Cousin Helen Gets a Little Help from the Hell's Angels

My dad's cousin Helen was 75 years old before I ever met her face-to-face. Daddy had been gone for a number of years and his brother in California kept urging me to call Helen, who lived in Oklahoma City at the time. I finally got around to calling her but didn't meet her for a couple of years. When we finally drove the 200 miles to see her, we found that she lived in a small house in a somewhat run-down neighborhood. I was pleased to see that the inside of her house was clean as a whistle and tastefully decorated.

I was also impressed with Helen's snow-white hair, twinkling brown eyes, and youthful outlook.

She said that when her daughter had been in law school in Oklahoma City, she had bought a house to live in while she was there, and Helen had later bought one nearby so she could be near her daughter. Then Terri finished law school and moved away. Helen was pretty well settled by then and knew she couldn't follow Terri every time she moved, so she had stayed on. But by the time we met her, she was wanting out of the neighborhood.

A teen-aged hoodlum lived next door with his mother who couldn't control him. He constantly harassed Helen and her gentle white dog that she sometimes tied out front to get some fresh air. One day Helen came home to find the glass front door broken, and she knew without asking who had done it.

The next time she saw the boy outside, she went over and tried to talk some sense into him. She finally realized she was wasting her time and was feeling really desperate. She said, "I don't know where it came from, but suddenly the idea popped into my head to tell him I had a good friend who was a member of the Hell's Angels and that he watched out for me."

She could tell the boy didn't believe her, and she felt foolish and guilty for telling such a story.

Shortly afterwards, a younger friend of Helen's called and said she was going to be passing through OKC and would stop by to see her. Imagine Helen's surprise when a couple dressed all in black leather rode up to her house on a Harley. It was Helen's friend and her boyfriend.

As the friends were leaving after their visit, the boy came out of his house and started walking down the street in the opposite direction from Helen's house. Seeing him, Helen told her friends about the way the boy had harrassed her, and related the made-up story she had told him. The friend's boyfriend said, "I'll take care of it." As they rode away, Helen saw the motorcycle swing over to the curb and saw that the man was talking to her neighbor.

Later her friend relayed the conversation that had taken place. Her boyfriend had said, "Hey man! Howya doin'? You takin' good care of my friend Helen?"

The young man assured him that he was.

The man continued, "I really appreciate that, because I don't take kindly to anyone who bothers her. You watch out for her, you hear?"

"Yessir. I sure will," the boy had said, apparently quaking in his boots.

Shortly afterwards, the boy disappeared for several months. Helen heard that his mother had sent him to some kind of boy's school or home for delinquent boys. Did his mother fear for his safety from the Hell's Angels? I don't suppose anyone will ever know for sure, but when he came home, until the day Helen sold out and moved to South Carolina, he never bothered her again.