This weeks Vinyl of the Week is an album I picked up in a store I don’t remember in San Antonio. AC/DC’s Powerage started my lifelong affection for AC/DC and also my small claim to fame in that I could sing like Bon Scott. So my post high school band did a lot of AC/DC songs. AC/DC released Powerage in May 1978. It was their 5th studio album and my first from AC/DC.

In the summer of 1978 I was working at a place called Mo-Ranch in the Texas Hill country near Hunt Texas. Hunt Texas is about an hour to hour and half west of San Antonio. Mo-Ranch was/is a church retreat for the Presbyterian Church and my best friend and I got jobs through his church in Killeen. We worked there two summers in a row, 1978 and 1979.

To us the first summer was a summer where we became self sufficient, and for me it was a great preparation for going off to college on my own. We were part of the staff and were required to work our jobs Monday-Friday. I was a housekeeper so I was cleaning toilets and making beds and occasionally doing laundry.

We were a group of 6 guys and 6 girls age 16-18 with minimum supervision. We lived (separately of course) in a screened in structure called a Yurt. I don’t believe they have them there anymore. Many an illegal party was held in the Yurts. We were not allowed to drink alcohol (being underage and a church ranch) and I almost got sent home for showing up to breakfast one morning with a debilitating hangover. We tried to say I was sick but the adults who ran the ranch knew. I was given a second chance. I learned my lesson then and drank in moderation the rest of the summer. They allowed me to return the following summer so I guess I hid my partying pretty well after that.

So anyways, back to the album. I bought the album on a trip into San Antonio on my day off. I borrowed another staff members Suburu Brat and me and another staffer drove into San Antonio for the day. One thing to note, the Brat was a stick shift and I had never driven a stick shift with a clutch. I lied to the guy. So it was a quick learning experience just so I could get off the ranch and into civilization. I don’t think I stripped his gears too bad and only stalled a couple of times. After stopping at a record store and picking up Powerage, cause the cover looked cool, we proceeded to fill the back of the Brat (it was a mini-truck) with cases of beer. We covered the beer with a tarp and snuck it all back onto the ranch and unloaded into our Yurt.

I listened to this album a lot that summer. We had a staff break room where we could take our lunch breaks and hang out or gather after work and listen to music on the stereo or read books. I read the whole Conan the Barbarian book series that summer.

So for being one of many albums that became a soundtrack for the summer of 1978, Powerage by AC/DC is PawPaw’s Vinyl of the Week.