Phil Cross: Gypsy Joker to a Hells Angel

  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

  My 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.

  Mom and I in front of our home in San Francisco. I’m about a year old.

  SO NOW WE ARE LIVING in the grand metropolis of Coyote, on Grandma Orlando’s ranch. You may not have heard of Coyote—no one has. At the time, it had a population of about twenty-five people, mostly my family and other ranchers. There was no actual town, just a post office, and I don’t think the town really ever got any bigger than those twenty-five people. To give you some reference, Coyote was just between San Jose (a pretty decent-sized town) and Gilroy (a small farming community). Now it’s gone; it’s all Pacific Gas and Electric towers along Highway 101 just before you get into Morgan Hill.

  Grandma’s house. The porch always seemed so much bigger to me.

  My grandpa, Joseph Orlando, died when my mom was a teenager. This left my grandma to run the ranch on her own (which she did as well as any man). We called it a ranch, but Grandma was really an orchardist. She had about twenty acres of plum, cherry, and walnut trees, and she had cats … lots of cats. They weren’t pets; they lived outside and caught their own food. They were the rodent patrol. I always thought they were pests too. After I left the ranch, I would never allow a cat in my house—not until my wife moved in (now we have three cats, two dogs, a tortoise, and two fish, and I have no comment).

  Grandma’s house was a sturdy three-bedroom with a big covered front porch. Without a doubt, the most important room in that house was the kitchen, with its big country kitchen table. My mom’s family all lived in Gilroy, and Sunday dinners at Grandma’s were an all-family event with various aunts, uncles, and cousins. This was a 100-percent Italian family, so imagine what those dinners were like. There would be opera music playing in the background, good food, homemade wine, and conversations (and hands) flying everywhere. They were good times.

  The front porch was second to the kitchen in popularity. In Coyote, it got hot just as soon as spring took hold and stayed hot until fall grudgingly let go. It would be too hot to be inside, so if there was going to be any sitting around, it was done in the cooler shade of the porch. To this day, I have a fondness for large covered porches.

  I was never a big fan of those cats that were always hanging around the ranch.

  The ranch was a healthy, wholesome place for a boy to be raised, but it was also a place where he could get bored and consequently get into a bit of mischief. It’s also where I learned to become a crack shot … at a real early age. So good, in fact, that when I went into the navy, I scored expert in marksmanship.

  I learned to hunt on my grandma’s ranch, and I have to say that shooting and killing animals didn’t bother me much because it just seemed natural. I grew up in a hunting family, seeing most of my relatives hunt. My dad hunted, and yes, my mom hunted. I have to say, too, that all of my uncles were remarkable hunters. Everyone in my family hunted, fished, or at least camped. But the hunters didn’t do it just for sport or trophies; what they killed we ate.

  My mom had two sisters and five brothers. One of her sisters died very young, so I never knew her. Growing up, I would say that I was really close with only three of my uncles. Not that Aunt Rose wasn’t great, but we just didn’t hang out a lot. Uncle John died when I was still pretty young, but I have good memories of times with him, Aunt Juanita, and Cousin John. Uncle Pete owned a ranch and was a commercial fisherman as well as an amazing cook. That’s what I always think of first when I think of Pete. Uncle Sam (Salvatore) probably was the uncle I most wanted to emulate. He had a certain way that he carried himself; you could tell that he was in control. It seemed that he had an interesting past, and as a kid I really wanted to find out what it was. I never did find out what Uncle Sam’s secret past was, except that he got into a lot of fights when he was young (sometimes my Uncle John would be with him). The other thing that I remember about Uncle Sam was that he loved to drive fast, I mean really fast, like one hundred miles-per-hour fast. I suppose you could say he was a bit of a nonconformist. No wonder I looked up to him.

  My uncle Sam. Even in this photo he looks like he has a secret.

  Even Grandma did some quasi-hunting, at least when it came time for picking a chicken for dinner. That old gal would go outside with the feed bucket, call for the chickens, and start casting the feed around. All her chickens were free range, and when she called, those birds would come a-running. Then she would stroll between them, still casting feed, and when she found the right one, she would reach down, grab it by the neck, flick her wrist, and snap its neck, all without ever breaking her stride. The other chickens never even knew what happened. They never knew that Grandma was the chicken grim reaper. Grandma was smooth.

  I started shooting BB guns at about five or six years old. By the age of seven, I was hunting with one. I got so good at shooting birds that Uncle Dominic started paying me one cent for each bird I got. Now you have to realize that birds were considered a menace because they were eating the cherries, and cherries were money. Well, I got real good at bagging those cherry-eating menaces, and one day I showed up with a big sack of birds for Uncle Dom. There must have been about fifty birds in the sack. Anyway, that cheap bastard didn
’t want to pay me. That was the day that I learned about someone welching on a deal and that I didn’t like it. Uncle Dom did finally pay up, though (probably once Grandma got after him), the cheap bastard.

  I moved on to a .22 the next year, and once I got that gun, I loved to shoot even more. That’s when I got really good too. I learned to shoot so well that by age ten I could hit a beer can at seventy-five yards with my .22 rifle. Remember I said Coyote could be a bit boring, not a lot to do? Well, I did a lot of shooting in those years, a whole lot. I would rather go shooting than pretty much do anything else in those days. It was something you could do alone and keep getting better at; for me that was important. I also had a whole lot of uncles, so I had plenty of beer cans to practice on.

  The great white hunter with my .22 rifle. That’s our water tower behind me.

  My kid brother David was always tagging around with me in those days. He was sort of like my second shadow. Now he’s only a couple of years younger than I am, but back then it was enough of a difference to make his constant presence get on my nerves. In truth, I probably wasn’t very patient even then. This one day he did something, I don’t even remember what he did, but I got real mad and I hurt him bad. I threw a board at him, and it hit him square in the head. Man, there was blood everywhere, and Dave had to go to the hospital to have stitches and whatnot. I felt really terrible, and not just because I got in so much trouble—big trouble, I mean the belt kind of trouble. Seeing what I did to my little brother (who really was a good kid) and realizing how wrong it was became the beginnings of a different path, one where I would always try to protect the people I was close to. I guess you could say it was the first faint stirrings of allegiance in my young soul. It didn’t, however, put an end to my sometimes-violent responses. After all, I haven’t been close to the people who I have fought over the years, at least not most of them, at first.

  Even though it seemed that Dave was always following me around, apparently I did have some time to myself. I remember at least one day distinctly (maybe he was recovering from that hit in the head I gave him). It was the day I was wandering on the ranch and I swear I met a ghost, or at least what I thought was a ghost truck.

  There was this old 1920s truck on the ranch. Obviously, it didn’t run. This thing was totally rusted, except the spokes of the wheels (only because they were made of wood). This particular day I must have been bored, so I decided to go and sit in the driver’s seat (which was nothing but springs). The key was still in the ignition, so I turned it and the engine turned over like it was trying to start. It startled me so much I jumped out of the truck. I ran about twenty feet away and just stared at it for a while. Then I decided to hell with that truck. I don’t think I ever got back in after that.

  Like I said, I loved hunting, but I stopped at about age fifteen. I suppose you could say I had an epiphany one day while I was hunting, and it changed the way I felt. I was camping up by Licks Observatory with a guy whose last name was Brown; I don’t actually remember his first name. I saw a deer running down a hillside. It was a big buck, and, boy, I wanted it bad. Now he was about 125 yards away from me and he was running really fast, but I knew I could get him. So I took my shot. I saw that buck stumble, but he disappeared into some trees so I couldn’t be sure if I got him. I had to know, and there was only one way to find out. So I went sliding down that hill, and as my feet hit the ground, I looked up and a mountain lion was hitting the ground not eight feet from me on the other side of the dead buck (no wonder that deer was running so fast). I raised my rifle, we faced each other off, and he paced back and forth, back and forth, his eyes moving between the deer and me. I was ready to shoot, but something stayed my trigger finger; to this day I honestly can’t say what it was that kept me from shooting. Then in one graceful leap, the lion jumped to the bank, about six feet above me. He gave one last look at the deer and one last look at me, and he was gone. That buck was mine! I won the day! But the next day I saw what I am sure was that same cat with his mate and two cubs (now you have to understand that this is a very rare thing), and suddenly I was really, really glad I didn’t shoot him. I just never had the desire to hunt after that. But I still really, really liked to shoot.

  Uncle Pete, with his constant companion (a cigar), moose hunting.

  Uncle George on one of our hunting trips. I wish I had that 1950 Willys truck now.

  Even though the town was small, hunting was not the only education that I got in Coyote. It had a nearby school, and that is where my formal education started. I have to say that I hated school. I hated elementary school, I hated junior high school, and I hated high school! My fighting career started in the first grade. I fought the same kid all the time; it seemed like I fought him every day for three years. His name was Joey Sasso. Joey Sasso was overweight. He was a “Butch the Bully” and I never beat him, but I never backed down and I never stopped trying.

  Grandma on the back steps in 1944. There were usually a bunch of cats hanging around those steps too.

  Dave and I in the yard. Check out that trike. I always did like striped shirts.

  “I’ve been a very good boy, Santa, so I want a Harley and a tattoo for Christmas.”

  WE MOVED TO SAN JOSE when I was about ten years old. I guess my parents felt it was time for them to get their own place, and my dad probably wanted to be closer to work. I wasn’t particularly happy about the move. I loved that ranch and would have been perfectly happy staying right there.

  I’m pretty sure this was the only time Dave and I wore the Hawaiian shirts that Mom got for us.

  Our house was on a street called Genevieve Lane, and it’s gone now. In 1964, Highway 280 was rerouted. Our house was located in a neighborhood right in its path, so the state bought all the houses, whether the owners wanted to sell or not, and we moved again.

  Now I had a bigger school and a larger population to go after me, so I never really stopped fighting the whole time I was in school. But once I got good at fighting, people stopped messing with me. Now they wanted to prove themselves against me, or they pissed me off, so I pretty much fought my way through my school years and that trend continued right on into the navy. If the schools weren’t fond of me (and they weren’t), you can only imagine how well the navy took to me with my ways.

  I joined the navy straight out of high school. I have to backtrack a little here because joining the navy is a time when most young men get their first tattoo. Not me. I already had one, a big one. I got my first tattoo when I was fourteen years old. I still have the same tattoo: a panther and snake fighting on my left arm. I had it done by a guy named Curt Quintell Bruns down on Post Street in San Jose, and it cost me $12 (which would only be something like $170 today).

  My parents split up when I was seventeen years old, about the time that the Genevieve house was being bought by the state, so I guess it just seemed like a good time for them to go their separate ways. I was pretty much a loner in those days. I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to what was going on at home, but I could tell that after the split my mom seemed happier. She bought a place right on the San Jose/Campbell border and, of course, my brother and I went to live with her. Even though they were divorced, my parents got along well; in fact, they got along better than before. We always spent holidays and birthdays together, and sometimes even just a Sunday dinner (but if my dad screwed up and started acting like a jerk, she could run him off). Of course, those family gatherings only happened if my dad wasn’t currently married. He got married pretty easily, three more times that I’m aware of, maybe more. I only say maybe more because I didn’t even know about one of his marriages until he happened to mention that he was getting a divorce. He didn’t stay married for very long either. My dad was pretty tight; maybe he thought getting married was cheaper than getting a housekeeper.