Then Came Bronson

 

You’re excused for being not older than God and therefore not remembering a 1969 movie and single-season TV series that pretty much changed my life.

It was called “Then Came Bronson” and starred Michael Parks as a burned-out, disaffected reporter named Jim Bronson. He watched his friend commit suicide, which caused him to evaluate which direction HIS life was going. Turns out — nowhere.

He spoke to his friend’s wife and found that she still had the friend’s motorcycle, which was apparently one of the few things he cared about one way or the other. Bronson bought the motorcycle from her and had it fixed up in his memory. It took about two seconds to figure out that the motorcycle represented what he wanted to do with his life.

This movie (and the followup TV series) is one of the absolute dead-on reflections of the actual 60’s counter-cultural movement. Not surprising I guess, since he's based on Birney Jarvis, at the time a SF Chronicle Reporter and a founding member of the Hells Angels Oakland Charter.

It's sorta like nowadays, now that I think about it — people whose lives are a sterile waste of time working for the machine are quitting in droves to go do — something else. Bronson quit his job, packed a pack, got on the bike, and left San Francisco, headed out into the world to just blow along to wherever life took him.

As he’s leaving town, he stops at a red light next to a clearly dead-end 60s-style businessman driving a station wagon at a smoggy, traffic-soaked intersection. The “elevator pitch” of the whole movie and series is contained in their short conversation.

Businessman: Taking a trip?

Bronson (Leaning down to hear him over traffic noise):  What's that?

Businessman: Taking a trip?

Bronson: Yeah.

Businessman: Where to?

Bronson: Oh, I don't know. Wherever I end up, I guess.

Businessman: Man, I wish I was you.

Bronson: Really?

Businessman: Yeah.

Bronson: Well, hang in there.

Implicit between them is the understanding and sad realization of the station-wagon driver that this is as good as it’s going to get for him, and that the iconoclastic biker letting go of everything with no plans for even as much as the next hour was free in a way he never will be. And the biker knows it, too. The “Well, hang in there,” is spoken with a sympathetic smile and a nod that says “Yeah, I hear you — hang on, you’ll be OK,” even when he pretty clearly isn’t going to be.

It’s the comfort given to a sick patient who probably isn’t going to be getting better.

By the time this movie and series came out, I’d been riding motorcycles for years, at least off and on. I was 9 or 10 years old when I got on a Tote-Goat, which was essentially a pull-cord lawnmower engine mounted on a hard frame with knobby tires, the whole thing designed to drag loads at pretty slow speeds and high torque up and down hills and in and out of forests. It was a hunting “vehicle” and about as much fun as you can have at that age.

When I was 11 I got my Yamaha 80cc, a sorta real motorcycle that would top out at about 50 or 60 MPH and would tackle the Montana prairie and river bottoms with enthusiasm and more than once tried to kill me. I loved that thing.

In my military years, I rode whatever I could find — dirt bikes, Honda street bikes, choppers, hard-tails, home-mades…but through all that it never occurred to me for some reason that they were a lifestyle, nor that they were good for much of anything but terrorizing the locals within about a 10-mile circle of whatever amounted to home.

But in 1969, “Then Came Bronson” came out — the TV version of the movie and, about 30 seconds later, the bootlegged European version of the movie, which had the added value of Bonnie Bedalia roaming around a beach wearing nothing but a pair of white panties after stripping off her wedding gown (cue: “Runaway Bride”). 

Bonnie nekkid seemed more than reasonable to me and the Euros, but was apparently too much for the US TV market.

In any event, the movie and the single season of the show that was ever made were game-changers for me. It suddenly occurred to me that instead of roaming the hills and tearing up alleyways and local streets, it was possible to get on a bike and ride till you ran out of money to feed it. In other words, being a biker on the road for long rides, 100, 200, 500 miles, was a thing.

And that was that. I watched Bronson every single night he was on, every cheesy “biker rides into town and sets something right” episode.

Yeah, they were fun, but what I was there for was the ride — the get on the bike and just hump it on down the road till you just can’t anymore, then stop when you get there and do stuff.

I wore my ass out for real trying that on the hard-tail semi-chopper I was riding, and even more on a variety of smaller bikes I picked up and rode the wheels off of. I’m telling you that if you put a couple of hundred miles on some of those things, you’re gonna be too crippled up to walk for quite a while, never mind get into an adventure of some sort in a strange town. But I loved it anyhow. I rode my ass almost literally into the ground.

And Then Came Southeast Asia and The Beneficiary.

There were about a bazillion little Hondas running around SEA, but the military didn’t like us riding them, and a big ol’ white boy roaming around on one of them was pretty obvious and certainly going to be caught doing it. I doubt I got 500 miles on the entire time I was overseas.

When I got back to the States, The Beneficiary had produced our first son. She told me she expected that we’d have nothing but sons. How she knew that is a complete mystery to me. But, she said, she had no intention of letting her boys get on motorcycles until they were grown, and she knew that the fastest way to make that happen was to pinch off the example they’d be following.

And, so, we agreed that I’d not get onto a bike again until the youngest of whatever we came up with was 18 or graduated from High School, whichever happened first.

And I DID agree with that, incidentally. I’d seen too many dead and crippled-up bikers to have any enthusiasm for letting the boys get on one. Did no good at all, of course. It’s in the blood, I guess, and they eventually all were out and about where they thought I couldn’t catch them at it on crappy little back-yard-built motorcycles.

But I kept to my agreement, which had the salutary effect of all of them trying to hide it from me, which reduced their exposure. The downside is that it took me off bikes for about 2 decades.

I actually thought I was over it.  Heh — yeah, that’s how I work.

I was back on bikes practically before the youngest got his graduation cap and gown off after the ceremony. And I haven’t looked back. Hard telling where I’d be if I had an extra 20 years on the road. Somewhere radically different, doubtless, assuming I had lived. Two of the three kids got over their “biker” years nearly immediately. And I like where I’m at now. So, once again, The Beneficiary comes through with a long-term life-change that turned out to be all good.

Now, of course, I ride "Bettina", a 2009 Electra Glide Classic (FLHTC for those of you into Harley lettering nomenclature), which is also known to the crews I hang around with as a “Geezer Glide”. It’s comfortable, has air shocks, plenty of room to pack stuff, and The Beneficiary is comfortable enough and feels secure enough on it to ride behind me, which has been a long time coming. And it’s safe to say that every day of it under me (thousands of miles so far) still belongs to that one-season TV show and movie. One of the early DVDs I bought when they were a new thing was the movie and the entire series, probably bootlegged. And I loved that crappy little TV show as much as I ever had.

On my leathers and bike in various places obvious and not so much there are triangles with the eye of Ra, or all-seeing eye, or God’s eye, or whatever version you think it is. 

 

This is mystical, but not in the way that you might think. I’m not beholden to any gods or overseers, thanks, and luck, skill, training, awareness, keeping my head out of my ass, and staying ahead of the curve (at least more often than not) are the only things looking out for me. 

It is a latent connection for me — as is everything I display on bike or leather, all the old, worn, threadbare patches, pins, stones, ribbons, wristbands... the important stuff.

This one is the iconic connection and expression of thanks to an imaginary person named Bronson and the itch he planted in me to ride or die. It’s the one distinguishing thing he had on that little "Bronson Red" ‘69 Harley he rode, y’see:

But, now it’s three AM, and my wordcounter has reset, and I have a string of 4 days where I didn’t write shit, so I’m now up to needing about 4000 words per day to finish NaNo. Ain’t happening, of course. But I’m going to keep hammering at it. Ah, well. Some of this junk will be useful in the blog, anyhow.