CHAPTER 40 There Were Giants In Those Days

Before one can really accept one's self for who one really is, one must learn to accept others for who they really are. That is probably the simplest expression of the unspoken credo of the biker world. You can be who you really are but you damn well better let others be who they are also. Otherwise, you've got a problem that no one is going to help you with. Freedom is a very sacred thing. It is meant to be shared. Especially amongst otherwise very strange people. Freak not unless froken to.

In this small circle of friends, Pat was our social director and served as occasional Captain of our river tubing excursions. Pat's bike was a lovingly and wonderfully restored old Indian motorcycle originally built at about 1948, which ran like brand new most of the time. Even brand-new Indians had their problems though, and we sometimes had to help the old machine home. Pat was kind enough to introduce me to to the legendary "Dirty Dick".

Dirty Dick was the nickname for one of our nastiest, grossest and most outrageous of friends. He was a welder by trade and an animal by preference, including his looks and conversation. As horrible as his attitude and demeanor was, his soul was every bit as beautiful. On our first meeting, he swore he was going to come to my house and dump in the middle of the floor. Dump - as in dump without flushing. It was his way of saying that he liked all the work I had done on the place and how comfortable the new carpeting was.

Dirty Dick had an old Harley Davidson which like most of our bikes, was in the process of being resurrected. Dirty Dick paid less attention to the restoration of his Harley though because his full attention was paid to his lovely lady Judy. She was just the thing to take his mind off of such toys. Absolutely beautiful and more than pleasant to be around, she had two kids from a previous marriage. Dirty Dick was a proud daddy to them and together, they were an outrageous and lovely family. He was passionate about protecting them. Once at a barbecue at his place, the party got crazy enough to sound threatening. Dick simply walked out with a shotgun and fired a couple of rounds in the air. The Phoenix cops never even drove by. The party mellowed.

In our tubing trips together on the Salt River, Dirty Dick, Pat, Rivers, myself and our entourage became something of an institution. This gang of miscellaneous misfits could create a raft of beer, pot and mayhem that was often looked upon with envy by the other rafters. The river was impossible to patrol and the County Sheriff generally gave the river a wide berth unless called out to handle a specific problem. Therefore, the river was something of a No Man's Land where anything could happen. That made it a perfect place for those with a spirit to do so, to present their own version of the Theatre of the Absurd. Some of the river runners were rather oddly carried, with all sorts of vehicles becoming a political statement on the water. One tube raft full of gay men was outfitted as Cleopatra's barge, others carried huge battery-powered stereos that could be heard for hundreds of yards. Some were Huckleberry Finn versions with topless girls taunting and teasing the other river people.

Occasionally, you could see a canoe. Others were store-bought inflatable boats, oddly out of place among the celebrating peasants. It was a poor man's Disneyland, where no one paid admission and a lack of money didn't keep you from exhibiting some real class. We are all equal when naked.

One portion of the river created a natural whirlpool in a bend, adjacent to a tall cliff where the most daring could jump almost fifty feet into the deep water below. By positioning one's tube in the whirlpool, you could circle endlessly while you or your buddy dove from the cliff. One afternoon as we swept past the cliffs, I was stunned to see a giant lounging on the bank, a young American Indian man who looked to be easily seven feet tall if not every bit of eight. He had to be 400 pounds or more but very well proportioned and quite graceful. I gawked in awe until I could spin around to see if anyone else had seen him. Apparently not. I was wondering if I were hallucinating, then his eyes met mine. He was huge. Something inside him was extremely charismatic and powerful. Nothing was said, but something passed between us as our eyes met, less than twenty feet apart. Then, the river carried us on past. The whole encounter lasted less than a minute, but it jarred my emotions, and my memory. I thought of the indian image in my mug shots in Prescott and the other huge indian giant, standing in the intersection directing traffic, in Tucson a few years before.

I was dumbstruck. I was no longer drunk, or stoned, or anything. I was simply stunned and as clear-headed as I had been for most of a month. I felt as if I had just heard a very good sermon at a church. All around me was the noise of the party, but I was totally separated from it. I could not seem to see any reaction from anyone that they had seen this same vision if indeed, that is what it was.
A few days later I got a call from Pat. Dirty Dick and Judy had been killed. They had been on Mingus mountain on their way to Jerome, returning from a welding job that Dick had been doing in Prescott. They must have been staying with friends in Jerome or the valley or just taking the scenic route home. They had left the road at almost 70 miles per hour, and had run straight into the side of a cliff on Mingus Mountain.

There were a few more river trips after that, but they were never the same. Rivers (Bob) got into a fight with some yay-hoo that had driven his truck over our tubes, and got hit in the head with a wrench. He was OK but that took some of the fun out of it all. Rivers, a natural red-head, was really an even-tempered guy. He was mad all the time. It was just that he was under control or violent, depending on the situation. Other weird stuff out of character with the spirit of the river, began to happen. I got out of my tube at the landing one day and big, burly guy with long blonde hair and wearing coveralls came running up to me. I thought I was being jumped at first, but he threw his arms wide and hurled his face into my chest, crying like a baby. "I can't make love - I can't make love, man!" and sobbed uncontrollably for a time. I just hugged him and rocked him back and forth until he settled down. He was just a little bit drunk and very upset. I told him he would be all right when he found the right girl. I could see it gave him hope, but it kind of put a slant on the afternoon.

Our river tubing fizzled for the rest of the season.