It was August 20th, 1965. I'm sitting in White Sox Park in Chicago with my sister, Teresa, my brother, Steve and 40,000 insane, screaming fans waiting for the Beatles to come out of the 3rd base dugout. The only problem was, we had at least 2 hours to wait.
We had driven 3 ½ hours from our small town of Elmwood, a small typical Illinois town situated among the tall cornfields about 42 miles northwest of Peoria. Our dad drove us to Chicago and the drive was excruciatingly long but Teresa and Steve were definitely into it while I was non-committal, at best. I had a friend, Tom Merrill who was a huge fan and had bought all their albums, but I thought they were mostly hype and I wasn't quite buying into it. I was all of 13 years old at the time and the Beatles just didn't seem my type. Teresa was 15, and Steve 16 and they would have traveled 500 miles to see them, but to me I was merely going because I couldn't let them get a leg up on me and do something that might be fun and I might miss out, so I reluctantly went, causing my buddy Tom to turn completely green with envy. He couldn't believe that I didn't really care to go. But there I was sitting in the midst of what was Beatle-mania, a term coined by the press that ushered in the British invasion of rock n' roll bands into America.
I had seen A Hard Day's Nite in "64 and was mildly impressed with all the craziness but I for the life of me couldn"t fathom what all this was about. I guess the girls dug these guys and all but the music never really moved me the way that it did others. My mother had bought us the Meet the Beatles album and Steve and Teresa played it until the vinyl wore out. Maybe I was just at that time in my life when nothing excited me too much. I was too young to drive. I was always still at home for the most part, hanging out in that little town of about 1200 people. I mean, you could hardly get into any trouble in that little town. My dream was to someday go to Peoria, where the bigger schools were and there was plenty of action for the taking. But not being able to drive made me feel like I was somewhat a prisoner in my dad's house. Not that dad or mom were bad parents or anything, dad, Elvin and Bernice Davis ware a proud mid-westerners that worked at the Caterpiller plant down in Peoria and worked hard their entire lives to give us a nice home in our quaint little town. We had a nice 2 story 3 bedroom standard Illinois home with a nice porch on a quiet street, the address was 1205 3rd Avenue. It really was a Mayberry type of town where there is a Main St., ice cream parlor, general store and even a sheriff's office.
My friends, of course Tom Merrill, Dick Essington, Skip Mercer all pretty much hung out together on hot summer days going to the local creek, fishing or the public swimming hole just outside of town. They had a small beach, a life guard and a dock to jump off into the brown water, we just called it “the pit”. There was just enough other kids around town to occasionally put together a baseball game at St. Mark's Elementary School.
Being within range of puberty, we'd have some local parties with girls, drinking cola, trying to look tough and slicking our hair back, trying to impress the girls. Some of the guys, though sported the Beatle look but it was out of the question for me, I thought that would be embarrassing as I was still into the “greaser” look. I didn't want to go out on the “long hair” limb for sure. Tom Merrill, however was another story. His hair was cut about the same as John Lennon's. He wanted to be John for sure. Skip Mercer was more of just a kid, a couple years to my junior who would go along with whatever the crowd was into, he was more of a greaser type, after all, his dad, Frank would take us to the stock car races down at Sugar Island, where it was most definitely a more greaser type crowd. Dick Essington was more of a worker type. He had his own Paper Route. He delivered the Peoria Journal Star every darned morning before daylight. Dick lost his parents in a train collision when he was 5 years old. He had been raised by his uncle John and aunt Helen, who were nothing short of pure tyrants. I remember often seeing cases of Pepsi in the garage and Dick would explain that the Pepsi was for uncle and aunt , whereas Dick was only allowed to drink kool-aid. I swear the only reason why his aunt and uncle took Dick in was for the money, as they would receive money from a fund to take care of him, two brothers an a sister. I would sometimes go over to his house to hang out and rarely would you hear a kind word or see a smile from his aunt Helen. But Dick was a stand-up guy and a hard worker. He didn't much care for music one way or another, being a year older than me, I think Dick was probably counting the days and the dollars to get his butt out of there as soon as was humanly possible. But that was still 4 years away for him.
