Page 40 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
on, I just wanted to kill Mickey because even then I had already had about enough. After a while, the police chief in Grants came over to tell me they didn’t need our kind in his town and he never wanted to see me there again ever. When it was time for us to leave, a caravan of cops followed us all the way to the county line. Mickey thought it was a big joke and I remember shortly after that grabbing him and slamming him against the wall somewhere in Texas and saying, “You son of a bitch, don’t you ever do shit to me like that again.”
On a playing date in Lake Ozark, Mickey was doing doughnuts in the road with his car and the state police caught him. It happened that I knew the patrolman that got him and I finally convinced him Mickey was a celebrity and he was set free. Besides Mickey’s bullshit, what I remember most about that tour was how many ice and snow storms we encountered.
When we came back to California, the band was living in North Hollywood on Victory Boulevard. We had bookings that April in San Francisco at the Off Broadway, one of the top clubs in the city, featuring notable acts such as Mel Torme, Lou Rawls and Lenny Bruce. But before we could get home, Mickey involved us in another encounter with the police. We were on the San Bernadino Freeway, going a little fast, with Mickey driving around 80 mph in one car. In my car was a case of beer we had bought somewhere on the way. I’m not much of a beer drinker and only drank about half a bottle and put it back in the case.
Then I was stopped by a highway patrolman. I guess he had been watching us and could tell Mickey and I were together, but
38