27-Mar-1985 Sydney Entertainment Centre, Australia
...about a month later I had to go to traffic court so I go down to traffic court. I hope nobody's gonna recognize me
or nothing and I'm sitting there. Now in traffic court you can plead; there's three things you can plead: one, you can
plead guilty.
Now nobody pleads that because they don't want to admit that they did what they did. You can plead innocent and
nobody wants to plead that because they know the judge ain't gonna believe them or you can plead guilty with an
explanation.
Everybody pleads that. If you sit in traffic court all night you think everybody...the whole world is guilty with
an explanation. So I was sitting there, a guy gets up before me and you go to this little microphone and he was
caught speeding. He was caught doing...I think 75 on a side street and his explanation was that he was drunk and he
thought he was out on the highway. So after that, you know, after that explanation, whatever explanation, whatever I
had to say was gonna sound good I thought you know, so, so I get up there, I get in front of the mike and I say
'Well judge it...it...it...it...all started like...like...like...Well I
had...
...so I stood there in front of the judge but the judge didn't budge he did (?) He fined me, I had to show him my license, my registration but I brought the wrong registration.
He said 'Son you're gonna sit here till you show me the right registration. I said 'But judge but...but...' He said 'Don't
worry cause we're Open All
Night.'
(Monthy Smith)
...I was bad at my studies, I was bad at sports, I was bad at...a wide range of activities. The only good thing that
happened to me in high school was I got interested in the guitar. Now I was already interested in the other thing but
as time passed and I matured the guitar was the only one that I got very good at, see that's why the shows are so
long cause the other thing happens so fast all the time but that's all right see cause I'm still looking for some
volunteers that want to practice, practice, practice...
(Monthy Smith)
...Oh...this is a song I can't (?) this is a...we used to...when, I was in my late teens I used to get around by hitch
hiking all the time and...uh. Me and all my friends used to hitch hike and we come and see who could tell the best
hitch hiking stories. Man, I had...that picked me up and he was so...I remembered you always got picked up by
these guys with souped up cars and they insisted on showing you how fast that thing went down the Garden State
Parkway. I got in with one guy and I think he was in a Plymouth Road Runner, I think it was a Road Runner, and he
started hauling down the turnpike. Man he's, he's going about 100, 110. I'm watching the speedometer go up and
I'm start...man, gee, I get off right up here...giggle...it's not that far you better slow down because I get off right up
here...like... (?) and we start to slow down. We come into traffic and like he's talking to me and he's not watching
where he's going and he got down to about 25 miles and he rams into the rear end of the car in front of us and
then he jumps out and you figure he was gonna, like he was real mad, gonna start screaming. Instead he jumped
over the hood and runs off into the woods by the side, so like, so I got out of the car and then the woman, the
woman who he hit gets out and like she's going like 'whiplash, whiplash' and she sees me and she thinks I was
driving.
She says, "Where's your license?"
I said, "I don't have my license, lady, I was just riding, you know?"
She says, "Oh yeah well where, you know, where's the driver?"
I said, "He ran off into the woods" and then I realized that most likely that the car I was riding in was not that
gentleman's car, and then I ran off into the woods. I remember I stayed in the woods for like two hours walking
backwards trying to get out of the way, afraid the cops were gonna come. But I guess the best hitch hiking story I
ever heard was a friend of mine came home and claimed that he'd been picked up by Elvis Presley on the turnpike
you know. He said it was real late at night. He said this big black limousine pulled up, the door opened and a big guy
got out of the front seat and he climbed in and said Elvis was sitting in there with a girlfriend and the big guy I guess
must have been one of his bodyguards. Said he got in behind him and he said they rode for about ten miles and he
couldn't think of anything to say whatsoever. He claimed that Elvis had said the reason he picked him up
was because he remembered breaking down in the Cadillac that they had on the road in the early days, somebody
giving him a lift. So I never knew whether to believe it or not. It was one of those stories you kind of hoped it was
true. I remember when a friend of mine called me up and told me that Elvis had died I thought, I thought back to that
story. I wondered like, what I would have said to him if I'd been out on that highway that night and uh I
guess...uh...just would have said ..."Thanks for the ride."
(Monthy Smith)