Donovan sang about it, ‘Mellow Yellow.’ Bright Eyes mentioned a Yellow Bird in two great songs. And yellow was the color of a rare cardinal who blessed the Birmingham area with numerous sightings.
Yellow is the color of sadness. For me, right now.
I’m mourning the loss of my yellow vinyl copy of Ole’ by the Electric Light Orchestra. Well I didn’t actually lose it.
I sold it.
I’ve written about the yellow bird here. And I’ve written about the sadness of selling beloved records here. Long story short I sold a Nick Drake record and a Buckingham Nicks record for $110 total. It turned out to be a fair price based on the Discogs median pricing average. In another transaction I traded/sold my ELO for a new vinyl I’d had my eye on at about $16 plus 5 dollars in cash. The $21 value may have been a little low but I was hurrying at this point. I got a fair trade and the whole thing jostled a memory from 1978.
I’ actually had two Electric Light Orchestra albums when I first did the MVC review in 2018.. The Ole’ ELO, yellow vinyl. I picked up when I was caller number something or other in Athens, Ga., Do radio stations still do that? We used to sit near the radio, the phone number dialed up except for the last digit. This was the same radio station (WRFC) where I did a little internship as part of a high school journalism program where we worked on the school newspaper and other journo things like this radio gig. And it was the station where I won the yellow record.
As part of that radio internship we went out and sold ads for radio spots. Then we made a radio commercial, which the radio actually used. After one of these sessions, So there were three of us going off campus every week to sell ads and go to the radio station.
On our last day of the program Walter Allen, the son of the principal, caved into repeated requests by our co-hort Bobby Brumby. Bobby want on the verge of getting his license wanted to drive. Just a little bit. Walter finally agreed..
He had been itching to get his driver’s licence, which he did not have yet. But he had been studying for it. The road the school was on was a relatively low trafficked 4-lane road. What could go wrong?
Bobby drove well, and we were almost back at the school. Walter and I had relaxed as we approached the driveway to turn in. But Bobby was still going 50 mph. “Bobby slow down here’s the turn,” Walter and I were shouting.”
He took the turn at about 40, maybe dropping to 30. It was unclear if it was the brakes or the pole l — the cylindrical pole made of steel and concrete which we drove over ripping bottom out of the car — that were factors in slowing the car down. The pole was a dividing market between entrance and exit.
But we knew what finally stopped the car: The 20-foot solid steel light post, one big enough to shine light on a large part of the front of Cedar Shoals High School.
We hit it head-on. At this point I think Bobby was searching his mind for the answer that he surely must have seen in the driver’s manual he had been studying. The question: What do I do when I’m careening headlong into a light pole.
I believe we were in a Ford Taurus or some mid-sized sedan. From inside the car it sounded like you would expect: a grinding metal on metal sound as the bending post scraped the innards out of that under carriage. The car had slowed from 40 mph but was showing no signs of stopping
I felt like I was in the scariest ride at SIx Flags. Finally the car went head-on into the giant steel poll holding a streetlight. Whew!
We were finally stopped. Walter, the principal’s kid, was yelling at Bobby, who was just kind of flabbergasted. I said, well, let’s get out of here. At least nobody was hurt. We reached for the door. and BAM!
There was a loud bang on top of the car, so loud in fact that we rolled off our seats to ball-up on the floorboard, which in spots was lumpy as if we’d run over a steel pole. Oh yeah, we did run over a steel pole. At this point we thought we might be under attack.
The roof inside the car actually showed the indented spot where the light fixture had fallen. Weight estimate? Oh about a buck-50 maybe of steel and glass. It had obviously picked up some speed on the 20-foot drop. It was a delayed reaction part of the crash. Thankfully none of us were out of the car yet when the light fixture fell off the pole we had hit.
‘Damn, I think it’s totaled,’ was my observation from the back seat.
“Ya think?’ was the look Walter gave me.
We cautiously exited the car and went in to confront Dr. Allen. I figured I would certainly not be center of attention in the burden of blame. I mean this was a school that still used the paddle. No one got paddled as far as I know in this case. I think Walter was grounded forever. I did see him years later at a High School reunion – – our 10th — and we laughed about the whole thing. At that time Walter was working as a DJ at, you guessed it, the very same radio station where I won the yellow record.
The yellow record I no longer have. But I still have the memories.