It’s a Monday morning around 11 a.m. and Eugene (Gene) McCaffrey is outside his Fountain Hills garage. He has the day off from his job as a part-time operations coordinator at the Fountain Hills Community Center, which means he’s wearing the usual cut-off t-shirt, jeans, sandals and a skull and roses belt buckle that shines in the summer heat.

Today, he’s installing a pair of step-bars on his Jeep so his wife, Andrea, won’t have such a hard time climbing inside. It’s one of three Jeeps that Gene owns, one of which he recently sold and will replace soon.

Memorabilia is stapled on his garage walls including a few vintage Grateful Dead posters from when he was a college-on-hold Deadhead roadie, an aerial shot of Yankee Stadium and two papal blessing parchments; one for his mother and the other for his father when they escorted Pope Benedict to second base at Yankee Stadium to conduct mass in front of more than 57,000 fans.

McCaffrey’s most recent addition to his eclectic memorabilia collection are two “Please Wear a Mask” posters he saved and tacked up in his garage, which previously greeted Community Center-goers during the throes of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

“Memorability starts whenever you think it’s worth saving,” McCaffrey said. “That stuff wipes me out. Little stuff like that is just, you know, you look at it and you remember where you got it or something and it just brings back an old, funny memory or a story.”

To the delight of his coworkers, McCaffrey has many such stories to tell, often coming into work on his day off just to “see what’s going on,” crack a few jokes and maybe play a hand of poker.

The Times sat down with McCaffrey to listen to a few of his stories, one of which began when he was a sophomore accounting major at the University of Dayton with an expired backstage pass to the Grateful Dead.

Truckin’

“It’s some of the best times I can’t remember,” McCaffrey said, describing his time traveling the country with the Grateful Dead.

He tried his luck with an expired ticket when the band passed through Cincinnati, just over an hour’s drive from Dayton. McCaffrey made the drive, slapped the pass on his shirt and disappeared into the crowd. Feeling a hand on his shoulder, he heard a man say, “Hey, where’d you get that pass?”

Gene muttered a reply, “Oh yea, the back doors, I came in.”

“That’s funny, because I haven’t given them out yet,” the man replied.

“I says to him, 'Look, it was from last year, I didn’t get a chance to use it,’ and the guy said, 'If you’re going to stay, you’re going to work,’” McCaffrey said.

Those words were music to McCaffrey’s ears and, to his father’s disappointment, promptly took off two semesters of business school to tour with the band, setting up and tearing down a total of 50 shows across the U.S.

“Every show was a different circus,” he said. “They’d go on stage and the place would just turn into a circus. And then they’d come off stage, you’d knock it down, you’d put it in the trucks and you’d go to the next one, and the next circus was funnier than the last.”

Enjoying breakfast one day on tour, McCaffrey recalls the whole band and crew sitting around when the late Jerry Garcia, the band’s lead guitarist and vocalist, got up to leave. Just then, a pair of young fangirls came whizzing down the aisle and snatched Garcia’s plate, coffee cup and dirty silverware and ran off with their newfound souvenirs.

“They ran out like they had stolen a diamond ring or something,” McCaffrey laughed.

Two paychecks

The summer after graduating from UD, McCaffrey’s father, Gene Sr., a business manager for an architectural firm, got his son a job at Mullaly Construction in New York. Little did Gene Sr. know, however, that his son was offered a $20 hourly wage, a paycheck far higher than what Gene Sr. was making at the time.

At his new job, McCaffrey came home with a new stereo under his arm, a TV for his bedroom and a brand-new 10-speed bicycle. Gene Sr. was puzzled and asked his son where he was getting all the money.

“I said ‘Dad, I'm working now, I got a paycheck.’ McCaffrey said. “My dad said, ‘How much are you making?’ I said, ‘$800 a week, dad.’ He went ballistic. Dad says, ‘$800 a week? I don't make $800 a week! I got a family of five kids. I'm going up to Mullaly tomorrow and I’m telling him to cut your salary.’”

A few days later, McCaffrey struck a deal with Mullaly to cut him two paychecks; one to show his father, the other to keep for himself, but only after learning an important lesson: “Never discuss your salary with anybody,” McCaffrey said. “That’s between you and your employer.”

Gene’s toys

Throughout his life, McCaffrey has surrounded himself with vehicles of all varieties, starting with a Winnebago in school, a 1951 Oldsmobile after college and onto more classic cars like his 1941 Plymouth and 1955 Chevy. Both the ‘41 Plymouth and ‘55 Chevy have brought McCaffrey his 15 seconds of fame.

Featured in the classic film, “The Godfather,” McCaffrey’s ‘41 Plymouth was the getaway car in the iconic scene when Sonny (James Caan) is ambushed at the toll booth. After the ambush, McCaffrey drives up to the toll booth and pops the trunk while the gangsters toss in their Tommy guns, jump in the car and speed away.

“It’s in the movie for 10 seconds but it took 12 days to film the scene,” McCaffrey said, who paid off the car with a few days of filming.

Growing up in Long Island, McCaffrey and a few of his friends would jump in his ‘55 Chevy and head to Burger King, a known hang-out spot for other hot rods.

One day, a kid named Brian asked McCaffrey if he and his friends would be willing to be in a music video for his band. McCaffrey agreed, and a few days later, a crowd of young people in their classic cars including McCaffrey, his friends and his ‘55 Chevy were under the Brooklyn Bridge at 11 p.m., getting filmed in an MTV music video for Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats, the 1950s-style rockabilly band that found widespread success in the 1980s.

“All these people hanging out looked great in the video because of where it was, under the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said.

Always moving

McCaffrey enjoyed a 50-year career in construction, many times working 60-plus hour workweeks building such monuments as the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, the International Paper Company Building and the Bear Stearns Building in New York City.

McCaffrey has been married to Andrea for 35 years. After retiring, McCaffrey, his wife and her sister took a cross-country road trip with eight cats and two dogs in 2020. They moved to Fountain Hills where McCaffrey - to keep from going stir-crazy - found work at the Community Center where his East Coast hustle is put to work and his endless stories have an audience.

The Community Center is also where McCaffrey says he finds meaning in helping people enjoy their favorite activities and get to wherever they’re going.

“It makes me really happy and it makes my day,” McCaffrey said. “I would like everybody to treat me the way I treat them.”

This fall, McCaffrey is toying with the idea of taking a chartered flight to New York to see his Yankees play the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks. The only issue is McCaffrey isn’t too keen on flying.

“I gotta tell you, it’ll either be exciting or scare the hell out of me,” he said. “And until I'm sitting there, if it happens, I might have a white-knuckle trip all the way there and take a train back.”