RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Saturday, April 12

MNZ: American Iron Magazine October 2007


Took the recycling with my middle kid to the dump today, and they have a big long open trailer (tractor and trailer style trailer) where you dump your old newspapers and magazines. I dumped a ton of old magazines and found a box towards the front where people put shit they think shouldn't just be dumped in the mix and automatically recycled at. It was full of organic gardening and hot rod magazines, which must be a strange household. I pilfered the mechanical shit though. This was the only motorcycle one, dedicated entirely to Harleys (aren't they all though?)
I don't know, I don't dig the new school Orange County Chopper style bike culture. The bikes are over-the-top and kinda faggy a lot of times, and I remember watching that show a couple of times and it was basically a bunch of stupid yankee fuckers, but with big mustaches on the old guys. I grew up with young and delinqent parents who sold and bought drugs from actual bikers. We used to go to this one dude Winkie's house (I was like four or five) and he had a giant poster like as big as his living room of a dude and a chick both riding choppers across a bridge and the chick was topless and I didn't know what the fuck it all meant but I knew it was gonna be awesome once I figured it out. Digging with other kids through their dad's hidden stash of awesome magazines would have Easy Riders mixed in with the Penthouses, so bike magazines to me are more like that - full of titties, mean-looking dudes who are proud of their manslaughter convictions, and racist jokes. So American Iron kinda sucked because it had none of this.
I don't know, biker culture was better when it had that whole 2% mindframe, where they basically single-handedly supplied methamphetamines to all of America, and would occasionally maim or rape people for fun, but all in a good-natured scary biker sort of way. Today's bikers seem like wannabes too infused with rap videos and too apt to park outside of Starbucks than some dive bar with bulletholes in the front door.
I remember being a kid at a party this one dude Tip had (who was like my second dad eventually) and this biker gang showed up, most likely Pagans since that's who used to seek and destroy southside Virginia, and us kids were running around and I was also a wrestling fan, but there was this giant bald-headed dude with a bushy beard, in dirty jeans and scummy leather vest like everyone else in his gang, and he had like a 14-inch knife strapped to his belt, looking very ominous. I thought he was Ox Baker. Tip's old lady had told us kids to stay inside but of course we just kept running around everybody, out to the garage, because them dudes were crazy looking, even crazier than all the wacky redneck hippie freaktards who were raising us in very corrupting ways.

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