My friend Craig said something about Woodstock and how he wished we could go. I had no idea what he was talking about. A music festival, he said. In New York. Well, it may as well have been on the moon. There was no way my parents would let me cross the country for some dang-fool concert.
Turns out I wouldn’t have recognized most of the acts anyway. I loved music – still do – but it was limited to the radio songs and the biggies of the time. Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys.
Somehow or another, Craig was in the music loop and introduced me to Zeppelin, Hendrix, the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was my friend David who brought Woodstock to my ears. He bought the soundtrack and we must have worn out that tape (a prehistoric way of streaming music) from the many times we repeatedly played it in his car. David was a world-class steering wheel guitarist who talked his boss into giving me my first job at Allen’s IGA in McAlester.
In our neighborhood, I was the only one my age, it seemed. Craig and David and Michael were all a year older. Car-driving age.
Occasionally, one of them would talk a parent into giving up the car for a Saturday and we’d make a day-trip to Tulsa. There was a new shopping center called Southroads Mall that had stores with the sort of things we small town boys had never laid eyes on before. I had never even heard the term ‘mall’ associated with a shopping center at the time, it was that long ago.
The “Mall” had record stores and novelty shops, where retailers offered things like Woodstock patches. And I bought one.
Never got around to sewing it on anything, and never got around to throwing it out either. It was in a box with some of my books and when I opened the bookstore it wound up as a shelf-top doodad – a reminder of the Three Days of Peace and Music that wrapped up 46 years ago today.
Next to the Woodstock patch I have another with a slightly more local sentiment, although it is likely becoming obscure. It has been ten years this summer since KRMG’s John Erling signed off for the last time. His twenty-nine years at AM-740 was nearly a decade longer than my entire broadcasting career.
Erling was a fixture by the time I found a spot in Tulsa’s morning drive radio, and it was an era of spoofs and gags and general zaniness. (Zany was a word we used –sparingly- back then.) I don’t remember who it was, but some morning deejay was tossing money along Riverside Drive during rush hour. The pranks calls were going out on KMOD.
And John Erling was encouraging tourists and locals alike to Ski the Tulsa Mountains.
His regular listeners were likely in on the joke, but no telling how many others were surprised that they had never seen the ski lifts or snow caps. Or the mountains themselves, come to think of it.
I remember seeing the phrase on bumper stickers around town, a tribute to the influence of a man behind a microphone whose followers knew exactly what it was about, without mentioning his name or his radio station’s call letters.
Am I way off, thinking that there were Glory Days of Radio, and Music?
No mountains here, but you can Skate the Rose District – and Chef Dustin and I will be serving it up at lunchtime, so…
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
