Wild Side Still Rumbles In Old Biker

Superman was nothing compared to Wino Willie Forkner, as far as young Bob Bennett was concerned.

One flew through the air in a leotard and tights, while the other flew down the road in leather on a Harley. In terms of coolness, Wino and his Boozefighters Motorcycle Club were heavyweights.

“I heard about them from my daddy way back when,” Bob says, laying a framed photo of beer-bellied Willie and the Boozefighters on his desk. “I always wanted to join this club.”

Bob joined, helped lead and retired from the infamous club before settling into a more mundane life as a tattoo artist in Post Falls two years ago. He keeps his Boozefighters green-bottle patch with pride, although he no longer wears it, and protects the memorabilia Wino entrusted to him.

He still needs the brotherhood he found with the rowdy road racers. He still speaks of the Boozefighters with a tenderness unexpected from a hard-drinking, gun-carrying, tattooed biker - even a retired one.

But the old drinking, riding and brawling club Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin made famous in “The Wild One” is gone - and Bob doesn’t want much to do with its new version.

“We’re old school,” he says, and Dan-o Satterlee, Bob’s retired club brother from Canada, nods his bandanna-covered head in agreement. “It’s not the club it was.”

The Boozefighters made history at a July 4 road race in Hollister, Calif., 50 years ago. Newspapers reported deaths, injuries and drunken, warring clubs terrorizing the town.

Not nearly as exciting or widely read was the police report from that day. Bob can’t read his copy without chuckling. It tells of a much tamer, drunken crowd, no terror and places the two unrelated traffic deaths miles from town.

“The Wild One” in 1954 embellished on the newspaper stories. By that time, Bob was 3 and Wino and his Boozefighters were a legend at home.

Bob’s dad was a biker. “A mean one,” Bob says. “But he treated his family like a million bucks. He held two jobs and hung out with the club for fun.”

Bob knew he’d join a motorcycle club someday, but it had to be the right one. Some are as demanding as cults; he wasn’t interested in those.

He began looking seriously after he returned home from Vietnam with the Special Forces in 1972. He’d been gone five years and spent 18 months as a prisoner of war.

“I came home and wanted excitement, brotherhood,” he says.

Bob rode solo until he met Wino at a Los Angeles party in 1986.

“That old man, he loved to party,” Bob says, lost in admiration for a moment. “We drank two bottles of whiskey and lied to each other.”

Only six original Boozefighters were alive then. Wino didn’t want his club to die or lose its integrity with a hasty injection of new members. He liked bearded Bob and offered him a charter so he could form a branch. Bob refused.

“I wanted to be an Indian, not a chief,” he says. He also lived in Chicago, another bike club’s territory.

Bob changed his mind two years later at a party in Indiana that attracted 6,000 bikers. He met Dan-o there, and both men accepted club charters.

“I found what I was looking for,” says Dan-o, a hefty, 44-year-old social services worker from Alberta. “We all work for a living. We don’t need the club’s permission to do things outside the club.”

“The only difference between us and the Elks: We ride motorcycles and carry guns,” Bob says.

Not quite. Boozefighters didn’t offer membership to women, cops, black men or anyone with a Japanese-made bike. They also wanted men they could trust, which usually required a drinking session to identify.

“You can’t just be a brother because you have a Harley,” Bob says.

He rode, raced, partied with and defended his Boozefighter brothers for seven years, content with the bad-boy fraternity he’d helped resurrect. Wino graduated from Bob’s idol to his adviser, drinking buddy, second father.

Then he noticed that things were changing. The club was liberalizing, granting membership to black men and cops. He and Dan-o tried fighting the changes, then retired.

“Call us racist,” Bob says with a shrug.

Even retired, they planned to ride to the Boozefighter’s 50th reunion in Hollister two weeks ago. Then, Wino died June 23rd. He was 76.

“He was the reason we were going. I couldn’t go because his death tore my heart out,” Bob says. “I miss Wino.”

They memorialized Wino with a wild party July 4 that attracted a visit from the Post Falls police, a fitting tribute.

“The old man would’ve wanted us to have a party,” Bob says, grinning. The police unknowingly made the night even better by threatening him with jail.

“I said my brother got busted 50 years ago on the Fourth,” Bob says. “It’s certainly not too good for me.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)