Common Ground : Bikers and Buttondowns Came to Bury Eric Hollands, and to Praise Him

I helped bury a friend that morning. I grabbed a shovel, and, shoulder to shoulder with a gut-loyal band of his best buddies, we planted Eric Hollands, 32 years of age, six feet under.

We did it with anger, intensity, sincerity, love, respect, fear. We gripped those shovels with knuckles white and jaws clenched, and, early on a 90-degree Southern California day, we dug our boots into that parched aggregate of clay, caliche and rock and went to work with a fury that cried out in frustration to God and nature. Every back, heart, thigh, every straining muscle of every man there was consecrated to sending Hollands on his way in a manner that showed him we meant business.

That’s the way bikers bury their own.

There must have been at least 300 people at the funeral. The largest chapel at Forest Lawn was bright and peaceful and beautiful, but inadequate in its capacity for this event. That, of course, didn’t matter to the bikers; they don’t sit during a brother’s funeral. They stand, together, in the back of the chapel. And there were more than enough of them to spill over into the aisles and out the foyer into the sunshine.

But the rest of the sanctuary was full, too, because Hollands had another love: Volvos. Over the past 10 years, he had established himself in the San Fernando Valley as the premier mechanical wizard for this stalwart symbol of yuppiedom.

The yuppies sat. They filled the pews in the nave of the chapel along with other assorted rock-solid and respectable friends of Hollands, and their sense of loss, though restrained, was no less sincere. But through it all, through the common purpose of everyone’s presence, you could feel the tension of antagonistic camps. This wasn’t a matter of subtle shadings in life styles, nor of anything cognitive such as an ideological conflict. You didn’t join either of these factions by choice as you would a civic organization; these were two distinct manifestations of the antipodic natures of man. You were one, or you were the other. It was power lunching and designer sweat socks versus beer-brawling and tattoos. Seated, in ordered ranks of gentle conduct, were the representatives of discipline. Standing, in constant flux, was the bare-fisted incarnation of civilization’s discontents.

But this was neutral ground.

Hollands was unique in that he offended no one, yet commanded respect. Perhaps it was the bounce in his step, his buoyant health, his perpetual grin. Perhaps it was because when he asked how you were, he listened when you told him. Perhaps it was because he would not tolerate depression. In anyone. Once, having felt the bottom of the deepest funk of my life, I let it slip to Hollands that, if I had owned a gun, I wouldn’t be there that day. His face drained. He tensed, put his arm around my shoulders, grabbed me by the neck and stared into my eyes: “Hey, man, you can use my .45, OK? I’ll go get it right now. How ‘bout it?” He held the stare, calling my bluff, his anger building by the second, his grip tightening until I shook my head in disgust and showed him an embarrassed grin.

Bruce Nauta, 26, is a sunup-to-sunset construction worker, biker, 450-pound benchpresser, karate expert and undefeated bar fighter. He stood by Hollands daily while he was on life support in the hospital (the victim, possibly, of a burst appendix) after peritonitis set in and both lungs collapsed. “Eric’s death was really hard on his partner at Northridge Volvo,” said Nauta when he first gave me the news, “so I thought I would stop by and offer him some moral support, y’know? Well, I walked in, and the instant he saw me, he started crying. I looked around, saw Eric’s tools, and broke down and cried myself.”

There was no eulogy at the chapel service. Instead, the minister dug into some philosophy by St. Francis of Assisi. Outside the heat was beginning to sear, stirring the already heady temperature in the chapel. No doubt it was Hollands’ last request. Mike Booth, 30, is a big, blond, barbate bear of a man, a biker who co-owns a four-wheel-drive shop and has one of the finest vintage Harley choppers in the Valley. He grew up with Hollands and claims, “Paradise, to Eric, would be to break down in the middle of the Mojave Desert with nothing but a case of Budweiser. There was no such thing as ‘too hot’ for him. One time, I was staying at his house, and I happened to walk into his room one afternoon and couldn’t believe how hot it was. So I took him back into my room and said, ‘Isn’t this nice, Eric? It must be 20 degrees cooler in here than in your room.’ Well, Eric studied the situation, looked out the window and mumbled, ‘Must be that damn tree!’ Three hours later, that tree was gone, and Eric, holding a smoking chain saw, walked back into my room, which was now so hot I couldn’t breathe, and sighed, ‘Ah-h-h, that’s better!’ ”

Other concerns arose that day, for Hollands’ mother and his little brother. Hollands was the head of the family, she said; he was the only one they had to take care of them. But Booth told me, “Hey, Eric was a brother, my best friend. I’m taking care of them from now on. They’ll be all right.”

The bikers made their move even before the brief service had finished. They strode down the aisle toward the casket, boots clunking, jeans chafing, leather creaking, sundering the uneasy decorum. It was their final, preemptive claim to celebrate Hollands’ life in their own way.

Outside, the Volvos were scattered along streets and throughout parking areas, but the Harleys were aligned in perfect formation, all front wheels cocked the same direction, glittering in a visual assault of chrome and color, with Hollands’ 1962 “panhead”

parked a half-length in front of the others. For a group with an anathema for order, this was order at its most ironic and conspicuous extreme.

As if on command, they all mounted their bikes and waited as the hearse appeared and Eric Hollands began his last ride; then, simultaneously, a street full of unmuffled Harleys exploded to life and sent volley after volley of deafening throttle revs rolling over Los Angeles like a 200-cannon salute.

One by one, the Harleys pulled out and fell in behind Hollands. At the front of the procession was Hollands’ bike, glistening, bellowing, ridden by Harley patriarch Jesse Romero, the man who had appointed himself Hollands’ father when he suddenly needed one at age 9.

Behind the Harleys were the Volvos and upscale sedans and sports cars filled with hyperkinetic MBAs, with aspiring dynamos of arbitrage, with budding leveraged-buy-out artists. Today, they were leaderless and chaotic--Organization Man disorganized--but hanging in there all the way to the grave at the top of the hill.

The graveside service was brief, but long enough for Hollands’ mother to gather her grief and place a final rose on his casket before being led down the hill to her car with the rest of the family.

Maybe it was Romero who threw the first shovelful of dirt, or maybe one of the Booth brothers or Nauta, or maybe it was a dead heat, but quickly, an avalanche was pouring into that grave on top of Eric Hollands and his mother’s rose, and the more dirt that flew, the harder and faster the bikers worked. The only sounds were occasional grunts and the clank of steel shovels driving into rocky dirt. Now all the bikers were taking turns, tapping the shoulders of those who were shoveling as one would if cutting in for the last dance of the night.

The heat and dust built a quick sweat in each, but none stopped to wipe his brow. Then I saw why. Here were men who, in their own image, were the ultimate protraction of masculinity, and they were weeping. They were weeping as they were shoveling.

Maybe it was the finality--the cold, hard realism of the burial--that hit home, because beneath the loss, one could sense a fear that betrayed their helplessness as grown men in the only course of events they could not control by their camaraderie, the fear of every existentialist that maybe the system offers continuity.

Then, from back in the crowd, a middle-aged man in a suit and tie, white shirt, tassel loafers and silk socks stepped forward, tapped a biker on the shoulder, and, without unbuttoning his suit coat, went to work. Sweat soon soaked his coat, his shoes were caked with dirt, his pants layered with dust, but he worked on. Then a young man in a blazer and yellow tie took his turn, and another man in a pastel suit, and another, until it was finished, then everyone stood back and watched as Mark Booth roughly smoothed the edges of the grave and gave it two firm, affectionate pats with his shovel.

Indeed, something had hit home, enough to kick-start these bikers into paying their most sincere form of honor to a brother: They drove a pickup stocked with ice chests right to the edge of the grass no more than 30 yards from where Hollands lay, and, through the sting of sweat and tears and dirt and smiles, bikers and buttondowns together cracked open some beer.

“Hey, wait!” yelled a biker. “That St. Francis dude said, ‘For it is in dying that we are born into eternal life.’ That means we ain’t here for Eric’s death. We’re here for his birthday! Hey, Eric! Happy birthday!”

Beside him, a grimy buttondown hoisted his brew and threw an arm around the biker’s shoulder, “Damn right, Eric! Happy birthday!”