“Keep it simple. Love your brothers. That’s what makes a club work.
Just love your brothers.”
~ Marshall Mitchell, Bandidos, Nomad Chapter, President
Believe me when I tell you that being a member of an MC is not
easy. No matter how well you’ve vetted potential new members you will always
wind up with a mixture of personalities that don’t see eye to eye. Bylaws,
rules, protocol, and hierarchy are important, but eventually you wind up with a
group of grown-ass people around the table arguing about direction, procedure,
and function.
It’s supposed to be hard. Struggle is what makes it
valuable. Anyone that thinks a group of men joining together to ride
motorcycles and drink beer constitutes an MC doesn’t understand group dynamics.
That kind of overgeneralization reeks of disinformation and a perspective of
someone that’s never had to work with a committee, operate on a team, or spend
time with other human beings for more than a couple hours at a time.
Your club is as diverse as your biological family. The idea
is NOT to develop ideological clones. The point of the whole exercise is to
teach one another how to love, honor, and respect this weird family they’ve
been adopted into. (I can hear the cynics scoffing now, “yeah, right. All they
want to do is rape, kill, and strike fear into the hearts of law-abiding
citizens.”)
Although there are some within the MC Community that have
nothing else going for them than their club, the vast majority of us do, in
fact, have far more to lose than we have to gain by wearing a patch. Intellectually honest critical thinking
should reveal that when you have smart, talented, sophisticated, law-abiding
citizens wearing a patch who are more vested in defending this lifestyle than
cowering to the cynical mindset of the misinformed, then there has to be
something of importance to all of this MC business. There has to be
something more than good times and foolishness to justify the love these folks
have for one another. It’s more about suffering through the tough times with
one another that makes the struggle worthwhile.
When I lived in Tulsa, OK, a friend of mine talked me into
running a 5K with him. I’d run a couple of 5K’s before, and I knew I could do
it. Besides, I didn’t want to let this particular friend down. The fact that he
was running any distance at all seemed like a miracle to me, and I felt like
I’d be a dick if I declined the invite.
For all the years that I’d known Ed “Snowman” Snow, he’d
weighed somewhere between 340 and 350 lbs. On a 5’10” frame, that ain’t good. I
can remember seeing Ed take the fried skin off a Popeye’s chicken breast, roll
it into a ball, and drag it through thick queso dip before shoving it down his
gullet. Many a time over the years had I, and the rest of my college buddies,
watched Ed eat while muttering the oft
repeated mantra, “Man eats like that…he
gonna die!”
As it turned out, six months leading up to the 5K invite I
hadn’t seen Ed. Rumor had it that he’d been trying to get healthier and lose
some weight. When I first laid eyes on him after having heard this rumor
several times I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that the Snowman could actually
look like a “normal” human being instead of a crowd-sized beach ball. Ed had
lost somewhere around 110 lbs. (of the eventual 190 he’d lose) when he asked me
to run that race with him. How could I say no?
Also, Ed is a hard guy to say “no” to. He’s a career
prosecutor and a Federal one at that. Ed knows how to change your mind and make
you believe that it was all your idea in the first place. He’s like a fucking
motivational ninja. If you don’t want to ever run a full marathon as long as
you live…stay away from Ed Snow. I swear on a stack of Bibles that the Snowman
can turn anyone into a lifelong exercising machine whether they want it or not.
Then he’ll drink you under the table at the post-race event and talk you into a
“recuperative run” the next morning followed by a brunch of Guinness and pasta.
The man is insatiable, infuriating, diabolically egocentric, and oftentimes a
complete dick. And I love him very much. But he’s a prick…know that.
That “one phone call” I made from the Waco jail after finally
being placed under arrest started something like this:
Me: “Honey, I’m
okay but I only have 5 minutes to talk. Do you have a pen and paper?”
Wife: “Yes. I love
you very much. I’ve got you on speaker. Go.”
Me: “First thing,
call Ed Snow…”
Wife: (Interrupts)
“I’ve been talking to him and he’s on speaker right now on another phone. Jeremiah (blood brother) is right here with me.”
In April of 2005, my wife gave birth to our daughter. Then
my wife died on the table. Then the doctors were able to revive her. Then my
hero-for-the-rest-of-my-life, Dr. Yen My Tran, performed an emergency
hysterectomy and saved Margaret’s life. Every day, for the next 7 days we
remained in the hospital, Dr. Tran would come to check on us in the morning.
The first three visits I would follow her out into the hall after her
examination and she’d cry because she knew how close we’d come to losing
Margaret. It was that close. It was “seeing
a Dr. cry three days after she’s saved a life” close.
During the time when Margaret’s life was hanging in the
balance, I got kicked out of the delivery room. I didn’t argue because I knew
that I didn’t belong in there at that moment. I knew she was dying and I was
only going to be in the way. But kissing her on the forehead knowing that it
might be the last time we spoke to one another broke me. By god, I did it while
telling her everything was fine and that I was going to the nursery to make
sure Sidney was all cleaned up and ready to come hang out with her Mommy, but
my heart was fully broken.
I’ve got a friend who is a Pediatric Cardiologist. We first
met at Oklahoma Baptist University when we were finishing up our undergraduate
work. Matt Kimberling has been best of friends with Ed Snow for decades. And
like Ed, Matthew is insatiable, infuriating, diabolically egocentric, and
oftentimes a complete dick. And I love him very much. But he’s a prick…know
that.
As I was banished from the delivery room that day, I thought
of only one person to call, Matt. I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach him by
phone in the middle of the day on a Monday, so I called his wife, Mary (a very
talented NICU nurse). The phone call started something like this:
Me: “Mary, I need
Matt.”
Mary: “Okay. Can
you tell me what’s going on?”
Me: “Margaret is
dying. I need Matt.”
Mary: “He’s in
clinic today, but I’ll make sure they pull him out. He’s coming. Hold tight.
He’s coming!”
Matt arrived in the waiting room still wearing his white
coat and carrying credentials that would get us any information we needed. Matt
did not leave my side until late that evening after Margaret was safely
recuperating under the watchful eye of a post-op nurse for the night. He was
able to go in and speak to her while I waited in the hall. He made me leave the
hospital with him to get some food and a couple beers. He showed up the next
morning with double shot espressos from the doctor’s lounge. Matt saw us
through the whole thing without hesitation.
In college, I met David Breedlove. He would eventually be
the best man at my wedding. Breedlove got me into more trouble, questionable
situations, and ill-conceived shenanigans than SHOULD be possible for one man
in a single lifetime. He went about it as if it were his job.
This is a guy that had never had a drink of alcohol until
his wedding night. I shit you not.
But this was also a guy that would drive his Jeep up the steps of the OBU
Chapel and smoke the tires on the way up just for shits and giggles. Some would
say he was brazenly recalcitrant. I say he was just fearless. Put the two of us
together and you had a recipe for wanton hooliganism. And we skipped a lot of
classes to go fishing and hunting and anything else we could think of to divert
us from classroom attendance. However, Dave pulled off his undergraduate in 4
years. I crammed 4 years of schooling into 6 years. I think Dave won on that
account.
Dave was friends with Matt Kimberling and Ed Snow before me.
And like Ed and Matt, Dave is insatiable, infuriating, diabolically egocentric,
and oftentimes a complete dick. And I love him very much. But he’s a prick…know
that.
Dave Breedlove, Terry Walters, Tim Kimberling, Matthew
Kimberling, and Ed Snow were my “club” before I had a “club.” All we needed
were motorcycles and cuts and we’d have had our own MC. We’ve all done work on one another’s houses,
babysat one another’s kids, decorated Easter eggs with all of our families
together, cooked together, drank together, lived together, and loved together.
The fact that I’ve always had friends that were loveable
egotistical pricks (said with the utmost respect) gives you an indication of
who I am and what is important to me. I want to belong. I want to contribute. I
want to spend hot days in Tim’s backyard mixing concrete for fence posts. I
want to help Terry haul and scatter mulch to prep his backyard for our group’s
weekly weekend grillouts. I want to spend night after night helping Dave tear
apart his kitchen and put it all back together before his wife and kids come
back from time away with family. I want to run my first half-marathon with Ed
because he’s somehow tricked me, once again, into believing that I can run a
further distance than we did last time (damn
you, Snow). I want to re-engineer Matt’s upstairs HVAC in a 130 degree
attic so that it’ll work like it was meant to.
I wanted to serve these guys because I love them and their
families and they love me and mine.
“Keep it simple.
Love your brothers. That’s what makes a club work. Just love your brothers.”
I’ve been practicing at this “love your brothers” thing for
a very long time and I’m not sure that I’m very good at it yet. It’s hard. It
is a constant humbling, pride-swallowing, work-your-ass-off-for-free,
pain-in-the-ass hike up a steep slope. It’s especially hard when you’re on a
team with so many egotistical pricks. But I love every bit of it.
The husband, father, family member, and friend that I am is
owed to this CLUB of men and their families I grew up with and to the CLUB of
men and their families I am currently growing old with. I don’t deserve a
single one of them. They are all smarter, more motivated, and more talented
than I’ll ever be. Every one of them is an asshat and I love them very dearly.
My loyalty knows no bounds when it comes to these men and women.
When they bleed, my family and I bleed. We are better
together even though every one of us fuss and argue, have differing worldviews,
and generally can’t agree on anything other than we are invested in one
another’s longevity, success, health, and well-being. Other than that, we’re
all a bunch of stubborn, brash, potty-mouthed brutes – and that’s just the wives.
“Keep it simple.
Love your brothers. That’s what makes a club work. Just love your brothers.”
This is by far the best advice I’ve heard in a long time.
Wisdom is like that. It cuts through the bullshit and brings us back to center.
Hearing that advice from a 34-year veteran Bandido while sitting across from
one another on steel bunks wearing matching orange outfits makes it that much
better. And it makes for one hell of a story. That’s kind of the point to this
kind of life, too – it’s about living a great story.