Gulf Coast Boy..The Biker Years

Well folks, it's time to talk about another segment of my life. I told you that I gave up fishing and bought a well used Harley. I'm going to keep this thing as 'polite' as possible, but it was a hell of a ride.

It was 1986 and I had sold my boat. I was 38 years old. Actually, Danny and I were flounder fishing on late afternoon in a driving rain storm and I said "I want to buy a motorcycle".

Danny looked up at me, water running over his face answered, "You, too?"

So I bought a Kawasaki and got familiar riding it. Danny had ridden dirt bikes a lot in his younger days, almost losing one leg in a wreck.

I enjoyed my Japanese toy until one day Danny came by my house on a used Harley, 1983 narrow glide.

I snorted, "Man, you're gonna have to work on that thing every day and it's gonna leak oil everywhere."

Danny smiled and said, "Just get on it and ride a few miles down the road."

I did. And I was hooked. I learned that moment that there are motorcycles and then there are Harley's.

Soon after, I found a used one, same model and year as Danny's, except his was a cherry and mine was a tired old iron horse. But, we had an ace-in-the-hole.

We knew a man named Steve that owned a 'Hog Shop". He is one of those easy, laid back people that can back up everything he says and not be bragging. He didn't sell Harley's, but he could, and still can, fix anything with a Harley name on it. I started hanging out at the shop and became friends with Steve.
My bike had a lot of problems. The first owner had tried to make it a drag bike, souping it up with a bunch of stuff like cams, lifters, oversize carburetor jets, etc. It needed work. Steve taught me how to work on it. With his help, I tore it down and rebuilt it, several times, from the block to the ignition. It ran a lot better, but never as good as I hoped for.

The hog shop wasn't your average yuppie Harley owner hangout. Steve's friends and customers might have been a bit rough, but I never met one that wasn't good people. I had found a new home.

I loved that old bike. It was a shovel head, 1983, just before the new 'evolution' engine came out in 1984. But, I actually enjoyed working on it, except when I had to repair it on some back road or beer joint parking lot to get home.

But riding it was great. The pipes and the vibration...well, it was a Harley, a real Harley. My wife would wrap her legs around me and doze as she leaned on the 'sissy bar' as we tore down some piece of hi way.

A big group of us would go every fall to a small campground on the banks of the Guadalupe River in central Texas during 'October Fest'. Party time!

I learned how to pack a tent, sleeping bags, clothes, and food on my Harley. And have room for one wife. (Plus a complete set of tools.)

Sleeping on rocks on a steep river bank got old quick. But the partying was great! We were all friends, but an occasional fist fight or knife waving broke out, but you've got to expect that. Getting caught slipping off with someone else's woman might get a bit more serious, but, that wasn't too common.

Once, a woman walked into our camp as we were having a typical beer drinking evening. She said she wanted to party with some bikers. She and her husband had a large motor home parked a hundred yards away. She was looking for some adventure and her husband stayed in the motor home, just peeking out the windows as his wife wiggled her ass in front of every guy.

Several of the guys were getting pretty wound up...but the biker girls and wives took her aside and explained to her exactly what they were going to do to her. She put her top back on and ran back to the motor home, they were gone the next morning. Ah, 'wanna be's' .
I've seen two biker women fight from inside a bar out into the shell parking lot and wind up under a truck. A bucket of water was all that stopped them from killing each other.

On one trip, some of the guys decided to roast a whole pig on a spit over a fire. Seemed like a good idea. They dug a pit, hug a rod and began to cook the pig. We were there for three days and all these guys did was turn that damn pig....and it was still only half done...

In the end, no one ate any of it...we were bikers, but hell, we weren't crazy.

On another trip, we went to Austin to an Easy Rider rodeo.

Easy Rider is a great biker magazine, full of bikes, tattoos, naked women...good stuff like that.

Outside the building, vendors set up displays of their stuff. One that caught my eye was a guy selling nipple rings for the ladies. He had a whole selection of them. No piercing. He had an album of Polaroids showing how they looked in use. His wife offered to show us the live product. She pulled up her Harley shirt and gave us a 'hands on' view. Being a biker was very good.

The rodeo had many interesting events. One was a 'wienie eating contest'.

A large sausage was suspended on a string and a biker would drive under it. His woman would stand up on the back pegs and try to bite as much as possible of it without using her hands. The driver couldn't stop or put his feet down, just one pass. Amazing how talented some of those ladies were.

Back at the hog shop, we would hang out, drink beer, bar-b-que, tinker with our bikes...If a 'real' customer came in needing a new tire or something minor, one or two of us would do it. It was a small way to repay Steve for all that he did for us.

None of us were 'patch holders'. That's someone who is a member of a bona fide MC club. Some clubs were outlaw and some were fringe and some were regular, but I never had any trouble with them. I wouldn't stop at a beer joint unless there were bikes out front. I was comfortable there.

One of our group was a 'pledge' to get int the Viet Nam Vets MC. They were good people, people I understood. He tried to get me to join, but I passed. Us old vets were getting scarce in the late 80's.

I started to rethink my life. I loved the biker lifestyle. Hell, why not? Beer, boobs and bikes...you could pour testosterone out of your boots.

I guess my final straw was at a beer joint. A guy started giving the barmaid some lip. She was perfectly capable of handling him, but I felt the urge to step in. Before I did something stupid, I thought about it. I was about to pick a fight in a beer joint with a guy I didn't know, who hadn't done anything to me or hurt the barmaid. My biker career was getting out of hand. I had to get all the way in or get out. I was getting way too comfortable.

I sold my beloved old Harley, bought Dockers, a set of golf clubs, joined the Chamber of Commerce and became the oldest yuppie in town.

Evolution is weird, isn't it. It was 1990. I was 42 years old.

I have one more chapter to add.

Thanks for reading.

The Grocery Store

A brief detour from 'Gulf Coast Boy.' I'll continue with 'The Biker Years' soon.
From time to time, I venture to the 'food getting place.' We've all gotta eat.
But, sometimes it's more of an ordeal than it should be. People....some of them are idiots. They have no consideration for anyone. Carts blocking the aisles is a given, but some shoppers make it an art form.
Before smoking was banned from most stores, people would drop their smokes on the floor and give them a quick tap with their shoe, leaving a nasty mess.
Another pet peeve, is to find meat or frozen goods on a dry goods aisle. Some shopper changed their mind and just left it on a shelf. Does that go back into the cooler when some employee finds it? Is that what I'm buying?
I try to park the cart away from the meat cooler or other popular browsing areas. I swear, I can park in front of the mops or floor polish, and in two minutes, three people are reaching over my cart to grab a mop or something. You can't win.
And the 'express checkout' is a joke. 'Fifteen items or less' the sign says. Obviously, some people can't read or count.
I bought some pre-cooked chicken nuggets recently. The package said 'Mostly Chicken".
Huh? What's the rest of it? They should have added, "Just eat it, it won't kill you"
And by the way, the myth of the 'frozen food aisle' just ain't true.
Thanks for reading.

Gulf Coast Boy...Young Man

In 1966, I married the girl I had courted with my egg farm wages. We were both 18, too stupid to listen to advice, I guess.
Eleven days later, I left for the Navy. I had worked with my father for several years as an electrician's helper and I wanted to continue that in the Navy. Viet Nam was getting serious and I didn't want to get drafted into the Army, I already knew how to shoot a rifle and drive a truck. So it was the Navy for me. Four years.
I hoped to be a Sea-Bee electrician, wiring buildings and such for the Navy. But the Navy had enough Sea-Bees and I thought maybe I could be an electrician on a ship. The Navy was full of ships.
Growing up in Wild Peach, there wasn't a lot to do at night. 'Lawrence Welk', "Paladin' and 'Gun Smoke' on Saturday nights was as good as TV got.
But we had an old set of World Book Encyclopedias, early 1950's vintage. I read and re-read them like dime novels, A thru Z. I absorbed a tremendous amount of obscure information.
During my Navy boot camp, we were tested to see what we might be good at. I didn't do well on sonar or typing or other things, but I almost aced 'General Knowledge'.
What I didn't know was that the Navy automatically redirected recruits who scored well into Naval aviation.
I got my wish. After 13 weeks and 5 days of boot camp, I was given orders to Jacksonville Fla. to aviation electrician school, 26 weeks. Tough school, but it gave me a career. A local Jr. Collage offered us a chance to take a test and receive an associates degree in electrical engineering after we completed the Navy school. This idiot didn't go take it; those that did said it was a 'cake walk'.
But this story isn't about my Navy experiences, they would fill a book by themselves.
Condensed version is I that became an aviation electrician, got assigned to a patrol squadron, deployed twice, once to the frozen Aleutians Islands and later to Viet Nam.
We had 9 four engine planes and I loved working on them. I have always had a passion for aircraft, and still do.
Back to the tale. My marriage produce two wonderful kids, but after eleven years the relationship ended in 1977. I was 29 years old.
But, this story is about 'Gulf Coast Boy', so I'll get back on track.
Skip back to 1976...
A knock at my door...a power company truck was idling in my driveway...
A young, lanky guy with a big grin said 'Hi, I'm Danny, and I hear you know how to salt water fish..."
So began a friendship that has lasted over three decades.
We began to fish together. I was something of an introvert, and he was anything but. I still accuse him of doing a 'three minute routine' when the icebox door opens and the light hits him. His enthusiasm and attitude remains the same to this day.
We bought a small fishing shack out in a local bay, only accessible by boat. It was just one room, maybe 10 X 14 feet, a bad pier and not much else.
We built a larger pier and deck, adding a basic shower and toilet. We drove pilings by hand and carried timbers out to the cabin on our boats to enlarge the place. I almost sunk my 'john boat' with pilings loaded on it. It always leaked afterward due to the stress on the rivets.
But, we were young and could work all day in the Texas sun. Danny's wife and small daughter were often there, never complaing about the heat or mosquitoes. My kids came sometimes, as did my girl friend who later became my 2nd wife. Life was good.
Danny became a good fisherman, although I never understood how he could catch as much a me using a broken hook and a bad knot. Now days, he is very good with lures and such, still chasing Texas fish.
We loved every minute of our 'cabin days'. We knew at the time it was good, but looking back,
it may have been, as Victor Hugo wrote, "the Best of Times".
Water seems to attract an unusual assortment of people. Our little piece of the Texas coast was no different. (We, of course, were perfectly normal, ahem..)
We made friends with some of the local bait shrimpers, helping them trawl for shrimp their small boats. Most had no winches for their nets, so extra hands were always useful. They showed us many things..like how to get a heavy boat over a sand bar and how to spot a game warden a mile off. Useful stuff.
Danny and I bought a 20' box net...gonna catch us some shrimp with all of this new found knowledge. We managed to snag some beer cans and oyster shells, but shrimp...well, let's say we were glad to have friends in the business.
We knew two brothers..one named Charlie and the other was Worm. We spotted Charlie one day heading out into the Gulf alone in a small boat to shrimp. We noticed that he had a two-by-four board tied to his motor to steer with. Steering cable broke, so you make do. Shrimping alone in the Gulf with a board to steer with..that's Texas.
Another interesting local was named Doug. He worked for a bait house/beer joint/boat ramp place. Doug was a jack of all trades. He was a mechanic, carpenter, shrimper, you name it, he was good at it.
From time to time, the place he worked for had parties..you know, a bunch of fun and drinking, dancing, etc. Did I mention drinking?
Well, Doug showed up for the party...only he was wearing a dress and full make up. He announced that he thought it was time for him to be him/her self. The joint was a quiet as the backside of the Moon. But, everyone liked Doug....so.....aw Hell, they fired him anyway..
Bay shrimpers are a breed apart. They would shrimp all day in small boats in the August sun. I've seen them going in after ten hours in 100 degree heat, tossing a bottle of Jack Daniels from boat to boat. These men were in their upper 60's and would be back on the water at 6:00am.
But times come and go.
We sold the cabin in 1982. In 1983, hurricane Alicia wiped it off the face of the Earth.
Danny and I sold our boats and bought Harley's. Danny became an engineer for his power company and later manager.
I adapted well to the new lifestyle and became 'scooter trash', but that's the next chapter.. I was thirty-eight years old.
Thanks for reading.
end of part 3.