Yesterday I already mentioned it; ‘blood brothers’. More than 38 years ago in May, our club only existed for more than 4 years. We were all still young guns and had the wildest ideas. We read the Easyriders magazines, Iron Horses and flipped through the Jammer Handbooks and the ‘In the Wind’ magazines. And then you sometimes come across an article where you think: “Hey, I want that too, to be a blood brother! But with whom?”
In this particular case we are talking about Nacks. At the time he worked for the Dutch navy and later in the French foreigners’ legion as a ‘specialist’. At the time he lived in Den Helder, the naval city. Skully lived just outside Den Helder and worked in the fishing industry. In short, shared activities, ‘the off-shore’ and living not far from each other and last but not least, not wanting to be inferior to each other. Sea bonkers are a bit different after all.
That evening an old-fashioned razor was used to make a cut in each other’s hands so that it started to bleed. That blade from the buck-knife wasn’t exactly sharp, so it took some extra force to make the cut with greater damage as result. So the old razor hat to do the trick. Then both hands were tied together to secure the blood brother band. After which we threw a lot of beer over it to complete the ceremony.
AIDS and Hepatitis B were of course not considered at all at the time. For us it was an extra side-kick on the spot. And it certainly was at the time. I had my camera, as in most cases, to hand and made photos about it. With today’s knowledge, these kinds of actions are of course not recommended, but what the hack, we had a lot of fun with it at the time.
Here we see Schweik, Nacks, Skull and Beer.