Looking around, I saw my hosts across the court. Brogan was showing off his strength by lifting the front end of a Volkswagen while Shotgun and Paranoid George marveled. The owner of the car was bustling around Brogan telling him he was strong and that was nice but to please leave the car alone.

Shotgun assured him Volkswagens were built for rough treatment while Paranoid George was busy taking off the hubcaps.

When the car's owner scurried off to call the police, I mentioned how hungry I was and asked Paranoid George if he wasn't hungry too. This took their minds off the car and we left for breakfast. After another fabulous feed on Brogan's credit cards, we stopped off at a bar for great pitchers of cold beer.

When we finally got back to Murray's place, everybody was hustling around loading up. I went to my car and found four of Big Mike's thugs in it all ready to travel and fully equipped with carbines and six-packs.

I asked one of my passengers if they had lost their scooters. He answered that they had come in a car and had parked outside a bar last night and some degenerate stole it. (They had stolen it in California.)

He further explained that they had liberated a brand new Camaro for the ride back but Big Mike would not let them use it. Three of them were on parole in California and so were in Arizona illegally. Big Mike figured a car with Arizona license plates filled with California motorcycle thugs would look out of order. They did not want to attract attention so they were riding with me. I was thrilled.

After a lot of shouting and gunning of engines, the caravan was assembled. There were eighteen cycles, a camper and three cars.

The camper was the repair shop and was used to haul tools, spare parts and busted up scooters and their riders. It took up the rear to be on hand for any accidents or breakdowns. The car directly in front of the camper had been souped up by its driver, an ex-moonshiner from Tennessee. It could do 130 mph and could outmaneuver anything on the road.

There is a kind of clown who thinks it is funny to sideswipe a motorcycle. If this happened on an Iron Cross run, the fast car would take after the offender, chase him down and hold him for the bikers to catch up to him and kick him to death.

My four passengers were pretty orderly except for hollering and giving the finger to other motorists. But by the time we got to Blythe, California, they felt secure and were also well liquored up.

We were at the head of the caravan when we were overtaken and passed by a car lit up with flower designs and peace symbols. Two hippies were in the front seat and the one on the passenger's side reached out and gave us the finger. He probably had held back while passing the rest of the column lest someone see the insult in a rear-view mirror and cut him off.

But as he passed us he hit the gas and sped ahead, undoubtedly feeling safe. My passengers went wild, nearly pounding me to death to get me to catch the hippies. I new it was either the hippies or me so I drove like a madman.

As we approached the little town of Desert Center, I prayed for cops. The two bikers in the front seat were pounding the dashboard urging the car on. In the back seat, I heard carbine bolts slipping into place.

Ahead, a tractor pulled out onto the highway and the hippies nearly hit it. They swerved across the road and nearly plowed into an oncoming oil truck. When they got back on their side of the road, they started throwing suitcases and tools out onto the highway hoping we would bounce over them and crash.

As we sped through Desert Center I looked for the law but I don't think they ever heard of police.

After dodging the hippies trash, I finally overtook them. The thug at the right rear window began firing through the hippies' open rear windows. There was no damage done a the bullets went in one window and out the other. The terrified hippies believed they were going to be shot.

After about the fourth blast, they swerved off the road at ninety miles per hour. They immediately caromed into a sand dune and flipped end over end and out of sight.

My riders went insane with glee and pounded me harder than when they were urging me on. I was finally accepted.

The rest of the trip was uneventful except when we passed a car with both rear windows open and no one in the back seat. Our trigger man had found a new game. He must have fired through a dozen cars but we were not caught and there were no complaints against the club.

When the caravan got to Big Mike's house in Glendale I was congratulated by all concerned. I was coming to believe that this club could get away with anything and it felt good even to ride along on its coattails.

Big Mike set up an appointment next day for the interview and I left with my four companions. The trigger man, Ape, had a bunch of credit cards like Brogan. The five of us must have burned three hundred dollars in the next few hours.

The bikers cleaned up and we went to three of the best restaurants and then bar-hopping with the swells on Sunset Boulevard. We each picked up a starlet and checked into a plush hotel.

It was getting to me, I had to admit. Before, I had to watch my pennies and now I could live like a king on a friend's piece of plastic. But here I was, feeling like a child turned loose in a candy shop when the scroungiest Iron Cross member took this kind of living for granted.

Next day I drove over to Big Mike's for that interview.

His home was spotless, in sharp contrast to the slovenly bikers lounging around. The Bullwinkle cartoon show was blaring on the TV and the bikers watched, fascinated, as Edward Everett Horton narrated a fractured fairy tale.

Big Mike's two year old son was under the couch swinging a coke bottle and trying to clobber a hulking German Shepherd puppy. The pup was yelping and snapping at the pudgy fingers grasping the bottle's neck. Its mother was skulking fretfully around the couch, grumbling and snarling instructions, not daring to bite the child but rooting for her offspring nonetheless.

When the last cartoon was over, Big Mike turned off the set, kicked out the dogs and put the child in its playpen. Then he got out a six-pack and we all settled down for the interview.

Like most motorcycle club presidents, Big Mike was democratic in the extreme. He never pushed his men around and gave few orders. There were rules everyone had to follow but he did not exclude himself. His job was more friendly director than overlord.

Some of his men were bigger, some smarter, some meaner. But none had the flair for being "on" all the time. The Profile could grandstand continually, a job few of his men could stomach. He was also an excellent manager and troubleshooter, tasks that left his troops confused and helpless.

Seeing how well he got along with his men, I asked him if there were many mutinies. He told me about Indian's twenty-four hour stint as president.

Indian, a happy neurotic who thought there was nothing to running the club, challenged Big Mike for its leadership. Since Big Mike knows his people and likes a joke, he told Indian he could have the club. Things started going downhill for Indian immediately.

As Big Mike tells it: "Indian, Pigpen, Samson, Paranoid George and Richard were crashed over at Indian's pad and partying. A dog had been barking and barking and it was just driving Indian nuts. So he went next door and tried to kick in the door, saw the dog, took a shot at it and missed. So the neighbors called the cops over that and nothing happened."

"Then he felt he should give his troops some action so they went down the street. There was a bunch of dopers down there, you know, popping pills, blowing grass, mainly just being vile and degenerate. And they were such a bunch of scumbags that, this being a Mexican neighborhood, even the Mexicans complained about them."

"So the fearless five went crashing in there, bashing in the door, kicking everybody out of bed. They thought they were gonna run into super big fight. The first person they kicked out of bed was a naked broad and she went running, screaming outside. They threw a couple more out the windows, girls, both of them not wearing anything, didn't have a stitch on."

"The two girls still there started saying, 'Oh, wait 'til our boyfriends get back. They'll take care of you!' So Paranoid George said, 'Well, fine, we'll just sit here and wait 'til your boyfriends get back.' So they slapped 'em around a bit and waited for their boyfriends."

"They didn't come so after about a half hour, they got bored and left. This was about three o'clock in the morning. By about three-thirty they were partying again over at Indian's."

"Then the front door came crashing in and there was a whole bunch of cops with shotguns. They rousted Indian's wife out of bed with a shotgun in her face and ran everybody outside."

"The girls they had run amuck on came up the street about then. It seems that the best looking one of the bunch, who looked nineteen, was only thirteen years old. I guess they had thrown her naked and screaming out of bed. Anyway, she had pressed charges for attempted rape on Paranoid George and Pigpen. And since she was so young, both Paranoid George and Pigpen were booked on child molesting."

"Well, they were hauled off to the clink. We got our signals crossed and I think a day later Paranoid George called me up and said, 'I'm in jail.' I said, 'I'm not responsible for you; Indian is. What are you in for?' Paranoid George says, 'Child molesting.' I says, 'I'm not going to get you out on child molesting' and hung up.

"So Indian called me later and told me the whole story and said the bail was $300. I figured, well that'd cost thirty bucks apiece to get them out. But it wasn't; they run them on a 288; crime against a child. When I called our bail bondsman he said no, the $300 is not the bail but the whole fee to get them out It was $3000 apiece bail!"

"I figured for that kind of money I'd just let'em sit in the pound for awhile. Two days later the thirteen year old dropped the charges but it did sort of put a damper on the new leadership in the Iron Cross. Indian figured he just really couldn't stand the headaches, plus Pigpen and Scooter had loaded his garage with a whole bunch of parts. Sad to say, most of those were hot. That's one of the things I should have put my foot down on; they were going to Watts and around there and stealing everything on two wheels."

"They had all those parts in my garage and my landlord told me if I didn't get every single bike, including my own, out of that garage, I was going to get evicted. So I got a'hold of those two and I said, 'Get this garbage out of here.'

"So they threw it in the pickup and ran it out to Indian's. Then Indian got an eviction notice and unloaded them on Bob, a prospect. But poor Bob had to get his stuff out; his parents told him that they wanted that junk out of there."

"Anyway, with all the hassling he hadn't looked for, Indian was glad to step down. There hasn't been any bids for power since."

I asked him about the aims of his organization and pointed out that there seemed to be a lot of chaos and confusion.

He said, "Yeah, but we can function in chaos; we can perform. You might say it's part of our training. When everyone else about us is losing their heads, we keep ours. We're used to confusion so we're able to take over in such situations. We're getting ready for total chaos. Then we'll really shine."

"You think maybe people will vote you into power then?" I asked.

"Vote? Hell, man," he said contemptuously, "We'll just take over."

"But would that be right?" I asked, so square I wondered later that they didn't kick me out.

At this, Paranoid George butted in, "Now you approach this thing and you don't moralize or philosophize. Power comes out of the gun barrel. You want to deny it, you better run like hell when the shit hits the fan. Because then when everything is out in the open and the phonies freeze up we, us types, will really get it on and then we'll grab off territory you wouldn't believe."

Then Noah, the club's pastor, said in a prayerful tone, "There are them who has who are weak and them who don't have who are strong. And I'm serving notice on everybody, Lord, things are going to change hands."

I asked, "But, won't you guys get stomped?"

Big Mike answered, "We're always getting stomped anyway, so what's to lose? Besides, the collapse of the establishment will produce casualties in every group. But those prepared, like us, will survive as a group. Then our rise to power will simply be a repetition of history. It's happened before, you know."

"Before the Roman Empire collapsed," he continued, "it manifested much in the same way we see now, disorder, chaos and anarchy in the society we live in. There was no way of enforcing law in the last days of the empire. Rich men left their houses with armed teams of fifty to a hundred men because of the crime, the criminals, the beggars and just plain scum that inhabited the last vestiges of the empire."

"Roving bands of desperate types grew out of the conditions of chaos in crumbling Rome. Many of them later migrated northward to what we know as Germany, France, Scandinavia, England and predominantly northern Europe."

"In the last days of the empire there were a few people, like some we have today, who tried to stop the deterioration and degeneracy that heralded the collapse of the empire. Unfortunately, they were too few and they were stoned, speared, crucified and otherwise killed by roving mobs of people who could see nothing but their own greed."

"The Roman Senate itself often dissolved into sword fights. Platoons of slaves worked to clean up the blood left on the Senate floor after each session. The Senate today hasn't gotten to this particular style of settling disputes, probably because they're too chicken. At least they are at the moment."

"As the empire collapsed, these roving bands of brigands worked out their tactics. And soon you had maybe five mounted horsemen swoop into a village and loot it. These people were just like a lot of people in the old west after the Civil War, before the advent of the twentieth century."

"These brigands had no code of ethics; no scruples. Anyway, five of them, perhaps, would swoop down on a village. They went in hacking down anyone they didn't like and would rip off what they thought they needed and disappear into the forest."

"As these bands of migrant bandits became stronger and stronger with from five to ten to fifteen men, they grew into private armies. There was no government in the middle ages of that time of any sort. The only thing with authority was the Catholic Church and they weren't particularly interested in protecting the possessions of anybody but the Catholic Church."

"So here were all these private armies and one day, it's lost in antiquity; nobody knows when, someone decides, 'Well, look, there's fifty of us, all armed to the teeth and we're all mounted. Now, there's a village down there with maybe a thousand people. They're relatively defenseless. They have only garden tools; they have no armor; they have no horses; they have no knowledge of war. Let's us bop down there and take over.' So that's precisely what happened."

"Fifty of them would go rumbling into a town of a thousand people and they'd herd them into the town square. Then their leader would tell the people, 'Look, you're under our domain.' Anyone who protested got killed."

"Well, the ones who were left who had any moral or intellectual caliber figured, 'These people may be here on top of us but on the other hand, they're protecting us.' So out of this evolved the feudal system of the middle ages."

"Today, the European nobility is primarily descended from these mounted bandits who moved in, took over a town and kicked all the peasants in the tail."

"Eventually, as they had nothing to steal because it all belonged to them anyway, they settled down. Then they designed coats of arms and established the age of chivalry. Then it became the fashion to right the wrongs and free the oppressed and so forth. However, at the time, most of the wrongs were created by them and the oppressed were their own people. They overlooked these things."

"There are many similarities between the robber barons and mounted bandits of the middle ages and the motorcycle clubs of today. The surcoats of the knights were simply a piece of cloth slung over your armor to identify which particular gang you belonged to. And the biker's colors are the same thing.

"The people in outlaw motorcycle clubs today are the same type as the old robber barons. Hoodlums, thugs, people who just can't seem to make a living; they seem to instinctively develop a style to pattern themselves after those old bandits."

That just about covered the projected aims and aspirations of the group. Anyway, we were interrupted by a pack of bikers assembling at Big Mike's before going to Gorilla Snot's wedding.

Gorilla Snot was as scroungy a biker as I had ever seen. His nickname came from 3-M gasket sealer which the bikers all called gorilla snot. The name fit him better than it did the sealer. He was truly vile.

He had decided to get married so all the outlaws around pitched in to give him a sendoff to hell. One of the bikers wanted to break his lease so the wedding was to be held at his place.

After a few cases of beer, the wedding got underway. The altar was a chopped hog set up in the middle of the living room with its black oil dripping on the wall-to-wall carpet. Everyone was in their greasy glory.

Noah was to marry the couple. He wore a backward collar, a Levis cutaway, a leather shirt and a German helmet. The bride wore her greasy Levis, a black blouse and a black veil. The groom wore a black Abe Lincoln hat, a black shirt and his greasy Levis. The best man and maid of honor were just as scroungy.

The wedding went on amid sniggering and poking and goosing among the onlookers. Noah and the bride and groom were dead serious, probably for the first time in their lives.

Noah, rattled by the heckling, was reading the part where it says, "And do you take this woman and her affections" but instead read "And do you take this woman and her afflictions." One of the bikers standing near Noah had been married several times so when he recognized the mistake he guffawed. This set several others off and Noah became enraged. He reached out and grabbed the laugher, jerked him forward and kneed him viciously. Then he threw him back into the pack.

A couple of the laugher's friends dove for Noah but Big Mike and Samson threw them down and began kicking them while the bride and groom waited patiently.

With all the turmoil, the neighbors must have called the law. About that time there was a banging at the door and someone screaming, "Come out with your hands up; this is the police."

Pinocchio threw open the door and yelled, "What do you mean, come out with your hands up? It's a weeding in here, you son-of-a bitch."

One of the four policemen repeated, "A wedding?"

"Come on in, you shit," said Pinocchio. "See for yourself."

The four lawmen filed in looking at the weird scene in ill-concealed amazement. One of them stopped by one of the laugher's friends, sitting on the floor rubbing his kicked jaw.
"Man, you've been worked over," said the cop. "Do you want to press charges?"

"Blow it out your ass," was the reply.

After looking over the bride and groom, the head officer said to the others, "Hell, if these people are getting married to each other, they don't need no more trouble. Let's go."

When the wedding was over everybody kissed the groom and shook hands with the bride. Then one of the bikers took off his boot, leaving inside his sock which he hadn't changed in months. He filled the boot with beer and champagne and passed it around.

One of the straighter citizens, half gassed for courage, remarked, "Gad, how disgusting. How could anybody drink out of a filthy boot like that?"

One of the bikers took out his upper plate and when the citizen wasn't looking, dropped it into his glass of beer. After the citizen took a long swig, the biker said, "Hey, gim'me that there glass. There's my false teeth." He yanked them out of the glass and put them in his mouth. The citizen then had a near fatal case of the dry heaves.

A gigantic cake had been ordered, plenty big enough for fifty people. One biker pushed his portion into his neighbor's face. That started off a cake throwing battle and fist fight that finished the cake and destroyed the apartment. The fight was all in fun but the place was a shambles.

The tenant knew he would be jailed if the landlord found him in the wrecked apartment. A passed out biker was laid out in it and was partly covered with flowers and beer cans. Looking around, the tenant said, "I wanted to break the lease but this is ridiculous."

Then he announced that he was going to move immediately. The drunken bikers cheered him and agreed to help him move.

Each grabbed up an armload of home furnishings and staggered out. One even went out with the tenant's garbage.

Two carried out the console TV and tied a rope around it. They attached the rope to one of the scooters and its rider went off dragging the TV down the street. There were knobs and tubes strung out for a block and a half.

The bikers had ordered a couple of gross bouquets of carnations. They had decorated their scooters with them and now looked like a flock of crazed garbage men celebrating a wedding on motorcycles and collecting the trash at the same time.

In the exodus the whole block was littered with bedding, garbage, phonograph records and kitchen utensils. Except for a couple of suitcases full of personal effects the former tenant had nothing left. But Ape had just gotten a Mastercharge Card, good at department stores and the tenant's wife loved to go shopping.

When the last of the furnishings had been jettisoned, the bikers went roaring around the neighborhood terrorizing everybody. At Big Mike's command they finally assembled and headed toward the local Shakey's Pizza Parlor. It was run by a paranoid type who was known to order motorcycle outlaws out of the place.

The attack was led by Pigpen and Samson, called by Big Mike, "The lilies of the field," because "they toil not, neither do they spin." They were masters at going into a restaurant, eating their fill and then causing so much trouble the manager was glad to see them leave without paying.

First they drove their motorcycles into the place and scared all the customers out. Then the rest of the bikers crowded in and began a mad dance on the tables and benches. They also stole several cases of beer from the locker. One of the bottles had a cockroach in it and Pinocchio was screaming at the manager demanding their money back.

At the sound of police sirens there was a wild scramble for the door. Within moments the place was cleared and the drunken bikers were heading off in all directions. The wedding party was a huge success.

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