Today, Country explains some old school riding attire that was worn in the early days. Through the years, some of their garb morphed into functional fancy duds that are displayed on clothing racks, down at the local Harley Davidson store. However, since they have ‘the HD trademark’ stamped or sewn on them, the mark-up is incredible. But you and I know a bona fide Harley Davidson wardrobe is the only thing that will do for RUBs. It kick-starts the adrenalin before they even swing their leg over their machine and to them, its well worth the price.
When I first met Snoopy, my husband, he would mention ‘his originals’ once in a while. I already knew when someone joins a motorcycle club and is given his first set of ‘colors’, after it becomes road weary and just hanging by threads, the colors will take a place of honor in their closet, only to be worn at biker funerals and such. The club member will don a new vest and patch and start the process all over again.
However, it took quite a while for me to realize that their riding jeans were also referred to as their ‘originals’. Snoopy explained that after years of working on each other’s bike (on the side of the road), getting engine grease rubbed on the thighs and butt was only natural - mix some bug guts in; your pants become pretty much water resistant and your originals suffice as a ‘rain suit’.
Our house was flooded once and the people from Servpro were cleaning out the garage (where Snoopy’s originals were ‘standing in the corner’). You should have seen Snoopy go off when he spotted his originals thrown in the trash. I'm glad Servpro had already gone for the day or we might have had an 'incident' on our hands.
You see, Snoopy's original cut is so 'righteous' that if you try to pick it up quickly it just goes to threads in your hands.
In the 60's outlaw bikers had put many thing on their vests or ‘cutoff's’ as we called them back then. We usually wore a Levi jacket with the sleeves cut off and our patch on the back or "colors" which is another old time phrase.
We also wore our "originals" which is what we called the jeans that had so much wear they were frayed at the bottom from whipping in the wind and more patches than jeans. I’ve seen many a member suddenly flare up when he drunkenly staggered to close to a camp fire on a cold night, including myself. When 3 or 4 club brothers jumped you and started beating on you, there were sometimes a few blows swung before it was realized they were trying to put you out.
That’s what beer and whiskey can do for you, oh yeah, not to mention the recreational drugs.
Everything had a mixture of 70 weight oil, liquor, road grunge and whatever else you had come into contact on the way, soaked into them.
On the colors you could find the usual vertical row of "wings". This was a row of different colored wings (white, red, green, brown and so on until you came to the ultimate silver wings) that pertained to different sexual acts. I'll leave it up to you to decipher what you think they meant.
We wore the "FTW" patch that is still worn today by many bikers. It stands for "F---- The World" as we were looked on as outcasts; we couldn’t care less and returned the sentiment.
The patch "13" stood for the thirteenth letter of the alphabet "M" and marijuana, which outside of Mexicans; bikers were probably the biggest user of the drug then.
If I were not on probation I would most likely still smoke it. Marijuana has kept me out of a lot of trouble. If I smoked a joint before I left the clubhouse and some idiot tried to run over me I would say to myself, "I knew he was going to do that." and go my way. But if I didn’t, I would be kicking dents in doors, snapping off radio antenna slapping mirrors and trying to get them to pull over so I could kick their ass.
Now, which would you rather happen if you were the idiot? Nuff said in the defense of pot. You "do gooders" might want to think of that next time you go to the voting booth. Might save you an ass whipping some day.
One of my favorite things to put on my colors was a braid of hair I had won during bar fights or some color pulling action from another club. I would sew them on my cutoff. I still had two braids until recently. The only one I have left is a braid of my daughter’s hair I put on when she was about eight so I could have her next to me all the time. The other one came from someone who thought a Scorpion member could be disrespected. It blew off somewhere when the thread rotted.
We don’t do that anymore as the wimps these days run to the police instead of being a man about it when it was usually them that started the fracas.
Our dead brothers’ patches were worn over our heart in a row. That just about got me shot on the Indian Nation Turnpike in Oklahoma by a State Trooper one time. I'll explain later on. The brothers who passed on became so many there was no way all of them would fit on the cutoff so we had to stop after a while, just keeping what was already there.
If you held an office in the club that patch was worn high where it could be easily seen. If you were in the 1%er category you wore a patch to that affect. If you were a 100%er . . . same thing.
We had a lot of memory patches, affiliation patches and just general patches that we thought were neat or that meant something to us personally.
I have seen some patches these days that had a million buttons and pins on them. We tried not to look like Bozo the Clown so we didn’t put just everything we came across on the cutoff. If it was on our colors, it usually meant something worth having.
Colors that we pulled from other clubs were worn upside down on our ass as a rule. Again they became so numerous that eventually we just wore a small piece that identified them. Later in the 80's, from one punk club that disappeared, we wore a patch upside down we had made that was a large "FTP". Every time the cops pulled us over they said that it was referring to them. I don’t think we ever convinced them it didn’t.
I look at my young brothers these days; I see them wearing things we came up with back when we had just two lane roads to ride on and am proud to see them carrying on the tradition. Love to my brothers.
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