Today’s post was written by Paul.
Pap picked out and paid for my first two vehicles. The first was the 1980 Buick Regal seen in the photo. He bought it from a man in our community named Buster Laney.
I believe Buster was a WWII Veteran. He worked for Kearns Bread at the intersection of the Blairsville Highway and US74. Pap gave Buster $1,500 for the Regal, which was a lot of money for us at the time. I believe the Regal had a little over 100,000 miles when I got it.
In those days, in NC, you could get your driver’s permit (with almost no restrictions) at age 15 and your full license at 16, which is exactly what I did, starting the day after my 15th birthday.
I drove the Regal the last three years of high school and my first two years of college, when I attended Young Harris College as a commuter. After YHC, I enrolled in the University of NC in Asheville.
I lived on campus at UNCA, but Pap didn’t trust the Regal to make weekly trips of 2+ hours, so he got me a 1985 Cutlass Oldsmobile (the one that Corie and Katie stood by as toddlers in our last video). He gave $3,500 for the Cutlass. It was a much better car than the Regal, featuring a 5-liter V8, whereas the Regal had a 3.8-liter V6.
I wrote the song in today’a video right when I transitioned from the Regal to the Cutlass.
I am one of those people who gets sentimentally attached to cars (and many other things!). Though in my song, I said that the Regal was “still,” implying a junkyard fate, Pap sold it back to Buster for $500.
Driving a car for 5 years and paying $1,000 rent on it, was a great deal, even back then. Pap and Buster were pretty tight friends. Just as in the song, the very last time I drove the Regal, I drove it home to Pap and Granny’s house. Pap then drove it over to Kerns Bread and turned it over to Buster.
Pap chose both cars with safety and reliability in mind. I never had any real trouble with either car, even though I drove them mercilessly with a lead foot. My first cars weren’t as cool as the cars that most of my friends drove, but I really liked them. They had great stereos. The only things I didn’t like about the Regal were that it had a heater core leak that would make your feet sweat in the summer; and one of the valve covers had a slight oil leak. It wasn’t enough to make much difference on oil consumption, but after a 30-min drive to YHC, a little dab would leak out and begin smoking on the manifold. I would park the car and walk away pretty quickly, a little embarrassed. I don’t know why I didn’t just install a new gasket under that cover.
When I wrote this song at age 19, I wasn’t just trying to memorialize my first car. I was trying to comment on a bit more than that, especially with the final chorus. If any of you watched the recent video in which I took apart and cleaned an old VHS tape, you know that I mentioned the concept of “planned obsolescence,” something that many manufacturers in many fields now employ by design, so that consumers have to buy a new product after a certain amount of time. Though planned obsolescence wasn’t a thing back then (at least not to my knowledge), with this song, I was trying to say that the Regal wasn’t like that. It did its job simply and reliably, something worthy of respect.
Buster and Pap were both sedan men, meaning, they liked mid to full-sized cars for their transportation, rather than trucks or anything compact. They were also GM men. Buster owned a string of Buicks and Cadillacs. Unfortunately, GM, like many American corporations later declined significantly in quality. In the early 2000’s, my girlfriend was looking to replace her Mitsubishi Eclipse. It was running fine. She was just looking for a change. She asked my advice. Thinking back to my experience with the two cars mentioned above, I sagely told her to get something American-made, something GM. That proved to be bad advice. She bought a brand new Pontiac and had to trade it after just two years, due to frequent mechanical problems. It made her miss and appreciate her Eclipse. Today, I’m a Toyota man all the way (although I hear that even Toyota seems to be slipping with their most recent models).
The little boy sitting on the Regal in the photo and video is my nephew Ben, Steve’s oldest son. That particular day, I happened upon a tiny cowboy hat and toy six-gun, complete with holster. I bought it and brought it home for Ben. The hat just happened to match the color of the Regal. Little did I know then how close Ben and I would become, through our mutual love of music and tennis.
I played and sang pretty sloppily in this video, but as I learned when collaborating with Darrell Savage, making split screen videos takes almost an entire day, so I used the very first take with both instruments. The timing is shaky throughout. I had forgotten about this song but saw the title written down in an old folder of mine. I have several more original instrumentals that I’ll try to do with Corie and share in the future.
Thanks for watching!
Paul
Original singles released on Spotify.
Shepherd of My Soul (Album released in 2016).
The Wilson Brothers Words of Life Album released in the 70s.
I really enjoyed the write up and song! It’s so sweet that Pap helped you carefully get your first two cars and cared so much about your safety. He was a wise and thoughtful man, always looking out for the well-being of his family.
Yep, first vehicles leave lasting memories. Mine was a gray Ford Ranchero , one of those car-truck body styles with a pickup bed but without the ‘suspension of a ‘real’ pickup. It was, as Randy mentioned, a ‘three on the tree’ aka ‘column shift’. I learned to drive on Dad’s Ford pickup and passed my test in it. At the time it had a stock rack mounted on it. It also was a column shift. To this day (though I no longer own one) I like to drive straight shift vehicles especially on curvy mountain roads where shifting is a near-constant need. The trick going up is to downshift just before you have to (too slow) but the same thing applies going down, (too fast) just less often. Thanks for the memories.
God Bless America!!! Watching different special television broadcasts about America yesterday showed me that the American Spirit and Pride of Country is alive and well!!! So many American people in their communities were highlighted and all were proud to be American. All were excited about the future of America. May the United States continue to grow and thrive.
Everyone have a BLESSED Sunday. And, thank God, rain came late last night.
thank you for the song and thank thank you for the story, God bless you and have a great day, God bless the sick lost suffering and struggling make life easier in Jesus name
That was a great story, Paul and the song is so cool!
“…[E]ven though he’s still…” Careful there, some folks might think you were saying it’s “A” still. Now, if people want to do “artisanal distillation” it’s their business and none of mine, but you DO have to watch yourself…though I’ll be honest, I never heard of car being turned into a still. 😉
I am sentimental about things and am bad to keep things for this reason. My uncle drove a Trailways bus for over 30 years and was always wheeling and dealing, he only cared how much money he could get for something. When he died he didn’t have enough money to pay for his own funeral, his church paid for it. In the 60’s SC was like NC, get your drivers permit at 15, keep it for a few weeks and then get restricted license until 16 and no restrictions. At 16, high school students could also get license to drive the school bus. I did all of this and drove a school bus for my last 2 years of high school. We were paid $1.65 an hour, I made $5 a day, I learned to drive when I was about 13 in a 1958 Chevrolet Delray, straight 6 cyl engine, and three on tree manual transmission. I had already been driving on the country roads I lived on for 2 years when I turned 15. I didn’t have a car until I finished school and went to work with my Daddy. In April of 1973, I have saved enough for a down payment to buy a new 1973 Plymouth Duster with the Twister package, 318 V8 engine, $2,500 and $84.98 payments for 36 months. I worried about paying for it, at that time I was making $2 an hour. In my day, only a few kids had a car to drive to high school. Most of the cars were clunkers ready for the junk yard bought by kids working after school jobs. A few kids had newer cars, these kids were going to school and working a full 40 hour a week job at the local cotton mill either on the 2nd or 3rd shift at the same time. Cheryl, I read your yesterday comment about parents teaching respect for teachers, police and others, it was the same for me. If I had gotten into trouble, I joke and say I would have called the law and begged them to lock me up, don’t let my parents get to me. Nowadays, many parents only look for someone to blame and sue when their kids get into trouble, it is never the kids fault.
Randy, I just read your comment from yesterday about the Bible reading and prayer in school. I, too, had a 3rd grade teacher who allowed 3 or 4 students each day to lead the in the morning recitation of pledge, reading of scripture, and perhaps singing a patriotic song. Not sure about the prayer part. But it would have been in keeping with the spirit of the day at that time around 1970. So very different now but at least the schools I taught at stood and recited the pledge each morning.
I am simply amazed at the detail you can recall about your life, Randy. It’s always interesting to read your comments and I’m impressed with how you can remember so much and so vividly. Have a blessed day!
when I was in highschool a cutlass was a ‘cool’ car to have, I still like them and for seperate reason other than ‘coolness’ I like the regal too.
hope you had a fun and blessed Fourth…I was watching the PBS show America Made in Virginia and of course singing along with all the old songs that were performed several which you never hear any more. I am sad to say that I forgot a few of the words to This Land Is Your Land’ (written by Woody Guthrie an Oklahoma boy, side note- I had the privilege of knowing his younger sister Mary Jo Guthrie Edgmon until she passed away) I also failed to remember all of the words to The Impossible Dream, and God Bless America (that one I am sorely disappointed I had forgotten some of the words). I remember in my very early years of school we sang all those songs in various school productions so school is where I learned all the words to them, rather than picking them up when I watched them being performed on some tv variety show. As I feebly sang along to all three I had tears rolling down my cheeks and felt The Holy Spirit in my home–tears partly because the pride and love of country is not wide spread like it was all those years ago, it has been replaced by hatred and conflict…the tears were also because God had blessed our country so very much but now due to those same issues and rampant defiance of Christ, and vile sin, one can seem to feel His Blessings slipping away from our country—that is so very sad. Next time you do a viewer request ‘song fest’ maybe instead of Ole Paint you could sing one of the three I mentioned today.