Lying, Stealing and cheating

Tales of the biker life from someone who's lived it all

MORGAN MODJESKI VOLUNTEER STAFF

A photo of Mickey Van Dyke
PHOTO CREDIT: MORGAN MODJESKI

While in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, a terrible thirst came over me and my friends. We were looking for a place that sold cheap beer and even cheaper food. On our way into one of the busiest markets in town, we came across a sign that read, “dollar beers, and clean washrooms.” This got us into the restaurant without even knowing what kind of food they sold. After walking through the door we found out that the place was called Café Roma, and it was a small café-style joint, somewhere anyone can go and get a drink. The pizza-place portion was a masterpiece of sweat-soaked people and delicious slices. At the bar, the beer was flowing; there was enough to float a boat. It was located on what was one of the busiest streets in all of Mexico, or at least in Jalisco. The owner was a man in his mid-40s who had run away from a Mennonite community in Steinbach, Man.. He married a Spanish woman and opened Café Roma, where he bought cases of beer for 10 pesos and sold a bottle for nine. He told me he sells at least 500 bottles daily. The café was covered in skeletons and awkwardly placed Christmas decorations to make foreigners more comfortable. I thought to myself, in a place where you can get dollar beers, who needs to be made comfortable?

After a few beers and a few more shots of tequila I noticed an elderly grey-haired man. He wore his hair long and messy, his beard was no different, he had a Harley Davidson hat on, and both arms were heavy with tattoos. I could tell he was a serious biker right from the start; anyone who sports a beard like that while in Mexico is doing it with reason. He asked my brother if he could bum a smoke, and commented on his shorts. My brother for some reason asked him if he rode a Harley. He laughed and replied, “for most of my days.” After a few minutes of conversation he started to do most of the talking, constantly speaking of days gone by. He told us how he spent most of his time riding with the Hells Angels, or any other biker crew that came his way.

He then looked right at me, as if I was supposed to say something. “Sounds like you have led a pretty interesting life,” I said. “I have read books about people like you.” Sensing a need to elaborate, I went on to list a few of the books, and among them was Hunter S. Thompson’s Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, the gonzo journalist’s landmark biker-culture tome from 1966. At the name Thompson this strange biker cracked a twisted smile on his face.

“I met Thompson once, it was during the back-to-the-land movement of the ’70s, I met him in a bar.” That’s when I thought to myself, maybe I should take some notes.

I found out that his name was Mickey Van Dyke, he was in his 60s and you could tell he had lived a wild life. The first bike he rode was a ’66 Triumph Bonneville TT Special; it was paid for with drug money. I hurried to ask questions about the day he met Hunter S. Thompson. “It was in the mid ’70s.” He responded “We all were on our way to do something called the back-to-the-land movement,” referring to a period when many Americans,

disenchanted with urban decay, tried to reconnect with nature by living more rural lives. “My wife and I were in a bar and my buddy told me to go talk to this guy. I strolled up to him and started talking to him.” I then asked what his first impression of the famously madcap journalist and author was. He laughed: “He was a whacko, and had a weird sense of humor. He was the kind of guy who had a response to every insult.” Adding, “He was right high though, everybody was.” Everything he said was like something I have read in old magazines, he spoke of wild parties and acid, strange people and some of the best people. He was now deep into conversation, blasting out more interesting facts, one after the other, like he was testing me.

He laughed, and I think he got a kick out of being interviewed. “Have you ever heard of Kesey?” he asked suddenly. The words hit me like bullets. “Ken Kesey?” I asked. My God! I thought, this man knows not only Thompson, but Kesey, the great acid-head author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “I was never one of the Pranksters though,” he continued to say, referring to Kesey’s notorious band of counter-culture druggies, immortalized by Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. “Never really liked to be idle for a long while and that’s what happened to people who joined the Merry Pranksters. I did spend a lot of time in Frisco though, yup, right on Ashbury and Haight.” Of course this was all astounding, Ashbury and Haight in San Francisco was truly a place where people came together during the heyday of American counter-culture. I asked him what exactly were his reasons for going down to Haight and Ashbury, and he responded with three simple letters. “LSD.” He went on laughing.

You could tell he was honest, and this was probably a heavy walk down memory lane for Mickey Van Dyke, but he seemed almost excited. “Kesey, though, was not as out there as Thompson. Kesey was a really conservative guy, someone who keeps to himself and comes across as loud when he needs to. Last time I saw that guy he was trying to make the world’s largest ball of twine, I don’t know if he ever did it though.”

Now, while I sit in my cold hometown, I realize what I really should have been asking him. I should have been making deeper inquiries about his philosophy on life and his ideas of freedom. Mickey, along with thousands of others who lived the biker lifestyle, experienced a sort of freedom that maybe none of us will ever feel again. A freedom that is emphasized by hours on the open road, spitting across a hot desert landscape, knowing nothing, or at least caring for nothing, except for the amount of gas in your tank.

By this time I was scribbling as quickly as I could on my improvised notebook, made out of a menu. “Most of my life is a blur, or at least certain parts of it.” He said the first club he ever joined was a Hells Angels farm club. “It was called the Outsiders, we were a tough group of cats, based out of Quebec. I moved out of there though, I was done being stuck.”

He told me about his current biker club; the name of it was simply Bikers. The main clubhouse was located somewhere in Germany, he never really made it clear. It was an international motorcycle club, one that had charters across the United States and Canada. He pointed to a tattoo on his arm that read, “Lying, Stealing, and Cheating.” He said it was the motto of the club. “Not the way you think though. Lying with the woman you love, stealing more time with friends, and cheating the Devil out of another day.”

But he became more solemn when he started talking about a time in his life when he was staying in Cave Creek, Arizona. “I was a guest of Sonny,” meaning Sonny Barger, founder of the Oakland chapter, who is known as “the Godfather of the Hells Angels.” “We were rolling around Arizona with Hoover, Hoover at the time was the president of the Hells Angels Charter located in Cave Creek. We had just finished a couple of

beers at a place called Bernette’s. As we were leaving, Hoover, while putting on his helmet, was shot in the head. He died right there, it was a terrible thing. We never did catch the little bastard who did it, but on that day the Hells Angels lost a great member, and Sonny lost someone so close he could have been a brother. Sonny had a bike shop down in Cave Creek, and after losing Hoover he closed it down.”

He talked about the death with a heavy heart, he said that it was like losing a family member. “Yeah, that was about 2003. There was a huge funeral for that brother, people came from all over the world, and bikers really come out when they lose someone as influential as Hoover.” The words he spoke ran through my head. It really goes to show the power of a motorcycle club.

Mickey Van Dyke showed me the truth behind his way of life. He showed me that it was much more than riding around on a motorcycle and stirring up trouble; it’s about the people you meet and love. As well as defining the life you live, he taught me that a motorcycle club is more than just a club, it’s a marriage, one of biker and the road, as well as the marriage of brothers within the club itself. With Mickey Van Dyke you could tell that he loves one thing more than the road, and that is the time he shares with friends. Perhaps the idea of absolute freedom, which stories of the late ’60s and early ’70s tend to evoke, is really an illusion. I realize now that, even to them, friendship is greater than freedom.

There I was, caught up in an interview with one of the most interesting people I have ever met. Of course it was under dollar-beer circumstances, but I would not have had it any other way. If only I knew more about this kind biker, I thought, but of course he was only in Mexico for a month, and myself, I was only there for a week. People like Mickey Van Dyke deserve to have someone write about them, be it a professional journalist, or in a student newspaper. Someone like this deserves attention, for the sole reason that they earned it.