Gypsy Jan - 12-8-2013 at 03:12 PM
He was a friend and an outcast who lived his life his own way.
He graduated from Swarthmore with a degree in Engineering and taught classes...then he went to San Francisco for graduate studies and fell into the
counter culture and never left.
When we knew him, he was a large, bluff man with a big laugh. He had a beard that reached down to his navel. He rode his rice rocket with his cat on
his shoulder and was always dressed in tie dye T-shirts, saggy board shorts and flip-flops.
He wrote a society and advice column for a biker magazine based in Orange County, CA. He was never a member of any gang, but because he had a legal
background from attending classes at the UC, the local biker gangs, Hell's Angels and Mongols, sought him out for advice and he also negotiated peace
agreements when needed.
His family had long ago disowned him, but his sister, a heavyweight DA in Arizona, always welcomed him into her house on the holidays with the proviso
that he wouldn't drop in unannounced when she might be entertaining people she needed to impress.
That same sister later disclosed to me that he told stories around the table about visiting us in Baja and announced, "When (not if) I am
reincarnated, I want to come back as one of their dogs!"
The last time he visited it was during the Hell's Angels Toy Ride for the children in Tijuana and we took him to Puerto Nuevo #1 restaurant in Puerto
Nuevo for a lobster feast.
When we entered, the very full and busy restaurant quieted down for a brief second and then someone yelled, "There he is!" and a great many of the
customers rose to their feet and saluted him with upraised hand displaying only one middle finger.
His funeral was conducted in a church in a part of Riverside near Chino. Over six hundred people attended and the local police mobilized everyone
they could haul in so to have a visible presence at all the intersections near the event.
[Edited on 12-8-2013 by Gypsy Jan]
David K - 12-8-2013 at 04:50 PM
Sorry for your loss...
vgabndo - 12-8-2013 at 06:09 PM
Jan, what a beautiful tribute. Thanks for helping me remember that our culture is woven of many different threads; some salute differently than
others. He earned the respect of his peers. I'd be happy with that. I hope he was. RIP until you come barking back into this dimension Mark.