Beatlemania

Beatlemania
My best friend, Wane Dean, was the first kid I knew who had a copy of “Meet the Beatles.” He called me right away after his mother brought it home for him. I ran as fast as I could along the icy road to his house because that was a big deal. “I Want to Hold your Hand” hit the American airwaves two weeks before and was already #1, traveling across the ocean like a huge tsunami that that would engulf us all. It would wash away all the bullshit on the radio we were sick of like the “Da-doo-ron-ron” tunes and the absolutely wimpy stuff that dominated the charts. The Singing Nun’s “Dominique” had been #1. … Even I hated it, and I was Catholic! And there was Edie Gorme’s, “Blame it on the Bossanova,” … blame it on bad taste! But from then on it was only Beatles.

Wane was a very good friend because he waited for me before cutting the cellophane seal that surrounded the precious treasure. He had his own record player perched on a short dresser that looked like a small suitcase that snapped closed with a large brass latch in front. This was his first album; at that time, kids played only 45’s. As I held the vinyl record between my palms like a large black Eucharist, Wayne removed the little plastic 45 disc at the base of the tall silver center post and exposed it bare. He switched the knob to the “33” setting and I gently settled the record on the post and swung the catch arm over and locked it into place. He clicked on “play” and we watched as the album dropped and spun as the tone arm swung to the edge of the record and the tiny diamond stylus found the groove. The speaker openings were small and covered in a burlap kind of material. The sound was mono and tinny but we didn’t know better, it was the biggest sound we had ever heard.

Wow!

I believed in the Holy Trinity already but when we played that record we were baptized into the new religion that idolized “The Quadrinity.” We bounced at the end of the bed as the music played and stared reverently at the Fab Four on the front cover. It was a black and white photo with John, George, and Paul above, and Ringo, crammed in the lower corner. They were side-lit, wearing black turtlenecks … and that long hair. The Beatles hair hung in thick bangs to their eyebrows and God forbid, touched the top of their ears on the sides. In the land of the buzz-cut, that was radical. Boy’s hair across the nation, including mine, started growing that very second.

No sooner had we been introduced and seduced by this new phenomena, The Beatles were scheduled to make their national TV debut in America on The Ed Sullivan Show two weeks later. It was one of those milestone memories I recall as well as JFK’s assassination, the first moonwalk or being there for the births of my three sons, Jude, Ian and Nick.

The anticipation that February 9, 1964 was unbelievable. My sister Karen turned ten the day before and I would be nine in a week and a half. We were young but well aware that something special was happening and we would be a part of it that Sunday night. The Ed Sullivan show was about to begin. We huddled hungrily in front of the TV along with 73 million other viewers and watched as Ed appeared in his slick suit and Brylcreem hair in front of a fake curtain. I’d seen Ed’s show plenty of times and he was usually quite stiff and moved around like he had a board up his ass. Even his little buddy, Topo Gigio, was more animated than he was … and Topo was a puppet! But Mr. Sullivan was lively that night and wasted no time getting to: “Ladies and Gentleman, The Beatles!” He swung his arm in their direction, as the crowd, made up of mostly teenage girls, squealed with delight. “The youngsters from Liverpool” as he called them, were dressed in crisp dark suits and encircled appropriately by a prop of huge dimensional arrows that pointed to them as the center of attention. They performed three songs in a row, including my favorite, “She Loves You” …Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! The Beatles were well-rehearsed professionals as they performed, provoking the audience into an absolute frenzy with an “Oooooo!” or a shake of their hairy mops. The girls screamed with orgasmic delight as the camera cut to them squirming and hopping in their seats, flushed and ready to faint at any moment.

That reminds me of a fun Beatlemania movie I saw a while back, called, “I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND.” Some teenage kids from Jersey would stop at nothing to get into The Ed Sullivan Show to see the Beatles that night. In one scene a crush of fans are packed tight along a partitioned sidewalk in front of a hotel where the Beatles were whispered to be staying. A maid, ten floors up was cleaning a room and pulled open a window and shook her black dust mop out the window. A teenage girl in the crowd below screamed and pointed up at the glorious sight. It set off the whole mob into pandemonium. … Brilliant!

That’s how it was.

We sat mesmerized in front of the TV and were left hyperventilating when the third song ended. It was a variety show after all, so we were forced to endure a magician, two scenes from the Broadway show “Oliver!” with non-other than Davy Jones, (before his Monkees days), the Impressionist, Frank Gorsham, whom I recall more vividly as Batman’s nemesis, The Riddler. Although he did a wicked angst-ridden Burt Lancaster that always cracked me up … Some hyped-up fat British broad sang, danced and jiggled her way through show tune songs, the finale with a ukulele. After her there was a series of lame office comedy skits. (Jesus … that show must have been eight hours long!) Finally … The Beatles returned and sang two more songs. It was great!

We were like innocents on a far away beach watching as a harmless looking swell in the distance rolled toward the shore. It was too late to get out of the way as it grew into an immense wall and swallowed us up in its powerful surge. We came up gasping, glad to be alive. The Beatles changed the landscape around us; the way we dressed, even the way we thought and instilled a youthful rebellion that would soon find its voice.

The Woods

The Woods

No matter how many times you walk in the woods, it’s a new experience every time. My woodland companions and I were explorers in the truest sense of the word. We were out to discover new treasures and be the first to stand on earth where no man had been before, even the Susquehannock. I have Indian blood; my father’s grandfather was Lenape, of the Turtle Clan. I guess that makes me, what … one-sixteenth Indian? Whatever, but I’m proud of it. I have always felt a kinship to the Indian ways and to the spirits of the forest.

I still revel in the many wonderful things I encounter there. I’ve sat beside a baby fawn curled up in a bed of grass, looked into a bird nests filled with hungry gaping mouths, held a shut-tight box turtle until it opened and been awestruck by the beauty of a scarlet tanager lighting onto a branch just above my head and listened to its song. Nature has always been a precious abode. The trees frame my walls, the sky my windows, the moss covered stones my furniture and autumn leaves my carpet. Home sweet home.

When I’m in the forest or sitting laying on rock by the side of a lake or swimming with my eyes open in a clear creek I give thanks to God for his wonderful gift.

I could wax poetically about nature forever, but I want to get back on the trail I started on earlier. However deep into the forest we went, I seemed to have an innate ability, a built in compass, I guess, so I could find my way back from wherever I roamed. We went as far as the main trails took us and followed our whims from there. We searched every rock face for a secret cave, climbed every hill to see what was on the other side and up-turned rock piles in search of buried civil war soldiers and rusting musket balls. We followed the creek and caught a hundred bullfrogs and ran from just as many snakes. It was paradise.

Crabs

On one of our long treks deep into the forest, beyond the main path, we picked up a deer trail and followed it to the edge of the woods on the south side where it came out behind a restaurant along Pulaski Highway. It was a seafood joint, don’t recall the name, but I sure remember the smell. A hundred yards behind the building, well into the woods, we discovered a monstrous heap of shelled blue crabs. The pile was well over our heads. The newer freshly cooked shells were carrot red toward the top and gradated to bleach-white midway down. We approached it from up wind and couldn’t appreciate its full-bodied aroma till we were within a few steps. I knew it must have stunk because Blackie was already rolling in some of it. It was worse than any foul perfume that Blackie ever carried home. Like pungent ammonia, it burned our sinuses and made us tear up. It was a thick physical presence that enveloped you. You could taste it just breathing. Overcome, we retreated immediately and kept a safe distance while we decided what we’d do with this unusual challenge. There was only one thing to do … we would have to smash it to bits.

We threw everything we could find at it— rocks, sticks, boulders and logs. We even toppled over a dead tree right through the middle of it. When the tree crashed through it, the pile exploded like a grenade. Crap from inside the fresh shells splattered everywhere. Suddenly the wind changed or something because the stench was so bad I started to gag. I was going to be sick and had to get out of there. I ran fast as hell but I couldn’t outrun the stink. Still in a run, I gagged then heaved my breakfast. I stopped and bent over to puke again as Blackie moved in … and ate it. “Uuuhh!” That made me even sicker so I ran again. But I could not get away from the putrid reek. I stopped this time to catch my breath and retched as my friends caught up with me. They were laughing so hard they couldn’t speak. Wayne kept pointing to his nose then at me.

Stuck to the side of my nose was a rotting gob of crab guts.

The Plane Crash

On the evening of December 8, an airliner, Pan AM Flight 214 from Puerto Rico was in a holding pattern on its approach to Philadelphia when it was struck by lightening. The myth that a plane could not be brought drown by lightening was dispelled that windy night. The strike ignited fuel vapors in a wing reserve tank and the plane exploded. The crew somehow managed to send a final message – “Clipper Out Of Control!” – before it crashed just outside of Elkton. You can look it up in the Guinness Book of World Records as the worst death toll in history from a lightning strike. Eighty-one people died.

I didn’t hear about it until the next day, my dad told me. Hundreds of Navy recruits attending training at Bainbridge, where he worked, were hustled to the crash site and helped to search for, mark or bag any remains they could find. It was so traumatic that the Navy began a ten-year study of the sailors who participated in that search.

The crash wasn’t that far from where we lived. I couldn’t get it out of my head after hearing about the body parts and luggage and people still strapped in their seats out there in the woods. They couldn’t have found everything that fell from the sky. I looked, hoping I would find a wallet stuffed with a thousand bucks or maybe a purse with smuggled diamonds sewn in the lining. What I really wanted to see was a dead body. I’d never seen one and was wondered what that would be like. Or if I was lucky, I’d find the only survivor, someone they missed on the passenger list and everyone could read about it in the paper the next day: “Boy Finds Sole Survivor of Deadly Crash -Gets Major Award!”

But that didn’t happen and I never found a thing. That was probably for the best.