Feeding the Black-Leathered Masses

Every year, rain or shine, on the Wednesday before Father’s Day weekend, two tractor-trailer trucks and two aged school buses stop at the entrance of a state park on Route 9 in Keene, New Hampshire. Between 20 and 25 men and women pile out of their vehicles. Within hours they set up generators, one of which cools a 45-foot refrigerator truck trailer, and erect a 20-by-40-foot tent, under which volunteers place gas grills, stoves, refrigerators, and tables and chairs. Port-a-Potties are placed a discreet distance away.

Soon people arrive with enough food to feed the thousands that will stop during the next six days. Signs go up along the highway, starting miles away, inviting the tens of thousands of motorcyclists heading for the Motorcycle Weekend at Loudon, New Hampshire, to stop in. By Wednesday night, the roar of Harleys and BMWS blends with the muffled sounds of a crowd as bikers gear down, park their bikes, and stretch bodies that are tired and dirty after hundreds of miles of traveling.

A Different Kind Of Tent Meeting

The site of the activity is the “Tent,” and orchestrating the goings-on is 42-year-old Joseph Delio, of East Swanzey, New Hampshire, a burly man with long, black hair and a beard to match. Dressed in leathers, he has driven in on his own Harley. When he turns around, his light-brown leather vest shows a logo with a cross and a “chopper,” and the words Cornerstone Outreach Ministry.

Delio says that although the ultimate purpose of the Tent is to win people—especially bikers—to Jesus Christ, volunteers also want to help and protect those who are inebriated, stoned, or just tired from the many miles traveled.

Thousands of travelers will frequent the Tent over the next few days, attracting some of the 50,000 bikers from across the nation and Canada making a pilgrimage to the region for the annual Motorcycle Weekend and Loudon Classic race. By weekend’s close, locals will hear reports of a few deaths and hundreds of arrests, and police will confiscate an unsettling number of handguns.

Delio is no stranger to biker subculture. Growing up in New York City, he hung around their clubhouses. “Bikers were my heroes,” he says. “I had no other male role models.”

Soon he was running out for their cigarettes and other items. Then, as he grew older, he began to ride, party, deal drugs, and get arrested with his biker buddies. He also acquired a drug habit that would last 17 years.

Now director of pastoral care at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation hospital in Keene and a parole officer for New Hampshire, Delio feels a special calling to minister to bikers. “I knew God had restored me when I received Christ. And he has given me a purpose: to deal with a group of people nobody wants to deal with.”

Delio and friends from a Keene-area church started Cornerstone Outreach as a ministry to bikers over a decade ago. In June 1979, they set up a small tent and a few signs inviting bikers to stop on their way to the races. They served cookies, sandwiches, and coffee to more than 800 bikers.

The roadside stop now includes a cooking tent with a menu of fried or scrambled eggs, omelets, English muffins, pancakes, hot dogs, cookies, sandwiches, fruit, coffee, and cold drinks. Some 15,000 travelers are served over the course of the six-day event, Delio estimates—at no charge.

In addition to the refrigerator truck loaded with food, and another trailer of supplies, much of them donated, there is a 500-gallon water tank at one end of the camp, and a counseling and prayer room at the other. A school bus provides still another counseling room and sleeping quarters. Dozens of churches in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Ohio send food, volunteers, or financial support. So do several Christian motorcycle groups.

Volunteers who work the Tent on an annual basis know the weather that weekend will be typical New Hampshire June weather—either hot and humid or cold and wet. When it is hot, dust hangs in the air and clings to everything—the sweaty bodies of bikers and workers, tables and chairs, and the bikes.

On rainy years, the dirt turns to mud splattered on pants and encases sneakers and black boots. Hair hangs limp, and raincoats become useless. Regardless of the temperature, black flies and other biting bugs can be counted on to find hot, dirty bodies. After two or three days, the workers no longer notice the smell of the tired bikers—it just mingles with their own.

When Bikers Are Called Brothers

Over the years, Delio and his coworkers have logged hundreds of hours, seeing what they do as a concrete way to put Christian faith to work. “Everyone talks about brotherhood,” Delio argues, “but a lot of people are just wagging their tongues and moving their mouths.”

Such large-hearted concern is felt by the bikers, and they let the workers know. The faces that come with the bikes are covered with road dust and grime, and at times are framed with long, stringy hair. Earrings dangle as far down as shoulders. But almost all of the bikers return the smiles and pleasant talk they receive from the tent workers. The language is rough and crude at times, but most tent workers do not flinch; they have learned to accept the bikers as they are. A few expletives are still followed with, “Sorry, Ma’am.”

Women bikers and passengers find a place under the Tent, too. Dressed in leathers, jeans, and headbands, they are welcomed by female tent workers, who are eager to listen and share stories about children and jobs. Others prefer to rest, or join the men to listen to local musicians who volunteer their time, singing and strumming guitars.

Many return to the Tent year after year. “It’s the only time I haven’t been treated like a second-class citizen,” bikers say repeatedly. Many of the workers are biking enthusiasts themselves and are able to show genuine interest as they listen to biking stories or see what a biker has done to modify his machine.

Before the bikers leave, they are offered food for the road, religious tracts and New Testaments, and are asked to stop by on their way home. The tracts and food, at least, are accepted with a “thanks.”

Sometimes a biker returns after a year or two to tell Delio about his decision to accept Christ. When this happens, Delio says, “It makes me cry. It helps me to understand that when God talks about a remnant to be saved, they’re still out there. When a person comes to Christ, I realize there are so many more to be saved.”

This reality hits hard some years. In June 1989, a young man who had just stopped at the Tent with his father and uncle was killed in an accident less than five miles away. When the news reached those at the Tent, someone said a prayer for the biker’s family, and Delio made plans for them to be visited by a group of Christian motorcyclists near their Pennsylvania home.

Sometimes a biker’s action speaks louder than words. One young woman attending the 1986 Loudon Classic was left without a ride home to Boston because her “old man” had been arrested over the weekend. A biker going in another direction took her down Route 9 to the Tent. He was sure someone there would help. He dropped her off, told one of the volunteers, “She needs a ride to Boston,” and left.

That day workers at the Tent knew they were meeting with success; after years of work, the Tent was gaining a reputation as a place a person could find help.

Delio, his wife, Diane, and others from the Cornerstone Outreach Ministries board go regularly to churches to speak and enlist workers. The most important message they share, Delio said, is that one need not “go to Africa to serve as a missionary. You don’t need to send money 8,000 miles away. We can save people right under our noses. The need is out there, but a lot of work is needed here in our own communities, too.”

By Diane Nix, editor of the Observer magazine of the Keene Sentinel, Keene, New Hampshire.

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