Because it had to happen, an influential friend I made was a guy I met at little league tryouts. His name here is CEP, and he was a very smart and interesting person. We shared two obsessions in girls and comics. There was a lot to talk about while standing around at first base (at the old railroad stadium) while kid after kid hacked at pitch after pitch. I got a pretty severe sunburn that day, but I made another good and influential friend. About two weeks after that first meeting, CEP and his folks moved next door.
Throughout the summer we played baseball (or, at least he did, on a different team than me, while, as usual when I have to play nice with others, I was ostracized by my teammates and retired), listened to music (Hanky Panky, We Ain’t Got Nothing Yet, Summer In the City, and Along Comes Mary played loudly wherever we were), read comics, talked about girls, and played hard while my new friend taught me how to be a football receiver. I liked sports, what little I knew about them, and CEP said that football was the gateway to the girls of our dreams. I was sold. I worked my butt off learning the necessary routes I had to perfect. Other than a bad throat infection I acquired about midsummer, it was a great time.
School began by separating us. CCP was in Junior High while I was in 6th grade, and still attached to the primary school. God, what a horrible year! My teacher, may she burn forevermore in Hell, hated me (and several others) while seemingly bowing and stooping to those students whose parents were well to do. The teacher was so concerned with the possibility of the pollution of these better dressed students by the ragtag bunch of the rest of us that she segregated them, with a few exceptions, to one side of the room. It was like she was trying to protect them, but I was never sure from what. It wasn’t from me because I liked most of them. Maybe they hated me, but I didn’t detect that. Perhaps she worried about the two black students in the class. They both seemed ok to me, though, so I really don’t know.
Before going on, let me explain how my particular teacher was not so unusual for that period. In fact, when I had begun to notice the inequity of her attitude, I could see it all around. The principal of the school certainly was on board with the idea that some students were supposed to be treated differently. It was the same thing with coaches and adults who sucked up to those children to score brownie points with the parents. Teachers’ pets tended to be from richer families. My guess is the practice continues to this day.
If that weren’t not bad enough (and it was), 6th graders were allowed to join the junior high football team. Yes, that is what I wanted, but the broken leg I received as result of a clip administered to the backs of my legs by the brother of one of my friends put a damper on everything. So for the next eight weeks I hobbled around on crutches, my poor leg in a cast, the hopes and wishes of having the girls of my dreams dashed by some miserable jerk-off.
Still, not all was lost. CEP turned me on to The Monkees, which in and of itself was no big deal, except that it started wheels turning in CEP’s head. Watching those cool looking guys and their antics was like a powerful medicine. It all seemed like such a fun way to live and be that one day CEP sprung upon me that we, he and I, should start a band and live like The Monkees, or The Beatles, or anybody else in that line. It was like a blow to the head via a 16 lbs hammer. Sure, I thought, why not? They played music (which I loved), they made shitloads of money (which was not entirely true, but I still liked it), and the girls seemed to love em (I’m in). We started working and plotting then and there. Of course CEP was the thinker between us. Then as now I was more of a manifestation of the Id than of deliberate contemplation, so whatever CEP came up with was more than ok with me.
“We’ve got to learn to play instruments,” he said.
That made sense. To be a band we had to play something, but what? Neither of us had musical parents nor owned instruments. He wondered what I wanted to play. Hell, I had no idea. What about him, I wondered?
“I wanna be a guitar player or singer,” he said. I thought it was a good idea. “I think you ought to play keyboards.” Keyboards. Wow. I had never really thought about that, even though I owned a two octave Magnus chord organ that my folks gave me for Christmas in 5th grade. CEP urged me to learn on that and then worry with getting other equipment later. Seemed like a good plan. We started hammering on our parents for equipment right away. CEP scored first when his parents bought him an off brand guitar, an Estey Magnatone amp, a Shure microphone, and a tambourine for Christmas of ’66. It took me another year.
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