Destination Lucky's (A Memory)
My hands were sweating on the handle grips of my trusty red and tan colored Royal as we pulled to a stop in front of St. Laurent’s Nut House. The slightly fishy smell of the Saginaw River was strong as we put down our kick stands.
There was nothing like a little chocolate candy to steel the nerves for my first bike crossing of the Third Street Bridge. “Nuts since 1904” was painted in large letters on the distinctive yellow brick building and it never failed to draw laughs from the three boys from St. Joseph Grade School who piled into the shop.
My best friend, Tim LeVasseur, and I shared a terrible Detroit Times/Detroit News paper route that had just sixteen daily customers and one hundred and twenty-five Sunday customers. This translated into a lot of responsibility but very little money. The first week of the month was our big payday and we each had the princely sum of $4 dollars in our pockets on the first Saturday of April in 1958.
Bob Hudson, the third member of our party, wore thick eyeglasses that made his eyes appear larger than normal. Hudson was fearless. He would not back down from even the older boys, and as a result, Bob had our total respect. He also had an older brother who was in high school, and Bob had access to his rock and roll record collection when big brother Tom was out of the house. This impressed Tim and I who were entranced with the new sounds that we heard on the radio and on the juke boxes at the several City Dairies where we often stopped for ice cream cones or malts. We were going to buy some candy for Bob, who didn’t have any money, but we saw that he was expertly shoplifting his own treats while we distracted the clerk with our purchases.
We were on our way to Lucky’s Record Shop located on Midland Street on Bay City’s west side. It was the first time any of us would bike there. I had walked across the Third Street Bridge a couple of times and was more than a little anxious about riding my bike across the wooden walkway where you could see the brownish-green Saginaw River some thirty feet below through the openings in the slats.
I made sure I was third in line as we started across the bridge. At all cost, I didn’t want to chicken-out in front of my buddies by getting off and walking my bike. It sounded like a machine gun as I started rolling over the wooden planks. Cars were roaring by just a few feet away on my left as I tried looking straight ahead, my eyes as wide as saucers and my vision blurred by the bouncing ride as I held on for dear life and pedaled to keep up with Bob and Tim.
It was probably only fifteen seconds, but it seemed like much longer before I reached the sidewalk on the other side and rode past the boat storage yards and over the railroad tracks to the Midland Street business district where Lucky’s was located. Lucky’s Record Shop had recently moved one block west to a larger location. I had bought my first rock and roll records at the old location. They were 78’s of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Ricky Nelson, and Jerry Lee Lewis just to name a few.
I liked Frank “Lucky” Peplinski the owner of the shop. I was probably one of his youngest customers and he always took the time to talk to me about records. It was Lucky who turned me on to Chuck Berry.
We parked our bikes outside the front window with the familiar pink and green neon sign; Lucky’s Record Shop. The window display also featured a life-sized plaster representation of Nipper, the RCA Victor dog. The inside of the shop was just slightly darker than most stores and had an old wooden floor that squeaked as you walked over it.
Lucky was in his usual place behind the counter filled with racks of new 45’s, a non-filtered cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “Hi-ya Buster!” was Lucky’s typical greeting to me despite the fact I had my own customer name card where I could get one free record after purchasing ten. He never did call me Gary in all the years that I was a customer there. It was always “Buster”.
I enjoyed taking my own sweet time in Lucky’s and tended to ignore my friends while there. I liked to look at all the album covers first. They had clear plastic covers for protection in the days before shrink-wrapping. The albums featured exotic artists who I had not heard like Chuck Willis, the “King of the Stroll”, who wore a turban, or Little Richard who looked like he was screaming at the top of his lungs on the cover of his L.P. I didn’t have enough money at this time to buy any of these albums, but they seemed magical to me all the same.
My next stop would be at the wooden racks containing the extended-play 45’s. These were particular favorites of mine since, thanks to my parents; I was now the owner of a new 45 rpm record player with an automatic record changer and shut-off. The E.P.s contained at least four songs and were housed in a pictured cardboard slipcase that was like a mini-album and cost just about 40 cents more than a two-sided 45, a real bargain. I had four Elvis Presley E.P.’s so far and was planning on buying another on this day.
Bob Hudson was pacing around the store anxious to go, but I would not be rushed at Lucky’s. I finally decided on two E.P’s: Elvis Presley's “Jailhouse Rock”, containing five songs from the film I had seen just a few months before at the Royal Theater located a few blocks from my home, and “The Chirping Crickets” that included the current hit, “Oh Boy!”. The only single 45 I bought was Ricky Nelson’s newest release, “Believe What You Say”, that featured a picture sleeve with a cool photo of Ricky.
Lucky marked off my three purchases on my customer card. Just four more records and I would get my third free disc at his shop. The ride back over the Third Street Bridge with my brown bag containing the records wound tightly around my handle grips wasn’t nearly as scary as the journey over. I even had enough change in my pockets to buy myself and Hudson ice cream cones at the dairy on Johnson Street near his home despite the fact that he had punched me in the arm at least a half dozen times trying to hurry me up at Lucky’s.
Feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, Tim and I left Bob outside the dairy and headed homeward. He lived just one house down from me on Rose Street and we were inseparable in those days. Now I would get to lie on the floor of my bedroom in front of my record player and listen to my new purchases over and over again. For an eleven-year-old kid, it just didn’t get any better than this.