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A mention of Stevie Nicks took me from an Oklahoma peanut field before sunrise to three Fleetwood Mac concerts with Steve. Funny what a song can bring back.

By Benjamin Groff II GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | ©2026

October 4, 2026

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Good morning, folks!

Recently, I read a piece on KikiFikar’s blog about family, texting, and Fleetwood Mac. One mention of Stevie Nicks sent me somewhere I hadn’t expected to go: back to an Oklahoma peanut field before sunrise.

Memory is a curious thing. Some days, a word I need won’t come when I call for it. Someone can ask me about an event I was part of, and I’ll have trouble finding it in my head. Then a song comes along, opens a door, and there I am, riding out to work with my brother-in-law and KOMA playing on the radio.

They played Fleetwood Mac and Elton John. I especially remember “Bennie and the Jets.” At that hour, I thought the music was moving a lot faster than I was. The sun wasn’t up yet. Some mornings, it seemed the moon had barely finished its own shift.

We were headed to the peanut fields to move irrigation pipe. I mean the kind you picked up and carried, section by section, across the length of a field. And yes, fields is plural. We didn’t have farmhands, unless you counted the ones at the ends of our arms. Those hands also hauled hay, fed cattle, trained horses, and built fence.

When the temperature climbed past 100, those same hands became very interested in holding a fishing pole. We called it bottom fishing. Whether we caught anything or not, sitting near the water sounded better than moving pipe.

Years later, Fleetwood Mac found its way back into my life through Steve.

When we moved to Phoenix in 2002, I made the mistake of telling him I’d heard Stevie Nicks had been spotted filling her car near one of my offices. From then on, my commute came with an assignment: report any Stevie sightings.

After enough days of having nothing to report, I told him she probably wore disguises. I may have added that I’d heard she dressed like a witch. Steve did not appreciate my investigative work.

To make up for it, I accompanied him to three Fleetwood Mac concerts. One gave me such a migraine that we stopped on the way home and bought what felt like the convenience store’s entire supply of pain relievers. At another, we took my cousin, who had enjoyed himself quite a bit before the show began and made sure everyone around us knew he was there. I think I enjoyed that concert most of all.

The surprising part is that, years before Steve met me, he would have been standing outside a Stevie Nicks concert. His grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, and Steve took what he’d been taught seriously. As a young man, he believed Stevie was a witch and Fleetwood Mac was evil. He once went to the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman with a Bible and a sign to protest one of her concerts.

I still find it remarkable that the young man outside the venue grew into the man beside me, hoping I might spot Stevie at a gas station. When he tells that story now, it reminds me how much a person can change. By the time we met, he had already begun finding his own way. We’ve both kept at it ever since.

So KikiFikar’s piece gave me more than a Fleetwood Mac memory. It brought back a dark drive to the peanut fields, my brother-in-law’s radio, a concert migraine, my cousin having the time of his life, and a younger Steve I never knew.

If a song takes you somewhere this morning, let it play. You might remember a person you miss, a day you can laugh about now, or just how far you’ve come since you first heard it. I’ll raise my coffee to that—and to whatever song KOMA was playing while we carried that last piece of pipe.

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