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As I sit here reflecting on my own life I can't help but wonder what wonderful stories others have to share.

So i am dedicating this page to all those who have a wonderful life story to share. If you have or know someone who has a great story please send it to us and we will post it here.

This story comes from a newspaper interview in the Salem Evening News,  Salem  MA.

I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Brown many years ago, and am honored to share his story.

Blues traveler Peabody man shares tales from a life on the road

By Sean Corcoran

Staff writer

From half-way down the hall at the Pilgrim Rehabilitation Center in Peabody, Frank Brown looks to me like he could push away the walker he is leaning on, stand up straight and stride out the front door.

He could be a visitor - a musician, I think - leaning on a stray walker and having a laugh with the staff before he goes. Whatever he's saying, whichever tale he's telling, the group of nurses and aides are listening and giggling.

"You tell great stories, Mr. Brown," one of them says.

Even leaning on the walker, Brown looks tall and dapper. He is wearing a well-fitting black suit with a pink shirt and a white tie.

Dang if doesn't look like a blues man, I think.

But some might say Brown is no blues man at all. He is just an 80-year-old man from Mobile, Ala., whose life somehow took an unexpected turn and brought him to, of all places, Peabody, Mass.

But to me, Brown is as much a blues man as anyone. He is the former longtime bus driver for legends James Brown and B.B. King, among others. He has driven thousands of miles up, down and around this country, meeting, talking and living with some of the greatest roots musicians the world has ever heard.

Frank Brown is a blues man by association. And as far as he is concerned, his hospital bed in this Peabody rehabilitation center is just another stop. He just had to pull over a spell because his wheels stopped working.

"I feel good; I feel good," he says. "The only thing is the legs don't think I do. As soon as I can get the legs straightened out, I'll be all right. I'm not going on the road, though. I've had enough of that."

Brown is still sharp. For 80 years old, he's real sharp. But for one moment, I doubt it. For just a second, I doubt everything he's told me, sadly dismissing both the story he just told me about Elvis, and the one about B.B. leaving the plantation near Itta Bena, Miss., with only a guitar on his back.

I doubt it all after I ask, "When was the last time you saw B.B. King?" And he answers, "Wednesday."

"You saw B.B. King on Wednesday?"

"Yes, I did."

And there, on the table next to his bed, under King's "Reflections" CD and next to two autographed pictures, is a backstage pass from the Lowell Auditorium that says "1-7-04."

Indeed, he saw him on Wednesday. Thank goodness for that.

I sit in Brown's room for nearly two hours, completely captivated. He's not very good with dates, but it doesn't really matter. "If somebody was going to give me $1 million," he says, "I couldn't pick the dates right. All I did was drive and sleep."

He was born on Oct. 24, 1924, he says, and he spent much of his life in Mobile, somewhere near 50 years, cutting lots in graveyards, delivering medicine on a bicycle and working in an auto parts factory. He was drafted into the Army once, though he never went overseas. He also married twice, but both women died. I tell him I'm sorry, and he tells me not to be. "We all have to go," he says.

At some point in his 40s, Brown began driving for local blues musicians and bands - people such as Snookum Russell, Roosevelt Sykes and Bobby Bland. When I tell him I've never heard of these people, or several others he mentions, he says, "You've missed half your life." And I believe him.

For about 10 years, Brown drove a bus for James Brown, the entertainer known as the Godfather of Soul. But James Brown also is famous for his violent temper, a temper his bus driver saw many times.

"Everybody has their own way," Brown says. "And when you come to be a boss of something, that way changes. You change from who you are to what that word stands for - boss. The guy was all right as long as he could have his own way - right or wrong."

Somehow, Brown managed to escape the entertainer's wrath. Many times, he watched as James Brown would charge up to someone, his fists balled up with fury. But the two men never crossed. Brown left before they ever did, and it's probably a good thing.

"One thing he didn't know, because I never told him," Brown says, "is I did the same thing he did - box."

I look at his hands when he says this and they look twice as large as my own. His right hand aches him terribly, he says, holding it up and looking at it, as if in disbelief. He may need to have surgery on it. The same with his legs.

He tells me he quit driving for James Brown without having another job lined up.

"After I got with James," he says, "I had quit and I was walking down the street and one of (B.B. King's) fellas saw me and asked, 'What you doing walking down here?' He told me that B.'s looking for a driver.

"I went down where B. was and went and talked to him. He said, 'When can you start?' And I said, 'I've just started now.'"

Life on the road with B.B. King was filled with good music and adventure. Brown remembers the time King was playing in South Carolina and Elvis came by to say hello. Another time, Brown was standing outside a venue in Atlanta when Bob Dylan walked up next to him (someone told him who Dylan was), looked up at the marquee with King's name on it and said, "Is that the one people are talking about so much?"

One time, King told Brown and his band he was going to take them all to the Mississippi plantation where King grew up, drove a tractor and was known by the name Riley.

"B. told us he was going to take us down to the plantation where he lived," Brown says. "And he did. One morning he loaded up the bus."

When they arrived, King pointed to a man and said, "Oh, there's the old boss. Let's see what he has to say."

The boss recognized King, or course, and he called all the plantation workers over and introduced him. "He told them, 'B. used to be out there in the field just like you. Then one day I got up and (King) was walking down the road with a guitar on his back.'"

With his hands placed neatly on his lap, Brown tells me his stories and concludes, "I had some real good times when I was out there. ... I had my fun out there and enjoyed it to the highest."

Now, just like King, diabetes has made Brown's life more difficult. King still travels, though, and when he performs today he sits down because his legs bother him. But Brown was forced off the road by the disease, and sometime in the early 1990s, he moved into an apartment in Peabody.

"I had met some people in Peabody, and I just came on back to Peabody to get me an apartment,"

he says. "I had taken sick, which is why I left B. And I never did get over the sickness."

Just outside the room in the rehabilitation center where Brown's been for about four months, Unit Manager Gayle Racicot says Brown "has brought music to the third floor. He plays his music in his room all day long. We open the door sometimes so we can hear the B.B. King."

She says when Brown listens to the songs, he smiles. And I can picture it. That's just what he does when he talks about life on the road.

King has invited him back out there for awhile, Brown tells me, but says it is in God's hands.

"If I could walk and it didn't bother me, yeah, I'd go back out there for a while. Not to work, but I'd go out and drive around some, see if there is any changes going on out there. But I know I couldn't sit there on that bus without driving it."