[New post] Braided: Music, History, a Decade (A Musing, Part One)
pamkirst2014 posted: " "I heard a rumor yesterday at the greengrocer's that the Beatles are breaking up, and I found myself crying quite ridiculously among the cabbages and the carrots. It was utterly nonsensical---I thought to myself that they each had their own separate live"
"I heard a rumor yesterday at the greengrocer's that the Beatles are breaking up, and I found myself crying quite ridiculously among the cabbages and the carrots. It was utterly nonsensical---I thought to myself that they each had their own separate lives and families, that it was time for them to move on---but I felt an overwhelming sense of loss. It's as if they symbolized our hopes and our innocence, and I suddenly felt that I'd lived through the passing of a generation."
(From Dreaming of the Bones, by Deborah Crombie, p. 263; Lydia's 27 March 1969 letter to her mother)
The Beatles with Ed Sullivan, 1964. Image from Mentalfloss.com
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There are those who believe that history should be told, not through the recounting of big events, but through the telling of the lives molded by those events.
The events create the timeline.
The music of a timeframe creates the throbbing playlist.
And the people who live through both…they take the playlist and the timeline and, unconsciously, braid them tightly together with the details and the dailiness of their lives.
I believe that the Beatles created a special kind of playlist for a certain set of girls. I was one of those girls; I rode the crest of a phenomenal wave. My friends did, too. The music, the events, the personalities: they shaped us.
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I was two in 1957, two years old and learning my prayers,--the "Angel of God," and the "Glory Be," and working my way up to the "Hail Mary." Prayers, back in those days, in that family, were Important Things. There was a right way to say them, and it wasn't hurried, although it was definitely rote.
I loved to color, and I had a stack of coloring books in the built-in cupboard in the dining room, and weighty coloring issues began to puff up and float toward me over my limited horizon.
Should you outline? I voted yes; I liked that nice, neat delineation. Some of my brothers argued with that, and that caused me consternation, because it seemed my brothers were correct about so many things.
Should you blend?Yes, again; my mother showed me how to color the faces of fair-skinned people by shivering in just a little pink or magenta on the cheeks and chin and forehead, and then carefully covering that with a light glaze of orange, or, if we had a fancy box of Crayolas that year, what was called, in those days, "flesh." That flesh color left out a whole spectrum of facial colors, but that was not something much talked about when I was two.
When I was two, I wore hand-me-downs from four older brothers (one, at that time, a foster): corduroy pants with flannel linings; these folded up into broad cuffs so one could see that pretty plaid. I wore soft, worn T-shirts with horizontal stripes (the better to emphasize a nice round belly.) These had long or short sleeves depending on the season.
My girl-cousins in Buffalo, much older and impossibly glamorous, sent hand-me-downs, too: boxes of dresses and skirts and ruffly tops, and so I always had the required girl-clothes to wear to church, and the required boy clothes to go outside and play in the sandbox or to wistfully watch whiffle ball games.
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In 1957, when I was two, Sputnik erupted into the skies, and change happened. US school curriculum slowly turned the ship, seeking a path aligned with a general kind of panic. They could SEE us from up there, those Russians, and we needed to start getting better at math and science, start churning out experts and technicians to meet the Communist threat, now not just political, but also technological.
In 1957, when I was two, a Liverpool boy named Paul McCartney came to the attention of an older lad named John Lennon. They began to play together in John's group, the Quarrymen. Later that year, a school mate of Paul's, a kid named George Harrison, would join them.
In 1957, John was a worldly seventeen. Paul was 15, and George was all of 14.
Think of that—just babies, really, but stirring the mixture that would bubble into the Beatles—a concoction that would shadow—or enlighten--me, and so many other women my age, as we grew.
In 1960, I was five, and old enough to go to kindergarten. Kindergarten was Public School, not Catholic School, which I thought of as the Real School. My brothers went to the Catholic School, which was on the same street as my house, maybe a block and a half away.
Public School Kindergarten met in the broad clean basement of a Methodist Church, and that was downtown. My teacher was Mrs. Abrams. Although my brothers told me it was too bad I hadn't gotten the teacher they had (their teacher was neat), I loved Mrs. Abrams from the start. She had wavy dark hair and she wore perfect red lipstick, and she read to us, took us on walks to the library and the creek, and didn't mind my incessant questions.
The only part of kindergarten I hated was nap time. Naps were, of course, for babies. My mother believed in weaning children from napping early on; she was a firm believer in a good long night's sleep. So I hadn't napped since, probably, 1957, or even before.
During naptime I lay on the hard tiled floor on a big woven bathroom rug, and I fidgeted and sighed. Finally, Mrs. Abrams, realizing I would never sleep, allowed me to take a stack of books to my rug with me. While my classmates wiffled softly, I paged and paged, trying to say the words, trying to know what they meant.
At first, my mother walked me to school, my baby brother Sean in a heavy, unwieldy stroller; she bought that stroller with Green Stamps at the Nu-Way store. But I had morning kindergarten, and often the baby was not yet awake, and some days I would have to walk alone. I had to cross a Big Street, which was Route 60, and which ran in front of my house.
My mother would watch me across the street, remind me to be careful, and disappear inside.
It did not seem odd to me that a five-year-old was sent off to walk a mile and a half, on her own. I was, people often told me, Mature for My Age. I was Responsible. (Those tags followed me until, in high school, I struggled mightily against them.)
When I was five, in 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected President. He was the first Roman Catholic president elected, and even I, at five years old, understood that some people thought that meant the Pope would really be running the country. But President Kennedy was young and handsome, and his wife glowed with sophistication. They had a daughter who was two years younger than me, and often I would see Caroline's picture in the paper.
Over in Liverpool, when I was five in 1960, The Quarrymen had become The Silver Beatles had become the Beatles. Pete Best was their drummer. The Beatles played in their hometown, and they also played the club scene in Hamburg, Germany. They were older individuals now—seventeen, eighteen, twenty…grownups, from the vantage of five years old.
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In 1961, I started first grade at the Real School. My teacher was a young nun, Sister Mary Theresa. She wore the full wimple; we saw only her chalky skin, high cheekbones, long, beautiful hands. Her wooden rosary clicked when she walked the rows.
My parents would talk when they didn't knew I was listening. They said Sister was not much older than 18. They said she had never been to college. I loved her anyway, and I loved the worksheets and workbooks and the reader we used that had John, Jean, and Judy—Catholic kids,--instead of Dick, Jane, and Sally, who went to public schools.
In first grade I was, one day, paging through a book I'd brought from home out on the courtyard. I had memorized the book, and I often pretended to read it to my classmates. But that one day, the letters coalesced, and the words had meaning, and suddenly I could not remember what it was like to NOT know what the words meant.
First grade was exciting.
And 1961, when I was six, was an exciting year: the President launched the Peace Corps. The Freedom Riders were granted federal protection. President Kennedy unveiled his Moon Program proposal.
In England, record store-owner Brian Epstein became greatly interested in the Beatles, whose sound he really, really liked. He "fell in love" with them, according to Britannica.com, and Epstein left his store and went to work as the Beatles' manager. It was Epstein who connected them to George Martin, at Parlophone, a subsidiary of record giant EMI.
Martin was a classically trained musician; he encouraged the Beatles to find a more "polished" drummer—enter Ringo Starr—and he told them that their current tempo, playing "Love Me Do," was funereally slow. Speed it up, said Martin, and, when they did, it became a hit---#17 on the charts in England. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Me_Do).
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By 1963, I was---and other girls my age were---thinking about what we wanted to do when we were grown up. Some of us played wedding. Some of us played school, and some of us played at nursing. Some played house…other options weren't really all that well-known to girls in the early sixties. My friends and I played nun, practiced being as pure and austere as Sister Mary Theresa. One of my friends even had a Carmelite nun costume we took turns wearing---although I was bigger than she, so I stuck to the wimple, mostly.
I was in love with the power of writing; I wrote long rambling stories in an old, frayed blue looseleaf notebook. And I wrote letters: to my aunt Annie, who always answered; to different orders of nuns, who answered more slowly and usually urged me to wait and learn and grow before deciding the Sisterhood was for me; and to the Yankees, who sent me packets of literature and signed pictures of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.
I loved getting mail. I wish I still had those signed pictures.
By 1963, I had my first library card, and I was allowed to walk to the Darwin R. Barker Library and bring home exactly four books each week.
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And in Ohio, in 1963, Susan Straker may have been the first of the girls in my age group to have any knowledge of the Beatles. The term "Beatlemania" had been coined in England, but in the US, they were not so well-known. ("Love Me Do" would not be number one in the US until 1964.) But, Susan writes, "My neighbor and best friend's dad went on a business trip to England and brought home a 45 of the Beatles. I THINK one side was 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' but I'm not positive. He told us the Beatles were huge in England and we both felt a little cool because we were onto something before our friends."
In 1963, the year I understood the term 'charisma' because of our young president, the assassination happened. My stern elderly lay-teacher cried when we heard the news in school; she spattered her turquoise dress with tear drops. The entire class was shocked into silence, by the tears, and then, gradually, by the understanding of what had happened.
We stayed home from school to watch the impossibly slow progress of the funeral cortège, to see the heart-wrenching salute little John-John gave his daddy's bier. Lyndon Baines Johnson quickly ascended to the presidency, and 'charisma,' in my eight-year-old mind, did NOT apply to HIM.
Something shifted with that killing—some sense of absolute safety.
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Mrs. Macklem was my teacher, in 1964, when I was nine. I loved her because she was always jolly, and always organized, and because her husband owned a pharmacy where he sold, in addition to medicine, the most wonderful chocolates. On every holiday, Mrs. Macklem brought each of us a huge piece of chocolate candy in an appropriate shape—a flag, a heart, a Christmas tree, a bunny.
President Johnson, in 1964, declared War on Poverty, which I was kind of aware of. And the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, about which I knew nothing. But that Resolution would change life for everyone I knew, and people across the world, in the years to come.
Paul McCartney had vowed that the Beatles wouldn't come to the United States until one of their songs reached number one on the charts there, Eric Schaal writes on Cheatsheet.com. In December, 1963, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was released, and it quickly sold 750,000 single records. In 1964, my brothers bought that single and played it on the old cream and beige record player, carefully snapping the plastic adapter thingie into the center.
We sang along; even my parents knew the words.
And, on February 9, 1964, the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan's Sunday night variety show.
"My earliest memory is sitting on the carpet in front of our small-screen, black & white TV, screaming as I watched them sing 'She Loves You' live on the Ed Sullivan Show. Oh my gosh...they were SO wild shaking their 'long'-haired heads as they sang that 'ooooooohhhhhhh' at the end of the verse! When you look back at their early pics now, they were actually very 'clean-cut,' weren't they?!" writes Sue W.
That wild head shaking...it caught her too, Joanne remembers.
Mary Jean writes, "I remember watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan where they debuted. My cousins and I were all gathered around the TV with our mouths agape. The long hair just floored us."
Kim, born the same year I was, had a bedtime that sent her off to her room before Ed Sullivan aired. But she was not deterred, she writes. "I remember during the early years having to go to bed but, if you can imagine, I would sneak out of my bedroom, tip toe to the other end of the house (we lived in a ranch) and then hit the floor and crawl around the perimeter of the family room, behind my father reclining in his Barcalounger, and then under the couch elevated on skinny legs with just enough room for me and, I think, my brother. This would place me directly in front of the television just in time for (wait for it…..) The Ed Sullivan Show, where the Beatles would be announced in a way only Ed could do, ('Ladies and Gentlemen!!!! The Beatles!') in the drawn way he would do, and the women in the audience would scream and be so overcome with emotion they would cry and maybe faint. The Beatles would begin strumming away, Can't buy me loooovvvveee, love! and I would stay there and watch until my giggles and glee at pulling this off would blow my cover. My mom on the couch perpendicular to the one I was under would suddenly be aware, most likely saying, 'Phil, is that the kids?!' We would be hysterical and would be sent back to bed."
"Of course, I watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I wouldn't have been one of the screaming girls, but I liked them really well," Susan writes, and Mary Ann says, "I was in 8th grade when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. My family watched it together in the TV room and I remember my parents (they were 34 & 42, not old) being kind of puzzled and saying that they didn't understand what all the commotion was about. The next day at school, it's all everyone was talking about. It was a real shared experience."
And I sat in the living room with my whole family that night and watched the Beatles, on the tiny black and white screen in the hefty wooden box. My parents, who could sometimes be borderline cool, were a little puzzled, too. My oldest brother might have been a little too old to be drawn in, hook, line, and sinker, but the rest of the boys were rapt. And, like the other girls of my age, I was enthralled.
And, in a funny kind of way, committed.
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That was the start of it: from then on, for the rest of the sixties, the Beatles dominated my play list and provided the soundtrack to a whole lot of history.
Can't buy me loooovvvveee, love!
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