June 24, 2011
I thought I’d just walk home and write a short story tonight. I’ll take a few photos on the way home and then write a story about a favorite memory of mine.
And it's off we go towards the McDonalized light on 6th Avenue.
I'm just going to ignore that gum stain and walk by it quickly.
I hate it when people congregate like this in front of a restaurant hogging half of the sidewalk chattering away. You want to hang out and talk? Then go back into the fucking Olive Garden where you came from and talk while eating your stupid fucking endless salads and then choke on the endless breadsticks and die a slow agonizing death, please and thank you.
Shit!
Oh fuck, check out this mutant strain of the Cardboard Box Man. It just has a mouth and no eyes...yikes!
Okay, home sweet home and safe at last! Time to go to my writing area and get this story down.
Aaaaahhhh!
A Beatles Memory
I feel kind of lucky to have grown up when I did. I was a child in the ‘60’s, a teenager in the ‘70’s and a young adult in the ‘80’s. I witnessed a lot of things in those three decades. I can remember the day when President Kennedy was shot, because I was pissed off the next day that there weren’t any Saturday morning cartoons on, just news reports. Five years later I remember watching the reports on TV when his brother Robert was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan (a man so nice they named him twice!) and being shocked and saddened. He was the first politician I was ever passionate about. And I have to confess, it wasn’t really so much his politics as the fact that he had long hair for a politician at the time and I thought he was really funny and cool. I was ten-years-old when he was gunned down and I remember asking my mom why people were shooting at the Kennedy’s. She just shook her head sadly and said, “I don’t know.”
I remember the first moon landing and then seeing the same images being used twelve years later when MTV launched. I stayed up all night long with my brother watching the videos on the pioneer TV station. We couldn’t believe it, music videos all night long! Such a concept!
Random memories off the top of my head include: Richard Speck murdering those nurses in Chicago, Easy Rider, Martin Luther King getting assassinated, the Manson family scaring the shit out of the Hollywood community in 1969, Woodstock, Altamont, hippies, Watergate, Nixon quitting, disco, punk rock and kids dying in a stampede at a Who concert in Cincinnati. Lots of memories and I’m always playing them back like films in my mind. One of my favorite memories is the Monday after the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan.
On February 9th, 1964 The Beatles appeared and sang five songs on the Ed Sullivan show. I was five-years-old and our family was living in Louisville, Kentucky at the time. I remember the week before hearing ads on the radio saying, “The Beatles are coming!” I was riding shotgun to the Winn Dixie grocery store with my mom and I asked her if they were talking about bugs. She laughed and explained to me that The Beatles were an English singing group and they were going to be on Ed Sullivan that week. I didn’t think much about it and was more interested in getting a candy bar when we got to the checkout line.
That Sunday was pretty much like every other Sunday of my youth. We went to church in the morning, came home and had breakfast then whiled the day away playing and engaging in things that pass the time when you’re five-years-old. My mom always cooked a big Sunday dinner and we probably had something like pot roast and mashed potatoes and gravy. Then after dinner the whole family gathered in the front family room and did what most families did in the ‘60’s. We turned on the TV and watched the Ed Sullivan Show. And here’s what we saw that night:
I watched in amazement at all the screaming girls and wondered aloud why they were screaming and carrying on in the theater.
“Because they like them, stupid,” my brother Jim said and then smacked me on the head.
We watched the whole show and although a couple of years later I would become a full-fledged Beatles freak, they didn’t have much impact on me that evening, but I did like the music.
The next day my dad dropped my brothers Tom and Jim and my sister Terry at their grade school, Holy Trinity. He then drove me to my kindergarten, Sacred Heart on the other side of town. Almost every day he’d let me steer the car for a little while if there wasn’t much traffic and I always loved doing that. We arrived at Sacred Heart and he watched me climb the cement stairs leading up to the school’s entrance. As I opened the front door, I waved goodbye as I always did, he drove off to work and I walked into the classroom.
Some kids were already there and others were showing up. I hung up my coat in the hallway wooden coat rack and went inside the room. We didn’t have separate desks, there were tables where you sat at an assigned seat with other kids. I sat at a table with two kids named Matt and Mark. I liked Matt, but I remember disliking Mark because he was kind of mean and didn’t share anything. He had a habit of drooling too and that was gross. Our teacher was a nun whose name was Sister Gabriela. I can’t really remember what she looked like, I only remember her full-blown penguin nun outfit. She was nice though and opposed to other nuns I experienced in my years of Catholic education was an nice and gentle woman.
We started the day out like every other day, we said a prayer and then Sister asked a question of the class.
“How many of you children watched the Ed Sullivan show last night?” She asked with a smile. Every hand went up in the air and then came down.
“And how many of you saw the English group, The Beatles on the show last night?” She asked as the smile disappeared.
A couple kids giggled and once again every hand was thrust upwards towards the gray corrugated ceiling.
“I want all you children to know one thing,” she said in serious tones as the hands went down, “it’s a sin for a boy to wear his hair that way.”
Mark immediately shot his arm up the air and Sister called on him.
“I’ll never wear my hair like that Sister!” He barked out in a sickening, ass-kissing moment.
Sister smiled and said that was good.
God how I hated that drooling, selfish, ass-kissing little prick!
As a little kid, I was pretty good and didn’t often question things my parents, teachers or authority figures told me. I wasn’t going to say anything in class that morning, but I wondered why wearing your hair a certain way was a sin. I didn’t get it and it bugged me all day long and into the evening. This incident may have triggered a life-long habit of obsessing over weird little things and not being able to let them go. (See: Box Man, Cardboard and Dog, Papaya.)
That night after dinner I was reading a Dr. Seuss book in the room I shared with my brother Jim. He came in and I put the book down and sat up on my bed.
“Sister Gabriela said it’s a sin for a boy to comb his hair like the Beatles do,” I told him.
He just looked at me and thought about that for a minute. Then he walked over to me, grabbed my arm and said, “Come on.”
I got up and followed him into the bathroom. He locked the door behind us, opened a drawer and took out a comb and ran it under water. He then proceeded to comb his hair down into Beatle bangs. Both of us laughed and then he handed me the comb and I did the same thing. We continued to laugh at the way we looked and then my brother defiantly said, “Nuns don’t know everything.” I looked at him and nodded in agreement.
Ten years later we were teenagers in the wild ‘70’s doing drugs, breaking rules, laws and questioning authority every fucking minute of every fucking day. And it all started with one downward swoop of a comb way back on a winter’s night in 1964.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Further reading: Internet Beatles Album, Ed Sullivan, NewBusters and Trivia Quiz (I only got four out of ten. Motherfucker!)
You also might like: The Dave Clark Five, Gang of Four and Three Jacks and a Jill.
Four Beatle Children
Julian Lennon
Mary McCartney
Dhani Harrison
Zak Starkey
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
29 Comments
Reader Comments (29)
I saw them twice in Chicago and didn't like them as the girls were screaming. At the time, I liked the Dave Clark 5 then went on to the Stones. Still, I'd give my left nut even to see them at Comiskey park like when they played without amps and we couldn't hear a thing.
Always love these stories. Yeah yeah yeah!
Great stuff brings back a lot of the same memories. I wonder if the Card Board Man and his little off-springs you keep find all around the city like the Beatles?
That brought back a lot of memories, Marty
September 4, 1993
I was rolling a joint with Lou Reed, when his then wife Sylvia Morales, came into the room and announced that “That little guy from Fantasy Island died”. Lou took a hug hit and while letting it out said: "Da plane, boss, da plane!” Sylvia rolled her eyes, took a hit and went back into the kitchen. Lou and I went back to our conversation about Guitar intonation….
RIP Hervé
@Mike Hunt: Very cool you got to see them twice and "Catch Me If You Can" was the first 45 I got as a kid.
@Barfly: Yeah, yeah, yeah!
@Knuckles: I doubt Cardboard Box Man and his mutant speicies knows of the Beatles, I don't think he's of this planet.
@Harry: Great story! To: Herve!
Yesterday’s Larry Storch dissection and Cher’s “Ringo I Love You” reminded me of an F Troop episode with guest star Henry Gibson as Private Wrongo Starr, “The Army's most notorious jinx”
@Harry: Ha ha ha! I forgot all about that Henry Gibson character! Thanks for the re-memory!
Three words concerning the surprise link...Oh...My...Ghod...and as for that new mutant spedies of all mouth cardboard box man..."All the better to EAT you with my pretty"-the Wicked Witch of the West. Maybe when that mutant cardboard box man sneaks into your bedroom tonight to gobble you down, the last thing you'll see is that it has a second set of snapping cardboard box jaws like the xenomorph in the 'Alien' movie....mouahahahahahaaaaa!!!
Your memory of the Beatles visit to Ed Sullivan's is very similar to mine. I thought at first they were wearing wigs, the way they shook their heads and all. Of the Beatles children, Julian is the one that really got screwed over. John used to say that Julian was "born out of a whiskey bottle", basically a love child and he never had the life that Sean, Dhani, or Paul's kids did. I think Yoko cut him off years ago from any access to John's money. Just pure selfishness on her part,,, you would think a person with 800 million dollars could spread a little to him.
What a great memory - Hair - the gateway drug. If there is any concert I wish I could have seen, it would be by the Beatles - probably the one on the rooftop.
@Al - here, here! Poor Julian - he even had to have his song written for him by Paul.
@Jaws: Aaaahhh!
@Al: From what I've read Julian finally got a cut of the money, but he had to get lawyers to sue Yoko for his own inheritance. John Lennon was always my favorite Beatle, but he was also a huge prick in real life and really fucked Julian over.
@Britta: I love the saying: "Hair—The Gateway Drug!" Ha ha ha! Good one!
Great story, Marty! Ironically, when I was at Catholic high school in 1983, Sister Margaret had that very same '60s Beatles 'do. She also had hairy armpits, but that is neither here nor there.
@Biff: I never knew you went to Catholic high school! We need to trade tales of utter nunsense sometime! To hairy nun pits!
My nun looked like Sam the butcher...
and as far as I know is still alive..
It has to be 120 years old by now.
so if the Beatles were sinners for long hair.. what was Jesus?...
oops bad gidge.. sister Micheal the penguin is gonna get me now with a ruler...
ouch.
here is another bad gidge moment..
http://www.jesusdressup.com/original.html
WOW...damn don't know what to say...never saw the beatles on tv...sorta remember ed sullivan in late '67...never rolled w/ lou but did smoke a bowl w/ tosh and kicked a ball w/ marley...blah blah blah...
If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there.
~Paul Kantner
rr
go back into the fucking Olive Garden where you came from and talk while eating your stupid fucking endless salads and then choke on the endless breadsticks and die a slow agonizing death, please and thank you
Hahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!
Great story! You're lucky to have grown up in such a cool era. I'm a child of the late 70's Australia. We were 10 years behind until this internet thing came out!!
Goddam box.
@Gidgie: That nun sounds scary! Jesus was the Beatles drummer before Pete Best. That kicked him out because he kept taking breaks in the show to heal cripples. Love that link! We're both going to hell.
@rr: You never saw the Fabulous Four on the idiot box, that's wild! And I'd love to hear the Peter Tosh, Bob Marley stories. Great quote from Kantner and you know his memories are fuzzy.
@GENE: Glad you got a larf out of that!
@Clacky: I'm not thrilled about getting older, but I am glad I grew up when I did.
Boy do I hate Mark - what an obnoxious little ass kisser. He's the same jerk that reminds the teacher that she promised a quiz today.
Bet he loves Olive Garden too.
@JAZ: I bet Mark manages an Olive Garden and is super-shitty to the poor people that have to make endless salads in there. I've often wondered about how tiring it would be to manufacture a salad that doesn't end. I'm getting dizzy now!
i was eight when they were on Sullivan and clueless. My teenage sister was on her knees in front of the TV, screaming and holding her head with both hands. My father was appalled, of course. At a later date, he would say 'If he Beatles are so great, why don't they put their crap in a jar and sell it?' I don't think Brian Epstein ever got hold of that idea, he would've made a lot of money on it, I'm sure! ha ha ha ha
Of course my father wasn't totally clueless. He was driving me home from my accordion lesson (laugh here) one night in 1968 when the radio announcer came on and said Martin Luther King had been shot. My dad got a really troubled look on his face and said, 'Oh no...I hope it wasn't a white guy'--even though I'm sure he assumed it was. He saw the riots coming, immediately.
This is also the man who used to let me borrow the car constantly as a teenager and college student. One Saturday, as I tucked into some cold pizza after rolling out of bed around noon, he called to me from the backyard. I went to the door and he handed me my little 1920s tobacco tin, which was stuffed with pot and my pipe. I was stunned, and realized I must have left it in the car the night before. All he said was, 'I'd appreciate it if you didn't use that stuff when you were driving my car. It's still illegal, you know.' And that was it. Plus, he had actually given it back to me! This from the guy who was still firmly holding on to WWII-era morality and Joe Friday law-abiding correctness.
Whoops, I'm rambling. But thanks for the memories, Marty. As you can see, they triggered a few good ones of my own!
@dark1p: Those are some great memories! Love the Beatles selling their own crap line! I appreciate you taking the time to write them. It was quite a time to grow up in, wasn't it! Feel free to share stories here anytime, I love it when that happens!
"go back into the fucking Olive Garden.........."
Funniest thing I read all day. hahahahaha
Sip Ahoy!
@Uncle Waltie: Glad you got a larf out of it! *Sip Ahoy!
(*Sip Ahoy is a patented Uncle Waltie catchphrase, please use with permission only!)
Great memories Marty. I don't think my life time has been quite as exciting, but maybe that's not a bad thing.
Oh and there is another long lost Beatles child living in Utah. Or at least she is convinced she is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHT3moMvC4s&playnext=1&list=PLB0469F967942B4F8
@kari: Thanks for the link! I wonder if Ringo has a restraining order against her?
TO HAIRY NUN PITS! HA HA HA!
@Biff: TO HARRY NUN PITS!