Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings From the Road Read online

  I TRIED A HUNDRED TIMES TO QUIT SMOKING. BY THE TIME I ACTUALLY did quit smoking cigarettes, I had already started smoking pot, which I picked up from a couple of old musician buddies that I had run into in Fort Worth. The first time I smoked pot I kept waiting for something to happen. I kept puffing and puffing, waiting for something to happen, but nothing happened. So I went back to cigarettes and whiskey, which made shit happen. As I started playing the clubs around Texas, I ran into the pills: the white crosses, the yellow turnarounds, and the black mollies. I never liked any of the pills or speed, because I didn’t need speed; I was already speeding. So I quit everything but pot. Cigarettes were the hardest. My lungs were killing me from smoking everything from cedar post to grapevine, but I wasn’t getting high off the cigarettes, so it was good-bye, Chesterfields, and I haven’t smoked since. It’s one of the best decisions I have ever made.

  The day I quit, the day that I decided that I was through with fucking cigarettes, I took out the pack of cigarettes that I had just bought, opened it, threw them all away, rolled up twenty joints, replaced the twenty Chesterfields, and put the pack back in my shirt pocket, where I always kept my cigarettes, because half of the habit, for me, was reaching for and lighting something.

  FAMILY BIBLE

  There’s a family Bible on the table

  Its pages worn and hard to read

  But the family Bible

  On the table will ever be

  My key to memories

  I can see us sitting round the table

  When from the family Bible Dad would read

  And I can hear my mother softly singing

  Rock of ages

  Rock of Ages cleft for me

  This old world of ours is filled with trouble

  But this old world would oh so better be

  If we found more Bibles on the table

  And mothers singing rock of ages cleft for me

  THE NIGHT OWL AND BUD FLETCHER

  The Night Owl was hell—at least that’s what Mrs. Bressler told me. It was the first place that my best friend, Zeke Varnon, and I used to hang out, get drunk, and play music. There was a lot of drinking, smoking, dancing, cussing, and fighting. Margie and Lundy ran the Night Owl. In the middle of all this confusion and fighting was music. It’s what brought everyone there. It was one of the first beer joints that I played. Me, Sister Bobbie, Whistle Watson, and a little harelipped drummer. Bud Fletcher, who was Sister Bobbie’s husband—she married him while she was a senior in high school—was a very good friend of mine. He was my first promoter/booker. He was about half hustler. We had a band called “Bud Fletcher and the Texans.” We played the Night Owl, Chief Edwards, the Bloody Bucket, and every beer joint in Texas at least once. Bud was the bandleader, but he was not a musician, even though he looked like he was. He was in the band with us and he played upright bass. Well, not really played it. He spun it and kicked it a lot, but I never heard one note of music come out of it.

  I would always hock my guitar during the week at a pawnshop in Waco and drink and gamble up all the money, and Bud would always have to go get my guitar out of hock before the weekend so we could go play our music gigs. I used to say I hocked my guitar so many times that the pawnbroker played it better than I did. But Bud would always get it out of hock, because he would have already booked us in a place, and we needed to go play.

  I remember one night we played some bar for the door (meaning we got the money people paid to get in—the bar got the money from the booze). There were six of us and we each made thirty-seven cents. That was not an unusual night. We were always getting booked into places that weren’t quite ready for us. I’m not saying we were bad, but our music just didn’t quite fit in in places like the Scenic Wonderland in Waco, which was a huge dance hall that held about two thousand people. We could never manage to get more than twelve or fourteen people in there.

  We also played a radio show each Saturday in Hillsboro at KHBR studios. It was a lot of fun, a great experience, and allowed us to plug the shows that we were playing around the state. We played in places like Whitney, West, Waco, and San Antonio.

  One time, we played the Huntsville Rodeo at the Huntsville state penitentiary. As soon as we got to the property line, the guard from the penitentiary got on the bus to escort us to the bandstand. We had about twenty pounds of pot in the bay of the bus that we had bought the day before. The guard must have smelled it, because I did, but if he did, he never said a word. We played the rodeo, which was the best rodeo I had ever seen in my life, because these guys just didn’t give a shit, and got out of there as quick as we could!

  Thought for the Day: If it ain’t broke, break it!

  BACK TO ABBOTT

  I was trimming trees with Zeke, Billy Bressier, and Curly Ingram. Curly was the boss of the tree-trimming gang. We worked for Asplundh Tree Company, which was a contractor hired by the Texas Power and Light Company to keep the power lines clear and free of trees and limbs. My job was feeding the chipper, a machine that ground up the limbs when they were thrown down from the trees, and at the end of the day, we would take the load of chips to the dump. One day, Billy Bressier was high up in a tree sawing off a limb. He needed a rope to tie around the limb so that it could be lowered to the ground without falling on anybody or anything. I climbed up the tree to give him the rope, which I had done a few times before, and instead of climbing back down the tree, I decided to climb back down the rope. I had just started down the rope when my left hand got tangled up with the rope. My fingers on my left hand were intertwined with the rope above my head where I had tried to lower myself. I was hung up. I couldn’t go up, and I couldn’t go down. We were about twenty feet above the ground. Right below me were the two power lines. The rope was tearing the fingers off my left hand when I told Billy to cut it. He did and I fell all the way to the ground, right between the two power lines. I hit the ground, jumped up, and walked away from that job, never to return.

  Had all my medication and it’s half past ten

  I’m just sitting round waiting for something to kick in

  —WILLIE NELSON, SONG IN PROGRESS

  CHURCH

  I have spent all my life in church. The Bible says our body is our church, our temple, and I have spent seventy-nine years in this temple. We all live in our church.

  Church is not a building; it’s our body, our temple, and we should take care of our church. It’s the only one we get this lifetime, and we will be judged by the way we treat it. The better we treat our body, the longer, healthier the life we will have, and the more we will be able to do for the world and ourselves. We are our brother’s keeper, and he is ours. Treat him the way you want to be treated. You get back what you give. Good for good, bad for bad; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you dish it out, you better be ready to take it.

  Amen.

  Abbott had four churches and one tabernacle, where all the other churches used to hold their summer revivals. We lived right next door, and I mean right next door. I could sit at our dining room table and hear every word. Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ—great singing and preaching, and when it was the Methodists’ revival, I went every night. And every time the preacher gave the invocation, where he tried to get you to admit your sins and join the church, I went down and asked for forgiveness. For what, I didn’t know; I was only ten years old. How much sinning was I into at ten? But I went down anyway because it made all the women in the church happy. They loved me. They made me a lifetime member of the women’s missionary society. That’s a true story. The Catholic Church was a little more lenient. They danced and drank beer, and it was okay. I played dances for the Catholics at the SPJST Hall, where they would get together, dance, play dominoes, and have fun. My first paying gig was at the SPJST Hall in West Texas, with the John Rejcek family band. They played polkas, waltzes, “Cotton-Eyed Joes,” the schottische, the Bunny Hop, and the Texas two-step. I learned to play them all, and got paid for it. I made ten dollars. I
had hit the big time!

  SISTER BOBBIE

  Our first music performances together were in our church, the Abbott Methodist Church, where we were all members. Our grandfather wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but our grandmother was. She had us scrubbed and cleaned and dressed for church every time the doors opened. She was a Sunday school teacher for children as well as a music teacher for anyone who wanted to learn to read music, play an instrument, or sing. This was one of the ways we survived. She used the barter system, exchanging her knowledge of music and life for some of the material things we needed for a comfortable survival. We were never unhappy or sad because she made sure of that.

  I KNOW MY PART

  I know my part

  I’ll bring up the rear

  I’ll eat the dust

  You know I don’t care

  That’s what I do

  I’ll get ’em thru

  I’m driving the herd

  I sing ’em to sleep

  I sing ’em awake

  They like my songs

  I give and I take

  I know my part

  I play from the heart

  While I’m driving the herd

  Or maybe I’m following

  They let me know

  If I’m doing it right

  They sing along with me every night

  TROUBLEMAKER

  I’ve been called a troublemaker a time or two. What the hell is a troublemaker? you ask. Well, it’s someone who makes trouble; that’s what he came here to do, and that’s what he does, by God. Like it or not, love it or not, he will stir it up. Why? Because it needs stirring up! If someone doesn’t do it, it won’t get done, and you know you love to stir it up . . . I know I do.

  THE TROUBLEMAKER

  —BRUCE G. BELLAND, DAVID TROY SOMERVILLE

  I could tell the moment that I saw him

  He was nothing but the troublemaking kind

  His hair was much too long

  And his motley group of friends

  Had nothing but rebellion on their minds

  He’s rejected the establishment completely

  And I know for sure he’s never held a job

  He just goes from town to town

  Stirring up the young folks

  Till they’re nothing but a disrespectful mob

  And I know for sure he’s never joined the army

  And served his country like we all have done

  He’d rather wear his sandals and his flowers

  While others wage a war that must be won

  They arrested him last week and found him guilty

  And sentenced him to die but that’s no great loss

  Friday they will take him to a place called Calvary

  And hang that troublemaker to a cross

  SALESMANSHIP

  I did a lot of work in sales. I have worked selling on the radio and door-to-door—encyclopedias, vacuum cleaners, books, sewing machines, and all kinds of sales. I had my own sales crew in Waco selling the Encyclopedia Americana. They were and are still, I think, a great set of books. Every home should have a set, and I tried hard to put one in every home. I had great teachers, and I got good at selling them. We had a friend who worked with the phone company and who gave us all the new listings in Fort Worth each week. We called them and would make an appointment to come by their home and show them the new Encyclopedia Americana. We would make at least six appointments per day, then go out that night and try to make a sale. A good salesman would sell at least three sets of books out of the six appointments. The books sold for three hundred to six hundred dollars, depending on the binding. You could make from sixty to a couple hundred dollars’ commission per sale. Three per night added up pretty good. But this job and all the others were just temporary until I found a job playing music.

  As I said, I worked at KHBR in Hillsboro, where I had a live show with my band on Saturday at noon. It paid nothing and only covered a few miles, but my band and I could plug our dates. I also worked at KBOP in Pleasanton, KCNC in Fort Worth, and KVAN in Vancouver, Washington. It was a good way to stay involved in music.

  ONE IN A ROW

  If you can truthfully say that you’ve been true just one day

  Well that makes one in a row one in a row one in a row

  And if you can look into my eyes one time without telling lies

  Well that makes one in a row one in a row one in a row

  Why oh why do I keep loving you

  After all of the things you do

  And just one time come into my arms

  And be glad that you’re in my arms

  That will make one in a row one in a row one in a row

  Why oh why do I keep loving you

  After all of the things you do

  And just one time come into my arms

  And be glad that you’re in my arms

  That will make one in a row one in a row one in a row

  One in a row, one in a row

  One in a row, one in a row

  Thought for the Day: Remember, we’re not happy till you’re not happy.

  OCCUPY WALL STREET

  They are still at it, and it’s been weeks. It’s growing; it’s good. Where and when will it end? Not until the 1 percent antes up the equivalent of what the working-class people are sacrificing. They say it’s the 99 percent against the 1 percent, but I believe it is more like 99.9 percent against one-tenth of 1 percent, which equals about 1,200 people who own the world. And then there are all the rest of us who pay them to rob us blind. The one-tenth of 1 percent love to complain about welfare moms who take what amounts to chump change in funding compared to the trillions that the one-tenth of 1 percent take from our tax dollars as subsidies . . . which is nothing more than welfare. And just because you’re a millionaire, or some would say rich, does not mean you are a crook . . . no more than you can say that everyone who is poor is completely honest. There are a lot of poor people who would like to be millionaires, regardless of what they would have to do to get there, and a lot of millionaires who have used their money for good. Some would say I am in that category, and even I believe, like Warren Buffett, that it just ain’t fair for people like us to have all the advantages.

  I started the TeaPot Party after I got busted for pot in Sierra Blanca, Texas. I thought, Hey, there’s a Tea Party, so why not a TeaPot Party? There are now TeaPot Party representatives in every state of the union, and even in several foreign countries. On a few occasions, the TeaPot Party has backed a few politicians who believe, as we do, that marijuana should be legalized, taxed, and regulated the same way we do alcohol and tobacco. On the border of Mexico and the United States, thousands of people are killed annually because of the war for and against drugs. We should bring home all of our troops from around the world, put them on our borders, and legalize drugs, and in doing so we will save thousands of lives and millions of dollars. We should not be sending people to prison for smoking a joint, who after years in prison return to society as hardened criminals, with no other way to make a living than, you guessed it, selling drugs. Addiction should be treated as a disease, period.

  If we legalized drugs in this country, and treated abuse as the disease it is, and offered medical treatment for these addicts, it would make much more sense than putting them in prison, and we should leave the marijuana users alone but tax them. It’s already been proven that taxing and regulating marijuana makes more sense than sending young people to prison for smoking a God-given herb that has never proven to be fatal to anybody. Cigarettes and alcohol have killed millions, and there’s no law against them, because again, there’s a lot of money in cigarettes and alcohol. If they could realize there is just as much profit in marijuana, and they taxed and regulated it as they do cigarettes and alcohol, they could realize the same amount of profit and reduce trillions of dollars in debt. Making marijuana illegal only helps the criminals and the private prisons. My mother and my dad, my stepmother, my stepdad—well, half of my family—have been
killed by cigarettes, and as far as I know, no one has ever died from smoking marijuana. Marijuana’s being illegal makes no sense at all because that’s not keeping it off the market. I’ve never had trouble getting marijuana anywhere in the world. In the places where it’s legal, the smart countries, they are making a profit. And where it’s not legal, the only people making money are the criminals.

  Put something in the pot, boy; it’s your move. Your back is against the wall, and that wall is Wall Street against Main Street. I didn’t come here and I ain’t leaving.

  Amen.

  LEAVING ABBOTT

  We moved to Pleasanton, Texas, where I lied my way into the job at KBOP. The owner of the station was a guy named Dr. Ben Parker. Dr. Parker was a wealthy chiropractor who owned at least six radio stations in Texas. My job was to sign on in the mornings, which meant I did news and weather, played music, swept the floor, wrote copy, sold time, and collected. I did everything there was to do in a radio station, except that I was not an engineer and couldn’t work on the equipment. When I applied for the job, Dr. Parker asked me if I had any experience. Of course I lied and said I did. So he asked me to sit down, go on the air, and read a commercial I had never seen. Live. I’ll never forget that commercial. It was for the Pleasanton Pharmacy, and at the end of the commercial I was to say, “This program is brought to you by the Pleasanton Pharmacy, whose pharmaceutical department will accurately and precisely fill your doctor’s prescription.” Of course I screwed that up completely. He asked me if I was familiar with the board, which was an RCA board, because as a disc jockey I would have to operate all the equipment, turntables, and tape machines. And when Doc Parker asked me if I was familiar with this particular board, I said, “No, I was trained on a Gates board,” which I had no idea about either, but I had seen it somewhere. Doc Parker must have just liked me and knew I had a family and needed a job, because he gave me the job and showed me how to operate the equipment.