Early story: Truck Tire Rodeo

Summer of 1992, band practice with our Band Desperado in Mt. Vernon, IL.

Jeff Bradley loves to tell this story and the rest of the band got a real hoot out of it so I'll give it a shot. Our band from high school and early college, Desperado, was practicing at the house of our drummer (Shane Carnine) which was on a fairly steep hill overlooking a golf course. We practiced in their pole barn garage and would park our vehicles just outside so we could load our equipment in through the large garage door. It was really quite a posh set up for a young band.

At the time, I drove a red1980 Dodge Ram pickup truck with a manual transmission. I always kept a spare tire in the back and had to move it often so I could load and unload my equipment. The amp and guitar could shift around as I drove so I would often load the equipment towards the cab and leave the tire at the rear to prevent unwanted re-arrangement. I cringe now thinking about toting my Dad's 1964 Fender jazz bass around in that old truck like that.

Loading up my equipment after an afternoon practice, I opened the tail gate and jumped up into the bed. As usual, I decided to move the spare tire out of the way and threw it out of the truck bed and onto the ground. To my astonishment, instead of landing flat the tire landed on the edge and made a large bounce downhill. Upon seeing that, I sprung off the tailgate, in my jeans and cowboy boots mind you, and began chasing the tire. The tire picked up so much speed that it crossed the street below and almost rolled into the golf course!

Eventually, I caught the tire and headed back up hill with it. To my surprise, the rest of the band were in tears laughing at what they had just witnessed. To this day they, chuckle at the sight of my astonished face as the tire bounced and started rolling downhill and my subsequent jump, cowboy boots and all, as I tried to catch it. I wish I had a picture of that!