By Diane Needham Mummert
One of the first things New Desire learned in road life is that it pays to have a mechanically inclined
person on the bus at all times since buses are prone to mechanical malfunctions, usually hundreds of miles
from home. One of New Desire’s most memorable “malfunctions” occurred on a cold, rainy New Year’s
Eve. On an Eagle bus, the wipers are on separate controls – one for the driver’s side and another for the
passenger’s side. It sounds kind of complicated and unwieldy – imagine having two separate controls for
the wipers in your car - but it worked out well on this particular evening, because the driver’s side wiper
failed.
Have you heard Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be A Redneck” lines? He might be inspired to write a few
more after this predicament. It was the middle of the night, New Year’s Eve, no less. There was no getting
that wiper motor running for a few days; but it was raining, and they had to get home. What to do? Most
buses have blinds in the windows, but New Desire had curtains, and it’s a good thing they did. The creative
minds on their bus thought to use the curtain rod to “tie” the driver’s side wiper to the passenger’s side
wiper. So about 3:00 AM on the first day of a New Year, they headed down the road with a curtain rod
attaching the good wiper to the bad wiper, effectively running both of them off one motor: You might be a
redneck if you use a curtain rod to run your windshield wipers!
Oh, but the fun didn’t stop there. The defroster on that bus had also stopped working. With visibility
reduced by rain and having curtain rod windshield wipers, the window was rapidly fogging over because
the defroster had quit. Wiping a fogged windshield with paper towels works for a little while, but that
leaves water streaks all over the window--not the ideal situation. It’s hard to drive while wiping a window
that large and it’s even harder to see when someone else is wiping it in front of you. New Desire took the
redneck approach: start the generator, get the hair dryer, plug it in and have someone stand right by the
driver, blow-drying the windshield. They felt like the Beverly Hillbillies trying to get home that night, but
they made it.
Of course, lift the engine cover and see how crazy things can really be in road life. New Desire broke an oil
line just on the south side of Louisville on their way home from NQC. Engines don’t run very well or very
long without oil, and if the line’s broke, no oil will to stay in the engine. This presents a problem, especially
at night far away from Auto Zone or even Wal-Mart. So what does a Southern Gospel singer/bus mechanic
do if the oil line breaks in the middle of the night over 300 miles from home? Well, he does what any good
redneck would do – he gets the saw and heads for the woods. Yes sir, I’m talking cutting down trees. Not
big trees, just a small sapling-- one that’s about as thick as an oil line - a tree you can whittle down to just
the right size to plug a hole in your oil line until you can get the bus to a real mechanic.
That’s road life. And that’s why every bus should have a mechanic on board, or at least a redneck that
isn’t “stumped” by crazy mechanical malfunctions.
The redneck crew of New Desire consists of Dan & Brenda Robinson and Labron & Brooke Cason
(vocals), Lemuel Evans (bus driver) and Debra Evans (music technician). Bookings for New Desire can be
made by contacting them at www.newdesire.org, by email at bookings@newdesire.org, or by calling their
office at 705.645.6444. New Desire’s latest CD release by Crossroads is titled Time In The Garden.
If you enjoyed this rewind find more stories at www.sgmradio.com
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