When Don Clark rolls into the gates of a bluegrass festival, people pay attention. No, he’s not driving a tricked-out 50s muscle car or a new Lamborghini.

He rolls around the country in a restored 1955 Martha White tour bus, just like one that Flatt & Scruggs used.

It’s called the Martha White Bluegrass Bus Museum, which amounts to a traveling history of the music Clark has loved since his youth.

If you’re wondering about the reason for the bus’s existence, blame it all on an old Flatt & Scruggs album Clark bought many years ago.

“Well, what really made me do it was about the time the Beverly Hillbillies came out, I heard that banjo, Earl Scruggs, the theme song “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” and I thought I just got to have a banjo and learn how to play,” Clark said outside his bus at last weekend’s Franklin, Ky., bluegrass festival. “About that time, my cousin got one and then I got one and we learned how to play together.

“I bought the album they showed on there (the Hillbillies),” Clark said, as he digs through the memorabilia on the bus and produces the LP.

“I learned the songs on it and how to play and everything. I kept looking at that album going … man that’d be so cool to play banjo like Earl and have an old bus like that. Well here it is.”

For the last two decades the Martha White Bluegrass Bus Museum has educated and inspired the future generations of American music, according to a Web site dedicated to the bus. “From the deserts of California to the heart of the south, Don Clark has made it his personal mission to spread the joy of American music through his Bluegrass Bus Museum. The bus is a hands on interactive museum that allows children and adults to become immersed in the history of country and bluegrass music.”

Clark has collected bluegrass and country music memorabilia for the past three decades. His rolling museum includes hundreds of autographed photos of musical legends ranging from Flatt & Scruggs to Nickel Creek. The museum features vintage clothing worn by stars such as Ralph Stanley, Jimmy Martin and Johnny Cash. The museum is covered from floor to ceiling in musical items that date back to the 1930s.

Clark actually brought the old vehicle back from its grave when he ran across it about 20 years ago.

“Actually, the bus…. I found rusting away under a tree at a feed and tackle store. I bought it and brought it home and restored it up. … It was in pretty rough shape when I got it,” he said.

The bus is a 1955 Flxible that was manufactured in Loudenville, Ohio. It once was Jimmy Martin’s mode of touring.

“The reason the name is Flxible and a lot of people, When they hear a Flxible bus, they think it flexs in the middle or bends. That’s not the case,” said Clark. “What happened was, in the early 1900s Flxible developed a side-car for Harley-Davidson and it would flex. It would flex in a curve. That’s where they got the name Flxible. After World War I, they decided they needed some other way to go to keep their business going, so they decided to get in the bus business. They were in the business until the ‘80s.”

The bus had definitely seen better days by the time Clark caught up with it.

“It was pretty rough,” Clark remembers. “The outside was bad. The interior needed the floor and paneling. It was real bare.”

Now, Clark says his bus has been restored close to its original condition when bands used the Flxible models to travel the country.

Flatt & Scruggs’ bus, said Daniel Clark, the owner’s son, “was gutted out though. They had 4 seats, much like the drivers seat, on each side. In the back they had cots that they bolted down to the floor. Some of the cots had ropes, and they literally strapped themselves into the cots while they were going down the road.”

” A little different than Rhonda Vincent’s Martha White bus now,” quips Don Clark. “You could put two of these in her bus.”

Despite the Martha White name on the sides of the bus, Clark said he’s self-sponsored. The company has given him permission to use its name, as has Nashville radio station WSM and the families of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

Clark and his son say they get a lot of enjoyment traveling from festival to festival.

“When this rolls up at a festival, people, it just perks their interest because it’s something different,” said the younger Clark. “It’s different than a band. It’s different than a vendor stand, The market’s cornered with this bus because there is no other museum that’s portable that can come to a festival.”

Daniel Clark said he and his dad now book the bus at festivals just like they were a band scheduling performances.

“I’ve been doing this for 20 years and there were a number of years when I’d just pull up to a festival and they’d let me in and I’d park it by the stage,” said Don Clark, referring to the days when pump prices were far less than today’s $3 a gallon. “It’s so expensive any more. I just can’t afford to do it anymore without some form of sponsorship.”

Clark said he wishes one of the companies with traditional ties to bluegrass would help sponsor his museum.

“Martha White, The Grand Ole Opry, they all love what I’m doin’ but they don’t want to give any money to do it,” he said. “I’m sad on that, ’cause if I have a major, major engine go or something like that. The bus is going to sit for a while.”

For now, Clark’s bus isn’t sitting. For a schedule of appearances where you can see it, go to Clark’s Web site at bluegrassbus.com

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