Balancing on the hay wagon behind the baler. The bales are too heavy to lift but they somehow make it up on the growing, moving stack. Maybe $3.15/hour will buy the electric bass that will sound like Stanley Clarke’s.
Detasseling hybrid seed corn. One mile at a time, one tassel to pull from the top of a seven foot stalk every ten inches. The older kids want you to fight, to wrestle at the end of the field.
The old school bus takes us to the fields at first light all summer long.
A few years of trial and error. An inkling of an identity leaning hard on a simple musical instrument. Miles Davis, or maybe Zeppelin? Nobody else likes Steely Dan? Obscure 80’s jazz fusion?
The chance came in eleventh grade. I would replace an aging bass player on a tour of the northern Midwest with Johnnie Branham and the Silver Eagle Band. Named for a defunct tour bus, the Silver Eagle would travel in a pickup. There had been a bus driver. A driver with a harelip who loved to talk about Buicks. NowJohnnie and Al talked about the driver and the bus while
we drove the pickup three abreast. CB and AM and jerky, pork rinds and Coca-Cola.
From Ohio, our first stop was Miles City, Montana. I had never really listened to country music.
The Alta Club was, I suppose, a real roadhouse. The club owner (Bud?) dealt poker and kept an eye on the blinking machines.
My older brother Fred’s driver’s license got me in the door. Gary, a very short and friendly truck driver was the bouncer for the week. He was appalled when a fight broke out. It was between a pair of old and stiff ranchers. There was a woman- they took turns dancing with her. One old man knocked the other into the small stage. Johnnie stopped playing to steady the speaker cabinet sitting on a two top near the edge.
Old men really bleed a lot when cut.
We were all appalled. Gary performed some kind of first aid.
I remember watching it play out from the stage all through Friends in low Places and Don’t Close Your Eyes. They pointed at each other while dancing with the woman. We played some Elvis songs (Johnnie had been an impersonator in Chicago).
It was the Achy Breaky summer and there was no getting around that. Five hours each night, five days a week. So much line dancing.
There were these other songs-really good songs-by Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson and others. I would hear most of them for the first time on a little stage in Montana or Wisconsin or Indiana.
I roomed with Al Ridgeway; Johnnie got his own. Al was beginning his 40’s with a full set of dentures and without the ability to read or write. He had that Jerry Reed sort of nervous hillbilly energy that makes for a great drummer. I remember Al going through a carton of Basic Filter 100’s every few days, unable to make it through a night’s sleep without at least one cigarette break.
On the longer drives, Al’s restlessness would have him on the CB trying to cause controversy among truckers.
Pretty country.
Precious Moments figurines were sent from a truck stop to the wives back home.
Al and Ginny weren’t legally married yet but Al figured any woman who stays with you through a few drunken suicide attempts may as well be a wife.
They were so kind to me. Didn’t let me drink more than I could handle.
Easter happened while we were in Miles City. The bar maids brought an Easter dinner to the Alta Club for us.
I regret telling Al that Jesus was likely not Caucasian as portrayed on the TV cartoon Easter special. There was One Jesus and He Was White.
Wolf tracks at a state park.
One quart of oil per tank of gas.
Johnnie finally got his high school diploma through a correspondence course. Class ring and everything.
Wisconsin Dells at the Best Western lounge, International Falls at the Border Bar, Ft. Wayne for a charity show at a hospital cafeteria.
As a Pentecostal preacher and a fully literate high school graduate, Johnnie was able to remain straight-edge throughout.
Al had no such guiding principles and fell in love with a sometimes prostitute who took his wallet one night.
Now Al was drinking too much and I loaned him some of my pay to make it back to Ohio.
Johnnie Branham Junior joined us from Miami to replace Al.
New stories about a metal cover band and a Kawasaki Ninja and southern women. I missed Al.
Johnnie made it on the contemporary gospel charts a few years later. A house in Nashville. Another tour bus, although not a Silver Eagle.
Photo: Adeena Baer