Chapter Three

1964 (part two)

I don't remember the first time I ever heard Dahlia's voice, but I must have been seven years old because that's how old I was when she and my dad got married. Apparently, she was a well-off widow lady caught off guard by the charming used car salesman from Florida. They met at a beach resort in the Florida Panhandle and after a whirlwind courtship, settled into married life back in Tampa. For a while they lived in a small apartment on North Boulevard just down the street from the Florida State Fairgrounds.

There were good times when I visited on weekends. My dad and I played dominoes, Dahlia served up delicious downhome cooking, and the three of us watched the Hit Parade on TV. On Saturdays, I played with my toys in back of Wallace's office on his new used car lot on Hillsborough Avenue.

About two years later, going on nine, I asked Tommy if I could live with my dad during the week. At the time I lived with her and my stepdad, Leonard, in St. Petersburg. Leonard and his brother had just purchased a tavern by the bay on Gandy Boulevard. I went to 54th Avenue Elementary finishing up the third grade. Afternoons after school I hung out at the tavern, a place called The Little Skipper.

Some time in the summer of '59 I adopted the vague but determined notion that I wanted to play Little League baseball the following spring. It seemed to me that all my friends going into fourth grade had dads who played catch with them. How could I play Little League if I only saw my dad on weekends? Compared to my friends in St. Petersburg, my catching and throwing needed lots of work.

One morning at the breakfast table Tommy told me she was sorry that Leonard wasn't able to play catch with me more. "But I always thought you and I did pretty well playing catch."

I squirmed. "We do. But...you know. It's not the same."

"I know," Tommy said. "I always knew, I guess. Is there any other reason you want to live with your dad?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Yeah."

"All right, Son. If you really think you want to make this change, I suppose we can do it. When were you thinking of? At the beginning of the school year?"

"Sure. Then I'll be ready for spring."

My new school in the Hyde Park section of Tampa was two stories tall, made of red brick, and it had ancient wooden stairs that creaked up and down and ancient wooden desks to match in the classroom. I liked Gorrie Elementary and my new teacher, Miss Myrna Tolliver, who turned out to be kind of shy like me. Sometimes I rode with our next door neighbors, the Lockharts. On other days Dahlia would transport me across the causeway bridge from our house on Davis Island to the square brick school off Bayshore Drive.

Either way we usually drove past the Little League field where I would soon take the diamond in the green & white uniform of the Redwing Carriers.

In the beginning it seemed okay——my move to Tampa, that is. I liked my school. I liked Miss Tolliver. I liked seeing my dad more than two days a week. The problem seemed to be...as time went by, anyway, Dahlia seemed to be...well, less and less happy about having me around five days a week.

Of course my dad stayed busy. The used car business was tough and he seemed to switch every few months from sales manager at the big Chevrolet dealer to owner of his own lot. So he worked hard. And when he did come home, Dahlia didn't exactly encourage him to jump outside and play catch with the resident nine-year-old.

Good thing I had the Lockhart boys next door and Bobby Mitchell across the street. They were older but put up with the stubborn rookie neighbor who learned how to catch, throw and swing a bat even though I started out as the surefire "last pick" in the sandlot games down the street.

But Tampa was a different place and time—over four years ago, to be exact—and I had drawn inward, away from Little League in the last couple. I played for three seasons and that was enough. Besides, Dahlia always hated driving me back and forth to practice and games.

That winter of 1964, living in Sarasota five days a week with my dad and Dahlia, I pursued two main interests outside of school: music and an imaginary world captured on a portable tape recorder. Spending weekends with my mother gave me the opportunity to spend most of my hard-earned allowance in a downtown St. Petersburg record store. There I purchased a platter full of cheap 45s and an occasional album. Actually the record shop resided in the basement of the old Maas Brothers' department store near a park where the old people sunned themselves on green benches. Tommy took me there on Saturday mornings about twice a month and we would both head for the listening booths in the back where you could check out current hits. Come to think of it, I listened to the latest hits; Tommy more often spun LPs by people like Les Paul & Mary Ford, Louis Prima & Keely Smith and the Ink Spots. I had graduated from Elvis to artists such as Brian Hyland, Chubby Checker, Little Stevie Wonder and The Four Seasons.

Back in Sarasota in my clean and correct bedroom with the sliding glass door overlooking the empty goldfish pond I played rock'n'roll on a boxy little phonograph you could latch like a piece of luggage and take with you anywhere. I did, too. Up and back on the bus every weekend, latched and secure under my feet on the floorboard. When you have to ride the bus as much as I did, it's not a brilliant idea to check luggage.

Twice a week, week after week, year after year, I hopped on board with a weekend bag and my phonograph. The only time I checked bags was at the beginning and end of summer. Free for summer with my mom and going back to my dad's in the fall, only twice-a-year did I have too much to carry on.

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As far as the record player goes, Tommy had given it to me for my eleventh birthday. Just this past Christmas, Wallace surprised me with the latest "transistorized" gadget—a portable tape recorder which ran on batteries or electricity. I think he thought I would use it in my new role as a reporter for the school newspaper.

Instead, I invented wild stories and characters by the reel full. UFO landings, gangsterland melodramas, western shootouts, famous sportscasts with twisted endings and "main street reporter" interviews of celebrities and historical figures. I created sound effects using props and my own mouth: the roar of the crowd, racing cars and boats, violent weather, screen doors slamming, horses galloping.

Inside my room sitting on the edge of my perfectly made bed I made up a fantasy world and ruled it the way I saw fit. Once I finished a series of "shows" and filled up a reel of tape, I simply rewound to the beginning and started recording new ones.

One of my favorite routines was to pretend to be a disc jockey on a popular AM radio station. I would drag my well-traveled record player into the act, spinning the platters and filling in the DJ's "patter." Sometimes the act became a TV variety show and I would introduce the performers a la Ed Sullivan on a Sunday night.

About this time in early February the elements of my make-believe world and the real one, the one beamed in on the new color console in front of Wallace's recliner, were about to fuse in unforgettable harmony.

The Beatles exploded on the screen for the first of two appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and both my father and stepmother, devoted fans of the old maestro, were horrified.

"Yullk," Dahlia kept repeating, curling her upper lip in disgust.

"Bleah," Wallace said. "Look at those girls screamin' and cryin'. It's terrible sounding." Did he mean the music or the crowd noise?

"I like it," I said.

"Ugh," Dahlia said. "That ain't nuthin'."

"What do you think of their hair?" I asked, grinning.

"Hah!" she said. "I tell you what. That's sissy stuff."

"Those gotta be wigs," Wallace said. "Else they're queers."

"They kinda act queer," Dahlia agreed.

"It's all an act. They put those wigs on backstage."

"Yullk. All that high-pitched oooohin' and yeahin' and head shakin'. They act like they's fairy boys."

"Maybe they're queer all right," said Wallace. "But I know one thing, one way or the other—that ain't their real hair."

By the time The Beatles closed Ed's show that evening, I was a believer. I believed they were as real as their new haircuts and I felt more excited and energized about life than I had since Kennedy got shot.

After The Beatles' second TV appearance that February, as a reporter for the weekly junior high newspaper, I got to write a column about their performances in the Brookside Bulletin. I have to admit, the review leaned toward flowery. The night it came out, I handed the issue to my father, telling him about my assignment. He took a quick look and tossed the paper back at me.

"Josh, I don't know why you like this Beatles' crap, but it's the sorriest shit I ever heard. As far as I'm concerned they're either fake or queer or both. And whatever you wrote about it, the music's awful."

GO FORWARD TO 1964
(part three)

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(part one)