Fishing for Music at Bass Lake
by Adam Hildebrand
Take a right at the Mountain House just past Oakhurst, and it’s about four miles to Bass Lake. Roll down the window and the smell of pine tar and dust float in through the warm air. Thick flora fences in the sleepy lake. All at once, it seems, the deep blue water emerges between the trees. People speed through the water on Sea-Doos, while shabby boats drag people in inner tubes. On the shore pasty white bodies reflect the bright summer sun. It’s late June, and the crowds are trickling into town, onto the beaches and into the water.
Bass Lake doesn’t appear to have grown since the 60s. The town looks like it has been designed to keep casual passers-by from mingling with the natives and with those who are paying to visit. The beaches most easily accessed by visitors stand opposite the town. If you loop around the lake, wind through some back roads, and keep up with the poorly marked 222, you’ll reach the tiny town. Thick trees obscure the homes that dot the hills. From the other side of the lake, these homes are invisible.
July 4th weekend, 1965, this quiet village rattled with fear for an entire weekend. At the height of their infamy, the Hell’s Angels were expected to make one of their massive runs to the lake for the holiday weekend. They were a rough and ragged crowd. The Angels numbered in the hundreds, and their collective criminal record ranged from minor traffic infractions to murder. A few of their men faced the possibility of jail time for the much-publicized alleged rape of two teenage girls. While the bikers claimed the girls had asked for it, the rest of the country wasn’t convinced.
Meanwhile, the local studs geared up for the fight of their lives. They expected a weekend full of keeping an overwhelming force of drugged-up, raging and aroused maniacs from raping and pillaging the entire establishment. But that wasn’t the Angels’ idea of fun that weekend. Instead, they wanted to enjoy the weekend in peace—like anyone else would. Not chancing anything, the local cops quarantined the gang far from the regular tourists, and the Angels enjoyed their time alone.
The most heated moment came when the Angels ran out of beer. A few of them rode into town to grab a few cases. The sight of the motorcycles practically sent the tense locals into a frenzy. But the situation was quickly dismantled, and the Angels loped back to the hills with their booze without as much as a punch thrown.
As we drive through town, looking for a place to park and explore the lake, I can’t help but search for signs of the gang’s historic visit. The town has its fair share of retired hippies and motorcyclists—a crowd that might not have been welcome 45 years ago—but they’re the one’s running the show here. The mood is peaceful; everyone is here to have a good time.
With pine trees shooting up from the shore, and calm waters, Bass Lake has the potential to be quite beautiful, but not every spot is exactly a work of art. Green sludge crusts the shore where we stop. And with a good gust of wind, the scent of duck droppings, dead fish, and pond scum wafts through the air.
Tiny pockets of people—mostly teens—speckle the shallow shores. As new groups arrive, the thinner girls eagerly strip off their jeans and tank tops, and, bikini-clad, run splashing into the water. Meanwhile, the heavier girls cautiously wade into the shallow water wearing large navy blue T-shirts and swishing their hands over the surface. The boys toss their shirts onto the sand. Pimples speckle their pale shoulders. They immediately go to splashing water at the girls and picking up dead fish from the shoreline.
A radio blasts classic rock, but the sound is spread too thin over the expanse of the lake. Wispy guitar riffs and drum solos echo through the air and mingle with the relaxed splash of waves and the general smattering of voices. After only being here a day, this is the first sign of music. With five days left to go, no cell reception or internet, and two days from my brother’s-in-law wedding, I wonder what Bass Lake has to offer musically. Just then, a maroon helicopter roars over the lake and circles for no apparent reason. People cheer as it flies overhead, and the chopping blades drown out the splashing, the voices, and the radio.
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