My Days with Granny!

First of all, my co-worker and fellow blogger APGG, has asked me when I'm going to post again. Ok, I admit I’m not a daily blogger. I do like to think about what I’m going to blog about and if it’s “blog worthy”. He's actually the one that said...you should blog about that...so here goes.

I owe my days with Granny to my former bandmate, David “Lonesome Dave” Lutz. A smoke’n guitar player not to mention one of the better singer/songwriters that I know. So I’ll dedicate this one to you Dave. Thanks for all the good times, your patience with me back when, the memories of cruisn'n down the road, solving (or attempting to solve) all the problems of the world while passing the miles in Granny and most of all for your friendship.

Moving to Montana
Back in 1990 when things were really falling apart for me here in Florida, I got a call from a friend of mine who had packed up and headed west to Montana. He was in a band that was getting ready to go on tour in Canada and needed someone to do his lighting design/direction for him. Of course I jumped on the chance leaving everyone I knew behind on the other side of the burning bridge (yeah, that’s another story).

So I packed up and went west, well North West, to Kalispell, Montana. Now coming from a place like Tampa, Florida and going to a place like Kalispell is a HUGE change within itself. I didn’t know what to expect. I just know that when I got there it was a lot cooler than where I had come from. Yeah…cool…like colder but also like cool! After all, I was in the Flathead Valley with mountains on two sides of me and 40 minutes from Glacier National Park…wow! My Montana days…again, another story for another time.

Canada
After being in Kalispell for a couple of weeks we packed up the cars and the trailer which was hooked to a long, sleek sided-rounded top, scream’n girl named Granny…a.k.a. a 1960 Pontiac Bonneville hearse. Yeah…a hearse! Hey, sure you may laugh but what a ride this beast was. Big and brown and it was like 20 feet long (well it seemed that long) with enough leg room to stretch out comfortably (no pun intended) and hold a boat load of band gear, suitcases, stash cases (yes, we had those back then) and instruments.

I won’t go into all the details of the actual establishments we played in, but here’s a brief rundown of where we played and not in any order, only because I can’t remember that far back.. Fernie, British Columbia for a week, Calgary, Alberta for a week (at the Calgary Stampede), a week at a rundown hotel bar in Calgary (can you say S C A R Y? Well it was!). Other small towns in Alberta such as Pincher Creek (twice), Brooks where there happened to be no A/C and the largest slaughter house in North America , Drumheller (Land of the Dinosaurs), way up to Fort McMurray, which is like 3 hours south of the Yukon, Edmonton for a week, Banff for a week (one of the prettiest places to play in Canada) and the only place we managed to get fired for not being loud enough…but got hired across the street with better accommodations and then finally, I believe it was back to Kalispell. All of that took a good couple of months…kind of a blur if ya know what I mean.

Ride’n shotgun in Granny, on that long road with the Canadian plains slip’n past my window, I was exposed to more music and conversations about music than I ever had been. Ok, I’ll confess that some of the best music was Dave’s originals. He’d probably shrug that off with a laugh but he WAS the singer/songwriter of the group and still in my book has what it takes. But I digress…so back to the story.

Now somewhere in between one or our gigs, one of the band members decided to fly home and back, only to find out that we were in Canada illegally. So, from Calgary, 3 or 4 of us had to travel back down to the Border and do a “turn around the flag pole” as they say. It seems, at that time, you could only be in Canada (as a tourist) for a few weeks. We didn’t have any kind of temporary work visa’s and needed one if we wanted to remain. I guess you could say we were in Canada illegally. Ok, we WERE in Canada illegally. Needless to say when we got to the border it was a real hassle and it took us a good two or three hours to be processed around the pole and back into Canada.

Cruising throughout Canada in a 1960 Pontiac Bonneville hearse draws some attention, to say the least. It was a great time in my life and I will always remember being in a band, making music for money and not having to worry about anything. Dave, Granny and I saw many great adventures on the road and not only in Canada. She made several trips over to Washington State traversing Lookout Pass and the 4th of July Pass several times with me right there with her in the passenger seat all along.

The Demise of Granny
I recall this time very clearly so here goes. We were on our way back to Kalispell from a few weeks in Moses Lake, WA. There we were, just cruise’n home to see our loved ones after being gone for 4 weeks, feeling good (yeah, at the time I was feel’n reeeeeaaal good). We were just east of Spokane, Washington and all of a sudden Granny starts to fish tail back and forth and the left rear end drops and drags the axle for a good 75 yards or so while my band mate Dave struggled (really struggled) to bring her to the side of the road. He get’s her over, I jump out (barefoot mind you) and the left rear tire has collapsed and folded inward underneath, and, the tire was on fire…which happened to be right next to the fuel tank.

Things Get Interesting
As our drummer had decided to go over to the Seattle area to visit with his brother and was going to fly back to Kalispell, our other band mate (Billy Angel) was driving the other band car (Gladys) and pulled over about 50 yards behind us. I decided to run down the highway to tell him the tire is on fire. While running barefoot I step on a very hot shard of metal that had sheared off from Granny and managed to burn the bottom of my foot. OUCH! Billy starts flagging down folks in search of a fire extinguisher in which he gets two people to pull over who have those tiny extinguishers they sell you…HA! They last about 15 seconds and then fizzle out. So after literally ripping and tossing all the gear out of the back and sides of Granny and shoveling dirt on the tire with the cymbal bag cover, and finally getting a trucker to pull over with a real fire extinguisher, we finally get the fire out. Not only would have we lost everything in the back of the hearse, but we had the trailer hitched up full of the rest of our gear, which all would have gone up in smoke as well.

Needless to say, that was pretty much the end of Granny. With the rear end gone, the left rear ball joint gone, basically a broken axle and, burned on one side, she was shipped off to the storage yard. Granny sat there for several months until purchased by someone out of Moses Lake who restored her to a big black shining beauty. We never saw Granny after that day she burned. It was hard to say goodbye, especially for Dave who loved the old girl. But, nothing that a turbo charged used Hertz/Penske cargo van couldn’t replace with a pull out ramp…oh yeah!

But, the story doesn’t end there. One may ask, how did you get all that gear and the trailer back from outside of Spokane, over two mountain passes, and finally back to Kalispell? Well it just so happens my close friend was at a water ski tournament just down the road (funny how that worked out eh?). I hitched a ride to the tournament and convinced him into coming over, throwing the gear from the hearse in the back of his truck and hitching up the trailer and towing it back. I tell ya, the other two guys were NOT happy with me as I was at the lake, sip’n on a few cold ones while they waited in the hot sun for 3 hours. But they found it in there hearts to forgive me since I DID secure the ride home.

Lessons Learned
So is there a lesson in all of this besides when hauling precious cargo and a heavy load, ALWAYS carry a fully charged, industrial size fire extinguisher. Or better yet, a foam unit which can extinguish rubber while burning? Not really, but it was a fun story so I thought I’d share it with you.

Like I said, I have more stories from the road but I’ll save that material for another time and another blog. Like the one time we got to see our band mate in shackles and chains dressed in one of the those nice orange jump suits...