Riding in Style

Had events turned not so insane, this is the kind of house Laddy would be living in right now, in the hot and bothered summer of 1972. It was a suburban split-level in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with a TV antenna and a two-car garage and central air conditioning. Laddy confidently pulled up right into the driveway in a 1969 gold Cadallac, on loan to him for the afternoon from Chance Ladder (yes, that Chance Ladder, the former lead singer of the Romanistics, who was already hot on the comeback trail, but was a generous black man who knew that Laddy was genuine.).
Laddy drove up from his home in Atlantic City, which was about an hour's drive. Along the way, on the Parkway, he luxiouriously set the car on cruise control and listened to FM radio. Music was not the same these days, and he wasn't thrilled about the change. After all, what grown man calls himself Alice Cooper? What does Mott the Hoople mean? Black Sabbath?
Not that Laddy was an old fogey at all: he was barely thirty and still grew his sandy brown hair and sideburns long, as is the fashion for the groovy. One time, in 1959 and 1960, that hair was famous for being swept up in a pompadour. Now, it was dry and wavy and cascaded down his neck, the way Jesus looked in those watercolor paintings sold on the boardwalk.
He wore tight twill pants that flared into bell-bottoms, and cowboy boots in a variety of colors. He had a collection of floral polyester shirts in every manufacturable shade, unbuttoned to the nipples. His face was puffier than it was in his heydey, but still somewhat symmetrical and handsome, with a gold chain around his now beefy neck.
If he were registered to vote, he would cast his ballot for McGovern. And he knew where to score the best pot in South Jersey, the kind that came down from heaven and Harlem. Still, as hip as he was, good music was very specific for him, and he could not always comfortably ride the current trends. Even when he was making records, he would be the first to admit that he did not have quite the talent for a Grammy award, but he knew what was good. This, on the radio today, was not good. It was noise. It was trash. He usually kept his mouth shut about it for the fear of appearing unhip; he would wait it out.
He heard his son's hit records, though, on three different stations that faded in and out from transmitters all along points unknown in South Jersey. The boy, like Laddy, had not a good voice, but good, soft looks, those of an Irishman right off the boat. The rest of his talent was all taken care of by studio equipment.
When Laddy would walk on the boardwalk, he would see posters of the boy in storefronts. He would also see him on television, on talk shows and game shows, and on a weekly family comedy in which he played the youngest brother of a whole brood of assorted brats. The show was so sickenly sweet and phony and badly acted that Laddy could not get through it without a good, deep, strong toke and a whiskey shot.
Bradley (Laddy did not name him) looked like a chick, like all the boys look today. Skinny, with soft features and long, feathered hair, and no hips and tight jeans and big lips and large eyes. In the drug store, Laddy read 16 and Tiger Beat and Role Call, the very magazines he had appeared in himself in 1959 and 1960. Boys looked like boys then, though.
One of his son's songs was a remake of a hit fifties number called "Until You Say Yes." That was a good sign. Decent music was on its way back. It was only a matter of time. Laddy himself had said it, when the Beatles invaded this country: it was a fluke. Music would return to its former sanity. It was a long time to wait, but only a matter of time.
If Chance Ladder was suddenly getting paying gigs again, and an act as big as his son would score a huge hit with a fifties remake, then there was hope for music and hope for America and hope for Laddy.
Hopeful was how he felt as he rang the bell to the house in Cherry Hill, and he could hear a nervous rustle from inside.