Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 18, 1993 TAG: 9308180035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PAINT BANK LENGTH: Medium
\ There's a Darkness on the Edge of Town. No, wait, that's just the shadow from Potts Mountain. The main drag is no Thunder Road, unless it's from the sound of tractor-trailers rumbling as they try to make the grade up Virginia 311. The only thing Born to Run here are the 'coon dogs.
But Paint Bank can boast one connection with rock star Bruce Springsteen - a fire truck.
It's the one with "The Boss" - as Springsteen is known to his fans - painted on the grill to commemorate the town's benefactor.
The 1967 Ford arrived about a year ago, with some help from John Mulheren, a Wall Street stock-trader, Springsteen chum, New Jersey neighbor and Roanoke College alumnus who owns a farm outside Paint Bank.
"Mulheren came down here and asked if we wanted one," says Glen Linton, a longtime Paint Bank firefighter. Next thing the firefighters knew, the fire company in Freehold, N.J., Springsteen's hometown, donated a surplus truck to replace Paint Bank's aging '55 model.
To trace Springsteen's role in the transaction, fans may want to consult the song "My Hometown" on his 1984 "Born in the U.S.A" album. In the bleak true-to-life ballad about urban decay in Freehold, Springsteen sings of how "they're closing down the textile mill across the tracks."
A few years ago, plans were made to turn the abandoned mill into a library and Springsteen donated $100,000 toward the effort.
Not long afterward, though, the building burned. According to the Freehold News Transcript, a vagrant lighting a fire to keep warm was blamed.
The plans turned to ashes, the library sent Springsteen his money back. That's when one of Freehold's fire companies suggested Springsteen donate the money to them instead to buy a new fire truck.
So Springsteen forwarded his check to the Freehold Fire Department, with just one string attached.
"Part of the deal was to have the old truck donated to that town down in Virginia," says Hank Stryker, Freehold's first assistant fire chief. Freehold officials didn't think much about the stipulation. "The rumor was that he had a farm down there," Stryker says.
It is Mulheren who owns the farm, a spread of 3,000 acres hard by the West Virginia line where he raises buffalo.
Mulheren, best known here for his days as a Roanoke College prankster and best known on Wall Street for his conviction in a stock-manipulation deal involving Ivan Boesky (a conviction later overturned on appeal), is reluctant to say much about his role in putting the Paint Bank bug in Springsteen's ear.
He says one of his relatives actually worked out the details of the fire truck donation. "I know they have some ridiculous rules in New Jersey that fire trucks can't be over so many years old."
Folks around Paint Bank don't have much to say about Springsteen's donation either. "Most of the older people don't know who he is," says Fire Department president Ernie Palmer. "They know the name, but they go about their business."
Even when Springsteen is in town, as he reportedly was a few years back, presumably visiting Mulheren.
"He was in the store," Palmer says, "and the girl at the register recognized him. But she wasn't going to say anything."
If you can't find privacy in Paint Bank, Palmer reasons, "you can't find it anywhere."
by CNB