Texas Road Trips Reconstructed
Riding the blue highways of North Texas back in the day
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. It was the mid-1970s.
OK, these road trips only focus on rock ‘n roll. Sorry, but I was a yearbook photographer hitting the highway to shoot my high school football team on away games. Plus, I was pretty clean cut anyway. (Boy Scouts … of course.)
North Texas is laced with long stretches of nothing but mesquite, hackberry trees, cattle and roadside fruit stalls. Perfect territory for two teenagers travelling three hours to get to the kickoff on time.
It was 1975 in the middle of football season. We wore bellbottoms and John Denver hair. We played cassette audio tapes in the car. The portable Walkman wasn’t invented yet and Boomboxes were a few years away. Cassette tapes replaced bulky 8-track cartridges that looked like plastic versions of Texas toast stacked in boxy bread loaves.
Back in those days road trips required only three things: a vehicle, a full tank of gas and a cassette player. Radio only lasted for a few counties before the station faded out and you had to spin the dial again. The biggest question for hearing music was where to install the speakers: behind the back seat or flush with the front doors? Nobody had ear buds. Tunes were communal.
I was the co-pilot; Mike was the driver. The ride was a 1974 Mustang II hatchback in candy apple red. It wore Texas license plates that read, “EKIM 17”. We felt like it was our special “magic carpet ride”. Inside the tight cockpit of the Mustang, Mike choose to install the speakers up front for a more up close and personal sonic experience.
Mike was a starting guard on the high school basketball team. My best buddy from third grade was the other starting guard. I got cut. So Mike was my assistant on the field sidelines, but the road trip was the real reason he went along.
As Texans, we learned to depend on the road early on. As teenagers trapped in small to medium towns - and obsessed with rock ‘n roll, blues, soul and funk - we thought nothing of driving 2-3 hours to go to a concert in Dallas, Houston, Austin or San Antonio. And then drive back home after the show. Miles are no obstacle when you can see and listen to your rock ‘n roll heroes live.
Mike and I hit the road in the afternoons on the blue highway backroads of the Central Great Plains. The tarmac spat out like a long, black tongue reaching the horizon. It just kept rolling and rolling with scant sight of other humans.
It was time for ZZ Top. These long-bearded Texas boys always got our trips off and running with their raunchy blend of thumping blues guitar and guttural singing.
Just listen to how “La Grange” kicks it into high gear to start the trip in homegrown style. As the speakers pulsate, the blowback from the percussion reverberates across our bodies as the Mustang II puts more miles behind us.
Nothing beats being engulfed by the sounds of your youth, even decades later. Today, the advent of smartphones makes listening to music a solo experience. Yes, it’s extremely convenient. But it doesn’t soak into your pores, pierce your brain and take your soul to new plateaus.
Jackson Browne, the California songwriter/artist, sang it best in his 1970s song, “The Road And The Sky”:
When we come to place where the road and the sky collide.
Throw me over the edge and let my spirit glide.
They told me I was going to have to work for a living.
But all I want to do is ride.
I don't care where we're going from here.
Honey, you decide.
It’s hard for us Boomers to believe that younger generations of American kids are not getting driving licences. No car, no stereo speakers, no f***ing way. Earbuds and bluetooth be damned.
Back on the road, Mike and I zipped over the asphalt arriving in Lubbock, Mineral Wells or Ft. Worth with high energy, good spirits and time to spare. The football game was secondary. After three hours on the gridiron, we jumped back into the Ford Mustang and headed home for the return leg.
The nights were always cooler, pitch dark and deserted. Only the headlights of passing 18-wheelers and cars disrupted the view. We settled in for the ride home on a different musical plane. A long day deserves to descend into a calmer and steady state to carry you to the end destination.
Enter ELP. Emerson, Lake and Palmer were an English supergroup that turned progressive rock into an atmospheric symphony of sound. The song “Lucky Man” bounces off the left and right speakers with percussive beats, choral harmonies, guitar riffs and a piercing Moog synthesizer. It was immersive listening that got us home.
Road trip memories last. For the rest of the year, Mike picked me up each morning on the way to high school. It was out of his way, yet he never reneged on the offer.
Mike went on to become valedictorian of our graduating class, attended Rice University and become a corporate attorney. We haven’t been in contact since those road trip years as our lives diverged and high school faded into the distant past.
Despite the time gap, I’ll never forget sitting in that Mustang II with the songs ricocheting back and forth as the rock ‘n roll spewed out into the wide open Lone Star landscape.