Yes, We Have One Happy Banana

Today is a perfect day for reading.

            The town of Madisonville itself seemed pretty old. It was a straight shot from Greenwood Circle down Warren Street (which ran east and west through it) into town proper. The landmarks along the way were nearly as interesting as town. The first was a house (largely abandoned but still standing, and for sale) across from the primary (or grammar) school. It wasn’t the house that was so interesting (though at times no one lived there for years at a stretch), but an underground garage right on the edge of Old Athens Road was the fascination. The doors were always locked and that just made it more mysterious and allowed for all manner of speculation.

            Just feet away, right beside the railroad tracks, was a wood treating operation. The fellow who worked there looked like a clean shaven, shorter version of Abe Lincoln. He controlled a boiler that occasionally let off enough steam to fog the control room and even an area outside near a water spigot from which I had taken many a drink on my way home after the movies. Though the building is gone, the site is now the location of the Habitat for Humanity store.

            I always considered the railroad tracks as the town boundary. Immediately past them and beside a sidewalk inclining upward was the Stickley property and mansion. The guy who owned it had also owned one of the drugstores in town. He died not long after selling the drugstore, and the grounds of the soon emptied house became largely wild, so a strand of trees lined the sidewalk and obscured sight of the mansion, which looked pretty spooky on a late grey afternoon or at night. In the fall, hedge apples, many smashed or rotting, covered the walk and southern side of the road there.

            Across from the mansion, where the street curved slightly right as it inclined toward town, was another country type store. One of the owner’s sons was a friend of mine (also a drummer), and an older son was a friend of my youngest aunt. Though truly a country store, it was the first place in town with an Icee machine. Like some of the stores farther out of town, a single gasoline pump was situated close to the outer wall between the two doors of the business (of which one section served as storage, but for some reason the owner switched out toward the end of the 60’s). The store also played briefly into my musical history a few years later.

The Curve of It All

Welly well, back again. One of my artworks is up for auction on the Hiwassee College site. Check it out. Bid if possible. It is all part of Hiwassee's Kefauver Gala. The money goes to a good cause and is tax deductible.
http://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/AuctionHome.action?auctionId=141232451

The rest is history.

            Ok, so what kind of town was I about to conquer? What sorts of rhythms regulated our human traffic? Well, if city dwelling is a goal it will not be realized in Madisonville, even yet. Monroe Country, like the counties surrounding it, is largely rural. I lived right on the edge of the city limits. I walked about a half mile to and from school every morning and afternoon. In those days, and for about 15 more years, there were still a few small farms inside the city. I passed several to and from school. I lived on the Old Athens Road, just past a split point where a gravel road veered off between the Church of God on the northern side, and Westside Baptist to the south. In the middle of the dividing line was the neighborhood store. I lived about 50 yards west of that. Since, like any small grocery, the store had dopes (soft drinks) and candy, kids hung around there all the time. The store owner liked kids and tolerated them.

            I didn’t think of myself as a townie, but I was not a country boy either. Other than vegetable gardening, I’ve done no other farm labor. I’ve never milked a cow, never fed chickens, never driven a tractor. The few times I hauled hay were miserable, and, after 1971, never repeated. I’m not saying I’m too good for any of that. The fact is that I’m not good enough for it. I’ve seen guys carry two bales of hay, like suitcases, at a time, when it was all I could do to hoist a single bale onto the wagon. Even the girls, lust inducing as they were, out-toughed me. I wasn’t a 98 pound weakling (more like a 110 pound version of it) either. I’m just not cut out for that sort of labor.

            The old neighborhood, where my mom still lives, was Greenwood Circle, which had been subdivided from the Greenwood Farm. Bits of the farm still existed until the early 70’s when what became New Highway 68 bowled through the giant red barn that appeared to be the last working remnant of the place. At the end of the circle, behind the church furniture manufacturing plant, and stretching a mile or so north and south between the railroad tracks and a creek emanating from a spring fed pond, was a thin strand of woods filled with tall pines in some patches, and myriad hard and soft woods along the way. My family had done a lot of blackberry picking out there, and right in the middle of the woods was a nice path where at one time (and I have no idea when that time was) the railroad had routed through. An old abandoned cinder block building with thick concrete supports inside was situated near the tracks. What it had been is still a mystery to me. Some friends and I found a newspaper dating from 1954 inside the place nearly 20 years after that date. It was destroyed sometime in the 1980s.

            Pretty near the old building was an old road that dead ended before reaching the railroad tracks. The north side of the road emptied onto Warren Street, very close to Greenwood Circle. In the late 60’s a wooden bridge spanned the creek (the same creek that ran around behind the primary school and football field) near a small, seemingly isolated house, quite segregated from the other houses on the north end, though not so far away. There was an older fellow (how old I can’t say since I was terrible at age guessing then, but he was probably as old, or a little older, than my grandmother, who was in her early 50’s at that time) living there. He was well known all over town by his nickname, and I had often seen him in my neighborhood as well as in the woods. I’d overheard people speak of him, and in some code I wasn’t privy to (and still am not sure about) nearly always said, “Well, he doesn’t bother anybody.”

            Not very far from the old fellow’s house, in a sort of enclave near the dead end, was what I had been told was an Indian (Native American) graveyard. True or not I can’t say, but the ground there was flat and not covered in trees, though surrounded by them, and there were what appeared to be headstones of an old timey type like I had seen in older sections of some cemeteries (there are a few in the Hiwassee College cemetery), and so old that all information had been worn away from the stone faces. I last walked down that street in 1985. By then the wooden bridge had fallen, and the old fellow’s house (he was dead) was nearly gone. I looked for the cemetery, but the location I’d remembered was covered by what appeared to be a sewer project.

The Almost Never Ending Story

More music history.

Phase 6

            Madisonville’s best known band’s purchase of new equipment set off something of a cold war-like equipment race in the area when the members traded up from beginner to professional gear. (I haven’t called the band by name because that’s part of its story and I don’t want to step on it in case the members want to tell their stories themselves [though I’d rather they hire me to do it].) Even some of those members made quick changes. The keyboardist/singer switched from the Doric organ to a Farfisa Combo Compact organ. The Farfisa was quite a sweet machine. Of course I wanted on just like it, but discovered its cost and knew I had no hope. Oh, well. Sometime afterward the lead guitarist traded the Toby amp for a Fender Bandmaster, an amp on par with even the Vox amps The Beatles used. He also added a fuzztone module that connected to the guitar via the out jack (and he was a master of its properties), and later brought on a wah-wah pedal (he was very good with that as well). The new equipment allowed for expansion into the new sounds that were becoming standard in pop music.

            When CEP and I had seen the band from Sweetwater at the Madisonville pool, the guitarist had recently purchased a Gretsch Country Gentleman. I assure you that those GCGs weren’t cheap. I recall that they cost around $700, which, in 1967 buying power, was quite expensive. The organist for that same band had a Silvertone console organ. The organ had a very nice sound, bass pedals, lots of voices, built in amp and speakers, including a Leslie speaker (rarely heard except via Hammond organs: Booker T, for instance), but the darn thing weighed a ton. A wonderful piece of equipment, though.

            It was in this atmosphere that I lobbied my parents for an organ. The organs that locals played were all I was aware of, but I was on the lookout for anything that I might be able to play in a band. I had practiced mightily on the old two octave Magnus chord in my bedroom until I had the major, minor, and seventh chords down, and I had learned a few songs. My parents were skeptical of my motives. “I’m just worried that you won’t stick with it,” they said over and over. I knew I would, but how can one convince another of that? I understand their concerns (though I didn’t then) because my parents weren’t rich or anything close to it. That’s not a slam. I’m not rich or anything close to it either.

            Over the Thanksgiving weekend of 1967 my dear old mom and dad relented. We got up early the following Saturday and my family, along with CEP, went to Knoxville to see what we could find. The deal was that we’d shop for an organ in the early part of the day, then go over to Atlantic Mills for Christmas shopping. We prowled pawn shops and a couple of music stores on Gay Street. I saw an organ in the pawn shop that didn’t impress me (though I’m sure it would have worked out just fine), and I saw one of the new Fender organs (which impressed me very much). After lunch, organ shopping ended and we headed west.

            A couple of months before that day, while at the county fair in Sweetwater, CEP and I had stopped by the Lee’s Music booth and talked to a nice lady there. She had a stack of Fender products brochures exhibiting guitars, amps, and keyboards, and those of several other companies’ lines. She allowed us to take these. On the way out we ran into the keyboard player from another Sweetwater band we’d met during our music lessons. He’d just purchased a double keyboard Farfisa organ. Damn! We didn’t get to hear the guy’s band, but the keyboard was impressive.

            The weekend following the Knoxville trip, my parents and I stopped by Lee’s Music in Athens, Tennessee. Pay dirt! A sweet little red and black Tolex covered 49 key Gem organ awaited me. It looked very similar to a Vox Jaguar organ (in fact, the Gem company manufactured that product for Vox), and at $300 seemed a steal compared to everything else we’d seen. Poor old mom and dad signed the papers and we took it home. I was very happy. The deal was that the organ was a Christmas present and I’d have to wait to take possession of it, but that just made it all sweeter. Look out, girls, we’re already in your town!

 The one below is like my first rig. I wonder if it still exists.

Growing Season

It's a chilly day in Madisonville, just the way I like it. Here's more of the history. May it warm your nostalgia.

            Also during this period I discovered the music press. It was near the end of sixth grade, before my keyboard lessons, so though I still had pop music ambitions, all I had was a transistor radio and my imagination as instruments. Contact with CEP had diminished since his move across town and our schooling occurring in different buildings. On a drizzly day in early spring I called him to catch up. He said he had learned a few chords and had learned a version of the opening riff of The Stones’ Satisfaction. All I had to say was that I’d heard some groovy songs, and had watched some fine television. After that we talked mostly about girls until hang-up. I needed more information.

            One day after school I was in the drug store looking through the magazine rack. It’s the same place where I used to buy comics, though by this time they had fallen out of favor with me, so I can’t remember what I wanted, but found Song Hits, a magazine that had stories about musicians and musical events, and contained lyrics to many of the hits of the day. I hadn’t realized that such a publication existed. What a wonderful thing! I could immediately see how song lyrics would be useful and time saving. I bought it (actually, I might have bought one just a bit later because I probably didn’t have any money on the day of discovery). I studied it carefully. My two favorite songs at the time were Tell It to My Face and Happy Together. The lyrics to both were inside. Pretty soon CEP and I were buying copies every month.

            Being far more thorough than me, CEP found an advertisement for a cache of magazines that contained music and lyrics to recent popular songs as well as articles about music and musicians. He said we each needed $3.50 to make an order. That was a lot of dough for a kid in those days, so I mowed lawns and clipped hedges (I was paid a dollar for a lawn and the same for a hedge row) until I’d earned my share. We got the mags in about a month. They were back issues of a title that I cannot remember, and all the songs within were things that were formally popular on the charts, but for the most part were still popular with us. Many of the songs would later be considered standards. We’d struck big.

            CEP and I split issues, and then traded so we had the full benefit of our purchase. One thing I noticed was that the articles tended to be harder edged and oriented more toward rock than pop. Sure, a few popish songs were included (folkish songs too), but most info was about bands rather than singers, which was perfect for us. I wish I still had those publications, not to sell on Ebay, but to occasionally reexamine and see what they would teach me now. Can’t keep everything, though. I doubt that many issues survived the summer.

            A week or so after seventh grade began, CEP, Lawman, and I were going to a football game. We made a run through town (about a two minute from the football field) before the game, and I bought a special rock explosion issue of Hit Parader magazine, which touted the new British Invasion and the new direction in rock music. Now we’d been hearing this new direction all summer, but now I’d positioned myself for the inside dope (that word being more appropriate than I knew at the time) on the workings of it. So on the following Saturday morning I sat in granny’s living room floor and alternated between Space Ghost on television and articles about all manner of musicians and their groups. Some of the stuff I learned was shocking (Brian Jones quoted as saying he didn’t believe in God), but most was pure pleasure. The knowledge made me feel a part of the music world, and the habit of reading such publications (Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone a few years later) and related books has stayed with me to the present.

            The world began to open to me via the music. I began to consider ideas that were very different than what I had been brought up on, and I began to act accordingly through my questioning of the status quo, even questioning the musical status quo. Something new was happening and I wanted to be a part of it without knowing what that entailed. From my standpoint, only one piece of the puzzle remained, but soon it would be in place as well.

900 Pound Banana

Thanks to all who read THB, and thanks, too, for the kind comments. Here's more.

            I must backtrack a bit. I’d forgotten that I did have a couple of albums in 1966. My parents joined the Columbia Record Club. The club was a great idea for those who loved music but, like us, lived in a town where the pickings were slim when it came to buying records. The deal was that the club sent a number of records for a penny or a dollar as a teaser, after which the contract stated that 12 additional records, one per month, must be purchased at the regular price. My parents allowed me to choose some of the first batch and would allow me to choose a record every two months or so. I was happy with that. Of course I liked my selections, and my mom’s selections weren’t so bad either. She ordered The Dave Clark Five’s Greatest Hits, and a couple of Herb Alpert records. Dad got Johnny Cash and other country records, probably by Jim Reeves. Two of my selections, Paul Revere and the Raiders’ Greatest Hits and The Blues Magoos’ Psychedelic Lollypop (a favorite to this day) brought many hours of pleasure.

            The summer after sixth grade was little more than a long listening session. CEP had moved from next door to a place about a mile away. I was accustomed to walking everywhere I went so that was nothing. He and I and another guy, Lawman, who had not long lived in my neighborhood, were big basketball players and music lovers. Many Sundays were spent walking the three miles to and from Hiwassee College where we often had the gym to ourselves. A lot of the rest of the time was spent in my family’s living room listening to my small record collection. Lawman really loved a Blues Magoos’ cover of I’ll Go Crazy, a James Brown song. CEP and I used these sessions to pick through various songs we might want to do if and when we were able to put together a band.

            The local scene really exploded during the Summer of Love. Not so long after school let out, Madisonville’s local band played a gig in a laundry mat, and later performed a series of dances at the city swimming pool. I loved those engagements. What could be better than listening to a band and being in the pool with a bunch of high school girls? I don’t know how I stood it. Another band, from Sweetwater, Madisonville’s top rival in Monroe County, played the pool. CEP and I screwed up the courage to approach the lead guitarist/singer and the keyboard player and asked if they’d be interested in instructing us in those respective instruments. The two guys, brothers we discovered, said sure, and so a time, place, and fee were agreed to. We took a total of six lessons, enough to learn a few songs and acquire chord charts for our instruments.

            Along the way that summer CEP invited me to stay overnight at the home of his cousin in the Mount Vernon community. The cousin’s mother worked nights and we were left alone with just a very old grandmother in charge. She went to bed early and two of cuz’s friends came by to hang into the late night. We drove around a bit in the country before the other guys went home. They were both great fellows and it was fun to be with them. After goofing off in the yard until two or three a.m. we went back into the house where, using CEP’s guitar (unamplified), cuz’s drumsticks, and an ironing board as props, we mimed a few song playing from cuz’s singles collection. We felt stupid afterwards, but all agreed that it had been fun.

            As the night began to dwindle away and we became tired and sleepy but unwilling to give up, something totally unexpected happened. CEP was picking around on the guitar when he came up with a little, nice sounding sequence. Damn! That sounded like a song. I got very interested and moved close to the guitar. CEP standardized his creation until he had put together a couple of parts. One of us came up with a line and we began to build on it. In 40 or so minutes we had a fleshed out song. We were shocked, as much because of the division of the invention as anything else. We’d always planned to write songs as part of the big idea, but the plan had been that I would work on the music and CEP would cover the lyrics. What happened was the reverse in that it was me who supplied the lion’s share of the words. “You know, you’re pretty good at lyrics,” CEP told me. I was very proud. The song, as could be expected, was junior high in every aspect, but hell, we didn’t know anybody else around who wrote, so we felt really good about it. We’re on par with The Beatles now, we reasoned.

            Several other bands came to Madisonville during the summer and I saw and learned as much from all of them I could, though I still liked the town’s local group the best. They had a wide playlist of radio hit covers, and they had steps, lifted from Paul Revere and the Raiders I later discovered, along with their dazzling equipment. Some of the songs they played still impress me. They always opened with You Can’t Sit Down. It was perfect. And the bass intro to Night Train, which they played at breakneck speed, blew me away. They seemed very professional and I liked them very much.

Pudding

Time and space for another round of musical history.

            I became interested in joining the Cub Scouts while in the fourth grade. A friend of mine whose dad was scoutmaster invited me to a troop meeting. I became a member in late 1964. To be honest, I was a little disappointed because the things I associated with (and wanted most from) scouting, mainly knives and hatchets, were totally absent from the program. “They do all that in Boy Scouts,” someone told me, so I decided to wait it out. It was ok: I got to wear a nice uniform (with hat), and consumed great refreshments every week.

            Mom and dad returned to stay in spring of 1966 and we moved back to our place across the road from my grandmother’s house. About six months later, for my 12^th birthday, I got the most important piece of musical equipment up to then when my parents gave me a transistor radio. For the first time in quite a while I was able to listen to whatever I wanted, which at that time was WNOX in Knoxville, where the hits played 24 hours a day. I was in heaven.

            Five or six weeks after my birthday, I took the leap and joined the Boy Scouts. I could reveal many details about that experience, but the real point here is that I met a fellow scout who became a great influence and friend. Since I can’t use names, I’ll call this guy Tig, because he told me he had a Mattel Tiger guitar like the ones advertised on TV (and because a beautiful girl he was in love with called him Tig). I thought he was the second luckiest person around (a couple of brothers in the scouts had Honda motorcycles, so I guess I thought they were luckier than anyone on the planet). Actually, the friend who invited me to Cub Scouts was the drummer in my second band, but that’s still a bit further down the road from scouts. The news about the guitar made me wonder, and probably made me a little jealous, too.

            My Boy Scouting experiences did not last that long. I went on campouts and other functions for a little over a year before petering out after summer camp. To be clear, I’m not cut out for the type of rigor that scouting required. I’m so not into authoritative organizations that being told what to do by a peer is galling to me, and the peers seemed bent on controlling us in a nearly National Socialist manner, so out I go. By the time basketball season rolled around during 7^th grade, there was no time for Scouts anyway, so all’s well.

            Going into 7^th grade felt like I imagine an anthropologist feels when first setting foot on a strange land where an equally strange society might kill rather than allow study of its culture. No kidding. Rather than the familiar faces I had been schooled with until then, a new crop of people who had attended smaller schools infiltrated when the small schools were closed and consolidated after a new high school had been built. This was not all bad, especially when a new crop of girls was factored in. As might be expected, of course, the new guys, hicks from the hinterlands of the county, were a nightmare with their country ways and boorish behavior. I can’t escape my own criticisms here because I’ve exhibited plenty of the same shitty attitudes and actions toward my fellow humans. It’s the pot calling the kettle black, but still, from my point of view, I was locked into a situation where my worst impulses were unleashed to commingle with, to me, a spate of unhip and largely stupid mindsets. It’s 1967, for Christsakes! What’s wrong with you people? Didn’t you guys go through the same Summer of Love as everybody else? Where’s the free love, the music, the antiauthoritarianism? What was this?

            Well, no matter what my classmates were into, I had experienced the SOL, at least through the music. With my tiny General Electric transistor radio I had a constant flow of music that turned my bedroom into a fortress of solitude. Out in the real world, my parents’ living room, I saw all the up and coming acts on Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, and The Smothers Brothers. My folks had, on a trip to Knoxville to shop for school clothes, agreed to buy me an album. It took most of the day to narrow down my possible choices. I finally had to decide between Freak Out, by The Mothers of Invention (two records for the price of one), and Strange Days, by The Doors. With Light My Fire still on my mind (and I hadn’t even heard the long version of it), I took The Doors.

            During the first week of school, a circus that came to town around every two years, was visiting and setting up on campus near the railroad tracks that ran closely past the primary and junior high schools. A large number of students went over to look at the elephants after lunch and before class. Great fun was made when one elephant cut loose about 10 gallons of piss. A girls I though particularly cute looked like she was about to bust a gut laughing so hard. Some circus guy standing there whispered something into the elephant’s ear. Suddenly, another guy ran up and without the hint of kindness roughly told the man to take the elephant away, then told us to go away as well.

            I was lucky enough to have Phys Ed with CEP and a couple of other young men I knew, so I wasn’t totally alone, though I often felt that way. About two weeks into the new school year I became reacquainted and friendly with Brillo, who had been in my 2^nd grade class. We weren’t friends then, in fact, I thought he was uppity, though I now realize that really wasn’t the case. I’d seen him playing a lap steel guitar for a 6^th grade assembly program, but had not been at all close to him up till then. That changed in a flash. We became fast, nearly inseparable friends for the simple reason that he got me, or better, he got what I was about. He was much the same, to my surprise, as I. For me, being around him was like being hooked to a battery that amplified my most outrageous ideas and behaviors. The teachers did not love us. I was blessed to meet someone like him who was the perfect foil for my anarchy in that crazy school situation.

            Big stuff happened on my 13^th birthday in 1967. After school, and to the dismay of my parents, I often walked with CEP to his family’s business to spend a couple of hours listening to the juke box and goofing off until near suppertime when I made my way home. On my birthday I took the extra liberty of extending that time a little (it was my birthday, what could anyone do), so supper was waiting at my grandmother’s when I got there. I feel sorry for my parents because they really wanted to spend  time with me while I unwrapped my presents and enjoyed cake as I had on all my birthdays until then, but were disappointed when they learned that I wanted to go to a dance instead of staying home (we all must grow up and break free). I could see they were sort of hurt, but I had no sympathy for their desires since it was my birthday and not theirs. I met up with CEP and we cut out.

            I’d been going to dances since the winter before when a friend of mine, the same guy who got me started going to the movies (man, I’m really in debt to that guy), suggested I go see a band playing at the soon to be vacated high school. I went, danced, and loved the group. Apart from the high school marching band, it was the first live music I had experienced and I was impressed. I thought the band was great. Not long after that first experience, the band played a talent show where the members’ new equipment was unveiled. That was when I first learned I had a fetish for musical equipment. I liked the old equipment, but the new was something else. My friend’s brother had a new Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar, just like the one George Harrison of The Beatles played, and a tall Toby amp that looked like a washing machine. In The Beatles vein, the drummer had a set of Ludwig drums like Ringo’s. The bass player bought a new Yamaha bass, and the singer/guitarist/keyboard player got a new Doric organ, a Gretsch amp, and a Gretsch Astro Jet guitar. All that opened my eyes and gave me a target to shoot for.

            The dance, held in the same room where Boy Scouts had formally met just a few months prior, had begun before CEP and I arrived. Tig, my old buddy from Scouts, played lead guitar. He had graduated from the Mattel Tiger to a hollow body Fender Cordova electric guitar and a Supra amp. Two of the other members were guys who I had over to my house when I was still working on putting together a band a few months earlier. There was also the singer who I would get to know very well a short time hence.

            In some ways the gig was a bust. There were a few pretty girls there (ok, they were the only girls there) and a few guys. The band, Aftermath, played a several numbers, but it started to become more of a social event than a dance, and more or less degraded into a sort of jam session where a friend of mine, who had the same birthday as me, and I sang the song Detroit City, at least until the other singer turned off the amp we sang through. I didn’t even notice. Sometime during the evening a fellow I almost knew came in and guest sang Little Latin Lupe Lou. No one turned off the amp while he sang. Little did I know that I would play in bands with five of the nine guys who were in the room that night.

Struming Along

More history today.

            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 6^th 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), 6^th 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 5^th 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.