![\"Daddy's](\"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/ayearofsongs\/images\/blogimages\/DaddysRentedCadillac2.jpg\")
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I<\/span> did go to a high school prom in my dad’s Cadillac but, unlike the guy in this song, I<\/span> had a date, didn’t wreck the car, and survived to tell the story. (Not to mention that my dad’s Caddy was a genteel 4 year old de Ville he picked up for a song from some prosperous relatives.)<\/p>\n Like so many of my songs, this one started with a phrase (the title phrase in this case) and sort of fell out from there. When I was a kid, first driving, I used to drive up in the then rustic hills above Orange County, California, and we used to go ghost hunting up there playing hooky from boring parties or dances. I like to blot them out, but I know I had a lot of close calls on the roads up that way.<\/p>\n Indeed, one time driving back from an especially long loop that took me the length of Santiago Canyon road (back when it was a moonlit, winding, two lane blacktop) and all the way down to Laguna, I had pulled out onto Pacific Coast Highway north of town and was heading up one of those long grades when the sky ahead of me lit up almost like daylight.<\/p>\n This was the late 60’s and I honestly<\/span> thought they’d finally dropped the Big One on LA to the north. I couldn’t think of any other explanation.<\/p>\n It was with a sense of fascinated fatalism that I continued driving up the hill. As I topped the crest, I was temporarily blinded by the intensity of the light.<\/p>\n For a moment I was afraid I might crash into something and then the light dimmed perceptibly and my eyes adjusted as well.<\/p>\n The two southbound lanes were consumed in huge flames, almost obscuring a fuel tanker and what looked like one or two cars. It was all I could do to drive by the intense heat. A CHP car was just rolling up from the north, dropping flares behind it.<\/p>\n I drove by, thinking, close call.<\/p>\n I really expected nuclear war back then.<\/p>\n Everyone did.<\/p>\n This version uses chords I improvised on the spot, since I was a little hazy on the actual chords as I’d written them back in ’81.<\/p>\n I’d been listening to Jack Tarr and some other chanties and folk songs and I wanted to get that kind of dark, folk ballad feel.<\/p>\n BTW, the round faced, vaguely South Park-looking character behind the wheel of the Caddy in the pic above [and let me tell you, it was plenty<\/span> hard to get him in there behind the windshield… it only looks<\/span> like it’s transparent, you know] is none other than my alter ego, my frequent bulletin board avatar, my better half:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/ayearofsongs\/images\/blogimages\/tk-spark244x302-2011-10-31.jpg\")
\n(While I don’t actually have any studded wristbands and never did, I do have a Pop Group T-shirt just like that. Well, to be honest, I have 3, because I decided I liked how good it looked on my avatar, here, and… maybe I’ve been on the internet too long.)<\/p>\n\n