Freedom Read online

  Freedom

  Credos from the Road

  Sonny Barger

  Freedom is not just another word.

  —Sonny Barger

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  1 Treat Me Good, I’ll Treat You Better. Treat Me Bad, I’ll Treat You Worse.

  2 Put Together Your Own Family

  3 Stick Together, Even If It Means Taking One for the Team

  4 Recognize Your Enemies!

  5 Leaders Exhibit Strength, While Bullies Prey on Weakness

  6 Screw Fightin’ Fair

  7 An Organization Can’t Be All Chiefs and No Indians

  8 Trust Is Not a Weakness

  9 Stay Alert in the Pack. What Happens to You Happens to the Rider Behind You.

  10 Tradition Just Gets Your Engine Started. You Drive the Bike.

  11 Leaders Accept Dissent, the Tyrant Goes It Alone

  12 If You Want to Travel Fast, Travel Light

  13 Temper the Steel to Forge a Strong Blade

  14 Early Is On Time, On Time Is Late

  15 Just Talking Never Gets the Job Done

  16 There Is No Reverse Gear on a Motorcycle

  17 Cut Down on Criminals by Cutting Down on Laws

  18 If You’re Gonna Ride, Wear Leather

  19 Customize Yourself. Originals Don’t Come Off the Assembly Line.

  20 Only One Person Can Ride a Motorcycle

  21 Gonna Take a Beating? Hell, No, Fight Back.

  22 If You Can’t Change the Players, Then Change the Game

  23 Don’t Listen to “Them” Whoever “They” Are

  24 Knowledge Is Out There, but It Don’t Come Served to You on a Bun

  25 Learn from the Past, Don’t Live There

  26 Truth Is the Ball Breaker

  27 Nothing States Your Position More Clearly Than a Punch in the Face

  28 You Can’t Appoint, Hire, or Declare Leadership

  29 Take a Pit Stop, Overhaul Your Psyche

  30 Be Careful Writing People Off. They Can Be Rebuilt.

  31 How Strong You Look Is as Important as How Strong You Are

  32 Find Your Speed, Maintain Velocity, Keep on Doin’ It

  33 Joining a Group Doesn’t Make You Any Less of an Individual

  34 Don’t Live for a Good Funeral

  35 Controlled Anger Is a Powerful Weapon

  36 You Win a War by Kicking the Enemy’s Ass, Not by Negotiating with Them

  37 To Get Wet You Have to Get in the Swimming Pool

  38 Don’t Trade Freedom for the New Security

  39 The Bigger the Group, the Smaller the Ideal

  40 Give Your People the Freedom to Screw Up

  41 When You Got Nothing to Prove, Just Put It on Cruise Control

  42 Trust Your Gut. It Doesn’t Need Any Oil or Batteries.

  43 Discover Your Limits by Exceeding Them

  44 Quitting Time Is Not the End. It Is the Beginning.

  45 Individuality Is the Most Precious Freedom

  46 My Body Is My Business

  47 You Gotta Learn to Listen, You Gotta Listen to Learn

  48 Sitting on the Fence Is for the Birds

  49 Blood Makes Everything Slippery

  50 Keep Things Fresh by Replacing the Tires and Checking the Oil

  About the Author

  Other Books by Sonny Barger

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  Live your life the Sonny Barger way? I don’t recommend it.

  I’m frequently asked about my philosophy of life and my views on freedom in America. I’m not sure how this came to be, people asking me these questions, but it has been so frequent as of late that I decided to put my thoughts down on paper and write a book about it.

  Let me begin by saying that I’m a lifelong fan of the American way of life, particularly the way of life and the rules that our founding fathers mapped out for us a couple of centuries ago. To me, these rules are where freedom really lies. America was born out of a revolution staged by smart and tough renegades and radicals. Guys like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and Samuel Adams are the quintessential American rebels, troublemakers and innovators who stayed loyal to one another and true to one single vision: freedom. When I say rebels I mean it. Funny how the word rebel has taken on an entire new meaning today.

  My way of life is an American way of life that requires a never-ending devotion to the “idea of” and the “practice of” freedom. Being aware of yourself and looking after your brothers, sisters, and partners means staying vigilant and aware at all times. As much as I’m looking out at the road ahead, I’m tempted to look over my shoulder, back at the legacy I am leaving behind, a legacy of brotherhood, loyalty, fun times, and hell-raising. But I can’t and don’t look back. I always look ahead, to the side, but never back.

  Writing Freedom made me ask myself a lot of serious, soul-searching bottom-line questions, questions you’ll need to ask yourself in the process of reading this book. Who am I really? What are my strongest beliefs? What exactly do I stand for and represent? What’s worth living for? What’s worth dying for? What is my individual definition of freedom?

  Only daredevil, freedom-loving Americans would take a two-wheel, motorized contraption like a motorcycle, wrench it up, turn it into a street-burning road machine, and let it symbolize their notion of freedom. And get away with it. Be allowed to do it, is more to the point. During the early twentieth century in Europe, the motorcycle was a practical, dependable mode of transportation. After World War II and probably as a result of the war itself, we turned the motorcycle into a screaming battering ram from hell with flames painted on the side. My friends and I put everything we owned into our bikes then. Our bikes were us, and to us, they were and remain the very symbols of freedom.

  Another offshoot or result of the war was the brotherhood, commonality, and regimentation that we learned as soldiers. Joining a band of brothers together, a group with one common interest or mission, whether as a company, a team, or a motorcycle club, requires not only a commitment to loyalty but an understanding of self-preservation as well. You might ask why I do it. It was my choice to form an organization, and after I did so, it was my obligation to maintain it. A group only works if there is an established set of rules that all involved pledge to and maintain. When you are a member of an organization, life isn’t only about you. As part of a circle of people who depend on one another, you watch one another’s back and remain loyal to the concept of brotherhood. You learn how leadership and loyalty are about wedding your personal beliefs into a common belief, losing the individuality of thought and joining together with others. This bonding yields freedom, believe it or not. That is one of the principles I will be addressing in this book. So I begin with this question: Are you ready to give yourself up to be free?

  While I can’t claim to be an expert on life management, I can sure tell you a few stories about the pursuit of happiness, and I can say that after fifty years on the road, the two biggest constants in my life are freedom and brotherhood.

  Writing this book put my constants of freedom and brotherhood into personal perspective. It also helped me to gather my core beliefs and philosophy and put them down on paper in a straightforward, no-bullshit manner. In communicating my thoughts, I tried not to preach or rant. I tried to keep my thoughts and credos simple and direct, as if we were having a conversation. Freedom wasn’t written as a political manifesto, although it might be perceived that way. Rather, I set out to convey equal contempt for all political parties, law enforcement organizations, and any organization or institution that tries to control me by separating me from my individual freedom. In other words: living free as an individual.

  I’m not exac
tly sure how best to define the term freedom. It’ll come forth as you read the book. What I have written here are my thoughts that were born on the road, at rest, and during periods of incarceration. Freedom just might be the most direct book about my life that I’ve written. I’ve already gotten a hell of a lot out of writing it. If you get something out of reading it, well, then I’ve accomplished something.

  Before we get started, though, here is a very simple question: Do you take freedom for granted?

  Lose it and you won’t.

  I never considered myself a political person; in fact, I am apolitical, if you want a classification. But by living in the United States of America and riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, you become classified as a political statement in the flesh, like it or not. You are branded as a modern-day outlaw, a ne’er-do-well, an agitator, and yet we bike riders are only doing what we are allowed to do because we live in America. Freedom is what we all seek, but it’s what we do with that freedom that ultimately defines our character. In the end, a man’s character cements his fate, good or bad.

  I’m neither Republican nor Democrat, more of an outsider not even looking in. You could classify me a libertarian (small l ), an independent (small i ) without any party or a political agenda. As a felon, I have lost the right to vote, but I still have my opinions and beliefs. My values and affiliations come from a quilt of mixed influences I’ve picked up along the road, in clubhouses, and in jail. I’ve also spent years on the receiving end of America’s wrath and power, and while I love America, I have a lot of fun tasting and testing my freedom.

  Every person alive is unique. As human beings, we are social animals, we have to interact with one another. It’s been that way since the Garden of Eden. Interacting does not mean controlling or that one holds sway over another. It means the way you treat me is the way I will treat you. As an individual, you have your own unique set of rules for how you conduct yourself, and when they coincide with the rules of others, then this is harmony and life can be lived. When someone’s rules are different from yours, that can be okay, but when they try to impose their rules on you, a problem arises. Lots of problems arise. I don’t think anyone likes to be told what they have to do.

  Law and order are terms that are thrown around very loosely these days. As often as I’ve been branded a rebel, in my opinion I have a deeper belief in law and order than the average citizen, and I’m constantly repelled by the way overzealous authorities such as policemen or politicians don’t share that view.

  I’m one of those guys who, as the system tests me, continually challenges the system. I have seen our government trample on our most basic and hardest-won freedoms and human rights, yet most Americans are too blind or comfortable to notice. People need a social system of their own. Inside that system they cooperate with others to achieve things that as individuals they could not achieve on their own. Law and order is an example of the principles that the democratic system has set up in order to achieve harmony.

  The first motorcycle ride I took changed my life forever. So did serving a long-term sentence in Folsom. They were both equally important and monumental turning points in my life.

  I’ll begin with my initial motorcycle ride, which let me experience total freedom for the first time. When I was thirteen I had a little motor scooter that cost about twenty bucks. But I could get that little thing up to about forty miles an hour. A few years later, when I got out of the army, I graduated up to a full-size motorcycle. I had dabbled with cars, but I liked motorcycles because they were all you and nothing else. You could take the motor out and rev it up and then when you hit either the streets or highway, it was your creation and the world was yours. You could go as fast and as far as you wanted. It was freedom all right.

  The second thing that has changed my life is that I’ve done time in a few joints and county jails. In a lot of ways, I find jail, and especially prison, an all-American experience. No other country in the world puts more of its citizens in jail than America does. We lock up over two million people in this country at any given time. The prisoners range from out-and-out bad guys like cold-blooded murderers, child molesters, and big-time thieves to teenagers busted for their first offense dealing in drugs or prostitution. But no matter what you are in for, once you’re in, you’re in. In the joint everybody’s the same, they’re prisoners.

  Prison is a place where the inmates, wardens, correctional officers, and whoever else is running the show fashions their own society, their own system. Both the people who run the prisons and the inmates who live there create their own little America, except it’s an “America” with a much more intense set of rules, values, pecking order, privileges, routine, and punishments. In order to survive in this prison system, you have to be superaware and smart. You have to be self-confident and, above all, constantly on top of your immediate surroundings. You need to be capable of sizing up a bunch of different situations quickly. You have to be a swift judge of character and committed to the principle of getting through life one day at a time. As a result of this system, prison gave me an invaluable perspective on freedom and survival.

  Prison, to me, was a job. I was working for a company, an organization meticulously built upon a foundation of strict rules and routines, with many decisions already made for you. You wake up when you’re told to. Report to work detail. Eat your meals when you’re told to. Go “home.” Lights-out. There’re the occasional lockdown, setback, good days, bad days, and horrible days. You lose control over your daily life. In such a situation, you’re more conscious of the precious few moments that are your own. And those few moments for a prisoner are your freedom. And that is how I learned the true definition of “freedom.”

  Prison keeps people apart by relegating them to small and manageable subgroups guaranteed to keep them separate, hostile, slightly jealous of one another, and competing. Sound familiar? We end up doing “the man’s” dirty work much more effectively than the man could do. In prison, after you’re given a number, cell, and bunk, you’re inside a social structure that’s designed to erase your individuality out of you. It’s a dehumanizing technique to the maximum, and without exception, it works beautifully. You can fight it but you’ll eventually learn you won’t win trying to do it your way. Do your job, do what is expected of you, and you win.

  Look around at your own circumstances right now, your job, home, and organization. Do stubbornness and barriers divide you or do a common mission, interests, and goals unite you? You know the answer. When was the last time your family, fellow employees, or friends sat down and really discussed what keeps your group together? Is there a common goal that everyone understands, shares, and aspires to realize?

  Before going into prison, I was accustomed to all the amenities that freedom in America brought. So I assumed that my freedom was a highly portable state of mind. But then, there I was in Folsom Prison, with only a few basic rights afforded to me. I soon learned that bringing that “portable” sense of freedom into a prison cell while serving a potential life sentence was a far different challenge. Since my body was confined, I learned to free my mind. It was this self-ownership of mind and thus spirit that got me through.

  But this liberation of mind and spirit did not come to me overnight. While I was inside, I received boxes of books from the outside. These were the “Free Sonny Barger” days of 1973 and 1974, when my then wife, Sharon, and my friends worked tirelessly to keep my name out in front of the press.

  I am a self-taught individual. My schooling stopped early and I was never inspired by my parents and surroundings when I was young enough to read a book, or read anything for that matter. I could read but I never appreciated or knew how much reading can do for you until I was in Folsom. The books I got there were of all different types. There were novels that, I learned, give you a chance to escape to different worlds, experience and meet people from all walks of life, see situations that otherwise you would never have known existed. There were nonfiction books that I learned from, b
ooks of history and politics, and also biographies. A whole new world opened up to me and slowly I began to realize that everything that mattered really was determined by the state of mind I was in. I could be doing some menial job during the day, but if my mind was off somewhere else, then I was starting to achieve an inner freedom.

  Today, I know almost as much about doing jail time and loss of freedom as I do about riding motorcycles and enjoying liberty and bliss. From the 1950s on up to the present, I served about thirteen lucky years. As I got more proficient at doing time behind bars, I also began envisioning freedom in the form of a collection of credos, which is what I’m now passing on to you in this book. These are my “pearls,” taken originally from notes, letters, and notebooks, now assembled into a book of thoughts and advice.

  After finishing my last five-year prison stretch at a federal facility in Phoenix in 1992, I decided to leave Oakland permanently. I settled in Arizona, only a couple miles away from where I’d once been confined. Once I was established, there I was again, a free American, beginning anew, free to ride, write, and raise my own hell. In short, I was able to exercise my freedom.

  The greatest thing that I have learned is probably the simplest thing any of us can learn: I am what I am. I’ve opted for the rough road in life, the one less traveled. And I think I’ve got a few things to reveal. My life has been a good one, but one full of setbacks, hard times, and disappointments, punctuated by achievements, good times, hard-fought battles, and significant victories. So having lived in both restricted and unrestricted conditions, I feel I have definite and unique opinions on the subject of freedom. I’ve lived with both an overabundance and a complete shortage of it. And ironically, it was during my complete shortage period that I learned the most about the concept of freedom.

  My most basic credo is: I never said freedom was cheap. And it ain’t. Never will be. It’s been the highest-priced and most precious commodity of my life. Johnny Cash used to say the best part of a journey is the last mile home. I’ve found independence to be a hell of a ride, a hard ride, never a dull ride, guaranteed to be a bumpy ride, always unpredictable, but well worth the long trip home, especially that last mile, which I am riding into free.