User:Faboutlaws

Faboutlaws 17:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC)I want to respond to the article on the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. I have been an Outlaw since October 14, 1966 when I joined during my senior year at the University of Illinois. The article contains as many untruths and half-truths as truths. My club rarely responds to these kinds of inaccuracies, preferring to laugh at society's attempt to describe and define us. This is in consonance with our 1%er traditions. We have been putting together our history over the last 15 years. One of the members has put in thousands of hours interviewing hundreds of people, gathering thousands of photographs and researching hundreds of newspaper articles and the few books that mention the club. I am one of the contributors to this effort and I am in a position to know this subject. However, nobody in my club speaks without permission on important matters. To do so will get one a black eye, at least. I support that policy. I have also collected a few black eyes over the years. While I am in the process of seeking permission, allow me to make an initial correction and add some interesting stuff, too.

The article incorrectly said the club was formed in Joliet in 1935.

The club was formed in McCook, Illinois in 1935 by a group of young men who knew each other from playing baseball at several local highschools in the early 1930s. They started out as a baseball team and played in local leagues with other teams from the area. Some of the members of the team started riding motorcycles to practice and the games. After the games, the players gathered to socialize at Matilda's bar on Route 66 near the intersection with 1st Avenue in McCook. As more and more of the players became interested in motorcycles and rode around with each other, baseball became less important and many non-players with motorcycles joined the group. By 1935 they were a motorcycle club who met at Matilda's where they took on the name, the McCook Club. Within a couple of years, after attending numerous American Motorcycle Association sanctioned events, some of the members got involved in a scuffle at an AMA affair. Although they clearly prevailed in the fight, politics determined the outcome. The McCook Club was labeled an "outlaw" club and banned from attendance at all AMA events. Rather than laying low for a year and petitioning to get back in, they took a defiant attitude by renaming themselves the McCook Outlaws and went their own way. They continued to ride together, attend non-AMA events and meet regularly at Matilda's through the 1941 riding season. When the war broke out for America in December of that year, several of the members volunteered and many others were soon drafted. A small few had critical civilian jobs and they remained behind as the rest of the Outlaws went off to war. Those who remained behind occasionally met at Matilda's and rode once in a while. Riding was made difficult by gasoline and tire rationing. It was a time of great sacrifice for the country and club socializing of any sort was considered frivolous. When it comes to the defense of this country, Outlaws have contributed their share along with most other Americans. As the war ended and McCook Outlaws began to trickle back home....