They were spotted again three days later at a farmer’s market in Arkansas. However, not privy to the circumstances of the missing report (and somehow not suspicious that Lela couldn’t tell the officer where they lived), he only gave the couple a warning and moved on. The first time, they were pulled over by a police officer 500 miles away for driving at night with their headlights off. The couple had been spotted a few times in the days after the festival. They were immediately reported missing by their children – one of whom had already previously shown signs of concern and had offered to drive the two to the festival.
However, following their day at the festival, the couple never returned home. But neither of those circumstances would stop the couple from breaking their annual tradition of attending a fiddling festival about 15 miles from their home. Her 88-year-old husband, Raymond, was recovering from both a stroke and a head injury. At age 83, Lela was beginning to show signs of Alzheimer’s. In “The Way”, Fastball’s Tony Scalzo sings about the unsolved mystery surrounding the deaths of elderly Texas couple, Lela and Raymond Howard. But what I didn’t know about was the crazy and somewhat disturbingly sad true story behind the song until very recently (I know, I’m probably late to the party, but my mind is blown and I haven’t been able to stop listening to the song since). Heard it? Recognize it? I bet you do! I did almost immediately after hitting play.
The way fastball lyrics free#
You might not know it until you actually hear it, so feel free to give it a quick listen via the video at the top of this post before reading the rest of this blog. The song I’m referring to is called “The Way” by the band Fastball. That just happened to me with one of the biggest radio earworms of the ’90s (about 23 years after first hearing it). The one day you DO decide to read up on it, you hear the song through a completely different set of ears. Lela and Raymond Howard's bodies were discovered in that Oldsmobile, at the bottom of a canyon, hundreds of miles away from where they meant to go.Īnd the next year, 1998, when their children and their grandchildren got in the car, flicked on the radio, you can only imagine how they felt to hear their family story immortalized, romanticized in this song by Fastball: "The Way".One of my favourite things about music is that you can go nearly your entire life having heard a song multiple times and not really know much about it. And it isn't until after Tony plays that song for his band Fastball and they decide to record it, that he reads the final newspaper headline: "Elderly couple found dead in car two weeks after trip to festival." Tony writes a song about Lela and Raymond. Who were these people? And where were they going without ever knowing the way? The search parties are out.Ī few days later, Tony reads another headline: "Family still mystified by disappearance." Tony becomes obsessed with the story. Even though Raymond was 88 and recently had a stroke, and Lela is 83 and starting to show signs of dementia, that day they hit the road to the festival like a couple of crazy teenage lovebirds.ĭays later, in another part of Texas, Tony Scalzo - the bass player for the band Fastball - sits down at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee and a newspaper and reads the headline: "Elderly Salado couple missing on a trip to nowhere." Lela and Raymond Howard set out for a fiddling festival, and didn't come back. Their last name, their families, their love of music.Įvery summer, Lela and Raymond pack up the Oldsmobile and drive 15 miles from Salado to Temple, Texas, for their favourite fiddling festival.Īnd in June of 1997, that's exactly what they set out to do. Lela and Raymond fall madly in love and get married.
And they each resign to spending their golden years alone. They're both grandparents, both in their 70s. In 1998, when Fastball released their smash hit song "The Way", most people heard the romantic tale of eternal youth and an endless road trip, b ut listen to the story behind the song… and I promise, you'll never hear it the same way again. Today, Talia Schlanger steps in for a story behind "The Way" by Fastball. Each week on Rear View Mirror, Rich Terfry and the Radio 2 team look back at a great song from the good ol' days.
0 kommentar(er)
