Saturday afternoon about 2 p.m. five or six Harleys lean heavy on sidestands outside Zembie’s on Second Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Two rugged-looking guys dressed in faded blue denim and scuffed well-worn boots stand beside the downtown bar with their backs to the wall.
The man with the braided beard wears Norse fire god “Surt’s” sacred yellow, black and red seated image emblazoned on an outlaw motorcycle club patch stitched high on the front of his sleeveless “cut” vest.
Neither man pays us any attention as we climb the steps and open the door to the bar. My wife Stephanie and I are spending an easy afternoon with our Pittsburgh friend Michelle whom we haven’t seen in about 35 years. Stephanie and I once drank as regulars in this same bar (then called the G-Man) where we met 44 years ago when she bought me beer and took me home like a sick, stray German Shepherd. Back then Turtle the cook served us free weed in a coleslaw container whenever we ordered take-out food. Yeah, the G-Man was our kind of place.
A lot of life has changed since then. We’re older now, closely watching our health. So Stephanie and Michelle back out of the bar as soon as the thick cigarette smoke hits them like a toxic cloud. We decide to split, go back to the Hilton and drink healthy-for-the-heart red wine to prepare for dinner tonight.
I stop walking as we pass the two bikers. A brief April shower has created soft springtime memories for me, a good time to plant another small seed that might blossom and help keep my old friend Sonny Drake’s powerful legacy alive. Breathing life into the spirits of the holy dead always matters.
I respectfully tell the two men I grew up with Sonny and ask if they knew him when he served as the Pagan’s Motorcycle Club’s Appalachian Chapter president and also wore “Surt” on the front and back of his cut-off vest. Before Sonny died in 2023 he sent me a photo of himself clad in that cut and sitting astride his classic black and orange custom half ’47 Knucklehead, half ’48 Panhead bike. Wearing black shades Sonny stares fearlessly toward the open gates of paradise and the honor and glory awaiting him in Valhalla.
One of the two men immediately recognizes Sonny’s name and reputation as a club chieftain beloved by “Pagan’s” nationwide. When I say I’m in touch with some of Sonny’s club brothers (after Sonny’s military funeral where 75 “Pagan’s” roared in a tight pack into Indiantown Gap National Cemetery to salute their departed Marine Corps veteran) both men nod politely, all of us picking up on the same somber vibe.
Learning hard lessons of the past helps make us stronger in the present.
Feeling common ground I offer a little more information, this time to lighten the mood the way Sonny and I used to kid each other to conquer tough times as rough- and-ready high school kids roaming the Cove in rural Perry County.
“I also listen to the best rocking rolling band in the world,” I say to the two guys.
You can’t blame them for not knowing where I’m going with this. At 6 feet 223 pounds, wearing a cracked black leather jacket with my long gray hair hanging below my shoulders dipping into a scraggly gray devil goatee, I’m grinning my big capped-tooth grin like an escaped mental patient about to run amok.
“Willy Blaze and the Bad News Crew!” I howl like a music-soothed savage beast.
“Yes, yes,” laughs the man with the black and blue neck tattoos. His road partner flashes a smile as wide as a shiny new Buck knife blade. Like Sonny these two brothers know well their brother Willy Blaze, his righteous banging band and their killer white hot music. Each day nationwide Willy Blaze and the Bad News Crew grow bigger and badder. “Bad News” is good news, especially for the one-percenters in the club who know the pounding beat of the inside track.
Before we part company I get serious again and ask, “So how are you guys doing?”
“We’re good,” says one.
“Thanks for asking,” says the other.
Despite being strangers, we stand together as allies on a gray drizzling day. And I walk away remembering Sonny Drake’s laugh the last time I saw him at our 50th high school reunion when we sat together and reminisced about teenage mountain men adventures we shared knocking around in our wild, wild youth. We embraced on the street that night before going home to ponder what we knew then and what I know now.
Brotherhood is a bond.
True kinship lives forever.
