Saturday Story

Because It Was Right.

Bikers are a pretty self centered group. Mostly they want to be left the hell alone so they can ride, party and be with their own.

There’s always some slob that wants to start a fight or argument, that usually ends pretty quickly. Some bikers go out looking for trouble, others try to avoid it, but mostly they don’t back down. They can’t.

The flip side is the majority of them are willing to give of their time and money to help someone in trouble. Even someone they don’t know.

There always seems to be someone getting hurt in an accident, sick, or needing help for one reason or another.

Mugsy was an asshole. And that’s as nice as I can get. Never liked the guy, his old lady or his “more biker than you” attitude. And his wife of the time was a loud mouthed “You gonna let him talk to me that way” kind of girl. If there was trouble started, she probably started it.

It was only because several guys spoke up for him when I took the club Presidency that I agreed to let him “prospect” for a while. They all claimed he had gotten rid of this old lady and he’d changed. So I decided to give him another chance.

That very night, he gets in an accident, eviscerates himself on the handle bar mounted tack/speedo, is kept from dying by a doctor that witnesses the crash, and ends up in the I.C.U. with nobody sure if he was going to live or die that night.

During the next several weeks my wife, myself and other club members spent most of our days sitting in the ICU waiting rooms.

There wasn’t much we could do but wait, hope and pray.

As the days would pass, different members would come and go as their off time and jobs would allow. Being “between jobs”, I was there pretty much full time.

While there I met and talked with another family that was doing pretty much the same thing, waiting.

Their daughter, 14, had been in as accident the same night as Mugsy. She was also in a coma from being thrown out an over turning truck. They also didn’t give her much of a chance to survive.

As for Mugsy, there was a lot of shit going down around his incident. Mugsy’s ex-wife (a world class bitch full of $ signs), her brother (a practicing asshole) lawyers and cops all involved but again this isn’t about them.

As we spent time together, we got to know the girls family. We all sympathized with each other, shared small meals, and held group prayers, watched for updates when someone else went out for a smoke or whatever.

The family pretty much stayed in the waiting room. They brought food, slept on the floors, and only seemed to leave in shifts to cleanup, go to school or work. They were there for their child, just like we were there for our brother.

I don’t remember just what caused it, but we all found ourselves sharing prayers and caring for the other groups hurts.

We, the club, began to care about the injured girl.

Mugsy woke up and appeared he was going to make it, several of us stayed in the ICU waiting room, for her.

The day the hospital moved Mugsy out of the ICU, the club bought massive pans of Chinese food and brought it to the hospital.

We were allowed to use a small meeting room where we presented dinner to the girl’s friends and family and all the nurses and orderly’s that were so attentive.

But it didn’t seem enough. Mugsy was military so as soon as it was feasible he was moved to Tripler Army Medical Center. The little girl and her family stayed at Queen’s. Mugsy’s bill was covered by the Army. Theirs kept building.

So somewhere along the way I decided to talk everyone in the club into doing a one day fund raiser for the family. Surprise, most everyone agreed immediately, so we started putting it together.

Much of the preliminary work was all word of mouth, a band that some of the club members followed volunteered their time and music. The bar, Anna’s, gifted the use of upstairs, a percentage on the beer charges and the bartender, Mike Hilson, volunteered his time.

Flyers were printed up during the work day and then, passed out, hung up and distributed during the nights and weekend before.

She was not “family”, that is, these were no bikers, but for some reason we all, well most of us, cared.  We served foot long hot dogs cooked in beer, beer to drink, and music. On that Sunday the bikes came, stayed a while, listened to the band, then they’d roll out to their next stop and others would roll in and stay awhile.

The band was fronted by one of the guys we knew from work, they were pretty well known here in town and they brought their own followers out in the daytime. A good trick because some of those followers stayed damn near all day, spent lots of money.

By the end of the day, the parents, aunts and uncles came to the bar. We sat with them, talked awhile, and then handed them some $1,200 in cash. Ok, not much when you consider how huge the medical bills probably were.

But it was $1,200 they didn’t have that morning. It was $1,200 that a bunch of “bad ass bikers” had raised for a little girl and her family. For a family those bikers didn’t even know.

Over a year later I was on the side of the road having a smoke with 6 or 8 other members when a van pulled over and parked. A very large local guy got out and walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and helped a young woman get out, set up her crutches and then they started walking toward us.

It was her and her uncle. She had never met us. He had, and she had been told the story of the biker club that threw a party for her. She had seen the patch and told her uncle to stop. She wanted to meet us, and show us how well she was doing.

It was a warm spot that grew in my heart. We had made a difference in the girl and her family’s life. We, a bunch of long haired, blue jean and leather jacket wearing bikers had made a difference.

I eventually lost track of her and her family. I didn’t do what I did for credit I could keep bringing up.

I did it ‘cause it was a good thing to do.