Installment #08 – First Prison Run

This was a strange one in awkward times. I was working at Easyriders in 1972 and filtering through thousands of letters from cons. We discovered some truly talented brothers behind the walls. A few became some of the best writers, illustrators and brothers we ever met. Some were just working the odds that their pitch would garner them some attention from us.

Some claimed they were innocent, and others asked or begged for whatever they were after. Some of the more psychotic threatened our lives if we didn’t comply with their demands. Predominately they just wanted someone to write back. We tried to respond to as many letters as possible. One such letter came from a prisoner at the minimum security prison in Chino, California. I think his name was Richard Crandall, and he wrote about having a bike show at the prison. Keep in mind that all bikers were considered criminals during the early ’70s. Richard had a dream, though, and when he got out of prison, he continued to work with prison authorities to bring a show inside. It would be the first of its kind.

At first we were leery of this guy. We didn’t know him from Swiss watches, so I waited until he got out, met with him and determined that he was in fact a human being. Then I went with Richard to meet with the prison authorities to establish that he was on the up and up.

I was the liaison to this fiasco. The problem was not the prison. They utilized their standard precautionary measures, set us up with security and gave us forms for riders to fill out. At the time, most bikers were criminals of one sort or another. We weren’t generally violent criminals, but the rap sheets ran the gamut from dodging ex-ol’ ladies and kids and tax evasion to drug busts, armed robbery and murder. Most bikers weren’t about to allow the Man to run a background check for any event, and many didn’t want anyone to know where they lived. That eliminated 70 percent of the applicants. Meanwhile, we recruited volunteers and tried to get the paperwork done in time. As I remember, it took months of meetings to lock in a date, then to organize a ride to Chino in the hot, smoggy inland valley.

Richard, a tall, bearded guy, made endless phone calls to the prison and trips to our offices. He worked with his guys inside on the trophies, plaques and accommodations. Richard had done time for drugs. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he had a weakness for the bottle. Plus he was trying to adjust to mainstream society after a handful of years behind bars. He was also trying to find a job and position himself with Easyriders for some level of employment, but there wasn’t any. He wasn’t a writer or a wrench, but his heart was into it big time, and I wished we could have found a job for him. Unfortunately, there was no money in promoting prison bike shows. But nothing would stop him from seeing this event through.

I attended a couple meetings, published news of the first prison bike show in the magazine and tried to organize the ride. I was young and inexperienced, plus I’d had an accident in Paso Robles, 200 miles north of Los Angeles, and my right foot was constantly wrapped in gauze. I wasn’t aware at the time that the majority of my big toe would eventually be amputated. I hobbled around with a raging infection.

I finally got the forms signed by some 25 riders and presented them to the prison two weeks before the event. As it turned out, the majority of the riders were club guys. You can imagine the anxiety and paranoia as the date grew near. I didn’t have a rap sheet, yet the thought of filling out this form and riding through the gates into a prison was intimidating. I could only imagine what Jews felt like in Nazi Germany. Some of the riders bowed out along the way, but only one was turned down from entering the prison.

I was disappointed in the turnout, as was Richard and Lou Kimzey, the publisher. I think at one point or another we all thought that 2,000 guys would come forward to do this, but that wasn’t the case. Future prison bikes show were better attended.

The show was to take place on a Saturday and as the weekend drew close, the tension rose. Concern about the cops, the clubs and the party the night before filled my feeble brain, and as each day passed my anxiety grew. We were scheduled to start the ride in Long Beach, since that was a mid way point for most of the riders rolling out of the San Fernando Valley. We decided to have a party the night before. Custom motorcycles in those days weren’t that reliable, so starting out from Long Beach was a better bet. We had a few loners, like my lifelong brother Mad Mick, but the majority of the attendees turned out to be members of the Devil’s Henchmen, Righteous Ones and the Sundowners. They were cool, leery of me and the magazine, but cool.

Of course that meant we had to party all night, smoke enough weed to build several grass shacks, and drink enough beer and whiskey to float a small destroyer. The next day we got up, fired up and hit the road like sane men, when we were actually on the brink of melt down.

Keep in mind that these were the days of grubby bikers. We were dirty sonsabitches, from our greasy engineer boots to the dirtier Levi’s, jackets and cutoffs. We didn’t care if we were going to the Academy Awards or to meet the governor, we wore what we wore. I had to wear a light pair of loose boots because of the wrap around my right foot. As the weekend wore on and I couldn’t treat or elevate it, the infection worsened.

I had to hand it to the guys who attended. Most were on illegal motorcycles and rat bikes. Most never rode unless they were high, and we couldn’t catch a buzz that day. Some had done some time and this made for a nerve-wracking situation. We were riding to a prison, where I’m sure several guys suspected that once on the inside they would never get out.

It was a hot sunny day as we left Long Beach and headed out the freeway for Chino. The ride was cool and the pack tight as we pulled into the prison parking lot. A rider greeted us on a long, black chopped Knucklehead with exposed rockers clicking and ticking. It was Dick Allen, a grisly character with a black beard and kinky black hair. He was pissed because he couldn’t get in since he hadn’t filed the paperwork on time and we had to leave him behind.

The bikes were parked in a small gymnasium and the cons were allowed to wander in and review the bikes. There was a lot of heart there that day among the hundreds of thankful cons who hadn’t had the opportunity to touch Milwaukee iron in years. It went down without a hitch and started a trend to entertain cons all across the country with such shows.