Indian Larry - Early Life

Early Life

Born Lawrence DeSmedt in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York on April 28, 1949, Larry grew up in the Newburgh, New York area including the town of New Windsor. Indian Larry was the oldest of three children, with two younger sisters, Diane and Tina. Larry’s mother, Dorothy, described him as "a good boy, but mischievous." Larry's strict father, Augustine, was a carpenter at West Point Military Academy and had built the family's home. He wanted his son to follow in his footsteps in the carpentry trade. Young Larry liked Lincoln logs and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth Revell plastic model kits. Roth, a legendary California artist and hot rod builder, was a big influence, and what Larry absorbed would later bubble up to influence his own work in one form or another.

Larry attended a Catholic elementary school where he suffered abuse. The nuns would hit his knuckles until they bled and lock him in dark closets. Larry kept what was occurring to himself, and didn't tell his family what was going on. When his mother asked about his knuckles, Larry would always just say that he had gotten into a fight. It wasn't until years later that his family learned what had actually happened. As a child Larry was described as being sensitive and artistic, and "feeling more than most."

A well-known anecdote about Indian Larry is that as a kid he attempted to build a bomb in his parent's basement in order to blow up the Catholic school; Instead, an explosion occurred at the DeSmedt home, and Larry lost the small finger on his left hand. Another version of the story states that the injury occurred while Larry was trying to build a skyrocket for the 4th of July. When asked about the injury during a 2003 Biker Build-Off program, Larry seemed to have come to peace with it:

Like most horrible atrocities that happen to you in life, when you look at them in retrospect, it's usually a blessing or a lesson. It's not much fun when you're caught up in it. But it's better. You can get into tighter spots. Makes you a better mechanic.

As a youth Larry participated in the Boy Scouts. Larry's scoutmaster, Gerald Doering, is known for having raced Indian motorcycles, "and his love for the sport had a profound effect upon Larry." Doering and his son Ted (who was the same age as Larry; they were friends in the scout troop together) would later found the Motorcyclepedia in 2011 — a large motorcycle museum 65 miles north of Manhattan. (Ted had opened a chopper shop in 1969 out of a shed on the family's property, and the Doerings started selling wholesale parts in the early 70s focusing mainly on older Harley-Davidson models and had collected Indian motorcycles over the decades).

Larry's first build was when he took his little sister Tina's tricycle and equipped it with Schwinn bicycle handlebars and a lawn mower engine. According to a Rolling Stone interview that was mentioned in a New York Times article, Larry's first motorcycle was a 1939 Harley Knucklehead that he bought when he was a teenager for a couple hundred dollars. "Within hours, he had taken it apart, and it took him nine months to put it back together."

As a young man Larry learned how to weld from Conrad Stenglein in the Newburgh, New York area. The shop was simple. As Stenglein described it: "All we had in the shop was a welding machine, torches, grinder, body putty, stuff like that." Quality of work was important to Larry early on. Stenglein said that "Whatever part we made for a bike, it had to be strong and had to be good, that was our thing. It had to be perfect. If Larry put something on a bike that he didn't like, he'd cut it off. That's how he was."

A month before he was to graduate from high school, Larry told his mother that he was heading to California to join his younger sister Diane who was deeply immersed in the 1960s counterculture (Diane had run away from home when she was 16). Once in California Larry also took part in the scene and delved into drugs. Larry saw his sister Diane as a kindred spirit who understood what it was like to feel like an outsider in society. Then tragedy struck. On June 21, 1971, Diane was murdered. Larry accompanied her body back to their hometown for her funeral. The experience was emotionally devastating to him.

Coupled with his grief, Larry was spiraling in drug addiction. To pay for the drugs he was robbing stores. The cops had an idea that it was Larry but had not been able to catch him so they set up a sting operation. In 1972 as Larry was exiting a bank he had just robbed, he was fired upon by two police officers. He narrowly escaped being killed when one of the bullets grazed his eyebrow. At the age of 23, Larry was sent to Sing Sing prison for three years. During his incarceration Larry earned his GED, and started taking courses in welding and mechanics. Prison was "the place where he honed all his best mechanic skills." He also asked his mother to send him a dictionary and books on philosophy and other topics. He was released in September 1976.