“AIN’T IT FUNNY HOW A MELODY CAN BRING BACK THE MEMORY, TAKE YOU TO ANOTHER PLACE IN TIME, COMPLETELY CHANGE YOUR STATE OF MIND.” (CLINT BLACK)
At this time forty-five years ago, C.W. McCalll’s “Convoy” was climbing the charts to become a number one hit on pop radio. The track about toll busting lead truckers Pig Pen and the Rubber Duck introduced the rest of the world to CB radio talk. It also inspired the CB fad among non-truckers and even brought us a bad movie starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali MC Graw.
As schlocky as “Convoy” was, the song brings back great memories to me. Ones that make me smile and laugh to this day.
First memory– The fall of 1975. I was a high school freshman and the main focus in my life was playing pinball. Several pals of mine and I would often get our parents to drive us to The Game Room in Lombard which housed half a dozen pinball machines and an air hockey table. No other nearby towns had pinball.
However, the BEST place to play the silver ball was at a huge arcade in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin called “Game Land.” They had more new and old school pinball games and attractions than you could play in a weekend.
That fall and winter, my older sister Marianne was the good sport who drove me and my close pal Mark Fredriksen up to Lake Geneva to flip our flippers and aim for high scores on the Gameland pinball machines. This was heaven to us and Mary even played a few games herself. She was in nursing school at the time and the Saturday rides 90 minutes north for gaming, fudge and other eats were a welcome break for her.
Mary drove a ’73 Plymouth Duster with an AM radio and a cassette deck under the dash. The big song blasting on that radio during every trip to Lake Geneva and back was, you guessed it, “Convoy.” WLS and WCFL seemed to spin that hit every damn hour and while in the car on our trips, we caught every play of it. I think I knew that song backwards as well as forwards.
My sister and I had many other adventures over the years; Movies, concerts ballgames, beach trips and of course loads of fun at home too. She passed away in November of 2014, but the fun we had on those gaming trips to Lake Geneva as we rocked out to “Convoy” will never be forgotten.
2nd Memory– The summer of 1981- I was at a college classmate’s raging beer bash in Carol Stream the night before I was to host an all day 4th of July barbecue at my parents’ house. With me at this party was my longtime buddy Willie Costello. Will and I had comparable tastes in music and similar twisted ideas on how to liven up social gatherings. (There was the time at a party when someone left a disposable camera laying around and Will & I covertly took photos in a bathroom documenting a pissing contest, but I better not say any more about that one)
Anyway, the host of this Third of July wingding had a killer stereo sound system in his basement rec room with speakers set up in the backyard where most of the partygoers were tapping a keg. The guy had a giant collection of vinyl discs.
The party was packed guts to butts with college kids as they rocked to music by The Police, Clash and Rolling Stones. So late in the evening before leaving the party, we took one last look at this guy’s record collection. There in the stacks of wax was C.W. McCall’s album. We snickered at the discovery of this novelty gold. Nobody else was manning the stereo so Will and I decided to play impromptu dee-jays and switched out the Jimmy Buffett disc on the turntable for, you guessed it, “Convoy.”
The song started up with the opening CB radio talk among truckers as Willie and I prepared to dash out of the house to his car. For good measure I pushed the lock button on the rec room doorknob behind us so it would take a couple of minutes for someone to bust in and dump the corny “Convoy” cut. As we zipped out the front door and McCall’s hit was pumping though the speakers, I could hear the groans and some “What the hell is this?” complaints from the party crowd. Willie and I laughed our asses off the whole way back home to Elmhurst!
HERE’S THE LINK TO C.W. MC CALL’S MID 70’S NOVELTY HIT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqYTX7parRw
So whenever I think about C.W. McCall’s “Convoy’, I get taken back to good time trips with my late sister. And I also get taken back to that basement rec room when Willie and I schooled some hipsters on what fun a schlocky novelty song can be.
NEXT BLOG– One more round of movie memories.