I think it was back in 1968, myself and some friends from my neighbourhood were working in Toronto. There was no work at home, people used to say “you couldn’t buy a job.” I had found work for my friends in a warehouse where I worked. Back in those days, we were all country music fans, I still am. We used to watch the Carl Smith Show on television back home. There was a bar in Toronto in the area of Queen Street and Spadina Avenue called the Horseshoe Tavern, which we heard a lot about from people we knew from home. Some of the big names in country music used to play there. We heard of a group that we had seen on the Carl Smith Show at home, so we were there one Friday night.

The group didn’t disappoint us and we enjoyed the show. Between the sets, the owner of the club got onstage to make an announcement about their annual Labour Day bus tour to Nashville. She said the return fare, a night in the hotel and ticket to the Saturday night Grand Ole Opry show was $60. We were sitting at a table close to the stage and when the missus got down and was passing our table, she asked if we wanted to go to Nashville. We all said we really would but $60 was a lot of money and we were all working from less than two dollars an hour. She told us that we didn’t have to pay the sixty dollars all at once, just as long as it was paid in full two weeks before Labour Day. It was late April then so we figured we could manage.

I often think of that now, what you would get for sixty dollars today and have precious memories to show for it. So, every day for two weeks after that, we would go to the Horseshoe Tavern and pay five or ten dollars towards our trip. The boys would have a beer or two. I was too young to be served alcohol. The boys wouldn’t have been old enough either at home, but we were in Ontario. We had our trip paid for long before Labour Day, and couldn’t wait for the time to come. I remember I wasn’t allowed to drink beer but I could buy a Coke which came in a small bottle like you’d get from a vending machine, and it cost the same as a beer. They had to pay the people on stage.

I’ll never forget it, on one of our trips to the Horseshoe Tavern, we saw a pickup truck in the parking lot when we got off the Queen Street streetcar, which ran on rails like a train. The truck had a homemade camper on it. There was a sign on the side of the camper that read: “Stompin Tom Conners Star of Radio and Booth Records”, with two black footprints painted on. We had never heard of him. We sat at a table close to the stage as usual, the boys with their beer and me with my Coke. We were soon to get to know him and to admire him a great deal.

As long as my mind continues to function, I’ll never forget that night. This tall, thin man dressed in black, a black cowboy hat on his head, a guitar in one hand and a piece of plywood about two feet square in the other hand. The plywood was well worn on one side. There was another man with thin who also had a guitar. He sang silly songs he’d written himself, like “Bud the Spud”, “Luke’s Guitar”, “Tillsonburg” and many more. He told Newfie jokes between his songs, you heard them everywhere in Toronto back then. We told him to watch it with the jokes, we were Newfies at our table. After his set, he stopped at our table and sat with us, had a beer or two. He spent his entire break with us, talking about working away from home and life back east. He was a simple working man, no stranger to hard times, who became a legend in his own time and never lost the common touch. Many years later, again back in Toronto working, I would watch his funeral on television and hear the tributes that came from many famous people in Canada’s music industry. God rest your soul, Stompin Tom, and thanks for the priceless memory.

We left work early that Friday before Labour Day, took a taxi to the boarding house, grabbed a bag, took transit to the Horseshoe and got the bus to Nashville. Left at 6:00. We crossed the border into the US at Windsor, ON. Customs officers came on the bus at Detroit. There were no passports then, just driver’s license for those old enough to drive. We had our birth certificates from the churches. One man had nothing but they let him go when his buddy vouched for him. Imagine trying that today.

No one slept on the bust that night. People played guitar, drank beer, told stories and partied all night. There was no washroom on the bus, the driver just pulled over to the side of the highway and everyone, men, women, boys, girls, just peed on the side of the road. I can honestly say I urinated on the side of the road in at least three states of the Union. We stopped at a roadhouse for lunch and a washroom break once. There was a new driver on the bus when we came out. He asked if everyone was on board, everyone said yes. We were driving for almost an hour when the bus was pulled over by the Highway Patrol. Two Officers with their Smokey the Bandit hats came on the bus, followed by a very angry looking woman. Apparently, her husband was drunk and forgot to tell the new driver she was still in the washroom when we left the rest stop. She flew into her husband and everyone else on the bust just laughed.

We pulled into Nashville around noon on Saturday, got settled at the hotel, then went looking for something to eat and did some shopping before going to the Opry that night. I walked around town, visited the State Capital and saw two statues of famous people, Davey Crockett and Sgt. Calvin York. Wish I had a camera and someone with me to take a picture.

We went to the Grand Ole Opry that night. It was very exciting. I didn’t realize it was a live radio show performed in front of a live audience from all over the country, and in our case, Canada. They even did the commercials right there on the stage. It was divided into fifteen-minute sections. There was a drop sheet that would unfold for the different segments. Most of the big stars were on tour at the time, but I saw Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb, Minnie Pearl, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. We all went to Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge after the show. It was just across the alley from the stage door at the Ryman. The walls were plastered with autographs of the performers. We went horseback riding on Sunday, and got the bus outside of Tootsie’s. She opened just for us.

Everyone slept on the way back. No one got left behind. I and many others watched the lawn in three different states. I met a young girl my age named June Carter. No, she wasn’t the June Carter who married the Man in Black.

Cyril Griffin
New Perlican, NL