Buck Owens died yesterday at the age of 76. If you are 50 or so, you will at least remember him as the co-star, with Roy Clark, of Hee Haw, the television show devoted to country and corny.

Owens really sang Hillbilly music more than country music. It had the twang and whine that onnly Hillbilly has. I know this from experience.

My father really liked Hillbilly music. When I was very young, we always traveled at night so the car would not overheat and neither would the passengers. My mother would often go to sleep and my father would change the radio station, if he could find it, over to some Hillbilly station. I would ride along in the back, staring at the West Texas flatlands, listening to the Chuck Wagon Gang, the Carter sisters, Flat and Scruggs and others.

The music was appropriate to the travel. You drove over miles and miles, in the dark, staring at flat land and listening to someone sing through their nose about their troubles.