Happy Convoy Day!

In January of 1976, I was 9-years old. I wouldn’t turn 10 until August 3rd of that same year. There were a lot of good television shows and movies in that time period. Some TV shows that immediately come to mind are, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Sanford & Son, All in the Family, The Jefferson’s, Good Times, Hawaii Five-0, and Kojak. As for movies, Rocky, The Shaggy D.A., Freaky Friday, The Bad News Bears, and my very favorite of that time frame, Logan’s Run.

Not only was there a bunch of great TV shows and movies, there were a lot of big hit songs by the popular performers of that time; Beth, by KISS, TNT, by AC/DC, Slow Ride, by Foghat, S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night, by the Bay City Rollers, Love Hurts, by Nazareth, Rhinestone Cowboy, by Glenn Campbell, You’re My Best Friend, by Don Williams, Thank God I’m a Country Boy by John Denver, and the list goes on and on. However, amongst all of the cool stuff of the 70’s, there was a song that hit the radio waves by a virtually unknown artist, that shot to the number one position on both the country and pop charts. This song started a whole new craze that would last for the next several years. In January of 1976 that number one song was, Convoy, by C.W. McCall. We couldn’t get enough of it! Kids and adults alike were going around singing it. I learned every single word and could repeat it back to you at any given time, and 32-years later, I still can!

Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June
In a Kenworth pullin' logs
Cabover Pete with a reefer on
An' a Jimmy haulin' hogs
We's headin' fer bear on I-one-oh
'Bout a mile out a' Shaky-town
I sez Pig-Pen, this here's th' Rubber Duck
An' I'm about to put the hammer down
Cause we got a little ol' convoy, rockin' through the night
Yeah, we got a little ol' convoy, ain't she a beautiful sight?
Come on an' join our convoy, ain't nothin' gonna git in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy acress the U.S.A.
Convoy, convoy… read the rest of the lyrics here.

All of a sudden everybody had C.B. radio (except for us.) Folks were putting them in their cars and in their basements, talking night and day to strangers all across the land. People started making up cool “handles” that they would call themselves while on the C.B. Of course we learned all of the C.B. jargon from listening to the song Convoy. I can only imagine how mad all of the truckers must have been when all of a sudden all of these idiots were invading their air space trying to be cool. The year after Convoy came out, Smokey and the Bandit, was released in theaters, which added more fuel to the C.B. craze and of course, The Dukes of Hazzard, followed a couple of years later. I don't know about the rest of the U.S. but here in the south we were C.B. crazy!

One of my friend’s parents had a C.B. in their car and I remember one night a bunch of us sneaking into the car and playing on it. One of my buddies (which shall remain anonymous) thought it would be funny to say a bunch of bad words on the air. He started cussing up a blue streak. He was calling people names and making threats and cussing at every given opportunity. He really ticked off some people. We were all sitting around laughing our heads off when all of a sudden a real deep and loud voice came over the radio that said, “Yep, they’ve been reported to the police and we know exactly where they are!” We were so scared we nearly messed on ourselves. We turned that C.B. off and ran as hard as we could away from the car, scattering in all different directions. We worried about getting caught for several days after that. They probably didn’t really have the technology to pinpoint our location back in those days, but we didn’t know any better.

So tomorrow is the 6th of June, just like the song mentions. Which is the whole reason I wrote this post. Happy Convoy day!