Chapter 5 – Wheels of Rage by Kurt Saxon

He planned to gather his troops and charge into the parade and scatter bodies all over the place. The Hell’s Angels attacked a peace demonstration a few years ago and had gotten a lot of public approval for it. Big Mike did not know what he would do with public approval but he thought it would be a novelty.

Most of the other bikers rejected the idea. To charge into a mob of dissenters on foot and using only their bare fists when they had enough guns to take the city was just stupid. And with so many cops at a thing like that, they were sure to be busted.

At a party Big Mike gave a rousing speech on patriotism and class but only sixteen accepted the challenge. Six were prospects who could not refuse if they wanted to become official members of the club. Nonetheless, two other prospects walked out, saying they were going to join the Knightriders who never walked when they could ride and never punched when they could shoot.

Most leaders have days like this. Big Mike was angry and hurt but a victory would show them all. Again, like all leaders, he sometimes got to believing his own publicity and thought a thing was wise and right just because he had thought of it.

Yet, he had built better than he knew. He had some insanely loyal troops who would follow him wherever he led. Those not so loyal still recognized his ability and class. Knowing his madness would go away they laughed at him but still partied in his clubhouse, believing in better days ahead.

The parade was to begin several blocks down Wilshire Boulevard and end up at MacArthur Park. Big Mike, Pinocchio and Ape went to plan the action a few days before Easter. They went to Lafayette Park. It was decided to assemble the bikers at the north side of Lafayette Park. They would loiter around until the main body of the parade approached and then go straight for the servicemen demonstrators.

The seventeen patriots went to the park early on the big day. They drank beer and lounged around on the grass for about three hours before the parade began. When the hoard of marchers finally appeared, Big Mike had to run all over the park gathering his troops.

Paranoid George was asleep by a pile of beer cans and had to be kicked awake. Gorilla Snot and Samson were on the swings and Ginch was playing baseball with some little kids. Pinocchio was in the back of a panel truck making out with a couple of hippy girls he had met in the park.

Later Pinocchio designed a leaflet to be given to peace types. Its heading was, “WHOSE SCORING WITH YOUR BROADS WHILE YOU ARE MARCHING IN THIS HERE PEACE PARADE?”

After banging on the panel truck and rocking it from side to side, the bikers finally got Pinocchio to give up and join them. Ginch was up at bat and refused to leave until he struck out. By this time half the parade had passed and the servicemen protesters were long gone down the street.

Still, Big Mike was not one to waste all the time and effort he had spent getting this raid together. He assembled them and charged them toward the center of the parade. Each yelled his favorite battle cry and the marchers who saw them coming broke and ran like cockroaches surprised by a light.
Before they reached the parade two flying squads of police approached from either side and cut them off the sidewalk. They were ugly cops, too, glaring at the bikers with clubs upraised.

Pinocchio hollered, “Screw you, Brown. You had to get me out of that goddam panel truck for this!”

Then he turned tail and ran like a rabbit. He was followed by Big Mike and the rest and the police were right at their heels. In no time at all they were surrounded over a wide area. Paranoid George was too drunk to resist and so let two cops drag him along by the feet while he reviled them. Six cops had Gorilla Snot up a tree from which he yammered down at them that they were pigs and secret practicers of brutality. Big Mike and Samson were pulled down by several officers and clubbed while Pinocchio was surrounded by eight cops, three of whom had drawn their guns.

In moments they were all handcuffed. A gray-haired officer stepped up to one of the police and said, “What’s with the cuffs? you were supposed to cut them off so they didn’t reach the parade.”

The cop he addressed said they hadn’t reached the parade.

The gray-haired officer then said, “If they didn’t get to the parade they didn’t hurt anybody. So let them go. And what’s this hitting them with clubs? What are you, police or what?” He made the rounds of his men, chewing them out individually and in small groups while they were busy unlocking handcuffs.

To add to the embarrassment of the whole thing for Big Mike, was the knowledge that it was not just a matter of bad luck that so many cops were at the spot. The place they had picked days ago to watch for the parade was right across the street from the Ramparts Police Station. It was the main area precinct house with more cops than any regular police department. For about three hours the police had watched them from their building, knowing exactly what they had in mind and ready to strike the minute they made their move.

This was not the end of Big Mike’s political career, however. The parade, like every leftist enterprise, was heavily infiltrated by right-wing spies. Although Big Mike’s caper attracted no attention from the press, it was duly reported to the rightist organizations by the infiltrators.

A few days after the bikers’ abortive attempt to disrupt the peace parade the clubhouse was contacted by Willis Carto, head of Liberty Lobby. Carto is very heavy on the right and takes in a lot of money from concerned old folks. His various patriotic gatherings are similar in that they all have an atmosphere of religious fanaticism and denture breath.

Gorilla Snot took the call. Carto told him he was going to hold a Right Power rally and needed some tough patriots to guard it from possible communist attacks. He hinted there might be some money in it and asked if Gorilla Snot would mind punching some leftists.

Gorilla Snot answered, “Hell, Mister, we’d destroy the world for a dollar-thirty-seven cents. But if you got a job for us you’ll have to arrange things with Big Mike.”

He took Carto’s number and Big Mike called him that evening. They set up a meeting and Big Mike, Ten-gun and Muskrat went over to Carto’s.

Willis Carto usually wears a kind of startled expression. Ten-gun said he had the look of a man caught masturbating. To the three bikers he gave the impression of being guilty of something. Big Mike didn’t much like him or any of his flunkies.

Carto was going to hold a Right Power rally for the National Youth Alliance. The N.Y.A. is a bunch of militant bird watchers who fancy themselves the right-wing hope of the nation.

Big Mike had to attend a conference concerning the rally to be held on the U.C.L.A. campus July 16. They were trying to form a coalition of right-wing groups to hold each other’s hands in case the Black Panthers or somebody tried to wipe them out.

Their rally was to be a peaceful affair. They just wanted to get up there and say their piece. They did not want anybody to say anything mean to them. Big Mike figured they scared easy.

Big Mike, Ten-gun and Muskrat went to the conference and there they met the last chance for the white race. One of the conferees was a character named James Konrad Warner. He sold anti-Semitic books to elderly white mental cases. He represented The Sons of Liberty, of which he was the only member. Ten-gun said from the way he talked in his high, squeaky voice, he should call his thing The Daughters of Slavery.

Bill Morrison, printer of right-wing material and representing the Angriff Press was there with a boy friend who was an obvious faggot. Called “Morrithon” by some, he is rumored to be trying to organize the homosexual trade of the gay bars he frequents. When he gets them all together, it is alleged, he intends to lead them against the forces of degeneracy.

Lou Byers will be remembered by many as the man who was going to wipe the campuses clean of leftists. Big Mike describes him as: “Middle aged, real soft looking. In boxing he might be good for ten seconds of the first round, that is if you didn’t hit him too hard. He looks like the black man’s answer to white supremacy.”

At the conference Carto announced reassuringly that the Iron Cross had been invited to keep order at the rally. They all seemed shocked when Big Mike growled out, “Yeah, but what’s in it for us?”

Then Carto answered, “Well, I’ll lay three hundred bucks on your club if you guard the rally and nothing happens.”

Big Mike asked, “And suppose the shit comes down and there’s a big brawl and we all get busted? Then what happens?”

Carto said, “Oh, we can’t pay the bail or anything.”

Big Mike just grinned at Ten-gun and Muskrat and they all got up to leave. Then the people at the conference looked like a bunch of high-level political hacks being walked out on by the Secret Service. Carto leaned over to Byers and after some whispering he said, “Okay, we’ve got the bail money.”

The three bikers then decided to stick around for a while. They had to put up with a half hour harangue by Byers on how the National Youth Alliance was a national organization and they had chapters here and chapters there and had two hundred members in Los Angeles. Big Mike interrupted him and asked, “If you have two hundred warm bodies, what do you want with us? For a thing like this I can probably only muster fifteen or so men since most of my boys won’t get into any political hassles. If worse comes to worse and you want to lay a few more bucks out I can invite some more troops from some of the other clubs. But, like I say, if you got two hundred people I don’t see why you need us. I mean, crap, that’s enough to fight anybody.”

A man from the White Citizens Council kept saying to all concerned, “We need more troops.”

Big Mike says of him: “You know, this geek must have been six-six and two hundred and fifty pounds. The son-of-a-bitch was huge. But the looked like, you know, another bourgeois fat slob.

“I chalked the whole bunch of them up as being a bunch of real rumpkin cowards. Here they were going to save the country and the world and win the war in Vietnam and yet they were afraid of getting out and spilling any blood themselves.”

The right-wingers were pleased to have the bikers as bodyguards but resented their Luftwaffe pins and other assorted Nazi decorations they wore on their colors. The bikers left them on, saying that to remove them would leave clean patches on their otherwise filthy colors, making them look very disorderly.

Big Mike explains their love for the German decorations like this: “The wearing of Luftwaffe pins and swastikas is very prevalent among motorcycle people, especially in California. A lot of people tell you it’s to snap the citizens’ minds, but it goes a little deeper than that. It’s not being Nazis so much but a real deep love for machinery.

“You know, the Germans, whatever you think of their political bag, did produce the finest machinery in the world. Look at the German Luger, the tanks they had and so forth. And the reason all the bikers in the different clubs wear German pins is that it identifies them with machinery. There’s this old Greek saying, ‘Deus ex machina,’ or God from a machine. And what people wearing these swastika Luftwaffe eagles are trying to show you is that they worship their machines.

“But you can’t explain that to citizens. They don’t understand so it’s easier to say it’s just to blow their minds. The whole thing is silly for two reasons. One is if we wanted to be Nazis we would put on khaki shirts and arm bands under our colors. But we don’t. Two, the third Reich has been dead for twenty-six years and only any idiot gets excited about it anymore.”

Carto and Byers had noticed the decorations and had said, “You should leave them home. We don’t want anybody to think we’re Nazis.”

Big Mike answered, “Oh, horse shit. We agreed to keep order, not change our colors or to wear your uniforms.”
Carto had wanted the bikers to wear a uniform he had designed. It looked like a cross between a bus driver’s and a cop’s. Combat boots, blue trousers, blue shirt.

Big Mike told him, “Hey, man, my boys are pretty bad but if we show up looking like the Mickey Mouse Brigade your enemies will come in on us like stink on shit. We’re wearing our colors because that way at least those characters will know what they’re up against.”

Carto settled for telling the audience at the rally that they that the Iron Cross had been invited by the White Student’s League.

Fifteen members of the Iron Cross showed up to guard the rally. Only five of the “200” N.Y.A. members were there; Carto, Byers and an acne infested teenager in a blue uniform made three. The other two walked out half way through the rally.

Concerning the one with the blue uniform; a couple of weeks later the Los Angeles Times carried a picture of him picketing in the uniform of the American Nazi Party. Big Mike figured Carto had his nerve hassling them about their little Luftwaffe pins.

Just before the rally started Carto called Big Mike aside and told him he could only arrange $1,000 for bail money. Big Mike said, “Look, Carto, I’ve got fourteen of my boys here. With that kind of money I might get three of them out on disturbing the peace or something light. This is so much crap because I got guys took off from work to be here. If all hell breaks loose, it’s going to be all over.”

Carto answered, “Well, you’ll still get the $300.”

An idea hit Big Mike and he told Carto that everything was alright. Then he rounded up the bikers and said, “Look, I don’t know if you realize it but Carto’s getting tight with the money. He won’t go over $1,000 for bail. He rips off $800,000 a year sending out sucker lists to the right-wing. He claims he can’t get into that money because old ladies are sending in a dollar at a time. But you guys can rot in jail.

“Now, I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do. If real trouble comes and the mob goes for Byers we’ll let them have him. If they attack us, we’ll fight but only then. If Carto can double cross us, we can double cross him better.”

Big Mike was so steamed over Carto’s withdrawal of the promise of bail money that he wished later that he had told the leftists they could have their way with the rightists. But as it was, the bikers loitered around and the mobs of leftists were afraid to act up.

It might seem strange that fifteen men can cow a mob of a couple thousand. But a couple of thousand people are still just a lot of individuals who don’t want to wind up in the hospital crippled and maimed because they got too near a murderous animal.

There are several ways of looking at fighting with bikers. One way is that you are fighting a person who will kill you if he can. He doesn’t care. You may only want to shock him awake to your line of reasoning but he wants you dead.

You might think you have a good punch but you’ll be punching a guy who has been punched by the best, often, and stomped and been banged up by wrecks on his bike. He can take it and he can give it out in a sick callous way that will make you forget about even defending yourself, much less fighting. You’ll just want to get away.

One method bikers have of fighting a mob is to form into groups of about five each. Then each group will snatch one person out of the mob and stomp him to jelly before the eyes of his friends. Each horrified friend, no matter how he wants to smash the bikers, feels it a far, far better thing to let a friend get kicked to death than to get kicked to death himself.

So the mob was relatively quiet. Even so, the first right-winger to speak took one look at all the Black Panthers and hippies surrounding the speaker’s stand and chickened out. Byers was on next and since he was being paid by Carto he had to get up there.

Even though Byers was safe because of the club’s reputation among the mob, he was shaking like a leaf. Nonetheless, with the Iron Cross in evidence, he ranted on about “niggers” and “white power”. Since no one wanted to feed the meat grinder, Byers finished and got off with no broken bones.

The next morning he was interviewed on a TV show by himself and this time no bodyguards. His interviewer was a big black and so his arrogance was completely stripped away. After screaming “nigger” and “white power” the day before, he now made such statements as, “The National Youth Alliance welcomes support of the Black Students Union”, etc. Generally he just blew his big brave image as far as being a bad assed white racist was concerned.

After that incident the bikers decided to stay out of gutter politics. It was not that they weren’t concerned with social issues. It was just that they considered the left to be loyal to foreign interests and the right to be too phony and faggoty to protect the interests here at home.

With politics in the past, they next ran up against a possible war with a car club called the Los Angeles Street Racers. The Racers seemed to be wanting to convert to bikes because several of their members were going around ripping off motorcycles wherever they found them.

One afternoon the wife of Hathaway came home from work and saw a Racer wheeling Hathaway’s scooter out of the driveway. She rushed upstairs and got Hathaway out of bed and he ran out into the street with a towel wrapped around him and carrying an automatic in his hand.

He saw the Racer jumping up and down on the bike trying to get it started and ran after him. The Racer saw him coming and dropped the scooter and ran off up a hill. Hathaway charged up to the top of the hill and saw the Racer running down the other side about forty yards away.

He squatted and aimed and cranked off two rounds. The second shot got the Racer just below the knee and knocked him head over heels and fetched him up against a fence.

Hathaway ran down and put the pistol in the Racer’s face and the Racer said, “My friends’ll take care of you.”

Hathaway dragged him back to the house and turned him over to the police.

Later that night a carload of Racers pulled up in front of Hathaway’s house. Hathaway ran out with his pistol and waved it in their faces and made them all get out and line up against the curb.

Noah and Pinocchio were coming back from church and saw Hathaway and the Racers but did not know there was trouble. Noah drove the few doors up the street to his house. He intended to change his clothes and go back and see what was happening.

When he went into his house his wife, Syble, was quite upset and said, “Hathaway’s been running amuck on a car club. He shot one this afternoon and now he’s hassling some more on the corner. Only there are two more cars full of them. I saw them going back and forth signaling with flashlights trying to find out which house was Hathaway’s.”

Noah and Pinocchio finished changing clothes and Noah snatched up a Garand rifle and gave Pinocchio a pistol. Then they tore out and down toward Hathaway’s.

At Hathaway’s house his wife was standing out on the balcony with what appeared to be citizens since they were too clean to be bikers or car clubbers. Hathaway had punched the car clubbers to the ground and was kicking them. One tried to get up and he clobbered him with his pistol.

Some more citizens were streaming along the sidewalk going toward the action. Noah and Pinocchio ran out into the street to get down there quicker. Then Noah heard a car’s engine being raced and jumped aside as a carload of car clubbers was bearing down on him.

Noah spun around and using his Garand as a club, he smashed it into the car’s windshield. The driver’s face was shredded and the car went out of control and slammed into a parked car. Another car full of Racers fled the scene.

Noah and Pinocchio ran to the wrecked car and started jerking the passengers out. They furiously kicked three of them in the chest and face. Then Noah grabbed a fourth and was in the process of choking him to death when he felt a tapping on his shoulder. Thinking it was a citizen, he reached around to backhand him and saw it was one of our heroes in blue.

By this time several squad cars and two ambulances were in the area and the police were rounding everybody up. Syble had called Big Mike and he and five others came bombing in there on their bikes. Ginch had stayed at the clubhouse calling around and in a few minutes enraged bikers heavily outnumbered the police.

Witnesses volunteered that Hathaway had been attacked and that Noah’s victims had tried to kill him. The police had four mauled Street Racers put in the ambulances and hauled the rest away in squad cars leaving the bikers alone.

The bikers then went into Hathaway’s apartment and partied the rest of the night.

The next night Noah, Pinocchio, Hathaway and five other bikers got armed to the teeth and went over to a bar the Street Racers like to use. When they walked in with their guns, Racers, dopers and the general customers went tearing out the back way.

Someone upstairs had called the police when the bikers parked their scooters out front. Within minutes six squad cars had blocked both ends of the street. Then the police sent a sample cop into the bar to see what would happen to him.

Evidently the Racers had been telling what had happened to their brother members because when the bikers walked in even the bartender fled. The bikers were helping themselves to the beer and beginning to party when the cop walked in.

Noah offered him a beer but he refused. Then he commented on their guns in an incorporated area and told them they were breaking the law. Noah explained that the Street Racers had tried to kill several of their number and they meant to settle the argument once and for all.

The officer said, “Okay, you’ve won the argument. The Racers are gone. They’re afraid of you. Now it’s between you and us police. We know your blood is up so we don’t want any trouble, we just want you out of here.
“Now, I haven’t seen any bullets in your guns. I’m going to turn my back for a minute and when I turn back around I want to see your empty chambers. Then I want one of you to take any ammunition you might have, and the rest of you to take your guns and all of you clear out. That way, nobody loses face and the law has been observed.”

The police weren’t afraid of the bikers. But they had families and felt no need to grandstand. It was policy to go easy with a lot of unstable bikers who, if treated right, would slink home to their incessant beer party.

Noah was amused at the officer and they were all proud of themselves at routing the Racers so easily so they did as the officer asked. When they filed out of the bar, they looked at both ends of the street and saw at least twenty-five shotguns, rifles, and pistols aimed at them.

The doors of the six squad cars were open and the inside lights were on and the flashers were flashing. The men behind the car doors and inside looked at the bikers with stony tenseness. The bikers mounted, started their engines and sped off to another party.