“I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride

But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died”

– Don McLean, American Pie

There’s a scene in the movie American Graffiti where Richard Dreyfuss goes into a radio station to ask Wolfman Jack to do a dedication for him. The man behind the mic convinces him that he’s not The Wolfman, but he asks Dreyfuss to tell him his story.

Dreyfuss’ character said he desperately needs to get a note to The Wolfman so that he can do a dedication for a girl. The Wolfman said he’ll pass the note along and see what he can do.

As Dreyfuss leaves the station, he hears The Wolfman on the radio and looks through the window to see that the man at the mic really was The Wolfman.

American Graffiti was loved by my father. He adored the film so much that it sent him on a search to find some of his favorite records from his teens. The only problem was, many of those pieces of vinyl were no longer in print.

The soundtrack from American Graffiti was a two-album set and included many of my dad’s favorite songs, but the film set a fire under my father to find Buddy Holly’s greatest hits.

Originally released in the early 1960s, it was not a record you could still find in the racks of the local record stores. It was 1973, and The “B” section of the alphabetical racks contained Bachmann Turner Overdrive, and Bread, but no Buddy Holly.

Not to be deterred, my dad went on a quest. And he often took me with him.

We must have gone to every record store in Texarkana looking for Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits. But, no luck.

Until one day we went into a store downtown. To the best of my recollection, it was Woolworth’s and it was located off of Stateline Avenue. It resided near the Kress store, Belk Jones, J.C. Penney, and other stores that lived in the heart of cities before shopping malls lured them away.

The person in the record department told my dad that he knew the guy who delivered the records to the store and that if anyone could find a copy of that Buddy Holly album, it was him. The man wasn’t making any promises, but he said he would try.

So, dad ordered it and we waited.

Today, we live in an instant world. If you want a Buddy Holly album, all you have to do is log on to an online store and download it. But, in the early 1970s, that wasn’t the case. If something wasn’t on a store shelf or in a rack, you had to order it, hope it came in, and then go and pick it up.

We waited some more.

I so wanted my father to get that record. It seemed to mean a lot to him. But as more time passed, I began to have my doubts that it was still available.

I didn’t want to see my dad disappointed.

In the meantime, dad would take out his American Graffiti soundtrack and the other records he’d held on to for years and he’d play them.

This was before we had a nice console stereo. My parents owned a small, and I guess you would consider it a portable, record player. It was in a large plastic case and it had “Sears” in the middle of the lid.

You’d unsnap the lid latches, lift it up, and then pull up the “L” shaped arm that allowed you to put multiple albums on at a time so that you could load a few 33 1/3 long play records.

Dad would put the records on and when one side finished, the needle would lift up and return to its base, while the next record dropped on to the platter. The needle would then return to the beginning of the record and it would begin to play.

I can still hear the sound of the mechanism working its magic so that my dad could hear the songs of his youth. They made him happy.

The American Graffiti soundtrack included sounds of The Wolfman in between cuts. And that album was great, but my dad still wanted his Buddy Holly record.

One day, my dad came home and my mom told him that Woolworth’s had called. I waited what seemed to be an eternity, honestly expecting that she was going to tell him that his album wasn’t available.

But, that’s not what she told him. The guy at Woolworth’s had come through. His album was waiting for him.

We drove to Texarkana and dad got his record.

He brought it home and wore it out. To this day, I still know all of the words to That’ll Be The Day, Peggy Sue, Maybe Baby, Rave On, and Raining In My Heart.

After my dad passed away, we were going through his things to prepare for an estate sale. When I saw a stack of records, I began to go through them. Jerry Reed, The Ink Spots, and all of his favorites were there.

And then I saw the Buddy Holly record. Memories rushed back as if they happened yesterday.

There was no way this record was going anywhere except home with me. It was more than a 33 1/3 record; it represented a completed quest that belonged to my dad.

I don’t know the man’s name who worked at Woolworth’s, but if you’re reading this, thank you.

 

©2019 John Moore

John’s book, Write of Passage: A Southerner’s View of Then and Now, is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

You can contact John through his website at www.TheCountryWriter.com.