{"id":1575,"date":"2017-11-21T23:30:40","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T07:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/?p=1575"},"modified":"2019-09-16T12:00:12","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T19:00:12","slug":"brush-with-the-infamous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/2017\/11\/21\/brush-with-the-infamous\/","title":{"rendered":"Brush with the Infamous"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Hope<\/figure>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n

A recent announcement in the news reminded me of an incident I hadn’t pondered in a very long time. I apologize for straying from my discussions of art in this post, but couldn’t resist sharing this experience, once it came to mind.<\/p>\n

Back when I was in art school, my father, brothers and I were into off-road motorcycle riding and motocross racing. My father was seriously involved in a motorcycle club which shared these interests, the Dirt Diggers.<\/em> In fact he eventually became president of this organization.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Hope<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Dirt Diggers biggest event of the year was to hold a pretty famous motocross race at Hope Town, <\/em>a collection of old movie sets, then owned by Bob Hope, located in the Santa Susana Mountains<\/em> of California. The course took participants along a serpentine route which included travel down many old western town streets. We’d all travel out to Santa Susana, the weekend before the race, to grade the course with tractors, set up hay bales in corners, string flags, generally, build the track. A bonus was that after all the work was complete, we could start our bikes up and give it a few test runs.<\/p>\n

While we were running the course, one of my younger brothers thought he’d improve the track by adding a side trip down a short unpaved road to the dirt front yard of an old run-down ranch house. There we could plant one foot on the ground, cross our handlebars, crank the throttle, perform a tight doughnut<\/em> turn (throwing a rooster tail of soft dirt into the air with our back tires) and head back onto the rest of the course.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Motocross<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

A few trips down this addition and we’d apparently interrupted a couple of guys working on dune buggies in a nearby open garage on the property. A few more trips and they walked over to where we were making our turnarounds, yelling, screaming and shaking big wrenches at us.<\/p>\n

Typical teenagers, right or wrong, we didn’t respond well to threats, so on our next and last trip down the side road, we directed the dirt streams thrown from our back tires, as we made the hairpin turnaround in this makeshift cul de sac<\/em>, all over individuals shaking tools at us.<\/p>\n

A year later, when along with the rest of America, we were familiarized with every detail of their sinister, horrifying actions, we learned who we’d offended. Whether Charlie Manson<\/em> was present at the Spahn Ranch<\/em><\/a> that day, with those members of his dune buggy army, we’ll never know, but the experience made clear to me that you NEVER know who you’re dealing with.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent announcement in the news reminded me of an incident I hadn’t pondered in a very long time. I apologize for straying from my discussions of art in this post, but couldn’t resist sharing this experience, once it came to mind. Back when I was in art school, my father, brothers and I were into off-road motorcycle … Continue reading “Brush with the Infamous”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2131,"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions\/2131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trowzersakimbo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}