When I was a buyer at Belk, I needed to hire someone for the Record Department. I told Personnel that I wanted someone who knew a lot about music. They told me they found someone, and they wanted me to interview them. His name was Del. He came in my office, and his eyes lit up when he saw a Beatles poster on my wall. He said he was a big fan of The Beatles, and I knew we would get along well.
Del and I went to record shows and antique stores. We were both collectors of The Beatles. It also turned out that we knew a lot of the same people. He and I became friends. He introduced me to his distant cousin Chris. Chris was younger than us, but he had an old love for The Beatles. He was also from Columbia, but he was going to school in Memphis, TN. We also had more in common. Del and Chris had been in a band, where they sang mostly cover songs. I had been writing songs since I was in 4th grade. So, we decided to form a partnership, where Chris would write the music, and I would write the lyrics. Chris also wrote lyrics, and on some occasions he would add some lyrics to mine. It was a good arrangement.
When Chris was home from school, the three of us would go to record stores in Charleston, Charlotte, Augusta and Atlanta. We would also go to record shows to build up our collections. One game you play with dealers is to try and get something worth a lot more than what they are selling it for. If you can outwit the dealer, you have been successful. Del didn't have much of a poker face. He would see something in a bin that he wanted and yell out "Yes!" That would tip of the dealer that he needed to up his price. Chris and I would get mad at Del for doing this, but he couldn't help it. There were many times where Chris and I would go into the hall and move to another area from Del to distance ourselves from him. That way, we got better deals before Del got there. During our trips, each person would make cassette tapes to play in the car. I would mainly do classic rock. They liked surf and drag. I hated that kind of music. They didn't like much of my music, so it worked out well or not. Another thing we liked was going to amusement parks. During our time together, we rode on six of the top ten roller coasters in the country.
We took one trip to Six Flags over Georgia. It was 70 degrees when we left, and it freezing cold and snowy in Atlanta. We were not dressed for the cold. There were very few people at the park. We had to hold onto the metal bars on the roller coaster through the pockets of our light jackets. We went into one gift shop there just to get warm, and the employee called security on us, as she thought we were going to steal something. Another Six Flags trip was around Halloween. We went into the Haunted House. I have never been so scared before in my life. It was pitch dark in there, and some guy started a chainsaw right next to my head. I ran over people to get out of there.
One memorable trip was one that Del and I took to Memphis to meet up with Chris. He was majoring in music recording, so we got to go to a real recording studio. Del and Chris cut two songs there. One was a cover song, and the other was one of my songs. It was cool. I got to work the board. Del played the piano and bass. Chris played guitar. We had a drummer that Chris knew. We also went to Graceland to pay homage to Elvis. After doing that for a couple of days, we went to Six Flags over Mid-America near St. Louis, MO. We got on a roller coaster and got up to the top of the first hill, when it suddenly stopped. Off in the distance, we could see a tornado coming. It had just gotten dark. We had to walk down the frame of the ride to the bottom. Most of the other park goers went for their cars to get out of there. The employees went to an underground shelter. The three of us stayed with a security guard and watched the tornado spin in the clouds over us. Thankfully, it didn't touch down until a few miles further on. Since most of the folks had left, we pretty much had the park to ourselves. That was fun.
I will write more about the music collaboration with Del and Chris in the next story. Needless to say, we were really good friends and had a lot in common.
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