Whether it is due to being pressed for time, or laziness, or whatever name you choose to give it, when I know a state has been checked off the list, I am hesitant (at times) to make another stop. Maybe I am just getting old. Yet sometimes, an opportunity presents itself in such an unexpected way that I do not question the necessity to slam on the brakes and pull over. This is the story of an example of the latter, and it was a rewarding stop to say the least.
During a trip to the PNW I had visited a record store in Portland, then drove to Aberdeen to spend the night. I did make an undocumented stop at a Goodwill (also in Aberdeen) and the following day completed my work in neighboring Hoquiam. It was during my escape from western Washington, en route to Seattle for my flight home, that I encountered a full blown record store in this small town. I was in the left lane, and it was on the right, so just short of the screeching of tires I swerved to park and make a stop during what was surely some time to kill.
It was a mild day and the front door was wide open. I stepped inside and squinted in the dim light to make out a figure sitting on a couch watching a television overhead. He was smoking a cigarette and most memorably, wearing a red Adidas track suit. I say it without a grain of criticism as I own a few Adidas track suits (and I have owned others in the past) but if anyone considers the color a bit loud, it is only reasonable as this gentleman was leaning toward obnoxious himself.
He jumped up and flipped the lights on and immediately greeted me. Not surprisingly for the area, I was the only customer so I truly got some one-on-one treatment. Part carnival barker and a hefty portion of flea market tradester, Pete (as he soon introduced himself via a business card) was a memorable character to say the least.
There were 4 or 5 boxes of used vinyl in the corner of the shop which he identified as $5/ea while he made a bee line for the counter on the west wall. Behind it a ton of vinyl was displayed, and he rattled off some 80s metal bands asking if I was interested. Judas Priest caught my ear and I asked what he had. He brought over copies of ‘British Steel’ (this was a reissue) and ‘Hell Bent for Leather’ (this was not). It was somewhere in this exchange that he told me (prepare yourself for this) that his parents were Nicholas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley.
Besides the fact that Nicholas Cage had no children with Lisa Marie, they were together around 2000. Even if they had a child five years before that, this would make that child under 30 today. I did not check his birth certificate but Pete is clearly not of that bracket. He wanted $30 for ‘Hell Bent’ and I countered with $20. We settled on $25 and I continued to walk around the store and look at the loads of awesome media and memorabilia he had for sale.
There were two catch phrases that Pete would come back to again and again. The first was ‘that walks out the door’. As in “this album is worth $200, but for $150 it walks out the door”, meaning he’d accept that price. This was often qualified with ‘all day’, meaning that it was a sure thing, you could be well assured that he would honor that deal, he considered it to be priced to move. So as he showed me posters, albums, guitars, amplifiers, stereo equipment and more, I was warned of the prices attached to each and I can tell you that they would all walk out the door (all day!) deeply discounted for his assessed value.
We looked at a rack of vintage t-shirts, again largely metal and/or rock artists of the 80s and 90s. He had a Metallica shirt popular when I was in grade school that caught my eye. I don’t doubt that someone will pay top dollar for these.
I recommend stopping by when you are in the area. If you don’t find something you want – record or otherwise – you are promised to have a good time with Pete.
