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

Californians are known to be enthusiastic outdoorsmen; in 1964, near Los Angeles, thousands of weekend campers had to be restrained by barriers from moving into an area that had just been gutted by a forest fire. When it was under control and the barriers were opened, the blackened campsite quickly filled to capacity. A reporter on the scene said the campers were pitching their tents among smoking stumps. One man who had brought his family explained that there was no place else to go, and we only have two days.

As a pathetic comment, it made a pathetic kind of sense. But nothing that simple and tangible could explain the capacity crowd at Bass Lake. Anybody who really wanted no part of the outlaws had plenty of time to find a safer vacation spot. Police reports of possible Hell’s Angels strikes had Bass Lake near the top of every list.

So it must have been a giddy revelation for the Bass Lake Chamber of Commerce to discover that the Hell’s Angels’ pres­ence — far from being a plague — was in fact a great boon to the tourist trade. It is eerie to consider the meaning of it. If the Hell’s Angels draw standing room only, any half-hip chamber-of-commerce entertainment chairman should see the logical follow-up; next year, bring in two fighting gangs from Watts and pit them against each other on one of the main beaches . . . with fire­works overhead while the local high school band plays Bolero and They Call the Wind Maria.

13

That was the trouble with Porterville — they had four thousand people down­town watchin two hundred of us.

— Terry the Tramp

Our final purchase at the beer market was a dozen cans of horsemeat for Pete’s big redbone hound. The dog had been on other runs and seemed to know the spirit. It ate constantly, never seemed to sleep and went into long fits of howling for no apparent reason.

We drove back to camp very slowly. The car was so jammed with loose six-packs that I could barely move my arms to steer, and each bump in the road caused the springs to drag on the rear axle. When we got to the Willow Cove turnoff the car wouldn’t climb the dirt hill that led into the pines. . . so I backed off and made a fast run at it, driving the junker straight into the hill like a cannon ball. Our momentum took us over the hump, but the crash pushed the right fender back on the tire. The car lurched far enough down the trail to block it completely and stopped just short of crashing into a dozen bikes en route to the store. It took some rough work with a bumper jack to get it moving again, and just as we freed the front wheel a purple truck came grinding over the crest and rammed into my rear bumper. The rhythm of the weekend was picking up. . . a huge beer delivery, the rending of metal, greedy laughter and a rumble of excitement when Sonny told what had happened at Williams’ store.

We had been away about two hours, but the interim peace had been preserved by the arrival of several carloads of girls and beer. By six the whole clearing was ringed with cars and bikes. My car was in the middle, serving as a communal cooler.

During Barger’s absence, the other chapter presidents had seen to the gathering of wood for a bonfire. The task fell to the newest member in each chapter, a tradition that nobody questioned. After all, as Tiny has said, the Angels are like any other fraternity — and like the others, they have a fine sense of ritual, hierarchy and organization. At the same time, they take pride in a certain uniqueness, a distinctive sort of life orientation that sets them apart from the Elks and Phi Delts. Inevitably, members of other fraternities have questioned the Angels’ traditions — calling them eccentric, or criminal. Among the most controversial are Rape, Assault and Body Odor. Another, not so repellent to the public, is the outlaws’ powerful disdain for either home telephones or mailing addresses. With rare exceptions, they have assigned this aspect of reality to various wives, mamas, girl friends and friendly hustlers whose pads are always open, day or night, to anyone wearing the colors.