The Misplaced Beatles

An event from my childhood

An event from my childhood? Hmmmm, let me see. Do I write about my visits to my grandparent’s farm and how we (my brothers and cousins) chased the neighbor’s cows around just before milking time? Or about how my brothers and I, with the help of the neighborhood kids, set up a couple of two by four pieces of wood between two branches of a huge tree and then tied a rope to an even higher branch so we could swing out like Tarzan? Or how about when my best friend, Denise, and I would climb a ladder and crawl onto an open garage door and have another friend pull the door down so we could slide off it, never once thinking that if we raised our heads we’d whack it on the frame of the garage? Ignorance was truly bliss back then!

There are so many things that stand out in my mind, but I think I will write about my infatuation with the Beatles. I always wrote stories. In elementary school they were dog and horse stories (I was horse crazy which was transferred to cats in my teenage years). When the Beatles first came out I thought nothing of them. But my best friend and partner-in-crime, Denise, loved them so it wasn’t long before I became infatuated. I was thirteen, Denise twelve. My stories stopped being about dogs and horses and were now Beatle stories, where Denise and I married our favorite Beatle. I never finished it, as the story continued for thirteen composition books. It was a hoot when I found them in 1998 when my brothers and I had the unfortunate task of cleaning out our parents home. I could tell they were written by a child, but what the heck. They brought back many cherished memories.

Denise and I pantomimed the songs from their albums. I have them all - from the first to the last. We did the early ones, as we stopped doing it upon entering high school. Before then Denise was no longer Denise. She was George. And I became Paul. My father would tease us but we didn’t care. To this day I still play the guitar left-handed even though I am right-handed. I learned how to eat with my left hand, write and so on. Talk about obsession!

One day we thought it would be great if we had guitars instead of air, so Denise and I decided to make a couple out of plywood. The pieces we had weren’t long enough for the body and the neck of the guitars so we opted to make the body and neck separately and then glue them together. We started with George Harrison’s guitar.

First we drew the body (just like his) and then we took turns using a hand-saw to cut it out. It was tiring but we didn’t give up. After the body, we did the neck of the guitar. Then we glued the neck to the body and drilled holes for the strap. We let it set over night.

Then came the time to test it out. We put on “Don’t Bother Me” from Meet the Beatles album because George sang it. I stood back and watched Denise pantomime the song perfectly. At the end I clapped.

“Bravo!” I said. “Now bow.”

Smiling, Denise made a flourished bow, extending her hand. That’s when it happened. The neck of the guitar disengaged from the body and the two separate pieces hung from her neck. It was so comical, we both started laughing. Needless to say, we didn’t bother making Paul’s guitar. But boy - did we have a hoot!