THE BEATLES

The year was 1964 and I was 14 years old.  My parents couldn't afford an allowance so I had to earn my spending money and did so by selling concessions at football games, seat-to-seat, at Tad Gormley Stadium, otherwise known as City Park Stadium back in the day.  Back then there were no beer sales allowed at these games.  Most of the football games were high school teams and I suppose it was a good idea that alcohol wasn't sold.  My specialty was Barq's Root Beer, although from time to time, I would also sell peanuts or popcorn but I sold a lot of Barq's Root Beer back then.  Barq's was a popular, locally created soft drink and they were sold in heavy, glass bottles.  Interestingly enough you seldom saw broken bottles anywhere.  And if you were a real hustler, you would scavenge the empty bottles to return them to the local grocer for a handsome price of $.02 each.  This was back when they paid you to recycle.

The bottle soft drinks were heavy and were carried in a wire basket which had the ability to carry 6 bottles at a time.  I carried one basket in each hand and quickly found out that the people didn't like drinking lukewarm soft drinks and they would let you know it, sometimes after you had already opened the bottle for them.  The football crowd tended to be much older teenagers than myself and were quite boisterous even without alcohol but I can't remember seeing an actual fights at any of the games.  I didn't get rich selling soft drinks but I was able to sell more soft drinks than the other men and boys by heaping large amounts of chipped ice on top of the already soft drink filled baskets.  I would walk up and down the stadium aisles, shrieking, "Soft drinks here, get your ICE-COLD soft drinks here!"  A flash of the ice-covered wire baskets would often spur even the not-so-thirsty attendees into purchasing a Barq's Root Beer.  Sure the baskets were heavy to begin with and the ice just made them heavier but when you need and want to make a dollar, you did what was necessary.  It wasn't only young boys like myself that sold the soft drinks either.  Older men, past their prime with no particular job skills and no retirement could sometimes be seen selling soft drinks as these games.  Some of the men were older than my dad who at that time was already 57 years old, having married when he was 43.

The concession stand manager asked me if I wanted to work a concert coming up and I quickly agreed thinking about the many people who would be attending.  The concert just happened to be the new musical sensation from the other side of the pond, called The Beatles.  The day of the concert was September 16th, 1964 and as I contemplated the large amounts of money I would be making, I had already started thinking about the girls at 14 years of age.  I didn't really know much about them but it was apparent that I was attracted to the opposite sex at an early age and figured that this would be a good place to see and meet some of them.  I hadn't really bought into the Beatles new music but it seemed pleasant enough to me.  There long hair kind of turned me off.  I came from a family who frowned on long hair, at least none of my brothers had what I considered long hair nor did any of my school mates.  I thought The Beatles long hair, kind of made them look like girls and I think that kind of turned me off from liking them early on, because I hadn't bought into the long hair thing just yet.  Anyway, I arrive at the stadium, early as usual, eager to make some good money.  Tips were rare back then but some people did give you a nickel or dime tip every now and then but for the most part, tipping was rare.  I guess money was a little harder to come by back then.

It didn't take me long to see that this concert wasn't the optimum conditions.  The stage was seated at the South end of the stadium.  The concessions headquarters was at the North end of the stadium and that made for a long walk to where the customers were located.  Sure, it was September and this is an outside stadium in New Orleans and it was HOT, almost always hot even at the night games which is what I worked mostly.  The crowds came early and I sold a couple of baskets of soft drinks but it soon became apparent that these people weren't in a soft drinking kind of mind.  Their minds were fixated on The Beatles and concession vendors were an annoyance.  Trying to pitch "Soft drinks here, get your ICE-COLD soft drinks here", against "I Want To Hold Your Hand!" was futile so I sold my last remaining drinks and returned the wire baskets and decided to listen to the concert.  Now like I said earlier, I liked their music but at this early time (for me) I hadn't completely fell in love with their music, after all, who could stomach that long hair on men?  Well the girls and women that were at this concert didn't just like The Beatles; they didn't just LOVE The Beatles, hell, they practically swooned over every chorus of every song.  That long hair didn't seem to turn off the girls for sure.  I had never seen females behave this way.  The closest I ever saw females acting like this was when Elvis Presley would come on the old black and white television we had at home and even then, the girls and women would kind of restrain their ecstasy but that wasn't happening at this concert, no way.

I quickly concluded that the girls were not only not interested in holding my hand but they were revolted by the soft drink pitch.  The long hair on The Beatles coupled with the new style of music that they played had a violent addictive effect upon practical every female in the stadium and even some of the guys.  The girls would swoon from time to time and sometimes rush the stadium, only to bet met by dozens of blue coats linked arm and arm together, preventing anyone from reaching the stage.  Other police officers and medical personnel made steady work by carrying off girls and women who had fainted and fallen to the ground.  It was a spectacle for sure and while I enjoyed the music, I wanted a souvenir and Ring Starr was my favorite Beatle, so that was when I devised THE PLAN. I saw that the stage was well fortified on the West side but was practically void of policemen on the North side.  I was standing at the North end of the stadium when I decided that this was my day of infamy and I would make a bold plan to snatch the drum sticks that Ringo played with, right from his hands.  I mean I was smarter and faster than any of those policemen down there and I had a plan.  I wasn't some delirious, swooning teenager and was more of a soldier of fortune, knowing that those drum sticks would be worth mucho dinero.

So now I'm estimating how long it would take me to run the 70 yards I had estimated to reach the edge of the stage.  The stage was rather high, about 6 feet high but I had deemed quite accessible from the North, especially since it was't fortified by any police.  This plan was concocted in a minute or two and immediately put to work.  As I took off running at a comfortable pace, not wanting to expend too much energy in getting to the stage because I needed to catapult myself to the top of the stage, which I felt I could comfortably do.  My body was light in weight and my feet moved like the Greek messenger of the gods, Mercury, or so I thought.  As I closed the distance between me and the stage, the adrenaline was kicking in and I knew I had plenty of energy left to make the catapult so I urged my muscles to move even faster.  My plan was simple, get on the stage, snatch the drum sticks from Ringo's hands and be gone just as fast as I arrived.  That was it....nothing beyond that.  What did you expect from a 14 year old?  Anyways, my legs are moving as fast as I have ever run and I am maybe 15 yards from the stage ready to make my leap and catapult.  I'm looking side to side and in the front of me, there are no obstacles (no police), I go even faster, when suddenly I am knocked to the ground.  I didn't realize what had happened to me until the police officer twisted my hands behind my back, lifted me to my feet and was scolding me with some harsh language, telling me that I was going to JAIL.   My face had grass and dirt on it and my skin had a slight brush burn in a couple of places but I was fine other than that.  I immediately went into a wail that I worked at the stadium selling concessions and that I didn't want to go to JAIL.  Being incarcerated terrified me as a child, not that I feared closed in places but jail was a place a 14 year old boy didn't want to go.  I didn't know much about the juvenile facilities either but I knew I didn't want to go to JAIL.  So after a very serious scolding, they made me promise not to try that again.  The music didn't have exactly the same attraction as it did earlier, the girls didn't look as pretty as they once did, faces all contorted with emotion that was hard to believe, so I finished listening to The Beatles, at quite a distance from any police officer and finished the concert on a relatively low note.  No drum sticks from Ringo Starr, no girl friends for me to hold their hand and no profits from selling Barq's Root Beer.

Yeah, I know it was a bummer but today is September 12, 2014 and WYES (a PBS television station) has a concert scheduled for September 16, 2014 by the FAB FOUR, the California-based BEATLES tribute band who have toured the world, singing the signature songs that made The Beatles arguably, the greatest band of all time.

My wife decided that she didn't want to go but  I have a couple of tickets for this WYES sponsored concert and will be going to relive my youth if only for an hour and half.

If you see me on the news next Tuesday night, handcuffed and looking a bit disheveled, don't worry too much about me, just come visit me in JAIL and make sure the police didn't take the drum sticks that I stole from Luis Renteria, who plays the drums as Ring Starr.

JoeyA