Lazy summer afternoons, you’ll find a Norman Rockwell-like
setting of Little Leaguers playing ball at Veteran’s Memorial Park
in Hollister.
Lazy summer afternoons, you’ll find a Norman Rockwell-like setting of Little Leaguers playing ball at Veteran’s Memorial Park in Hollister.
They don’t have a clue their tranquil baseball field marks the ignition point of a chain of events leading to a social revolution that changed America.
It all began, appropriately enough, on the Independence Day weekend of 1947. The United States was catching its breath after 16 years of economic depression and global war. Battle-weary veterans of World War II were returning to an America where jobs were scarce. And many young veterans were discovering a low-cost and exciting way to tour the country – motorcycles.
Hollister, a quiet community of 4,900 residents back then, had a motorcycle racetrack at Vet’s Park (it was located where the baseball fields are now). This popular racetrack made the American Motorcycle Association choose the farm town as the destination for its “Gypsy Tour” gathering of 1947.
The motorcycles started rolling in on Thursday, July 3. No official count was ever taken, but news reports of the era estimate as many as 4,000 bikers revved their engines through Hollister’s city limits.
Some residents who recall the 1947 rally say the vast majority of the bikers were well behaved and polite. Some mavericks, however, imbibed heavily on alcoholic beverages. The beer got flowing, and the trouble got going. A few rowdy brawls started.
At least one motorcycle rolled into a bar. Bikers raced down the main drag of San Benito Street. Some crashed and were taken to Hazel Hawkins Hospital. Hollister’s Police Chief Fred Earl was an elderly man who patrolled the downtown on a bicycle. On the evening of July 3, his station phone rang almost nonstop with residents complaining about the noise and ruckus.
The hordes of motorcyclists must have seemed to law-abiding citizens like a Viking invasion. Earl felt panic at a potential mob riot. The few officers on his police department were no match against the thousands of bikers, so Earl called in 40 Highway Patrol officers for backup.
Arrests were made, but the local jail couldn’t hold all the troublemakers. News reports of the time describe cops arming themselves with tear-gas guns and corralling bikers onto a block of San Benito Street between Fifth and Sixth streets. When a band on a truck bed began playing, bikers began dancing. (The cops that night never dreamed they were helping start a tradition for band performances at Hollister’s more recent bike rallies.)
A San Francisco Chronicle reporter was in town to cover the motorcycle races at Vet’s Park. Getting a bit creative with facts, he sensationalized some of the biker incidents. Life Magazine editors read the Chronicle articles and sent a photographer to take pictures. By the time he arrived, the bikers were gone.
Afraid of trouble with his boss, the Life photographer staged a photo using a local volunteer sitting on a motorcycle. Some borrowed beer bottles scattered on the sidewalk added to the improvisation.
For conservative America enjoying the peace of the post-war years, the sensationalized Life Magazine article and photos were shocking. Such appalling violence might happen anywhere.
Inspired by the Life Magazine article, Frank Rooney wrote a fictional short story titled “The Cyclists’ Raid” which was published in Harper’s Magazine. It inspired Hollywood producer Stanley Kramer to make a film.
Many people wrongly believe the Kramer’s B-movie “The Wild One” documented what actually happened in Hollister, but the 1953 flick is only loosely based on the actual 1947 event.
“The Wild One” was a commercial hit with young Americans and it made actor Marlon Brando an icon of rebellion. The film’s box-office success prompted an endless string of low-budget rebel biker movies in the 1950s and 1960s.
The image of the outlaw biker as an anti-establishment hero was born, helping to attract young Americans to the subculture. And Brando’s movie character “Johnny” had a powerful impact on the American psyche. The young biker and his gang ramble into a conservative farm town and, misunderstood, must face vigilante citizens and closed-minded authorities.
By the end of the movie, Johnny is a mythical figure. Brando’s defiant “Johnny” hit a nerve in President Eisenhower’s complacent America. Many young people started to identify with him and the nonconformist heroes of other biker flicks.
In the mid 1960s, the anti-establishment counterculture began to emerge throughout America. Angry young people protested on university campuses and on the streets against the Vietnam War, racial inequality and abuse of governmental power. Conservative America felt shocked that the youth dared question Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon’s presidential authority.
I doubt it’s a coincidence the youth insurgence came from the same generation that grew up watching rebel biker movies. The young people subconsciously molded their own self-image on the film outlaw heroes.
With the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the founders of our country stood up against a tyrannical authority. That document turned them into rebel outlaws. The young people of the 1960s no doubt saw themselves in the same light of liberty. In that decade, America returned to its roots of rebellion.
We were reminded of a lesson from our revolutionary past – that the preservation of our freedoms requires the never-ending questioning of authority.
Once upon a time, 4,000 motorcyclists thundered into Hollister. They were lured by a racetrack at Veteran’s Memorial Park. They didn’t know it then, but that Independence Day rally in 1947 changed America forever.
Martin Cheek is the author of the “Silicon Valley Handbook” and a Morgan Hill resident.
