EVEN in those earlier years when most of the riders appeared to be large aggressive men of doubtful character, I must confess I have always thrilled to the throaty chuckle of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
The leather vests are still there, as are the tattoos, the chains, the steel-capped boots and the rough banter. But today's breed of Harley devotees can often be...well, a caring bunch.
Take the 40 members of Jakarta's Harley Owners Group - that's HOG for short in Muslim Indonesia - who for the past 10 years have been raising money to transform the lives of disfigured Indonesian children.
What makes their volunteer work so relevant this year in particular is the fact that the Academy Award for best documentary, Smile Pinki, focused on that same socially crippling problem. Only 38 minutes long, but powerful in its impact, the documentary tells the heartwarming story of how a simple operation on her cleft lip saved an eight-year-old Indian girl from the life of a village outcast. Dwarfed as it may have been by the success of the other award-winning Indian movie, Slumdog Millionaire, it was a huge hit in the little girl's village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
A child with a cleft lip
whose operation will be
funded by the bikers.
While her mother and everyone else watched the award ceremony on the village's sole television set, Pinki was there in Hollywood with her plastic surgeon, who performed the corrective surgery on her in 2007.
Just a day before the award was announced, the HOG members were at south Jakarta's small Lestari Hospital watching a team of eight green-robed volunteer surgeons performing the same procedure on 35 Indonesian children. Standing at the door of the white-tiled theatre, the University of Indonesia Medical School's director of plastic surgery, Dr Guntur Sudjatmiko, told me: 'This means everything to them and their families. It will change their lives forever.'
A veteran of more than 1,000 such operations over the past decade, Dr Sudjatmiko is one of those people you meet sometimes who restore your faith in humanity - and in Indonesia's future.
Paediatrician Hariarti Pramulyo, the kindly chief administrator of the tiny side-street hospital, is another such person. That Sunday morning, the hospital looked more like the rallying point for a Harley- Davidson reunion.
This was the sixth time HOG and Lestari have collaborated in Operasi Bibir Sumbing. The hospital sends out fliers and parents phone in to register their children for the operation.
The bikers get a kick out of seeing the mothers and their children waiting patiently - and with some trepidation - for their turn to undergo the life-altering operation.
Mostly Indonesians, Americans, Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders, the bikers belong to a Harley-Davidson chapter that was formed in 1987 - the first outside the United States. There are an estimated 20,000 Harley-Davidsons across Indonesia, ranging from old World War II courier bikes to the new models on which generals and other social luminaries purr around Jakarta on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
Dealerships in Jakarta and Bali sell about 350 of the iconic machines a year, at prices ranging from 350 million rupiah (S$45,500) to 460 million rupiah. In some hotels and other locations, there are parking places reserved for the Harley-Davidsons.
HOG secretary Jack Hammett, a grizzled Australian engineer, and vice-president Clive Carlin, a professional diver and one-time thespian, are the driving forces behind the cleft lip endeavour. The unlikely liaison began back in 1997 when businesswoman and social worker Arti Utami Supangkat asked the bikers to help the doctors raise money for their volunteer work.
Since then, they have funded up to six rounds of operations - some of them in outlying rural hospitals - a year, transforming the lives of more than 1,300 underprivileged children. Early next month, the chapter will hold its annual HogFest, a musical- cum-barbecue that raises enough money to pay for about 200 operations and provide monthly supplies for a Jakarta orphanage.
Cleft lips take about an hour to surgically correct, normally under general anaesthetic if the patient is under five years old. More serious deformities affecting the nose and palate require a further one or two operations to repair.
Occurring in about one in 600 babies, the condition is often genetic. But a lack of proper nutrition, zinc and folic acid deficiencies or an infection in the early stages of pregnancy are all contributing causes.
'Without the operations, the children become outcasts and try to hide their disfigurement behind their hands,' says Mr Hammett. 'Sometimes they are not even allowed outside and are unable to attend school or mix with other children.'
Sadly, Ms Supangkat, the woman who made it all possible, could not attend the latest Operasi Bibir Sumbing event. Bedridden, she died of cancer just days later. A thundering phalanx of Harley-Davidsons escorted her body on its final journey to a suburban cemetery.
