Sometime around this era, Wayne’s parents in Bingen bought him a motorcycle. We’re not sure if it was a Harley, but probably not, at least not the larger cc Harley he ended up with. His sister-in-law, Lois Eisenhart, who lives in Oklahoma today, and was married to Wayne’s late brother, Ronald, speaks of Wayne’s first motorcycle purchase as a turning point of sorts, and emblematic of a kid who was doted upon. “He was loved,” Lois says. “He was the youngest boy,” and perhaps a bit “spoiled,” she says.

There’s certainly a strong current of this basic narrative among all those who present the mid-1970s Hellertown of Legend. And I feel it myself, pretty deeply at times. Wayne somehow feels more accessible to me and magnetic. Barry Lee is harder to get—a child of chaos, and harder to like.

“For a couple decades, Hellertown was truly as wild as the Wild West. There were warring, gun-slinging gangs, kidnappings, beatings, police and the Feds on the backfoot, and murders.”

There’s mostly just a boy there, without a trace of the swagger and danger that would eventually emerge. That was still a few years away.