This past month has been a very trying month for Ol’ Naps and family as we have been dealing with multiple issues with the house and it continues with our new found hot water pipe leak which is conveniently buried under the floor with no crawl space access. But in the midst of all of this chaos, I try to find a temporary escape to take my mind off this money pit for awhile so I don’t explode and let this house reduce me to rubble.
My escape has always been reading. If I need to close out the world for awhile, I jump into a book and lose myself for awhile. As I read and picture the story, it takes me away and I forget about my troubles for awhile. I’ll read just about anything, but my two favorite genres are Science Fiction/Fantasy (I know, I’m a sci-fi dork) and True Crime. I love true crime books, because I’m the type of guy who roots for the bad guy. I have a skewed view of “good guys” a.k.a the cops, the government, or any type of authority because of my own run ins when I was younger. I saw how quickly your name labeled you and how crooked the cops, DA’s, and judges can be whether or not you were guilty. I was always drawn towards the bad guys, because, yeah they were doing stupid things, but they always had honor amongst thieves, their own sense of honor and loyalty, and they handled things in house rather than running to a corrupt judicial system.
That brings me to my latest escape. I just finished up reading “Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club”. This was a great read, it is written first person by Sonny Barger, the founder of the Hell’s Angels. I like it because, he pulls no punches and tells the truth about everything, the good times, the bad times and all the things that they were guilty of. I’m sure it’s biased because he wrote it, but I feel more connected to his side of the story than the other books I’ve read by the informants and lawyers and cops.
But what struck me the most was the main theme of the book was that the Hell’s Angels MC was not a criminal enterprise, it was a brotherhood. It was a brotherhood of guys who just wanted to be free to ride motorcycles and party, yeah they had members who were involved in some devious stuff, but it wasn’t sanctioned by the club.
It just really connected with me, I miss that sense of belonging. I miss having a group/slash club that I belonged to, where everyone was there for everyone no matter what. Everyone hanging out almost every night, and doing things as a group. Just knowing that you had people that were down with you for whatever the world wanted to throw at you.
But anyway, it was a very good read if you are into that sort of thing and it served it’s purpose for me by distracting me. Now I’m on to my next read once I decide which book it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment