Before embarking on a solo career, Lita Ford was the
lead guitarist for the first successful all-female rock
and roll band - The Runaways.

There wasn't much to look at when driving from Ft. Worth to Houston, so the new landscapes of Louisiana were a welcome change. But while the scenery may have been different in Louisiana, the management at the Lake Charles Cardi's was, unfortunately, very similar to that of the management we'd recently encountered at the Houston Cardi's.  It had become obvious to us that the Cardi's chain seemed to be going down hill fast. They had lost most of their quality people and were having to make do with whatever morons they could get to run their clubs. We didn't expect the royal treatment we'd grown accustomed to back in our heyday, but we sure expected better than what awaited us on July 24th, 1984 when we arrived at the Cardi's in Lake Charles. 

The manager talked to us like we were idiots for arriving on Tuesday. He said that Lita Ford didn't want an opening act. We told him what Bloomstrom had said, but our words fell on deaf ears. Cardi's attitude was "I don't know what to tell you, but you aren't playing here until Wednesday night. End of story." So as usual, we made the best of it. It would turn out that Lita Ford had her own opening act arranged. The incident gave us a chance to see the Lita Ford show, while getting acquainted with some of the local people in the area. Lita Ford was hot, both on stage and off. After her set, I was outside getting a break from the smoke, when I noticed Rich Mauch boarding Lita Ford's tour bus! That was huge news. I scrambled to find out if anyone knew what was going on. 

Dan told me that Lita Ford had chatted with Rich for a few minutes, and had invited him out to her bus. All I could think about was what a lucky dog that Rich was! I couldn't wait to hear a first hand account of every thing that happened, from Rich himself! It would turn out to be anti-climactic. Lita invited Rich on her bus because of what he had in his pocket. Once it was gone, he got the boot. It was as simple as that. She'd been around the block and knew exactly how to play the game. 

The following afternoon we arrived at Cardi's for our sound check. One of the waitresses had just bought a puppy, and was playing with it on the stage. It was a tiny thing, solid white, and playful. I sat down next to them to check it out and leaned forward to say something like "Oh what a cute little doggie you are!" Suddenly, the dog lunged forward and bit me right on my nose! It's teeth were razor sharp, leaving a gash on the right side, above the fleshy part of the nostril. (I still have a tiny scar.) Blood didn't trickle from the cut. It poured! In fact, I was concerned that I wasn't going to get it to stop bleeding in time for the gig. My entire nose, which is bulbous to start with, turned red and began to swell up. The bite had triggered a sneezing fit, and my eyes were bloodshot for the entire night. It was just a big fat hairy drag of a deal to mess with right before a gig. After the gig, we ate at the Pitt Grill, where a huge fight broke out. Lake Charles was full of interesting characters. 

On Friday night, our old pal Tank (Chuck Bush) from Waco showed up. He drove in from Baton Rouge with a copy of his latest movie, "Terror In the Swamp". After the gig, we had a movie premiere back at the motel. We had all wondered if Chuck would try to make a career out of acting after appearing in Fandango back in 1983. As happy as we were for our friend, it was a bit ironic how RJ and I had spent at least six nights a week for the past nine years playing in clubs trying to get discovered, and then Chuck walks into a convenience store and meets a movie director who puts him in a Kevin Costner movie. So it goes.We were very happy for Chuck, and his great fortune, dumb luck, or whatever it was that put him in that Seven Eleven store at that moment in time. Whether he went on to be a big star with a long movie career or not, we were proud to know him because he was just a great all around guy. A teddy bear. A sweetheart.  

On the morning of July 29, 1984 (a Sunday) Rich Mauch and I piled into Rick Miller's car and the three of us headed for New Orleans, while the rest of the band and crew drove on to Beaumont with the equipment. Mobile phones hadn't been invented yet, and Carla was due to deliver at any time. And to make things even more interesting, she and Rick were having twins! That meant it would not be unusual to deliver a week or two early. Rick checked in at every opportunity. Things seemed to be just fine at home so we set out to enjoy ourselves and take in a little culture at the World's fair.

Sunday night we partied on Bourbon Street. Then on Monday, we went to the World's Fair. I'd been to the 1968 Hemisfair in San Antonio, but this would be my  first full-fledged World's Fair. The first thing I noticed as we pulled into downtown New Orleans was the giant MART (Mississippi Aerial River Transport), a skyride that stretched across the Mississippi. The supports for the cables were really tall and the thought of riding that thing gave me the willies. But I would eventually ride it. The cable was 2,000 feet long, and took four minutes to cross the river.

The official logo of the 1984 World's Fair.

Once inside the event, we were in for a very memorable day indeed! The fairgrounds covered 150 acres total.  At a total cost of $350,000,000 - this would be the first World's Fair to declare bankruptcy while still operating! The theme of the fair was a bit on the boring side; "World of Rivers: Fresh Water As a Source of Life."  Still, it would be a fascinating day for us, particularly as we turned a corner and came upon the Space Shuttle sitting right in front of us. The Enterprise was the first U.S. Space Shuttle built. It had originally been named the Constitution, but a massive letter writing campaign by Trekkies (fans of Star Trek) convinced NASA to change it. The Enterprise was a test vehicle, and was not equipped for space travel. It survived 5 unmanned missions before human pilots flew in it. (It is now in the Smithsonian Institute.)

Space Shuttle Enterprise at the 1984 World's Fair.

We also saw the very last steam engine built for the U.S. Railways. Old No. 8444 came cross country on a historic journey to be at the Fair. Paintings by Matisse and Dali were on public display. But perhaps the biggest thrill of the day happened totally by chance. We were strolling along when we noticed a small crowd beginning to gather in front of a church. Then we noticed a sign that said, "Reverend Jessie Jackson will be speaking at 2pm."  That was over an hour away, but we couldn't resist the opportunity to see him. We waited in line for over an hour and a half, in the mid-day heat. After a while we noticed that we were the ONLY white people in the entire line! And we weren't exactly your average looking white guys either! We stood out like sore thumbs! But we hadn't thought anything about it from a racial point of view. We knew that Reverend Jackson was a historical political figure for several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he was running for president. 

1984 was a big year for Jessie Jackson. It was the year he created the National Rainbow Coalition, a national social justice organization which would influence and change public policies in America. Jackson was the first African American presidential candidate to receive Electoral College votes, and to win a primary. He had been at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's side when King was shot and killed. Jessie Jackson was probably the closest thing to a president that I imagined I'd ever see in person. He gave an amazing speech. It was a version of his famous "I AM SOMEBODY" speech. And as a bonus, we also got to hear Coretta Scott King, (MLK's widow) speak too. It was interesting to be in that crowd, in the balcony of an old white church on the grounds of the World's Fair, and have to decide if we were going to join in with the audience in their battle cry. Jackson would shout, "I AM!"  Then the hundreds of black audience members would shout back, "SOMEBODY!" This went on and on for a while. I felt that if I didn't join in, it would be more conspicuous than if I did. So there we were, working ourselves into a social self-esteem phrenzy, led by none other that the Reverend of Reverends! In my state of social retardation, I was half-expecting a big brother to bounce us out of there, or at least get an angry glare from someone, but it never happened. We were just as welcome as anyone else. It was as if we were invisible. Truly an uplifting social experience. Once the speech was over and everyone filed out of the church, we couldn't help wondering why no other whites people had attended. Were things that different in New Orleans? Or did we overlook a sign somewhere telling us to keep out? I would eventually come to credit the fact that we were musicians, and musicians are some of the most colorblind people on earth.   

The worst part about the World's Fair was that I had stomach cramps the entire day. But seeing the Space Shuttle, Reverend Jackson, and all the other great sights helped me forget about it. After we'd seen all we could see in a day, we started our 264 mile journey to meet up with the rest of the guys in Beaumont. We were scheduled to play five nights at Cardi's there. The first night would be as the opening act for our old friends John Kay and Steppenwolf.  They'd always been great to work with in the past, but in Beaumont they seemed to go out of their way to make it difficult for us to set up, do sound check, and tear down. They were stingy with the lights and number of channels we could use on the PA. It was just sad. But it was also just one of those things we had to roll with. 

Some girls drove in from Lake Charles to see us. That was a surprise. We loved eating those big greasy breakfasts at the Iron Skillet Restaurant next to the motel. Walking across the parking lot was always interesting too. The place was filled with 18 wheelers, and truck stop whores. They would come out of the woodwork and start following us, asking "Want a date?" We didn't want one THAT bad. 

Beaumont people liked their rock and roll, and the attendances were good, but the crowds didn't mingle much with the band members like they did in other towns. That made for a rather boring time. After a few nights in Beaumont, the boredom must have gotten to RJ because he started pulling pranks and being a major jerk. RJ was the king of the pranksters anyway, but it was in Beaumont that I believe he pulled one he would never be able to top. Before the gig started, when Dan was gone to the bar for a beer, RJ climbed up on a table in the dressing room and grabbed a handful of fiberglass insulation. He then crumbled it up and sprinkled it into Dan's stage clothes that were hanging on a rack. Dan itched and scratched on stage all night long. It was a really cruel gag, but classic. I don't know if anyone ever told Dan why he was itching so bad. And I would later wonder if a gag is still a gag if you never admit what happened...

I had a run in with RJ in Beaumont on that particular trip as well. He had gotten into the habit of bending the neck of his bass to bend notes in certain songs. It seemed like he'd taken to doing it in almost every song after a while. It didn't take much of that to knock his bass out of tune. At the time, there was no such thing as a compact, easy to use guitar tuner yet. At least not in our band. We used a device called a strobe tuner, which was about the size of a large toaster. They were really expensive so we all had to share the one. I tried to get everyone to make it a habit to tune during every break, but it wasn't working with RJ. He just ignored me and played on an out of tune bass just to irritate me. So I started tuning his bass for him during the breaks. No charge. No fanfare. I just did it. But rather than thank me for it, he did something that was classic "RJ". On the following break, he put his bass in its case, and wrapped duct tape around the case about 6 times. Then he drew a sign - a picture of a guitar strobe tuner with a circle around it and a line through it! I knew what it meant immediately. It was the universal symbol for DON'T!  He'd started using that little symbol months earlier when he got fed up with motel maids waking him up in the mornings to clean the room. He made his own door-hanger with a picture of a maid, with the circle and line through it, and would hang it on the door. He would get really mad when they would come in anyway. They rarely spoke English, and that frustrated him even more. The NO MAID SERVICE door hanger was another great RJ classic.

We somehow survived Beaumont without any of us getting into a fight with each other, and made our way back home. Ricky met me at the door with a long face and I knew something was wrong. I put my gear down and plopped onto the couch as he opened up about being extremely depressed over his parents discussing getting a divorce. He told me he was going to take a leave of absence from his band, and planned to come back without Marty, Dave, or LD. He wasn't sure if he would keep Joel on drums or not. And he gave me the date that he would be moving out. I had until September 1st to figure out what I was going to do about a room mate. That gave me just under a month.

CHAPTER 59:  FUGITIVES FROM REALITY

SAVVY STORY INDEX

BACK TO JONESLAND

SEND EMAIL