The Vicksburg Farmers’ Market site at Washington and Jackson streets was swarming with visitors Saturday and the center of attraction wasn’t tomatoes and beans, it was Hondas, Harleys and Indians.

Visitors to Vicksburg’s second antique motorcycle show arrived early and stayed long, examining and photographing motorcycles, mini bikes, scooters, mopeds and other vintage pre-1990 motorcycles under a bright sun and cool temperatures.

“I’m hoping to have 100 bikes here today,” organizer Roger Harris, himself a collector of vintage bikes, said, adding he organized the show last year to help attract people to the city.

The collection of motorcycles on display included American made motorcycles like Harley-Davidson and Indian, Japanese bikes like Honda and Yamaha, and BMWs from Germany, but also motorcycles from England, France, Russia and other foreign countries.

A restored Russian Ural military motorcycle was adorned with a bright red star from the days of the Soviet Union and a machine gun affixed to the sidecar.

Several motorcycles had histories of their own.

Dwayne McLemore’s 1917 Cleveland motorcycle had a tragic history behind it.

The motorcycle, he said, was owned by a young man who was a courier for Congress and had a wreck with a car. “He hit the windshield of the car,” he said.

“They took him to the hospital, where they sewed him up, and he walked home. Later, he told his mother, ‘Mama, I don’t feel good,’ and he collapsed.

“When they sewed him up at the hospital, they left a piece of glass and he had an aneurism and died.”

Another motorcycle had a Vicksburg connection.

Buddy Muirhead, a former Vicksburg resident now living in Searcy, Arkansas, said his restored 1924 Ner-A-Car motorcycle was bought by man to ride in the city, but it didn’t have enough horsepower to handle the hills in the city, “So he hung it up in his garage in 1928.”

When Muirhead’s brother, Jerry, and their father came from Greenville to visit the man in 1943, they took the motorcycle back.

“We had a good time riding that motorcycle,” he said, adding it wrecked in 1944.

When his brother was discharged after the Korean War, Muirhead said, he moved to Denver, Colorado, and took the bike with him with the intent to repair it.

When Muirhead visited him in 2004, he took what was left of the bike and restored it.

“It took a while; we had to find parts for it and had to make some of the parts, but we got it done,” he said.

Muirhead said the motorcycle was touted as transportation for “ministers and ladies.” Because of its open design, Women, he said, didn’t have to stretch their legs over the bike to get on it.

“They just stepped over,” he said, adding there was a hood that covered the bike’s moving parts.

When Harris decided to organize the antique motorcycle show, “I thought this would be a good way to bring people to downtown Vicksburg, and a lot of people from out of town have brought their motorcycles. We’ve got people from Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.”

“People love to see these antique bikes,” he said. “It helps them remember days from their childhood. They bring back huge memories.”