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The Bridge
By Kent Taylor
There were Big Dan and Big Red, dad and mom to the two girls, who were known as Little Red and Blackie, along with one boy who didn’t get a nickname. They called this one “Magoo,” and they all lived in the Idle Wheels Trailer Park in Forest Hill, California, which is maybe all that we might have ever known about the Chandler family if Big Dan hadn’t convinced a fast Northern California motocross racer to make a slightly awkward trek to meet his wild, red-haired wannabe racer.
It is the early 1970s. Billy DaPrato was riding his own dirt bike at an OHV park called Mammoth Bar when a chain-smoking (“in the morning, he would light up a cigarette before he would even put on his wooden leg”) Big Dan Chandler asked him to come to meet his son, who was pretty good on his minibike but needed some help if he was going to become great.
“I said, ‘Okay,’” DaPrato recalled, thinking that Chandler’s son was just over on the other side of the park. “Well, we wound up riding for about half an hour before we got to their mobile home. Sitting out front was a really trashed-out minibike. Out comes Danny, and we started chatting and quickly became friends.”
This was the bridge between the end of one promising MX career and the beginning of another one. DaPrato, injured too many times in too few races, would soon decide to write the conclusion to his own dream of becoming a motocross champion. He would start a new chapter, where the protagonist was a rambunctious redhead (is there any other kind?) who had a chance to be a hero if only he had a guiding hand to show him the way. While DaPrato would not be alongside Danny during his most successful seasons as a pro, he was there in the beginning, forming a partnership that would last just a few seasons but also a friendship that would endure for the remainder of Danny’s life.
DaPrato was on track for his own pro career, racing with some of Northern California’s best in the early ’70s. “I was so into it. All I did was ride and look at motorcycle magazines. I turned expert at 16,” he remembers, “and picked up a sponsorship with Gene’s Automotive, which was a car repair shop that sold Husqvarnas in the back. Later, I met Carl Cranke, a Penton rider and probably the best all-around American dirt-bike rider ever. He mentored me and taught me a lot about being both a rider and a mechanic. But in 1972, I broke my shoulder and had to have surgery. After that healed, I crashed again and broke my elbow. Back then, they just really didn’t know how to fix things like they do today. I thought I had healed, but my elbow just locked up during a race. I crashed again and hurt my shoulder one more time.
“I decided that was enough—time to get a job. My parents helped me start a shop called Woodland Cycles. We started with Hodakas and ended up picking up Suzuki, Kawasaki and KTM. It was a decent dealership, but it was in a small rural farming community. It was hard to make that work.”
“I remember watching Danny riding a CZ when he was like 14 years old. He was good—and was battling with guys like Darrell Schultz. In 1976, he had a sponsorship from a place called The Dirt Factory, which fell through, and so my shop started sponsoring him.”
By 1978, Chandler was off riding the Nationals on a 125 Suzuki and turning in good results, just not quite good enough to get a real factory ride. Once more, DaPrato enters the scene.
“There was a fellow named Jim Moore. He owned a trailer business, and he had fallen out with his sponsored rider. He calls me up to say he needs a racer for his Maico. He asks me if I know of anybody. I called Danny, and in 1979, we wound up winning the California Winter Series on that Maico 250. That led to us getting a call from Selvaraj Narayana, who was the team manager at Maico. We signed a contract, they gave us a box van, which I built into a race rig, and we headed out on the road.
“The company wanted us to ride the 250 because they weren’t selling very well at the time. But they were heavy and slow, and we couldn’t get them to rev, which is how Danny liked to ride. We lightened the pistons and the clutch, replaced the swingarm, and installed handmade MX Fox forks.”
At Saddleback Park in 1979, Chandler and his Maico were enjoying a spectacular day in the sun, leading the exotic Japanese machinery piloted by Bob Hannah, Marty Tripes, Jim Weinert and Kent Howerton. But it was a short-lived glory, as the mighty Maico expired, leaving Chandler a sideline spectator.
“We might’ve won that race, but the piston locked up,” DaPrato said. “We tore it down, put it back together, and didn’t have any more problems with it. To this day, I don’t know what happened.”
DaPrato said the contract promised works bikes and parts. They never showed up. Without them, he felt the bike needed to be modified to be competitive, which is where he locked horns with team manager Narayana. In early 1980, DaPrato made the difficult decision to leave Team Maico.
“I told Danny, ‘I can’t do this any longer.’ And he was scared about losing his only ride, so he stayed. But they fired him a few months later anyway.”
That would temporarily end the professional part of their relationship. DaPrato returned to the motorcycle business. Chandler went on to great success with Team Honda, winning Nationals along with his famous sweep of the Motocross and Trophy des Nations races in 1982. His success brought him back full circle, back to DaPrato, and the two men made plans to team up once again, this time in the FIM Grand Prix circuit in 1985.
“We made a plan,” DaPrato said. “I was going to join him in Europe as his Kawasaki mechanic. He just had a few more races to ride to honor his existing deal, and that was when he had his crash in Paris.”
Chandler would live the next 25 years in a wheelchair. Through that time, he and DaPrato remained close friends.
Two days before he died, “Magoo” paid a visit to his mentor and friend. “It was May 2, 2010. He had a van that he could drive, and he came over to see me. I said, ‘Come out, and we can bring you into the house.’ He was like, ‘No, Billy. I don’t even want to get out of my van.’ And then he said to me, ‘I’m just so tired. I’m so f-ing tired.’ And two days later, he was gone.”
Many moto-journalists and fans eulogize Danny “Magoo” Chandler as a wild man, a rider whose throttle hand twisted too far beyond his skill level. They say he was “crazy” and “a crasher.” DaPrato, who knew him better than anyone, believes that this trailer park kid, who grew up to beat the world’s best and then lived 25 years in a wheelchair, knew only one speed. Wide open. All day long.
“He was like a quarter horse. He gave it everything he had for as long as he could.” CN
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