Dutch

  I only did one record show in Columbia, and that was at Dutch Square Mall.  Back then, the mall was full of shops and shoppers.  My tables were located near one of the entrances.  It wasn't a prime spot, but it was okay.  It was sort of near a barber shop.  

 As I have written before, I sold music videotapes.  They were not commercially available at the time and could have been considered "bootlegs".  I didn't like that word.  I preferred to say they were "unavailable elsewhere".  It was all in how you framed them.  "Unauthorized".  "Imports".  "Promos".  "Not commercially available".  It all meant the same thing.  And, the picture quality varied from great to poor.  There was no such thing as digital quality back then. If you wanted it bad enough, you didn't care.  All sales were final.

 One of my most popular titles was Elvis Presley's last concert that was shown on CBS TV right after he died.  The show was an hour long, and the tape also had the original commercials.  I had a lot of customers who loved Elvis.  The only problem with the tape was that the color was faded, due to it having been copied from the original TV broadcast and then copied a few more times.  My copy was a third-generation tape, so the ones I sold were fourth-generation.   The sound was still good, but the picture just wasn't very clear.

 As luck would have it, a busload of senior citizens from Florida stopped at the mall for lunch.  One woman saw the Elvis tape on my table, and she started talking about how much Elvis meant to her.  She remembered that show and wanted a copy of it.  She asked me if the quality was good.  I told her it was.  She was from Jacksonville, so I didn't think I would ever see her again.  She then asked me that if she wasn't satisfied with it, could she mail it back to me for a refund? I told her no, that all sales were final.  She said she would take a chance and gave me the $10 for the tape.  I am sure she has long-since departed this world, but I still would like to apologize to her.  Maybe, she didn't care after seeing it.  After all, it was Elvis.

 

Bomb

  When one does a record show, you have to pay in advance for the number of tables you will need to sell your stuff. There were no refunds, if a seller didn't show up.  At the first show I did, I paid for just one table, and I found that one was not enough space.  Two tables were much better.  Some promoters wanted you to buy a space. which was actually better, because you bring in your own tables and other display materials.  At a couple of shows, I brought a combination TV/VCR to play my tapes on which helped pass the time, and it was an attention grabber.  People liked coming to my space, and they ended up buying something.

 One show I did was in Greenville, SC.  It was in an old mall that only had a couple of stores in it.  The night before the show, it snowed in Greenville.  I called the promoter to see if the show was still on, and she said it was.  Since I had paid for two tables, I had to go.  No refunds.  My friends Del and Chris went with me.  I had my usual stuff in the trunk of my car which helped with traction on the icy roads.  After living in Texas, where we got snow a lot in the winter, I knew how to drive in that stuff.

 By the time we got there that morning, the snow had mostly turned into icy slush.  We got off of the interstate, and it was a short drive to the mall.  They had started late to allow for a little thaw.  Our tables were near the entrance to J. B. White's, which was the only department store in the mall.  It was a good location.  As we placed the boxes on the tables, we found that the tables were not sturdy enough to hold the weight of the boxes or record albums.  It sagged in the middle.  So, we put the album boxes on the ends of the tables, and the videotapes in the middle.  

 During the show, there were two guys selling at a couple of tables across from us.  All of a sudden, everyone heard a big bang that sounded like a bomb going off inside the mall.  Between the hearts pounding in peoples' chests and the diving under tables thinking shots fired, we saw what had happened.  Their tables broke, and all of their records were strewn out onto the floor.  After everyone gathered their wits, we all helped them pick up their records.  Some were broken.  The promoter said that it was the mall's fault for having substandard tables.  It was.  The show closed early because of the weather.  I didn't sell much that day, but it was good to know that no one had a heart attack when the "bomb" went off.

Asheville

  After leaving the record show in Spartanburg, my next stop was the Red Roof Inn near Asheville, NC.  I was staying there before our next record show.  Anyone who has driven along I-26 toward Asheville knows that there is a very steep hill on that highway.  I had a bunch of records in my trunk and videotapes on my backseat, so there was a lot of weight on the back part of my car.  When I saw that steep grade ahead of me, I tried to take a running jump at that hill.  I was going 70mph in my little Nissan, when I got to the hill.  I cut off my AC to get more power.  I was even leaning forward to try to get some more momentum.  By the time I got to the top of that hill, my car was creeping along at 35mph.  I was just praying I wouldn't blow out my motor.  I made it over the incline and headed to Asheville.

 On the day of the record show, my friends Chris and Del were supposed to help me.  Unfortunately, they got stuck in a tunnel for hours with a car wreck ahead of them.  They never came until right at the end of the show.  One thing I would do would be to travel around to antique and record stores and find things I could sell for more.  A place I found in Augusta, GA had a lot of music memorabilia.  I found some concert posters for The Beatles and Elvis Presley.  They were $5 each.  At the time, I didn't know they were reproductions, so I had them at the record shows selling them for $20 each.  I had sold the Elvis posters in Spartanburg but still had the Beatles for Asheville.  A guy came up to the table and asked if the posters were real.  He was a high school student.  I told him they were, and he bought one.  I found out later that the date of the Shea Stadium concert was wrong on the poster, and it was fake.  I would like to personally apologize now to whoever bought it that it was fake.  

 There were also some big-time Beatle collectors from Black Mountain, NC who were at the show.  They told me that their collection was in a vault up in the mountains, and no one could see it.  That kind of goes against my thinking.  I used to have a pretty big collection of Beatles stuff.  I displayed it for all to see and for me to enjoy.  For them to put it in a vault sort of takes away from the joy of collecting.  

 When the record show was over, I headed back home.  I still had some records and tapes to leave with.  When I got to the I-26 hill going down, I just took my foot off of the brake and sped down the mountain.  The weight in the back of my car allowed me to not fly down the mountain, but it was fun doing 70mph in my little Nissan.  You meet all kinds of people at record shows.  Some want to bargain with you on price.  One trick for buyers:  if you get there right before closing, you get the best deals.  Most sellers will allow bargaining with the buyers, because they don't want to haul their stuff home with them.  The downside to this is that if you are looking for something in particular, it might be gone by the time you get there.  And, don't ask sellers to hold items for you, unless you offer your first-born male child as collateral.  Finder's keepers, loser's weepers. 

BMG

  When I was doing record shows, I had a variety of items to sell.  Mostly, I sold records and videotapes.  As I wrote about earlier, I used to deal in bootleg material.  I used to sell bootleg video and audio tapes.  They were concerts not available in stores.  The quality was questionable, but people wanted to spend money for these things.  There was a guy in Atlanta that sold videotapes for $20, so I undercut him and sold mine for $10.  We had a lot of the same stuff.  

 Across the room from me in Spartanburg was a guy named Randy who sold bootleg cd's.  He was asking top dollar for his stuff.  The promoter came up to us about halfway through the show and said that BMG was coming to the show to look for bootlegs.  BMG had a plant in Spartanburg, and our bootlegs were breaking the law.  I just put my videotapes under the table.  A tablecloth went to the floor.  Randy gathered up all of his product and quickly loaded them into his car.  He was pulling out of the parking lot, as BMG came in.  No bootlegs were found, so they left.  

 A few years later, Randy got caught with his bootlegs at a record store in Columbia.  He went to federal prison for a while.  One had to know how to advertise them.  They were either "imports" or "promos".  Keep them on the down low.  After Randy went away, those of us stopped selling them at record shows.  It was just too dangerous.  I ended up selling my collection on eBay as blank tapes with stuff on them.  I hope they liked the blanks.

Spartanburg

  I used to sell stuff at Record Shows at several cities in South Carolina and North Carolina.  If I had to travel, I would usually book a motel room for the night to be ready for the next day, and hopefully where the show was going to be held.  One such motel was in Spartanburg, SC.  

 I had arrived early to look around town.  One place I visited was the First Baptist Church, where my father had been on staff back in the late 1930's.  I enjoyed that visit, but I heard so much about the downtown area being filled with shops and pedestrian friendly.  I walked across the street to a jewelry store to get directions to downtown Spartanburg.  The man in the store took me outside and pointed across some woods.  He said that was downtown, but he said:  "You can't get there from here".  It was kind of weird, so I never made it downtown.

 I went back to the motel to eat and relax.  In the next room to mine, a TV was blaring through the wall.  It was so loud that I couldn't hear the TV in my room.  I knocked on their door to ask them to turn it down, but I got no answer.  I called down to the front desk to see if they could call that room and ask them to turn it down.  They told me that it wasn't their responsibility to control what others did in their rooms, even if it was disturbing others.  I just felt they didn't want to get involved.

 Now, it was approaching midnight.  I had to get up early the next morning to set up for the Record Show.  Still, the TV was so loud that I was getting irater.  I walked down to the office and demanded that they go up to the room next to mine and get them to turn off their TV.  Reluctantly, the guy at the desk walked with me to the offending room and pounded on the door.  No answer.  He used his passkey to enter the room and found no one there.  He told me that the room was occupied by a man and his son.  Apparently, it was homecoming at Wofford College, and they were in Spartanburg for that.  

 I finally went to sleep.  At 2am, I was awakened by those two coming back.  Thankfully, they didn't turn on the TV again.  The next morning, I saw them in the lobby and just glared at them.  The clerk at the desk apologized for my lack of sleep.  He said that the man apologized to the clerk for the TV.  It seems his son had cranked it up when they left, and he didn't know his son had done it at the time. The motel should have credited my account for the room, but they didn't.  I went to the Record Show with very little sleep under my belt.  Somebody could have bought all of my stuff for $1, and I wouldn't have known the difference.  

Piedmont

  My father was leading a Sunday School conference at a Baptist Assembly in Kentucky.  He asked me if I wanted to go with him.  I was around 10 years old.  I said yes, because it would be my first airplane ride.  

 We left from Asheville, NC to Louisville, KY., and we were flying on Piedmont Airlines.  This plane was not exactly the nicest plane, but I didn't know any better.  Between Asheville and Louisville, we landed at every airstrip along the way.  Some were in the middle of nowhere with mountains on either side.  When we finally got to Louisville, it had been snowing and drifts were up to my waist.

 We spent a few days at the conference and then went back on Piedmont to Asheville.  This time, it was at night.  I don't know if the pilot knew where he was going or just wanted to have fun, but we banked very sharply through the mountains.  So much so that the flight attendants were having trouble standing up. We also stopped at every runway between the two cities. They served a meal going back which consisted of green roast beef.  I didn't eat it because of safety concerns.

 Thankfully, we made it back to Asheville in one piece.  My first flight was kind of scary.  Normally, that experience would put one off from flying anymore.  I have flown many times since then with very few mishaps.  I would just rather not have had a daredevil for a pilot that night.

Red

  I have had to fly to different places many times.  Despite my familiarity with flying, I am a bit of a nervous passenger.  I learned in Europe to chew gum on taking off and landing.  It helps with the change in air pressure.  I have also learned to drink a soda during the flight to help with my stomach, or to take some Pepto-Bismol tablets before the flight.  I have only gotten sick on two flights.  One was flying between London and Rome, and the other was from Columbia to Nashville.  Most of the time, I like sitting by the window.  It is interesting looking out of the window and hopefully not seeing an engine on fire.

 When I lived in Fort Worth, I had two ways to get home for a visit.  One was to drive, which usually took almost three days.  Back then, my car was not the most comfortable way to go, and I had to stop when my back started hurting.  The other way was to fly.  As I was working at Sanger-Harris, I might get one day off for Christmas, and I wanted to fly home to be with my parents.  If I could work it out and get another day off, that was when I flew home.  I wasn't making a great deal of money, so I found that taking the "red eye" flight to Atlanta and then to Columbia made sense.  It was cheaper than a day flight.  

 Flying at night was much calmer for me, since I could look out of the window and see the lights of homes and businesses.  On one occasion, we got into Atlanta a little late.  We had to circle due to storms in the area.  There was even discussion about landing in Birmingham, but the pilot did get us down to Atlanta.  By the time we arrived, the flight to Columbia was going to leave sooner than I had planned.  Had we arrived on time in Atlanta, I would have had a longer time to wait for the departure to Columbia.  As it turned out, I was running through the terminal to get to the right gate.  It was sort of like that old TV commercial of OJ Simpson running through the airport and jumping over luggage on the floor.  I made it to the gate with just seconds to spare.

 The flight from Atlanta to Columbia was a bit scary.  I could look out of the window and see lightning in the distance, and it was a bit bumpy.  It was raining, when we reached Columbia.  The pilot landed the plane halfway down the runway and jammed on the brakes.  When we finally stopped, everybody clapped.  We weren't clapping, because we landed.  We were clapping, because we were lucky to be alive.  

 I am sorry that my parents had to come out to meet me early in the morning, when it was still dark, but sometimes saving money outweighs the inconvenience.  At least, the engine didn't catch on fire, or I don't think it did.  It was dark.