Quote:
Originally Posted by winniebagotony
So tell me why do they call themselves Hells Angels ?
Tony
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"Hells Angels" was a name long favored by mercenaries and soldiers, warriors and troops who risked all for principle, belief, freedom and individual rights - including the right to ride big Harley-Davidson hogs. The history of today's Hells Angels is obscured by the hazy exhaust of half a century of Harleys, and no one can see through quite to the beginning.
But many believe the original Angels were members of the U.S. Army's 11th Airborne Division, an elite group of paratroopers trained to rain death on the enemy from above, drifting in behind the lines of battle.
They called themselves the Hells Angels because they flew on silk wings into hell itself, bringing a brutal hope for peace with 20 pounds of TNT strapped to each leg. The nickname was a badge of honor, a mark of invincibility, a wartime emblem indicating the toughest of the tough. It was a totem to ward off the worst.
Not surprisingly, a handful of those original Hells Angels - along with many other returning soldiers who had awakened to the nightmare of war - found it difficult to settle into the half-sleep of the American Dream. After living on the edge so long, they found only a depressing fatalism and monotony in jobs, family, mortgages, college, suburbia and cookie-cutter houses with white-picket fences.
And so they rode. Motorcycles were cheap in the mid-1940s, sold as military surplus, and they offered a certain wild peacetime freedom not unlike the wartime skies of Europe. Soon, individuals gathered into groups, sharing weekends when they rode hard and partied harder.
But when Monday came, not everyone went home. Some stayed, turning the weekend motorcycle club into a surrogate family of full-time brothers.
Two of the first such fraternities were the ****ed Off Bastards and the Booze Fighters, groups that established early the notoriety of the outlaw biker image. In 1947, at an American Motorcycle Association convention in the drowsy town of Hollister, Calif., the ****ed Off Bastards rode in drunk, wild and destructive, landing as if behind enemy lines with a belly full of TNT. The local sheriff later described the scene as "just one hell of a mess."
Quick to control the public relations' damage, the AMA denounced the Bastards, saying it was unfortunate that 1 percent of motorcyclists should ruin it for the law-abiding 99 percent. To this day, the 1 percent insignia remains a badge of honor, worn with pride by those who define themselves as not part of that milquetoast 99 percent majority who ride whining Hondas back and forth to the office.
But in the months following Hollister, internal tension among the Bastards and Booze Fighters was mounting, and in 1948 Bastard Otto Friedli broke from the club, splintering the group to create the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in Fontana, Calif.
Growing old is mandatory - Growing up is optional
Hope you come here one day so I can see it "in the flesh" so to speak
can I say that
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