20 YARDS FROM IMMORTALITY.

The year was 1964, the day was September 16th.  The location was City Park (football) Stadium, New Orleans, Louisiana.  This time instead of a football game the event was a BEATLES concert.  The Beatles was by far the next great thing in music for my generation and to me it seemed that they easily surpassed the great Elvis Presley in popularity, although in 1964 Elvis was still going strong.

As a young boy, I was taught that if you wanted something out of life, you had to work for it.  I had held a couple of other jobs, sometimes two at a time by the age of 14 which I had just reached when The Beatles came to town. 

Previously, I had sold soft drinks at City Park (football) Stadium and Tulane Stadium during football games.  Back then, all soft drinks were in heavy glass bottles, not the plastic ones you see today.  The soft drink sellers, mostly young boys in their early teen years, although some older men who weren't qualified to do other jobs, sometimes sold these drinks and other food items like peanuts or popcorn to the masses that attended the football games.

The drinks were often carried in wire baskets, six drinks to a basket.  Savvy sellers would add as much ice as the thin wire baskets could hold, in order to keep the drinks cold.  The sellers would walk up and down the stadium steps, hawking their wares shouting, "SOFT DRINKS, GET YOUR ICE COLD SOFT DRINKS RIGHT HERE!"  It wasn't always easy to get people to part with their hard-earned money.  If my memory serves me correctly we sold the soft drinks for about $.20 a bottle back then and minimum wage was $1.25 per hour.  Contrary to what you might think, very few bottles ended up broken.  I guess people were a lot more conscientious back then and cared about their the impression that they left behind.  I sold the peanuts and popcorn and liked selling the peanuts because you could get a pretty good penny for the peanuts and the bags were small and you could carry a lot of them and didn't have to return to the concession stand that often to refill.  The soft drinks, with wire basked and ice could leave a severe impression and even blisters on young, tender hands but since my parents were too poor to provide me with an allowance, I was taught to earn my own money and looking back, it taught me the value of money.  "PEANUTS, GET YOUR HOT ROASTED, DELICIOUS PEANUTS RIGHT HERE!".  I learned early on that a vivid, tasty description sold your item faster than just "peanuts, twenty-five cents a bag".

This particular day, I had heard about this band from Liverpool, England called the Beatles and I wasn't too excited about going there to watch them as much as I was thinking about the large number of people who might attend this spectacle.  I really wasn't that familiar with their music although I had heard them perform on the Ed Sullivan Show in January of 1964.  I remember thinking to myself that their haircuts somehow looked effeminate.  I was only 13 at the time I saw them on the small, black and white television that my parents had in their living room and I kind of liked their music but at the time it was a new kind of music that I wasn't used to hearing and couldn't make up my mind if I really liked them or not.  For crying out loud, their hair looked like a girl's hair style.  Back then, I combed my hair straight back and there were different classes of teenagers.  Some guys were called "frats", short for fraternity brothers while others were called "hoods" short for hoodlums.  Another name that I NEVER see in print or hear about is the word "Pit or Pitts".  I don't know what happened to that particular word as it seems to have been lost in history or perhaps it was just a New Orleans neighborhood thing.

This day I was disappointed at the size of the crowd and didn't really sell that many soft drinks.  I was listening to the Beatles serenade what looked like an almost all girl audience in the stadium, with the girls wailing loudly on every major note and new song that they sang.  Many of the girls swooned over and over, some of them to the point where they had to be removed from the stands and provided with medical attention.  I didn't think much about that long hair right then and there but later on it dawned on me that maybe the Beatles long hair was attractive to the girls and a few years later I found myself with hair covering my ears.

Since the girls were screaming and totally immersed in the Beatles' concert, they were not very thirsty for my soft drinks and since I wasn't making much money I decided to possibly find another way to make a dollar or two.  In my young mind, I was thinking that Ringo Starr's drumsticks would most likely sell for a pretty penny if I could find a way to get them.

I watched for about 15 minutes as scores of young people both boys and girls, but mostly girls as they hurled themselves toward the Beatle's stage only to be rebuked by scores of policemen in blue.  There seemed to be no end to the number of policemen, carrying the swooned girls to safety and escorting others, rather firmly back to their seats or out of the stadium or to the really unruly ones, to the police cars that awaited all those who refused to comply.  Order was the protocol for the day and the police did a fantastic job of keeping order in a very chaotic atmosphere. 

The stage was at the South End of the football stadium facing the sidelines.  The sides of the stage were about 6 foot tall and not steps leading up to them.  I don't remember how the Beatles got on the stage as I was busy trying to sell soft drinks.  There were probably some portable steps that they climbed to get to the stage platform.  The back of the stage was very high and I believe it looked like a wall that would be difficult to climb.  I had set my mind to working on how to snatch the drumsticks from Ringo's hands.  At 14 years of age, I was quick as a mongoose and weighed little more than that but that didn't prevent me from imagining that I could get Ringo's drum sticks.  It was obvious that all of the policemen were at the front of the stage separating the stage and the Beatles from the frenzied fans, some who were absolutely hysterical.  Me, on the other hand, I was calculating and hell bent on getting those drum sticks.  I was at the North End of the stadium and there was NO ONE there except for me.  As I looked at the side of the stage which was about 6 feet in height I decided that I could make the run from the north end of the stadium to the side of the stage and catapult myself up onto the stage before anyone would notice and a surprised Ringo would most likely quickly give up his drum sticks to a stark-raving-mad boy of 14.  This was surely my way of achieving immortality or at least making some money in the money-starved world that I came from.  I was sure that I could sell those drum sticks for a handsome price.

I knew there were risks but before they coined the term "YOLO", I was already living that perspective.  Looking around me 360 degrees, I saw that no one was watching me and no one, especially the policemen were paying any attention to the North Side of the stadium.  The stadium seemd to extend about twenty yards from the South Side goal posts.  That meant that I would probably only have to run about 70 yards, catapult onto the stage, snatch Ringo's drum sticks and back off the stage before the police or Ringo knew what had happened.  I took off at a fast trot and as I approached the 50 yard line, I put on a serious burst of speed, the adrenaline pumping my heart and legs faster and faster.  I was about 20 yards from the stage, already calculating my steps and distance so that I wouldn't have to slow my speed or impede my planned catapult onto the stage.  I was running as fast as I had ever run when all of a sudden from no where, I felt my legs go out from under me.  Someone (a policeman) who was obviously much faster than me, tackled me from behind.  The wind was knocked out of me for a minute and I was immediately hustled to the west side of the stadium, arms locked behind my back, held tightly by two strong policemen.  They scared me with talk of being arrested and I wildly started blabbering about how I worked the stadium selling concessions, apologizing over and over.  With much pleading and promises to not make another run at the stage, they agreed to let me go but if I tried again, THEY LOUDLY THREATENED THAT THEY WOULD INDEED ARREST ME and put me in jail.  At 14, I doubt I fully understood what they could actually do but the threat alone was enough to make me cease an desist.  So much for immortality and a good pay day.  This is a youtube link to a video of that actual day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=593B55Kgu2k

You might even recognize me at 3:42 into the video.  Then again, it could just have easily been some other "insane teenager".

JoeyA