2 July, 2018. Houston, TX
I remember one hot summer evening at Pontchartrain Beach Amusemant Park in New Orleans. The sun was going down, the lights began to come on, and a thunderstorm occasionally flickered in the distance over the vast expanse of water.
It was time for some sort of show at the bandstand, so we all gathered around. Cruddy, shrill music wailed and screeched out of a long-outdated P.A. system as neon notes lit up a large cube atop a high pole next to the stage. (I never understood what those cubes were for, anyway.)
Tonight, a movie screen was lowered to the stage floor and instead of trapeze acts, music concerts, or dancing fountains, there would be some sort of film shown.
It began with Sixties rock and roll music, and the theme of the film was the upcoming TV season on one of the networks. It was just an ad - a composite trailer promoting one specific television network. Yep, it was just an 'infomercial,' but we kids didn't care. It was an excuse to wind down. The nice evening breeze coming from the lake cooled us off just a bit and we rested up after running around the amusement park and riding the rides most of the day.
The program began: It was about a conversation taking place some fourty years in the future, and the characters discussed how television was so great in the year 1967 ( approximately).
The main characters were The Beatles - and the super model "Twiggy,"
The Beatles (then at the height of popularity) were now grey-haired, balding OLD MEN, tottering and shaking. Ringo was having trouble holding on to his drumsticks, and the remaining three fumbled with their guitars as they croaked out some tune, or at least tried to.
Twiggy, now a frumpy greying old lady, mercifully toddled in to the room and interrupted the Fab Four's singing to take them back to the present year. We roared with laughter to think of cute little Twiggy, a top model, as an old lady! As IF!
We didn't think about growing older. I guess we thought we'd stay 15 all our lives. That day, we did, as time stood still for us. The earth stopped turning, and it was hard for us to realize that there was a real world outside the glitter and clatter of the amusement park.
I can only remember bits and pieces of that film - having been shown some FIFTY years ago, but I sometimes think: what if I could travel back in time to be with the kids my age in that crowd and tell them how this little skit would and could never take place.
In just over a dozen years from that evening, I'd tell them, some crackpot would shoot and kill John Lennon "for no apparent reason". I'd also tell them that George Harrison would be dead just as the new Millennium broke. I could even tell them that the very park we were enjoying so much - that magical place called Pontchartrain Beach - would one day be no more.
If time travel were possible, I guess I could do that......
Oh, but why bother? Why spoil everything?
The film ended and we had a whole evening of fun and enjoyment to get to. We had rides to ride, cotton candy and hamburgers to eat, and if we wanted to hear the Beatles, we could listen to "Let it Be" on WTIX radio.
We were young then. We lived for the moment, and what a moment it was!
Instead of thinking about the Beatles that evening, I thought about the upcoming new TV season and the wonderful shows that I'd watch. I looked forward to that with eager anticipation.
That was a different time, and a different place.
Those were days when we looked to the future with wonder and anticipation, to the present with happiness, and to the past with distanced wonder.
The years don't go by for nothing. Those of us who made it to today look back on those days with longing nostalgia.
Yes, I guess you could say I saw The Beatles play on-stage at Pontchartrain Beach.
But I really wish I could see a concert of the original Fab Four today. Of course they wouldn't be the caracatures of doddling old codgers as they appeared in the film. They would all be old men now, walking up onto the stage slowly and with difficulty when once they would run up enthusiastically. Their youthful voices would have surely mellowed with time. But it wouldn't matter.
And I have changed as well. I am no longer the young, energetic teenager I was that humid summer evening, when Pontchartrain Beach was still there, my parents and my grandparents were still alive, the Beatles hits were on the AM radio, my worries were few, and I thought of nothing but having a good time.
And so I did!
Thanks for the memories, Pontchartrain Beach!
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