Bob Bitchin
Legal Crapola & Explanations (For those who care!) This is either a work of fiction or non-fiction. This work proves that Schroedinger’s Cat Theory: A cat imagined as being enclosed in a box with a radioactive source and a poison that will be released when the source (unpredictably) emits radiation, the cat being considered (per quantum mechanics) to be simultaneously both dead and alive until the box is opened and the cat observed. In this story the cat is very much alive! As this didn’t actually happen, it didn’t actually happen about mid-August, 1973. What I am trying to allude to is it never happened… and when it did, I wasn’t there, because if it were labeled as non-fiction a whole lot of people could be highly embarrassed (or worse!). 3
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Well, not a lot, because most of them are dead by now, or in jail, but just in case, and to keep from having what little I have left in life taken away from me by lawyers and other blood-suckers I guess I will just label it as FICTION! There, now no one can sue me for anything. But those of you who were there, you will know. You will also know when I stray from the facts. Ya gotta have a little poetic license, right? I mean, hell, if Tom Clancy can use the Royal Family and sitting Presidents in his “fiction” I guess I can use a bunch of degenerate bikers in mine, right? By the way, degenerate is not a derogatory term in this book. In fact, at the time this DIDN’T happen (wink-wink, nod-nod) it was my fervent hope that I had reached the pinnacle of being a truly degenerate and sleazy biker! So let’s set the scene for the time period. It was the early seventies. Viet Nam was just over, the love-in’s were fading into memories (sigh) and bikers were at the top of their game. It was just before the “Man” started to hassle us as criminals, and it was a time when young girls… well, let’s just say it was a good time to be a sleazy outlaw biker! Okay, if this had happened (wink-wink, nodnod) it would have been about 50 years ago, and if I were there I would have been in my late twenties. As we reach senility sometimes things that happen get foggy, and things that didn’t happen seem to warp into some kind of fuzzy reality. So 4
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Introduction
By Rich “Magic” Marker
I was lucky enough to start working with Bob Bitchin when he was unlucky enough to lose almost everything in a business deal gone south. Most folks know the story of the royal screwing he received on the sale of his sailing magazine, Lats and Atts. At the time of the debacle, I was drawing a sailing cartoon for the mag. Bob had liked my drawings enough to print the crappy scribbles in his magazine. I felt I owed this mysterious dude, and offered to help however I could. Almost immediately I was caught up in the creation of his new sailing magazine “something bigger and better” that’s about all we were going on. It’s always going to be bigger and better. That’s the chaotic energy that is Bob Bitchin. 7
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Not long after we finished Issue 20 of Cruising Outpost, Bob asked “Hey you wanna do something fun and stupid?” I thought, “You mean, like, what we’ve been doing for the last 5 years?” Truth is, I can never predict what’s coming down the pike next. Seat-ofthe-pants flying is Bob’s preferred mode of transit. It starts with a smirk, raised eyebrows and some out-loud thinking, wheels begin to turn, and soon you’re making shit up as you go while trying to keep from flying off the merry-go-round. Bob told me about the idea for this book based on some foggy memories of a bus trip to some place, or fish, called Sturgis and I thought “here we go…” This “based on a true story” epic odyssey is nothing but pure Bob Bitchin. I didn’t realize it until now really - after finishing the final drawing. DORF, the story of a broken down bus and two yet-tobe-broken down bikers, is an exemplification of how Bob lives his life. Just pack your shit and go - grab hold of the controls of the 747 and figure out how to land before you get there. Bob and I are sorta kindred spirits. Spirits separated by a few decades of time, and positioned at opposite ends of the drugs/sex/rock and roll spectrum. I grew up on a farm in the bland Midwest. There were no drugs, there was no sex (other than scrambled late night Cinemax), and there was only two kinds of music – country AND western. I like to think that in the proper setting, with the proper training, I could have been a Degenerate Jim. Maybe. When I look at Bob Bitchin I don’t see the larger-than-life-boating-celebrity-tattooed-ex-biker that a lot of others do. I see a guy that more than anything, likes to laugh and make people laugh. He loves com8
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Her paint was kept well waxed, and her chrome shinned like a brand-new silver dollar! But now it was the mid-70’s. Over the years she had seen service at a variety of private schools all over the Southern California area. As she aged, and her shocks started to sag and her engine would cough, they started mistreating her more and more. Her last job in education was when she was used by a church to bring the elderly in from around the parish. A noble task, and she enjoyed it and worked hard to stay in running shape. However, the day finally came when she could no longer get started on the cool Southern California mornings. Her pistons would move slowly in the cylinders, but there was just no spark left in her. For two years, she sat on the back of the used bus lot on Anaheim Street in the sleaziest part of Long Beach. Every once and awhile someone would board her, look her over, perhaps kick a tire or two. In the end they would end up taking one of the buses that were in better shape. Month after month turned to year after year. The time dragged by. There was little doubt she wasn’t far from the wrecking yard. And then came the day when her life was changed forever. Not necessarily for the better, but it was, indeed, changed.
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Chapter 1 Two men sat astride a couple of oil dripping, smoke belching Harley’s waiting for the signal to change. Treb and Degenerate Jim were riding their chopped Harley’s on a typical sunny Southern California afternoon, just kinda living life and trying to decide where they would have their next beer. They’d stopped at a light, and were busy trying to figure out which of the hookers they were looking at were actually women, and which were men dressed up as women. In that area of Long Beach you couldn’t always tell. As the light changed they pulled away from the light, not quite sure of one of the hookers, and Treb waved to Degenerate to pull over. 12
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buses digressed as well. “So what kind of budget did you have in mind?” Manny asked as he dodged an old Bus that had two flat tires and a broken headlight. Treb was looking at some of the prices that were written in chalk on the windshields, and just pointed further to the back of the lot. “Actually we don’t have a budget,” he replied. What’s way back here?” As they came around an old 60’s rusted hulk which was once painted O.D. green but had long since gone to rust, they saw the back fence. It was the end of the lot. Degenerate slowly saw his dream of cranking some cute little low-mileage pit woofer on diamond pleated seat-covers dissolve as he saw the 17
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old school bus sitting at the back of the lot. And this is where DORF was first discovered. The name on the hood at one time spelled Ford. But sometime in the years she had been sitting on the lot, some joker had removed the first and last letters on the hood and reversed them. When Treb, Degenerate and Manny walked around the corner, what they beheld was DORF. A 1959 32 passenger bus that had seen better days and had seen over 3 million miles of road in her past. Degenerate was sure this would end the foolishness. He’d wandered off to take a piss behind one of the buses, and when he’d gotten back Treb had just bought DORF for the grand sum of $900. Even at that price Degenerate figured Treb was more than a few fries short of a happy meal in the brains department. It had been a major undertaking getting DORF back to Treb’s crash-pad in Hermosa Beach. Once Manny had put a new battery in it, and used a can and a half of starter fluid, she cranked over. Ran for about the first mile or so. Then she started belching smoke and coughing, and about half-mile from the freeway entrance she coughed her last cough. Treb had ridden back to the crash pad, got his “cage” which was a 1949 Packard Hearse he’d picked up in the middle of the Mojave Desert. He had an old ‘55 Merc, which died of heart stroke, and ended up trading it for the hearse. Treb was not the best horse trader. 18
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safety for the trip. They had found a couple huge stereo speakers behind a trash can, and wired them into the stereo. They had even found an old 8-track tape player, and scrounged a pile of tunes from friends and garage sales. Add to that a stack of the newest issues of Biker News to hand out at the run, and they were almost set. The last step was to make sure they didn’t run out of the necessities. “Hey Treb,” Degenerate asked Treb as he entered the garage, “Are you sure you have enough supplies for this? You know it’s gonna be two weeks, right?” Treb pointed to an ice chest tied down behind the front seat, tucked neatly under the plywood bench.
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“I think we can make it. I have 6 cases of beer tucked in next to the ice chest.” He hesitated, for a minute, looking around, and then continued. “Under the floorboard I have 5 pounds of sensimilla Patrick brought down from Napa.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then went on. “I got a half pound of hash from the Swami upstairs and 100 hits of Orange Sunshine acid and an ounce of crystal meth from Freaky Frank. Oh, yeah, I could only get 30 Quaaludes, so we may run short there, but I’ll bet we can trade some of the acid for ‘Ludes if we do.” “Oh, yeah” he added as an after-thought, “I have to go to get a couple of sandwiches from Mickey’s Deli for the road too.” Degenerate smiled. Mickey’s sandwiches were God-food when ya got the munchies, and a lot of people in Hermosa Beach got the munchies. Mickey’s deli sat a block down the street, and they stayed open until late every evening to catch the stragglers. Being just a half-block off the beautiful sands of Hermosa Beach, it was like a magnet to the kind of folks that gathered in small beach towns in Southern California. When Treb had gone to pick up the sandwiches he made a quick stop at ‘Hermosa High.” Hermosa High was a Head Shop opened in the late sixties that specialized in black-light posters, rolling papers and bongs. Walking in you were hit with incense and an overwhelming odor of Pa24
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He headed outside and got there just as Jim was putting the gas cap on. “Dude’” said Jim. “Let’s get the fuck outta here. I think these assholes are about to attack.” “Calm down man. You aint gonna believe this, but they got a Titty-Flop show going inside. Let’s park the bus and check it out.” And so it was, Treb & Degenerate Jim met Preggy Peggy and Sleazy Suzy. The two top performers (well, actually the ONLY performers) at the Red Mesa Trading Post. The first on stage was Preggy Peggy. With a cold beer in hand, the boys sat back as the music started, and were more than a little surprised when an 8-month pregnant Indian comes out on stage undulating to the music, wearing nothing but a g-string and pasties. With a couple of hits of Orange Sunshine acid coursing thru their veins, along with unknown quantiles of Bitchin Powder, cocaine and meth, what they saw seemed to be Mother-Earth herself. Her body seemed to be ripe with new life, and they sat stunned as she squatted in front of them. Degenerate reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of bills, stuffing them into her g-string. Treb merely looked on with his mouth hanging open. When the song ended both of them sat there with tears in their eye’s, thinking of what a wonder life it was, when Sleazy Suzy walked out onto the stage. Whatever feelings of warmth and life they were feeling went right out the door. 35
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Standing there in front of them, with Gary Puckett and The Union Gap screaming out “Young girl get outta my mind, my love for you is way outta line...� was a seventy year old person (they were unsure of it was male or female) undulating. It soon became evident that it was, indeed, a woman, as she dropped her flea-bitten robe, and stood there with G-String in place, with gray/black bush sticking out above, below and all around it, and a pair of pasties, not more than an inch or two above there, stuck to two of the lowest hanging breasts one could imagine. Once again the acid took over their minds, and in less then a minute they ran screaming out the door, jumped into DORF and were careening
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they were anything but tight, and had not been white in years. Now, perhaps at this point we should describe Treb. This will help you get a better vision of what was about to happen. Treb is bigger than the average bear. He stands about 6’4”, weighs in at a little under 300 pounds, and had been pumping iron for years. He was also a fan of tattoo’s. He had full sleeves on both arms, with a variation of dragon’s, tigers, skulls and Harley-Davidson wings, and on his chest was a very large piece showing Poseidon slaying a huge shark. At the time of his awakening he had slept about three hours, and his eye’s were as red as a stop-light. He hadn’t had a haircut in months, and his hair was as wild as it could be. He sported a full beard and mustache, and at that very
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moment looked a lot like everyman s idea of what the Devil would look like. Now, Degenerate Jim, on the other-hand, was a little smaller, but none-the-less frightening. Standing about 5’ 10”, he was slender and had a beard ZZ Top would envy. His hair hung down past his shoulders, and he to was covered with various works of tattoo art. To top it off, he always wore sunglasses. Yes, always,even when he slept. He, as well, had doffed his clothing during the evening, and was less than happy to be rustled awake by a 300 pound Treb screaming that they were being attacked by wild Indians. And so it was, the door to the bus opened, and to this very day, the townsfolk of Cortez Colorado talk of the day they were visited by the Devil and Beelzebub, his right hand daemon. Both came forth from the vehicle from hell with glaring red eye’s and guns in both hands. The parking lot emptied in a matter of mere seconds, and the preacher was last seen heading across a neighboring corn-field, making a zig-zag path, as he had learned to do in Viet Nam a few years earlier.
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did have a badge. But history was changed when John, who’d had less weed, and no Magic Powder, inject-ed a moments clarity into this scene. John reached out and grabbed Treb’s arm before he could get it pulled up, and whispered into his ear. “Treb. Be cool. This is the man here.” The words “the man” got thru the fog in his slightly altered state, and he just kinda stood there and grinned. Sheriff Buford also made an historic decision that day. He decided to defuse the situation instead of pushing it to it’s other possible conclusion. He smiled back at this hulking behemoth standing in front of him. 59
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“If you’ve got a minute,” said the Sheriff, “I’d like to talk to you. How about coming with me for a little drive.” Treb looked at Jim, Jim looked at John, and they all looked at Karen, who had become bored with things, and wandered back into the Lounge pulling up her pants. She never did realize that it was Jim and Treb. The Sheriff told the group that Treb would be “right back” and they got into his squad car, and drove off. When they reached The Sheriff’s Office Buford led Treb into his office. Treb looked around. It was pretty typical of the day, There were photos of the Sheriff with different people who looked like citizens, and one of him standing with the governor. This Treb knew because it said “Sheriff Buford Wheems and Governor Richard Knelp.” Treb also saw a photo of a younger Sheriff Buford, with a group of Rangers, taken in Viet Nam. It was this photo that set the tone of their talk. “Sheriff, I am sorry if I caused a problem,” Treb started. “I have a small biker newspaper in Southern California and I thought that would make a great photo for the paper.” This defused what the Sheriff was going to say. Maybe this guy could be reasoned with. “Okay, but you have to understand, your instigating a photo like that is unlawful, and just plain indecent. As a reporter you will get some leeway, but if I catch you instigating other acts 60
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away from him. Steve walked back over to his bike and started to pack it. He didn’t say a word to her. She looked over at Treb, and he smiled. She smiled back, and started to walk over to him. Ten minutes later Treb had her spread-eagle on the floor of the bus with his tongue buried so deep in her he was licking her bellybutton, from the inside!! The way she was squirming he must have been doing a fairly decent job. Jim sat in the passenger seat, watching for a few minutes and smoking a joint, and then mumbled something about a “two headed beast”, and headed into town. In the meantime Diane proved that she knew everything that a man could want in the way of giving a blow job, and the afternoon drifted away 65
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as they became acquainted. Over, and over and over. It was well after dark when they emerged from the bus and walked over to the Steak House next to the Armory to revitalize and revive from a couple hours in a very hot bus, bumping uglies as if their lives depended on it.. Crazy Ace and the Skullmunchers had just arrived from Texas, and he’d set up his tattoo chair under a 10X10 shelter, and hung out his sign. “Tattoo’s By Crazy Ace.” Ace & Treb had known each other a couple years, and they’d partied together in Dallas, where Ace lived. Ace rode with the “Skullmunchers.” They were a club out of Texas that seemed to attract only the very large and scary types. Most were over 6’6”. They got a lot of respect from the other clubs. Over the previous couple years Sturgis had turned into a place bikers could go and get good Tattoo’s by some of the best tattooists in the world, all in one place. Treb wandered over to say hi to Ace, and Jim started looking thru his Flash to see if there was any new skin-art he needed. He selected a skull with the words “Born Dead” on it. Diane and Treb wandered off to get a drink, and when Degenerate finished getting his new art he came & found them. They felt it was time to catch up on some much needed rest, and headed back to the campgrounds. Besides, it had been over an hour, and Treb’s mom used to tell him to wait an hour 66
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he’d get a cover out of it. And he might have at that, if Degenerate had remembered to put film in the camera. (For those of you not old enough to remember, a camera is what we used to take photos with before we had cell phones!!) Ahhh, but the fun was just about to begin. The all piled back into DORF and started back to Sturgis. But first they needed a little excitement. Treb usually found that excitement kinda naturally as things went wrong. So what could go wrong with a bus-load of screaming outlaw bikers? Treb turned the bus out of the parking lot and started to head back towards the land of bikes & booze; Sturgis. And they were doing pretty well for the first few minutes, until the brakes went out. No shit! Really.. The brakes all of a sudden stopped responding to Treb’s not-so delicate touch. In fact, even when he stomped on them they wouldn’t seem to engage. At first he thought he might be a little high, and was doing something wrong (hey, it happens!) but this was not the case at that particular time. His alleged mind was working fine. It was the stupid bus that wasn’t going along with the program. And so it was they were soon barreling down the hillside at over 75 mph, taking curves on three wheels at times, (which means the other three were in the air!!) And passing bus-loads of geriatrics on curves. We must digress here. As mentioned Treb may have been a few brain-cells short at the time it happened. Many who were on the bus that day 71
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can still recall the faces of a bunch of geriatrics waving franticly from a tour bus they passed on a particularly tight curve. All Treb could recall is this picture frozen in his mind of wide eye’s, gray hair, and very loud caterwauling from the back of the bus! And before you ask, yes he tried everything he could think of, like turning off the ignition, pulling on the hand-brake and putting it into low. The hand-brake was inoperative, as they were going downhill turning off the ignition did nothing, and dropping it into low was the only thing that had any effect at all. And what it did was to create a noise that they hope they never hear again. Kinda like the sound of a bus transmission going 72
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est, aged about 18-20, carrying automatic rifles, while the bikers were not allowed to “bear arms” or “arm bears.” Highly unfair, they believed! At one point there were a group of bikers hanging around the bonfire of the Avengers. There were two “good ol’ boys” from Iowa that were looking for ways to have some fun with this. They were called the Pig Farmers, because, well, because that what they were. Neither of them weighed under 300 pounds, and they wore overalls. One of them suggested that he felt like streaking for the cops. Diane laughed so hard they thought she was going to cough up a lung, and she was just about high enough to go for anything. The next thing we knew one of the Pig Brothers was naked, with a very naked Diane sitting on his gas tank, and they were off! They started going thru the middle of the park, and then hung a hard left and cut right between to cop cars, who, when their headlight shone on a pair of magnificent breasts, and a huge naked pig farmer grinning like a Cheshire Cat they went nuts! All of a sudden there were sirens going off, and people yelling “catch them” as they rode across the lawn, thru two other campsites, and then crashed thru the wooden stake fence, out onto Highway 32, and you could hear his engine wind as he screamed at full throttle out of town, with a dozen police cars in pursuit. They didn’t catch them! About 15 minutes 79
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later Pig Boy and Diane came slamming back thru the hole in the fence they had made on their way out, came sliding into the fire area on a twowheel drift, and before the bike stopped moving they were off and into one of the tents. The bikers threw a blanket over the bike where it lay, and tried to put on their very best “Who sir? Me Sir? Oh no Sir!” Look on their faces. It didn’t take a minute for them to put on their clothes, and were standing by the fire when the cops arrived, looking for “two naked people who had streaked the park.” We, of course, knew not of what they spoke! The police patrolled the area until almost 80
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But we digress. As it turned dark it was time for Degenerate and his friend to go hit the bonfires again and see what kind of trick-or-treat they could get this time. The scene in City Park was like something out of a movie set. This little park, about 10 acres in all, had a circular drive around the center of it. So in the center and on both sides of the dirt road were fires. Over a dozen, and each of them fairly large. Around each fire were wooden picnic benches, with the various clubs “hosting” each fire. This time they knew Degenerate would be “sharing his goodies” so there was no need for guns,
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which was a good thing, as most people were so fucked up they would have been shot for sure on this night. At many of the fires there would be a radio blaring music, and the ol’ ladies were taking advantage of the time to dance. The later in the evening it got, the less they were wearing! This made for a very entertaining walk thru the park! It must have been three or four in the morning when Diane & Treb headed for the bus to see what kind of new adventures they could find. It’s kinda funny, but when they first met Treb thought she was too hot to be true. But now, after three days of more sex than one should participate in, he wasn’t so enamored. In fact he was trying to figure out how he could get rid of her before they headed back to Redondo Beach. Once again, right around dawn, it was time for them to play “Let’s see if we can keep Degenerate Breathing thru the night.”
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the agent took the duffel bag, inspected it, then she asked Treb to put the guns back into the bag, put a tag on it, and he watched them disappear thru a small opening in the wall behind her. After waiting to board abut an hour they started boarding. As they’d made last minute reservations they’d been unable to get two seats next to each other, and were shown to two center row seats about 3 rows apart. Now let’s sit back here and try to use our fertile imaginations, shall we? Try to imagine that you are sitting in a window or aisle seat after losing a bunch of money in Vegas, and then see the Hells Angels version of Mutt & Jeff walking down the aisle, and you know 97
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one of them is going to be taking the seat next to you. Yeah, “Oh No” is about the best comment you could imagine, and that was NOT the opinion of the man who Treb ended up next to. In fact as soon as he jammed his over-sized body into the seat, and managed to wiggle around enough to where he could get his seat belt fastened, the man hit the ground running, looking for a stewardess almost (or should I say flight attendant to be politically correct?) It was obvious by the way he was holding his nose and motioning toward Treb, he was not a happy individual with his new seating partner. The woman on the other side, who looked just frumpy enough to be his wife, just sat hugging the bulkhead and dong anything she could so as not to be touching Treb. It was also noticed that one of the ladies who was sitting to each side of Degenerate seemed to be trying to indicate her displeasure with her new seating companion as well. The poor stewardess (let’s stick with that terms as this is a “time piece” from the 70’s, when that was kewl!) was turning her head from one to the other, with glances at Degenerate and Treb in between, and she looked like one of the Road Runner cartoons where you could almost see the “motion lines” around her head. It took awhile, but she was soon able to move people around enough to where the only vacant seat in the plan was between Degenerate and Treb. 98