Buck Owens turned 13. Having completed the eighth grade, he looked for work during his summer vacation and had no trouble finding it. So many men were in uniform during World War II that labor shortages plagued the nation; since Buck was six feet tall, he could do a man’s work for a man’s pay. He saved his money, but a couple of months after he began ninth grade that fall, his savings were gone. He decided to quit school, go back to work and earn some more money. Though he persuaded his mother to let him quit school by promising to return to school, he never went back. He was a Western Union messenger boy, washed and polished cars, and loaded and unloaded fruit.

Music became an even greater part of his life in Mesa. Alvis Owens played harmonica and two of Buck’s uncles played guitar. He heard bluegrass and string band music beamed into the U.S. on the megawatt radio “X” stations just across the Mexican Border, stations that boomed in on the family’s battery radio. Buck’s younger sister, Dorothy Owens, also recalls her brother listening to the music of Bob Wills, T. Texas Tyler, Moon Mullican, and Ted Daffan.
That Christmas, Buck received a mandolin as a present from his parents. His dad later gave him a Regal guitar.

According to Dorothy, Buck taught himself to play. “Music was always his interest,” she says. “Mother showed him a couple of chords on the guitar and he taught himself the rest. When he was 16 or 17 years old, he would have these musicians come to the house and play. He played with them, but he watched them. He was like a sponge. He absorbed from everybody, whether it was records, radio or whatever. “