As a child, I would go to my grandparents house in Bancroft where they had a big old 8-track stereo. If my paternal grandparents were Big Band, my maternal grandparents were Grand Ol' Opry. One weekend when I was about 7 years old, my mom dug out one of the 8-tracks and played a song called "Goodbye Rubberhead." The rhyming scheme and gratuitous use of the word "boob" appealed to me. I giggled at The Ketchup song, about a potato and tomato that get married, and at the long-sufferingness of "My Brother Paul".
My mom and dad found a 60 minute tape and made me a copy of that 8-track album, Bud the Spud and other Favorites, filling air on the B-side with East Coast fiddle music. For the next year or so, when we visited our trailer during the summers my mom would cue up that cassette tape before I went to bed each night and I would fall asleep to the music of Stompin' Tom. I held onto that tape until I was in my early 20's, when it was lost during one of many moves.
He came to Midland a few years ago to play the rec center, but at the time the ticket prices were out of my reach, or perhaps I had I unbreakable obligations to attend to, but for whatever reason, I missed this show and I swore I would see the man perform live while there was still time.
That time has run out and I don't mind saying I'm a little heartbroken.
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| R.I.P Mr. Connors |
You've stirred strange, amber-tinted memories in me, Yandie. :-) I like that.
ReplyDeleteI raise a glass.
Pearl