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

by Jerry Fitzpatrick

  Chapter 35 The Departure Of Dad

  My dad made his obligatory trips to Little Rock during the summers. I looked forward to the time away from my mother, and each year I would hold out hope that Dad would listen to my stories and rescue me from her. The first couple of summers when my brother and I traveled to my dad’s home, we had great times. Dad was sensitive and soft spoken, and during our time time together when he took his leave of duty, he seemed very dedicated to my brother and me. My sister didn’t travel with us those years. My mother claimed she was too young.

  In 1967, we spent our time with dad in Omaha, Nebraska. After being stationed in Little Rock, Dad had transferred to Offutt Air Force Base, just outside of Omaha. As the Air Force headquarters, I remember the base being really large. By this time, I loved planes so much that all I talked about was flying them, riding in them and working on them. There was a museum outside the base that had a bunch of World War II aircraft, and Dad took us there several times. We played baseball together – Dad was a big baseball fan – and we did a lot of fishing. Dad loved to fish freshwater rivers and lakes for bass and catfish. Good times spent together. I didn’t matter the activity, really, I just enjoyed being with him.

  I’m not sure how it came to be. Perhaps I was trying to get a glimpse of my dad because I thought he was so important in the Air Force, but I started watching the news. John Sawyer, the grandfather I got to know, was diligent in his news. Every day he read the paper, and in the evenings he watched the nightly news. I spent many days watching him watch the news, and many times he was making comments to the television in response. He taught me how to watch it. I remember when President Kennedy was assassinated because we watched all the coverage right up to the funeral. I took an even more keen interest since there seemed to be a lot of stories about our military build-up in Vietnam, the war and the people starting to protest against it. Walter Cronkite was telling me what was going on in the world several times a week when I was younger, and I watched intently hoping to see my dad somewhere.

  When the summer was over in 1967, my dad explained to me that he was going to Vietnam a few months after he dropped my brother and me back with my mom. While he explained it in the car, I didn’t completely understand his words. He knew I watched the news, and even though I didn’t fully know what they were saying, I did understand what a war was. To me, it meant my dad, the hero, was going to save the country again, and it meant I wouldn’t be seeing him for a long time. I was so proud to have a dad like him, and I knew the other neighborhood fathers wouldn’t be going to war, so I thought I would have something to brag about – my father.

  By the time Dad got to my mother’s house, I got that sick feeling of transferring back to a different way of life. Just about any child of angry divorced parents knows that feeling. My dad hugged me at the end of the driveway and drove off down the street. I stood there and watched him disappear, standing and staring for a long time watching the empty street. He had dropped my brother and me off as the sun was setting. I was occupied by a million things: knowing my dad was going to war, praying my mother had changed during our trip, and having a lonely feeling so deep it was hurting my chest. I eventually sat down and cried, staying there until well after dark. There was a gas light in our front yard, and I was leaning against it when my mother came out to look for me. The driveway had a steep incline, and she came out of the carport door and stood beside the car to call my name. When I answered she could tell I was crying. She walked down next to me.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  I looked up at this woman who terrified me so.

  “Dad is going to war,” I started to cry even more.

  She pulled me up and escorted me into the house.

  “Your dad is going to be just fine,” she said.

  When we got into the house, the table was set for dinner, but I couldn’t stop crying. Mom sent me to bed, and I cried myself to sleep while praying for my dad. I watched the news just about every day after that time. The newspapers I picked up after Mom discarded them were showing more and more about the war and the protest against America’s involvement. I learned to read the newspaper, and I did okay in school, especially in social studies as well as geography and history. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, war was on the front pages every day and the evening news always led with something about Vietnam.

  I watched Walter Cronkite often and always was interested when Dan Rather was in the jungles giving reports on our servicemen. My mother and a few others explained that I shouldn’t be so consumed with the news of the war and protests. None of that was going on in Arkansas. Things seemed to be falling into the same abusive routine with my mother as the winter progressed. She hadn’t changed at all.

  Chapter 36 Planning An Escape

  When I reached the fifth grade, I started attending Southwest Junior High in Little Rock. Mom would drop me off and go to work. Since I arrived early before school, I would stand in the parking lot and watch kids arrive on their bicycles and motorcycles. There was a fenced compound where all the kids parked their transportation. Every morning, kids would turn off the street and drive about 150 yards or so, go through a gate and park their rides.

  Two kids named Rocky and Tommy were the show offs of the school and could ride on one wheel forever. Each morning they arrived about the same time, turned the corner onto school property, pulled a wheelie and rode it across the parking lot and right through the gate. Every morning dozens and dozens of kids would hang out just to watch these two ride in. They never missed the gate. They were the “Fonzies” of the school. Everyone wanted to be like them. I got to know Tommy later on in life when we ended up being neighbors for a short time, but many kids – myself included – thought they were the shit when we were young.

  I had a good friend, Ronnie, who was squared away compared to all the goofiness I pulled, but he still hung out with me nonetheless. Ronnie had a small motorcycle that he rode around the neighborhood. Close to his house was a large empty lot where many of the kids met and rode their bikes, mini bikes, and motorcycles over mounds of dirt and small hills. Sometimes it would get pretty crowded with kids trying to learn to do wheelies and jumping over things, racing each other and having a good time. Boys being boys, I guess. There weren’t many girls riding with us.

  Ronnie’s motorcycle wasn’t licensed for the street, and I believe he was still too young to have a license at all. One day he was returning home when he popped a wheelie and lost control of the bike. He ended up crashed under a parked car, and he died from his injuries. As word spread through the neighborhood of what had happened, I went to the scene of the accident. Everyone had already gone except a few kids. I sat down by the accident scene and had my first real thoughts about death. I hadn’t really been confronted with death at that point in my life. There were a couple of relatives who had passed away, but it wasn’t like I knew them like I’d known Ronnie. I have carried occasional thoughts of Ronnie with me over the years. He was a good kid. His death made me think of the way people rode their bikes and motorcycles, and it put fear into me about riding that way for a long time. Stretching the limit with stunts and speed suddenly wasn’t so appealing to me.

  Many mornings my mother woke me for school by yelling obscenities at me. More than once she grabbed me by my legs and pulled me onto the floor while I was asleep, my body hitting the floor with a crash. After waking up to screaming, yelling, cursing, shoving, hitting and punching, it would be very hard to get into a groove at school. Other kids and people, it seemed, weren’t going through this sort of thing, and I came to realize that I didn’t want to put up with it anymore. One day after a particularly bad beat down from my mother, I decided it was time to get away from her. I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be a punching bag for her or anyone else. I devised a plan to make an escape.

  The first time I took off, I didn’t go far. I made my way under our house with a sleeping bag and set it up in a corner away from the door that led under
the house. When no one was looking, I slipped under the house and sat and listened to my mother when she came home and started to look for me. I heard her cussing that she was going to beat the shit out of me when I got home. The first night went okay. I wasn’t afraid of anything, and I could hear the conversations upstairs. The next morning, I came out and went into the house, ate and goofed off while everyone was at work and school. I missed school but wasn’t thinking about that, only of keeping away from the beatings. On the third day, I was in the house eating when my mother drove up and quickly came through the door. I think someone had called her and said they had seen me. As soon as she came through the door, she grabbed me and started punching me. She hit me in the face and bloodied my nose. She hit me so hard that I fell down. Then she started kicking me. I was yelling and screaming, trying to get away, but I couldn’t do it. She beat me until she was tired and then held me down while she caught her breath. Mom grabbed the belt and put me over the chair and beat me with it for a few more minutes. She then led me to my room and shut the door.

  The next day when I had to get up for school, my face was bruised and cut, and I had a black eye. Bruises were on my back and butt, and I was really sore. Not one person in authority asked me what had happened. Not one person could identify with what I was going through, and I felt really trapped in a situation I couldn’t get out of. I made another plan to escape and it wasn’t going to be under the house this time.

  Chapter 37 Music Makes An Entrance

  When I was 12, my mother got me a job as a bus boy and dish washer at the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant on Asher Avenue in Little Rock. She had been working for the Lee family, doing their books several nights a week and hanging out at the bar in the restaurant. On the first night I went to work, the grill cook walked out, and Francis, the older son working in the kitchen, put me on the grill preparing ribs and meats and deep frying won tons and egg rolls.

  I admired Francis right away. I often wondered why a guy in his early 20s wasn’t out partying like most other people his age. Francis worked really hard and made an impression on me that hard work paid off. He was in charge of the kitchen with a man we called Uncle Billy. Uncle Billy was an Asian man who had been a family friend of the Lees for years. Mr. Lee had been a Little Rock restaurateur for a while, and Uncle Billy had worked for him most of that time. A few years later, Uncle Billy opened his own place, Hong Kong Restaurant. It was located in the Old Cantrell part of Little Rock and was a hit for years. They kept the kitchen in order, working like a clock. Francis’ easy manner was a hit with me, and he taught me how to do most of the things on and around the grill. When I took a break, I would get some fresh steamed rice, cover it with butter and put sugar on top of that. Uncle Billy teased me every time about how fat I would become.

  “Oh, you get so fat,” he would say to me with his Asian accent. I would just smile and enjoy the perfectly cooked rice.

  Most of the money I made, my mother said was going into the bank. I wasn’t making much, just minimum wage, something like $2.75 an hour. I figured it was about $40 a week with the hours I was getting. It was fun, and it was a way to avoid my mother even though she would be in the next room doing the books. She left me alone and rarely came back to the kitchen. She never hit me or yelled at me when other people were around. When she did come into the kitchen, Francis and Uncle Billy would give her glowing reports about my job performance, and she would make comments about what a good kid I was. But when we were at home the abuse continued.

  For a few months, throwing papers, working part time in a Chinese restaurant and going to school kept me so busy that I didn’t have any real time to enjoy being a kid.

  My mother and stepfather were avid bowlers. Monday nights they bowled with a team, and on Tuesday and Wednesday they competed in individual events. On Saturday mornings, when we were old enough, Mom would get up early and take us to the bowling alley for the kid sessions. Then she would go back home and sleep until it was time to come get us. I learned to bowl well. I didn’t set any records, but I was pretty consistent at it. I tried to impress my mother, but that seemed impossible. I don’t think we ever bowled a game together. I still enjoy bowling, and I have had several outings with crews and band folks that were very memorable times.

  When school was out for the summer, some of my workload eased, and I looked for ways to plan my moving on. I didn’t think of my plan as running away. It seemed more important than that. By the summer of my 12th year, I felt that I knew what life was all about, and I wasn’t finding it in Little Rock. As with most kids, I did not recognize the value of my hometown or state. The media promote so many life choices that it’s very easy not to see the value around you. Arkansas is a beautiful state with fresh air and fresh water. From the northern border to the southern one, the typography of the state changes from Ozark Mountains to the Delta with swamps. With forests everywhere, it is referred to as the Natural State for those reasons and others. The people here are as genuine as you can find anywhere in America. But when you’re young, you don’t consider those values as important to life. Most young folks want to move away and find a life that is different. Head for the glitz and glam.

  With the scars already imbedded, I couldn’t see the value of anything in Arkansas. When my dad picked me up for the summer months and took me somewhere else where there was no abuse and only fun, I knew there was a better life than what my mother was providing in Arkansas. It was a place I wanted to get far away from and have a normal life, whatever that was.

  I had quit making newspaper deliveries and had taken on the Chinese restaurant job full time. My grades in school were average. I did well in history and geography, just okay with my science and downright bad in my math and English studies. My mother bought me a cornet, and I joined the school band. I got no encouragement from her to play and wasn’t allowed to practice at home. After a few months in the band, I wanted to switch to the drums and that caused a problem with my mother. I wanted to grow my hair long like the fashions that were sweeping the country, and that too caused her grief.

  Boyle Park, only a couple of blocks away from our home, had become a place that I escaped to more and more. A large city park with more than 100 acres of woods and streams, I would ride my bike for hours there. I knew all the trails from one end to another. Three large pavilions stood at a crossroads in the park where occasionally bands would set up and play music. Mom and my stepdad had warned us not to go down there when the bands were playing. They were all a bunch of drugged out hippies, they would say. They made it sound like zombies eating kids – crap like that.

  I was discovering music and after hearing it in the park I was drawn to it. From our house we could hear the thumping and a few high notes once in a while depending on how the wind was blowing but couldn’t really make out the songs that were being played. I rode down one Saturday afternoon and all three pavilions had bands in each one. The pavilions were three different sizes with the largest one being a massive thing put together with large trees made into logs. A very large fireplace was at one end, and the steps leading up into it were all rock. In the summer it was a beautiful place nestled into the hillside with greenery all around. Several hundred people could get inside it. The band was set up in front of the fireplace with the drummer centered in front of it. I remembered they were playing protest songs about the war. I know I objected to the war from my own viewpoint because it had taken my dad away from me, but I felt compelled to defend my dad and others who were there fighting it. I was taken by the music just the same and mesmerized by the guys playing it. They seemed to be in another world.

  About that same time, there was a dance downtown at a place where the Masons met for the DeMolay kids. My uncles and cousins were all a part of it, so I was encouraged to join DeMolay as well. The Saint Frances Group, a popular local band at the time, was playing our dance. They had lights and sound and several guys running it all. It was a big production for a local band, and it seemed like a really big event
to me at 12 years old. Some of these same guys playing in the band and working the lights and sound I would meet later in life and they assisted me in my start in the touring business.

  There was a guy in my neighborhood who was a drummer at the time, and he played in another local band that seemed to be the talk of the town. Linc lived only a few blocks away, and I saw him coming and going a lot. I thought he was even cooler because he had the same name as Linc on the popular TV show, The Mod Squad. He never let me hang out with him. I’m sure he thought I was a weird, little fat kid, but I admired his cool demeanor and the fact that he played drums for a band named Reminiscence who, in our little world, was as big as The Beatles. I went to the fairgrounds one day to see Reminiscence play. Many neighborhood kids couldn’t wait to go the show because of Linc’s connection. The band wore matching outfits. Fred Moorhead, a young black man who fronted the band, had a good singing voice. How unique that, during that time, a black man was lead singer of an otherwise all-white Arkansas band playing rock music.

  Another kid, Brooks Brown, who was an incredible guitar player, sat in with Reminiscence that day. When I was older, I met Brooks. He grew to become a well-known musician in the area who later was in several other local bands. One of them was called Fifth Cliff. I really enjoyed their music and took a couple of demo tapes to several record company offices in New York City when I became a driver. We never played together, but when I went on tour with Eddie Murphy in 1988, I called Brooks at the last minute, and he got into a small rental truck and followed the tour carrying Eddie’s entourage’s luggage. We had a great time traveling the country together, staying in some of the finest hotels in America, doing all kinds of things in the various cities and hitting the bars. I was so shocked and let down when a few months after the tour was over that Brooks ended his life with a shotgun in a local hotel room. I don’t think anyone saw that one coming.