Howdy

It's good to feel ok.

            Tig had turned 16 and had been regularly driving for a few months when, in early summer, we discovered that Vanilla Fudge would be playing at a racetrack east of  Knoxville. Of course both of us were excited nearly beyond our capacities to contain ourselves. We plotted carefully how we would raise ticket money and how we’d get to the place. A big sale would be our parents. I was only 15 and had rarely been allowed outside the county, and Tig was little older and had no practical experience driving in the big city. But it was the Fudge coming, so we would pull out all necessary stops to make the trip happen.

            Things really went better than we had hoped. We were quickly granted parental consent, and the concert cost, I believe, was around four dollars each. Great. My dad worked in Knoxville and gave us directions, which he assured us were easy to follow, and that the location was easy to find. Tig’s folks allowed him to use the main family vehicle, equipped with an eight track tape player. Everything came together.

            We got rolling a little early on the night of the concert in case we took a wrong turn or in some other way got lost. New Interstate 75 had not yet been completed, so everyone from Madisonville took Highway 411 to get to K-town, which meant also that going through town during rush hour was a necessity to get to the concert. My dad had stressed that all we had to do was stay on the road to Virginia and we couldn’t miss the place. As coincidence would have it, we stopped at a convenience store to make sure we were on the correct road, and ran into my dad who just happened to be there. He confirmed our location, and not long afterword we parked in the racetrack lot.

            I was expecting a scene like Woodstock, but except for the occasional long haired boy, the crowd looked about the same as one at a high school football game. Tig and I bought tickets and were allowed through a narrow, gated passageway. We found an isolated spot on the bleachers and prepared for the crowd to come that never came. Not only were the seats largely unfilled, but no one even sat near us. The majority of concert goers had settled on spread blankets arrayed near the stage.