The summer of 1964 we freshly- minted high school graduates ready to face the big bright sun new world that had been laid out for us, and that we felt we could shuffle around at will if things didn’t work out the way we wanted them to, were under the sign, as old Wordsworth’s poem proclaimed, of those who could claim “to be young was very heaven.” More importantly, we were summer of 1964 and freshly-minted eighteen years old and therefore permitted, legally permitted (although “unofficially” we had entered several months earlier under, uh, fictious IDs and other flim-flam moves aided by a couple of dollars greased into friendly and outstretched hands), to enter the“hot spot” teen night club, the Surf Club, over in Ocean City a few miles (important miles to keep away snooping parent knowledge and snooping no-account local kids) away from hometown Old Saco, Maine. Most importantly we were summer of 1964 and soon to be freshly- minted college freshmen which gave us a certain cachet with, well, who else, the girls who flocked to the club in droves looking for, well who else, looking for guys and maybe a bright prospect college freshman guy.
As with all such teen things though, college guys, dead-end hamburger flippers, lifer gas station grease monkeys or short life low-rider bikers, this one summer of 1964 Saturday evening, a July night, that put things in joe college hopes perspective, started off slowly. Slowly meaning the girls were not flocking into the club in droves, those that had entered did not look like they were looking for soon to be freshly-minted college freshmen but rather solid gas station grease monkeys (who at least had the advantage of being able to help fix that old 1957 Desoto that was always dripping oil, and for free. Well, kind of. ). A little later though thing s did pick up once the local legend cover band , The Rockin’ Ramrods, started to warm up for their first set and suddenly the place was filled with girls (and guys too, not with the girls, it was that kind of place, strictly a meet and match place.)
Now part of the reason that things had started slowly was that everybody with any dough and a few connections had brought “the fixings” with them. In twenty- one legal age Maine the Surf Club was strictly, very strictly “no alcohol allowed.” So “the fixings,”meaning alcohol in those days, meant that one and all had spent the early evening out along the seashore boulevard parking lot that stretched from the Surf Club to Seal Rock down at the far end of the Ocean City Beach drinking and getting themselves “rum” brave enough to face the evening. We (my old high school corner boys from Mama’s Pizza Parlor over on Main Street, and me) had done our share of cheap jack Southern Comfort drinking (straight up, not a good idea as I will tell you about some other time) as well but being rookies at this business had come early and had finished up our portions already so we slipped inside the club just a little too early.
Once the band started up though I was rum brave enough to corner a girl
I had been eyeing for a few minutes, and she, I thought, had been eyeing me. (I told you it was that kind of place, with guys eyeing and girls eyeing in order to live up to that meet and match reputation.) What caught my fuzzy, bleared eye was that she was wearing high-heel sneakers, light blue, that were the minute rage among young women around our way that summer. And that meant that she was hip, hip in a way that guy could think about, or dream think about.
Wouldn’t you know though it just that minute when I asked her for a dance the band started to play Louie, Louie by the Kingsmen, a song that had practically become the national anthem of the Surf Club (and maybe the national anthem of party and teen club hungry, boy and girl hungry, youth everywhere). Now I didn’t (and don’t’) dance particular well but my moves on that song must have impressed Betty enough. After that dance was over and I had said thank you she asked me to come back to her wall (when the music started the walls were where you wanted to be not caught at some hunker-down no eyeing table with your friends) to talk to her. Later, after some feeling out talk to see if we did match (she was going to some school down in Boston, Emerson, I think, to study television production, and I thought that was cool, very cool at the time. And match-worthy) she asked me, if you can believe this, if at intermission I might not like to go with her to her car and have a drink or two to cool off in the seaside summer night. Yes, that summer of 1964.
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