![]() ![]() I may have partied a little too hard, and as Eyeball said “I did a "Blackhawk Down" in Gwen's backyard. It was definitely an old school moment remembering how music once sounded before CD’s. It was the familiar crackling of a needle playing on a vinyl record. As we all listened to the tune I noticed something different about the song that I haven’t heard in many years. It was a vintage Allman Brothers tune “Blue Sky”, which seemed to fit the atmosphere of our trip to the Ozarks. As we all sat on Gwen’s back porch sipping a beer, Gwen walked inside the party room and played some music. She has a place in the country with a huge fenced-in back yard that includes a large storage shed that’s been converted to an entertainment/party room. ![]() We had a great party at Gwen's house later that evening. Dickson Street is a beautiful area, with many clubs and restaurants, and we enjoyed a great meal of Mexican food at a local restaurant. Once the three were pleasantly caught up, we said our goodbyes to Monte and rode to Dickson Street to sample the local entertainment and share a good meal. It was entertaining for Super Pickle, Eyeball, and I to watch these three people laugh and recall the “Glory Days” of house parties and good times. The chance encounter with a woman I had only known from a website, had now developed into a reunion of three friends who had shared a past in this college town of Fayetteville. His name was Monte and it had been many years since they had seen each other.Īs the two talked and reminisced about old times, Gwen realized that she too knew Monte and had been a good friend of Monte’s wife back in the seventies. We were going to visit Dickson Street, which is the major location for nightlife in the city, but first Raoul took us down a very steep road in a local neighborhood to visit an old buddy of his. We rode to nearby Fayetteville, Arkansas, a college town and home to the University of Arkansas. We followed Gwen back to her house and dropped off her car and she climbed on my bike with me. She was an attractive brunette with a big smile who took great delight in knowing we had ridden our bikes all the way from Texas. The bar where we were to meet Gwen was a typical biker bar with a friendly wait staff, cold beer and much welcomed air conditioning. It was a pleasant surprise to travel all day in unknown territory and then meet someone local that knew you. Raoul told me with a laugh “She lives about fifteen miles from here and is going to meet us at that bar we passed by five miles back.” After a brief conversation with Gwen, Raoul hung up the phone and handed it to me with a puzzled look on his face and asked “How do you know this woman?” I told Raoul “From a biker website and I wasn’t sure exactly where she lived in Arkansas, just thought I’d give her a call“. I asked her to hold on a second and handed the phone to Raoul, who had grown up in the Ozarks and would be more familiar with the area. I called her and she was happy to hear from me and began giving me directions to her house. Her name was Gwen and we had been friends for a few years on a biker social website. Their home was left vacant and had burned. His wife Jaynie had passed away in 2001, and they were both buried here, with their infant son and Jack’s dog Pistol Pete. Super Pickle told us that Papa Jack and Jaynie had lived in the farmhouse on the property, and Papa Jack had suffered a fatal heart attack while tending to his horse in the barn. We cleared the weeds from the gravesite with our hands and took some pictures. I had no idea he and his wife Jaynie were buried in Oklahoma, actually I had no idea where they were buried. Papa Jack was the man who established the Gypsy MC in Texas, and the club as we now know it today. Raoul and Super Pickle had been to the gravesite before and probably knew what to expect, but Eyeball and I hadn't and I was moved, even awestruck, by this sight. They pulled the grass back and there was Papa Jack and Jaynie's headstone with the Gypsy logo and the inscription “Together for Eternity” on it. Soon Eyeball and I were signaled to come over to a spot where they were standing. We watched as they searched through the tall grass in an open field south of the farmhouse. Eyeball and I followed Raoul and Super Pickle into the property. Just outside the town, we turned down a little country road and pulled up in front of a farmhouse for sale. On the second day of our journey we found ourselves in the small town of Westville, Oklahoma. It was a wonderful “destination unknown” ride through the Ouachita, Boston and Ozark Mountains. We were following Raoul, and not really knowing where we were going. Last year, after Big “D”s Lifer Appreciation Party Raoul, Super Pickle, Eyeball and I struck out for Arkansas.
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