My Beatles Experience

There has been a lot on television this month about the 50th anniversary of the appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. It has prompted my own Beatles memories. I was 10 (coming up 11), and I saw that show. My best friend in school and I watched and then called each other. We were excited. We didn't really know why, we just were. She was my first "cool" friend. She taught me how to do the jerk, and other hip (at the time) dances.

I had another old friend who had moved away a year or two before, to Houston, which might as well have been to Mars back then. We didn't have cell phones, or even our own private phones. Our parents wouldn't let us call long distance. We could write letters, but that got old pretty quickly. That friend though, Carolyn, had the advantage of having parents who were also friends with my parents. So when they did come to Corpus we usually got to see each other. She was as Beatles-crazy as I was. All we did when we were together was talk about the Beatles. We daydreamed about them, and we played their records on my old box record player, endlessly. We were in love with the Beatles. All four of them. We had their pictures tacked on our walls. As soon as a new song came on the radio, we raced out to buy a 45.

In the early summer of 1965, Carolyn and her parents came to visit. They had a proposal to make to my parents. Carolyn was busting with excitement. The Beatles were coming to Houston, and at that moment, as we whispered in my lavender room, her parents were asking my parents if I could come to Houston and attend the Beatles concert with her and another girlfriend of hers. I felt the breath go out of my lungs, and it stayed out for about an hour before my parents called me into the kitchen where they had been talking with Carolyn's parents. What did I think about the idea of going to Houston to see the Beatles in August? WHAT DID I THINK?……!!!

I really couldn't believe that my parents were going to let me go. I would be 12 by then, which seemed very old to me, but they never had thought so before. And they were going to pay for me to FLY to Houston, where Carolyn and her dad would meet me at the Hobby airport. I had never been on a plane before. The prospect of a plane trip, by myself, was almost as exciting as the idea of actually seeing the Beatles in person. The days dragged by that summer. Unbelievably slow.

But finally August arrived. My bag was packed. I had on my best satin and lace dress, complete with stockings, low-heeled T-strap shoes, and gloves. We got dressed up to go on airplanes back in those days. Mother and Daddy took me to the airport and walked me out the terminal door onto the tarmac. They kissed me goodbye at the base of the rolling stairway that rose up into the plane. The Corpus airport had no "jetway" at that time. Nobody had heard of such a thing. You walked people right out onto the runways and said goodbye just before they stepped up onto the plane. Times were much simpler, and nobody flew around the country just for work or the hell of it. An airplane ride was something special, and rare.

I was nervous. The stewardess showed me to a window seat. The big propellers on the plane started to whirl. They were loud. As the airplane took off, I was transfixed. I pressed my face to glass and watched the cars on the road below turn into toys. We rose above clouds that had rainbows gleaming inside them. I adored every single second of that plane ride. In about an hour, we landed at the Houston airport. Carolyn and both her parents were there to meet me. Carolyn's mother said I looked elegant in my gloves and lacy dress. I felt grown up and sophisticated.

That night we went to the Sharpstown Mall. We didn't have a mall in Corpus yet and I was fascinated by all the stores under one big roof. We went to a record store. They had posters all over advertising the Beatles concert that was sold out for the next day. We flirted with some boys that were hanging around in there. I had on a Mary Quaint style mini-dress, blue with an empire waist and flared sleeves. I bought a 45 of a song I had heard on the radio by some new recording artists named Sonny and Cher. The song was "Baby Don't Go." Carolyn and I played it over and over on her box record player that night. We were hyped and hardly slept a wink.

How we got to the Houston Coliseum the next day is foggy in my memory. So is the other girl who went along with us. She was Carolyn's friend and after that trip, I never saw or heard from her again, but the three of us were the very best of friends all that day. Carolyn's dad drove us, and before he let us out at the curb, he handed us all our tickets. I still have the stub. The general admission ticket cost $5.00. I guess Mother and Daddy paid for it. I'm not sure.

The place was packed. Later they said 10,000 people, mostly girls, filled the Coliseum. There were several opening acts that we all endured with polite applause, but nobody listened much. The Master of Ceremonies, a radio deejay called "The Weird Beard" got up on stage and announced that the Beatles were in the house. The place erupted. Out they came, looking just like they did in magazine pictures. Girls screamed and the whole place surged forward. They started playing "Twist and Shout." The crowd went wild. Girls were trying to get up onstage, but a line of policemen had blocked their way. The three of us stood up on our seats like everybody else but still we couldn't see them well. You could feel the bass and hear the drum, but the rest of the music was lost in the screaming.

Carolyn nudged me. She and her friend had an idea. She was pointing down at the floor. In the pandemonium I couldn't hear her at all, but I followed her lead. The three of us got down on the floor beneath the seats and crawled. We were only about five seats from the aisle, and when we got there, we were stopped by a policeman who motioned for us to go back. Carolyn just shook her head fiercely and motioned that we wanted to leave. The policeman let us by and we went in the opposite direction from the stage. Carolyn's friend lead the way; I guess she was familiar with the layout of the Coliseum. She took us up to the balcony which had emptied when the Beatles came on the stage. We went all the way to the front of the balcony, sat down, and had a bird's eye view of the whole band: John in his slouch hat, Ringo's fists full of flashing rings, all in their matching suits and mop-tops swinging. It was fabulous, an experience of a lifetime. It was all over in about 30 minutes, and we were emotional and subdued as we left the Coliseum.

Funny that the plane ride back to Corpus is gone from my memory. Or maybe Carolyn's parents drove me back, I just don't remember. Everything that happened after the concert was anti-climatic and unimportant. But I had seen the Beatles. In person. When school started again a few weeks later, I was the envy of everyone who believed me. A lot of them didn't. Thought I was bragging. Probably I was. Probably I rubbed it in a little too much. I know I felt pretty special. I still do.