Don't Worry Baby, Everything Will Turn Out Alright

Don't Worry Baby

Everything Will Turn Out Alright

Of course he'd pick that song, I thought. He seems to get into the zone and just wants to hear those particular three or four songs, but most especially that one. I sighed and smiled. It wasn't a bad song. In fact it was a pretty good one, all things considered. Good tune, easy to sing along with. Can't really gripe about it.

We were sitting in a restaurant, one that we frequented quite often, eating cherry pie and drinking cup after cup of hot coffee. It could have been sometime in the afternoon, but it was more likely late at night, maybe even after midnight. Since the time period was late Eisenhower or early Nixon, each of the booths in the joint had a juke box selector right there on the wall. Ya slid in yer quarters and ya punched in the buttons. Then yer song played. They were all mostly rock 'n roll, of course. This was actually before they dropped the “'n roll” to make it just rock. Definitely back in the early '60's.

The quarter was finally inserted and the appropriate buttons pushed. The first was good ol' Elvis singing “Crying in the Chapel”. Of course it was. It was OK, I thought. Not my fave – a little on the mournful ballad side, but... Bill surely liked it. But when it was over and the next song started I smiled. This was more like it. The Beach Boys and “Little Honda”. First gear, second gear – all those so, so familiar lyrics. Of course we sorta jiggled along with it and sang the lyrics around bites of the cherry pie and sips of hot coffee.

That was back when Honda in America meant a two-wheeled vehicle of lower power. I think. Like the song said, a groovy little motorbike. Cool! And more fun than a barrel of monkeys! Hot dog! Dunno if a barrel of monkeys would make my day now, but they sounded like so much fun back then. And the song was by the Beach Boys, doggone it! Those surfer dudes out there in California where the waves were (apparently) big, the cars were all woodies (what's a woodie?) and all the girls were blond surfer girls with hot bikinis (that part seemed alright!). The Beach Boys! Son of a gun. What would that era have been without their musical offerings? Probably all Elvis mooning about crying or something.

Or about his pore hound dog.

For an Ohio boy, California and surfing and lil' Hondas were pretty exotic. Dairy farming, homework, small-town doings, camping with the Scouts on weekends, dad working in the factory and mom staying home and keeping house were the norm, the invisible ocean of here-and-now that we, like fish, unconsciously swam through. With the occasional musical Cliff Note that another whole different world was out there.

Of course these are all jumbled recollections of the past. Sometimes all it takes is a smell to transport you somewhere or to retrieve a long-forgotten memory. Or a taste. For instance, the taste of root beer takes me immediately to a small diner in my hometown, the Dyn-a-Mite Cafe in the very early '60's. I am playing a pinball game and drinking Hires out of a long-neck bottle. It's vivid, too. I'm there, doggone it! Other times it's a scent that's the triggering element. White Shoulders was my mother's scent. It and my mother are virtually synonymous in my head. As is the same with Estee and my wife. I'm sure you can bring to mind similar ones.

But it's music that, at least for me and probably for you also, is the trigger for a lot of memories. Not all songs, but a lot of them will take you somewhere. Usually some place pleasant. With a particular girl, a particular place. Some songs won't bring about a single memory but a melange of connected images – a vacation to the beach, a hot date with your sweetheart of the moment, a close friend, your sixteenth birthday or a very special kiss. Maybe a juicy story about the singer you remember or a concert you attended? There are many, many memories that can be triggered by a song. Hell, maybe only a chord or two from the beginning of the song and voila, Sandy of the dancing blue eyes and honey-blond hair is back in front of your face, smiling at you and holding out her hands for you to dance with her.

Oh yeah...

Anyhow, a lot of these memories came floating back to me last night. My wife and I, along with four other friends, attended a concert at our local fairgrounds. In the infinite wisdom of the committee that picks the artists that perform at our annual fair, the selection comes usually from the ranks of country and western performers. I guess it's a pretty good bet for them as the cowboy hat wearing dudes usually draw a good crowd and that's more money for the committee to spend on improvements to the fairgrounds. I'm usually surprised at that as I'm not a fan of most mainstream country western music. I suppose I haven't been enlightened as of yet.

But, as I said, it's usually a few artists of the country western persuasion that work the grandstand at our fair.

However, this year I guess the available talent also included an old rock 'n roll band who's name was very familiar. And they picked it! Along with two other performers of the country/western ilk, of course, but the headliner this year was... Get ready for it!

The Beach Boys!

I ordered the tickets as soon as they were available for the six of us and began counting the days until “the day”. And that day was last night!

It had been very hot last week here at home and I was concerned that the concert would be a scorcher, a sweat box with music. Our part of Ohio can be a fickle bitch in early September. You can sweat your butt off one day and be shivering and wrapped up in a sweater the next one. Luckily for us the heat wave broke a day or two before the concert and the cooler weather appeared. It actually was very pleasant.

Our noble fairground's grandstand was constructed sometime around a hundred years ago, so you could say it's not really state-of-the-art. The seats do have backs to them, but the seats and backs are all made of wooden slats and they will make your backside feel really sore after a couple hours perching on them. And they're narrow, too! I'm sure that's a relic of our parents and grandparents day when their backsides were not as, ahem, wide as ours are now? Of course the seats could have shrunk over the years, but that's not very likely, is it?

Anyhow, there we were, sitting with the other bazillion (seemed like) folks all squeezed together watching the sun go down, watching our watches and watching the empty stage. Of course the curse of every concert on earth was once again the norm as the 8 o'clock start time was not to be. Should have figured, I guess. All those geezers around me took so darn long to haul their carcasses up the aisles that the performers had to wait on them. I suppose geezerhood would have to include me and my group also, but I hate to admit it. And boy I didn't really remember those grandstand steps being so doggone steep!

At about a quarter after eight the announcer finally came out to make the obligatory statements about not smoking, no photography, no sound recording, yadda, yadda, yadda. And then... it was time for the show!

Now you have to realize that the Beach Boys have gone through a LOT of transformations over the years. A death here, mental illness there, various substitutions and what have you. So the product that was before us last night carried the name Beach Boys, but they were definitely not THE Beach Boys of yore. But, you know... They still were GOOD! We were guessing that one or two or maybe even three of the performers may or may not have been somewhere close to being one of the originals, but by the second song it was pretty much immaterial. They were very, very good! Every gray-and-bald head (and that was a lot of us) was a-bobbin' and a-weavin' as the songs came out, most of the music and lyrics old friends. We sang along, we tapped our feet, we wiggled and danced a bit as the tunes came thick and fast. And there were a LOT of them! The Beach Boys had been so prolific. Barbara Ann, 409, Be True to Your School, California Girls, Don't Worry Baby, Fun-Fun-Fun, Good Vibrations, Help me Rhonda, I Get Around, Little Honda (of course!), Shut Down, and all the surfin' ones – Surfer Girl, Little Surfer Girl, Surfin', Surfin' Safari, Surfin' USA and many, many others.

They did about an hour and three quarters with no intermission. They joked around a bit, but it was almost all songs and almost all of them well, well remembered. Hell, even MY throat was sore from singing along, and I just don't normally do that. Guess the ol' boy got a bit carried away last night. Go figure...

Even with the cramped quarters and the sore butt, the time just flew by and before we knew it they were done. We got 'em back for a quick encore with Fun-fun-fun and her daddy's T-bird, but after that the stage was dark and it was time to go home. The thousands of us soon filed out to the vast parking lots and finally to our cars. Soon we were home and the magic was fading.

But the old songs were still alive in there today, buzzing around in my head and still surfacing from time to time. I find myself humming a tune or voicing a lyric or two as the day has gone on. And the visions of a younger me walking along a golden beach, watching the surfers and the surfer girls under a clear blue California sky, eatin' caramel corn and dancing to a rockin' band still echo and reverberate in the county fair grandstand of my mind.

It was a good time.

And yes baby, everything did turn out alright!