Memoir Experiment Part Four

By Patrick
01 Jun 14 at 10:14 AM
In: Micellanea

It must have been a Saturday—my father was off work. We drove out to one of the big car lots on Dirksen Parkway. I don’t recall if we were shopping for a car, though I suppose we must have been. A country music station was putting on an event whereby one took a sledgehammer and laid into a “gas guzzler.” Can you imagine? A country station? This would have been 1980, so some vestiges of the seventies remained in place, like tree-hugging communists running country music stations. Promoting violence against the heavy steel bodies of good American V-8 automobiles, instead of driving monster trucks equipped with vulcanized rubber testicles, swinging grimly from trailer hitches. But gasoline prices had risen above one dollar a gallon, so desperate measures were in order, even if they were mere rhetorical gestures. Regardless, a certain ten-year-old with a penchant for destruction very much wanted to take part in this activity, even if he didn’t know or care much about country music.

I was quickly deemed too small to handle the sledgehammer, but, sensing my disappointment, a car salesman and the radio station representative conferred. The kindly salesman disappeared and then returned with an old fashioned hand-held claw hammer, and I commenced to pound merrily upon the car. Despite my best intentions, the body of that low MPG boat took my spirited assault in stride. In short, that rusted hulk bore not the slightest scars from my repeated hammer blows. The salesman and radio announcer egged me on, and my father watched suspiciously, wondering, no doubt, why he had allowed this situation to develop. My conspirators invited me inside the car, where my diminutive weapon might be more effective against the delicate innards of the hated vehicle. Ironically, I went immediately for the car stereo, or I suppose mono radio, sending splinters of plastic everywhere. I was smashing the very fingers that fed me, but I didn’t care … I was finally witnessing sweet destruction, I was bringing it about myself. Take that, WMAY.

As a reward, my sister and I were given vouchers good for one country record album each from The Platter downtown. This was not terribly exciting. It was just one year from when I received a tape recorder and my first cassette: Devo, New Traditionalists. My youthful sensibilities were already being pulled toward post-punk, the Talking Heads being one of the first things I remember hearing from my older sister’s stereo.

We stopped at The Platter on the way home. Given our extremely limited knowledge of country music, we selected albums we recognized from film. Eileen picked Eddie Rabbit, perhaps feeling that a crossover album would be less embarrassing than straight country. I chose Dolly Parton, the soundtrack from 9 to 5. I wonder if I still have it?