I just watched the George Clooney and Evan McGregor film, “Men who Stare at Goats.” It made no sense, but about a decade before the Iraq war, maybe two, I owned goats and was a member of the Hells Angels.
I lived on a half-acre in Sun Valley on the outskirts of the San Fernando Valley. I bought this little clapboard one bedroom in a bad part of town. It’s all I could afford at the time, but I needed to get back in the market or forever grouse about not being able to own my own home. Not bad thinking for a grubby 26-year-old biker.
I won’t mention the club much. I was about to get out after being around the organization for about 2.5 years and a member for a year. I could have stayed in, but I saw treachery and trouble everywhere and too often in the ranks. As a member for a year, I had been in six fights and lost one.
The first one happened while I was still a prospect. The charter attended a funeral up north. I drove an international panel wagon. A brother, Old Man Paul ran off the twisting Topanga canyon road soaked in whiskey and became instantly a life-long paraplegic. I was able to haul him in the back of my panel wagon to a couple of functions. One time we also drove his stinkin’ Lincoln to Pismo Beach. We partied in some other club guy’s home. He initiated fights all night as if to obtain a stripe for each violent encounter. It was too weird. He wanted to fight all of us. He lost.
When I returned home from the funeral, I found my redhead at the time attended a party in Marina Del Rey, home of the Heathens Motorcycle Club. One troublemaker messed with the her and we faced one of our codes: You don’t mess with an HA broad. Old man John the president and I met up with their President and this dufus Mofo. I fought him until I tore his patch off his back, while he scrambled along the deck next to the pool table.
Recently George Christie mentioned one of the fights in his book, “Exile,” and claimed I started a war over a girl. That wasn’t the case at all, which I had to point out to Sonny Barger after I left the club. We rode to the Great Western Exhibit Center swap meet and had a great time with my brothers and so many other guys I knew in the industry.
I bumped into a member of another club who turned and said something disparaging about the Hells Angels. Another code faced, I had no choice but to smack him and the fight was on. It was just a fight between young members of two clubs, not a war. But ultimately, the leadership turned it into a war. It changed everything. I didn’t know until years later, my ex and her club boyfriend were somewhere in the swap meet. I never saw them.
George’s rendition of the event was more romantic and kept the book flowing. That’s an author’s prerogative.
A month later I found myself in a set-up brawl with the same club and the Satan’s Slaves in a bar in the San Fernando Valley. We took a few patches and the member I handled fought valiantly to retain his coveted patch.
Then the Summer came and we rode to the Bass Lake Run in Northern California. We partied hard and a northern member came around with drugs. Soon the whiskey and liquid acid took their toll and this member started to pick a fight with me. In a fog, I moved around and he smacked me once. I didn’t know what to make of it. He was an older Oakland member and well known and respected. I admired him and didn’t want to fight.
We argued about the massive campfire and then he hit me again. That turned me from my cloud of drugs into a fighter and I went after him. The next thing I knew he fell to the dirt and I climbed on top. That’s when the realization hit. Oakland wasn’t going to lose this fight. I would be rat packed and most likely stabbed maybe killed in the dusty dirt and pine needles. So, what the hell was I going to do?
Fortunately, this old member hit like a little girl, so I let him roll on top of me and get the best of the fight. I was a mess and rode home covered in blood, gravel and dirt.
At the time, I felt like I should lose the fight at Bass Lake for my charter. Again, I might have been set up for a mud- check on acid.
More towards the holidays we rode to Ventura to party. We made our presence known at all the biker bars and ended up at a brother’s 1930s mission styled home with a massive wooden porch. Our president at the time, Indian Ray started in on a big prospect. This was another lesson. Ray and whiskey didn’t match and he would go after the Buck, folding knife on his hip and stab someone, anyone.
He started to reach for his knife and it was in that precarious moment we told the prospect to leave. He tried to defy us, but we ultimately convinced him to leave his motorcycle and peel out on foot. That left me face to face with the angry Indian who wanted blood. I spent an hour eyeball to eyeball with the mad man, his calloused hand twitching over his knife.
Ray’s proclivity to stab folks created devastating issues with the club and may have ultimately led to his death.
Later, I got out of the club and went back to working for Easyriders and being a grubby biker. I still had my club babe, Melanie, and we had a blast for a while until drugs and shit got in the way.
I left the club in the winter and the next Summer rode to the Kern River Run. With a bunch of guys from Moorpark, where we set up camp and the party started. A brother ran up to me in despair, something about our friends and a surfer with a knife. I checked and this long-haired surfer-dude pulled a massive bowie knife on a rider from my camp. I told him to put it away and fight like a man.
He did, but as soon as I walked away he pulled it again. I returned and hit him with a half-empty Cuervo Gold bottle and took the knife. “Now, fight all you want,” I said. His face swelled up like a blood-filled balloon.
All night long emissaries from his camp begged me to return his knife. Use it or lose it was and is the code. I held onto the long-blade bone-handled knife for over 30 years.
Years later, I trained in close-quarters combat with a close friend and weapons expert. He taught me gun, knife and close-quarters fighting. George taught martial arts for decades. I also trained in Pilipino stick fighting with Bruce Lee’s mentor Sifu of the IMB academy in Harbor City.
Here’s the deal about fights and violent encounters. Each one is a roll of the dice. I could hit a guy once and kill him. Anything and everything can turn in any direction. A brother can simply be pushed in a bar, slip in a puddle of beer, hit his head on the iron edge of a pool table and never be the same again or worse. The pusher could face a murder charge.
I may have missed a fight description or two and maybe it was meant to be.
