BLUFF GAZE OF A SCOTSMAN AT COMMERCE IN HIS SHOP… JEFF WILSON OF HELL’S HALF ACRE STANDS UP TO COWTOWN COPS
FT. WORTH – T-E-X-A-S – Popeye stood up on a table top at Strokers on Harry Hines Boulevard in Big D and told the Sons of Liberty to keep a cool, cool melon on their shoulders.
“You see a club you don’t much like, just stay cool,” he said.
Their destination: Hell’s Half Acre, Cowtown’s North Main, the Stockyards, the Rodeo, Swift’s, the gateway to Chicago, KC, Omaha, and New York, N’Yawk – where a piece of the beef is de rigeur – that is, pre-cigars and brandy for the gents and idle chit chat for the ladies.
The Cowtown Cops told members of Los Vagos – a Southern California club long strange to the Lone Star State, now sporting a Texas rocker, that they own the Stockyards of Ft. Worth.
They said so when they busted in on the trade at Jeff Wilson’s Leathers in the midst of a busy Saturday – 38 years in the location at 2225 N. Main, and the site of many a patch party and Sabbatical for two-wheeling clubmen en cavalle, errant, vacillando.
Held guns at their backs, searched their bikes, damaged their saddle bags, knocked the machines over at the berm, charged them for carrying pistols – of all the cockeyed, well, never mind – against the peace and dignity of the People Of The State Of Texas. All that and a bag of chips, as it were.
Wrong.
Wilson reacted with alacrity, to say the least. The Sons of Liberty chimed in with harmonic overdrive.
Thus: The Stockyards Stampede from the Valley of the Trinity to the Western-most valley of the Same Holy Triad, meandering across the prairie to the Salt Grass, far and away.
Arriving on the bloody grounds, the cavalcade made a victory lap after a cruise down Belknap Street on the Bluffs of the city, on up Main, around the tourist trappings and the fancy old commission arena, past Swift’s front gate, and back down Main for the traditionally loud and rudenik episode of the obligatory Hog-Riding U-turn drama, to angle park on the curb across the street.
Funny how a bevy of wheels mounting video cameras will temper and dampen even the boldest tush hog cop dead in his boots, forcing a certain – ah, well – reticence.
We in the Sons’ cavalcade were but amazed at their mild-mannered, unobtrusive presence, including the dozen or so poised to swoop at the rodeo arena, the glittering black Suburbans lurking in the side streets.
Nothing doing.
Unmolested, our – ah – GANG wheeled on up to the front door and lingered awhile, that is, long enough to blow the foam off a short beer and have a doughnut or two – and thence into the concrete canyons skirting the runways of the sky chariots.
We gone.
However, this much is established.
There is no known due process of law whereby an extemporaneous decision by a peace officer will empower We The People Of The State Of Texas to just haul off and declare a person “out law,” thus enabling the People, in all their majestic peace and dignity, to intrude upon the person, papers, and property, etc. And other well-known words so well modulated by the DUE PROCESS of – well, whatever.
I am sincere.
I have spoken.
So mote it be.
- The Legendary
2200 Block of North Main – Hog Heaven – Hell Bent For Leather – Ahem