Cy was very patient as he showed me how to bring a snowmobile down the ramp and off the trailer. Then he taught me how to reload by goosing the sled up the loading ramp with just the right amount of throttle at just the right time and always having your hand on the brake because you’re going to have to stop quickly.
He showed me how to make sure there is plenty of oil and antifreeze in the machine, to always make sure you have an extra belt, and just about everything I know about the operation and care of a snowmobile.
There’s nothing like packing a lunch and heading for the mountains with Cy and Jeannie. They know the trails at every location around the area, which ones are too difficult for Hazel and me to handle, and which ones have been recently groomed. We spend a lot of days whizzing around the Rockies together.
CHAPTER 52
CLOSE CALL IN THE ROCKIES
January 15, 2010, was a bright, chilly day in the Rockies. Cy and Jeannie, Hazel and me, and some other folks were riding in good powder in one of the most beautiful spots in the Rocky Mountains when something scary happened.
I think I tell it best in one of my soapbox articles I wrote shortly after the incident when my memory was fresh and vivid.
I call it “Different Strokes.”
The day was magnificent. The snow was smooth and deep, and the trail had just been groomed. We were skimming across the snow at a good clip, doing one of my favorite things in the whole world: snowmobiling in the beautiful Rocky Mountain backcountry with our snowmobile buddies, Cy and Jeannie Scarborough and some other friends, hitting the high spots and just having a wonderful time.
I noticed that my left hand was getting numb and thought that it was because I had been hanging on to the handle bars of my sled for so long that it had gone to sleep. Then I felt the left side of my mouth start to grow numb, and my left foot started getting hard to control. I knew something was happening to me. I knew I’d better get back down the mountain and get some help.
I told Cy how I was feeling, and we immediately headed to the trailhead for the longest fifteen-mile snowmobile ride I ever hope to take.
When we got to where we were parked, Jeannie gave me three baby aspirins and we got in Cy’s vehicle and tore out for Mercy Regional Medical Center about thirty miles away in Durango.
I had so little coordination on my left side that I needed a wheelchair to make it to the emergency room, where the staff hurriedly started diagnostic procedures.
A few minutes later, the doctor on duty told me what I was pretty sure of already. I was having a stroke in the right part of my brain, the part that controls the left side of your body, probably caused by a blood clot in the brain.
They gave me a shot of a drug called tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), which breaks up blood clots. In a few minutes I was loaded aboard an ambulance plane and hurried off to Swedish Medical Center in Denver, Colorado. I was hurriedly taken into the emergency room and examined by a very capable staff of doctors, including a neurologist. I was put in the critical care ward, where I was hooked up to a battery of diagnostic machines and IVs and began the many tests I would be given over the next two days.
The early consensus of the doctors was that I had indeed had a stroke in the right part of my brain, as a CAT scan was later to confirm.
The only effect that it seemed to have left behind was a numbness in my left hand and a stiffness in my left arm.
They released me on Sunday morning and I went back to Durango, where I am writing this column.
I begin physical therapy today to relieve the stiffness and numbness in my left hand and arm.
That’s kind of it in a nutshell. I’m doing fine, but there are a few details I’d like to share with you.
First of all, if you begin to feel a stiffness in your limbs or face, or if one or more of your limbs start to become difficult to control, immediately chew up a couple of aspirin and head for the nearest hospital or clinic.
Don’t procrastinate or try to tell yourself it’s going to go away. You only have three hours from the time you feel a stroke coming on to get a shot of tPA into your system to break up the blood clots that are causing the stoke. So don’t play with your life—get help.
The other thing I want to share with you is how the fingerprints of God were all over my experience.
First of all, we were snowmobiling on the side of Durango where Mercy Regional Medical Center—the only hospital in Durango—is located. We could easily have been on the opposite side of town and much farther away.
Cy and Jeannie Scarborough—who always haul their own snowmobiles—had decided to ride my two extra sleds that day, which meant that we had a vehicle with no snowmobile trailer to unhook and could hurry to the hospital without delay.
Our other friends, Tom and Anita, loaded our snowmobiles and drove our vehicle down off the mountain.
By the time I got to the hospital and the doctors got me diagnosed, since the drug is time sensitive, I only had fifteen or twenty minutes left to take the shot of tPA to break up the blood clot in my brain.
Swedish Medical Center—the hospital they took me to in Denver—has one of the top neurological units in the country.
Of course, Hazel immediately got on the phone and started calling our pastor and our Christian friends. The prayers were making their way to heaven even as I was making my way to Denver.
I have seen the hand of God extended over me in the past when I was in a dangerous situation, and I knew He was near.
There were so many things that made me know that God was ordering our steps.
We could have easily been snowmobiling a lot farther away from the hospital.
The fact that Cy’s vehicle had no snowmobile trailer to remove saved us precious minutes.
Everything worked like clockwork; there was a plane available to take me immediately to Denver.
And here’s the mind-boggling part. Mercy Regional Medical Center in Durango had only been stocking tPA in their pharmacy for about three months. If they hadn’t had it, there would have been no way for me to get the shot in time to prevent the stroke from doing major damage.
As I said, nothing less than the hand of God.
One other note. My wife Hazel is a very emotional person and will shed tears at the drop of a hat. On the way to the hospital I heard her tell Jeannie, “I’ve got to be strong for him.”
And she was; she has been a rock.
On the way to the hospital, I called my son, Charlie, and after telling him what had happened, I simply said, “Your mom needs you.”
He and my manager and friend David Corlew were on the next plane heading our way and met us in Denver.
Thank God for family and friends.
Well, that’s about it. I’m doing fine, and I want to thank all of you who got the news and prayed for me.
Looking forward to another great touring year.
See ya on the road.
We cut our vacation short to get back to Nashville, where I immediately started seeing doctors and a physical therapist to help rehab my left hand and arm.
Although there was no paralysis, the stroke had affected the dexterity and range of motion in my hand, and I needed to do designed exercises to loosen up and strengthen my fingers. My neurologist said that playing my instruments was actually the best therapy I could do.
It was good getting back to work. Our vacation time is from a few days after Christmas until the first part of March, when the year’s touring begins.
We set aside a few days of preparation to rehearse a new show, adding new music or maybe going back and adding an old song or two.
When we put a new show together, it’s never a problem what to play but what not to play. When you’ve been around as long as we have and are blessed to have as many familiar songs as we do, when you put a show together, there comes a time when you have to make choices as to what to leave out of the set to stay within the time constraints.
We usually do about a ninety-minute set, which means we play
about sixteen songs. We put the skeleton of the set together with our most popular tunes. We always do “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” “Long Haired Country Boy,” “The Legend of Wooley Swamp,” and others. When you add a couple of new songs, it takes up most of the hour and a half we play.
Then you’ve got a couple of slots left to fill in. Do you do “Trudy” or “Stroker Ace” or “Boogie Woogie Fiddle Country Blues,” or maybe a blues jam or “Simple Man”?
I may change the order of songs two or three times during the first few shows until we reach a point where the set flows like a river.
The road crew makes sure that all the equipment is in good condition. If we have repairs to make to any of our instruments or amplifiers, we try to have them done during our off time. They change strings, pack the road cases, and get ready to roll.
During our off time, we send both buses to the shop to have them gone over from stem to stern so they can be depended on to roll another hundred thousand miles or so.
When I hear musicians complaining about what a drag it is being on the road, I think to myself, If you don’t consider traveling around the world playing music to be a blessing, why don’t you just go home?
I love going on the road. I love getting up in the morning, going to the front of the bus, and pulling the curtain back to see what motel parking lot we’re in. I love looking at the world through a bus window. I love miles and miles of open highway and seeing Lakeshore Drive all lit up when we pass through Chicago late at night. I love to see a full moon hanging over the highway or rolling past a big Kansas wheat field.
I love the fact that I get to walk on stage in front of a crowd of people every night and play music I’ve created with a bunch of guys I love and admire.
I am blessed and thankful to God for granting me the desires of my heart and to the millions of people who have attended the shows and bought the records, allowing me to live the dream.
CHAPTER 53
AIN’T IT GOOD TO BE ALIVE AND BE IN TENNESSEE
It was a Sunday morning in early May 2010. We were just back home from a road trip and had gotten off the bus and gone into the house when the bottom fell out. It sounded like a heavy midsummer shower on our tin roof. But this was no summer thunderstorm. This was an all-day rain, straight down for hours and hours.
It had also rained all day Saturday. Thurman, the ranch manager, had to move some cattle out of some low-lying fields after the fences washed over, and he helped rescue a lady who had driven into deep water on the road in front of the ranch.
By the time we got home Sunday morning, the rain had stopped. The only visible signs of the high water were the washed-over fences and the standing water in the fields.
But it was to be a brief respite, as the heavy rain began again Sunday midmorning and continued all day and into the night.
Our house is on a hill and our barn is pretty well elevated, so we were safe from the creeks and streams that were rising all around us. As the day wore on and television news began reporting from around the area, it became apparent that this would be one for the books.
Areas were cut off and isolated. Whole neighborhoods became islands with people stranded and unable to get out of them, with no end in sight.
The Cumberland River was out of its banks and headed toward the Opry complex. The shopping mall, the Opryland Hotel, and the Opry House, the home of the Grand Ole Opry, were overrun with the flood water. There was more than five feet in the Opry House, rising above stage level and flooding out the complete electronic center located in the basement of the Opryland Hotel.
Downtown, an entertainment service complex called Sound Stage, where sound and light companies stored their equipment when they were off the road and country music stars like Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, and Keith Urban stored their extensive collections of guitars, was totally flooded. Nobody was able to rescue anything or even know the extent of the damage until the water went down.
People’s homes were destroyed, their livelihoods interrupted, and their lives changed overnight.
I am extremely thankful and proud to live in a place like Middle Tennessee. Nobody waited for any government agency or relief organization to arrive before swinging into action.
Families took perfect strangers into their homes, set up charcoal grills in their front yards, and passed out free burgers and hot dogs to any and all. A location was set up to supply free household items to those who had lost everything. Benefits were planned. Donations were made as the good-neighbor, Southern-hospitality virtue came out all over Middle Tennessee.
Oh, the flood left its marks! The Tuesday night Opry had to be held in the sanctuary of a nearby Baptist church a couple of times. The Opryland Hotel and the shopping center were to be out of commission for many months, and private citizens had to wait much too long for insurance claims.
But Nashville cleaned up, rebuilt, retooled, and rolled on, bigger and better.
A little side story. . . .
The Ryman Auditorium had been home to the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 until 1974, when it moved into its new home at Opryland. They cut a circle of wood out of the center of the Ryman stage, the place where the legends of country had stood and performed for more than thirty years, and inserted it into the center of the new stage at the new Opry House. It’s an honor to stand on the circle of wood where so many country greats have stood.
Well, when the new Opry House got flooded, that circle of wood popped out of the stage and floated away. It was later to be found and reinserted in the middle of the new stage, where it remains today.
I guess it’s just supposed to be there.
CHAPTER 54
THIS IS A RIGHTEOUS CAUSE, SO WITHOUT DOUBT OR PAUSE I WILL DO WHAT MY COUNTRY ASKS OF ME
In 2005 the war in Iraq was in full swing and we had more than a hundred thousand troops in the theatre. They were in a strange and foreign land fighting a kind of war the United States had never been engaged in. They needed some distractions.
Judy Seale, who heads up Stars for Stripes, a service organization dedicated to getting entertainment to our service men and women no matter how desolate the posting, asked CDB to do a tour that would involve stops in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq. We eagerly accepted the invitation.
The first leg of the trip was a breeze. We were aboard a state department plane that was laid out like a passenger plane, with wide, comfortable seats and the amenities of a commercial flight. But from there, the travel would become much less luxurious.
We were accompanied by Tennessee Adjutant General Gus Hargett, Colonel Max Haston of the Tennessee National Guard, and Brigadier Russell (Rusty) Frutiger.
I remember there was a light snow falling when we landed in Kyrgyzstan. We went to our quarters and tried to shake off some of the jet lag. Then, rested and fed, we headed out to do our first show, which was a blast for us and the troops.
Next morning, we boarded a C-130 for Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The C in the C-130 denotes that it is a cargo plane, configured for large loads of supplies. The passenger contingent is basically incidental, usually some fold-down webbed seats along the sides of the plane.
The C-130 is a four-engine prop plane that is the workhorse of the military. The crews are constantly in the air ferrying cargo and passengers around the battle zone. We were to get quite familiar with them over the course of the next couple of weeks.
On most of our flying trips, I had the honor of flying in the cockpit with the crew. They gave me a headset so I could talk while we were in flight, and I quickly learned the working names the crew used to communicate with one another in flight. “Nav” was “navigator,” “load” was “load master,” and so on.
They were the greatest bunch of kids. Friendly and courteous, they were always willing to call attention to points of interest along the way or answer my naive questions about flying around a war zone.
As we approached Bagram, it became apparent that we were not going to be able to land. There was
a sand storm blowing on the ground that looked like thick, brown turbulent clouds obscuring everything. I’d never seen anything like it.
We had to divert to a base in Uzbekistan called K2. We turned away from Afghanistan air space regretting that there would be no show for the troops in Bagram that night.
We arrived unexpected at K2, and the base commander scrambled to find lodging for us. Although we didn’t have all of our equipment, we wanted do a show for the guys.
We had guitars but no keyboard for Taz. All Pat had with him was a pair of drum sticks. Somebody at the base came up with a bass drum pedal. Pat hooked it up to a metal garbage can, and with various objects to beat on, we proceeded to do a show.
The next morning, we boarded another C-130 to go back through Bagram, Afghanistan. We would do another stripped-down show for the troops who could make it to the Pat Tillman Memorial Center in the middle of the day. We continued our flight to Arifjan Air Base in Kuwait City, the jumping off place for everything going into Iraq.
Kuwait was the only place where we stayed off base. We went to a hotel in Kuwait City and spent the night. We were able to look around a little, although we were advised not to wander off more than a few blocks from the hotel.
There was a big mosque down the street. As I walked by it, I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures, when this security guy hustled over and seemed very irate about something.
“You got camera?”
“Well, yes, it’s right here.”
“No pictures!”
“Okay.”
“No pictures!”
“Okay, you can take the stick out of it if you want it. I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to take pictures.”
“No pictures!”
We walked away, no harm done but a little confused.
It turns out that this particular mosque is where the emir, or king, of Kuwait attended. I guess they were uptight about security or maybe just didn’t like Americans with cameras. But, whatever, I was glad to resolve the situation without causing an international incident.
Never Look at the Empty Seats Page 23