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As summer vacation began in 1980, I was riding my Farmall Super C tractor cultivating weeds from my dad’s corn field. To break the monotony, I would daydream about many unrealistic things. Perhaps some young ladies will drive by and stop and ask me to go to the lake. Maybe a Hollywood film maker would just happen to notice me and decide to cast me in the movie adaptation of the comic strip Funky Winkerbean. If Pat Benatar’s tour bus went by the field and she saw me, would it be love at first sight? As you can realize, the hot sun and the exhaust from the tractor’s muffler affected my thought process. Sound canceling headphones had not been invented. It was difficult to hear music through the white ear plug that came with my Panasonic tape player. I could not use one hand to push the earpiece deeper in my ear while steering with the other hand because I would wipe out corn stalks and dad would not be happy. He caught me once at the end of the row. I laid down under the tractor and made it look like I was cleaning off the cultivator shovels when actually I was laying in the dirt taking a quick nap. This did not help me get a raise of my allowance. Mother would often say, ‘if that kid would get to bed one night, he might be more work brittle’. I just now looked up what that means. It says
“Work-brittle” is a dialectal adjective meaning industrious or diligent, though it has a long history of also meaning unwilling to work, depending on context. It is a compound of work and brittle, and is considered dialectal or obsolete in most contexts. (Sometimes now I feel like I am obsolete in most contexts).
The summer of 1980 had some really cool tunes. Some of my favorites were Coming Up-Paul McCartney, Brass in Pocket-Pretenders, Steal Away-Robbie Dupree, Train in Vain-The Clash, Another Brick in the Wall-Pink Floyd, We Live For Love-Pat Benatar, You May Be Right-Billy Joel, All Night Long-Joe Walsh, and Gimme Some Lovin-Blues Brothers. My friends and I could not wait until we saw the Blues Brothers movie which was brand new. We finally got the chance to see it at the Eskin Theater in Richland Center and we spent the next two years repeating lines..’we have both kinds of music, Country and Western’, ‘are you the police, no maam we’re musicians, ‘we’re on a mission from God’. That movie is still one of my favorite comedies of all time.
Saturday night during Those Were the Days, I will spin a few from my misspent youth and from all of the generations of tunes including the fifties through the mid-nineties. Audience participation is always key. I love to hear about requests from the talk and text line and trivia games are held each hour. Join the fun Saturday night from six until midnight on WRCO 100.9, WRCO.com or through the free Civic Media app. If you stay up too late that night, you can always take a nap the next day in your corn field.
Philip
