{"id":1123,"date":"2017-11-27T20:13:33","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T20:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=1123"},"modified":"2017-11-27T20:16:50","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T20:16:50","slug":"ftv-keep-on-truckin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=1123","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Keep on Truckin’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0I idly wrote the title of this FTV one day when thinking back about hauling my drum set around over the years. \u00a0Like the kid who decides to play the tuba in the school band, one does not sling a drum set under one\u2019s arm and walk home after school. \u00a0Luckily for me, the school band had drums for me to play so I really didn\u2019t have to move my set much farther than the basement when my mother found it hard to keep sane with me banging away on them in my bedroom at the end of the hall thirty feet from her kitchen. If your mind works like mine, the phrase \u201ckeep on truckin\u2019\u201d either sends you to the Grateful Dead song or the iconic cartoon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Our good friends at Wikipedia frame the cartoon as follows: \u00a0\u201c <\/span>Keep on Truckin’<\/span><\/i> is a one-page <\/span>comic<\/span>\u00a0by Robert Crumb.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It was published in the first issue of Zap Comix<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>in 1968. A visual riff on the lyrics of the\u00a0 Blind Boy Fuller<\/span>\u00a0song “Truckin’ My Blues Away<\/em>“, it consists of an assortment of men, drawn in Crumb’s distinctive style, strutting confidently across various landscapes. The strip’s drawings became iconic images of optimism during the hippie<\/span>\u00a0era. \u00a0Crumb was offered $100,000 by Toyota to reproduce the image for a <\/span>Keep On Truckin’<\/span><\/i> advertising campaign, but turned it down.\u201d \u00a0Yep – the \u201chippie era\u201d rang a bell with me, but also the Dead reference as my old bass player Mike was an avid Dead fan. Not to mention we developed this strange habit of walking in a leaned back pose any time the sun was low in the sky behind us, thus giving our legs that kind of elongated, shadow that evoked one of Crumb\u2019s characters (and no doubt made people think we were a little off center).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cTruckin\u2019\u201d in my early days involved stuffing my drums in the trunk of our 1969 Chevrolet Caprice. \u00a0That tank of a car held the whole set so all I had to do was talk my mother or sister into dropping me off at a buddies house or school, depending on what I needed them for. \u00a0When I was in the pit orchestra for the musical <\/span>Bye Bye Birdie,<\/span><\/i> the final weeks of rehearsal involved so many nights at Kaufman Auditorium, it made sense to leave the drums there. \u00a0Eventual Twig bass player Mike was the guitar player on stage so we would make it a point to get to the theater early and have a little impromptu jam with the orchestra bass player Ron Caviani. \u00a0The Saturday before the final week of play prep, a group of us decided to walk over and have a little jam on stage completely forgetting that there would be no reason for the auditorium to be open on a Saturday. \u00a0After the final Sunday matinee, I had to coordinate with someone to pick me up to transport my drums to the cast party at the old Chalet Restaurant (which later burned down to be replaced by the Bonanza Steak House which is now a clinic of some kind). \u00a0We had a grand old time being the cast party music (which in turn was the spark that set in motion the formation of The Twig), and at the end of the night, I had to call for another pick up to get the drums home. \u00a0One of the reasons my folks never objected to having my bands rehearse in our basement was simple – they didn\u2019t have to drive me anywhere else! \u00a0Of course, getting a driver\u2019s license cured the need for finding a ride, but my bands kept rehearsing at our house for the next eight years just the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When The Twig began playing gigs on a regular basis, both Mike and I had access to a pickup truck with a topper on it. \u00a0The family that didn\u2019t need the truck for something else or wasn\u2019t at camp on any given weekend dictated who drove to the gig. \u00a0It didn\u2019t matter to me that I drove more often as the equipment always ended up back at my house and if it was a late night, we could blow off unloading until the next day. \u00a0As a trio, we didn\u2019t have all that much equipment, but it would not have been fun to stuff two amps, the PA and drums into the backseat of the Caprice. As we upgraded to Fender Bassman and Showman speaker bottoms (Mike and Gene each had two bottoms which not only looked cool, it made it much easier for them to hear each other with a cabinet on each side of the stage and for us to fill some pretty big halls), a truck was the only way to go. \u00a0On occasions when Mike\u2019s truck was partly filled with his father\u2019s stuff, I would transport the drums separately in my green whale car if we had to rally to the gig.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By the time I was in Knockdown, I was also employed at the Huron Mountain Club in the summers and living at home while attending NMU the rest of the year. \u00a0We had worked out a delicate ballet of \u201ctruck, truck, who needs the truck\u201d so I could continue using my dad\u2019s truck to get to gigs. \u00a0We were playing two or three nights a week so I appreciated being able to leave the equipment in the truck for several days at a time. \u00a0During the school term, this meant keeping my other wheels available so my dad wouldn\u2019t have to drive our equipment all over town doing his errands. \u00a0All summer, dad would graciously let me leave the stuff in the truck so I could swap vehicles on gig nights, do the job, drop off the truck, and then motor back to the club for the morning shift. \u00a0I lost how count of how many times my dad and brother had to unload all our stuff into the garage so they could use the truck. \u00a0They never complained, but I probably didn\u2019t thank them enough for being able to arrive home and pick up the fully loaded S10. \u00a0Over two full summers of commuting like this, there wasn\u2019t one time that we goofed it up. \u00a0\u00a0It never crossed my mind at the time, but had we gotten our wires crossed, it would not have been fun to show up and find the truck gone and our band stuff sitting in the garage or basement! \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Just before my junior year in college, my dad came home one day and said, \u201cHey, I found a used pickup truck for sale in Iron Mountain. \u00a0Why don\u2019t you buy it so I can have a truck to use when you are using mine?\u201d \u00a0The beater Chevy Bel Air I had been driving back and forth the the Huron Mountain Club that summer was burning almost as much oil as gas so it seemed to be a no-brainer to me. \u00a0The equipment truck ballet continued, but now there was always a truck on hand for my father\u2019s handy-man and wood cutting projects. \u00a0I suppose I could have picked up a basic shell for my ochre colored truck, but it was probably handier to have one open bed and one closed bed truck for various uses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My first year in Ontonagon, I didn\u2019t have a band so the drums stayed in Marquette until Mark Bobula invited me to perform at the spring Hootenanny athletic benefit at the high school. \u00a0Still lacking a topper on the ochre beast, I again borrowed my dad\u2019s truck for a week to get them here. \u00a0My adjustment to living in a smaller town became complete when I heard my two bedroom wall neighbor\u2019s discussing the new truck that appeared in the apartment lot. \u00a0It was kind of funny to listen to the two young ladies (who I had not actually met face to face) discussing whether or not the new truck meant that I might have a roomie. \u00a0One part of me wanted to beat on the wall and yell, \u201cYou know, I can hear you!\u201d but it was cheap entertainment so I let it slide. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Once I was invited to join Easy Money, it became apparent that I would have to bite the bullet and get a topper. \u00a0My dad was still traveling with his State job so I asked if he could keep an eye out for a basic shell. \u00a0Sure enough, a week later he called and said that a dealership in Hurley was having a sale so he put down fifty bucks and told them I would be down to pick it up later in the week. \u00a0I remember the trip clearly because that was the last road trip former Elementary-Junior High librarian John Nakas and I took before he pulled up stakes and moved back to Detroit. \u00a0As a city boy, I had a hard time explaining to John exactly what we were going to pick up. \u00a0Only when it was clamped on the back of my truck did he finally grasp why I kept calling it a \u2018topper\u2019 or \u2018a shell\u2019. \u00a0As an added bonus, I found the extra weight made it much easier to back up in sand or snow than in the days when I had an open bed truck. \u00a0The back end was so light that the wheels would chatter and buck trying to gain traction. \u00a0It was such a problem that I had become the master at never driving forward in a situation where I might have to back up on sand or snow, especially if I didn\u2019t have my \u2018winter accessories\u2019 in the back: \u00a0two washtubs of sand to add traction weight.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The next problem arrived when I was back in summer school at NMU. \u00a0Easy Money had a lot of jobs booked that summer, so I was racking my brain how to not have a truckload of equipment on board when I would commute back to Marquette for classes. \u00a0My folks again came to the rescue and offered me use of the old whale car. \u00a0The Caprice was seven or eight years old and because \u00a0my mother only drove it around town doing errands, it had less than 25,000 miles on the odometer. \u00a0\u201cPut some miles on it and park the equipment truck in your garage for the summer\u201d was just too good a deal to pass up. \u00a0\u201cFor the summer\u201d ended up to be a two year arrangement that only ended when I retired from playing regularly with Easy Money and my folks decided to sell the whale car to my sister and her husband.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the ochre pick up truck\u2019s reliability declined (putting more money into a rust bucket that was beginning to show its age didn\u2019t make much sense), I put an ad in the Herald. \u00a0An Ontonagon local serving at KI Sawyer AFB saw the ad and showed it to a buddy from Gwinn who was looking for that model. \u00a0When he showed up to take it off my hands, he told he that he used the parts off a couple of trucks to keep one on the road. \u00a0I am not sure what shape the truck he was driving was in, but he said that my truck was now going to be his primary wheels! \u00a0When he announced that, \u00a0\u201cIt is in much better shape than my other trucks\u201d I was a bit thunderstruck! \u00a0\u00a0As they say, one man\u2019s trash is another man\u2019s treasure, so after a decade of road trips, hauling, and backwoods exploration, I found myself without a truck. \u00a0By that time, we owned a small Subaru wagon and I got over missing my truck when I found I could put the whole drum set in the cargo area for those occasional gigs I was still doing with Easy Money. \u00a0It now takes the whole back seat and trunk of my Fusion to do the same load, but I am still truckin\u2019 my drums around for the occasional fill in gig.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Truckin\u2019? \u00a0It was a way of life for so long that I have fond memories of the many gigs and many miles I managed to put on our \u201cfleet\u201d of trucks. \u00a0I like to think I am still truckin\u2019 along, I just don\u2019t happen to do it with a truck these days.<\/span><\/p>\n

Top piece video – I know you were expecting the Dead, but we like to keep you on your toes – another great<\/p>\n

truckin’ song by BTO from a 2010 appearance in Ontario.<\/p>\n