SPONSORS
By Mike Brown, as Told to Kurt Saxon
Legal knowledge, strength and bodies are the mainstays of a motorcycle club. But bigger clubs than ours have gone down the tubes for lack of that old ace in the hole; the sponsor.
He’s like a guardian angel who comes bopping in when we’re just about to go over the edge. Of course, it works both ways. We’re the cavalry that comes to his rescue when he’s being screwed over.
Basically, he’s an outsider who digs our bag. He helps out in all kind of ways. Money, a place to sleep at times, a friendly witness when there were no friendly witnesses. In return we thump on his enemies and make sure nobody bothers him. He’s got a private army to call on.
We’ve had sponsors all over the Southwest at one time or another. One of our first out-of-state sponsors was a guy I’ll call Baker, since he doesn’t need the publicity.
He dug the Hell’s Angels and like that but there weren’t any around Dallas. About eight of us stopped there on a run and he met us and invited us over to his place. Well, we partied and had a good time and, out of the blue, this guy starts laying guns on us.
He first gave us an M-1 Tanker’s Model Garand with about a thousand rounds of ammunition and as far as we were concerned that boy could do no wrong. He was a gun nut sponsor and they’re the best kind to have.
A lot of these types like to buy guns but then once they have them, they’re not all that sure what to do with them. But you unload em on a motorcycle club and they’ll figure out what to do with them eventually.
While we were admiring the Garand, Baker brought out 45 Automatics, Shotguns and ammunition and even threw in two hundred bucks cash. When we left Dallas our crash truck was loaded down with thrity-five hundred rounds of ammo and umpteen dozen guns. He told us he’d use the gun value and the cash as a tax dodge. I think he had us entered in his tax records as a
convent.
We haven’t heard from Baker in a year but we’ll never forget him. We’re on call any time. Anything he wants.
We especially like hand guns. Baker gave us a brand new Smith & Wesson nine milimeter pistol I still have. You know, when people donate hand guns to a motorcycle club you just can’t ask for anything more.
The money will get spent, the beer will get drunk, but those hand guns will always be there.
You donate a hand gun to a motorcycle club and five years later somebody in that club has still got it. They don’t turn loose of that stuff unless the Man gets it. Even so, you’ll always be on their books as super.
A lot of times one sponsor turns you over to another guy who’ll sponsor you. Baker gave us the address of this guy who owns half of Amarillo. It’s his wife who is so generous. He gives her about two grand a month allowance.
This guy is another gun freak. He’s also in a wheel chair so he likes to, I think, identify with super physical types like us.
He has a room about twice the size of the average bedroom and it has a closet where there’s got to be two hundred boxes with a pistol in each. This is his hobby. Every week he goes out and buys a new 44 Magnum or a 38 Special or a 380 Automatic or something.
This guy had pistols stacked up to the rafters. Then he had a whole bunch of rifles .and telescopic sights and shotguns and like that. The thing that really freaked me out was the pistols he had. He must have had ten years’ salary of the average man in pistols alone.
He didn’t unload any of the pistols on us; I wish he had. Anyway, we partied and stayed there overnight. That’s another thing sponsors are good for. They put you up when you need a place to crash.
When we walked out of there next morning his old lady laid a hundred dollar bill on us each. It wasn’t fifties or twenties, man, it was. a C note. And she laid that on us apiece and that sure did make our trip a whole lot easier.
Now, our number one sponsor is Harper. He sent us six hundred dollars when a couple of our former members ran out and stuck us for their bail. That would have levelled us financially. We didn’t have all that much money coming in.
Here we were passing the hat so as not to burn our bail bondsmen and most of the guys were broke. Once you burn your bail bondsman, that’s the end of you, brother. You’ll never fly the colors again because the Man’11 put you out of business. And it’s not that hard, considering felony bail of twelve-fifty each and you’ve got to come with the cash each time if you lose your bail bondsman.
All a club usually has is their scooters and even though they might bring thousands we don’t like to sell them. It’s like asking for a guy’s blood to ask him to sell his bike to get one of the guys out of jail.
Anyway, Harper is our number one sponsor and he lives down there in Marana and whenever we get into real trouble he gets us out. His thing is he just digs motorcycle clubs.
A lot of these sponsors, they’re just hobbiests. Some people collect model railroads, some people collect guns and others collect butterflies. Well, the people I’m talking about collect motorcycle clubs.
It’s a far more interesting topic of conversation. Especially if you want a couple of thugs to drag around with you to profile for your friends.
Let’s say Harper wanted to go into town and needed an escort. All he’d have to do is give us a call. Then I’d send two or four or six of the boys over and he’d put em up and they’d run around and profile with him. That way he’s got his own little private army tor awhile.
Even though a sponsor gets a big kick out of his association with a club he usually gives more than he gets because he’s a hobbiest. As far as a motorcycle club being bought, well that’s crap. We’ll go a long way for a good sponsor but he doesn’t own us.
Let’s say a sponsor’s been really righteous with us and say he needs a whole lot of bodies to move from like Glendale to Burbank. So he just calls his friendly Iron Cross. We’ve got a couple of dozen loose bodies loafing around so we get a couple of pickups and move him.
You know, when you’ve got about fifteen or twenty guys moving somebodies housefull of goods you can get him moved in about three hours. The moving company will take all day.
When you’ve got that many people it’s actually more efficient if they know what they’re doing. Most motorcycle clubs are good at moving because they’re always stealing stuff and moving it from place to place.
All the sponsor has to do is to buy the beer and the sandwiches. Then he’ll get a four hundred dollar moving job done for maybe forty dollars for the refreshments and all. That includes destroying the house he previously occupied if his landlord was a bastard.
Now, Harper is an example of a prime, grade-A sponsor. They don’t come any better. He’s got his own place out in the desert. He’s got a couple hundred acres and several buildings to quarter troops in and an Olympic sized swimming pool. A great place for a vacation. And he’s always glad to see the troops.
I don’t always tell all the guys who all the sponsors are. Like Muskrat and Ten-gun, for example. They get the idea that they’re going to the sponsor and talk him into some hairy, wild scheme that would cost a bundle and maybe get the sponsor into trouble.
That’s something you’ve got to watch like a hawk. I have to protect sponsors from certain well meaning but screwball types who would turn them off. Let’s face it, bikers don’t have many friends so we don’t want to screw over those we got.
You don’t want to let the troops too close to certain sponsors. Say you’ve got about twenty dummies hanging around and they’re always running by and bumming sandwiches and so forth, they can deplete the sponsor’s larder.
It’s like the goose that laid the golden eggs, man. If you take your egg only when it’s offered, you have a steady thing. But if you get greedy you just blow it. One good sponsor can get you another if you’re careful and act right and considerate.
So for various reasons we don’t tell all the guys about all our sponsors. Usually that knowledge is just for-the club officers like myself and Noah and T.R. and that’s about it. That way the citizen type partying with us might just be a friend of mine or he might be a rich sponsor.
When a person shows us friendship we don’t dare take unfair advantage. And if his wife or neighbors get to him and he wants us to stop coming around, fine. We part friends. He might still be good for bail some day.
Another example of a real good sponsor is this guy McKernan in Pennsylvania. Now here’s a guy who didn’t have any money, but money isn’t all there is when it comes to sponsors. There’s also willingness to help and doing things that we’re not able to do ourselves.
For example, we were low on scooters about three years ago. I called McKernan back East and he said, “Yeah, I’ll scrounge you up some”. So he got us four scooters and put them in his yard in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
All his neighbors tried to get an injunction against him for running a junk yard. You know, he was a righteously good sponsor so he told them to cram it up their ass and he’d get em out of there when he damn well felt like it.
He finally got one of these U-Haul trailers and we sent him a hot credit card. Then he came bombing, across country with that and delivered us four eighty-inch flatheads. Eighty-inch flatheads weren’t the thing then, but boy, they are now.
Anyway, he took Christmas vacation off from his family and he has a little girl and he came all the way across the United States in the middle of winter just to bring us four scooters. -And he didn’t make any profit. He got back just what he paid for em.
Now, this guy spent two weeks and a hell of a lot of effort scrounging us up some scooters. California scooter prices are just ridiculous and we couldn’t afford them then.
I think he paid about a hundred bucks apiece for them in Pennsylvania. Oh hell, just the transmissions out here were worth fifty dollars apiece. The engines were probably worth a hundred and a half each or better. It was just a real good scene. And of course, we couldn’t have done it without hot credit cards.
So that’s the other kind of sponsor, the one who doesn’t have any money but still earns our undying gratitude. Then there’s like a sponsor who’s a paint contractor and can hire the guys at times. Or maybe you’ve got one that’s a good mechanic or owns a gun store.
The Knightriders had a sponsor who was only about twenty. He didn’t have a bike and just hung around because he thought they were interesting, like a botanist looking at a rare plant.
So he went over one day and said, “Hey man, I’m gonna lay some guns on you guys”, and they said, “Oh, fine”. They figured he had some old garbage that wouldn’t even shoot. So he goes back about a week later and this kid had a whole trunk full of guns. There were P-38s, German Lugers, 45 Automatics, Smith & Wessons, Colts, just all kinds of good stuff and it really blew their minds.
From what I understand, he did this a couple of times. A sponsor like that you can always use.
We had another couple of sponsors, Vicky and Jim. If we got in a jam or something and needed fifty bucks we could go by and tap them.
They used to go down to thse City Council meetings and scream about their property taxes. We offered several times to go down and run amuck on anyone getting vile and arrogant with em. Like when they’re talking to these bandits who want to raise taxes and they get rude answers we can punch somebody in the mouth.
I think they were more afraid of us causing them great embarrassment than those people saying anything mean to them. It’s a case of they’d like to take us along but they wouldn’t want someone to go to the hospital just because he said something insulting to one of our sponsors.
Actually, very few clubs have sponsors. There’s only been three that I know of, the Knightriders, the Hell’s Angels and us.
The smaller clubs that are on dope and wine and profile on the sidewalk never get sponsors because most people would sooner get rid of em. But if you’ve got a class club you get sponsors.
What it is, a lot of these people, they figure it’s likeinsurance. You know, they’ve got theft insurance and life insurance and like that. But they don’t have insurance if the society collapses. Okay, now here’s a sponsor and maybe we never did shit for him when things were going right. But boy, when the pucky hits the fan and the whole world collapses, like it gives every indication of doing, then he’s got friends.
One of the things about a righteous club, man, we never forget a favor. If you do a favor for me then you’re one up on me, see? And whereas it may appear a lot of us are just stone parasites, we’re just adding up these favors ’til when it counts to pay em back.
Now take Harper, he’s laid a lot of goodies on us and put us up and taught us how to act in Mexico and all kinds of things. He’s just laid a hell of a lot of bread on us and treated us to a hell of a lot of beer and meals. In fact it’s even embarrassing to go to town with him because he wants to buy you all the guns in the place.
Now here’s a guy, when the shit comes down, and the society collapses he’s got a place to squat. If he doesn’t have anything he’s still got friends. And the friends he’s got will be the ones most capable of coming back after the crash.
So that’s what the sponsor is buying. He’s buying friends for when he really needs them. He’s not buying somebody just to hang around.
Like this guy Fred Backus laid a 30-06 and a thousand rounds of ammo on me and I haven’t seen him in two years. But if he ever needs a place to crash or his whole sociological order comes down and he needs a place to start over, well we’ll have something going among the ruins.
He probably doesn’t even realize that; a lot of them don’t. But then, a lot of them do.
Most of your sponsors are older. They’re mature, like. But the worst sponsor you can have is a young woman and we just shine her on. Because, in the first place what they want is not what we want to give em on a trade for trade basis.
Well hell, if they want to get laid there’s no problem there. But some of them damn broads want to service the whole club. And we’re iust not that kind of club.
Degeneracy isn’t our bag.
That and also, a young broad, man, they’ve got flappity mouths. All they’ve got to do is overhear something.
And you know, because they’re a sponsor you can’t do anything to em. A sponsor can make a lot of real deadly mistakes. They won’t even know they made em because everybody just keeps cool. An ordinary citizen makes the same mistake and, blam, it’s just about the end for him.
But like I say, you don’t want young broads for sponsors because most of em have lots of hangups. Most of which are their husbands which they think are candy asses. So it’s not really right to take a young broad as a sponsor. If you’re going to score on the broad, fine. But don’t take money from her for doing so.
Now, your older girls, say they get up in their early fifties or sixties and like that, they’re hobbiests and they’re not trying to get that close to the subject, like the younger ones are. They’re real good to have because they feel protective, like this Vickie in Glendale.
Now, she’s righteously good people. There was some fight on TV and she thought it was us and that we’d gotten busted. She was calling all over town trying to get us out of jail.
Fortunately she didn’t find out where those other bikers were held or she would have sprung them. That would have just cost her a lot of money for nothing.
If a sponsor is righteous enough I give him a set of colors and make myself up a new set. This is provided they agree to just hang em up on a wall.
Harper has a set on his wall down there in Marana. He’s been a good sponsor and deserves the honor.
In fact, my colors always look pretty clean because I’m always giving them to sponsors and new members once I’ve broken them in properly. I’ve been extremely lucky and I feel my luck rubs off on people who have a set of my colors.
When you’ve got a good sponsor you’ve got to do something for him. It’s not all just a one way street. Usually if we get like five hundred dollars in effort or money from a sponsor we send him a set of colors. We’ll move em and maybe fight for em and all, regardless, but when they’re really cool the gift of a set of colors shows it, like a medal.
Usually it’s about a year after he’s latched onto us when he gets a set of colors. That’s because we’re not in the business of selling colors to collectors. Because, shit, you’d have all kinds of rumpkins running around who have an extra five hundred bucks and they want to buy some glamor for themselves.
Most of our sponsors are out-of-state. We’ve got the one in Arizona, one in Pennsylvania, a couple in Texas and like that. A lot of these sponsors we met bumming around the country. You know, people pick up on you and you’re good people and interesting. And they’re hobbiests so they want to have something to tell their friends about.
It’s like show and tell at school. A little kid will take something to school like a 45 Automatic and show it to all the other little kids. Well, grownups are the same way. Grownups have a choice of two things; they either have a hobby or they want to be in a club.
Well, the Iron Cross, we’re all in a club. But with the sponsors, it’s a hobby. They can tell their friends, “Look what I’ve got”. We must have our pictures hanging up in the homes of every sponsor we’ve got.
Harper has sort of an office and there’s pictures of us hanging up all over the place. When his neighbors come over they get a big eyefull and he can say we’re his buddies and he’s like the only kid on the block who has an outlaw motorcycle club. His buddies really dig on that.
It’s much better than knowing a celebrity. Anybody can get an autographed picture of Tiny Tim or Senator Fullbright or Junior Samples. But if you’re a sponsor and you’ve got autographed photos of a whole bunch of us guys you really have something to rejoice over.
Being a sponsor’s an art, man. You know, we don’t just take up anything that comes along. Take, for example, this one kid that wanted to be a sponsor. He was nuts. He had tried to join our club.
He was about nineteen but he told us he was twenty-one, our minimum age for membership. He first wanted to run prospect. He was a prospect for about forty-eight hours when we shined him on and said, “Hey man, we can’t go this route; you’re just too nutty”.
Then he says, “Well, can I be a sponsor?”
I said, “What are you going to do for us?”
He says, “I’ll give you my Harley”.
I said, “Oh shit, I know what’s gonna happen next. You’re gonna give us your Harley and then you’re gonna go out and piss in the wrong guy’s face and get the whole club involved in a super hassle that you start. No man, look, if you weren’t so nutty you could loan us the Harley.”
Like we always got guys with busted or impounded machines and if a sponsor wants to loan us a Harley we’re grateful. But we weren’t taking any Harley from a guy like him because he’d just be a headache from then on.
Another thing with a sponsor is that they sometimes go overboard and spend too much on us. Not Harper because he’s single and we’re certainly not going to break our Texas millionaire sponsors.
But it’s like a fanatic stamp collector who lets his wife and kids go without food. We don’t want to do that to anybody. That’s not right.
On the other hand, if a guy’s a millionaire and he wants to spring for a couple of scooters and guns, especially guns, fine. Guns are always in more demand than scooters because the reason new scooters are usually needed is that they are always being impounded for number jobs or violations.
Even so, you usually get your scooter back. If it gets impounded because it has a number job sometimes they’ll only take the crankcase with the numbers on it so you’ll get back a whole bunch of parts. You get it all back, and soon, for violations.
But guns are always getting ripped off or traded for stuff. With a club, guns and ammunition are just like money. I’ve gotten other clubs to do work for me which my own members couldn’t do or didn’t have the right connections. I’d just pay them off in 45 ammo. That’s the most tradeable ammo.
Between 45 ammo and pistols you can buy anything you want. If you had a source, for example, of 45 Automatics and 45 ammo, as far as the club went, you wouldn’t need any cash money.
Everything you wanted, with the exception of beer, you could probably trade for. Some bikers trade for it anyway, muzzle first. But that’s not a practice I recommend. Who wants to get busted for sticking up a liquor joint? It shows a complete lack of class.
With a club, the armament is usually considered first and the way their scooters look, second. Another club I know of has an anti-tank gun. It’s like being the baddest kid on your block.
How are you going to argue with an anti-tank gun? Man, if they want to back it up to your clubhouse door and just wipe out your whole club, it’s no sweat.
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We’d be tickled pink to get stuff like that except that the I.R.S. and people like that would be watching us more closely.
So to sum up what a sponsor is, he’s a friend of the club but not a member. He doesn’t attend meetings and he probably wouldn’t want to listen to our business trivia anyway. But he comes to our parties or throws parties for us. He listens to the gossip and it’s like a second family.
He’s usually older and I think the sponsor, man or woman, sort of feels like the parent of a bunch of robust, wild young sons. And sponsors are as safe among us as any parent would be.
I’m not going to try to dissect why a sponsor sponsors. No matter what anybody else thinks about our sponsors, we’ve got a lot of reverence for them.
The Fifteenth & Final Chapter Of WHEELS OF RAGE