As a Realtor in Topeka, Kansas for over 30 years, I have enjoyed many a funny and strange incident in the course of this business. The following story, linked to my childhood, is one of these.
I grew up in Hollis Oklahoma in the 1940s. Hollis was a small cotton town tucked away in the far southwest corner of Oklahoma. The Great Depression still lingered there--until about 1984--just nobody knew it.
My bud, Glen D. Hardin looked just like any other American kid except for the shock of blonde hair that stuck straight out from his forehead. My dad said it looked like the front porch of a house. So, Dad always called him �Porch.� In Hollis Oklahoma everybody had a nick name.
Glen D. and his family lived in a rent house down south of the railroad tracks near the Farmers� cotton gin. His father worked for the gin during cotton harvest and did whatever he could to make ends meet the rest of the year. This sounds like the start of a rags-to-riches struggle. It is a rags-to-riches story, but no struggle, for Glen D. had this remarkable God-given talent. By grade school, if he heard a song, he could play it on the piano and he could play a piano like the Lord intended it. Wherever Glen D. found a piano, a crowd gathered. Every day or two dad would ask me to invite ol� Porch over for supper.
My mother had purchased a blonde spinet piano several years before in hopes that one of her two sons would learn to play, but no luck there. Glen D., on the other hand, could make that piano dance. Needless to say my parents loved having my bud come to supper, which he did two or three times a week. Glen D. would have probably moved in with us had his parents let him. What more could you ask for, all you could eat, a grateful audience, plus a piano to play? I harbored a faint nagging concern that my folks would have traded both my brother and me for him. My Mama dearly loved her piano player.
It never bothered me that Glen D. lived below the tracks. We were buddies, and on Saturday nights we sold bulldogs, Sunday�s Daily Oklahoman newspaper, on Main street to the farmers that had come into town for supplies. At a nickel a piece, a buck and a half was considered a big night.
One Christmas morning, (I must of have been in the fifth or sixth grade at the time), I was out by the driveway trying out my brand new Red Ryder, 1000- shot BB gun with lever action, wooden stock and forearm and a leather thong half-hitched through a metal ring on the right side of the breech, when Glen D. came walking up the driveway wearing a brand new black leather motorcycle jacket with lots of silver metal studs. Boy, was he proud of that jacket! He took it off to let me try it on and I handed him the BB gun.
After a while we traded back, and Glen D. said �This jacket is really tough, because motorcycle guys wear these, and they fight a lot. That�s why they don�t get hurt. In fact, I�ll bet I couldn�t even feel the BB if you shot me with that gun�, �I don�t know Glen D.,� I said �This rifle can kill a bird at a long distance. It shoots really hard.� He kept trying to get me to shoot him somewhere in the jacket. So finally I said, �Get down to the end of the drive way, turn your back to me and pull the jacket up above your head.... Tell me when you are ready.� �One, two, three, ready shoot .� He said. � Pow!� went the air rifle. The BB hit Glen D. squarely in the middle of his back. Glen D. dropped on to his back and, legs kicking, commenced turning in a circle and screaming at the top of his lungs. The closest thing I had ever seen to this was a dying moth fluttering after flying through a flame. When Mama heard the commotion, she came flying out the back door, and of course the first thing she saw was me standing over Glen D. with the smoking gun in my hand. �What have you done to Glen D?� she cried. �Mama we were just conducting an experiment� She bent over the Christmas casualty. �When I take care of Glen D., I�m going to conduct my own experiment-- on your little buttocks.� �But Mama Glen D. asked me to shoot him� �Well sure he did. I bet people come up to you all the time and ask you to shoot them.� The more I said the deeper I dug the hole. I had done the unthinkable, I had maimed her piano player.
When Glen D. finally caught his breath and composure, he got me off the hook by telling Mama that it really was his idea for me to shoot him to see if his new jacket could take the BB. Mama said, �I think you boys learned a valuable lesson today. The jacket had no problem taking the BB.�
Soon after that incident, Glen D.�s dad got a better job in Lubbock, Texas, and they moved away. We were all sad to have him leave.
Over the next two or three years, he came back a couple of times to visit. I remember once that he had gotten a new pair of cowboy boots. He said he had bought them with his piano money. It seems he was playing the piano for a local radio station in Lubbock. I was really glad to see him doing well. I think that was the last time I saw Glen D. in person.
Over the course of the next ten to fifteen years, I would hear that Glen D. was becoming quite a name in the music business playing for various big name musicians. It must have been sometime in the late 1970�s, that I was watching Elvis Presley�s special called �Blue Hawaii.� During the show, Elvis introduced the members of his band. He identified his piano player as Glen D. Hardin. My wife and I were at my parent�s house at the time and when my mother saw Glen D., she commented that she had partially raised that boy.
Around 1983, when they found out I was making a trip to California someone gave me Glen D.�s phone number. When I got to L.A., I called him and asked him if this was the Glen D.Hardin I knew from Hollis, Oklahoma?� Who is this� he asked. �Ron Richardson,� I replied. �Ronnie Harold Richardson,� he said. �Do you remember when you shot me in the back with your BB gun�? I laughed. �Probably not as well as you remember it.� We had a great visit and he planned to pick me up at my hotel the next day. Unfortunately for me, he called back to say he had to go to Lake Tahoe to play with John Denver. I told him to tell John I would be glad to do lunch the next time I was there. I can�t believe I never got that call.
Now, to modern times: I recently got a call from a lady who asked me to look at her lake house, as they were thinking of putting it on the market. I love these kinds of calls. After I got to the house, the lady and I started visiting, trying to establish some common ground. And, the conversation got around to her having worked in Las Vegas for many years as Liberace�s general manager. She told me how interesting the work was and all the famous people she had met over the years. She told me that she knew Elvis Presley and all his band members. I asked her if she knew Elvis�s piano player, Glen D. Hardin. She squealed, �You know Glen D?.� �Do I know Glen D.?� I said �Heck, I shot him in the back.� I then had to explain myself.
Then she told me one of her Glen D. stories. One time when Elvis was playing in Las Vegas, she said, Elvis wanted to take his plane, the� Lisa Marie,� and fly everybody to Denver to get some special brownies that he liked. Glen D. didn�t want to go, so he hid out in the hotel. Elvis had his whole crew looking for him before they gave up and took off for Denver. She later asked Glen D., �Aren�t you afraid Elvis may get angry with you�? Glen D. replied, �He might, but when he needs a piano player, he�ll call me.�
Half the known world would have given a body part to have been asked to accompany Elvis Presley anywhere, and my old buddy Glen D. could have cared less! I wish you well, where ever you are �Porch.�
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Since writing this story, I have recently reconnected with Glen D. by phone, and have enjoyed reminiscing with him. We talked about things that happened over fifty five years ago like it was yesterday. It was great visit.
I have since learned through a search on Google, that Glen D. Hardin appeared with Elvis Presley eight hundred eighty nine times over a period of seven years and has played on recordings for numerous singers in a variety of music genres including: Emmylou Harris, Dean Martin, Rickey Nelson, Buck Owens, Linda Ronstadt, Kenny Rogers, Johnny Rivers, Merle Haggard, Michael Nesmith, Waylon Jennings and Dwight Yoakam. He also played piano on the Roy Orbison television special, A Black and White Night.
