Gulf Coast Boy... The Biker Years

The fourth in a five-part series my father wrote.

***

It was 1986…I sold my boat and bought a Harley. I was 38 years old.

Actually, Danny and I were flounder fishing one day in a storm and I said I thought I would like to buy a motorcycle. He said “You too? I was just thinking about that same thing”.

I bought a Kawasaki and learned to ride. Danny had ridden dirt bikes years before and had almost lost his leg on one.

I was enjoying my new Japanese toy until Danny came by one day on a used Harley he had bought. I picked at him and said, “You’re gonna have to work on it every day and it will leak oil everywhere”.

He said, “Just get on it and ride down the road a few miles”. I did and I was hooked. There are motorcycles and then there are Harleys.

Soon after, I found a used bike, same model and year as Danny’s…except his was a cherry and mine was a wreck. But we had an ace in the hole.

Danny knew a guy named Steve who had a “Hog Shop’. He didn’t sell new Harleys but he knew everything there was and is to know about them. We started hanging out there. Steve and I became friends and he taught me how to work on my bike. Steve is one of those easy, laid back people who can back up everything he says and not be bragging. The hog shop wasn’t where your average yuppie Harley owner goes. His customers and friends might be a little rough, but I never met one that wasn’t good people. I had found a new home.

I loved my old bike. And riding it was great. My wife and I would just take off…she liked the roar of the pipes and the vibration and the thrill of it all. Often, she would wrap her legs around my waist and doze off as we tore down some road.

A big group of us made several trips to camp on the bank of the Guadalupe River in central Texas every November. I had to learn to pack a tent, sleeping bags, clothes, and food all on my Harley. And have room for one wife. (Plus a complete set of tools, of course). Sleeping on a steep bank on rocks got old real quick! But when we got there the party was on! We were all friends, but an occasional knife fight broke out or someone tried to slip off with someone else’s woman and there was a fist fight or some such stuff…you’ve got to expect that…

Once, I swear a woman just walked into our camp. She and her husband had a huge motor home parked across the campground from us. We were having a big party and she came over looking for some adventure. I guess she found it. After wiggling her ass in front of everyone and getting some of the guys pretty wound up, a couple of the biker girls took her aside and explained to her exactly what would happen if she didn’t leave…she got the message and left. All we ever saw of her husband was a flash of a curtain on the motor home…they were gone the next morning. Go figure.

On one trip, some of the guys decided to roast a whole pig over an open fire. Seemed like a good idea. The dug a fire pit, hung a rod over it and put the pig on the rod. We were there 3 days and all these guys did for those 3 days was turn that damn pig…and it was still half done…in the end, no one ate any of it...we were bikers, but we weren’t crazy about food poisoning….

We went to an “Easy Rider Magazine” rodeo in Austin one year. ‘Easy Rider’ is a great biker mag. Full of biker stuff, tattoos and half-dressed women. Good stuff like that….

Outside the convention area, a lot of vendors had set up shop. One that caught my eye was the ‘No Pierce Nipple Ring” stand. This guy and his lady were selling nipple rings that didn’t require any extra holes in the body. They had a whole set of Polaroid’s that showcased their stuff. But as soon as I asked about them, she was more than willing to show me the end product. She pulled up her tee-shirt and gave me a “hands on” view. Being a biker was very good.

The ‘Rodeo’ had many interesting events. One was the ‘weenie eating contest’.

A large sausage was suspended from a string…a biker would drive under it and his lady on the back would rise up and try to eat as much of it as she could in one pass under it. No hands could be used, the bike couldn’t stop and no one could touch the ground…Most sausage bit off was the winner…Now that’s a fun little game, isn’t it!

Back at the hog shop, we would hang out, bar-b-que and drink beer. If a ‘real’ customer came in with a flat or some minor repair, some of us would handle it. It was a small way to repay Steve for all he did for us.

None of us were ‘patch holders’. That’s someone that’s a member of a bona-fide MC club. Some clubs were outlaw and some were ‘fringe’. As I said, this wasn’t your ‘Harley Owners Group’.

One biker was a ‘pledge’ with the Viet Nam Vets MC. They look pretty rough, but aren’t ‘outlaw’.

He tried his best to recruit me. Not too many old Viet Nam vets riding around on ‘shovel heads’, even in the mid ‘80’s.

I passed on that…becoming a ‘patch holder’ was a lifetime commitment, and I was starting to rethink the whole biker life anyway. Actually, it was getting a little too damn comfortable. Beer, boobs and bikes…you could pour your testosterone out of your boots.

I think my final straw was when I was playing pool in some beer joint and a guy started giving the barmaid some lip. She was perfectly capable of handling him, but I felt an urge to step in. But before I did something stupid, I learned where this guy worked. I was about to pick a fight with a guy that I didn’t know who worked on a garbage truck. An honorable job, I’m sure, but I decided my biker career was getting out of hand.

So I sold my beloved old Harley, bought Dockers, a set of golf clubs, joined the Chamber of Commerce and became the oldest yuppie in town.

Evolution is weird, isn’t it? It was 1990. I was 42 years old.

End of part 4