Never Steal Motorcycles
So there I was, standing on the sidewalk, watching the shit hit the fan.
It was the 1970's. I was a kid or maybe a teenager. I forget exactly what year it was, but it isn't important to the story.
Whatever year it was, I was employed by my landlord. Part of my job was to take care of his rental properties. I'd paint stuff, help remodel after tenants moved out, fix stuff, collect rents etc. I learned all about weird shit that you should never try and flush down a toilet because somebody like me would have to extract said object. I actually learned a lot of stuff that would come in handy later in life when I too became a homeowner.
The apartment in this story was a first floor apartment in a 4-family building. One of those old late 19th century buildings that have all the woodwork done in lead paint, horsehair plaster walls, hardwood floors and used to be heated with coal back in the old days. That meant the cellar had a series of coal bins with little rectangular windows that led to the outside where the truck (or horse drawn wagon, depending on what year it was) would deliver the coal via a chute. Remember this, it factors into the story.
The tenant of this apartment happened to be a biker. I'm not going to say where this took place or name any names, but I'll call him "B". He was the sort of biker who really wanted to be a 1%er, but was really just a scumbag. He was married to a skank I'll call "V" and had to evil little children. We knew he was going to be a problem tenant when I went to collect the rent and he had a couple of Harleys torn apart in the living room. Not that there is anything wrong with tearing a bike apart in your living room, but come on now, letting the oil drain all over the hardwood floors is just an asshole thing to do.
Every now and again, B&V would actually pay the rent. It was a fucking dump. Trash was everywhere. Car parts, motorcycle parts everywhere. You KNOW that a tenant is a transient when they use trash bags and bedsheets as curtains.
Where it all went wrong for him is that one of those stolen bikes he was stripping in the living room happened to belong to a 1%er who ran with a well known 3-piece patch club. Big mistake.
So there I was, standing on the sidewalk, watching the shit hit the fan.
All of a sudden, two pickup trucks full of guys with colors came roaring around the corner, escorted by a number of Harleys. The trucks and bikes screeched to a halt and the guys in the back of the truck all jumped out with bats, crowbars and axe handles. My boss and I sat back to watch the show.
Half of the guys went onto the front porch and began ramming the front door and smashing windows to try and get in. The other half of them went to the back door to do the same thing. While all the commotion was focused on the front and back doors, B,V and the two evil little kids (who are probably 40+ now) managed to run to the cellar, climb into the old coal bin, and escape via the coal chute, running for their lives through the wooded area next to the house. They got away unnoticed.
In the meantime, the 1%ers breached the front door and they went in to retrieve all of the bike parts and frames they found inside. They loaded up the trucks, jumped in and left as quickly as the had arrived. It was a perfectly executed plan to recover a member's stolen property.
Nobody ever saw B or V again. To officially "evict" them and go in to remodel the apartment, we had to go through a process with the sheriff. That is when we learned he was wanted for assorted crimes )mostly theft) in all of the abutting states. The stolen Harley was one theft he wasn't getting away with!
The apartment took a lot of work to make it habitable again. We had to paint the hardwood floors with special floor paint because of the oil damage. If I recall, the next tenant was some sort of drug dealer.
The moral of this story is that you should never steal motorcycles. That Harley that you want to strip for parts just might belong to a patchholder and he just might have a couple of truckloads of friends who will want to have a serious discussion with you when they come to retrieve his bike.
Jokes (Coming soon)