July 21, 2002
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My intent here today is to provide some background info to my upcoming series of blogs about my years riding with outlaw bikers, while bumping that slow-loading profusely illustrated cat blog off the page when the new autobiographical series begins.
My thought was that many of my readers are young enough not to remember any of this. This morning, when I mentioned the film The Wild One to Greyfox, who was born in 1947, he asked, “Is that the one with James Dean and Sal Mineo?” That’s when I knew that it wasn’t just the young people who don’t know these things.
When I was a kid, it seemed that to my parents and the media all motorcycle riders were suspect at best and worthy of being run off the road when sighted on public highways. The reason for this was an event that occurred in southern California when I was only two years old.
Some bikers attending a motorcycle rally in Hollister got drunk and started yahooing the town. Yahooing is what drunk cowboys used to do in the railhead towns after cattle drives. It was the reason that men like Wyatt Earp became famous for quieting things down. One of the more interesting facts about the Hollister yahoos is that the police used a dance band to quiet things down.
That dance band factoid is only one of the interesting details I learned when I went searching for Hollister references on the web. If you would like to know more, and see pictures of the mess, check out the links below.
The Hollister Free Lance (This is on Grumbler’s site. Graeme “Grumbler” Harrison is also the nice man who let me use the B&W gif above.)
Comments (5)
cant wait to read about it. i have spent some time with a few one percenters myself being in the tattoo trade but i dont ride. i love to hear about women and bikes.
Wow – my dad wasn’t even born yet. It is great to read this stuff and to hear personal accounts though so I love this.
The bikers gained noteriety at the Lake of the Ozarks, too…and on south of there…near Branson. Yahooing I guess.
hm…considering what the country had just been thru, in WWII, and considering a lot of the ‘boys’ in those photos were very likely veterans…it’s almost fun to see them…relaxed?…no matter what the outcome of the yahoo. When I think about what they had seen overseas, anything else would be tame in comparison.
Wow! Pretty serious business there ……… I only managed two links, the rest are broken, but still!!