When you grow up in a small town, you can usually get what you need, but maybe not everything you want. But you do your trading local cause that’s how your friends and neighbors make their living. Used to be, if you couldn’t buy it in town, you would order from Sears & Roebuck or Montgomery Ward. Or if you were lucky, maybe you had a JC Penney. Seems like they were maybe a bit more “upscale”, kinda like KMart vs. Wal Mart vs. Target. If we actually went shopping out of town, it was special occasions. Maybe school starting or Christmas. I think that’s why Miranda Lambert’s “Automatic” is a song I really appreciate. It reminds me a lot of growing up.
This is Randy. If it’s Sunday, it must be time for “Randy’s Ramblings”. Here’s a story about my youth. I didn’t ask my sister or mom about the facts. It’s just how I remember it. So it may not be exactly right, but in my mind, it’s gospel.
Miranda Lambert grew up in East Texas like I did. About 50-60 miles away, give or take. Longview, Texas. Of course, she’s about 1.5 generations younger, but that’s not the point. For us, Longview was a big city. Big department stores. El Chico Restaurant. They even had McDonalds. We had cousins there, so we went from time to time. Perspective figures into things. In her “Automatic” song, Miranda sings about going shopping:
“If we drove all the way to Dallas just to buy an Easter dress
We’d take along a Rand McNally, stand in line to pay for gas”
It was 1970. I don’t recall standing in line to pay for gas. That would be later. I do remember gas station attendants still pumped gas for you at that point. And we made a rare trip to Dallas. It was later in the year. Christmas shopping must have figured into the plans. But the speed limit was still 70/75 so 120 miles down Interstate 30 didn’t take forever.
In our small town, we didn’t have a shopping mall. We didn’t even have a strip shopping center. That would come soon enough. Part of this trip included my sister finding something very important. She’d already been to Gibson’s (think poor man’s Wal Mart). West’s Department Store. White’s Auto. Yes, she was looking for a record. Not an album. A 45.
If it was a shopping trip to Dallas, that meant a stop at Big Town Mall. They had EVERYTHING. To a 9-10 year old kid, it was like a circus. Clothing stores, food court, Radio Shack and music stores. Whatever they were selling that day, they didn’t have everything we wanted. And they didn’t have the record. So we wound up at North Park Mall.
I don’t recall ever going to North Park before this visit. This was really fancy, big city shopping. They had massive Christmas decorations. And record stores. Well, at least one. And in this mall, the heavens opened and there it was. The record store with the holy grail. I’m sure in my sister’s mind, the entire reason for this trip was to find and buy the record.
The record? Well, it was a hit. A somewhat new band. And for the time and era, it was a pretty good record. History shows it spent 11 weeks in the Top 100.
So we conclude our business in Dallas, and make the drive home. Funny, the trip always seemed to take twice as long going home. Maybe because it was dark. But the old Chrysler Newport Custom (yes, a Chrysler “big as a whale”) always rode comfortably (if you could ignore the vinyl seat covers).
We got home, the car was unloaded and the record was carefully placed on the turntable. The stylus (needle) was dropped, and the record played. And played. And played. And played. And played...
Seems like it was the next day that the collision occurred. Might have been a couple of days. The record had been playing and playing. Over and over and over and over and over. And again, this is my recollection. May be right. May be close. I don’t know. I figure somebody’s going to deny something. But mom, finally having had her last good nerve jumped on one time too many, went into my sister’s room. The song? It was David Gates and Bread. “It Don’t Matter To Me”. And after what seemed like 100 spins, mom went into the room, pulled the record, broke it in half and said, “It DOES matter to me”.
No comments:
Post a Comment