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"You've got to have a job now," Moose says.
He says he's probably helped build 1,000 choppers, about 500 or so from scratch. In August, the Discovery Channel will air footage of his work in a segment about the history of the chopper.
"Very few people are able to live out their fantasy," Moose says. "What do you want to be when you grow up, sonny? Fireman or cowboy? I've been able to have that dream and live it ... to wander, go from here to there, raise hell and meet people, drink and do whatever. You could say at some point in time, maybe a knight in shining armor."
The intention of starting charters in the Midwest, Moose says, was to build motorcycles, ride, and protect their territory as a one-percenter club. All of El Forasteros' chapters have a 100-mile radius rule -- no other one-percenter club can establish a clubhouse within 100 miles of any Forasteros charter.
The Forasteros have only about 100 members, compared with the Bandidos and the Hell's Angels, which have thousands.
"All we're wanting to do is keep our territory for riding," Shifty says. "Because if we've got all of them in our town, then the heat is down on all the clubs and we're not able to do what we like to do. We're not able to enjoy our freedom to keep riding. Missouri is probably one of the few states left that doesn't have a bunch of major clubs here. We're trying to hang on to it. It's ours."
During a raid in November 1996, a small army of police agencies executed a warrant on the clubhouse after receiving an anonymous tip that it was a drug house. They were looking for marijuana and paraphernalia used to manufacture and sell methamphetamine, but they found only guns and ammunition. So investigators began taking items that weren't listed on the warrant, says Jeffrey Lang, an attorney who has represented El Forasteros. Lang says the cops stripped the walls of photographs, posters and insignia, even a plaque commemorating Shifty's 25th anniversary in the club.
It took nearly two years to get the mementos back through court action. In the clubhouse, a wooden case displays various diamond-shaped patches that were confiscated in the raid. Shifty says he has always considered it his duty to confront any man wearing a one-percenter patch who isn't also wearing the mark of an outlaw club. Some of the patches in the wooden box had to be ripped off the men's jackets, Shifty says.
In March 2003, a member of the Wichita chapter of El Forasteros spotted a man wearing a cap that read: "Support your local Bandidos." According to The Wichita Eagle, Forastero John Dill, known as "Big John," confronted the man on two consecutive afternoons, telling him to take off the hat as a show of respect to El Forasteros territory.
On March 21, Dill and another Forastero, Bret Douglas, approached Devin Quattlebaum when they saw him wearing the cap again. Dill died of gunshot wounds to the chest and back. Douglas was also shot in the chest but survived.
A jury acquitted Quattlebaum of a murder charge, ruling that he had acted in self-defense, though Dill and Douglas had no weapons when Quattlebaum opened fire with a gun hidden under a seat in his truck.
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