Tales from the Trails of a Rock ’n’ Roll Bus Driver

by Jerry Fitzpatrick

  My earliest memory of my father was that of a hero. I must have been about four. We were lying on a blanket, my mother, my father and me. They were arguing, as usual, and my little brother, still in diapers, was sitting on a child’s riding tractor. It was kind of like a tricycle except it looked like a tractor. Our yard at the time had a slight hill going away from us from where we relaxed on the blanket. My brother started to roll backward, slowly at first then picking up speed. At the property line there was about a three- to four-foot drop over a stone wall into the neighbor’s yard. My mother spoke up.

  “Grab Mark, Harold!” Dad must have been a bit slower than Mom liked so she raised her voice. “HAROLD! HAROLD!”

  Dad, in his Air Force uniform, jumped up and got to my brother just as the tractor was about to go over the wall. My mother was yelling and screaming through the entire incident. My brother started to cry as my father brought him back over to the blanket, all the while Dad smiling and saying it was all right. We all laid back down for a minute, and Mom and Dad started right back into their argument. Dad then got up and left, drove over the hill, and I didn’t see him for quite some time. When he did return, the divorce was final and Dad had remarried. Arrangements had been made as to what would be best for the kids: 30 days or so in the summers with Dad, winters with Mom.

  During those days, the Cold War was cranking up. Cuba was over, but Russia was the enemy. The United States was gearing up to fight the Communists in Vietnam, and American military men and women were constantly on some kind of alert status. Dad was always busy someplace, and I never saw him. He was out saving the country, as were thousands of others. Father, son and family sacrifices were just a way of life. What other way can one look at it?

  At a young age, I came to realize that my mother was abusing me. I don’t think I realized what the word meant, but I did know that just about every day of my life, my mother hit me, slapped me, kicked me, pulled my hair, yelled at me and put me down. I must have been seven or eight years old when I started to object. I realized that most of the parents in the neighborhood weren’t hitting their kids. Most of the kids didn’t seem to be afraid of their parents like my siblings and I were.

  My mother never inspired me to do anything, instead choosing to tell me what an underachiever I was and would be all my life. I was a chubby kid, and she called me “Fat Ass” and “Round Ass” and other names. My dad wasn’t around to stop it. My mother remarried soon after the divorce. She met Ray Adams at the bakery where they both worked. Ray was from Bigelow, a small country town about 50 miles from Little Rock. After graduating from high school, Ray got a job at the bakery and ran a bread line machine. Apparently, they met on a break and started dating. I admire Ray to this day. He was a great man to take on a young woman in her 20s with three children. He was a hard worker who never missed a day of work.

  Ray and Mom were able to buy a brand new three-bedroom house in a subdivision that sprang up west of the downtown area. Meadowlark was surrounded by many other subdivisions with hundreds of homes of mainly white families. I remember going to visit the house as it was being built and walking between the framework and other areas. Those walk-throughs brought comfort to me. I enjoyed bouncing around through the house to the smell of the wood and figuring out which room would be mine. When we moved in, my younger sister had a room, and I shared a room with my brother. We started the typical family routine with work, school and play with neighborhood kids. It seemed to be a better life.

  Chapter 33 Seeing The Future Through Television

  As a child, I was a big dreamer with thoughts of flying jets and driving racecars and playing baseball. I was also into Army games at an early age.

  Somewhere around the age of eight or nine, I remember a group of neighborhood kids were in a park close to our neighborhood. We would go up on a small bluff overlooking the park, about 20-30 feet from the road, and we would run through the park with our fake rifles and pistols hiding behind trees, jumping creeks, making shooting sounds and screaming, “Grenade!” We would drive the enemy back through the woods across the road and up the hill. We would wait out the traffic... or enemy tanks... and cross the street to the hill. At the edge of the road, a steep incline to the top scattered with loose rocks and slate became an army test. It was a good climb, not too hard, not too easy. We would get to the top, secure the ground, sit around and yap. One day one of us showed up with an egg. The egg became a de facto grenade. It got thrown from the hill, and of course it hit a passing car. We all “shit our pants” and took off running. As we ran away we heard a woman yelling but couldn’t make out what she was saying. We then started walking and laughing. We joked it up for a while and went home to supper.

  The next day, of course we all showed up with our own “grenade.” We made it through the park and up the hill with all our eggs and started planning a major bombing of a high-ranking enemy official that would be coming down the road any minute. From the angle we had, we could see the tops of the cars as they passed but not inside. There were no sunroofs on cars then. There was a stop sign where the traffic pulled up and then turned left on the main thoroughfare through the park. From the top of our little hill, we could hear the cars pull away from the stop sign and see them for three or four seconds as they passed under our position and traveled on to the park exit. As one of the passing cars pulled up to the stop sign, we all got ready to launch our grenades.

  Pretty soon, we found our prey. We all stood up and launched our eggs in perfect timing.

  “SPLAT!... SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!”

  We took off running. About 30 yards later, a man climbed to the top of the hill and came at us in a full sprint screaming the whole way. We all froze, and when he got to us, he had on military fatigues and boots, and a lieutenant’s silver bar on his collar. He hit the hill so fast that we had no time to get away. He had left his car door open and engine running, and someone pulled up behind his car and started honking the horn. He was crazy mad and threatened to kill us, but then he took off for his car. I had never been so afraid in my life. Just some crazy kid crap that happened. I have no idea where the idea came from to act that way.

  Back at home, my mother and stepfather had an old black and white television set in the living room that stood on old, skinny, spindly legs. There were several shows that we watched each week like Bonanza and Dragnet. Sky King was one of my favorites, and so was The Rifleman with Chuck Connors. Each week someone would die in the name of honesty. I got a replica of the Winchesters the star used on the show. It had a curved lever different from a regular rifle, so he could cock it fast when he was in a shootout. It was pretty cool, and I learned a lesson at the same time. If you’re not honest, you’ll get caught. Unfortunately, it took me well into adulthood before I adopted that lesson.

  One thing that was always on each night was the 10 o’clock news. Each night the sound of an old-style typewriter clicking signaled the start of the kids’ baths. It got to a point where when we heard that typewriter we went into action getting the bath thing over with. By the time the news was over, we had better be done and in the bed before the last note of Doc Serverson’s musical intro to the Tonight Show. When that trumpet was blaring, clear the hall because kids were scrambling. What a nostalgic moment it was the first time I visited the Tonight Show stage as a driver with a musical act. I didn’t make it there during the Johnny Carson era, but I have visited the Jay Leno set several different times. Each time I have watched Jay drive to his parking spot in a really neat car. He’s a collector of automobiles, and he drives something different each trip it seems.

  Depending on the size of the band, the group you’re driving usually goes to one of the late shows to perform and promote their latest project. Because of that, I have visited the sets of Leno and David Letterman several times. They are unique in their own right, and I have had good times observing the production on both coasts. In Burbank, you park your bus close to the building; the set is on a lot surrounded by various studios. I
n New York, you have to get a permit to park close to the entrance door on 52nd Street. In Burbank, you get to eat in the NBC cafeteria. In New York, next door is the closest food, but there’s no free pass.

  I had arrived at the Letterman show with Bruce Hornsby sometime in 1993. They tape the show in the late afternoon. Just before the show was about to start, I entered a side door and went looking for the stage. I wound up on the stage side of the green room door. The green room is a holding cell area where the guest stays during the show when they aren’t on stage. I stood by the door and heard all the noise, and I figured the show was about to start, when David Letterman came around a corner and stopped right in front of me. He wasn’t facing me. Someone had his jacket, and someone was powdering his face, and someone was telling him something, and a strange looking little man with bifocal glasses at the end of his nose and a clipboard suddenly noticed me. Guys with clipboards always think they’re in charge.

  He was looking at me from around Dave while all this other stuff was going on and suddenly bolted for me. He got right in my face.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m with the band.”

  He opened the green room door quickly and said, “You can watch from here.” He gave me a shove and closed the door.

  I sat down on a couch when another door opened and a man and a woman entered the room. The room was relatively small so I had to move a little for them to get through. They sat across from me at such an angle that they were in my line of sight when I watched the monitor in the ceiling’s corner. I had nodded to them as they entered and went on watching the television. The woman was incredibly beautiful. It was so hard to keep from staring. After a few minutes of trying to avoid another look, I started to notice the guy. He was looking more and more familiar, and each time I exchanged looks their way he would look back at me and smile.

  “You sure look familiar to me,” I finally gave in. “I am Bruce Hornsby’s bus driver. Do I know you?”

  We reached for each other’s hands to shake. “I’m Jeff Gordon, and I don’t believe we know each other.”

  I was floored to have not recognized him. After all, he was wearing his racing jacket, but I hadn’t paid much attention to that. I kept thinking... Tom Cruise or someone. In 1993, Jeff Gordon was just moving up through the ranks to become the driver he is today. We chatted for a few minutes, and then I went out to the bus to get ready for the drive out of NYC. I’ve met many racecar drivers who are fans of live entertainment. Many are as star-struck of their favorite rock star as rock stars are of them.

  Chapter 34 Testing The Limits

  Cars, motorcycles, things with fancy chrome and things that went “VROOM” caught my attention at a young age. A lot of the neighborhood kids had mini bikes and small 100cc motorcycles, and a guy who lived across the street from me had a race car, a 1967 Chevelle SS396 square back. He spent many hours working on it in his carport, and I would go over to watch and hang out with him and a couple of his buddies. I would hand him tools while the grownups made fun of me. They were good sports, usually drinking beer, and could see I loved hot rods, so at least they treated me like a person.

  The car was white, had mag wheels and slicks on it that he used for drag racing. It had an incredible big-block engine in it that he ran straight exhaust headers on. When he started the car, anything not nailed to the walls in my house across the street would rattle. I’m sure they did at the neighbors’ houses too. Sometimes folks would complain but not that much.

  One day he announced he was going to bolt a new Dodge transmission to the 396 Chevy motor. Since they weren’t made to go together, he had to do much rearranging and buy lots of separate parts to make it work. I helped him every day, handing him the tools and bothering him because I was so impressed with the car. It took several weeks to get the transmission in, because he was a working man and couldn’t devote many daytime hours to his hobby. When he finished, he fired up the car and offered me a ride in it. He pulled it out on the street and did a few burnouts. I thought it was the greatest race car in the world. When it all checked out, he said he was taking it to the Carlisle Drag Strip to race it on Sunday. He invited me to go and be on his pit crew. I couldn’t believe he was asking, and he went with me to get approval from my mom. Somehow, she said okay, and on Sunday morning I was up early helping to get everything in order. He painted the side of the car “CHEVODGE”, a combined word for the Chevy engine and the Dodge. Seemed cool at the time.

  Carlisle is a small town 30 minutes east of Little Rock. Through the racing season they would have races a couple of weekends a month. The radio advertised it all the time with the same words at the end of each spot. “BE THERE... SUNNNN-DAY!” It was a fun day and an escape from home life. I came home so excited and talked about it with such inspiration until my mother eventually tired of the topic and told me to quit talking about it. After that I collected magazines and models and became a bigger fan of drag race cars.

  Life continued to press forward, and at the age of 11, I got a route delivering the Arkansas Gazette, the state newspaper. My mother insisted that I get a job of some sort to make some money for the things I said I wanted: skateboards, bicycles and hip clothes. I wanted to follow the longhair fad of the time, but Mom refused that fashion in our house.

  The newspaper had a statewide competition to sell subscriptions, and I won in my area. I sold enough papers to double my route and won a trip to Washington D.C. with other winners from around the state. When the time came to make our trip, we traveled by bus through the night to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where we went to the American Museum of Science and Energy. We traveled through the night again and spent three days exploring as much as possible. We went to the Air and Science Museum along with the White House and FBI building. It was a great time and another chance to escape the abusive family life. It was a time when I started realizing that I could get away from my troubles at home and make independent decisions on my own.

  When I returned from the D.C. trip, I continued delivering papers getting up at 3 a.m. to meet the paper truck and finishing my route by 5:30. Between it all was a constant barrage of physical abuse. There were weeks when my mother beat me and my brother and sister every day. She would put us across a chair and tell us to grab the legs. Then she would whip us brutally with a belt. Many times I was told I was getting whipped for an infraction that I had already been beaten for the day before. Mom would come in from work angry or upset with her day, look at me and say, “Get me the belt.” It got to where I feared her coming home.

  I generally walked my route with a paper-delivery bag strapped over my shoulders. I could carry over a hundred papers through the week, but I would have to make two or more trips on Sunday because of the size of the paper and the additional Sunday-only customers.

  One morning while I was on my paper route, I was walking through the yards dropping the papers on front porches. As I dropped a paper on one particular porch, I walked by the carport. There was a Suzuki 125 motorcycle sitting at the edge of the carport. Being into motorcycles at the time, I stopped and admired it for a minute. Then I noticed the key was in the ignition. I freaked out. I thought I should knock on the door at 4 a.m. and let them know they had forgotten their key. After a moment of debate with myself, I walked on and finished my route. The next morning I looked to see if the key was in the bike again. The bike was in the same place and the key was right there in the ignition. After several more mornings of passing the bike, I started to think that’s how the guy did it every day. He just rode the motorcycle to work and then parked it in his carport without removing the key.

  One morning, instead of going to my paper pickup point, I went directly to the house where the motorcycle was. I quietly pushed it away from the house. There was a slight hill on his street so I jumped on it and coasted down the street. When I thought I was far enough away from the house while still rolling, I reached up, turned on the key, put the bike in second gear and released
the clutch. The motor fired right up, and I took off into the night riding the bike through the neighborhood. I went to where my paper pick up was, rolled my papers and took off fast, tossing the papers from the bike. When I finished, I rode for a few more minutes and then took the motorcycle back to the guy’s house. As I topped the hill from the opposite direction, I shut off the motor, coasted into his carport, parked the bike like it had been sitting and took off for home to get ready for school.

  I had so much fun that I went and did it again and again and again. Every morning I was getting the motorcycle, doing my thing, taking it back, and there was no one to stop me or warn me. One morning I fooled around a bit too much and the sun came up over the horizon. I lost track of time playing around. I freaked out and didn’t know what to do so I took the motorcycle to the woods by my house, and hid it in the weeds of the woods. I was nervous and disappointed with myself for not keeping track of time.

  I went to school, and the rest of the day I was worried about what kind of beating I would get from my mother. When school was over, I checked on the bike to make sure it was still there. The next morning when I got up to do my route, I got the bike, did my route fast and under the cover of darkness returned the motorcycle to the carport. The next morning, I did my route and as I came up to the house that had the motorcycle I noticed it was parked in a different part of the carport. The key was not in the ignition and the bike was lodged between the car and the wall. Too hard to get that thing out now. I felt like I had gotten away with something, but I wasn’t sure what.