TERRY’S IMPRESSION OF THE VAGOS wasn’t healthy after his brother’s trial. “They were young, broke-dick dogs,” Terry said.

There was little organization. Dues were two bucks a week, so the club’s coffers were limited. Even though Terry wasn’t a member of the club, the power vacuum within the organization sucked him in. Right away he began to right the ship, creating a structure that would act as a safety net for the club brothers should they find themselves in a situation like the one Parts found himself in. He introduced them to Joe Barnum, a bail bondsman. The relationship proved fruitful and Barnum supported the Vagos for the next thirty years, teaching them a few tricks along the way. At one time Joe was thrust into the unenviable position of having to bail out 100 members after a statewide bust.

“Collecting money was like pulling teeth,” Terry recalled.

Terry had no intention of joining a club until he started working in a small Triumph shop, Bud’s Custom Cycles, to augment his floundering studio income. That set Tekla off for the final time.

“I rode a Triumph Bonneville home one night,” Terry said. “She went nuts and ran off. She said, ‘Fuck you and motorcycles,’ and split.”

Terry was left to raise his young son alone. In his rambunctious way Terry tried to be a responsible, single dad and create a stable atmosphere, and ultimately he came to one disheartening conclusion. He couldn’t bring girls home.

“I didn’t want Terry Jr. to think any of these broads were his mom,” Terry said. Besides there was always the threat of the wild woman—Tekla—showing up, or of club demands interfering.

The brothers learned a lesson in brotherhood and courtroom antics, and they were showing respect.

His sister watched Terry Jr., who was also called “Terry the Wall” or “Boomer,” while Terry started to hang out with other bikers. He bought a rat Triumph twin for $600 from a Vago named Whitey, who was going to jail and needed money for a lawyer. Terry started to ride with Butch, Jerry the Jew, and Prophet, all Vagos.

“If I went to work and Tekla showed up at home, she’d toss my Triumph parts in the gutter,” Terry said. “I came home and found my parts up and down the street in the storm drain.”

One night while partying at Hollywood East, Terry got drunk and was arrested for public drunkenness. The next morning, the young biker was hauled into court to face a judge.

“I looked out at the courtroom and there they were: Butch, Jerry the Jew, and Prophet,” Terry said. They were respectful and prepared. “That touched a chord with me.”

For the first time in his life, his leadership made a difference. The brothers learned a lesson in brotherhood and courtroom antics, and they were showing respect. He finally became a prospect and started the wild rigors of the round-the-clock probation period.

It was another learning period for the brothers on both sides of the fence, the members and prospective members.

“A member called me Little Parts,” Terry said, “but after a while, the nickname lost its appeal. I told him to knock it off.”

That led to a fight with Deacon, a bad-ass member of the Monterey chapter. He was a store-bought reverend, courtesy of an ad in the back of Rolling Stone magazine, and a mean motherfucker. The Monterey chapter was tough.

“I was always being tested against the Monterey chapter guys.” Terry constantly had to rely on his fists to settle these tests. “For two years, I rode around with broken hands.” Terry had to watch his back twenty-four hours a day.

“I learned that a fight was just a fight, and not to carry a grudge.” Learning not to harbor any bitterness did not come naturally or easily for Terry, as was apparent when an A Val Bear—a member of the A Val chapter of the club—caught Terry at a party and gave him an assignment that didn’t sit especially well with Terry.

“Here’s a rag—clean all the spokes on my bike,” he demanded. For six months, Terry endured various levels of prospect abuse. In the process One-Eyed Willie gave him the nickname Terry the Tramp.

“There was a prospect member code within the member ranks,” Terry said. “You didn’t ask any prospect to do anything you wouldn’t do.”

The prospect period took on a blue-collar, motorcycle-mechanical, frat boys’ initiation essence, but with a violent edge fueled by wild chopper runs and all-night drunken nightmares. Being a prospect meant looking after brothers who were falling down drunk. It also meant keeping your mouth shut when a citizen was getting his ass kicked or when a brother slapped around a chick behind a Los Angeles bar.

Butch, the club president, warned him, “If you expect to become a member, that motorcycle better be running before the meeting tomorrow night.”

Some of the brothers were regular, working, blue-collar guys. Others were quiet types until too much tequila melted brain cells and they discovered rampant bravery behind a dozen shots. Terry played the game, riding behind his San Gabriel pack from party to clubhouse.

Terry stood the test of probation successfully, only to have his struggling motorcycle explode the day before he would be voted on for membership.

Butch, the club president, warned him, “If you expect to become a member, that motorcycle better be running before the meeting tomorrow night.”

Terry worked on the old Triumph all night and the next day. He rode to the meeting with his hands still coated with the grease of his labors.

Prospects were required to stand outside of the meeting place and guard the perimeter like junior soldiers on watch. They were only allowed to attend the meeting unless called upon. The members sat on stools and milk crates surrounding a partially assembled motorcycle project in the center of the room. They handled the meeting with sloppy Roberts’ Rules of Order.

Standing just five-feet, eight-inches tall, Butch, the president, wasn’t a big man and didn’t have a beard or the usual biker long hair. He was a pipe fitter and got pissed off when he drank. He could be fearsome when he put his mind to it.

One night in a canyon bar, Butch witnessed a tall bean-pole of a guy slapping a girl, trying to force her to be a turn-out, that is, to be raped by various members. Butch had had enough to drink that night, and although he wasn’t a great fighter, he beat the skinny son of a bitch senseless and took the girl. She was pregnant and when the child was born with Down syndrome, he looked after both her and the child. They built a home together and had three more children.

Butch called Terry into the meeting and told him they were about to consider him for full membership.

While Terry prospected with the Vagos he also worked two jobs and raised a son as a single dad. He was fed up with the petty bullshit, and that night at the meeting in Butch’s garage, he drew a line in the El Monte dirt.

“I was thinking about turning in my shit,” Terry said. He had been partying all over Los Angeles for three days without any sleep. He had been disrespected by a couple of members, and he was rapidly losing his frayed patience.

“Either vote for me or I’m out of here,” he demanded.

They took a vote and while standing on the greasy concrete floor of a Rosemead garage he became a member of the Vagos MC. This was in 1971, just a year after the movie Easy Rider, was released, starring Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and Jack Nicholson.

“Let’’s have a party,” One-Eyed Willie said.

“Bullshit,” Terry said, “I don’t have time for a party. I’ve got business to take care of.”

He rode directly out to Acton, on the edge of the desert, and found the dusty road where A Val Bear lived. He had watched Bear force his girlfriend to give him head in front of other members at a bar and the sight never left him. He knocked on the old door of the small ranch style home and when no one answered, he kicked in the door, stormed into the house, and found Bear sprawled out in a comfortable easy chair. Terry pounded him unmercifully, pulled his patch, and rode back to El Monte to report it to his president.

“I was tired of all the fighting, the trickbags, and bullshit,” Terry said. “This bastard had to go.”

A Val Bear wasn’t the only member to feel Terry’s wrath. He hunted down another member, a scraggly haired, thin heroin addict and bitched-slapped him. “He was only brave when ten brothers were around,” Terry said.

Ten days later, his president took him aside again.

“You have thirty days to shit-can that Triumph and get a Harley,” he warned. Terry sold the feeble British ride within a week.

He was at a party when a girl told a story of a Harley Panhead. It was owned by her brother, who left for Vietnam and never returned. Her father never sold the bike. It remained in the family garage. Terry asked if he would like to sell it and how much.

“How about $500?” she said.

“Hell, yes,” Terry responded, and they drove to Huntington Beach to find the bike under a growing pile of collected newspapers. The bone-stock 1957 Panhead had sat collecting moisture from the nearby Pacific Ocean and dust from the newspapers for nearly a decade. It was green with mold and rusty, but he uncovered it and hauled it home.

He was just getting the hang of the classic Panhead, produced during the last year of that historic engine, when Parts was arrested for murder.

Terry pounded him unmercifully, pulled his patch, and rode back to El Monte to report it to his president.

“I sold the Panhead to a Vago named Huey to help with the bail,” Terry said. “We didn’t have any money for an attorney, so they assigned Parts a black public defender. I knew the club brothers wouldn’t like the public defender, but I convinced them to give him a shot. I rode Parts’s bike while he was in jail.”

It was a manslaughter beef but Parts tried to run, so the cops jacked up the charge to murder. The public defender presented a compelling case and Parts was released once more, but Terry lost another motorcycle.

A few months into membership, Terry considered leaving the club. He enjoyed hanging with Butch, who worked constantly, and Jerry the Jew, a well-educated string bean of a man who owned a couple of bars.

“Jerry joked a lot, laughed and kidded,” Terry said. “He carried an oriental spoon and always went after the potato salad at any party.”

But the bullshit, the constant fights, and the slovenly members depressed him. Terry had a small home with his son, and he wanted it kept separate from the club.

“Some people lived like pigs,” Terry said and he didn’t want it rubbing off on him or his son. “How can folks live like this?” It turned his stomach.

Jerry was a contradiction to many of the members. He fell in love with a young hippy and bought her a home. He lived a comfortable, sedate, middle-class life at home during the week, and on the weekends he partied with the club. Then one Saturday he rode into a San Gabriel Valley Shell gas station with his love on the back of his long chopper. A truck rear-ended the narrow, chromed out Harley chopper, killing his girl instantly. It crushed Jerry and he was never the same. He got hooked on drugs and dropped dead a few years later.

Terry worked a couple of jobs at the studios, watched out for his son, and then met a new girl, a dark-haired Italian with a warm heart, Rosemary Cosintino. He called her Sheila.

A truck rear-ended the narrow, chromed out Harley chopper, killing his girl instantly.

Sheila, a young, knockout Denny’s waitress, got to know Terry on the nights he held court there over coffee and greasy food. She was just nineteen when she met the twenty-seven-year-old wild man, who led a handful of notorious outlaws into the restaurant every night.

One Friday night Sheila asked to hang with the guys and ended up straddling Terry’s wild chopper for an even wilder night ride to party at the Hut in Pasadena. Sheila’s sister climbed on another green chopper and followed.

“I recommended that they pass,” Terry said, “but she wanted to come.”

They tore north on the old concrete 110 freeway, the oldest winding freeway in the country, into Pasadena. It was just another crazed night of drinking, pushing folks around and riding like madmen. On their way back into El Monte, swerving across freeway lanes and raising hell, they were followed and pulled over by a couple of Los Angeles sheriffs.

“Tramp, pull your bike over to the emergency lane,” the cop barked from his patrol car speaker. Once off the freeway, one officer gave them a ride in his black and white to the Denny’s on Peck Road, while the other straddled and rode Terry’s bike.

“Don’t let him leave here until he sobers up,” the cop told Sheila.

The cop who rode Terry’s bike into the parking lot took the key to Sheila. She never asked to attend a Vago gathering again.

Sheila helped Terry with his young son and watched after his home while he roamed the streets with the Vagos, tearing up bars and beating riders out of their motorcycles.

Sheila was all soft curves, a warm heart, and a family desire, and instructions to pray.

Tekla was a wild, unruly woman and a harsh mother who didn’t give an inch of slack to anyone, and never received a break. She stayed in school and graduated from a nursing program. Pam was a bouncing child of the Hollywood scene and the hippy generation, full of financial recourses and the desire to be one with nature, nurturing animals and doing her own thing. Sheila was all soft curves with a warm heart, a family desire, and instructions to pray. “She was deeply religious,” Terry said, “and she wanted me to pray a lot.” She would do anything for Terry.

Sheila came from a close-knit family. Her dad drove a bus and raised his family using old-fashioned values. Her mother was always respectful, even when Sheila brought a grubby biker around. Her older brother Jim worked for Disney Studios, and her other brother Mike was an architect but faced constant health issues. Her sister Liz was a long-haul truck driver with her husband, but he had a massive heart attack and died.

Sheila’s life was one of deep religious faith and stability, yet she reached into the treacherous life of an outlaw and dabbled in the risky waters. Sheila and Terry played together for a few years, but she didn’t find a home in the outlaw lifestyle. She drifted into another job working as a waitress at a steakhouse, where she met a band leader and married.

“I met him once over too many drinks,” Terry said. “When the conversation shifted to Sheila we had to part ways before trouble erupted. He was a decent guy.”

The marriage lasted less than a year before she returned to live with her folks and date Terry.

“We started to get close again in the early eighties,” Terry said, “but I took her to Vegas and that broke the bond.” At that time Terry was the special effects coordinator on a Matt Cimber-directed film, Fake Out, with Telly Savalas, Desi Arnaz Jr., and Pia Zadora. The party atmosphere was hot and heavy.

At first blush Sheila enjoyed the ride, enjoyed hanging with the stars.

“She was offered a bit part in the movie,” Terry said. “All the guys wanted a piece of her.” Standing five-feet, eight-inches, with all the right curves perfectly located on her voluptuous body, Sheila was a happy-go-lucky knockout, always neatly dressed in form-fitting Levi’s, carefully color-coordinated.

While Terry worked during the day, Sheila watched Terry Jr., but as the weeks rolled on Terry found the blackjack tables mesmerizing. All-night gambling sessions and parties rocked every neon-lit Vegas evening, and the crew, including the director, couldn’t keep their eyes—and sometimes their hands—off Sheila.

“I stepped in one time,” Terry said, “and put a stop to the hanky panky.” Sheila was having fun, but the lifestyle didn’t fit her family-oriented, religious-based upbringing. One too many late nights at the blackjack tables and Sheila loaded up Terry Jr. and returned to the city.

Throughout this time Terry was constantly on the edge of leaving the club. There were incessant arrests for bullshit offenses and the brothers couldn’t build homes or security if they had to sell all their shit to bail out other brothers constantly.

One night a member announced at a meeting that if he rode to any brother’s pad and needed a part, he would take it.

“I told him to come on over,” Terry said. “If he touched any of my shit I’d kick his ass.”

Terry was learning the ways of the outlaw, the streets, and the legal community at break-neck speed. He was busted for an unsafe vehicle violation in Temple City, California, by the Los Angeles sheriffs in 1972. He was required to ride his chopper to court, where he met a young rookie attorney named Francis “Frank” Gately, who became a Rio Hondo judge and a life-long friend and confidant. Gately proved almost as colorful as any member of the Vagos. When he retired from the Los Angeles Superior Court in 2008 because, in his own words, “time’s a-footin’,” he said that his proudest accomplishment was “saving the western world.” When the Berlin Wall fell on the very same day that he was appointed to the old Rio Hondo Municipal Court, Gately said, “Once the Commies heard I was judge, they surrendered.”

“Frank asked me to give him a ride to prove my bike was safe,” Terry said. “I did, and he was convinced.”