I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability (21 page)

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Authors: Ron White

BOOK: I Had the Right to Remain Silent...But I Didn't Have the Ability
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Now I'm in the dark, I can't see shit, I'm pushing all these buttons, and I can't get out. I'm going, "This fucking sucks. Hey! Hey!"
Well, it turns out you need to push the same button twice. But if you don't know that, you're gonna push all the other buttons, and then start kicking shit. And you're still trapped.
It was a pretty bus, but dirty. But it was a nicer bus than the first one they sent us. It was all one big salon in the back with a nice bed.
By the time we've made this detour to shift into the new bus, it's gotten late. Barbara and I are exhausted, so we go in the back and go to bed. I had ridden on a custom tour bus once before, and the ride was incredibly smooth. I slept like a baby. So that's what I'm expecting now.
C.B. puts the bus into gear and gets on the highway.
Bang, bang, bang.
Barbara and I are bouncing off the bed. It's so fuckin' rough, we can't believe it.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
It turns out with these buses, when you park 'em, you let the air out of these hydraulic lifts and they sit way down low on the ground. Well, C.B. didn't know that. We're hearing all these appalling grinding noises, we're bouncing a foot off the bed, and I'm going, "This can't be right."
It wasn't near as bad up at the front, but it wasn't too good, either. C.B.'s holding on valiantly. I say, "You know what, it's a little rough back there."
C.B. pulls over at a gas station, we go out and look at the bus. The mud flaps are laying flat on the fucking ground. I go, "You know what, I don't know anything about these buses, but I know for a fact that the mud flaps don't drag on the ground."
Well, we've got truckers and everything trying to figure out the system to get this bus off the ground. We get the front end up, but not the back end. You gotta know how to operate that specific bus, because they're all different. They're all made and customized by different people.
Eventually we get it off the ground. Now it's driving so much better, Barbara and I can finally relax and get a little sleep. In the morning C.B. pulls into a Cracker Barrel for us to go eat. We don't know this guy, but we can tell he's a character.
We have this awkward moment, because we don't know if we're supposed to invite him to join us or if he goes off and eats with other bus drivers who happen to be there or whatever. So there's this awkward pause, and then I go, "Come eat breakfast with us."
We sit down at the table, and C.B. says, "Do you like pickles?"
"Yeah, I like pickles fine."
"Let me tell you a story about pickles. I drove eighteen-wheelers for forty years, and I was out in Los Angeles, California, and I pulled my truck up to the dock to unload. And I'm gonna have to drive back empty all the way to Atlanta, and I make no money at all for that. And I notice there on the loading dock there are cases and cases of pickles."
Barbara and I are leaning in to get all the details now. We never heard a pickle story before.
"I asked the ole boy who was working the dock. I said, 'What's the deal with the pickles?'
"The ole boy said, 'Onst a month, we sell our employees pickles at discount prices.'
"I said, 'Well, you know what, I'm kind of an employee. I'm working right here on your loading dock, after all.'
"He said, 'Well, you know what, we've got so many pickles, we'll sell you pickles at employee prices.' Do you know what I did?"
We said, "No, what did you do?"
"I bought every pickle on the dock. And I loaded my truck up with 'em, and I took off across America selling pickles. I met one woman that was having a pickle party. Have you ever heard of a pickle party?"
"No."
"She bought four cases of pickles. I paid four dollars a case, I'm selling 'em for nine dollars a case. You think I wasn't making money?"
He tells the story in such a manner that I think he's still got a few cases of pickles left that he wants to sell me. It turns out this happened thirty years ago.
"I stopped at grocery stores. I told 'em, 'I got pickles at discount prices. What kinda pickles you want?' And they stocked the shelves."
He was Johnny Pickleseed, I guess.
C.B. drove for us for a while. Now, our dogs have never chewed up anything. But if C.B. left anything out on the bus, our dogs would chew it up. They chewed up his glasses, his cigarettes, his phone book.
He's actually calling the bus company saying, "I've got another pair of glasses in my house. You're gonna need to FedEx 'em to me." He's driving the bus blind.
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, Larry, 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.

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