3. March 20, 1976
Today is 37 days from the first anniversary of Dad’s passing. I’ve committed to writing 40 stories about him as that day approaches. Forty Steady Stories.
One of my earliest memories of Dad was when I walked into the master bedroom on Merrifield Road and found him playing a TDK cassette tape in a Panasonic handheld cassette recorder/player. He had his electric guitar out and was playing along to some groovy tunes. At one point I looked down at the tape in the cassette player and Dad had written one word in all caps: ELVIS.
I didn’t know who Elvis was, but I sure did like the sound of “Hound Dog.” Dad seemed to know a lot about this music and said that “Hound Dog” was one of the songs he used to play with his college band — “Steady Cash and the Cashiers.” (#coolestbandnameever). Dad played some other songs for me like “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Suspicious Minds,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Teddy Bear,” and the list goes on. That SA-90 tape became one of my favorites and we wore that tape out at home and in the car.
Then I got my Panasonic SD-203 all-in-one stereo with a turntable on top one Christmas. Beside it was the RCA Elvis album pictured above from 1973. I wore that LP out and became a huge Elvis fan. In fact, I was Elvis for Halloween for about 3 years in the mid-1970s. My mom made the costume, and it was epic. EPIC! It had a cape, a huge belt, and had rhinestones all over it before the Bedazzler made that easy. So, I paid my dues and then it happened.
March 20, 1976.
Dad took me to my first concert. That’s right, my first concert was Elvis. (Bump, bump, bump. Oh, sorry, I dropped the mic. I’m back now.)
Dad took me to Belk’s at SouthPark and bought me a classic 1970s hat for the concert (so cool that it’s already back in style only 50 years later), and then we headed out to the Charlotte Coliseum — the original Charlotte Coliseum on East Independence (now Bojangles Coliseum). I don’t remember much of the prelude, but I’ll never forget what happened when the lights went down, and people started screaming the loudest I’d ever heard in my life. I’ll never forget the two young girls in their late teens that were sitting in front of Dad and me.
When the lights went down, they started screaming so long and loud that they both passed out within seconds of each other and fell down. Security team people carried them out of the show, and I never saw them again. No exaggeration. I looked up at Dad and he looked back at me and shrugged his shoulders. Here’s the thing… People all over the coliseum were doing the same thing and the security team was rushing around carrying people out. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t figure out why all those people didn’t stop screaming so they could see the show!
Then Elvis came out. Dad and I high-fived each other, and I couldn’t stop smiling. He was bigger than I remembered from the album cover :) but was still incredible. He’d basically ripped off my mom’s Halloween costume design and had added silk scarves — which he kept using to wipe the sweat off himself. Then he would throw the scarves into the crowd on the floor and people went crazy for those sweat-soaked mementos.
All of this taught me a valuable lesson that didn’t take root until much later in my life: we all worship something or someone. On March 20, 1976, for a lot of those folks, it was Elvis. We might not call it that, but that’s what worship is — what or who I put on the throne of my heart. There have been seasons for me where work, food, people (self or others), and things have taking up space in the throne room. Dad taught me through his example to enjoy life but to reserve the throne of my heart for God. What about you?
