After his brush with death, Bud
Holloway herded his family into Moby Dick—the enormous white Edsel that had
nearly crushed him—and headed to Texas for a visit with his mama. Hollowhead later
described what happened.
As Bud drove through Albuquerque, he
toyed with the radio and managed to tune into a radio station somewhere in
Midland, Texas, which coincidentally was close to where they were headed.
The disk jockey came on and announced a
contest. “Our l’il ole’ radio station is gonna give away a check for one
hundred dollars to the first ‘58 car to pull into our parking lot.” The deejay
set a one hour time limit for someone to claim the prize.
Hollowhead said his dad didn’t give this
much thought because they were hundreds of miles from Midland. The hour came
and went, and no car arrived to claim the prize.
The deejay returned. “All right now,
ya’ll, let’s sweeten the pie. We’re gonna make it three hundred dollars if a white ‘58 car pulls into our parking lot within one hour!”
Hollowhead said his dad still wasn’t
thinking about it much, but there was a slight possibility Bud tapped the gas
pedal a bit harder.
Another hour passed.
“This is getting interesting, folks. It’s
hard to believe that in the entire Lone Star State there isn’t a white ‘58 car
around to claim this prize. So here we go again, more milk for the kitty. Now
we’re looking for a white ‘58 vehicle with a red interior. And we’ll
pay five hundred dollars!”
Bud must have glanced over at his wife
rubbing her sore back as she sat beside him on the Edsel’s red vinyl front
seat. I imagine he gave thanks then and there for the powerful V-8 engine as he
put the pedal to the metal. The city of Amarillo must have passed by in a blur.
When the deejay interrupted a song to
announce a winner, Bud reportedly started to slow down. But he accelerated
again when the deejay exclaimed, “Sorry folks, thought we had a winner, but
some guy was trying to pass off an orange interior as red. No dice. We want
red, and now we want a Ford as well.
Bring in a ‘58 white Ford with a red interior, and we’ll give you seven hundred
dollars. Now listen up folks: a few of our great Midland merchants are calling
in to see how they might participate in our l’il ole’ contest. Midland Tools
has agreed to add some honey to the pot. In addition to the seven hundred
dollar prize, Midland Tools will gift a thousand dollars’ worth of tools to the
first car meeting our specifications.”
According to witnesses in the car,
tool-addicted Bud started drooling at this point. Another hour passed without
anyone claiming the prize, after which the deejay demanded the sought-after car
have air-conditioning. Sixty minutes later, the car needed to be a station
wagon. Another hour and it needed to be manual, not automatic. Hollowhead said
his dad fingered the column shift out of overdrive, dropped to a lower gear and
pressed the gas pedal to the floor.
Merchants were calling the radio station
and donating all sorts of goodies to cash in on the cheap advertising, but
Wilma was most intrigued when a jeweler phoned in to donate an unusual item. He
had an imitation of the crown jewels worn by Catherine the Great of Russia at
her coronation, a set that, although not genuine, was still valued at five
thousand dollars. How such an item came to be in Midland, Texas, was a mystery,
but this was also added to the booty for the first white ‘58 Ford air-conditioned
car with red interior and manual drive that also happened to be an Edsel.
Speed limits were definitely a thing of
the past when they rocketed through Lubbock on their way to Midland. Another
contender for the prize was eliminated for exceeding the amount of recorded
mileage the deejay had requested. Miraculously, Moby Dick had just the right
number of miles on its chrome
speedometer. They’d come halfway across Texas by the time they reached the
radio station and screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust. They’d won, and it was too bad for that other white ‘58 Ford
Edsel wagon with air-conditioning and red interior and manual drive and equal
mileage that blazed into the parking lot just moments after the Holloways had
claimed all the prizes.
Local reporters made a big deal out of the
contest, and pictures of the Holloways made it into several newspapers.
Hollowhead even got to talk on the radio about life in California. The deejay
unofficially proclaimed him an honorary Texan and wanted to know what he
thought of Texas so far. Hollowhead said it was just fine and that he wanted to
spend the afternoon touring The Alamo. The deejay tried to explain that The
Alamo was in San Antonio, not Midland, but Hollowhead insisted that it must be
hidden around there someplace.
I learned that people phoned the radio
station to question the quality of California’s public school system or to ask
if Hollowhead was retarded. Evidently it was beyond any Texan’s imagination
that a school kid anywhere wouldn’t know the location of The Alamo. Finally, a
hotel manager in San Antonio called; he’d been listening and offered a free
hotel suite if the Holloways wanted to drive on to San Antonio to see the
Alamo, which they did. It was with reluctance that Hollowhead climbed back into
the Edsel—he was convinced the Alamo was hidden somewhere in Midland. The twins
had no interest in The Alamo, but a monumental fascination with the hunky
deejay. They would have preferred hanging around Midland but Bud rounded up his
family for the drive to San Antonio so Hollowhead could finally tour the Alamo.
On the drive back to California, somewhere near Flagstaff, Bud remembered they’d forgotten to visit his mama.
When the Holloways returned home, everyone
in the neighborhood took turns ooohing and
aaahing over the treasure. Bud
was nearly readmitted to the hospital after learning the amount of his tax
liability for all the money and prizes, but Wilma took it all in stride. She
wore Catherine the Great’s coronation jewels while manning the
lawnmower—claimed they made cutting the grass easier. I can still picture her
mowing her front yard, a bejeweled crown twinkling on her head, her chest
covered by a glittering necklace weighty enough to stop bullets.
