Coincidence

[steev]

For several years I had an off/on helper, "Al", who'd spent some years doing hard time; he'd spent a lot of time on the weight pile, so he had "penitentiary arms", but he was entirely non-violent and an excellent fellow {very religious, which tended to be a hassle to those of us less so, but we mostly got along).

His last stretch was from his trying out for the Hell's Angels and getting busted in a drop-house he was guarding as a prospect; he met Sonny Barger (President of the Hell's Angels in Oakland) in prison and they agreed that the Angels owed him something, so there was a new Harley waiting when he got out (he eventually trashed his hip with it).

I'm reminded of this because I'm re-watching "Sons of Anarchy", staged in Cali's Central Valley (my old stomping grounds), and Sonny Barger is actually in an episode of the third season; he's the guy in the slammer with the tracheotomy; last I heard, he was selling cars in Arizona and thought Harleys were too high maintenance; we get less vigorous as the testosterone diminishes.

[prairiegarden]

Perhaps not just the Harleys, but the extras often associated with them that are pretty high maintenance.

I once asked to rent a pasture for a few months and they told me it would be doing them a favor by keeping the grass down. And once worked for an engineer who was a Hell's Angel, he was fine, but then he didn't need to be anything else, his affiliation ( which he never mentioned) was enough to keep the crew in order. Oh yes, and once limped off the highway into an unfamiliar city with muffler dragging looking for a garage, stopped the first place I saw a bunch of guys and only after noticed the jackets one or two had on.. They were great, couldn't fix it, but took it off so I didnt screech and scrawk at everyone withing two miles while going down the road, and gave me directions to where I could get it fixed.

So I've been lucky enough only to see the social side, the side that does the toy ride at Christmas, and not the other side.

[steev]

Some people fear "what COULD be done" to the point that they lose track of "what IS being done"; kind of how people relate to diamondback rattlesnakes: yes, they can bite, but they prefer to be left alone and can bite without envenoming, except for the young dumb-asses, until they figure out that they can't get food if they've shot their "clip" on something they can't swallow; makes it hard to re-load, venom being very protein-intensive to manufacture.

Here in the USA, we're seeing a lot of the "could-ers", which is depressing; tends to skew where we put our efforts/resources; tends to skew us toward the very thing many fear. Living in Oakland (one of America's "crime/murder" capitals), I've learned that there's a lot of media bullshit/fear-mongering. It's not the guy with a Saturday-night special taking off a Quickie-mart who's screwing us, it's the bankster, the CEOs of the multi-national corps, the "let's just tweak it" politicians, and the weapons manufacturers.

Grow your veggies, folks, "there's no way to delay that trouble comin' ev'ry day".