Phil Cross: Gypsy Joker to a Hells Angel

407 Pages·2013·62.25 MB·English

by  Phil Cross

PHIL AND MEG CROSS
PHOTO EDITED BY MARK SHUBIN
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 Coyote
CHAPTER 2 Atypical Teen
CHAPTER 3 See the World, Join the Navy
CHAPTER 4 In Transition
CHAPTER 5 The Rise of the San Jose Gypsy Jokers
CHAPTER 6 The Fall of the San Jose Gypsy Jokers
CHAPTER 7 Hells Angels
CHAPTER 8 On the Run
CHAPTER 9 Terminal Island Is Not a Vacation Spot
CHAPTER 11 Meg
CHAPTER 10 Back Home
CHAPTER 12 On the Run, Again
CHAPTER 13 Back Home, Again
CHAPTER 14 Deerfield
CHAPTER 15 Hells Angels Santa Cruz
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
In Memoriam
M
y name is Phil Cross, and I’ve been a Hells Angel for forty-three years.
Everybody has their own story as to what led them to become a member, but we
all have one thing in common: a love of both motorcycles and the camaraderie of
the brotherhood. This is my story.
I have been a Hells Angel longer than many people predicted I would be
alive. I’m not kidding; I was somewhat reckless in my youth and was told more
than once or twice, or a dozen times, that I would not live to see thirty, or
probably even twenty-one. You get the picture. Well, it turns out that they were
all wrong … really wrong. I even survived a liver transplant when I was fifty-
nine and stage four cancer five years later. So I guess you could say I have been
lucky, or maybe I was just meant to live a long and interesting life (and that I
have). And it all started when I was born in San Francisco, California.
San Francisco has always been an interesting place, right from the start.
Before it was called San Francisco, the Bay Area was home to the Ohlone Indian
tribe to the north and the Miwok Indian tribe to the south, and you have to agree
they were pretty interesting people. Then the missionaries came and built
Mission San Francisco in the late 1700s. The next big deal was the gold rush that
started in 1847, which made for big growth in two industries in San Francisco:
prostitution and gambling—this was the Barbary Coast. In 1906, the big quake
hit and the fire that followed wiped out the entire Barbary Coast, which meant
no whores and no gambling … at least not for a while. San Francisco played a
big role in World War I, but nothing like it did during World War II. Being a port
city, San Francisco was vital in the war effort. The shipyards located there and
along the coast worked with machine shops, metal fabricating shops, and
woodworking shops to become one giant ship-building industry. That’s what my
dad did for a living; he helped build those ships that were so badly needed by our
armed forces, and that’s where I come in.
Me as a twenty-five-year member.
My mom as a sweet sixteen-year-old.
I was born in San Francisco, California, on August 11, 1942. We were an
average middle-class American family: Mom, Dad, my kid brother, the family
dog Corky, and me. Unfortunately for my parents, we had to leave San
Francisco. When I was two years old, I got sick and just couldn’t get seem to get
better. The doctors found a spot on one of my lungs and told my folks that I
needed to live in a warmer, dryer climate, so we packed up and headed for
Coyote, California (to my grandmother’s ranch). My parents went from living in
one of the most important and urban cities in the world, with a population of
635,000, to a place no one knew existed, with a population of about twenty-five
farmers.
It was probably difficult for my parents at first, but it was a good place for a
rambunctious kid like me to grow up. I have wondered what my life would have
been like if I had grown up urban rather than rural. Maybe I would have been a
pharmacist!
Before I jump into my growing up years in Coyote, here are some of the
highlights of 1942 that I find interesting.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was president of the United States, Angelo Joseph
Rossi was mayor of San Francisco, the Hells Angels were a U.S. Army Air
Force Bombardment Group, and we were right smack dab in the middle of
World War II.
So I guess it could be said that I came into a world at war, and I have spent
most of my life fighting—either for something, or against something, but
fighting nonetheless.
Mom and Dad right after they were married.
Dad and I on a visit to Grandma’s ranch when I was about six months old.