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Hunter S. Thompson
HELL'S ANGELS --
A STRANGE AND TERRIBLE
SAGA
OF THE OUTLAW MOTORCYCLE
GANGS
Excerpt from Chapter 13
It is easy enough to trace the Hell's Angels' mystique -- and even
their name and their emblems -- back to World War II and Hollywood. But
their genes and real history go back a lot further. World War II was
not the original California boom, but a rebirth of a thing that began
in the thirties and was already tapering off when the war economy made
California a new Valhalla. In 1937 Woody Guthrie wrote a song called
"Do-Re-Mi. " The chorus goes like this:
California is a garden of Eden
A Paradise for you and for me,
But believe it or not,
You won't think it's so hot,
If you ain't got the Do-Re-Mi. [1]
The song expressed the frustrated sentiments of more than a million
Okies, Arkies and hillbillies who made a long trek to the Golden State
and found it was just another hard dollar. By the time these gentlemen
arrived, the Westward Movement was already beginning to solidify. The
"California way of life" was the same old game of musical chairs, but
it took a while for this news to filter back East, and meanwhile the
Gold Rush continued. Once here, the newcomers hung on for a few years,
breeding prolifically, until the war started. Then they either joined
up or had their pick of jobs on a booming labor market. Either way,
they were Californians when the war ended. The old way of life was
scattered back along Route 66, and their children grew up in a new
world. The Linkhorns had finally found a home.
Nelson Algren wrote about them in A Walk on the Wild Side, but that
story was told before they crossed the Rockies. Dove Linkhorn, son of
crazy Fitz, went to hustle for his fortune in New Orleans. Ten years
later he would have gone to Los Angeles.
Algren's book opens with one of the best historical descriptions of
American white trash ever written. [2] He traces the Linkhorn ancestry
back to the first wave of bonded servants to arrive on these shores.
These were the dregs of society from all over the British Isles --
misfits, criminals, debtors, social bankrupts of every type and
description -- all of them willing to sign oppressive work contracts
with future employers in exchange for ocean passage to the New World.
Once here, they endured a form of slavery for a year or two-during
which they were fed and sheltered by the boss -- and when their time of
bondage ended, they were turned loose to make their own way.
In theory and in the context of history the setup was mutually
advantageous. Any man desperate enough to sell himself into bondage in
the first place had pretty well shot his wad in the old country, so a
chance for a foothold on a new continent was not to be taken lightly.
After a period of hard labor and wretchedness he would then be free to
seize whatever he might in a land of seemingly infinite natural wealth.
Thousands of bonded servants came over, but by the time they earned
their freedom the coastal strip was already settled. The unclaimed land
was west, across the Alleghenies. So they drifted into the new states
-- Kentucky and Tennessee; their sons drifted on to Missouri, Arkansas
and Oklahoma.
Drifting became a habit; with dead roots in the Old World and none in
the New, the Linkhorns were not of a mind to dig in and cultivate
things. Bondage too became a habit, but it was only the temporary kind.
They were not pioneers, but sleazy rearguard camp followers of the
original westward movement. By the time the Linkhorns arrived anywhere
the land was already taken, so they worked for a while and moved on.
Their world was a violent, boozing limbo between the pits of despair
and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. They kept drifting west, chasing jobs,
rumors, homestead grabs or the luck of some front-running kin. They
lived off the surface of the land, like armyworms, stripping it of
whatever they could before moving on. It was a day-to-day existence,
and there was always more land to the west.
Some stayed behind and their lineal descendants are still there -- in
the Carolinas, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. There were
dropouts all along the way: hillbillies, Okies, Arkies -- they're all
the same people. Texas is a living monument to the breed. So is
southern California.
Algren called them "fierce craving boys" with "a feeling of having been
cheated." Freebooters, armed and drunk -- a legion of gamblers,
brawlers and whorehoppers. Blowing into town in a junk Model-A with
bald tires, no muffler and one headlight ... looking for quick work,
with no questions asked and preferably no tax deductions. Just get the
cash, fill up at a cut-rate gas station and hit the road, with a pint
on the seat and Eddy Arnold on the radio moaning good back-country
tunes about home sweet home, that Bluegrass sweetheart still waitin,
and roses on Mama's grave.
Algren left the Linkhorns in Texas, but anyone who drives the Western
highways knows they didn't stay there either. They kept moving until
one day in the late 1930s they stood on the spine of a scrub-oak
California hill and looked down on the Pacific Ocean -- the end of the
road. Things were tough for a while, but no tougher than they were in a
hundred other places. And then came the war -- fat city, big money even
for Linkhorns.
When the war ended, California was full of veterans looking for ways to
spend their separation bonuses. Many decided to stay on the Coast, and
while their new radios played hillbilly music they went out and bought
big motorcycles -- not knowing exactly why, but in the booming,
rootless atmosphere of those times, it seemed like the thing to do.
They were not all Linkhorns, but the forced democracy of four war years
had erased so many old distinctions that even Linkhorns were confused.
Their pattern of intermarriage was shattered, their children mixed
freely and without violence. By 1950 many Linkhorns were participating
in the money economy; they owned decent cars, and even houses.
Others, however, broke down under the strain of respectability and
answered the call of the genes. There is a story about a
Linkhorn who became a wealthy car dealer in Los Angeles. He married a
beautiful Spanish actress and bought a mansion in Beverly Hills. But
after a decade of opulence he suffered from soaking sweats and was
unable to sleep at night. He began to sneak out of the house through
the servants' entrance and run a few blocks to a gas station where he
kept a hopped-up '37 Ford with no fenders ... and spend the rest of the
night hanging around honky-tonk bars and truck stops, dressed in dirty
overalls and a crusty green T-shirt with a Bardahl emblem on the back.
He enjoyed cadging beers and belting whores around when they spurned
his crude propositions. One night, after long haggling, he bought
several mason jars full of home whiskey, which he drank while driving
at high speed through the Beverly Hills area. When the old Ford finally
threw a rod he abandoned it and called a taxi, which took him to his
own automobile agency. He kicked down a side door, hot-wired a
convertible waiting for tune-up and drove out to Highway 101, where he
got in a drag race with some hoodlums from Pasadena. He lost, and it so
enraged him that he followed the other car until it stopped for a
traffic light -- where he rammed it from the rear at seventy miles an
hour.
The publicity ruined him, but influential friends kept him out of jail
by paying a psychiatrist to call him insane. He spent a year
in a rest home; and now, according to the stories, he has a motorcycle
dealership near San Diego. People who know him say he's happy --
although his driver's license has been revoked for numerous violations,
his business is verging on bankruptcy, and his new wife, a jaded
ex-beauty queen from West Virginia, is a half-mad alcoholic.
It would not be fair to say that all motorcycle outlaws carry Linkhorn
genes, but nobody who has ever spent time among the inbred Anglo-Saxon
tribes of Appalachia would need more than a few hours with the Hell's
Angels to work up a very strong sense of deja vu. There is the same
sulking hostility toward "outsiders," the same extremes of temper and
action, and even the same names, sharp faces and long-boned bodies that
never look quite natural unless they are leaning on something.
Most of the Angels are obvious Anglo-Saxons, but the Linkhorn attitude
is contagious. The few outlaws with Mexican or Italian names not only
act like the others but somehow look like them. Even Chinese Mel from
Frisco and Charley, a young Negro from Oakland, have the Linkhorn gait
and mannerisms.
_______________
1. © Copyright 1961 and 1963, Ludlow Music Inc. New York. Used by
permission.
2. A story called "Barn Burning," by William Faulkner, is
another white-trash classic. It provides the dimension of humanity that
Algren's description lacks.