Kelly likes to watch a show set in Sturgis, the summer biker mecca of legend. After speaking with him last night, I understand why. We had two shots and 3 beers over 2 hours as he strung a few yarns together.

The night before, this gimp a few hours into town, had joined Kelly, Ken and Duke at Red’s Bar and Grille on Taco Tuesday, the ladies at another table. He bought me two double shots and I bought us two pitchers. Making room for Duke, he knocked over the nearly empty pitcher and I used a napkin to mop it up and squeeze it back into the pitcher and refilled the glasses. Kelly new Duke of old and teased him about his preference for Bud Light, “I’m only fuggin’ with yah, brother, because you have a fuggin’ hole in your throat and can’t talk back!”

Kelly is so big he has to sit at the end of the table, like a viking king attended by his house carls, his arms way bigger then my thighs.

“Brother, I boxed and wrestled between 180 and 210—I’ve gone to shit!”

He smiled tolerantly as Ken relived one of his oft repeated Vietnam stories, he and Duke both veterans of that war.

…

At his home the next night, the ladies on the porch smoking and us seated in his living room, him wrestling with his 25 pound dog, Cooper with his right hand and drinking a Busch lite with his left he smiled:

Heard you fell asleep at Andy’s! I’m not takin’ the heat for that! Go light tonight. You know, after last night, finding out that Ken his been dragging that old fugger Duke to all of his doctors appointments, managing his medical care—like what most people won’t do for their own parents—I have a lot of respect for Ken; will make it easier to listen to his same old war stories. Poor dude’s got fucked in that war, like a vinyl record got scratched so it replays the same song in their head—fuck, what a bad deal. I never trusted the government enough to get involved in any of their bullshit.

You ever been maced?

[no, nods the runt to the giant]

You’re not missing much—fuggin’ sucks!

Happened to me right up the street here, at that bar. [Name forgotten and since changed.] I used to run the place, meaning I had a tab there, worked 60 hours a week and drank there 20, about $150 dollar a week tab when beers were $1.50. Well, somebody gets bumped, apology isn’t enough I guess, and this dude wants to fight. I’m like, brother this only runs one way, let it go. But his woman is egging him on. He can’t stand the heat, not for a second and this bitch maces me, the bear spray, right in the eyes. I was fuggin’ blind. So, I grabbed him, turned him [mimes leaning back against a wall] and choked him, choked him out with the forearm across the coratid. I was afraid he was dead—was lucky I didn’t break his neck. She wouldn’t let up. I’m not one for hittin’ women, but since I was blind, it could have been anyone that hit the floor from that punch!

…

Okay, so here’s one for the book. Don’t know why this reminded my of that. So, there was this old biker dude in Forest Grove. He had a 220 pound bull mastiff chained to a clothes pole with a logging chain. That dog hated me. Never did nothin’ to that dog, and it just hated me, bent that pole trying to get loose. I’m walkin’ home from school one day, and he finally snaps that chain. I ran all the way across Forest Grove on porches and over cars, running along parked cars—that thing could have killed me. I get to my friend’s house and his mom and grand mom are like, “He’s not here,” and I came in any how. They called the police and the cops would have killed it if old Verb had not come and got him.

Verb was a mechanic, used to buy the surplus little willy jeeps that came in the crate on the pallet, with that little 4 cylinder Hurricane engine and fix them up and sell them, would make ten times his money. He helped us learn on our motorcycles. I drove around on a Yamaha 180. He needed his roof shingled and no body had the balls to do it, it was so steep. He paid me and my friend, the same kid whose house I ran to from his dog, to shingle his barn roof. We set the shingles too tight and some of them popped and cracked. The next year he called us up and we went and fixed it—that’s the way it was. This was in the 1960s. Verb was old as dirt and he passed.

His wife asked us to come over. She said, “Verb has something out back for you. Go pick one out.”

We go behind the barn and there are three bikes there, there are two Harleys. My buddy sees an Indian, Chief, with the Indian right on the front, and he says, “That’s mine!”

I didn’t care. I was getting’ a free Harley, a 1947 Panhead.

So there we go, my buddy and me, driving out to Sturgis, fucking South Dakota. You gotta be a young, stupid motherfucker to ride a panhead for two days; only does 55 [miles per hour] and burning your leg, leaking oil.

So, and here is another arm wrestling story for later, you go out past Bend, Oregon, and you’re in the desert for two hundred miles of bumfuck nothin’. We were coming up on Ontario, Oregon, almost to Idaho, It’s a hard way to go, especially on a bike. We’re 18, young and dumb. We pull up on this sign, that says BEE CROSSING AHEAD, 5 MPH.

My buddy is like, “Fuck that, that’s a prank.”

Sign looked official to me, so I obeyed and did 5 MPH. No shit, I was rumbling through a swarm of bees, the bee hives on one side of the road and the clover on the other side. I stayed cool and did not get stung. Then I find my buddy laid out on the side of the road with his Indian, all stung up. Bees don’t like speeding!

So, it was such an experience, rolling into Sturgis with FBI all lining the road with their Hollywood movie cameras spying on you. There were these bikers there that wanted my panhead and were fixing to take it. Now, there was this guy who I didn’t know from no body [name forgotten] and he was the president of Brothers Speed, they still have a club over there [points to southeast]. He told them bikers that I was his brother and not to fuck with me, that I had more balls then them being wet behind the ears and driving that thing across country. I couldn’t afford to fix it up properly, so ended up selling it later. I got a good deal riding back in the van with the girls they had brought along, with the trailer rig that they brought for any bikes that might get wrecked.

…

Notes

-1. The arm wrestling story is in #7.