FITZ’S ROAD TO CASPER

FITZ’S ROAD TO CASPER

Nobody believed the Fitz Brothers could rebuild Carl's van.

To be fair, they had given them plenty of reasons.

Touring culture creates relationships at an unnatural speed.

People who would probably never speak to each other in normal life suddenly find themselves sharing buses, motel rooms, truck stops, loading docks, gas stations, hangovers, equipment failures, bad meals, long highways, and the increasingly fragile illusion that anyone involved actually knows what they are doing.

Over time, road crews develop a strange survival instinct:

Every personality flaw becomes negotiable as long as a person proves useful during a crisis.

The entertainment industry has historically been full of deeply difficult people who remained employable simply because they were exceptional at one specific task.

Carl was one of those people.

Which creates another strange reality inside touring culture:

Road crews often spend more time evaluating personalities than actual technical ability.

Talent matters, certainly.

But after enough miles, most crews become far more interested in questions like:

Can this person survive adversity?

Will they panic under pressure?

Are they useful during emergencies?

And perhaps most importantly:

How annoying are they going to become after six consecutive days inside a moving aluminum tube?

Most long-term road friendships are forged through shared inconvenience:

Broken vehicles, bad weather, impossible schedules, catastrophic lodging, public humiliation, and mechanical failures occurring hundreds of miles from anyone qualified to help.

Somewhere inside these situations, strangers slowly become teammates.

The Fitz Brothers accelerated this process considerably during one tour involving a hostile sound engineer, a dying Ford van, several cases of beer, and one extremely unfortunate carpet in Casper, Wyoming.

The Fitz Brothers had developed a reputation in the local stagehand community. Whether that reputation was good or bad depended entirely on who you asked. Most people liked them. Most people doubted them. The brothers themselves saw no contradiction between those two facts.

A band needed a couple of extra hands to load gear, set up lights, and generally stay out of the way. A roadie who knew the Fitz Brothers recommended them for the tour.

Whether he was helping their careers or playing a practical joke on the band remains a matter of debate.

The brothers arrived at the warehouse and met the crew. The bus driver and security chief was a man named Tiny, a biker-looking giant with a permanent grin and a talent for finding humor in almost everything.

Tiny took one look at the brothers and immediately decided they were going to be entertaining.

Bill, the tour manager, was less certain.

"We should warn you about Carl," he said.

Carl was the sound engineer. He traveled separately in an aging Ford van packed with equipment and possessed the social skills of an IRS audit.

"He also happens to be kind of an asshole," Tiny added helpfully.

Right on cue, Carl arrived.

Matt stuck out his hand.

"Nice to meet you."

Carl ignored it.

"Let me show you how I like my gear loaded."

For the next twenty minutes Carl explained, in excruciating detail, how every case should be loaded, unloaded, positioned, rolled, stacked, and secured. Then he made the brothers unload the van and put everything back exactly as he had described.

The brothers complied without complaint.

Tiny watched the entire exercise with the expression of a man who had purchased a front-row ticket to a comedy show.

The tour left that afternoon.

Within a few days, the crew had reached a consensus.

The Fitz Brothers were good-natured, enthusiastic, and completely green.

Tiny found them hilarious.

Bill found them mildly alarming.

Carl didn't trust them at all.

An hour outside Albuquerque, the tour bus blew a rear u-joint and left the crew stranded in the desert.

Tiny and Carl took the van back to town and Tiny being Tiny, somehow organized a rescue convoy, a barbecue, and temporary housing before nightfall. In the process, Carl volunteered his aging Ford van to haul gear it was never designed to pull.

Tiny looked over at Carl and asked, “Are you sure about this? The load in this trailer is pretty heavy.”

"The old van hasn't let me down yet," Carl replied. Tiny shrugged and thought nothing more of it.

The next day, with the bus repaired and the gang full of barbeque, the trip resumed. A few hundred miles later, the engine of the van started knocking.

Carl ignored it.

Bill met the owner of the band house the moment the bus pulled into Casper.

The owner’s wife was named Linda, a petite, attractive woman in her mid-fifties, and Bill fell in love almost immediately.

Not real love, of course. More the sort of temporary road-induced infatuation that develops when an attractive woman smiles at a sleep-deprived tour manager after three days on a bus. He especially loved the way she apologized for looking a fright at this hour of the morning while she looked like she had just stepped out of a salon.

Linda cheerfully showed him around the house. “I think you boys are really going to like this” she said as she unlocked the door. “Bob is really proud of this; we just redid the whole place! He will meet up with you when he wakes up, but I can give you the grand tour!” Linda was one of those people that actually sparkled as she spoke.

The place was immaculate.

Fresh paint. Clean furniture. A hot tub out back.

Most importantly, brand-new carpet.

"We just had it installed last week," she said proudly.

Bill immediately became terrified of what eight musicians, a bus driver, a sound engineer, and the Fitz Brothers might do to it.

Later that morning Bill met Linda's husband, Bob.

Unfortunately for Bill, Bob was just as nice of a man as Linda was a woman. Which ruined Bill's completely unrealistic fantasy that Bob might turn out to be an asshole.

Instead, Bob spent the next fifteen minutes being friendly, welcoming, and genuinely pleased to have the crew staying in his newly renovated house.

As Bob proudly pointed out the new carpet for a second time, Bill found himself silently praying that nobody in his touring party would do anything stupid.

Given the personnel involved, this was an ambitious prayer.

By noon the group, (with the exception of Tiny, who was still snoring heavily in his bed) had moved into their new digs and had gathered on the front porch. Matt had awakened in hunger, and he and Jeff were surveying their surroundings to find a place to satiate their needs. The band was looking in the phone book to find a Blockbuster and rent a movie, since they had a shiny new VCR atop their TV. The guitar player finally looked up and asked, “Where the hell is Carl? We could use his van right now. I don’t want to have to call a cab to go to a freaking Blockbuster.”

Right on cue, (again) they heard it before they saw it. The banging and clanging of a tan Ford van only hitting on five cylinders was unmistakable. Then they saw it. Carl rounded the corner with a trail of blue smoke exiting the rear of the van that could have rivaled a steam locomotive arriving at its final destination. He pulled in between the bus and the house and with a final clatter, shut the van off.

Bill looked at the guitar player and said, “I think you should seriously consider taking a cab.”

Carl exited the van looking more disheveled than usual and completely haggard. He slowly walked to Jeff and Matt, looked down at his feet and said, “So you guys said something about fixing old Fords?”

Bill was the first one to lose it. His laughter came uncontrollably as he was waving his hands and giving Carl an “I am so sorry” type of look. The band followed suit. The brothers just looked at each other and then at Carl.

“What the hell happened?” Jeff asked.

“Well, the knocking started getting a little worse and by Denver, I couldn’t get it over sixty. I had to add more oil when I stopped for gas. About an hour ago there was a bang and now I can’t get it over forty.”

Jeff looked at Matt. “Threw a rod, maybe?”

“Might be a cracked ring or piston.” Matt replied.

They both nodded at each other.

Carl looked at both of them with a very blank stare. “Can you fix it?”

“Won’t be easy without a garage.” Matt stated.

“Gonna have to tear it down to the block for sure.” Jeff said.

Carl continued staring. Finally, he asked, “Well, can you fix it or not?”

“Oh yeah, we can fix it, but it’s going to cost you.” Jeff was very matter of fact about the project now.

“How much?”

“Don’t know yet. We’ll think about it over breakfast. Going to have to find a hoist to rent and some tools.”

“Any idea?”

“No clue. Don’t know this town or anything in it.”

“Should I just take it to a garage?”

“Maybe, but now you’re hoping they're not backed up on repairs, and they will charge you an arm and a leg for labor.”

“What will you charge me for labor?”

“Beer. Lots and lots of beer.”

“Okay, you guys fix it. I’m going to bed.”

“Nighty-nite. Take my bed, Matt and I will use the hide-a-bed.”

Bill, finally regaining his composure, jumped in. “Here Carl, I’ll show you where it is. We already dropped your stuff off.”

Bill walked back in the house with Carl shuffling slowly behind him.

“Hey guys” Matt motioned to the band, “can we steal that phone book?”

“Hell yeah” the guitar player handed it over, “you guys are going to need it way more than we do at this point.”

“Cool” Matt looked back at Jeff, “now can we go eat?”

“Absolutely. This is going to take some planning.”

Over breakfast, the brothers devised a plan involving rented tools, borrowed equipment, Carl's credit card, and an alarming quantity of beer.

The next morning, a hoist, engine stand, and enough tools to open a small repair shop arrived at the house. The brothers immediately set to work.

For three days, the band house became an unauthorized engine-rebuilding facility.

The van was dismantled in the driveway. Parts were cleaned on the patio. The engine block eventually migrated into the living room atop a collection of packing blankets that the brothers were convinced would protect the carpet.

Tiny joined the operation somewhere along the way. At first, he helped because he was curious. Then he helped because he was entertained. Eventually he helped because he had become genuinely impressed.

The job was enormous.

The engine was stripped to the block, damaged parts replaced, cylinders repaired, components cleaned, measured, polished, and painstakingly reassembled. The brothers worked from morning until well after dark, pausing only for food, beer, and arguments about the correct way to do things.

Tiny particularly enjoyed the arguments.

Watching the Fitz Brothers rebuild an engine was like watching two people perform the same task while disagreeing on every step required to accomplish it.

By the second day, even Tiny had changed his opinion.

"Well, boys," he said, cracking open another beer, "I gotta hand it to you. I guess you do know what you're doing."

The final assembly took place in the living room, much to Bill's horror.

"What the hell are you guys doing?" he demanded when he discovered an engine block sitting on packing blankets in the middle of Bob and Linda's pristine house.

"Putting it back together," Jeff replied.

Bill stared at the engine.

Then at the carpet.

Then back at the engine.

“Hey, we laid down packing blankets. It’ll be fine.” Jeff said.

"This is a terrible idea." Bill muttered under his breath.

History would prove him correct.

By the time the band was leaving for the show, the engine was almost complete. They were down to the exhaust manifold, spark plugs and ignition wires, so the brothers thought that it would be easier and less hazardous to put those in after the engine was back in place.

Tiny and the brothers began pushing the engine back out to the van. This was easier said than done with only three people on blankets on top of carpet. Work lights were set up and the navigation of aiming and edging an engine that weighed five hundred pounds off a single point hoist began. The process went a little better than taking it out but was still an engineering feat of its own. The van accessibility was a much tighter fit than simply taking off the hood of a truck.

At two o'clock in the morning, the band and Carl gathered around the van with equal parts anticipation and dread.

Jeff turned the key.

The engine groaned.

Everyone held their breath.

He tried again.

The van coughed, sputtered, and then roared to life.

For a moment nobody said anything.

Then the driveway erupted.

Carl's van was running again.

The brothers exchanged a high-five while the rest of the crew crowded around the van, inspecting the engine and offering congratulations.

Bill shook his head and laughed.

"Boys, I'll admit it. I didn't think you had it in you."

Neither had most of the crew.

Now they had saved the tour.

The house began slowly coming back to life around noon. Bill said that he was going to grab some food, then probably go back to bed to nurse his hangover. The rest had basically the same idea except for the Fitz Brothers who were chomping at the bit to give the van a run through its paces before they had to leave the next morning. While the rest licked their wounds the brothers took off and drove around town, then the outskirts, then the highway for a bit as they coaxed the new motor back from break-in mode to normal operation.

They arrived back at the house just in time to greet everyone as they were leaving for the show. More handshakes and backslaps were given and the two groups parted ways. The brothers sat on the couch as Tiny was kicking back on the Lazy-boy.

“Well, fellas, why don’t you kick back and have a beer, then we’ll clean this place up.” He then reached beside his chair, pulled a couple of beers out of the cooler and tossed them at Jeff and Matt while never leaving his prone position. “How’s she running?”

“Pretty solid” Jeff replied. “We’ll dump the detergent oil and put the forty-weight in tomorrow before we leave. She should be good to go.”

“Nice. Let me finish watching MASH and we’ll get to it.”

Once the MASH episode ended, the cleanup began.

The first blanket revealed three deep grooves in the brand-new carpet where the engine stand had sat.

The second revealed two stains in the unmistakable shape of a Ford engine block and crankshaft.

The room fell silent.

"Oh shit," Tiny finally said.

For the next two hours, the trio attacked the damage with every carpet cleaner Walmart sold. The stains faded slightly. The grooves barely changed.

"Bill is going to kill us," Matt said.

The three sat in silence, staring at the ruined carpet and contemplating how quickly a person could go from hero to idiot.

Then Tiny snapped his fingers.

"I got it."

An hour later they returned from Walmart carrying an area rug.

To everyone's amazement, it fit perfectly.

The grooves disappeared.

The stains disappeared.

The entire disaster disappeared.

Tiny folded his arms and admired the result.

"Okay," he said. "When Bill gets back, keep your mouths shut and let me do the talking."

That night Bill walked through the front door and immediately noticed the rug.

"What's this?"

Tiny didn't miss a beat.

"Bob and Linda have been so good to us we decided to buy them a housewarming gift."

Bill looked at the rug.

Then around the room.

Then back at the rug.

"Brilliant," he said. "Kind of wish I'd thought of it myself."

The crisis was over.

Or so they thought.

The next morning Jeff and Matt changed the oil, gave another test run and handed the keys to Carl. He was not overly happy with the bill but was actually halfway smiling and maybe even a little chipper. The brothers didn’t get a Thank You per se, but coming from Carl, they decided to take what they could get and considered the whole thing a done deal.

Linda was absolutely ecstatic over her new entry rug, going on and on about how nice this group was and how sweet Bill was. Bill didn’t exactly claim to have thought of the rug, but he didn’t deny it either and thought himself doomed to damnation for secretly hoping Bob would have a heart attack so he could sweep Linda off her feet.

Tiny gathered the troops and the Merry Band of Traveling Minstrels were off to the next gig, leaving Casper, Wyoming with fond memories and good vibes.

Nobody said it out loud.

Nobody called a meeting.

Nobody welcomed the brothers into the club.

But the two green hands everyone thought were idiots a few weeks earlier were now part of the crew.

When Carl's van died, the brothers had become their salvation.

Three weeks later, Bill’s hopes for Linda were dashed when he got a call asking if he knew anything about what had happened to the carpet.