When I was a kid, my grandma drove a 1979 Chevy Nova.  To my six-year-old mind that car was the very definition of luxury — it was a dark metallic green that fairly glistened in bright sunlight, and it had both air conditioning and an 8-track tape player.  On rare occasions, when there were no other passengers older than I, I was allowed to ride in the front seat next to my grandma, and I confess, it was almost too much for me to take in.

One of my very earliest love affairs got its start in that car.  Unlike most young love, this love has gone the distance, lasting me through childhood and adolescence and early adulthood, through flirtations with bubble gum pop and grunge rock and “new country.”  Even after I discovered that which was to be my ultimate love, I retained a deep and abiding tenderness for my first love, a love that had sprung to life, fully formed, from the speakers in my grandma’s dashboard.

Like many of her contemporaries, my grandma liked ’60s and ’70s country gospel and her music collection of course reflected that.  Among the 8-tracks she rotated through in the car was a little something by a group called the Statler Brothers, the four men who became my first love.  Or more correctly, the men whose album, The Best of the Statler Brothers, became my first love, for though each and every word of the eleven songs on that album is imprinted on my soul, I can’t honestly claim to be a Statler Brothers fan, in the larger sense.

But, oh, that album … it’s the only album I can remember listening to on 8-track, on LP, on cassette, and on CD.  I have personally owned two copies on cassette (my brothers, harboring a love similar to mine, appropriated these, though they’ll doubtless deny it) and at least three on CD, the most recent of these purchased on eBay mere days ago.  Since this newest copy arrived at my house yesterday, I’ve listened to it all the way through five or six times, and it’s every bit as good as I remember.  If the reaction of my kids is anything to go by, however, this love of mine may not pass to the next generation.  That’s okay, though  … we’ve had a good run, the Statler Brothers and I.