* Webster defines oxpeckers as small, dull-colored birds that feed on ticks which they pick from the backs of infested cattle and wild animals.
The term mama is all that remains of the original expression Let’s go make somebody a mama, which was later shortened to Let’s go make a mama. Other fraternities have different ways of saying it, but the meaning is the same — a girl who’s always available. A widely quoted section of the Lynch report says these girls are called sheep, but I have never heard an Angel use that word. It sounds like the creation of some police inspector with intensely rural memories.
The mamas aren’t pretty, although some of the newer and younger ones have a sort of demented beauty that erodes so fast that you have to see it happen, over a period of months, to feel any sense of tragedy. Once the girls have developed the proper perspective, it’s easy to take them for granted. One night in Sacramento the Angels ran out of beer money and decided to auction off Mama Lorraine in a bar. The top bid was twelve cents, and the girl laughed along with the others. On another occasion, Magoo was packing Mama Beverly on a run to Bakersfield when he ran out of gas. Do you know, he recalls, I couldn’t find a single gas-station attendant who would give me a free gallon of gas for a go at her. The public prints are full of testimony by men who take pride in having sold their talents dearly, but people who understand that their only talent is not worth fifteen cents or a gallon of gas are not often quoted. Nor do they usually leave diaries. It would be interesting to hear, sometime, just exactly what it feels like to go up on the auction block, willing to serve any purpose, and get knocked down for twelve cents.
Most mamas don’t think about it, much less talk. Their conversation ranges from gossip and raw innuendo, to fending off jibes and haggling over small amounts of money. But every now and then one of them will rap off something eloquent. Donna, a stocky, good-natured brunette who came north with the exodus from Berdoo, once put the whole thing in a nut. Everybody believes in something, she said. Some people believe in God. I believe in the Angels.
Each chapter has a few mamas, but only Oakland maintains as many as five or six at a time. Among other outlaw clubs the situation varies. The Gypsy Jokers are not as mama-oriented as the Angels, but the Satan’s Slaves are so keen on the practice that they take their communal women down to the tattoo parlor and have Property of Satan’s Slaves etched permanently on the left rump-cheek. The Slaves feel that branding gives the girls a sense of security and belonging. It erases any doubt about peer-group acceptance. The branded individual is said to experience powerful and instantaneous sensations of commitment, of oneness with the organization, and those few who have taken the step form a special elite. The Angels are not given to branding their women, but the practice will probably catch on because some of them think it shows real class. *
* In early February 1966, Terry and a Frisco Angel named George Zahn were arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a fifteen-year-old girl who had Property of Hell’s Angels tattooed across her back at the shoulder-blade level. She also had the clap, which worries the Angels about as much as bad breath.
But it takes the right girl, said one. She has to really mean it. Some girls won’t go for it. You know, like who wants to go to the baby doctor with a big tattoo sayin your ass belongs to the Satan’s Slaves? Or what if a girl wants to cop out sometime and get married? Man, imagine the wedding night. She drops her nightie and there it is. Wow!
There were about twenty Slaves at Bass Lake, but they didn’t do much mixing. They staked out a small corner of the clearing, parked their bikes around it and spent most of the weekend lying around with their women and drinking their own wine. The Gypsy Jokers were less inhibited, but their behavior was oddly subdued in the presence of so many Hell’s Angels. Unlike the Slaves, few of the Jokers had brought girls, so they were spared the constant worry that some pill-crazed Angel might try to move in and provoke a fight that the Angels would have to win. In theory the Hell’s Angels confederation is friendly with all other outlaws, but in practice the half-dozen Angel chapters clash frequently with various clubs around their own turf. In San Francisco the Jokers and the Angels nurse a long-standing enmity, but the Jokers get along famously with other Angel chapters. A similar situation prevailed for years in the Los Angeles area, where the Berdoo Angels had sporadic rumbles with the Slaves, Comancheros and Coffin Cheaters. Yet these three clubs continue to speak well of every Hell’s Angel in the state except those dirty bastards from Berdoo, who kept muscling in on other people’s turf. All this was changed, however, by the Monterey rape, which resulted in such overwhelming heat that the Berdoo Angels were forced into desperate coexistence with the Slaves and other L.A. clubs, who were not much better off.