The Bill Monroe Hillbilly Band Bus Adventure
By Constance Cassinelli, Inland Empire Branch
My Italian-American father had too much German-Irish blood. He liked to drink. His weekend beverage of choice was beer.
His grandmother from that Alsace Loraine settlement in Oldenberg, Indiana, had taught her sons and grandsons how to properly make a good brew in a galvanized trash can that was situated in a corner of the primitive work shed that she facetiously referred to as the loaf shop. This tradition began during Prohibition. The beer would be bottled and hidden down the well so it would remain cold for Friday night gatherings. Drinking and getting silly was a family event that continued for decades.
One Sunday in 1949 my father was casually driving around in his old black 41 Ford with his younger brother Victor. It was lunchtime and they were already snockered when they spotted the Bill Monroe Hillbilly Band Bus parked in a White Castle parking lot.
Bill Monroe was known as the Father of Bluegrass. Many famous musicians mastered their craft with his band. Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Vassar Clements, Mac Wiseman, Jimmy Martin were only a few who played with Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. Now they were likely having lunch together.
“I’ve never driven a hillbilly band bus before. Have you?” Daddy asked his droopy-eyed brother.
“Oh no,” Victor slurred and leaned back to rest his head against the rough mohair upholstery.
“Oh come on, Vic. This is not any old bus. It is a hillbilly band bus.” Daddy snickered as he drove the old Ford into the parking lot and pulled up alongside the door of the bus.
What a terrible invasion of privacy for anyone to enter that vehicle with the private and expensive instruments of famous musicians on board, but the door was not locked. It was meant to be entered, right? They did.
It seems my father’s curiosity dogged him to also want to know exactly how that particular floor shifting system worked. While experimenting, he accidently backed the bus into a telephone pole. The side of the parked Ford blocked their exit door. The police were called. It took a crowbar to pry open the rear door and rescue the brothers and precious instruments.
When asked why they did it, my father explained, “We’re tanked.” They were arrested, paid Bill Monroe $300 for damages to his bus, then later had to read about the Cassinelli Brothers and the bus incident in The Cincinnati Post. So did the rest of the family who were deeply humiliated.
When my father was eighty, I found the old newspaper article. What was embarrassing fifty years earlier was an incredibly colorful incident about the dignified senior citizens’ past. Copies were distributed to descendants of the two brothers who enjoyed a good giggle about their fathers’ creatively stupid adventure with the famous Bill Monroe’s Hillbilly Band Bus.