The bank sent a gangster biker to serve my foreclosure papers, thinking they’d hired some two-bit thug to intimidate me. He stood at my door holding the envelope, his gray beard and weathered face making him look like every stereotype I’d ever seen. “Another vulture here to profit off my misery,” I spat, snatching the…
I watched the old biker counting out crumpled dollar bills at the grocery store register while the line behind him grew longer and angrier. His leather vest was worn thin, patches faded, and his hands shook as he separated quarters from dimes. $47.83 for what looked like basic necessities – bread, milk, eggs, and a…
I watched that old biker die saving people who wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire, and I was one of them. For twenty years, I’d called the cops on Jake “Reaper” Morrison every time his motorcycle woke my baby, signed every petition to shut down his veteran’s clubhouse, told anyone who’d listen…
I laughed in that old biker’s face when he offered to help find my missing son, telling him we didn’t need some drunk Harley trash playing hero while real professionals worked. “Get back on your stupid bike and leave us alone,” I screamed as I was already angry my son was missing, actually shoving him…
I watched a grown biker collapse to his knees when my seven-year-old daughter handed him her teddy bear at a truck stop. Six-foot-four, covered in tattoos, leather vest loaded with patches, and he just crumbled right there on the asphalt. My first instinct was to grab Emma and run – what kind of dangerous man…
When news spread that 29-year-old Staff Sergeant Christopher D. Harding Jr. needed an escort home to St. Clairsville, Ohio, the Warthogs Motorcycle Club didn’t hesitate. The Marine, who died June 19 after a drunk driver crossed the center line and struck his motorcycle head-on, deserved a hero’s return to the Ohio Valley he called home….
My own daughter stood in my living room tearing up the only photos I had left of my Vietnam brothers because she didn’t want her kids seeing their grandfather with “those people.” Twenty minutes earlier, she’d walked in while I was showing my grandson the album – him asking about the motorcycles in the background,…
They finally said the quiet part out loud. Lagos just banned motorcycles from operating in most of the city, but let’s call it what it really is – keeping bikers out of areas where the rich don’t want to see us. And before you say “that’s Nigeria, not here,” wake up. This is exactly what…
My father stormed into the principal’s office, breathing heavily, and demanded, “What’s wrong with my daughter? Is she hurt?” The principal adjusted her glasses and replied, “We contacted you because her skirt violates our dress code standards.” My father looked me over, taking in my appearance carefully. After a moment, he faced the principal again…
The sign was spray-painted on plywood and propped against the fence at Miller’s Curve where my son died: “ANOTHER BIKER DIES HERE – GOOD RIDDANCE! ONE LESS MENACE.” I’d been riding this road for forty-two years, knew every pothole and crack, but seeing those words made me forget how to breathe. My boy Tommy wasn’t…
I told everyone my father was dead rather than admit he was a dirty biker who couldn’t string together a proper sentence without cursing. Four years at Princeton, and I’d perfected the lie that he died in a tragic car accident when I was seven, raised by a sophisticated aunt who taught me proper etiquette….
The bank manager took one look at my leather vest and told me I was “too high risk” before I even sat down. Twenty minutes earlier, I’d rushed straight from the emergency blood drive where I’d donated my 50th pint, still wearing my riding gear because the call said they needed O-negative immediately. My wife…
She pounded on my door at 3 AM, mascara running down her face, begging the “dirty biker” she’d tried to get evicted to help her. For two years, Linda had called the police every time I started my Harley, filed complaints with the HOA, even started a petition to ban motorcycles from our neighborhood. “People…
I’m 72 years old, worked as a diesel mechanic for forty-five years, and raised my boy as a single father after his mother died. But to my daughter-in-law, I’m just a dirty old biker who embarrasses her in front of her country club friends. Last night at Thanksgiving dinner, she handed me a paper plate…
My own son ambushed me at breakfast with legal papers, claiming I was “too mentally declined” to own a motorcycle anymore. Kevin stood there in my kitchen – the kitchen where I’d made him pancakes every Sunday for eighteen years – with a lawyer and a psychiatrist, telling me I needed to sign over my…
My mother-in-law called the cops on me for “attempted kidnapping” when I picked up my own son from school on my motorcycle. Twenty other parents saw her screaming that a “dangerous biker” was trying to abduct her grandson, pointing at my gray beard and leather jacket like they were criminal evidence. The principal had to…
The cops arrested my 68-year-old biker father for assault after he defended himself from three men who attacked him at a gas station, but they let his attackers go because they were “upstanding citizens” and he was just another dirty biker. I watched the security footage later – Dad pumping gas into his Road King,…
An Arizona Highway Patrol officer stops a Harley rider for traveling faster than the posted speed limit. He asks the old biker his name. “Fred.” He replies. “Fred what?” The officer asks. “Just Fred.” The old man responds. The officer is in a good mood and thinks he might give the old biker a break…
I told the funeral director to call the police if any bikers showed up at my mother’s service. “Those people have caused enough pain,” I said, handing him photos from her Facebook. “Especially this one – Tank Williams. If he comes within fifty feet of this funeral home, I want him arrested.” The director looked…
Bryanne Sturch had dreamed of running her very own lemonade stand since she was old enough to squeeze lemons. At eight years old, her dream finally took form on a quiet street corner in Chili, Indiana, with nothing more than a simple wooden table, colorful handmade signs, and pitchers filled with fresh lemonade. She wore…
I used to be embarrassed when Grandpa Jack drove me to school on his motorcycle. The other kids’ grandpas wore cardigans and drove sensible sedans, not leather jackets and rumbling Harleys. When I turned thirteen, I told him to drop me off two blocks away so my friends wouldn’t see him. He never complained, just…
I told my father-in-law he could see his grandchildren the day he sold his motorcycle and acted like a normal grandfather. That was six years ago. He chose the bike. Every Sunday, I watch him ride past our house at exactly 2 PM, slowing down just enough to look at the window where his grandchildren…
“You’re an embarrassment,” I told my biker father the last time I saw him alive. His cancer-ravaged body looked small in that hospital bed, but I still couldn’t find an ounce of compassion. All I could see was the worn leather vest hanging on the back of his door, those ridiculous patches and pins he…
I buried my only son yesterday. Then drove home to find someone had spray-painted “Dangerous Old Biker Trash” across my garage door. Thirty years I’ve lived in this neighborhood. Thirty goddamn years of waving to these people, shoveling their sidewalks, fixing their kids’ bicycles for free. Now, they’ve decided I’m the enemy. Because last week,…
“You’re not bringing that biker trash lifestyle near my daughter anymore.” Those were the exact words my own daughter said to me, standing in her $800,000 house that my forty years of factory work helped pay for. The same girl who learned to count by polishing chrome with me, who wore my club’s support shirt…