Nashville, Tennessee, 2024

In November of 1972, I was eight years old, and my grandparents lived about a mile away from our house in Valdosta, Georgia. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City was coming on television, and between our licking beaters of cake or pudding being prepared, I remember my grandmother’s alto voice yell, “Y’all get in here. Donna Fargo’s gonna sing ‘The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.’ from one of the parade floats”.
It was certainly a song we all knew because our mom had bought the 33 1/3 speed album and played it over and over on our record player.  We knew all the words. We also knew all the words to ‘Funny Face’, and through the years, I think we memorized the words to all the songs on that album. I imagined the record player’s needle wore grooves in the vinyl disc. Today, I still have that Donna Fargo album I play on my record player, and I listen to her CDs on my office computer.
I wondered what had become of Donna Fargo since those early days. I recalled hearing she’d contracted multiple sclerosis. After learning she’d beat that disease, Donna had gone on to continue to write songs, record, and launched a greeting card collection with Blue Mountain cards. Since it had been fifty years since ‘The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.’ had been released, I wrote to her and pitched the idea of an article for publication in a magazine. I found an address through her company’s website and wrote and in a couple of days, I got a reply from Donna’s assistant that she had agreed to an email interview.
I sent Donna a list of questions, and she responded to each one. I wrote and rewrote the article until it was ready and sent it with a variety of photos to several magazines. It ended up in three different magazines and shared with thousands across social media platforms.
We continued to correspond, I read her new novel and offered a blurb for the cover, and she offered a blurb for one of my new novellas as well. When I was invited to speak at a charity luncheon fundraiser at an exclusive venue in Nashville to support students in need, I invited Donna and her assistant to join me, my wife, and good friends Bobby and Sheila (who served on the fundraising board and invited me to speak). I still hadn’t met Donna and was both surprised and thrilled when she agreed to join.
I met them at the front door and escorted them to the dining room, and as folks found out Donna Fargo was there, several of the guests came up to meet her, and Donna also met the band who were set to perform. I also introduced them to the crowd before my talk about my writing. Afterward, I was surprised to meet Becky Brown in the crowd who knew Donna. She was married to the late singer Jim Ed Bown.
My childhood dream of meeting ‘The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.’ and discovering she was still happy had been fulfilled. I only wish my late grandmother, my senior mother, or my siblings could’ve made the trip, but I was able to send them signed CDs and books, including her newest hit single ‘Small Town Hillbilly Good-Time Saturday Night’ and her new novel Heartaches and Mindstorms. Next time I’m in the Nashville area, we plan to have lunch.
Donna Fargo: Still The Happiest Girl In The Whole U.S.A. – Yall.com
Stereo Story 902

Board members Barry and Sheila,  Michelle Reddick, Donna Fargo and the author.

Niles Reddick writes from his home at Cherokee Lake in the Appalachian Mountains and is author of a novel, four short fiction collections, and two novellas. His work has appeared in over forty anthologies and in more than five hundred pubs including The Los Angeles Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Hobart, Boudin, Bending Genres, Citron Review, Midway Journal, and Vestal Review.