A few months ago, I heard it said that anyone who was at least three years old in November, 1963 remembers President Kennedy's assassination. I think that's an exaggeration; however, I do think that nearly every baby boomer remembers the Beatles coming to America.
Someone mentioned to me at school the other day that this wasn't a big deal to her, that she was 17, a senior in high school, and was never into the Beatles. I was.
I was a Beatlemaniac, the term of art for girls, teens and pre-, who were Beatles obsessed. I had posters. I had the notebook binder. I had the bobble-head dolls. I had buttons, pins, pendants. I had a huge stack of Beatles trading cards. I have "The Beatles Flip Your Wig" board game. And except for the posters and bobble-heads, I still have all of it, in a box in the attic.
I listened to their music on WABC radio, one of the two top 40 stations in New York, where Cousin Bruce Morrow played their songs every night. I craved their records. I craved the Beatles. I especially liked Paul, aka The Cute One.
We knew they were going to be on The Ed Sullivan Show; it was well hyped beforehand. My parents, who were always oblivious of our need for cultural touchstones, had planned a daylong visit to relatives in Long Island. (They had made me go furniture shopping with them instead of staying home to watch the last episode of Howdy Doody. They regretted it. I was hysterical for hours.) This was a trip over a series of bridges and out on the Long Island Expressway. Traffic either coming or going was a crapshoot. There might be none or it might be bumper-to-bumper. We'd seen both.
We went out there every few months, or they came to see us. (These are the same relatives I visited in Florida last July.) My father was famous for wanting to leave there early enough after dinner to avoid as much of the traffic as he could. When we would walk in the door at noon or one, someone would look at his or her watch and say to my father "Well, Jack? Is it time to leave yet?" But on this day, my sister and I were nervous. If we kept to his timetable, we would be on a bridge somewhere just as the Beatles were making their appearance. We had to get him to leave really early this time.
It was not to be. Whether dinner was delayed or what, I don't remember. I do remember that we begged him not to leave until after Ed Sullivan was over. That would be 8:30. We must have left that late before; I know that the first time I ever saw Bonanza was at their house, and that was on at least that late. Anyway, everyone prevailed on him, and at 7:30, the whole family, including our parents, joined in the den and turned on the TV. The kids sat on the tiled floor.
Minutes before the show started, the doorbell rang. My aunt ran to get it, and came back dragging a kid with her. He had a coat and hat on, and looked embarrassed. My cousins said hello and then forgot he was there. He was the paperboy, coming to collect. When my aunt saw him at the door, she dragged him and and told him he had to see this. She didn't want him to be the only member of his generation who hadn't seen the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.
They came on. Oh, god, it was so exciting! I screamed, a little, because it seemed I was supposed to; the grown-ups were startled and amused. And then I listened. I loved their music so. I loved the way they shook their heads and looked so neat and tidy and perfect there on the TV. I loved them.
I don't know if their first album came out before or after they were on TV, but I remember how I got it. I came home for lunch one day, a day that my friend Jessica happened to come home with me. While we were eating, Shirl said she had gone to Alexander's that morning, and saw a long long line and got on it, not even knowing what she was waiting for, and then ... voila! She brought me this, which she had hidden in another room:
I think it cost about $2.50, or maybe $3.50. I don't know how she even got us to go back to school for the afternoon. I was definitely the first kid in my class to have it. Was that a cool mom or what?
The album is framed, and hangs right above my desk here, the first of five Beatles albums hanging there in a row.
Forty years. And Paul ... still cute. Always will be.
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I'm watching nothing's on
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