by Ron White
He’s got this black bag he always carries with him. One day it’s open, and I look inside, and he’s got nine bottles of pills in there. And I’m like, “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?”
He was a sweet guy, and he wasn’t a bad driver. Once he got it going, he kept it going smooth.
Then one time we were driving up north, going 70 mph into a 70 mph headwind. So we have a relative 140 mph wind, and we start hearing a rumble that wakes me up in the back going, “What the fuck is happening?”
We stop the bus, we don’t see anything. We start up again, everything seems OK. But as soon as we get up some speed, we hear that rumble again. We’ve got eight hundred miles to drive.
Then we figure from the sound that it’s got to be something on the top of the bus. We stop at a little gas station next to an abandoned motel in the middle of nowhere. And the gas station guy says, “My brother’s an electrician. And he’s got an electrical truck with a bucket on the back of it parked right over there. He’s using the bathroom right now, but I bet he’ll let you use it.”
They know who I am and they say, “Oh, yeah, let’s try to get this fixed.” They find the problem—a spotlight on the top of the bus that was wrenched around the wrong way. Part of it had come loose, and if you were going more than 30 mph, it would start to clatter and shake. They bungee-cord the spotlight down so it won’t vibrate or shake. And we’re good to go.
In the fall of 2004 that electrician got married, and his mother e-mailed me on my Web site to tell me about it. I showed up at the reception in Indiana as a surprise; I had the charter plane land in this little airport, and they were shocked and delighted to see me there. And it was just such a pleasure to be able to go pay my respects to somebody who had helped me out of a jam.
Back to C.B., we liked him fine. But we were worried about his health, not just driving the bus, but dealing with repairs and other problems along the way.
Then we got this fellow, call him Fred, who’d been driving rock ’n’ rollers for a long time. But he wasn’t a good driver. We didn’t know. We were falling all over the place, and we thought that’s just how it was. I figured he’s avoiding sniper fire.
Whenever we’d get somewhere and there was luggage to be moved or anything like that, Fred would get on his cell phone and just wander off. You wouldn’t know where he was. Barbara and I would have to lug our shit.
I got to thinking Fred’s days as our driver were numbered. I’d confronted him about all the things I didn’t think he was doing well, although he was being very well paid, but I didn’t think he wanted to try to improve his performance for us.
We’re on the bus heading home to Atlanta, and Barbara and I have two friends with us. I pour everybody some Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Then I don’t know for what reason, but Fred slams on the brakes and about $140 worth of scotch goes flying forward and splattering over everybody. And in my head I’m going, “He’s gone. He spilled my goddamn booze.”
And then our current and forever driver, Todd, showed up like Superman: “Bomp-da-da-bom! I’ll take care of every problem you’ve got. I’ll drive your bus and never spill a drop. I’ll carry every bag you’ve ever seen.” That’s not what he said, mind you, that’s what he’s done.
The first time Todd drove for us, we left a bottle of wine on the marble countertop in the tour bus galley. We weren’t trying to test the new driver, we just forgot about it. The next morning I see that bottle in the exact same place. I can’t believe it. And I mention this to Todd, and he says real matter-of-fact, “That’s why the other guy isn’t here anymore. And I am.”
Todd grew up on a farm in Iowa, and he is one of those quiet, incredibly competent people who never panics in a crisis. He can drive anything, and he can fix anything he can drive. Barbara and I say that we want Todd to be the highest-paid bus driver in America, because he’s the best bus driver in America.
You oughta see Todd drive a bus. I’ve never ever seen him start into a turn he couldn’t make. He’s never backed it up twice.
We were going to a NASCAR race one time, and there’s a wreck on the freeway. That’s gonna be bad anyway, but if it’s 140,000 people trying to go to one spot, it’s hell.
And Todd backs this bad big ole bus up through traffic and finds a way using his computer and navigation system to go a back way through this residential area. And eventually he’s got thirty cars behind him. The drivers all figure, “Well, that guy knows where the fuck he’s going, let’s follow him.”
On the way home from the race, we’re stuck in traffic again. And a car catches on fire. But it’s not on the same road where we’re stuck. And Todd goes out with his cell phone, calls the fire department, directs the fire department in. He comes back to the bus—my ex-wife, Terry, and her husband were with us, they’re good friends of ours—and Terry goes, “He’s probably gonna deliver a baby on the way back.”
Barbara and I sleep like babies in the bus because we know Todd is the best. If something bad happens, Todd will do the most that can be done.
He drives us everywhere at home too. ’Cause I drink too much, I shouldn’t drive a lot of the time.
He does so much stuff for us, I hired him to work for Barbara and me full-time. He takes care of all our cars. If we go on a vacation, he looks after the house and the dogs. The dogs love him. They know he’s family.
And on the road, he’s become my tour manager as well as bus driver. If there is a problem, he fixes it. He is totally trustworthy. Our goal is to keep him with us, even if we stop needing him to drive the tour bus.
But I guarantee you, Todd was born to drive. When he was three years old, I’m sure he was going around the house with a dinner plate pretending he was driving.
Todd’s building us a black stretch limo that will seat nine people, for less than it would cost to buy a Ford Taurus. He found one car in Atlanta for the mechanicals and chassis and another in Kentucky for the body.
All my vehicles are black. The tour bus—we call it the Tater Wagon—is a beautiful black Prevost custom coach with a decal wrap of a cigar in an ashtray on the back and cigar smoke on the sides. It’s just like the wraps they put on NASCAR racers, with all the sponsors’ logos. If you want to change it, you just peel it off.
I’ve got a black Lincoln Blackwood truck that I bought before I really hit it big. I couldn’t afford it, but I just had to have it. I’d come home and go for a drive in that truck, just smilin’. I couldn’t believe it was mine.
The whole truck bed is solid burlwood. It’s a chopped Navigator is what it is. They only made two thousand of ’em, so they’re really, really rare.
And I’ve got a black Bentley Flying Spur. I used to have the Bentley Continental GT, but I traded it in for the Flying Spur. It’s the fastest production sedan in the world, with a top speed of 190 mph.
I had it up to 135 on the highway once, and it was bored to pieces at that speed. Half the systems in the car hadn’t even turned on yet, ’cause that was still too slow for ’em to be needed.
I wanted chrome wheels for the Bentley. The dealer wanted $5,000 for ’em. Todd said, “Wait a minute, that’s bullshit. We can have the wheels that are on it chromed for twelve hundred.” The next weekend the Bentley’s on blocks while Todd’s getting the wheels chromed.
I was playing golf with some friends on Monday, and I wasn’t expecting the wheels to be ready then. To surprise me, Todd brought the car down with the chromed wheels and parked it at the course so I could drive it home from there. So I finished my round with my buddies, and it was the first time they saw the car, and it looked beautiful. That fuckin’ thing was shining. You can read the fine print off a newspaper in the reflection from the thirty coats of paint it’s got on it.
Golf has always been one of my favorite things. I started playing when I was fifteen, and there’s always a set of clubs on the tour bus. I’ve got a 14 handicap that I’m always trying to shave a little off of.
On the Blue Collar Comedy Tour sometimes Jeff, La
rry, Bill, and I would play foursomes. We even had our own tournament with trophies and everything, the Wannabe Classic, which was just a great excuse for having fun playing bad golf.
I’ve had the chance over the last few years to play at some great courses, like Augusta National, the home of the Masters Tournament. And I’ve met a few PGA Tour players, which is a huge kick for me. I’ve played with Mark Brooks, and I played five holes with Stewart Cink at my home club outside Atlanta. He makes our golf course, which is a very hard course, look like a pitch and putt. He scored 29 on the back nine.
I’m gonna play in the BellSouth Classic Pro-Am this year. I can’t go as a fan, because I have to sign so many autographs I don’t get to see any of the golf. Inside the ropes those guys are much bigger than I am. Phil Mickelson won the tournament last year in a playoff.
As far as my career goes, I’m in a great place and I’m loving it. The only thing I’m not doing a lot of now, that I’d like to do more of, is television. I’ve done specials for Comedy Central and the WB network, but I’d really like to do a series.
The special I did for the WB, The Ron White Show, was actually meant to be a pilot for a regular variety show, like the old Dean Martin Show. The people at the network begged me to do this show. I mean, they begged me. They’re just blowing me, trying to get me to say yes.
Actually, I thought it was an easy show to do, you know. ’Cause I don’t have to act, I just have to be myself onstage. There’s a really talented cast to do skits. It’s gonna be filmed in Las Vegas. I like everybody that works on the show.
We did the show, and it went over great. We had an audience of four million, which was bigger than anything the WB usually got. A lot of the television reviews were really positive.
It wasn’t the end all to beat all, but if you wanted a little fucking Dean Martin back in your life—an amusing guy onstage with some dancing girls and a scotch—it was fun. It could’ve found its spot.
And the WB told us they were gonna pick it up as a series. And they told Sony, which was the studio, and Sony went out and spent $2 million to get everything lined up to produce the series in Las Vegas.
Then the WB decided that they were going to shift direction away from Blue Collar Television—Jeff, Bill, and Larry’s show—and everything associated with it, which included my show. Even though my show, like I said, was closer to Dean Martin than to Blue Collar.
Anyway, they said they weren’t going to pick up The Ron White Show as a series, and that tore my fuckin’ heart out. But the people who were really pissed were the people at Sony Television, ’cause they’d spent a pile of money on the WB’s say-so and been made to look like fools.
But I’ve got another television project that may go. One of the neat things on The Ron White Show was we did these animated vignettes of some of my stage bits featuring a cartoon “Tater Salad” version of me. TBS is now developing an animated series, They Call Him Tater Salad, based on those vignettes, just like The Simpsons came out of those little “Simpsons” vignettes on The Tracey Ullman Show.
The Tater Salad character is sort of like Homer Simpson, King of the Hill, or the Family Guy. It’d be great if the animated show gets a chance. I could do the work near home in Atlanta, and I could steer clear of Hollywood.
I guarantee you, I found out Hollywood doesn’t want anything new. Hollywood does not want an original idea, or they’d have put on Señor White. They say they want something new, they want something 5 percent new. They don’t want 95 percent new. They don’t know what to do with it. Whatever you want to do, you gotta be able to say it’s like something they already succeeded with: “It’s like Northern Exposure, except it’s in Mexico.”
That’s what we tried—“It’s Southern Exposure”—and it was a good analogy, actually. But they couldn’t see it.
That’s a lot of water, and more than a little scotch, under the bridge. If I never get a television series, I’ll be OK. I have a great job, great fans, a great life. I love going onstage and making a big crowd laugh, and I hope I get to keep doing that for a long, long time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my manager John MacDonald and all the people at MacDonald-Murray Management for all they do. Maria, thanks for taking care of all the details. John, just remember this was your idea.
I’d like to acknowledge Sandy Fox, Maggie Houlehan, Jeff Abraham, Todd Modderman.
Special thanks to Hilary Hinzmann for his editorial help in putting this book together, and Matthew Shultz for the killer illustrations. Couldn’t have done it without you guys.
Thanks to my literary agents David Vigliano and Elisa Petrini for peddling this project.
And thanks to the good folks at Dutton, especially Brian Tart and Mark Chait, for putting my words into print.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ron White gained fame as part of the Blue Collar Comedy phenomenon, which includes the hit movie Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie that has sold over three million DVDs and was a smash hit on Comedy Central. He has since gone on to achieve individual mass appeal with sold-out shows in theaters and arenas; a hit comedy album, Drunk in Public; a hit DVD, They Call Me “Tater Salad,” which has sold over 1.5 million copies; his latest release, You Can’t Fix Stupid, a bestseller on both CD and DVD; and top-rated specials on the WB network and Comedy Central. Visit his Web site at www.tatersalad.com.