So I have been messaging Old Dave a bit just to see what he has to say about Simplex since he lives so close to the original plant. Here is some of what he had to say. His friends must be in their middle 80s I would guess. Rick, maybe you can call his buddy up and ask him about the spokes! LoL What follows is from Old Dave. Love to be at one of his car shows and chew the fat with him and his buddies!!
Sorry for the long delay as I forgot my password and got distracted on other projects. Yes I live in New Orleans and have driven by the factory and there is a guy in our local car club that worked there from 1947 - about 1960. He said they started him out putting spokes in the hubs and he worked his way up to assembly of the bikes and then sent him to AC school so he could learn to maintain the company air conditioning units. So he did that for years and even after he left for his own AC business he maintained the AC for the company until it closed. I am also friends with the son of the guy that took all the photographs for advertising for the company and he remembers the bikes always being in his Dad's photo studio. His Dad would never let them get on the bikes or even sit on them. So any black and white studio pictures you see of Simplex motorcycles are from Daspit Photography that was on Camp street and not far from the Barrone Street building which is a mile or so from the big manufacturing facility on North Carrollton Ave just a few blocks of Canal Street (the main drag through the City).
The big factory is now a Home Depot in the front so not recognizable as the factory but the back of the building looks the same but it has been a couple of years since I checked it out. I might have to run by it again just to see how it looks now.
