Tag: music

I was there just for the music

“It’s like I’m 16 again. I grew up listening to this music on the radio.
— Shared by the person sitting next to me at a KC and the Sunshine Band concert a couple of weeks ago.  

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That recent concert was the second time I witnessed the Florida based band perform. The first time was the early 1970s. At the fairgrounds in Longview, Texas. New on the evolving music scene, KC and the Sunshine Band was opening for Willie Nelson.

I was there just for the music, but my Momma didn’t raise an idiot. The venue packed with pocket pint carrying attendees and the aroma of burning wacky weed led us to surrender front row seats for the relative safety of enjoying the music standing near an exit.

Some fifty years and many hit songs later, the most recent venue was very different. Gray-haired grandparents wearing Velcro fastener tennis shoes abounded, shuffling to their seats while adjusting hearing aids.

I wondered if someone would awaken them when the music started.

But just two lines into “My, My, My Boogie Shoes,” at 3.0 on the Richter Scale, the room was glittering with revolving light beams bouncing from the disco ball above the stage. And these same fans I was concerned about mere moments ago were suddenly in the aisles busting moves not seen since John Travolta immortalized “Saturday Night Fever.”

It’s no secret that I love music. Or that my tastes span a wide variety of artists and styles.

Music was instrumental in my formative years. I watched Mom smile while enduring house cleaning chores listening to her high school record collection. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw.

I laughed at her little brother, my Uncle Bill, who talked about music connecting emotions, and memories. Little Richard, Etta James, Hank Williams, Bob Wills. Before psychological studies ever considered the concept, Uncle Bill related personal stories about early 50s service in the Navy. Guys on ships a long way from home listening to music and sharing memories. Cars they drove, girls they dated, places where memories were made. All entwined in the music.

Realizing that same appreciation for music over the years, I concur that a song can do more than simply entertain. Just a few notes can jog memories and stir emotions rooted deep in the soul.

Therefore, it was no fluke that recent revisit to the music and the subculture of 70s disco unleashed a rush of recollections. Like the time a bunch of friends ventured from Mount Pleasant in East Texas down to Panama City Beach, Florida. On motorcycles. Spending a week at the not-so-glamorous, but affordably cheap, Barney Gray Motel at twelve bucks a night. Before Panama City Beach enjoyed a significant remake into the resort area it us today. A time when it was affectionately and otherwise referred to the “Redneck Riviera.”

But that mattered little to us in 1974. We were there for the sun and the fun, orchestrated and enjoyed to a background of ’70s music.

Just short years out of college and experiencing my first time in Florida, the trip was not only fun for me, but also educational. It’s where I learned about severe sunburn, defied death on “The Starliner,” the infamous wooden roller coaster at Miracle Strip Amusement Park, and cruised the beach road every night lined with hot cycles and cool cars.

That trip was also where I was exposed to another ’70s phenomenon, one immortalized in a well-known musical masterpiece. A Ray Stevens song entitled “The Streak.”

The bare facts are that a half dozen guys were huddled around an arcade pinball machine, challenging each other to pile up points. In the whimsical song, the singer warns his wife, “Don’t look Ethel.” But when two young women ran right past us, au naturel, boogity, boogity through the arcade, I just happened to be the only one not intently focused on the pinball competition.

Steven’s song suggests the streakers he saw were “wearing nothing but a smile.” The genuine, in the flesh arcade streakers I witnessed that night were wearing nothing but a paper bag on their head, qualifying me to testify about everything but facial expressions.

Dumbfounded, I called out to my unaware friends. “G-G-Guys,” I stuttered, “Over here; look at this!”

But they were too late. The girls flashed right by us and out a nearby door before one of the pinball players finally turned and asked, “What are you hollering about?”

“Never mind,” I said, “I could tell you, but the effect just wouldn’t be the same.”

The effect would be perfect at this point if I could say that KC and the Sunshine Band was playing on the jukebox at the arcade that revealing night I got a peek near the pinball machines.

However, the honest truth is even better. Another ’70s disco era hit was providing musical entertainment that long ago summer night down in Florida. A Johnny Nash song that charted as a Top 100 number one in 1972.

A song entitled, “I Can See Clearly Now.”

—Leon Aldridge

Photo info: Front page picture from the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune dated July 7, 1974. Yours truly is the second face wearing a smile on the left side of the photo.

Photo cutline: “TRAVELING CHEAPLY – 19 Mount Pleasant residents decided to travel cheaply on their vacation this year. They’re traveling for the sand and sunshine on motorcycles to Panama City, Fla. The cyclists plan to have a safe trip. Tribune photo by Buddy Williams.”

An accompanying story headlined: “Family Fun: Local BIkers Leave for Florida” offers comments from some, just before the group departed moments after the photo was taken, Motorcycle travelers named in the story included “Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Spencer, Mr. and Mrs. Leon Aldridge Jr. , Mr. and Mrs. Mike Helbert, Ricky Holland, Kendall Johnson, Jimmy Clark, Kent Bryson, Mr. and Mrs. Terry Shurtleff, and the Spruill family, which includes Mr. and Mrs. Spruill and their children, Kim, Tim, and Scott, and Mrs. Spruill’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Dan Bynum.

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Friendships that foster fond memories

“My old friend, I apologize
For the years that have passed
Since the last time you and I
Dusted off those memories
The running and the races
The people and the places
There was always somewhere else I had to be.”
— Song lyrics by Tim McGraw 2004

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We never forget friends. It’s easy when we see or talk with them frequently. But it’s the friends we lose contact with that linger in memory. Friendships that fostered fond memories.

I met Minnesota native Tom Lund while living in Boerne. He played guitar and sang at local restaurants and entertainment spots. His wife, Tenlee, had an advertising agency that conducted business with the newspaper I published there during the 1990s, The Boerne Star.

Tom was fun. Always upbeat and positive with a great sense of humor. He graduated from Minnesota State University in 1968, served with the U.S. Air Force including time in Vietnam. Returning to civilian life in sales and sales management with U.S. Surgical Corporation found him starting in Milwaukee, followed by moves to Dallas and San Antonio before settling in Boerne.

Tom was always involved in music. Classic and “Outlaw” country songs by others. But he was also a songwriter, singing songs that, although he never said so, hinted at biographical bits put to music. Lyrics from life. Something typical of good songwriters.

Like the young blues musician who was consulting one of the older seasoned artists for advice. Sizing up the young man before responding, the old musician told him, “You won’t never be no blues singer driving a Cadillac with hun’ert dollar bills in your pocket. You gots to live heartbreak and sorrow before you can sing the blues.”

I got that feeling from Tom’s repertoire. Songs like “I Can’t Think About You Now” and “My Losin’ Was Really My Gain.” Even some of his others with whimsical titles. “You’re Just a Pimple on the Backside of My Life” and “Honey Won’t You Please Be My Ex-Wife.” Lyrics with brief myopic views of lost love and old friendships. Some with hints of haunting memories from Vietnam.

Above the depths of his music, Lund’s life was a fascinating success story. Two successes. I invited him to a Boerne civic club meeting to recount the details of his career utilizing his gifted storytelling, song writing style.

It was a story revolving around Laparoscopic surgery, a procedure used as early as 1901 that didn’t flourish until some 75 years later following advancements in technologies aiding medical care.

Enter Tom Lund. The tall, outgoing guy who dominated not only in stature but in smiles, personality, and a Midwestern accent deep in the heart of Texas. Never met a stranger. Always made people feel like a friend from the first handshake. Traits that, no doubt, contributed to his becoming one of the leading sales reps for surgical tools when laparoscopic surgery surged in the early 1980s.

The “new” medical procedure ultimately opened doors for the other side of medicine: malpractice suits. Enter Tom Lund for the second time. As the country’s leading sales rep for surgical instruments a decade earlier, his phone now rang off the hook with legal counsel seeking expert witnesses.

“Twice,” Lund said, “laparoscopic surgery provided a successful career for me. Something I never, ever dreamed of.”

That good fortune allowed Tom time in the Texas Hill Country to pursue his love for music becoming acquainted with other singer/songwriters. Lund performed at times solo, and others under the name of “Back Roads” with a young Boerne vet tech, Steve Ammann, who Tom credited with helping improve his “three oord country song” guitar playing.  

Lund was a lover of all kinds of music. So much so that he organized a music festival at the Kendall County Fairgrounds in 1995. Called it the “Texas Music Jamboree” featuring a varied lineup. Joining Back Roads was Conjunto flavored music from Conjunto Los Aguilas, the duet ballads of Brian and Bonnie, old time country from Tom and Classic Country, and some Cajun sounds of Swamp Angel. The festival kicked off right after lunch and ran into the evening hours with other performers. Too many for me to remember.

I left Boerne in 1998. Tom and Tenlee moved “home” to Brainard, Minnesota, a couple of years later. We lost contact.  

Time gets away from us much too quickly. We turn around twice, and our children are grown with families of their own. Lives go in different, often unexpected, directions. Friends we once laughed with, cried with, and made memories with start new chapters of life in other places. And for many, earthly time expires too soon.

When I began looking for Tom not long ago, that’s what I found. An obituary. Tom’s time ran out in 2022.

So, tonight, I’ll strum a few guitar chords and sing Tom’s song about “best friends” one more time. I might even take a stab at McGraw’s song. Vowing to get better at dusting off memories made with old friends.

While I still can.

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo above: Tom Lund (on the right) with his Backroads duet partner, Steve Ammann. Photo from the Wednesday, October 4, 1995 edition of The Boerne Star highlighting the first Texas Music Jamboree organized and produced by Tom, set for the following Saturday.)

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Score another one for dumb luck

“Dunn’s Law: Careful planning is no substitute for dumb luck.”
― Arthur Bloch, author of “Murphy’s Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong”

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In short order, I was back on the road. Listening to the ball game. Smiling at the good fortune of meeting one of the last living members of the original Bob Wills Texas Playboys band that played with music legend . And scoring a couple of records to remember the day.

Records.

I have lots of them. The vinyl kind now making a comeback after being kicked to the side of the audio road a few years ago.

Many audiophiles’ claim that vinyl records produce a richer, broader sound. Others laud the large, often artistic covers of long-playing albums. To me, it’s the story. Which song made us buy the record? What’s the memory that’s caused us to cling to the album for decades. Was it the time in our life? Maybe someone we remember?

Friend Leroy Newman exemplified it well after hearing “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night at a recent concert. “That was the number one song when I graduated from High School in May of 1971.”

Digging into my record collection last week, I stopped at a Bob Wills Texas Playboys album when the cover reminded of a fall drive through northwest Arkansas one Saturday afternoon during the early 1980s.

American musician, songwriter, and bandleader James Robert “Bob” Wills (1905 –1975), is considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing. He formed the Texas Playboys in 1934 hiring many memorable musicians. Not the least of whom was steel guitar player Leon McAuliffe.

Bob Wills buffs will recall the musician’s “Ah-haaa” vocals and “Take it away, Leon,” leading McAuliffe into a steel guitar solo.

After years of success, Wills’ health forced him to disband the Playboys in the mid 1960s. He continued to perform solo, dreaming they would someday play together again. And they did in 1973 before Wills died in 1975.

The Country Music Hall of Fame inducted Wills in 1968, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000. Turkey, Texas lays claim to the title of “The Home of Bob Wills” with a museum and a Bob Wills Day the last weekend in April.

On that afternoon drive through Arkansas some 40 years ago, I was listening to a football game on the radio. The old Southwest Conference was still a thing, and Arkansas was defeating SMU. An ad caught my attention, “Only at KOMA studios can you get this recording of the Original Texas Playboys with the history of Faded Love by Leon McAuliffe.”

“Sure wish I knew where that radio station was located,” I thought. Who would have guessed. Minutes later, I rounded a curve between Bentonville and Rogers, and lo and behold, there it sat. KOMA studios.

Small radio stations have never been known for large staffs. The only person visible entering the front door was the D.J., and he was awaiting the next network commercial break during the game.

Before he could leave the control board to see why I had wandered in, someone else from another part of the building saw me. After telling this guy I was interested in the advertised Bob Wills albums, he raised a finger to point and responded, “Follow me.”

In a back office, boxes of the records sat beside a desk where another man appeared busy navigating through a stack of paperwork.

“This is the Faded Love album,” the first man said, handing me a copy for inspection. “And we still have a few of the San Antonio Rose albums left.”

 I unhesitatingly obligated myself to one of each.

As I was fumbling for my wallet, the first man asked, “And your name?”

“Leon Aldridge,” I replied.

“Leon Aldridge,” he repeated, turning toward the man at the desk, “Meet Leon McAuliffe of the Original Texas Playboys.”

Completely forgetting the albums, my wallet, and the balancing act as they all fell to the desk, I extended my right arm. We shook hands, exchanged hellos, conversed about country music, and even talked about who we wanted to win the football game on the radio.

The country music legend autographed the records as we talked. I thanked everyone, including a nod to the busy DJ on the way out. Delighted with the completely unplanned and unexpected happening that had just occurred.

And recalling an old saying. Something about, “No amount of planning can ever replace dumb luck.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

The soundtrack of our lives

“Music is probably the one real magic I have encountered in my life. It’s pure and it’s real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things.”
— Tom Petty (1950 – 2017) American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. 

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Leadville, Colorado, came to mind. 1976. Or was it ’77? Me, Oscar Elliott, and others from Mount Pleasant. We were in the middle of a motorcycle sabbatical through the Rockies.

The same trip where we topped Monarch Pass and crossed the Continental Divide. Elevation 11,312 feet. Which was the first time I rode a motorcycle over the Continental Divide. And the first time I rode one on snow-covered roads. With snow still steadily falling.  

The song playing on my Pandora today brought back those memories. The same tune was playing on the jukebox in the bar at the back of that restaurant where we we ate supper that night in Leadville. The one next to the motel where we were staying the morning we woke up to find the city and our bikes covered in snow. The song was “The Y’all Comeback Saloon” by the Oak Ridge Boys.

Funny how music works that way.

As a kid, it amazed and amused me when my Uncle Bill, mom’s little brother, told stories about how he and his Navy buddies spent time listening to music. “When a song came on the radio,” he told me with a smile, “the objective was to describe the car we owned at the time, the exact place where we were when we heard the song, and the name of the girl we were with when we heard it. Any additional information was optional at the storyteller’s discretion.”

As a writer and journalist introduced to the news business through the art of photography, the adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” makes a great deal of sense to me. But it’s also apparent that any wordsmith worth the paper their thesaurus is printed on can likewise argue for a thousand words expressing as much as one photo.

As a lifelong music lover, however, I will concede the power of both words and images to the magic of music when it comes to shaking memories loose in the lost caverns of our past.

My mother introduced me to that musical enchantment with a collection of 78 r.p.m. records from her Kentucky high school days. I remember Saturdays, her playing records and singing along with them as she completed weekly house cleaning rituals. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Patty Page, Eddie Arnold, and Hank Williams, Sr.

As a grade-schooler in the 1950s, that genetic appreciation for music led me to saving my weekly 25¢ allowance to spend on records at Richardson’s White’s Auto Store in Mount Pleasant. Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Fats Domino.

High school and college band memories from the 60s are infused with John Phillip Sousa marches. “King Cotton ” and “The Washington Post” performed at goodness knows how many football games.

At the same time, my car radio was always tuned to KLIF in Dallas during the day. Making radio music memories at night cruising the streets or watching the moon rise over the city lake required tuning to WNOE in New Orleans.

Viet Nam era music by The Box Tops, Creedence Clearwater Revival, or Country Joe and the Fish still remind of the PA systems at drag strips filling pauses in racing action. Music for changing spark plugs at Interstate 20 Raceway in Tyler on Saturday night one weekend, and the next, listening for the next round of class call to the Dallas International Motor Speedway staging lanes.

Even work memories are bookmarked by music. Let me hear “Crazy” by Patsy Cline, and I’ll tell you about the night Johnny Garner and I sprayed a late-night paint job on a big truck at Sandlin’s Body Shop in Mount Pleasant with the radio keeping us awake.

And should I hear George Strait’s “Does Fort Worth Cross Your Mind,” you might have to endure my memories of good times with a dear friend 30-plus years ago at Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant.

Long-time American Bandstand host Dick Clark, whose name is synonymous with music, is credited with saying, “Music is the soundtrack of our lives.”

Maybe that’s why mom always appeared as though she was in a different world, lost in time while vacuuming or folding laundry.

It might also be why you can catch me at home on any given evening after work. Sitting and strumming a few chords on a guitar. Singing. Smiling. Remembering that time that me and …

—Leon Aldridge

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© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

You haven’t seen my math grades

“The true purpose of the arts education is not necessarily to create more professional dancers or artists. It’s to create more complete human beings who are critical thinkers, who have curious minds, who can lead productive lives.”
— Kelly Pollock, Executive Director Center of Creative Arts

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“Why is algebra required in school? Nobody uses it in everyday life.”

That wasn’t the first time I’d heard that question. But hearing it again a few days ago, I jokingly quipped, “You haven’t seen my math grades, or you wouldn’t be asking me.”

Truthfully, educating the mind to become a well-rounded or “complete human being” requires more than “book learning,” as my grandfather called it. His testimony can be entered into the record with credibility. He went to work at the age of 13 to help support his family and enjoyed a rewarding career.

Achieving a productive life requires curiosity about life beyond one’s chosen field.

For example, consider the story of a good friend and former colleague. He was an outstanding high school athlete and honor roll student when one of his classroom teachers confronted him.

“Why are you wasting your time on football instead of concentrating on something that will help you in the real world?”

If he shared his response that day, I’ve since forgotten it. But I will not soon forget his statement to that teacher a few years later. After graduating from a major university on a full-ride football scholarship where he was an honor student and an outstanding athlete who helped his team reach a post-season bowl game.

Visiting his hometown high school after college, he found the teacher who downplayed his sports participation a few years earlier by insinuating that athletics had no value in the “real-world.” He shared with that teacher what he considered one of the more valuable lessons he had learned at the university. That, “the value of sports is not a question of its direct application to ‘real life’ knowledge, but what it adds to becoming a productive member of society. Sports teaches goals, objectives, teamwork, strategy, planning, and success—all skills needed to effectively use an education in the real world.”

“Oh, and it paid for my education,” he added.

For what it’s worth, he is today the CEO of an international corporation and a staunch supporter of athletics in public schools.

My educational highway was a little bumpier stretch of road. I graduated not “cum laude,” but more like, “Lawdy, how come.” My job titles have more closely resembled something I once saw scripted on an executive coffee mug. “I’m in charge. My specialty is creating problems you didn’t know you had.”

And, where my friend was a football player, I was a band nerd. I didn’t wear a number, and you wouldn’t find my name in the program, but I made appearances in two Cotton Bowl games plus a couple of Dallas Cowboy and Houston Oiler exhibition games. Performing with the band at halftime, broadening my horizons, satisfying my curiosity, and developing an appreciation for arts and skills outside of my chosen field of study.

Did any of that enhance my career opportunities as much as the academic qualifications on my transcript?

Probably not. But like many forms of the arts and extracurricular activities, it helped even a bashful band nerd become a somewhat more complete human. One capable of thinking and communicating effectively to lead a more productive life while applying my “book learning.”

Band did give me an appreciation for music beyond the rock and roll I listened to on the radio back then. It also left me with a lifelong desire to become more involved in music and the arts, and an inspiration to learn how to play musical instruments. It afforded me a broader appreciation for all kinds of music, not the least of which has been leading congregational singing at church—something I’ve done all my adult life.

Best of all, perhaps, band gave me lasting memories of life experiences and friends. Hands down, the fondest memories of my school years.

As for algebra? While I admit we use it daily in ways we don’t even realize, in case you missed this earlier … you haven’t seen my grades in math.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

We can usually be thankful in the end

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”
– Anonymous

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“Lifelong member of the church of Christ, serving as song leader most of those years.”

I wrote that last week. One of many notes on one of many yellow tablets cluttering my desk. While struggling for a reasonable resemblance of a forward for my book. I’ve resolved to finish it soon; the forward or the book. Maybe both.

And yes, it was on my list of resolutions for this year and the year before.

A revered mentor once offered as how writing something in longhand commits it to memory. He bought more yellow tablets than anyone I knew. And amazed many with his astounding feats of recall in conversations.

The same practice also works well for soul searching. Remembering years of church singing is one thing. But writing about it was like, “Wow! That’s a long time for someone not to notice that I can’t sing.”

 Most church of Christ congregations reply only on a cappella singing in worship service. No pianos, no organs, no recorded background music. Guitars, drums, harmonicas — nada. However, my adolescent friends and I at Southside Church of Christ in Mount Pleasant used to sit on the back seat and hum a lot. We were always in trouble for something.

Saving theology another time, the purpose for mentioning it in this missive is simply background for the way life is when you were raised in a church of Christ family. Like most of my generation of cousins on Mom’s side. Because Mom and her siblings were reared the same way. Which leads to the story about my cousin Leigh who grew up in the small Panhandle Texas community of Kress, population 596 — salute!

In Kress, you could easily walk anywhere in town then. Probably still can. The town’s one grocery store, the farm supply, the Phillips 66 service station, and even Lawson’s Café were in walking distance. Most drove on Sundays, though. Everybody gathered at Lawson’s after church.  

As the story goes at family reunions, Leigh was in grade school when she attended the Kress Baptist vacation Bible school with her friends. The first morning, singing songs about Bible characters got underway in Baptist tradition. Kiddos singing with the piano while reading words from books. One verse in, Leigh stopped singing and folded her arms. “Why did you stop singing,” the Bible school volunteer asked? “Can you not read all of the words?”

“I can read the words just fine,” she countered defensively. “But I can’t hear the song over that piano.”

I still remember the first time I heard congregational singing as a young song leader. Part of Bible training for young men in leadership roles. Singing, teaching, praying. But the hymns I’d heard growing up resonated differently when I first stood and faced the singers looking back at me.

Luckily, I survived that first song on a Sunday night. And when the last note of “Blessed Assurance” fell silent, I returned to my seat relieved, expecting someone to say, “Well, that one can’t sing.”

But no one objected. So, I learned the basics of 3/4 and 4/4 time. Shaped notes and four-part harmony. I attended singing schools; traveling teachers who visited churches to teach singing. And learned from the old timers about hymns called 7-11 songs. Seven words sung 11 times.  

I was even around for the pitch pipe controversy. Disagreements over whether the use of a pitch-pipe for exact notes was scriptural. Saw it escalate once to the point of two brethren arguing over it before they settled down and agreed to disagree; still being friendly with one another. A rare occurrence in congregational differences itself. I don’t think either changed their mind. They were just no longer enemies as Sweet Hour of Prayer resonated through the church house.

The guy who didn’t want to give up his pitch pipe continued to nonchalantly slip it out of his pocket, though. Blow one quiet note, and then quickly pretend he didn’t do it. The other one simply ignored him.

A lifetime of witnessing debates in doctrine has brought me to believe that whatever the controversy of the day, if we all just focus on God’s word and His will, we can usually be thankful in the end.

I hope everyone enjoyed a Happy Thanksgiving this week. And I pray each of us paused long enough to count our blessings realizing that our gratitude can make what we have feel like just enough.

I’m thankful that I might actually finish my book project soon. And I am grateful for the opportunity to still lead singing in God’s house every week.

But maybe most of all, I’m thankful no one has noticed that I still can’t sing.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

It’s the 1970s, all over again

“Sooner or later, everything old is new again.”
― Stephen King, American author known for horror novels.

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Marveling at the things my grandparents must have seen in their lifetime was something I often did when I was much younger.

Having reached that “grandparent” stage, I find myself drawing similar conclusions about my own life. Remembering things that have faded away. Seeing others miraculously survive to live another day.

Dad’s father was born in 1888. We gathered at Rose Hill Cemetery in Pittsburg to celebrate his life in 1967. During my second year of college when the whole world was still new and changing to me.

My grandfather went to work at 13. Child labor was common then. Ten percent of girls between the ages of 10 and 15, and 20% of boys had jobs to help support the family. The internal combustion engine was gaining popularity, and mass production of powered buggies called “automobiles” was catching on. But only the wealthy could afford one.

Connecticut became the first state to pass a speed limit that year, limiting motor vehicles to 12 mph in cities and 15 mph on country roads.

My grandmother lived until October of 1993. The Wright Brothers flew one of the first airplanes at Kittyhawk in 1903, two years before she was born. She lived to watch man’s first walk on the moon on her black-and-white television. She was never convinced it really happened, though. Truthfully, she was never sure television was real, either.  

My grandmother flew in an airplane one time during her life. With me after I earned a pilot’s license in 1974. She spent most of the 30-minute flight around northeast Texas to see her house in Pittsburg singing “Nearer My God to Thee.”

She went to be with God in 1993 without ever flying in an airplane again — with or without me.

My grandmother, that flight, and life since then crossed my mind a couple of weeks ago. Along with my 1970 Chevrolet pickup in which I drove her to the airport. I loved that truck. My first air-conditioned vehicle. It was equipped with AM/FM radio, tape player, and CB radio. All at a time when a pickup truck was still primarily a utilitarian vehicle.

The woman who watched man walk on the moon via television, however, never owned a radio until after she was married. When she married my grandfather, electricity was still years away from most rural homes. And cars then had little more than headlights, horns, and a hand crank for a starter.

Radios appeared in cars in the late 30s and evolved into sophisticated sound systems over the decades. Basic AM, and FM radio, still survive today despite some electric car makers having dropped AM claiming electromagnetic interference affects the performance of EVs. Don’t count AM out yet, though. Congress has responded by threatening legislation requiring auto manufacturers to keep it.

It was surprising to learn however, that despite rumors of its demise, the last bastion of vehicular radio devices in my pickup that day 50 years ago when Granny consented to a trip into the wild blue yonder has surprisingly made a comeback.

Citizens Band Radio (CB) originated in the U.S. around 1945. Primary purchasers were farmers and the U.S. Coast Guard.

I was introduced to CB radio in the early 1960s as a member of Mount Pleasant’s “Emergency Service” Explorer Scout Post 206. Back when an FCC-regulated call sign, a license and “professional radio etiquette” were required. The two-way radios provided communication with first responders for our scout post aiding at wrecks and fires. Howard Townsend was the Post Advisor, monitoring our radio sets and conversations to ensure regulations were strictly followed.

But CB became a cultural craze in the 1970s. It was depicted in films such as ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ and ‘Convoy,’ on TV shows, and in music. Their use in trucker blockades to protest 55-m.p.h. speed limits and keeping tabs on radar speed enforcement became a thing of legend. And with it all, regulation went out the window when enforcement became impossible. The FCC threw in the towel on licensing in 1983.

CB antenna on author’s 1956 Ford Thunderbird for a trip from Center, Texas to Daytona Beach, Florida in October of 1984.

Popularity rendered CB radio as its own worst enemy. Frequencies were overloaded, making communication difficult. Business users switched to other frequencies before the introduction of mobile phones saw CB’s popularity drop faster than temperatures in a Texas Blue Norther. Everywhere, that is, except among over-the-road truckers, touring motorcycle riders, and classic car clubs traveling to shows and events in caravans.

As a touring cyclist and an old car enthusiast, I knew CB radio never really disappeared. At least not in my garage. And from what I have read recently, CB radio sales are flourishing better than sometime in the 1990s. While “entertainment radio” still evolves, CB has survived. It’s making a comeback to live another day. And it’s the 1970s, all over again.

“Breaker, breaker one-nine. Anybody have eyeballs on that CB I used years ago. Negatory? Well, CBs are back again, good buddy!”

—Leon Aldridge

(Photo credit: From Leon Aldridge personal collection of a few thousand Kodachrome slides. Photo at top of the page: CB Mounted on motorcycle for a trip from Mount Pleasant, Texas to Leadville, Colorado in October of 1975. Safely secured by a state-of-the-art bungee cord. )

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.