This column originally appeared on July 1, 2007
Take it from me: Old news stories never die. They get recycled, reprinted and rediscovered. Then they become not news, but history.
The notion occurred to me recently as I revisited two stories from my past. One you’ve heard of endlessly. The other, you haven’t, unless you were born and lived somewhere near Morganfield, Ky.
The better known of the stories is that surrounding the anniversary of the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the psychedelic album by The Beatles that may or may not be the most widely regarded rock music accomplishment in rock’s brief history.
The album came out 40 years ago this summer, and critics have been jumping all over themselves to relive the album’s meaning, its impact on the music world and its true place in rock history. I’ve been revisiting the story because it was one of the last albums I had to plead with my parents to buy me.
In 1967, Sgt. Pepper cost $4.19 cents at the Air-Waye Record store on Ludlow Avenue in Cinncinnati, Ohio, and you could have told me it cost 50,000 gold pieces at the Inn of the Seventh Happiness in Shangi-La, Himalaya and I would have had about as much chance of buying it.
Ten-year-olds in 1967 just did not have $4.19 lying around to spend on a record, even if it was the most monumental achievement in the world of rock music.
It occurred to me after reading the story of the making of Sgt. Pepper one more time that though there is little more new to be added, reading about it still makes me as happy as the day my father brought it home and I dropped our record player’s needle on the rotating vinyl and started singing along.
The other story came jumping back at me a few weeks ago after having slept undisturbed in my memory for the better part of three decades.
At the daily news meeting at the Daily Local News, at which we review the stories available for the next day, an editor began summarizing a wire story about a group of families in Kentucky who were fighting the government to get compensation for the land that had been taken away from them in the days before World War II.
The more the editor read, the more I remembered. I had covered this same story myself in 1980 as a neophyte reporter for the Sturgis, Ky., News, circulation 3,000, just down the road from Morganfield, Ky., the county seat, where the army had built a base on land taken from farmers.
The case was in legal limbo then, and still is, I gather. But it fell to me to write something about the case month after month because, well, that is what passed for news in Sturgis, Ky., population 3,000 -- and one fewer after I’d finally had it with stories about forfeited farms and packed up for Pennsylvania and, ultimately, to writing stories about Andy Dinniman.
Nostalgic nonetheless, I went through my old news clippings from Sturgis looking for whatever I had filed on the Morganfield families. I found much to revisit and rediscover, but nothing of their case. I had indeed left it all behind.
I do, however, have a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s, and I’m still enjoying the show.
Showing posts with label Memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memories. Show all posts
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Feeling Free At Night
This column originally apperaed on June 24, 2007
Last night, something called the Great American Backyard Campout occurred — presumably, since the National Wildlife federation has been promoting it vigorously — in communities across the country.
The purpose of the event is to acquaint, or reacquaint, American children, with nature, by tuning off the Xbox, turning on the flashlight and dropping off to sleep outside where they can see the stars. It’s supposed to be a time when parents and kids and neighbors and communities can all converge upon one another and bond for a few hours in the presence of trees, grass and a firefly or two.
I’m not certain how this all works in the urban world of downtown Coatesville, but I’m not here to pour water on the campfire, so to speak. Hearing of the event simply made me shake my head once again at how different things have become since my childhood.
In August 1969, Danny Biehl, Bernard Frank — my two best friends since nursery school — and I did not need any national organization to tell us of the pleasures of a sleeping bag on a summer’s night.
We had been pestering our parents to let us sleep out since the summer began, and they let us do it not for any high-minded purpose, but simply because they were sick of hearing us ask.
That is the difference between then and now. About as close as we got to exploring the ways of nature was picking green tomatoes off the vines in Danny’s next door neighbor’s garden. And if our parents had suggested that the whole family would join in the night’s activities, we would have called the whole thing off immediately. Bonding with nature or our families was not the point.
The purpose behind our campout was to finally experience a world we had been waiting for all our lives — the grownup world of the night. We wanted a respite from the supervision of adults, a liberation from normal rules, and, most of all, a chance to stay up late and walk around in the dark.
We got all we had hoped for.
After seeing the lights in Dan’s house go out, we made our way off the property, flashlights in hand. This was dangerous territory, being outside on the street after the world had gone to sleep. It was as close to crime as we had ever come, and it felt great.
We prowled the neighborhood, shining our lights at unsuspecting windows. We broke off tree branches and whacked each other as if in swordfights. We jumped behind bushes at the sound of a car engine and sight of headlights, believing that any adult would have rounded us up and turned us in to whatever authorities existed that governed midnight rambling by 12-year-olds on a moment’s notice. We had fun with an exclamation point.
I am certain that the memory makes the conditions that night more idyllic than they truly were. I doubt that the night was as starry, that the moon was as full, or that the air was as warm as I think of it now.
But I am convinced that the laughs we shared were as loud, the excitement was as tangible, and the sense of freedom was real as I remember.
Last night, something called the Great American Backyard Campout occurred — presumably, since the National Wildlife federation has been promoting it vigorously — in communities across the country.
The purpose of the event is to acquaint, or reacquaint, American children, with nature, by tuning off the Xbox, turning on the flashlight and dropping off to sleep outside where they can see the stars. It’s supposed to be a time when parents and kids and neighbors and communities can all converge upon one another and bond for a few hours in the presence of trees, grass and a firefly or two.
I’m not certain how this all works in the urban world of downtown Coatesville, but I’m not here to pour water on the campfire, so to speak. Hearing of the event simply made me shake my head once again at how different things have become since my childhood.
In August 1969, Danny Biehl, Bernard Frank — my two best friends since nursery school — and I did not need any national organization to tell us of the pleasures of a sleeping bag on a summer’s night.
We had been pestering our parents to let us sleep out since the summer began, and they let us do it not for any high-minded purpose, but simply because they were sick of hearing us ask.
That is the difference between then and now. About as close as we got to exploring the ways of nature was picking green tomatoes off the vines in Danny’s next door neighbor’s garden. And if our parents had suggested that the whole family would join in the night’s activities, we would have called the whole thing off immediately. Bonding with nature or our families was not the point.
The purpose behind our campout was to finally experience a world we had been waiting for all our lives — the grownup world of the night. We wanted a respite from the supervision of adults, a liberation from normal rules, and, most of all, a chance to stay up late and walk around in the dark.
We got all we had hoped for.
After seeing the lights in Dan’s house go out, we made our way off the property, flashlights in hand. This was dangerous territory, being outside on the street after the world had gone to sleep. It was as close to crime as we had ever come, and it felt great.
We prowled the neighborhood, shining our lights at unsuspecting windows. We broke off tree branches and whacked each other as if in swordfights. We jumped behind bushes at the sound of a car engine and sight of headlights, believing that any adult would have rounded us up and turned us in to whatever authorities existed that governed midnight rambling by 12-year-olds on a moment’s notice. We had fun with an exclamation point.
I am certain that the memory makes the conditions that night more idyllic than they truly were. I doubt that the night was as starry, that the moon was as full, or that the air was as warm as I think of it now.
But I am convinced that the laughs we shared were as loud, the excitement was as tangible, and the sense of freedom was real as I remember.
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