Hoyt Axton Triggers My Repressed Childhood Memories

Sorry I haven't blogged in so long. Times have been difficult for me.

See, back in the 90's, there was this thing called "Repressed Childhood Memory Syndrome." It was all the rage back then. Basically, the idea is that you have this normal adult, and then all of the sudden he remembers something from his childhood that he never remembered before for years. If all goes well, the adult can then sue his parents for whatever it was he just remembered.

What I remembered was this song called "Della and the Dealer," by Hoyt Axton. It was a jaunty little tune about Della and a dealer and a dog named Jake and a cat named Kalamazoo. I haven't heard or thought about this song for literally decades, but when I was but a wee lad, my parents would play this song for me all the time.

Now, since I was just a little guy at the time, and because my second favorite song during that period was Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler," I believed (up to this day) that the "dealer" in my very favorite song, "Della and the Dealer," was a card dealer.

But recently, I'd been getting snatches and phrases of the song running though my head. I couldn't shake it, so finally I did some Google searches for "if+that+cat+could+talk+what+tales+he'd+tell+but+the+cat+was+cool+and+he+never+said+a+mumbling+word."

I finally found the song. YouTube has disabled the "embedding" option for this video, but you can hear the song HERE.

It's unbelievable.

The "dealer" isn't a card dealer at all. He's a cocaine dealer. There's even a line in the song about the dealer snorting "coke though a century note."

The coke dealer is killed by (SPOILER!) Della's new lover, Randy Boone, and she runs off with him in the pickup truck with the dog and the cat named Kalamazoo. who happens to have a predeliction for shooting rye whiskey.

Drug use, unfaithfulness, murder, alchoholism... These are the themes of my very favorite childhood song.

And I didn't even know it until about twenty minutes ago when I Googled the lyrics and found out what I'd been listening to all those years ago.

What kind of parents would play such a song for a little kid?

Hopefully they're loaded parents who have been holding out on me.

Maybe I can sue them for tons of cash. I dunno. Until I find out, do me a favor and don't tell any of my siblings what the real lyrics of "Della and the Dealer" are. They might have heard the song too.

But I heard it first, so I should get first dibs.

(P.S. If you think you recognize Hoyt Axton in the video, but can't place him, he was the guy who played the dad in "Gremlins" and also in "The Black Stallion.")