From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-High Heel Sneakers, Circa 1964

CD Review

The Rock and Roll Era: 1964, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987

The summer of 1964 we freshly-minted high school graduates ready to face the big bright sun new world that had been laid out for us, and that we felt we could shuffle around at will if things didn’t work out the way we wanted them to, were, as old Worthworth’s poem proclaimed, those who could claim “to be young was very heaven “. More importantly we were summer of 1964 and freshly-minted eighteen years old and therefore permitted, legally permitted (although “unofficially” we had entered several months earlier), to enter the “hot spot” teen night club, The Surf . Most importantly summer of 1964 and soon to be freshly- minted college freshmen gave us cachet with, well, who else, the girls who flocked to the club in droves looking, well who else, looking for guys and maybe a bright prospect college freshman guy.

As with all such teen things though, college guys, hamburger flippers, gas station grease monkeys or low-rider bikers, this one summer of 1964 Saturday evening, a July night, that put things in perspective, started off slowly. Slowly meaning the girls were not flocking into the club in droves, those that had did not look like they were looking for soon to be freshly-minted college freshmen but rather solid gas station grease monkeys (who at least had the advantage of being able to help fix that old 1957 DeSoto that was always dripping oil). A little later though thing s did pick up once the local legend cover band , The Rockin’Ramrods, started to warm up for their first set and suddenly the place was filled with girls (and guys too, not with the girls, it was that kind of place, strictly a meet and match place.)

Now part of the reason that things had started slowly was that everybody with any dough and a few connections had brought “the fixings” with them. In twenty- one legal age Maine the Surf Club was strictly, very strictly “no alcohol allowed.” So “the fixings,”meaning alcohol in those days, meant that one and all had spent the early evening out along the seashore boulevard parking lot that stretched from the Surf Club to Seal Rock down at the far end of Olde Saco Beach drinking and getting themselves “rum” brave enough to face the evening. We (my corner boys from Mama’s Pizza Parlor and me) had done our share as well but being rookies at this business had come early and had finished up our portions already so we slipped inside the club.

Once the band started up though I was rum brave enough to corner a girl

I had been eyeing for a few minutes, and she, I thought, had been eyeing me.
(I told you it was that kind of place, with guys eyeing and girls eyeing in order to live up to that meet and match reputation.) What caught my fuzzy, bleared eye was that she was wearing high-heel sneakers, light blue, that were the minute rage among young women that summer. And that meant that she was hip, hip in a way that guy could think about, or dream think about.

Wouldn’t you know it just that minute when I asked her for a dance the band started to play “Louie, Louie”by the Kingsmen, a song that had practically become the national anthem of the Surf Club (and maybe the national anthem of party hungry, boy and girl hungry, youth everywhere). Now I didn’t (and don’t’) dance particular well but my moves on that song must have impressed Betty enough because after that dance was over and I had said thank you she asked me to come back to her wall (when the music started the walls were where you wanted to be not caught at some hunker down no eyeing table) to talk to her and later, after some feeling out talk to see if we did match, asked me, if you can believe this, if at intermission I might not like to go with her to her car and have a drink or two to cool off. Yes, that summer of 1964.