BACK FROM SPAIN

BACK FROM SPAIN

18 November, 2003 - Houston 

(An email to family and friends in the days before FaceBook.

Hi, everybody

Just to let y'all know we arrived day-before-yesterday safe & sound from

Madrid.

We're still a little jetlagged - and mostly suffering from lack of sleep after that NOISY hotel room in Madrid. HOLY TOLEDO!  And people say that I am talkative! 

Those Spaniards yackedy-yacked till dawn's early light, and really LOUDLY!! 

They must vaccinate folks there with phonograph needles! 

In Spain, the HORN is the most-used piece of equipment on the car - and I am sure nobody dares to venture out into the street without their horn in tip-top-tooting condition.

The police there have sirens on their cars. These they use at night after nine PM, so that everybody in town will notice them. Everybody notices them, all right, but nobody gets out of their way. Hence: MORE HORN TOOTING and siren-wailing.

Police in Madrid do not use their sirens in the day. They are ultra-quiet in daylight hours so as not to disturb the local folks who now are SLEEPING after being out all night cavorting, talking loud, and honking their horns.

The last night there, we saw an altercation that would have gone nicely on the Jerry Springer show: 

A lady evidently was stopped by a security guard at the exit of a clothing store, after the alarm sounded. Now, I am sure everybody has had at least one incident where somehow the salesclerk forgot to remove or demagnetize the anti-theft device. Usually the matter is cleared up within a second, when the receipt for the offending item is produced. In this case, the female security guard began to curse out the customer, who in turn began to curse back, and they raised quite a ruckus! 

I felt like hollering out of my window:"JER-RY! JER-RY! JER-RY!", but I am sure that that action would have not had the desired effect, either on the folks involved in the hollering - or for that matter on Koky, who, by this time, had not slept well for several days, on account of all the horn-honking!

Surprizingly the matter was cleared up, quietly, and the noise level dropped to a din.

In Spain, the folks who work in stores everywhere must eat lemons before going to work. For every friendly or helpful salesclerk there are about 100 rude, dry, or just unfriendly ones just itching to show everybody just how mean & nasty they can get! They come to work dressed up in suits, and they let those suits go to their head.

But I have figured it all out — those poor slobs have to go to work after not getting any sleep because of all the horn-honking, siren-wailing, drunken catterwalling, and hollering and screaming - to say nothing of overtalking. They probably talked so darn much that they's plum tuckered out of talking. 

So no wonder they's so onery.

Leaving the country, we had to pay an airport tax. WHY? Don't know - jest 'cause, that's all. 

Seems to me they'd PAY folks to come into the country to show their sales clearks how to be nice and friendly. Maybe they're just sore that we're leaving, and not taking a few of those sour-pusses with us.

Anyway, despite all that foolishness, we had a great time, spent way more money than we should have, and came back safe and sound. Can't ask for more than that!

Later,

Kenny

BEATLES SONG BOOK

Tuesday, 17 October HOUSTON, TX

One day in, I'd say about Spring of 1965 - the Beatles being in high popularity and I having only recently acquired my first turntable in October of the previous year - decided to buy a Beatles album. By this time, the large store I went to that day stocked not one, but several Fab Four albums from which to choose!

Looking at the songs on the back of the jackets, I recognized a few tunes on each album.

The songs I liked were not all on any one single album, and I had only enough money for one. I could not afford all three or four albums I would need in order to acquire all of those songs.

Enter an album entitled "Beatles Song Book."

To my delight, it had EVERY single Beatles song I knew and liked!! That was it — the purchase made, I headed home the proud owner of my very first BEATLES album!!! 

Here are the songs it perported to have:

From Me To You 2:15

I Saw Her Standing There 2:40

Please Please Me 2:45

P.S. I Love You 2:11

Love Me Do 2:26

I Want To Hold Your Hand 2:24

Can't Buy Me Love 2:16

All My Loving 2:21

A Taste Of Honey 1:56

Do You Want To Know A Secret? 1:58

She Loves You! 2:28

• The very minute I entered the apartment, I rushed to turn on my little record player, and immediately put on the LP.  The familiar notes of "From Me to You" began to play, but not as I recalled them, and not only that, the Beatles did not sing a single note! Not John, not George, nor Paul, nor Ringo - nor anybody else, for that matter.... It was just orchestral music! We called it "elevator music."

Standing there listening to it, I felt like a real "Nowhere Man."

Upset, I picked up the album cover and read it more thoroughly than I had in the store earlier - only to find that, yes, this was the Beatles Songbook, but it was songs - my favorite ones, mind you - played by some orchestra called the Hollyridge Strings!  

The WHO??? The WHAT???

I was a thirteen-year-old punk kid then, and I had just spent about $4.°° of hard-earned money I made from redeeming soda pop bottles for this!! Now I had no money to buy even one of those other records I saw for sale.

Since I liked the songs, I made the best of a bad situation, and listened to the album, and enjoyed it immensely, despite my mistake.

I heard those early Beatles albums at friends' houses, and never managed to acquire a taste for many of the songs of the albums I did not buy that day - and so was happy now that I never bought them! I came to the realization that they were just filler songs.

The day I bought the wrong album turned out to be a lost chance to own a real Beatles album; Throughout my whole life, I never managed to buy a single first-line Beatles LP.  

Not one. 

I eventually bought the blue and red compilations, which by then included all, or most of my expanded list of Beatles favorites. 

I finally got my music!

I finally got my ticket to ride 

- (but she don't care!)