I am the owner of The Nickwackett Garage. I grew up, or at least got older here, working for my father, Lloyd Provin, Sr. Dad was the second generation of Provins to own this shop, which was founded by my grandfather Earle in 1932. It was a Graham dealership then, selling Graham automobiles.

After Graham went out of business in the early 1940s, my grandfather used the shop to store and maintain his trucks, then rented it to various businesses, who serviced cars, ran machine shops and serviced televisions. I recently discovered that my Grandfather Wright worked here for a time after the second world war.

After my grandfather’s death in 1964, Dad moved his growing Triumph motorcycle business, begun as so many bike shops did in those days in his backyard, here. He sold and serviced Triumphs from 1957 until the end of the Meriden Triumph era in 1982, continuing to service and restore them until his death in 2007. He also sold lawn and garden equipment, serviced TVs and radios, was a Suzuki dealer from ‘64-’69 and a BMW dealer from ‘72-’80. Dad had a wide interest and insatiable curiosity about mechanical things. It seemed to me then as well as now, that he could fix anything.

I started working here as a child. My first assignment was removing rims from wheels. I was small enough that I had to stand on a makeshift stool to reach the workbench vise. That stool is still here, under the desk. As I grew older, I spent more and more time at the shop until I graduated from high school, when I began working here full time.

I was fortunate to have grown up in the time in which I did. When I was a teenager, British motorcycles were still a force to be reckoned with both on the road and on the sales floor. In just a few years, though, the great motorcycle manufacturers of England were virtually no more. Dad’s business turned more toward BMW, which kept the business vibrant until 1981, when he stopped selling BMWs. This was not a conscious decision; he had never signed a sales contract with Butler and Smith (BMW’s importer from the fifties through 1980), counting on Vermont’s franchise laws, which said that once a manufacturer had sold you a motorcycle as a dealer, they had to continue. He hoped to do the same thing with BMW North America when they took over US distribution in 1981, but they refused to sell him any bikes, and he refused to sign their contract.

With no new motorcycles to sell, Dad decided to branch out. He was uncomfortable with the seasonal nature of the motorcycle business, so he tried repairing radiators and selling used cars. Neither was a great success, but they did generate some income, and we learned new skills. I did most of the radiator repairs, learning how to really solder, which is becoming a lost art. Despite all our attempts, the shop was falling on hard times. I had become a BMW fanatic and wanted more involvement with them, so with a heavy heart, I left Dad’s shop in the spring of 1985 to work at Just Imports, a BMW and Moto-Guzzi shop in Montpelier, Vermont.

I worked at Just Imports until June of 1992, when I moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts to work at Berkshire Motor Works. In February 1996, I moved to Bob’s BMW, in Maryland where I worked until June of 2008, when I moved back to Vermont to re-open this shop under the name of The Nickwackett Garage.