His ballad actually hymns a hypocritical organic maven: Well, the protagonist intones, at lunch time you can always find me at the Whole Earth vitamin bar/ Just suckin' on my plain white yogurt from a hand-thrown pottery jar.... But when that clock strikes midnight and I'm all by myself/ I work that combination on my secret hideaway shelf/ And I pull out some Fritos corn chips, Dr. Pepper and an old Moon Pie / And I sit back in glorious expectation of a genuine junk food high.*
That droll ditty has also provided Groce a career high. Heretofore, he taught music appreciation in arts-endowment programs to Appalachian children and performed at low-scale clubs and on campuses. Next April, his form 1040A days will be over (for the year anyway). Junk Food Junkie propelled Larry into network guest shots with Dick Clark and Rich Little, and from $10,000 a year toward six-figure country. Which should keep him in his own favorite snack—Dr. Pepper ("the strongest thing I drink"), Twinkies and Chee-tos (fried, not baked).
Groce, 27, was raised on Texas cuisine in "Big D" but since 1972 has lived in a nine-fireplace "American Gothic" farmhouse he and his wife, Devon McNamara, are restoring outside Philippi, W.Va. They met at Principia College in Illinois, where Devon, seven years older, was Larry's English Lit instructor. Their romance started discreetly, says Groce, "because universities can get very uptight about anything like that." Adds Devon, "We spent a lot of time on the telephone." They wed two days after his graduation, with Groce rankling over his B+ English grade. "We've been arguing about it ever since," he says. "I really deserved an A."
Both are Christian Scientists, and Devon is a vegetarian (the only indulgent goody that ever touches her lips is Groce's beloved Dr. Pepper). At home he follows her menu to get his stocky 5'9" build back down to his playing weight of 160, for he can balloon to 170 from trash-gorging while on tour. Since moving to West Virginia, she has become a poet-in-residence of the state under a grant similar to his, and travels around bringing verse to schoolchildren. But Devon, who holds a Ph.D. and never herself rose above the $10,000 bracket, thinks Larry's showbiz windfall is, well, like how he pronounces his name—gross. "It's really absurd when you consider what a professor's yearly salary is."
But Devon doesn't begrudge all of Groce's benefits from his hit, including a pair of two-tone $45 cowboy boots that he's wanted since 1966 and "the first new set of clothes I've bought in years." His celebrity also promises new attention to some of his previously ignored social commentaries like We've Been Mailed, a tune about suburban shopping, and his musical lampoon of a tabloid weekly The National Enquisator, in which Jeane Dixon predicts that a UFO will find the cancer cure for Jackie Kennedy.
Groce has, in the process, become something of a cult hero among both Big Macaholics and the Anti-Junk Food Council. "The council thought it was great," says Groce, "because it pointed up the dangers of junk food. I know a lot of people think it's not nutritious," he notes, "but I don't know of anyone who doesn't agree that it tastes good."
*©1974, 1976 PEACEABLE KINGDOM
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
