Courtesy Photo Justin Hinkley’s grandfather, Win Hinkley, jumps over cars on his motorcycle during a thrill show promoting Knutson’s motorcycle and snowmobile business in Brooklyn, Michigan in the early to mid-1970s in this photo provided by the Knutson family.

“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France”

There he was, smiling in the grainy image on my TV: my grandfather, Winfred “Win” Hinkley, dressed in white pants and a white vest and a green button-down shirt with a big collar, performing stunts on his motorcycle in front of an overflow crowd.

He did wheelies and rode around while standing on his seat and he jumped through fire and jumped over cars.

The video quality is poor, apparently shot on a home video camera in the 1970s, and the video had no sound, just a twangy soundtrack.

But there was no mistaking Grandpa’s smile, shining through the grain.

The video came to me on a thumb drive shipped by a man named Tom Knutson, whose family owned a motorcycle and snowmobile business in Brooklyn, Michigan. Sometime between 1972 and 1974, Tom guesses, his father put on an open house for the dealership and invited my grandfather, who had a traveling motorcycle stunt troupe that rode with a circus for a spell, to perform as part of the event.

Tom wasn’t sure how his father and my grandfather came to know each other, but he did know the free open house attracted so many people the Michigan State Police had to close down the highway.

Tom’s father passed away last October and Tom came across photos and videos of the event while going through his father’s things. That got him researching my grandfather, which is how he came across a column I wrote in The News when Grandpa passed. That column connected Tom to me and prompted him to send me the thumb drive.

Tom’s mother still owns the business, which gave up selling motorcycles and snowmobiles in 1980, when interest rates got too high. Knutson’s is now an all-encompassing sporting goods store on Wampler’s Lake Road in Brooklyn. About 15 people work there, including Tom’s wife and son.

I’ve never been to Brooklyn and had never heard the name Knutson before, but Tom and I are now connected forevermore by my grandfather and his daring antics of a half-century ago.

What a small world we live in, a tiny little place that pulls us all together eventually and bonds us to our pasts.

I and my past are connected, too — in some small way — to every traveler who dines at the Cracker Barrel restaurant just off I-94 in Battle Creek.

Behind the restaurant’s host stand hangs a portrait of Winfred “Friendly Fred” Hinkley, Win’s father and my great-grandfather. In the photo, Great-Grandpa wears his blue tuxedo and tips his hat, smiling under his well-groomed mustache.

Great-Grandpa frequented Cracker Barrel before he died in 2010 and donated that photo to the restaurant. Great-Grandpa had a bit of an ego.

Great-Grandpa brought the Hinkley clan to Battle Creek in the 1960s when he got a job as an auctioneer for the federal government. He also ran a private auctioneering firm in Battle Creek for many years and briefly ran an auctioneering school. My grandfather and my father also worked as auctioneers. I am the first generation in four Hinkley generations to not take up the trade.

Among my most prized possessions are one of Great-Grandpa’s fedoras (he wore one every day) sitting on a shelf in my bedroom closet, a booklet promoting the auctioneering school tucked away on one of my many bookshelves, and a campaign poster hanging on the wall in my home office promoting Great-Grandpa’s bid for the Legislature.

In the poster, printed on heavy cardstock, Great-Grandpa wears a three-piece suit, a few documents in his left hand and his right hand clutching a pen as he points off into the distance. He looks very statesmanlike.

Great-Grandpa ran as a Democrat in 1978 and 1982, losing both times in the primary, according to Battle Creek Enquirer archives. In 1978, he picked up 11% of the vote as he took last place in a four-way race. In 1982, he earned 40% of the vote in a two-way primary.

In both races, Great-Grandpa pushed a tough-on-crime, tax-cutting agenda. Grandpa, Great-Grandpa’s son, always said Great-Grandpa should have run as a Republican and probably would’ve won.

I’ve never auctioneered and I’ve never jumped a motorcycle through fire, but somewhere buried inside of me is the statesman-salesman of my great-grandfather, the daredevil of my grandfather. Pieces of them make up the whole of me.

And the artifacts of the past, brought to me through this weird, tiny little world that connects us all, helps me see them more fully, which helps me see myself more fully.

And now, thanks to a man who lives at least a hundred miles from any place I’ve ever lived, hurtled into my life by cosmic forces, I have another small piece of me to cherish.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.