Retired Gunny Goodall Meets Cracker

Oceanside, California September 15, 1955

     Gunnery Sergeant John A. Goodall walked down the sidewalk on air. He grinned at a skinny guy who kept his eyes down and nearly fell off the curb trying to give him as much leeway as possible. People tended to give a man all the room he needed when he carried 300 plus pounds and his crew cut boulder of a skull, crisscrossed with scars, sat square on his neck. He had separated from the Marines after 20 and thought he’d go lift a few to celebrate his new civilian life.

     He entered the Brigand Tavern in Oceanside, California. Brigand’s fried onion, beer and sawdust odor made his nose flare in delight and he stood still for a long ten seconds. His eyes swiveled back and forth in their sockets and found an empty room, save the bartender and a cocktail waitress. He told the bar tender he wanted a cold one as he went to a table. The cocktail waitress brought it to him and then rushed back behind the bar. As he reached for his cold beer, his upper arms strained against his rolled up shirt sleeves. He ignored the handle and grasped the beer by the mug, his hand dwarfing it, took a long pull, and then set it back down, returning his hand flat on the table top.

     A hard looking greaser guy came in. John’s adrenaline surged a bit as he sized the guy up.  If John had to guess, he’d say the guy ran about 210, give or take, and stood six feet tall. The guy wore his hair greased up in a long duck’s ass, and dark glasses which he did not remove when he entered the darkened tavern, covered his eyes. Over his jacket was a denim vest that had motorcycle club colors on the back, his jeans were filthy and stiff looking and his engineer’s boots were run down at the heels.

Leather crackled as the greaser eased down into a chair at the table next to John, positioned on the other side of a doorway that led into a pool room. John kept him in his peripheral vision, alert for trouble.  A burst of laughter from the back pool room made them both tense and the bar maid’s eyes kept darting to the doorway.

The rowdy pool players burst through the doorway and swarmed into the room. There were five of them and they had motorcycle club colors on their backs too, except theirs didn’t look the same as the greaser’s. They had grown bored with their game and were up for something new to arouse their interest. The biggest one of the bunch ran close to six feet, 200 pounds and John decided he needed close watching.  

     The big guy slammed his hand on the bar and said, “God damn it, the beer bitch ain’t been back there. What’s a guy got to do to get another fucking beer in this dump?”

A little guy trailed the big one, attached to him like a rash. The other three were milling around, surveying the room. John decided those three didn’t amount to enough to worry about, so he tucked them back in his mind where they could be brought out and beat down if necessary. The smallest one looked like a little underhanded weasel and weasels liked to sucker punch or jump on your back when you were busy, so John kept him in mind more than the other two.

The greaser stiffened and sat up straight. John, already tensed for action, edged up even more, but he still kept his mouth shut and minded his own business. 

The weasel darted his eyes around the room to see what it offered in the way of amusement. His eyes passed over John and wavered, but kept going. He passed over the greaser and did a double take, then locked eyes with him. He grinned ear to ear and elbowed the big one. “Clyde, look.”

Clyde, occupied with trying to get the beers he had demanded, ignored the weasel.

The weasel gripped Clyde on the arm this time and shook. “Clyde.”

     Clyde shrugged the weasel’s grip off his arm, but this time the weasel wouldn’t give up. “Clyde,” he hissed and elbowed him a sharp one.

Clyde whirled around. “God damn you Whitey what the fuck you keep elbowing me for? I’m gonna kick your little ass.”

Whitey pointed to the greaser guy. “Uh, look Clyde, look.”

Clyde eased himself around and looked over where the greaser sat, and then he grinned. “I’ll be God damned if this ain’t our lucky day. Look what we got ourselves here.”

He paused and looked around the tavern, then talking to the room as if it were his audience, said, “A low life piece of shit Deacon - sittin down big as he pleases, breathin the same air as us.”

He grinned wider so all of his teeth showed, ear to ear now, and then looked into the greaser’s eyes. “You piece of shit Deacon. I’m feeling real nice today. And what that means is, I’m gonna let you leave here without bustin you all to pieces. All you gotta do is give me your colors so I can take em outside and piss on em - easy as pie, hand em over.”

“Fuck you, Clyde,” said the greaser quiet-like. “You ain’t gettin shit.”

Clyde scowled. “What’d you say? I could barely hear you, you douche bag.”

“I said fuck you Clyde. You got shit in yer ears?”

Clyde’s grin went away. “You a pretty big talkin piece of shit Deacon for bein all by your lonesome.”

“Like I said before, Clyde, fuck you – you ain’t gettin shit.”

Clyde moved away from the bar and started toward the table where the greaser sat. “We’re all gonna fuck you up now Deacon Boy.”

The greaser shoved back his table, knocking over chairs and John saw him suck in his breath. He stood with his legs outspread for balance and let loose an earsplitting holler of, “Semper Fi you motherfuckers. Come and get it. I love to crack heads.”

At the Semper Fi cry, John’s Marine nature kicked in and he jumped up to help a fellow warrior kick ass. “OOH-RAH,” bellowed John as he kicked over his own table and shoved it aside. The advancing bikers were too single-minded with their plan to strip the greaser of his colors, so they didn’t pay enough attention to his newfound Marine buddy.

Clyde started toward the greaser and the others spread like a pack of wolves to surround him as they came across the room from the bar. Whitey broke to the greaser’s left flank to get around behind his back and Clyde went head-on to meet him.

None of them were paying enough attention to John, figuring nobody would be stupid enough to get involved, so he stepped up to way-lay the three who had cut to their left, trying to outflank the greaser’s right side.

With his left arm stretched out rigid and muscles popping, Gunny Goodall stepped left and clothes-lined all three at their necks. One fell back on his butt, choking, but the other two grabbed hold of his arm as if to move it out of their way, to find they couldn’t budge the stiff arm of the large retired Gunny John Goodall.

John put his boots to the guy on the floor without even looking down and using his outstretched arm, swung the two bikers around and down to their knees over his overturned table, which forced their foreheads into the wall. They slumped over the table, knees on the floor and none of them moved.  

He looked over at the one he’d booted and thought he might still be moving. For good measure, he picked him up by his jacket front and punched him in the side of the head. This all took less than one minute and when he turned to help out the greaser, Clyde and Whitey were on their backs.

John looked over at the greaser. “That was almost as fun as bustin the heads of a crew of swabbies in a Hong Kong whore house. Too bad it didn’t last longer; I only just got warmed up.”

The greaser grinned and put his hand out to John. “Jim Cornwall, call me Cracker. I owe ya one, buddy.” His knuckles were cut and bleeding where he had knocked Clyde and Whitey in the mouth. He shook his fist back and forth. “It would’ve taken me a bit longer to bust all five o their heads alone – not sure my knuckles would’ve held up, though.”

“Retired Gunny John A. Goodall here and feelin fine.”

Before Cracker could say anything, the cocktail waitress ran over and said, “Jesus Christ, Rick called the cops. He said to tell you to get out of here before they get here.”

Cracker looked at John and then smiled at the waitress. “Don’t have to tell me twice sweet cheeks, we’re out o here. Hey Gunny, let’s go have a drink of somethin better’n the beer I never got here. We’ll go on out to my home away from home.”

“Hell yeah, I’m up for that,” said John.

Cracker walked out of the tavern and John followed him to where his bike had been backed in next to the curb.

Peace to you all whatever you may choose.

Nancy Frye-Swope

The Retired Biker Housewife

Nancy Frye-Swope 2010 © All Rights Reserved

Patch and Colors Ban: Discrimination, Litigation and Old School versus New

As we all know, and discriminators often conveniently forget, there are certain laws designed to protect all people against the act of discrimination in the United States. We as US citizens have equal rights regardless of who we are or what we believe. In addition, it is accepted in free countries that civil rights are indistinguishable from natural rights, derived from the rights of nature, and last I heard we were a free country. However, here in the US, in order to ensure we may exercise our natural rights, have the United States Constitution, along with all amendments and acts that follow to back up and guarantee our rights.

The Fourteenth Amendment and the Court’s interpretations, besides defining citizenship,  guarantees that no state may bridge the privileges or immunities of citizens, deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law or deny anyone within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. So what exactly is due process of law? Due process prohibits a variety of social and economic regulations, recognizes many fundamental rights such as privacy, requires certain hearings before taking action against a citizen and guards against conflicts of interest in courts of law.

Fundamental rights are like a set of guidelines under the law that says human rights are protected under our Constitution and so are given a high respect in our courts when there are conflicts between individual liberty and governmental infringement. Although many fundamental rights are widely considered to be human rights, the classification of a right as fundamental invokes specific legal tests used by our courts.

Fundamental rights are generally accepted and recognized as including but not limited to, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to freedom of movement within the country, the right to freedom of association,  the right to freedom of speech, the right to equal protection under the law, the right to freedom of thought -- in a nutshell, freedom and equal treatment for all. So, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees our fundamental rights and our fundamental rights guarantee our freedom of speech along with the First Amendment. Our freedom of speech then, is covered under both Amendment Fourteen and One. But, does a patch or colors constitute freedom of speech? According to our Courts, that’s not necessarily so.

Many bikers argue that under the First Amendment it is unconstitutional to ban colors as it is a violation of their freedom of speech, expression and expressive association rights. As far as I know, a patch has never been considered or ruled protected speech under any court of law.  It’s been ruled that a patch does not convey a particular message.  My personal opinion is that, if the courts are ruling that a patch does not convey a particular message, why in the hell is anyone banning it in the first place?

So why then is it allowed for a business, a city, a state or any other political entity to mandate that a biker who wears colors be denied access or service to an establishment, a city drag race, a fair or any other event?  Ah, you say, it’s because bikers and biker gangs are bad and we don’t want bad people rubbing elbows with we good people.  Business owners may even say they have the right to refuse service to anyone. Yet, in towns across America, many of those same businesses hypocritically salute bikers by displaying huge banner welcome signs when a big rally occurs so they can collect extra revenue.

Cops reason that bikers are gang members, do illegal acts and are no better than street gangs such as the Crips and Bloods.  They say the ban is to guarantee public safety. My old man doesn’t fly MC colors and has been a biker for 50 years give or take a few. He’s been an associate and supporter long before it became trendy and has been pulled over with or without those who were flying colors; just for being a biker.  He doesn’t get pulled over now (knock on wood) like he did in the old days when there weren’t color bans. Back then, bikers got pulled over, harassed and put in jail; overnight if they were lucky and came up with no warrants. Today, if the cops did so, they might be pulling over doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs.

When regular motorcycle enthusiasts took to the two-wheeled mode of transportation and spent loads of money doing so, they fueled a movement to become trendy wannabe bikers. Harley Davidson cashed in and formed the Harley Owners' Group. They wear a patch. I have nothing against the group, so don’t write me nasty letters, but the HOG Group is not an MC; it is a polite group of people who like to show off their shiny waxed bikes, replete with plenty of custom after market doo dads, wear designer leather and ride with like-minded people. They wear chaps with fringe and Conchos, jackets with huge Harley Davidson Logos and spend, spend, spend at the Harley Boutiques; motorcycle boutiques that were once dirty bike shops where a man came in and spit on the floor, grabbed his crotch and sat at a stool at the parts counter full of ashtrays to order bike parts, look at pictures of nasty women draped on motorcycles, and bull shit. Definitely not like the thousands of bike shops or majority of bike riders we see today.

Why is the color and patch banning more of an issue today than long ago? Probably because of the sheer numbers of bikers who have burst onto the scene in the last 10 to 20 years. Even probably because motorcycle clubs, bikers, motorcycle enthusiasts and wannabe bikers are more litigious in our present day. Today, a club is more likely to scream, “I know my rights,” and file suit when they feel their rights have been violated. In the old days, a dirty scooter trash biker felt lucky if he escaped being jailed or worse. Then, bikers hung out at biker bars, clubhouses or flop-houses and stayed away from cocktail lounges that didn’t want them. Today’s bikers have joined the long lines of litigious multitudes eager to file their complaints, suits and grievances. Maybe it will work and someday the banning of colors will be prohibited just as the banning of people of color was prohibited when they finally abolished the Jim Crow Laws of the Old South.

Peace to you all whatever you may choose.

Nancy Frye-Swope

The Retired Biker Housewife

Nancy Frye-Swope 2010 © All Rights Reserved