When I began my schooling, in 1961, my youngest aunt began her senior year in high school. Like my other aunt, she was pretty cool, and I was always fascinated with her friends and the things they listened to. As a member of the high school marching band, she played clarinet and wore a soldierish black and gold uniform. She’d been a big Elvis fan as a younger teen, and went through The Twist phase with everyone else in American. Her boyfriend (later husband) liked the usual pop hits and all, but he also had a real taste for R&B, especially The Platters. As usual, I dug it all.
Record listening became secondary, mostly because no new material was introduced into the house collection. For satirical purposes, product commercials became an influence. Beer commercial jingles lent themselves to clever word substitutions. My best buddy from across the street was a witty wordster, and between us many a tune was subjected to our often scatologically juvenile alterations. The same treatment was afforded the ever changing flood of television themes.
Near the end of second grade, in 1963, mom and dad moved to Norfolk, VA to temporarily stay with my oldest aunt and her husband in their military housing apartment while saving a stake to get their own place. They left me with my grandmother to finish out the year (just a few months), then mom took me on a bus to the great home of the nation’s largest military base. I was quite excited about a long bus ride and the chance to live in a city full of military personnel, ships, planes, and more.
Living, at first, with my aunt and uncle was ok, but with their four kids (later five), me, mom and dad, and my middle aunt, the restrictive nature of the crowd made me feel like a sardine. We finally got a place, to my delight, right on the beach. I could walk 50 yards from my back door and look out on the Atlantic. About a mile north of our stretch of beach The Oceanview Amusement Park (home, at one time, of the world’s largest rollercoaster ride, and old wooden thing that scared the crap outta me the only time I rode it) colored the night with reflective, carnivalesque light.
During that summer I mostly listened to Top 40 radio, but another source of music was the jukebox system at the restaurant where my mom, dad, aunt, uncle (who was also in the Navy), and my future uncle (whose hitch was nearly over) all worked during the night shift. While the radio played youth oriented songs (this was just before The Beatles), the jukebox was a different animal. If any youth songs made it to the playlist, they tended to be the softer in tone than some. Rather than combos thrashing earnestly away, orchestral arrangements with lush strings and full vocals prevailed. I regret that I have little knowledge of many of the titles on that system (or the radio, for that matter), though I do remember the Nat King Cole song, Those Lazy, Crazy, Hazy Days of Summer.
As the summer drew to a close, I became worried. My parents’ plan had been to bring me to Norfolk, show me a great time, spoil me a little, then put me into the school system in the fall. The flaw in their plan was that they had promised me the final decision on whether to attend school in Norfolk or return to my grandmother’s to attend school in Madisonville, TN. It really wasn’t a difficult decision. Although there were many enticing things the city offered, I just neither dug the people, nor the idea of being the other in a foreign land. It was bad enough in Madisonville, for if I am anything, I am other, even in my own land. But at least in my hometown I knew where everything happened, and unlike in any city, was free to roam all over the place. Regardless of my parents’ feelings (and I won’t ever try to BS and allow that I was immune from the emotional aspect of such a decision), it was the best move for me.
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