Chapter 11
"There’s somebody in the lobby you might want to meet," said a March of Dimes co-worker, poking her head into my office. Curious, I stepped out and was introduced to a short, dark-skinned Hispanic man with a smile as broad as the lobby.
"My name is Juan de Dios Campos Castillo," he said, reaching for my hand. "And you must be Bigfoot!"
"Juan wants to pedal a bicycle across the United States and into Mexico and Canada for the March of Dimes," my co-worker informed me. "Seems I remember you talking about a trip like that yourself."
I had mentioned it during one of those slow days when we were all sitting around saying "What if" and "One of these days…" But I never really thought it through.
"In my home country of Costa Rica," Juan explained, "I rode my bicycle many times though the mountains. It was my sport. Now, I want to mix my sport with helping people. There are many in your country, mine and others who are suffering. Some are sick, some are—how do you say?—handicapped. I want to dedicate a bicycle trip to these people and try to help them."
As he talked, I tried to size him up to determine if he was just a loony-tune. It wasn’t often I encountered someone with such noble ideas, let alone a foreigner. Why wasn’t he off conjuring up ways to take advantage of the American system—tapping into Welfare or some other social program? A Central American wanting to help the needy of North America? He had to be a kook.
He spoke as if he was ready to leave the following morning. I had no intention of uprooting once again and joining this over-zealous philanthropic peddler, but I didn’t want to dismiss him and his plan so quickly. I told him I would give it some thought and we agreed to meet over the weekend for more crazy talk.
Saturday, we met in Centennial Park, in front of the Parthenon, a replica of the original Parthenon temple of Athens, Greece. I showed up in my first set of Nashville wheels, an $800 Pontiac that had already broken down twice. Juan was on his bike. The Parthenon steps were a fitting place to discuss a possible conquest of the Americas.
"Look Juan, let’s be direct. A trip like this will cost several thousand dollars. I don’t know about you, but I’ve only been on the job for a few months and it will take me an eternity to save up that kind of money. We don’t even know each other. What if we get out on the road and discover we’re not compatible? Then we’re stuck with each other for God knows how many miles and days.
"And what about training? Have you noticed my beer belly and absence of muscles? I haven’t been on a bike since my paper route at age 12! You’re not talking about pedaling across town. If we pedal across the U.S., into Canada and Mexico, and back again, it’s a quarter of the way around this planet! You’re talking about mountains—big mountains that we call the Rockies. Do you know how tall they are? If we leave in the summer, we’re going to cook. If we wait until winter we’ll need parkas and snow tires.
And where would we sleep? Do you know how much it would cost for hotel rooms? What about food? I don’t even own a bicycle. They’ve got gears on those things now. They’re not cheap!"
It must have been apparent to Juan that I was trying to talk him out of going.
"Bigfoot, do you want to go?"
I crossed my arms and sighed. "Yes, Juan. I do want to go. It would be a helluva an adventure. But I’m just trying to be practical."
Oh my God, who was that talking about being practical? Me? It was a good thing my parents were out of ear shot. I was actually beginning to grow roots and become a responsible Nashville citizen. If I kept at it, perhaps I could settle down and become a salaried songwriter. Then again, why was that important to me? The fame? The money? So that I could hear people say, "Hey, there goes Mark Renz. He’s the one who co-wrote that Willie Nelson song, ‘Pannin' For Gold.’"
"Mark, if you want to go, I have saved $4,200 from my job as a butcher. I will pay. You told me your job ends in June. It’s the middle of March now. That gives us time to buy our equipment, train and get to know each other. We don’t need hotel rooms. We can camp on the way. If you want to go, we can do it."
The son-of-a-gun was persistent and I was fast running out of excuses not to do it.
"All right, Juan, you talked me into it," I heard a familiar-sounding voice say. I must be nuts, but at least I’ll have company. However, you mentioned pedaling for the March of Dimes. If we’re going to go off and have fun I think you’re right that we ought to make the trip count for something. The March of Dimes is a very worthy organization, but I would prefer we enlist in a cause that addresses the poor. I know we have poverty here in the U.S., but I think the degree of suffering is even greater elsewhere. I don’t think we ought to consider borders when it comes to feeding or clothing the needy.
"Christian Children’s Fund, for example, helps children around the world—especially in Third World countries. Why don’t we dedicate a trip to an organization like that? What do you say we do some ‘cause’ shopping between now and June?"
On the drive home I felt numb. Tell me I didn’t just agree to what I think I just agreed to. Hitchhiking to Nashville was a piece of cake. Tolerating Mission life was nothing. But spending weeks, possibly months on a bicycle, pedaling in all sorts of weather and sharing the road with impatient motorists…that would be a challenge. Look at my physical condition. I was at least 25 pounds overweight. This wasn’t a matter of whipping those old bicycle muscles back into shape. Those muscles never existed.
The more I thought about it, though, the more certain I was that I wanted to do it. I was 29 years old, single, with no real responsibilities. When—if ever—would I get another chance to do something like this?
Juan and I got together off and on over the next month to hash out the details of our journey. I thought about the trip day and night. A million doubts crept into my mind and I chased them out again.
I recalled a book I had read called "Wanderer" by the late actoor Sterling Hayden. At the peak of his Hollywood career in the 50s, Hayden thumbed his nose at a $160,000 a year salary, walked away from a shattered marriage and set sail with his four children on the 100-ton schooner, Wanderer—bound for the South Seas.
Hayden had a way of boiling life down to its essence. In planning his own escape from the expectations of society, he said this of the stay-at-homes:
What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine—and before we know it our lives are gone…We are systematic people. We have a systematic approach to almost everything—from raising children to getting buried. Somehow it is the male’s duty to put the best years of his life into work he doesn’t like in order that he may retire and enjoy himself as soon as he is too old to do so…It is the same thing that prompted Thoreau to say in 1839, "The majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
As the idea of leaving Nashville again took hold, I rummaged my mind to see if I wasn’t forgetting any unsettled business. I was. The first involved the CMA. The second was Ruthie.
The CMA had an employee in public relations who had given his notice and would be gone as of July 1. I couldn’t swear to it, but I felt as if Cathy Gurley was grooming me to take over his position. She had let it slip several times that she really wanted to get me on full time. I decided to delay telling her about the bike trip until the last minute—just in case it didn’t pan out.
Breaking the news to a potential employer would be easy. Breaking the news to Ruthie would be another matter. We had been dating now for a couple months. It wasn’t her looks that had first drawn me to her, but a genuine sweetness she exuded and her distaste for uppity people and the material world. She wasn’t good at explaining how she felt, but I understood from one of her favorite singer/songwriters, Mac McAnally. In straight-forward messages and loose metaphors, he sang about our crazy world, the quirks of youth, how we view death and dying, men who keep their women barefoot and pregnant, how we’re all trying to beat those yellow lights and the world according to Jesus. If anyone would understand, it would be Ruthie.
Ruthie’s father, Henry, was a famous bass player—or "Super Picker," one of a handful of topnotch studio musicians whose instruments wind up on the albums of many of the major artists. Henry, Ruthie told me, wanted to see his daughter latch on to someone of a little higher social status than yours truly. I couldn’t blame him. I’m sure he saw me as a man who wouldn’t be able to provide for his daughter and make her happy. And he may be right if money was the measure of happiness. But it wasn’t my goal. Then again, if he wanted someone to make his daughter feel alive and loved…well, he never tried to get to know me so it was a moot point.
When I sat down with Ruthie and explained I may be leaving for six months and why, she thought it was a wild and fun idea. She got excited for me. Then she got angry saying it would be the end of us. We had a heated argument and she gouged me with her finger nails across my arms. After that night I think we both lost the flame. There were no more dates, no more phone calls, no more talks of what we were going to do tomorrow. In her mind, I was deserting her and I think she was deeply hurt. In my mind, the trip was an interruption in our romance, not the end of it. We were close to using the big ‘L’ word, but hadn’t said it yet. I would be back and we could take over where we left off. Or...maybe I wasn’t the one to make her feel alive and loved after all.
Since my landlady’s place was a temporary home, I had to find another place to live. I had recently met and gotten to know a down-and-out songwriter from England named Donnie Penn. He too, was looking for shelter. He seemed harmless enough and had a great sense of humor, so the two of us went apartment shopping. Sharing a place with someone would help me save money for the big trip.
While walking up 17th on Music Row, we noticed a young man in a phone booth scanning the classified ads. I looked over his shoulder as we passed and saw that he was also looking for an apartment.
"Any luck finding a place?" I yelled through the glass. "No," he said, stepping out. He introduced himself as Randy Rudder from Stubenville, Ohio.
"I just got out of college and moved here today." he said. "I’ve got a degree in English, but I’m planning to become a Christian singer/songwriter. Right now, though, I’ve got to find a place to live."
Within 15 minutes, the three of us had decided to look for a place together.
We found it almost directly across from the pay phone—one of the many houses on Music Row that had been converted into apartments or offices. There was no furniture, but it was clean with a refrigerator, bathtub and phone hook-up.
Randy turned out to be an honest, likeable guy who was earnestly trying to make it. He got a job right away as a front desk person at Shoney’s Inn—the hotel portion of the restaurant where I retired. Donnie got a job at Shoney’s Restaurant as a busboy. I had warned them both not to admit they were here for the music.
Donny seemed normal for about a week. But one night about 3:00 a.m., I heard music in the other room and got up to check it out. He was sitting on the floor listening to a rock ‘n roll tape—wearing a dress. I pretended not to notice the dress.
"Hi Donny. You’re up late."
"I know. I just couldn’t sleep."
I smelled alcohol and looked around. There must have been 10 empty beer bottles scattered across the floor, some of which had leaked onto the bare wooden planks. Cigarette smoke drifted around the room just above the bare bulb of his lamp. Butts and ashes filled a tray next to Donnie and ashes had been flicked onto newspapers and clothing lying nearby. Donny was amazingly sober for the beer he must have consumed.
"I’m sorry mate, but I hope the dress doesn’t bother you. You probably won’t want anything to do with me now, but I’ve always had a desire to be a girl."
"Actually Donnie, I would rather have a female housemate," I said jokingly. "It’s no big deal. But I am curious as to why I don’t hear your English accent anymore. Are you really from the U.K.?"
"No…Alabama."
"Well then, why the charade?"
"I don’t know, Mark. I guess by pretending I was British, I thought I could attract more women. When I pretend I’m English, women usually ask me if I know the Beatles and I say yes. I don’t know how many have climbed under the covers with me because they thought I knew the Beatles."
"Wait a minute. You just said you wanted to be a woman. Why would you want to attract women then?"
"I never said I don’t like women. I’m crazy about them. In fact, I’ve got a wife and a child in Troy, Alabama. Here, let me show you," he said, opening his wallet and holding up a family photo. "But I’m not a homosexual – I’m not interested in men."
"So, what does that make you, a lesbian?"
"I don’t know, mate. I think it just makes me ‘me’."
"Well, I was just wondering what the noise was, Donny. Why don’t you turn out the light and try to get some sleep. Don’t you have to work tomorrow?"
"No, I’m off. But I know you and Randy are trying to sleep so I’ll turn off the light and the music."
Donnie was a bit bizarre and I did worry about him catching the apartment on fire in the middle of the night. But he had paid his share of the rent so far. If drinking and dresses were the extent of his vices, I could live with it for now.
I continued hustling for the March of Dimes and worked part-time at home, transcribing interviews for music reporters. In the evenings, I would belly up to the bar at a lounge near Music Row known as the Hall of Fame. It was called the Hall of Shame by locals, because of the impromptu stage performances of so many celebrity wannabe’s and has-beens, as well as relatives of stars.
By showing up at Happy Hour, I could get my drinks at half price and chow down for free at a table of lunch meats, cheeses or beef tacos. If I wanted to make an evening of the place, I could sit back and play observer. There was never a dull moment if you knew where to look.
One night, Tommy Cash and Tommy Jennings performed some of their songs. I couldn’t tell them apart from their legendary brothers, Johnny and Waylon. Calling herself the "Hag’s nag," Merle Haggard’s wife, Leona Williams performed another night. On still another, Faron Young sang "Hello Walls," got drunk and proceeded to vainly curse the late Marty Robbins over some dispute the two must have had years earlier. I felt sorry for Young. In the early 60s, he was a big deal in country music. "Hello Walls", written by Willie Nelson, actually crossed over to the pop charts and climbed to Number 12 in the nation. But Young had his demons. He would eventually put a gun to his head and squeeze the trigger.
Any time I saw Joe Sun walk on stage, I knew I was going to hear great music. He deserved to be a country music super star here in the U.S, but wasn’t. Yet when I attended a country music concert series in Frankfurt, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland while living overseas, he received the same thunderous applause as Tammy Wynette and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Sun’s house was just up the street from my apartment. I would often see him pedaling around town on a beat-up girl’s bike, and I would run into him at a local grocery store where we both shopped in the "Cost Cutter" section for the lowest prices.
His version of "Old Flames," later recorded by Dolly Parton, never made it to Number one. But it was soulful to the core.
He also did a haunting song written by Adam Mitchell, called "Out Among The Stars." It’s about a young loser who robs a liquor store and is relieved when the police shoot him down. As depressing as the song is, it offers hope for anyone with the right attitude.
He pictures the arrival of the cruisers
Sees that old familiar anger in their eyes
He knows that when they’re shooting at this loser
They’ll be aiming at the demons in their lives
The evening news, it carries all the details
He dies in every living room in town
And in his own home, a bottle is thrown in anger
And his father cries: We’ll never live this down.
Oh, how many travelers get weary
Bearing both their burdens and their scars
Don’t you think they’d love to stop complaining
And fly like eagles out among the stars.
The Odd Trio, as we called ourselves, lasted a little more than a month together. As much as Randy and I felt for Donnie, he was too self-destructive and said he wasn’t going to be able to pay his share of the next month’s rent. So we went our separate ways. Donny moved into a beat-up old Chevy with a couple of his buddies, referring to it as "The Cramalot Inn".
For $400, I bought "Casa Aluminum," a 14-foot travel trailer, and paid $40 a month to park it behind one of the houses on Music Row. My landlord, a retiree named Ray King, was handy with a guitar and told me he would help me with demos so I could start pitching my songs.
Ray turned out to be more than just talented with a stringed instrument. His voice reminded me of an artist I couldn’t quite place. When I got to know him, he told me everybody used to think he sounded like Gentleman Jim Reeves, who died in 1964. According to King, K-Tel Records was assembling an album of Reeves’ songs but were two songs short of a complete album when Reeves died. So they hired King to lay down the two tracks as if he was Reeves. No one ever knew the difference.
Though we were no longer housemates, I continued to buddy with Donnie on the Row. I also met some of Donnie’s friends, who Randy had dubbed the "Grammy Gang." Some of them had musical talent, but would never be successful because they didn’t understand marketing, or drank too much.
One afternoon, I made a trip to the Davidson County Public Library to compile a list of potential benefactors for our bike trip. Juan and I wanted to know how much of each organization’s income was spent on administrative expenses. We had read that anything over 30 percent may be excessive. So I called and asked for annual reports. I was pleased that all of them were under 30 per cent. Until I looked closer and realized it was easy to place certain administrative costs in other categories. Some of the organizations listed promotions or advertising separately. Some separated employee salaries from administrative expenses. Some separated office expenses from administrative expenses. It seemed to us that those areas should still be lumped under administrative expenses.
We concluded that the numbers were too easy to manipulate, so we focussed on other concerns. Who were they trying to help and why? If a portion of their proceeds were to promote religion, I crossed their name off the list. I felt that potential contributors would be Christians and non-Christians, so why should non-Christians have to contribute part of their money to a religious cause? We wanted an organization that didn’t use borders to determine who to help, although we knew that contributors would be free to choose a country of their choice.
Eventually, we settled on Children, Incorporated, a Virginia-based organization that advertised they assisted 13,000 children of all races in 26 countries, including the U.S. For $18 a month, or $216 a year, sponsors could help feed, clothe and educate a child. Communicating with the child by mail was also possible. What impressed us the most about Children, Incorporated was that it was a small organization compared to the others, and the director, Jeanne Clark-Wood wrote us a personal letter. We felt as if she genuinely cared about the children she was representing.
Rather than ask for money and collect it ourselves, we planned to ask potential sponsors to deal directly with Children, Incorporated. My job would be to make up a press release and drop it off at daily and weekly newspapers along the way. Our goal was to get at least 35 sponsors. Juan’s role was chief mechanic and my trainer.
A visit to local bicycle shops for equipment stunned us. Quality touring bikes started at $400 and some—constructed of lightweight aluminum alloys--were in excess of $1000. Juan already owned an old French 10-speed he had bought used for $110. We selected a $200 Raleigh 10 speed for me. Instead of buying it right away and training everyday, we waited until two days before we were scheduled to leave. I should have taken the time to train, but was afraid I would realize how much work it would take and would quit before we even started. "Don’t worry about it," Juan had assured me. "You’ll get your training on the road."
Tents and sleeping bags were also high-priced, prompting us to invest in Target and K-Mart stores. We ended up with equipment that was built to last—at least six months. What we lacked in first rate equipment, we hoped to make up for in being young, dumb and determined.
July 1 was our scheduled departure date. On a pocket road map, we penciled a rough line from Tennessee, north to Kentucky and Ohio, then west and northwest to Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington. From there, we planned to take a ferry over to Canada for a couple of days, then pedal south to Washington again, Oregon, California and down the Baja Peninsula. From Baja, we would ferry over to the Mexican mainland and make our way to Mexico City, where Children, Incorporated had an orphanage we could visit.
The return trip would take us into Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and back to Nashville. We estimated the total trip would amount to 6,000 miles in six months—providing our money held out.
In late June, Cathy Gurley handed me a key to the front door of the CMA. She didn’t say why and I didn’t ask. I assumed I was going to be hired full time. I had waited as long as I could before telling her what I was really planning to do over the summer. Now I had to let her know.
I don’t expect there to be a job for me when I return, I told her. But this is just something I’ve got to do. She said she understood and wished us well. I never did find out if she was really going to offer me the job.
The day before we left, Juan made all the adjustments to our bikes and we loaded them with our gear. We had saddlebags in the front and back as well as between the seat and handlebars. All our clothes were packed, in addition to our small two-man tent and two sleeping bags. It was after dark when we finally took my bike out for its first test run. Juan followed me. We got half of a block away, when a car pulled up next to us at a stop light near Vanderbilt University. There were two college-aged men inside.
"How far you headed?" One of them asked. "Ohio," said Juan, referring to our first goal. "If you guys need a place to stay for the night, you’re welcome to follow us to our place. We’ve got lots of room and would be glad to feed you, too."
We thanked them for their kindness and told them that we lived close by and hadn’t even left yet. They laughed, wished us luck and drove off.
As we circled the block, I thought about how warm everyone had been to me since I left Florida: Mort and Roger – my rides to Nashville; the janitor at the Ryman Auditorium, Gerry Goley, the gruff Veteran’s rep who loaned me the $20 (which I paid back); Vernell Hackett, Frances Preston and Nancy Franklin at BMI, Cathy Gurley at the CMA, Janis Azrak at Warner Bros.; my buddy Jim Earl; Lee Stevens, Susan Collier, the truckers who gave me a ride to Louisiana, and Jack and Marie Massey who gave me a lift all the way back to Nashville -- hundreds of miles out of their way.
And now these two strangers were offering us a place to sleep and a meal. Would the rest of America embrace us as warmly on the road? Would we be successful in raising sponsorships for our cause? Would we make it through the 17 states we marked on our pocket map, plus Canada and Mexico, or quit before we even got out of Tennessee?
This was true happiness, I thought. Going for the gusto on our own terms. I felt sorry for anyone who wasn't us. We had an opening in a world full of closed doors and missed opportunities. Well, we were going to give it our all.
Now if I could just get some sleep.