Showing posts with label little millie small. Show all posts
Showing posts with label little millie small. Show all posts

Thursday, February 7, 2019

Kids

 (I was the one with crooked bangs on the lower right. K is behind me.)

I didn't know that life was stark when I was a kid. I never felt poor ~ my mom made sure I had all the same things that kids in my classroom had. The early sixties weren't the age of conspicuous consumption. Sure, the clothes she picked out for me must have been clearance items, because they were so ugly. Either that, or Mom had really bad taste. But I never cared about clothes anyway.

We lived in an old farmhouse that was eighty years old (that would be about one hundred and forty years old now, if it's still standing.) I liked it. It had a hard wooden winding staircase leading up to the second floor and there was a cross-hatched vent about midway down that I could peek through and see everything happening in our living room (not that anything was happening). It had a scary unfinished basement that is a prerequisite for kids ~ scary things are de rigueur. How else would we ever learn to navigate life if it weren't for being scared so much that our breath catches in our chest?

I was lousy at making friends. Granted, living in the country precluded sleepovers. I never even had a best friend until I was in the fourth grade, and I met her on a walking bridge on the way to Wednesday catechism. My only real friend 'til then was my cousin K. K's dad was my dad's much younger brother, and Uncle A worshiped my dad (who wouldn't?), so our families spent an inordinate amount of time together. It was one of those rare perfect storms in which my mom and her mom actually liked one another. You know how couple friendships are ~ either the women are best pals and one guy learns to tolerate the other, or through family, the married pairs are thrown together and everybody decides to make the best of it. K's mom brought out the best in Mom ~ taught her to loosen up; not be such a prickly thorn.

K was one year older than me, which was acceptable in the annals of little-kid approval. From about age five, we tagged along together, creating tiny-girl mayhem.

She was one of those flawless beings ~ golden-haired and sky-blue-eyed ~ who couldn't do anything wrong even if the notion had flitted like a fat bumblebee into her mind. I, on the other hand, was a mess of dense red hair with a tangled desire to create something, but no earthly idea how to do it.

My mom actually preferred K to me. It didn't hurt my feelings ~ much. I would prefer K to me. In later years, Mom actually took vacations with her. Nevertheless, my cousin and I bonded over Ricky Nelson songs, like this:


Our eight-year-old paths converged. 

My dad got it into his head that I should take accordion lessons (I was apparently the experimental kid in the family), and thus, K and her brother took lessons, too. Our music teacher thought it would be neat to form a little trio with the three of us. (Of course, K played her accordion perfectly while I was admonished for dragging my basses). 

Somehow we were coerced into buying matching bandolero outfits, with Cordobes hats, white-fringed black felt skirts, and plastic cowboy boots. We may have even had neckerchiefs. Our mothers paraded us out to local nursing homes to ply our trade. By then I had been relegated to snapping brushes against a snare drum (because my accordion skills were so lacking). K's brother claimed the accordion spot and K strummed a guitar. We were the complete package. Our big number was "Bye Bye Love", on which I somehow snagged the solo on the opening verse. We eventually harvested more money than any eight-and-nine-year-olds could dream of reaping ~ through drunken tips ~ not from nursing home residents! (see below).

K and I (and her big brother) actually ended up living together for half a year. Our bachelor uncle had purchased a triple-threat establishment in a small town that featured a bar, a restaurant and a service station; and he sorely needed a cook. So my mom and K's mom rotated weeks of short-order hash-slinging for extra seed money; and thus it only made sense to move us kids there permanently and enroll us in the local parochial school. We were ensconced in Uncle Howard's attached apartment and plied our trade as traveling minstrels, holed up in the service station lobby as drunks exiting the bar threw quarters and dollar bills at us. The three of us purchased glass piggy banks at the local mercantile and stuffed those hogs with loose cash and coin. K and I periodically raided our stash and bought colorful beaded necklaces and miscellaneous scraps at the five-and-dime.

Our first day at Catholic school, K, naturally, was a big hit; while I wanted to crawl inside a culvert. I think I eventually made one friendship ~ a girl who was as mousy as I. K was effervescent. Complete strangers would amass at her feet. She instantly became the most popular girl in her fifth-grade class. At home, she and I were best buds, but out in the real world K had many universes to command, and she precisely ignored me. I didn't have enough friends that I could afford to diss any of them. K was a princess in any company.

Our life in Uncle Howard's apartment was a cornucopia of new rock and roll sounds and images on the black and white TV. There was a syndicated program called The Lloyd Thaxton Show that was the poor itinerant's alternative to Bandstand, but, holy cow, was it great!

Here is what our eyeballs witnessed on our cathode-ray tube:










I guess you had to be there:


Albeit not rock and roll, this guy was everywhere in 1964:


Yep, The Beatles didn't appear on Lloyd Thaxton's show in '64. I guess Lloyd just didn't pay enough. Not that we didn't know who The Beatles were. We had to appease ourselves with our pocket-friendly transistor radios to hear the most influential band of all time.

The last time I saw K, I was eighteen and not quite moved out of my house, and she and some friends came to visit my mom. Not me. My mom.

But one can't sweep away what once was. K was a huge part of my life; at least a very momentous piece of it. 

I bet she's still out there, sweeping strangers off their feet.














Saturday, February 24, 2018

Life In 1964 ~ With Music!


It occurred to me that 1964 is akin to the nineteenth century to many people. To me it's my childhood, albeit somewhat hazy by now. My mind flashes on scenes, but they sort of run together. My "fun adventure" possibly lasted no more than six months, but my brain squeezes it into approximately one week.

My regular life wasn't what one would call exciting. I rode the orange bus two times a day and in between I endeavored to grasp knowledge inside my third grade classroom. Granted, third grade was my favorite grade. My teacher, Mrs. Thomlinson, abetted my natural show-off tendencies. I was a third grade star. Then came summer vacation and I tried to find adventures, but living in the country demanded that I engage my imagination in order to find things to do that didn't involve traipsing along a dirt road, riffling my outstretched hands across the tall wheat-heads. No wonder I made up little melodies and told myself stories. It was just me alone with the sapphire sky.

Then my Uncle Howard stepped in. He'd invested in a triple-threat business in a tiny town called Lisbon; a splotch of a village criss-crossed by Highways 27 and 32 in the southeastern sector of North Dakota.

This is it:


As you can see, it's now an Eagles Club. And smoke free? Ha! Not in 1964!

The establishment was called Triple Service - because it contained a bar, a restaurant, and a service station. One-stop drinking! The problem was, my uncle was a bachelor and he didn't exactly know how to cook. So he presented a proposal to my mom and my aunt. He'd pay them handsomely to alternate weeks functioning as fry cooks. My mom, scouring her checkbook, acceded. Farming was a credit business. One charged everything; gas, seed, groceries, clothes -- everything except ice cream cones -- and waited for a late fall certified check to grace the mailbox so the charge accounts could be settled up. 

Mom had two little kids and me. Luckily my big sister was eighteen and negligibly responsible, so Carole was tasked with minding the little ones while my dad harvested the wheat and potatoes, and Mom and I packed our pink Samsonite suitcases and crunched inside the Ford Galaxie and aimed it down Highway 81 toward Lisbon.

My Aunt Barbara had two kids roughly my age. The deal was that the three of us kids would reside in Lisbon, North Dakota, trading off "moms" every week. It wasn't at all strange, because we'd had sleepovers our whole lives, so Aunt Barbara was really my second mom. 

Living in an apartment attached to actual real life was an awesome experience. We could step outside our kitchen door and inside a tiny room stocked top to bottom with all manner of crystal liquor decanters. Next to that was a cavernous dance floor, hollow in the daytime hours, but slippery and shimmery when the klieg lights were flipped on.

The cafe itself was a parcel of cushiony booths and twirly stools straddling a long Formica counter. 

The Triple Service bar was dark and smoky, lit by lavender sconces, jam-packed on weekend nights, the glow of the Wurlitzer heating up the corner; smelly with whiskey/cigarette butts and hops in the bare-bulb light of day.

My cousins, Paul and Karen, and I, forged a new life inside Triple Service.

We'd formed a little trio, thanks to our accordion teacher back home. Paul manned the accordion, Karen strummed a guitar, and I burnished the snare drum, brushes in hand. We had costumes and everything -- white-fringed felt skirts and western shirts and boots. I don't remember if there were hats -- possibly only neckerchiefs. Rules prohibited us from actually entering the bar area (when it was open), so we set up in the "triple" area of Triple Service, abutting the service station counter, and put on a show. Our big number was "Bye Bye Love". It's a funny thing about men who'd imbibed -- they turn into philanthropists. We raked in dollars and quarters and nickels from patrons who exited the bar through the service station door.

We became jaded, as neuveau-riche people do; and stuffed our glass piggy banks with coin and greenbacks, until we made that Saturday expedition to F.W Woolworth's to stuff our pockets and plastic purses with candy necklaces and molded Beatle figurines.

The only hitch in our (at least my) resplendent lives was the fact that our mothers had enrolled us in Catholic school. For my cousins, who were used to it, this was de riguer. For me, a dedicated public school girl, it was cataclysmic. My new fourth grade teacher was a nun! Nuns were evil, my catechism experience had taught me. Evil and sadistic. However, this teacher was semi-youthful and frightfully timid, so I settled in. The curriculum, however, was predicated on 1963 topics, and this was 1964! So, I was bored because I'd already learned all this stuff, and I hated my new school, because I didn't like new people. I wasn't what you'd call "easy to get to know". I'd always had a best friend back home, and it hadn't been easy choosing that honor. Best friends had to meet exacting standards. Karen, on the other hand, always had a group of friends, so the pressure on her was less. She adapted to our new school the very first day. I was miserable for at least a month.

And the nuns at the school, especially the "Head Nun" (sorry; I am not up on Catholic school lingo), heartily disapproved of our living arrangement. "Oh, you live at the place," she would comment. Yes, Sister Denunciatory, we lived at a bar. B-A-R. That sin-soaked den of people enjoying life. Scandalous!

Uncle Howard had a plaque affixed to Triple Service's wall that read:

There's no place anywhere near this place
Quite like this place
So this must be the place

I guess Mother Condemnation was right after all.

Kids being kids, we found all manner of off-duty pursuits, most of them stupid. Karen and I climbed up on the roof and perched between the big red letters that spelled out T-RI-P-L-E S-E-R-V-I-C-E and serenaded the guys who'd pulled up to the gas pumps below. "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" was our favored choice. Paul, Karen and I hid in the liquor room, which was right off the cavernous dance floor and did stupid things, like slide ice cubes across the linoleum. Paul, one night, captured a frog outside, and released it to hop across the floor. Essentially, we were scientists -- we just wanted to find out what would happen.

The juke box was Karen's and my tether. We inspected the white and red title strips and gleaned our musical education from Uncle Howard's ten-cent singles and fifty-cent album showcases. She and I created a comic book, the premise of which was, what happens to musical artists when they get old. That juke box really assisted our creativity. I do remember that Bobby Bare was a bear. Bent Fabric was shaped like -- well, I guess you can figure that one out. Uncle Howard passed our creation among his patrons and they loved it. We got orders for more, which we had priced at twenty-five cents each; but you know how it is with designing something -- once you've done it, it becomes monotony the second or third time. We made a half-hearted effort to produce more copies, but finally drifted away and into more interesting endeavors.

So, what did we glean from Uncle Howard's juke box? Bear in mind that Uncle Howard's clientele didn't go for that rock 'n roll "noise", so his musical choices were relatively sedate.

This was the hottest, I meant hottest, new act of 1964:




 Here's that "Bent Fabric" guy:


Little Millie Small:



One can never, ever forget Bobby Bare (who is not, in reality, a bear):


My dad liked this song; therefore, I, too, like it:



Dean Martin:



A gal named Gale Garnett:


Believe it or not, this was huge in '64. Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz (I guess):




Karen's and my seminal number:


Roger Miller again:



There was no one, however, who dominated country music in 1964 like Buck Owens dominated. Buck Owens was everything. I wasn't even a country-western fan (I was a Roy Orbison fan), but all I knew about country music revolved around Buck Owens.




The couples who stepped onto Uncle Howard's dance floor on Saturday nights contented themselves with Ernest Tubb covers played by a bolo-tie-clad trio of local musicians.We, in the liquor supply room, listlessly tapped our feet to the thump-thumping bass guitar. Had Buck Owens suddenly made an appearance, especially with Don Rich and the guys, it would have been like Uncle Howard's juke box come to life.