Ed Youngblood's review of "The Original Wild Ones.

Bill Hayes opens the preface of The Original wild Ones: Tales of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club with the words, "This is not a history."  He likens history to the fossilized bones of a dinosaur and declares that the purpose of this book is to put some meat on those bones, a task that he pursues with the help of Jim Quattlebaum, official historian of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club.  The Boozefighters were a bunch of young post-war California motorcycle-riding rowdies who made some noise in Hollister, California in 1947, caught the attention of Life magazine, became the inspiration for the motion picture "The Wild One," and thus became the unintended protoype for the Hell's Angles and the American motorcycle outlaw phenomenon.  Through a series of "tales," rather than chapters, Hayes tells their story in a compelling and entertaining fashion.  The text is peppered with historical photos, many of which earn their charm through their fuzzy snapshot quality.  Regardless of the author's claim, history this is, perhaps in its best form, using primary sources and the oral tradition