After Kennedy was shot, I fell into a sort of depressed state. It wasn’t that I loved the man and what he stood for enough to be horribly saddened by his passing, for at age eight I was not that clear on the implications of the occurrence, it’s just that my pain was not so specific. I knew it was bad and felt bad about it, but the issue for me was the feeling of loneliness, of being left alone without a leader, of wandering through a lonely country. LBJ seemed like some old bastard who would pick up a dog or a child by the ears and laugh to the press about it, just like every asshole who owned a business in my hometown might do. The lead colored November sky just pushed my fears deeper in.
My mood shifted a bit by Thanksgiving, and I had a great Christmas as my parents visited (and brought an incredible entertainment center: TV, radio, and stereo record player in one unit) and I got a load of new and interesting toys. After the holidays they went back to Norfolk and I went back to my usual activities. At that point I felt that the national crisis had ended.
I met the New Year as a fresh off my birthday nine year old. I greased my hair and tried to wear clothes that looked semi-thuggish. Whatever it was, I was against it. Where did that come from? I can’t write it off as easily as influence of the movies or television, though they played their roles, but something deeper that increasingly made me hate all forms of orthodoxy (I hate them yet). As far as getting along with the rest of the world, there is no getting along with the rest of the world with that sort of character. It put a big chip on my shoulder, but I couldn’t back down from any intellectual (or anti-intellectual) stance that offended my aesthetic sense. Right or wrong (often the latter), I couldn’t let anything go.
When it comes to TV viewing, I get bored quickly and always have. This doesn’t mean that I can’t sit through a show (though that was and is often true), but that I have followed very few shows from the beginnings to the ends of their runs. By the time I had turned 9, granny and I watched Bonanza more often than Ed Sullivan, which aired opposite each other. I loved the Cartwrights (and Hop-sing) and all their adventures. Bonanza had everything: gun fights, girls, drama, and plenty of comedy. How could Ed, with the spinning plate jugglers and Senor Wences, who had both appeared, seemingly, a thousand times, possibly compete? He couldn’t.
On one particular week in 1964, however, CBS had plugged Ed’s show more heavily than usual, touting an appearance of a new group from England called The Beatles. That alone meant very little to me except for the frequency of the promotion, which caught my attention. When Sunday rolled around I was divided, but my curiosity was aroused. I asked my grandmother if we might be able to catch The Beatles on the Sullivan show. She showed little outward interest, but said it would be all right, so I changed the channel and watched Ed long enough to find out that The Beatles would appear near the end of the show. I was totally taken aback by the screaming of the girls every time The Beatles were mentioned. “I can’t stand that racket!” my grandmother said. I switched back to Bonanza, with the idea that I would occasionally check up on Ed.
Rest assured that I checked in often enough to catch The Beatles, who I viewed rather analytically, almost more as an examination and curiosity than pure enjoyment. The measuring stick for the band’s performance was Elvis, who, for me as well as for The Beatles, was The King. From amid the screaming I listened as carefully as I could to the set. With the unusual mop-top haircuts mopping, Ringo’s nose nosing, Paul’s violin shaped bass, and the “Yeah, yeah, yeahs” yeahing, I thought The Beatles were pretty cool (ok, the longish hair appeared a little too girlish to my young eyes), but I was not really bowled over by those early anthems, at least not that night. No, The Beatles weren’t Elvis (weren’t they never), but I wasn’t ready to merely write them off. I kept an open mind.
The Beatles’ performance might not have blown me through the roof, but it shook the shit out of the elementary school the following day. Seems that everyone was singing those songs. I heard the “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” everywhere I went for the entire week. No one could avoid it. I didn’t know what to think.
About the same time as that famous Sullivan Show, a number of Elvis movies began to hit television. Those movies, some fairly recent, had apparently outlasted their drive-in usefulness and were leased to ABC for its various movie of the week slots. And even though I had to go outside and turn the antenna toward Chattanooga to pick up that network (the Knoxville ABC affiliate was a UHF station and we did not have a UHF capable TV), both my grandmother and I watched Elvis films that we would never have seen otherwise.
A week or so before Easter that year I contracted the mumps. Other than the pain from eating anything sour or tart, mumps didn’t seem that bad. I saw my doctor who suggested that I not jump around too much. Huh? He warned that the mumps might fall if I wasn’t careful. Huh? Let em fall, I thought, not realizing what that meant. The only thing about the visit that interested me was that I was not to return to school until the malady had passed. Thank you, doctor. Unfortunately, he also advised against any travel, and I was supposed to head for Norfolk for the holiday (which in those days meant Good Friday through Sunday). Heeding nothing, my grandmother and I rode with my aunt in her new car to see my parents and oldest aunt and her family in Virginia.
After a day or so in Norfolk I began to feel a lot better. I became acquainted with my middle aunt’s boyfriend (I’d met him the summer before), and enjoyed the stay. My parents took me to a little amusement park on the beach, in pretty cold weather, and a day or so later to the Oceanview Amusement Park where I rode the big rollercoaster for the first, and only, time (so much for not jumping around). Easter Sunday was a most beautiful day. My parents lived in a different house than the beach place of the previous summer, and the entire family gathered there for dinner, then went out to the backyard to talk while the kids played in the 75 degree air.
About bedtime a storm blew in from the north and totally changed everything, so that when I was awakened way too early the next morning to return to Tennessee with my oldest aunt, grandmother, and my four cousins in my aunt’s new Chevy station wagon, snow was falling through the freezing assed atmosphere. Along with the luggage, my four cousins and I rode in the flattened rear of the Chevy in the most horrible and uncomfortable trip I have ever made. My body ached nearly all the way since none of us could sit in an upright position in the flatted back area. There was also quite a bit of arguing, whining, and fighting among the kids, and a nearly constant series of angry admonitions from my aunt. The only thing that made any of it bearable was when my aunt would play the radio and allow us to sing along with The Beatles. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
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