The Day the Wolfman Cried

Preface:  During the summer of 1958, when I was  fourteen,  we moved to the rocky canyons and high plains of Val Verde County. There was  a sense of unease the moment that hot Southwest Texas wind blasted  through the open window of the family Chevy. 
Mother, Daddy and I had arrived in our new home: Del Rio---an Air Force town by the Rio Grande, bordering  Villa Acuna, Mexico. (Now Ciudad Acuna.) At that same time, a fledgling misfit disc jokey  steam rolled into that same town, shaking up the status quo---and , me as well.


Note:*** Bio information often claims Robert Weston Smith (1938-1995) known as Wolfman Jack, started his career in the sixties. Not true. He was in Del Rio/Acuna on air in 1958.  (It is unclear as to whether he was licensed at that time.)           
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 My father was devoted to saving souls, and that border town of Del Rio had sent for my father. The local congregation, combined with its south of the border Villa Acuna members, had found us a house on East Fourth Street --- an old Victorian with a wide front porch and a single barren peach tree out back.

"I don't feel right without  trees around me," Mother said.

It would be the last time she voiced her feelings for the duration --- at least in my presence. As  a preacher's wife , she kept her thoughts and emotions in check under all circumstances. As soon as all our belongings were in place, she went straight to that big old fashion kitchen and got out the mixing bowls.

"When I'm down I bake," she proclaimed.

She must have felt really low, because there would be a weekly stream of  loaves of bread and rolls coming out of the oven during our time there. Mother had her baking. I had my radio. We would get by.

Brother Joe was back in East Texas at college, so life was much quieter and oddly off kilter---like a broken compass unable to find true direction. Yet I settled in , choosing one large bedroom to the front of the house, overlooking the porch. I unpacked  my Philco  and my sketch pad and  stationary for letters to the friends I had left behind. I thought I might never come out. I thought I might  throw myself across the bed and sleep forever. I would  fall asleep with the soft  sounds of the late fifties.

 That first night I flipped the dial  to the sound of an unearthly howl that pierced the stillness of my room."AWOOOOOO!" 
I jerked down the volume for fear of waking my parents.  Then came a gravelly deep growl with a  New York accent. What kind of half human was this?

 This outlaw d.j. who called himself Wolfman Jack announced his new broadcast for XERF radio headquartered on Pecan Street,  not far from our house. Little did I know this was to be the beginning of the semi-legal "border blaster" 250,000 and eventually 500,000 kw. station whose transmitting tower was  on the Mexican side  near Villa Acuna. Mexico had no restrictions on broadcasting power, but the United States did. Wolfman spun the records into the late night.

"Tears on my pillow, pain in my heart " crooned Little Anthony.

The  hits were  interlaced with some of the strangest advertising known to man . I had it all there in my radio: rock and roll, rhythm and blues and some slightly disturbing "soul" I had never heard---and in between, Wolfman did commercials pitching cloths dipped in holy water from the River Jordan, life size statues of the Virgin Mary complete with blinking lights.. Then "Blade Man" took over and sold reconditioned razor blades. No doubt my father would have thought the Wolfman was inappropriate and a mental case to boot---had he known about him that is. I owned the radio, and it was my room, and I spent much  of my  time there that summer .I knew no one , and  school was two months away. Instead, I wrote letters ... lots of them, while listening to Wolfman Jack late at night.

 I was too young and full of life not to come outside eventually.
That summer I got to know some of the kids at church. We visited  Judge Roy Bean's old store and jailhouse in Langtry and got a sense of the Old West . Then there were  barbecues out at  Sam Mc Bee's ranch. His grandson  drove us around the ranch in an open jeep, bouncing over rocky and hilly terrain and splashing through low lying creeks. When I almost fell out, I informed Bart he was crazy and that I was ready to go back to the party.

"Awooooooooo!" came the boy's reply,  head back, howling in laughter.

 I half expected fangs to appear . This was my first indication that I was not the only kid listening to the border blaster record spinner. It was just  a matter of time before someone's parents found out about the Wolfman and his unsettling influence.The world had not yet caught on to that secret domain of teens.

Brother Joe visited us that summer, and he and I decided to cross the border into Villa Acuna . I was not prepared for the street children with their dirty faces and outstretched hands begging for money. On the side of the street was a tar paper shack where a woman slouched, hands on hips,  cigarette dangling from her mouth. She watched intently as the street urchins worked the touristas. I wondered if they were her children  and if they would someday escape the misery of that village, with or without her.

I couldn't change the childrens' world  nor mine. Yet somewhere in that Mexican village without hope, while cruising  in Joe's fifty-four Chevy, the powerful XERF transmitter blasted an American song by a new group called the Elegants .The sky filled with stars while the children begged for pennies, and  Wolfman howled happily.


"Twinkle. twinkle, little star. How I wonder where you are.
Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.
Wish I may, wish I might.
Please grant this wish I wish tonight.


 Something shifted in the galaxy on February 3, 1959.
The newsman on my radio said the Midwest was bracing for a blizzard.  The next announcement was that a plane carrying  rock and roll greats Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly had crashed in a snow covered cornfield in Clear Lake, Iowa  after performing  at  The Surf Club. No survivors. How many times had I listened to their latest hits. How many times had their music chased the blues as I adjusted to my new home.Yet I didn't cry. Someone did that for me: Wolfman's voice was heavy with unspilled tears as he broke the news to his listening audience. Then he cried quietly----for that  monumental loss to himself and to rock and roll. Was it possible that the irreverent,  devil-may-care  renegade had human feelings?

The songs of the stars played on , even as their bodies lay in a morgue thousands of miles from Del Rio:

 Chantilly Lace and a pretty face...I had a girl. Donna was her name...I love you Peggy Sue...on and on the records played.


Robert Smith, the mortal man, morphed back into the unflappable Wolfman Jack  and howled happily once again.  I guess he now knew what I knew: there were no more miracles---no matter how many samples of holy water were sold from the River Jordan.

In the meantime, Daddy saved some souls, a few  urchins were saved from the streets of Villa Acuna, Mother came to grips with her baking obsession, and the struggling peach tree out back actually bore fruit. And we left Val Verde County.

As for  me? I was much the same wherever we moved: always listening late at night, when across the crystal clear air wave  at ominous power, the would be miracle worker spun the gold.

The music could not die. Signing off for now.....