"The little shop in the middle of nowhere, where wonderful folks come from everywhere!"

Kersting's Cycle Center sits between the tiny Indiana towns of North Judson and Winamac--about 110 miles due north of Indianapolis. "We're in the country, so it's us and horses Harleys and hogs," Jim says, adding that some of those horses and hog® have served as payment over the years. "I've taken them in trade before, everything anybody wanted to trade," he says. "I still think it's a pretty good system. There's always someone wanting to buy horses and the pigs got put in the freezer."

In 1960, he married Nella, and they began work on their dealership's new home. "We built it out of cement blocks, and it was 28 feet wide and 70 feet long," Jim says. "The first 30 feet on the west end was our living quarters." Jim and Nella's two eldest children, Sandy and Randy, were born during the seven years the Kersting's lived in that building. The youngest, Jason, was born after they moved into a little home in North Judson.