Joe’s Journal

Chuck Berry RIP: Roll over Beethoven

Wed, 03/22/2017 - 8:30am

Just for the record, this column will not comment on the NCAA basketball tournament (Go Butler), the fact that our garden is hidden under a foot of snow, or the doings in Crazy town, USA , aka Washington, D.C.

Last Sunday morning, when we picked up our newspaper, turned on the TV or picked up the smartphone, we were greeted with the news that 90-year-old Chuck Berry had died.

If those of us who can still remember the old jukeboxes will shut their eyes and turn off their hearing aids, they might be be able to  hear Chuck Berry singing “Maybellene,” one of the first rock-and-roll tunes.

Unlike the news of a celebrity death, Chuck Berry’s passing triggered a smile on the faces of a lot of old folks who could still remember: 

“Maybellene, why can't you be true Oh Maybellene, why can’t you be true.

You’ve started back doin’ the things you used to do.

As I was motivatin' over the hill

I saw Maybellene in a Coup de Ville

A Cadillac rollin' on the open road

Nothin' will outrun my V8 Ford

The Cadillac doin' about ninety-five

She's bumper to bumper, rollin' side by side

Maybellene, why can’t you be true.”

You know the rest.

It was a long time ago, the 1950s, a simple time. For many American high school boys, it was a time when our fondest dreams were filled with girls, rock music and hot rod cars. and, of course, girls.

It was a time when we all respected our national leaders, like President Dwight D. Eisenhower, although national politics was the last thing on our mind, We were more interested in getting a driver’s license.

It was a time of peace. Our relatives had returned from World War II and the Korean Conflict.

The newspapers were careful not to call the Korean incursion a war. Instead, they called it a police action, although the soldiers and Marines who served there said it sure looked like a war to them.

Our homes had telephones, (land lines with wires), but many of us had “party lines” where we shared lines with several neighbors. You would pick up the phone and dial a number if someone else was not using the line.

Folks denied it, but many times, my mother suspected folks were listening in on her conversations.

No, it was not the NSA or the CIA tapping her phone. It was a neighbor listening in for some gossip.

You could call your Aunt Mary down in Florida, but the call was “long distance” and cost a lot more.

Not everybody had a car. If you were sick, your parents would call the doctor, and he might come to your home.

If you were injured, or really sick, you might have to ask a neighbor to take you to the hospital, or, you might have to call a cab.

It was before our towns were blessed with high-tech ambulances staffed with highly trained EMTs who were just a phone call away.

Here in Maine, the towns were really separate, mostly self-contained, communities.

I am told by reliable sources that the kids in East Boothbay didn’t know or play with the kids from “the Harbor” until they attended high school.

Some high school dances were held in the gym and called “sock hops” because the athletic coaches wouldn’t let us tear up their polished basketball courts with our boots known as “clod hoppers.”

In the midwest, where I grew up, school dances often featured boys on one side of the gym and the girls on the other side. Boys would huddle together with their pals and tell bad jokes to hide the fact they were too timid to walk across the floor and invite a girl to dance. Many times, when the music played, the girls would dance with each other.

Later, when we were juniors, our parents might – I say might — let us have the family car for the evening to let us go on “real dates.”

Sometimes a “real date” involved a trip to a drive-in movie. There, you and your date could sit in the car and watch the movie. I am sure lots of teenagers actually watched the show.

It was a wonderful time, but all too short, for it wasn’t long before we left high school, went to work or college and learned of a little Asian nation called Vietnam.

Then we found out that our draft cards, the ones we tried to alter to make our ages appear to be old enough to purchase beer, required some of us to report to an Army induction station.

But that is another story, for another time.

Thanks for the tunes Chuck, and the memories.

May you rest in peace.