My Almost Tom Petty Tale

In 1969, a year before I moved there permanently, I spent part of the summer in Gainesville, Florida. My friend Bob Wessels had invited me up from Miami to hang out with his rock group who were the house band for a rough and tumble topless bar called “Dub’s Steer Room”. I was seventeen then and looked twelve, but no one said anything as I spent each evening crouched next to the amplifiers watching the go-go girls breasts while the owner Dub broke up fights with the sawed-off pool cue he always carried. We would finish up around 2 a.m. then, along with two of the dancers, head back to an old two-story frame house everyone shared as living quarters. One of them, a seductive blonde named “Sammie” kept a pet owl in her bedroom. I wasn’t a virgin anymore, but I was damn close and would spend every chance I could talking with her. She, in turn, called me her “little brother,” dashing my slim hopes. Around dawn, everyone would crash and we would wake up by mid-afternoon ready to begin it all again.

The summer ended, the band broke up and a local group called “The Epics” took over for us. After a few gigs, they rented an old farm around the corner, re-named it “Mudcrutch Farm” and changed their name as well. We all saw a lot of Mudcrutch back then; too much, actually. They played everywhere constantly. And when they weren’t playing, they were practicing into the wee hours of the morning pissing off their neighbors who were good Christian folks and got up early. A few years later, Mudcrutch disbanded and three of the band members reformed as “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.” Rumor has it they did quite well after that.

Memories like this die hard, but that being said, I’d give them all up for one more night squatted next to those old amps at Dub’s watching Sammie’s breasts swaying in the sultry night air.