by George Rowe
Prophet, the national P at the time, was informed that as many as thirty Mexicans in the border city of Mexicali were practically begging to be anointed Vagos. After Prophet extracted a promise that they would faithfully observe all Vagos rules and regulations, he made their wish come true. Eventually another nine Vagos chapters would take root along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Almost from the moment those border chapters became established, Crazy Johnny and his Venice boys were running toys and stuffed animals down to the little bambinos. This turned out to be excellent public relations for Green Nation, and the club soon jumped on the good citizen bandwagon back in the States, adopting the Boys & Girls Clubs of America as their charities of choice. Members were expected to contribute food, clothing and toys to those organizations, but most of the younger outlaws hated that PR bullshit. They’d have preferred to blow a sawbuck on a few beers rather than on a stuffed pussy cat. But the family men had their hearts in it. Least I know Crazy Johnny did.
When Johnny announced another toy run to Mexico, this time to Mexicali, Big Roy decided to include the Hemet chapter. The ATF got a little nervous about that. United States jurisdiction ends once you cross into Mexico, which meant I was unprotected and on my own down there. But the situation couldn’t be helped—wherever the P said to ride, that’s where you rode. So off I went with the Hemet and Venice Beach boys, ready to party hearty with our Chicano brothers down Mexicali way.
Man, let me tell you about those Mexicali Vagos. If those dudes could scrounge two wheels together and strap on a lawn mower engine, they could ride for Green Nation. I’ve seen fat-assed Mexicans sputtering along on rusty mopeds, for chrissakes. It could get damn comical, but most of our amigos south of the border were dirt poor, barely able to rub two pesos together, much less afford a Harley.
When the Vagos thundered into Mexicali that day, it seemed like the whole town turned out to greet us like conquering heroes. They were especially hot for Crazy Johnny and his bad boys from Venice Beach, who wore trench coats when they rode, often with weapons concealed underneath. The Venice chapter was popular in the border towns because they always came bearing gifts.
“Viva Los Vagos!” cheered the townspeople. Then the city mayor and the chief of police threw us a big fiesta right on the main drag.
A pig was untied, its throat slit and the body dumped straight into a cauldron of boiling water. The Mexicans didn’t even gut the damn thing. That little piggy bloated up so big its intestines came spurting out its asshole. Well, no way was I eating that rude shit, so I walked around the corner to a bar where some of the Vagos had gone to drink and raise a little hell.
I gotta tell you, man, there was nothing like those border town cantinas. Some crazy shit went on behind those walls. Over in Tijuana, I once saw Big Todd getting a blow job from a hot Mexican chick who wasn’t all she appeared to be. Fuckin’ Todd thought he was a lady killer, but when that “chick” bent over to suck cock, a pecker fell out of his dress that was longer than Todd’s!
About thirty miles east of Tijuana, in the border town of Tecate, was another Mexican bar where Buckshot earned his Vagos road name at the business end of a shotgun. The way I heard it told, some drunk patch holder made the mistake of pissing off the bar owner. There was some yelling and screaming, mostly in Spanish, and the owner reached for his 12-gauge. Next thing you knew, those greenies came tear-assin’ out of that establishment like rats deserting a sinking ship.
Right behind them, chasing them into the street, came the owner, waving his shotgun. As the Vagos were hightailing it out of town—BAWOOOM!—that pissed-off Chicano pulled the trigger and let fly a barrel of buckshot.
Only one bike caught that broadside—a brand-new Harley-Davidson that still had its paper license plate on the back. Needless to say, poor Buckshot’s pride and joy was duly baptized and the man had himself a road name for life—or at least for the life he had left. Maybe that angry Mexican couldn’t kill that ol’ Vago, but cancer sure as hell did. Within three years Buckshot was dead and gone.
Long before Buckshot went into the ground, I attended so many Vagos funerals that I lost count. Members were always dropping like flies; cancer, heart attacks, bike accidents, car accidents—I once paid respects at three services in one day. When a Vago bit the dust, his chapter buddies would remove anything green from his house—anything and everything that had a Vagos logo on it, including T-shirts, bandanas, belts . . . even Vagos shit belonging to his old lady. Then the brothers would rummage through the pile, picking out what they wanted and burning the rest. I’ve seen send-offs where a fallen brother’s cut was lit on fire and another where a motorcycle was doused with gasoline and torched like a dead Viking’s longship. Once the ceremonies were concluded, the entire membership would jump on their choppers and ride for some bar to hoist a few farewell toasts—which, of course, was just another excuse to get shitfaced. One of Terry the Tramp’s favorite spots for these solemn occasions was the Screaming Chicken Saloon.
The Screaming Chicken, found north of San Bernardino in the town of Devore, was a 1940s vintage gas station converted into a biker bar. A hard-core outlaw with a thousand miles of crud on him might walk in, take in the stink and the filth of the place, and think he’d died and gone to biker heaven.
Terry the Tramp liked the Screaming Chicken for a few reasons, but I suspect convenience had the most to do with it. The bar was easily accessible off the I-15, only thirty miles south of Tramp’s home in the High Desert. The international P could cruise down in his Corvette, enjoy a few free rounds of beer on his brothers, then motor back home again.
On a scorching hot day in early summer, Tramp and another two hundred or so Vagos had jammed the saloon for another fond farewell to a fallen brother. But the sweltering heat and stink of dirt and body odor made staying inside unbearable. So I wandered out the door for some fresh air, passing a knot of old-timers in greasy Levi’s gathered around an island where the gas pumps once stood.
The Screaming Chicken Saloon in Devore, home of “hot babes” and “cold beer.”
Right away I recognized big Bubba, Tramp’s biker buddy that I’d seen at the Yucca Valley bar a few months before. Bubba was standing next to Quickie John, the P of the Norco chapter, who was lounging on a bench seat ripped from a pickup truck. All sorts of discarded shit was spread outside the Screaming Chicken for lounging on: milk crates, fifty-gallon drums, even a rusty wheelchair. Kicking back in that wheelchair was the P of the Vagos Riverside chapter, an old-timer named Blackie. Standing next to Blackie was his longtime buddy 37, head of the Mojave chapter. Blackie and 37 were “forever brothers,” a breed apart among motorcycle outlaws. Typically forever brothers had been riding with a club thirty or forty years. Like “nomads”—outlaws unaffiliated with any chapter—a forever brother often rode alone and answered to no one. In the world of the one percenter, be they Mongols, Devils Disciples, Hells Angels or Vagos, a patch on a man’s cut that spelled out FOREVER marked him as a man of respect—a man whose words carried the kind of weight only a lifelong outlaw commanded.
“Hey, prospect!”
37 was waving me over. As a prospect, it was an honor to be hailed by a forever brother, so I strutted over with high expectations. What I didn’t realize was that the mischievous old bastard was about to fuck with me, turning a leisurely afternoon of beer drinking into a goddamn three-ring circus.
“Check this out, prospect,” 37 said to me. “I want you to get me some aspirin.”
“Got one right here, 37,” I replied, searching through my pockets.
As a prospect you were expected to always carry items that a patch might need in a pinch; needle and thread, bandages, spark plugs, aspirins . . . you never knew what those boys might ask for. I handed that graybeard two aspirins but wasn’t prepared for what came next.
“Whoa, hold on a second,” said 37 as I turned to leave. “Bring me a tampon too.”
I stood dumbfounded as Blackie, Quickie and Bubba grinned and chuckled.
“No problem,” I answered and started off again.
“And a gun!” 37 shouted before I could enter the Screaming Chicken. I turned back, waiting to see if this was a joke. The old fuck wasn’t laughing.
“What are you waiting for?!” he yelled. “You heard what I said. I want a tampon and a gun. Now get the fuck outta here.”
Dutifully, I started on my fool’s errand. I figured the tampon was just a matter of asking some Vagos old lady for a loaner, but the gun was definitely going to be a problem. I spotted Crazy Johnny, the P of the Venice chapter, over near the bar and hustled in his direction.
“Hey, Johnny, 37 asked me to bring him a gun.”
“What for?”
“Dunno. I think he’s just bustin’ my balls.”
“Well, you go tell 37 you ain’t gonna put him in prison.”
I knew that answer wouldn’t fly, so I started making inquiries up and down the bar, getting strange looks from the clientele, as if a pecker had sprung from my forehead. But just when all seemed lost, some chick at the bar miraculously announced, “Hey, I have a gun.”
She pulled it from her handbag. Granted, it was green plastic and squirted water, but I didn’t give a rat’s ass. Far as I was concerned, it was a goddamn gun.
Recognizing a desperate man, the bitch held me up for twenty bucks. But I paid that ransom, took the squirt gun and burrowed my way back through the crowded bar until I stumbled upon old Buckshot.
“37 asked me to bring him a tampon. Can you help a brother out?”
“Don’t you ask me for no tampons, you dirty bastard.”
“I’m not asking you, Buckshot. But how ’bout your old lady?”
Buckshot looked over to where his woman was chatting with some of the VOLs and grinned. “Be my guest,” he said. “And good luck.”
Buckshot’s old lady declined my request with a playful slap in the face, but North’s woman came through and handed me a tampon from her bag. Shopping list complete, I hurried outside to where 37 was waiting.
“Took you long enough,” the old bastard groused.
“Sorry, 37,” I said and proudly offered the items he’d sent me for. “Look, I got you a tampon and a gun.”
37 took one look at the squirt gun and shouted above the din, “This motherfucker’s trying to give me a gun! He’s a fuckin’ fed!”
That good ol’ boy was screwing with me, but no one else knew that. Out of nowhere one of the Norco hang-arounds blindsided me with a sucker punch to the jaw. After I regained my bearings and realized who my assailant was, I beat that hang-around into the ground.
Now here came Big Roy and I was in trouble again.
The Hemet P dragged my ass around the corner of the building and started chewing me out. Quickie John soon joined the fun, pissed that the same guy who’d waylaid his vice president’s nephew with a cast had now beat the snot out of one of his hang-arounds.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find 37. “Hey, relax, boys,” said the forever brother. “I was just fucking with this prospect here. And you know, Quickie, he got hit pretty good by your boy. But I guess if you’ve got a problem with that you should talk to Tramp.”
“Maybe I will,” growled Quickie John.
Sure enough, in a few minutes the little garden gnome arrived, potbelly sticking out and that stringy white hair hanging to the shoulders.
“Prospect,” Tramp says to me right off. “Is it true you hit one of Quickie’s hang-arounds?”
“Yeah, but he hit me first,” I protested like a first-grader.
Quickie jumped in with, “We should let all the prospects fuck him up.”
Tramp thought a moment. “You know, that sounds like a pretty good idea.”
Well, that was all Quickie John needed to hear. Wasting no time, he gathered all the prospects he could find for a good old-fashioned ass whooping. Before those boys could have at me, though, the international P issued a new directive.
“Now wait a minute, Quickie. All at once doesn’t seem fair. Maybe we should have them fight one at a time.” Tramp glanced over at me. “That work for you, prospect?”
“If that’s the way you want to play it,” I told him.
“Alright, Quickie,” ordered Tramp. “Let’s take this out back and line ’em up.”
The crowd marched through the bar and out the side door into the open yard. Quickie John got to work making sure all his biggest bruisers were up front. It was time for a little one-on-one gladiatorial combat at the Screaming Chicken Saloon.
And those poor bastards didn’t stand a chance.
Throughout my teen years and into my twenties, if I wasn’t finding a fight, a fight was usually finding me. One night in the town of Winchester I got into a brawl outside a hamburger stand with three men, whipped two of them and ran off the third. Some dude ordering a burger saw the whole thing and suggested I should fight for a living. I didn’t think anything more of it until I bumped into the same guy at a bar a few months later and we got to talking.
He told me about an underground fight circuit, illegal in the state of California, where bookies arranged bareknuckle matches. It was cage fighting before the cages . . . only more brutal. These were two men pounding each other toe-to-toe until one gave up or couldn’t continue. There were no rounds. No referees.
“There’s two hundred fifty bucks in it for you if you’re interested,” the man said.
I figured why not.
This was at the tail end of my U-Haul Bandit days and I was looking for a way out of the drug racket. I’d dabbled in landscaping and tree trimming, but not many upstanding citizens were willing to hire convicted felons, so the fight game seemed a sensible alternative. The man jotted down an address, date and time on a piece of paper and handed it to me.
And so began my bareknuckle phase.
That Saturday night I drove out to a bowling alley in Riverside that had closed for the evening. But the door was open, so I stepped inside to find a small crowd of maybe forty people gathered under a haze of cigar and cigarette smoke. Right away I recognized the dude from Winchester, hobnobbing with a group of bettors. He broke away and greeted me with a handshake. As we spoke, I noticed the others sizing me up like a colt at auction. In a moment the bookie approached, a chubby bastard with a stump cigar between his teeth, a Tupperware tumbler filled with whiskey in his hand and a stink about him that almost made me gag. There were only two rules, the bookie explained; no biting and no poking in the eyes.
My opponent was waiting for me in an open space in front of the snack bar, where the tables had been pushed aside to create a makeshift ring. The fighter looked to be in his late twenties—a little older than me at the time—wearing a tank top and shorts. I wore a T-shirt, Levi’s and a new pair of Nikes, which I removed because I didn’t want to get them bloody.
We shook hands, then someone clapped and the match was on.
As we circled each other I could tell by the cheers that the big money was on my opponent—nobody was giving the new guy much of a shot. I finally got tired of the dance and met the man halfway. He came in close, took a swing. As the punch missed, my foot flashed toward his temple and struck the side of his head faster than he could raise his hand to block it.
The kick that coldcocked my opponent was a move taught to me by my old martial arts instructor, Mr. Lee. I’d practiced it countless times when I was a kid, and countless more as I got older. I’d jump and kick door headers from a standing position . . . broke my toes doing that once. To condition my feet I walked through parking lots booting concrete barriers. For my legs it was broom handles, one in each hand, slapped up and down my calves and thighs. To toughen my torso I whipped nunchucks back and forth against my ribs.
See, the thing about fighting was you had to be able to take a hit. Of course, it was always going to hurt, but if your body could absorb the blow, you were golden. A lot of fighters couldn’t handle the pain. I was never on
e of them.
After my opponent was lifted from the floor and got his head straight, the shit-stink bookie handed me my $250 and another slip of paper.
“Be at that address next Saturday,” he said, “and I’ll get you a grand.”
The following weekend I grabbed my friend Magnum and we drove to Pomona for my next match. Magnum had been a close buddy all through my drug-dealing days, a tall meth-head who resembled Tom Selleck and didn’t seem to know his own strength—like a big Baby Huey. Magnum first proved his loyalty when I was collecting on some drug money I’d fronted an ex-con. When the bastard went for his gun, Magnum clocked him. He became my trusted “road dog” after that, at least until he went to prison and Old Joe came along to take his place.
My next fight was after-hours in a Pomona bar, and this time there were maybe fifty or sixty bettors inside, including the fat bookie with his tumbler of booze. My latest opponent was a monstrous sonofabitch who had to outweigh me by at least a hundred pounds. And I’m thinking, Holy fuck, now I’m in trouble.
I removed my flip-flops and stepped into the open space near a couple of pool tables. This time there was no hand clapping to start the match. An air horn sounded and the fight was on.
My opponent was one of those lunkheads who throws a roundhouse from the ground up. When he tried that move with me, I quick-kicked him in the ribs. When he tried it again I booted him behind the knee, and now the giant was limping around like a lame dog. I was faster than he was. Much faster. The dude kept missing, and I kept working that bum knee over until he could barely stand. That’s when I made a sudden move inside and drove the palm of my hand hard into his face, breaking his nose.
That bookie made some money that night. I think he must’ve cleaned up on most of those suckers in the bar.
I kept on rolling from there, and with each fight the number of bettors seemed to grow a little larger. Now they were calling me “Shotgun,” my nickname before I was known as the U-Haul Bandit. I used to own a 12-gauge with a six-inch extension that my brother Keith had machined for me, and I used that shotgun to great effect. Before I made my reputation hauling furniture for delinquent junkies, I was the guy who blew their doors off the hinges and announced, “Where’s my money, motherfucker?”