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(It’s 1962, I’m just a dumb country kid from the Ozarks...but, I’ve got a recording contract with Columbia Records, I’ve had my first record released and just had my first apperance on the Grand Ole Opry, so i’m stepping in pretty tall cotton...let’s go back to a simpler time of life and remember what it was like.....)
LISTEN FRIENDS, I’M GOING TO NASHVILLE, IF IT HARELIPS HELL AND HALF OF GEORGIA......ain’t nothing gonna stop me........uh, how bout loaning me five dollars for gas? (Stan Hitchcock 1962)
After my first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry I got back to Springfield, Missouri with my new found knowledge of entertainment, my one set of stage clothes, and a burning desire to get on with it.
I went over to the radio station and talked to Si Siman, and we both agreed that I, sure enough, needed to move on over to Nashville. It just so happened that Bob Tubert had quit the publishing rep job that he was doing for Si, and would I be interested in running the publishing company, in my spare time, when I wasn’t being a world famous singing star? After all, it would pay me $50.00 a week.
Well, I carefully thought it all out, ran it all over, up down and around in my mind, considered all the possibilities, and finally, twenty seconds later, said I reckon I would take that job, shoot, 50 bucks a week.......what’s not to take?
Well, I gathered up my few possessions, one stage suit, one J45 Gibson Guitar, about 4 pair of Levi’s, two pair of boots, one pair tennis shoes, four pair of socks, three changes of semi-ragged underwear, four shirts and assorted toilet articles wrapped up in two bath towels.
Kinda slim pickins’ for a soon-to-be singing idol, but, I figured when I got rich, and had doubled my income to $100 a week, I could always buy another shirt and some new underwear. Besides, the only time you needed good underwear was when you had to go to the hospital, to the emergency room or something, and I planned to be real careful and not have any accidents.
I packed all my treasures in the trunk of my 1959 DeSoto (you remember, this was the car that had the push-button transmission that hardly ever worked), kissed the family goodbye, and headed out.
I had left all the money I had with the family, so I went by my old friend, Warren Stokes, and borrowed $50 to make the trip and live until the big bucks started coming in.
With the new career in show biz financed, I left Springfield, turned that DeSoto (I can’t believe y’all don’t remember DeSoto, man, it was an American icon...the only reason it is not still around is because it was so long, not many people could park it) east on Highway 60, a man following the beat of a distant drummer, and that sucker was playing in double time.
About four hours later, around midnight, I was eating that highway up, that big straight-eight engine just humming, and I pretty much had the road to myself....I say pretty much, cause there was one problem, and it almost caused me to wish I had put on my one good pair of underwear...You see, this was 1962 and that part of Highway 60 ran through a real remote area of the Ozarks, between Van Buren and Poplar Bluff, and it was still open range......uh-huh, no fences.
Well, I was kinda letting that old DeSoto have its head, feeling good, grooving to some country music on the all-night show, on WSM, doing about 75 when I topped a little hill, started down a long grade, and there at the bottom, laying all over the highway, a herd of hogs had set up camp for the night.
You have to picture what a DeSoto looks like, it is one of the longest cars that was ever built, with all the handling capabilities of a Sherman Tank, and if you could have seen me maneuvering around those hogs......man, it was something. Hogs and hog poop was flying everywhere...I left that two-lane road, hit the ditch, did a complete 190, hit the pavement again, then the other ditch, slid sideways for about a hundred yards, finally got it straightened out and back up on the road, eased to a stop, shut everything down and just sit there, with visions of little pigs, dancing in my head. Now, if you have never had the experience of hitting a herd of hogs at 75 miles per hour...let me tell you something about it. You hit a deer, or a buffalo, or an elephant and it’s like hitting a wall for a couple of seconds, then the momentum of the car throws them away to the side of the road. You hit a pig and it rolls up under the car and you can’t get rid of it....hit a whole herd of them and it’s like going over boulders three foot wide, and the sounds of this kind of accident are even worse.
The silence was really strange after that high pitched screaming I had been hearing.....I looked around and wasn’t nobody there but me and what was left of the pigs...so I guess it was me. My butt had chewed the heck out of a pretty good pair of underwear, one side of that DeSoto had cleaned out a whole row of young saplings, growing next to the ditch, and I had burnt about an inch of rubber off all four tires, but, all in all, could have been worse I reckon. I cleaned hog poop off that thing for two weeks, and my throat was sore for a couple days from the high pitched screaming, but, no lasting damage.
Later, driving on toward Nashville, my good angel, on the left shoulder, kept saying, "Hey, you better slow this thing down a little." while, over on my right shoulder, the devil would answer, "Yeah, when pigs fly." Yessir, I was headed for the big time and no bunch of Ozark pigs was gonna stop me.
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