Hell’s Angels. A Strange and Terrible. Saga by Hunter S. Thompson

The procession rolled at exactly eleven — a hundred and fifty bikes and about twenty cars. A few miles north of Oakland, at the Carquinez Bridge, the outlaws picked up a police escort assigned to keep them under control. A Highway Patrol car led the caravan all the way to Sacramento. The lead Angels rode two abreast in the right lane, holding a steady sixty-five miles an hour. At the head, with Barger, was the scruffy Praetorian Guard: Magoo, Tommy, Jimmy, Skip, Tiny, Zorro, Terry and Charger Charley the Child Molester. The spectacle disrupted traffic all along the way. It looked like something from another world. Here was the scum of the earth, the lowest form of animals, an army of unwashed gang rapists. . . being escorted toward the state capital by a Highway Patrol car with a flashing yellow light. The steady pace of the procession made it unnaturally solemn. Not even Senator Murphy could have mistaken it for a dangerous run. There were the same bearded faces; the same earrings, emblems, swastikas and grinning death’s-heads flapping in the wind — but this time there were no party clothes, no hamming it up for the squares. They were still playing the role, but all the humor was missing. The only trouble en route came when the procession was halted after a filling-station owner complained that somebody had stolen fourteen quarts of oil at the last gas stop. Barger quickly took up a collection to pay the man off, muttering that whoever stole the oil was due for a chain-whipping later on. The Angels assured each other that it must have been a punk in one of the cars at the rear of the caravan, some shithead without any class.

In Sacramento there was no sign of harassment. Hundreds of curious spectators lined the route between the funeral home and the cemetery. Inside the chapel a handful of Jim Miles’ childhood friends and relatives waited with his body, a hired minister and three nervous attendants. They knew what was coming — Mother Miles’ people, hundreds of thugs, wild brawlers and bizarre-looking girls in tight Levi’s, scarves and waist-length platinum-colored wigs. Miles’ mother, a heavy middle-aged woman in a black suit, wept quietly in a front pew, facing the open casket.

At one-thirty the outlaw caravan arrived. The slow rumble of motorcycle engines rattled glass in the mortuary windows. Police tried to keep traffic moving as TV cameras followed Barger and perhaps a hundred others toward the door of the chapel. Many outlaws waited outside during the service. They stood in quiet groups, leaning against the bikes and killing time with lazy con­versation. There was hardly any talk about Miles. In one group a pint of whiskey made the rounds. Some of the outlaws talked to bystanders, trying to explain what was happening. Yeah, the guy was one of our leaders, said an Angel to an elderly man in a baseball cap. He was good people. Some punk ran a stop sign and snuffed him. We came to bury him with the colors.

Inside the pine-paneled chapel the minister was telling his weird congregation that the wages of sin is death. He looked like a Norman Rockwell druggist and was obviously repelled by the whole scene. Not all the pews were full, but standing room in the rear was crowded all the way back to the door. The minister talked about sin and justification, pausing now and then as if he expected a rebuttal from the crowd. It’s not my business to pass judgment on anybody, he continued. Nor is it my business to eulogize anybody. But it is my business to speak out a warning that it will happen to you! I don’t know what philosophy some of you have about death, but I know the Scriptures tell us that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. . . Jesus didn’t die for an animal, he died for a man. . . What I say about Jim won’t change anything, but I can preach the gospel to you and I have a responsibility to warn you that you will all have to answer to God!

The crowd was shifting and sweating. The chapel was so hot that it seemed like the Devil was waiting in one of the anterooms, ready to claim the wicked just as soon as the sermon was over.