And when I touch you I feel happy inside.
“Come on, Bobby! Let’s dance!” squealed my sister Jane as she picked me up and twirled me around the room. It was the most joyful sound I had ever heard and we both laughed and spun until we couldn’t stand up. “It’s the Beatles, Bobby!” She was in the grip of that fevered teen condition called Beatle-mania and it was contagious. Rock-and-roll radio pumped out the music all day, but television hadn’t really caught the rock wave yet.
That all changed on February 9, 1964. I was barely a toddler, but I remember the excitement. It was like Christmas, Halloween, and a birthday all wrapped into one as the whole family gathered around the TV set on a winter’s night to enjoy the fine and wholesome variety programming brought directly into America’s living rooms every Sunday by impresario Ed Sullivan. My sisters couldn’t sit still. They bobbed and bounced as they sat on the deep-pile shag carpet as close to the big cabinet that housed the television screen as they could get.
Helen said, “You kids will ruin your eyes!”
The girls answered in unison, “Aw, Mom!”
Then it happened. Sullivan made a stiff introduction and then they appeared. “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you.” And with that line, the Forrest living room exploded with girlish squeals and shrieks of delight. “They’re beautiful!” said Jane, tears in her eyes. She grabbed me and bounced me in time with the music and my feet, with not many miles on them, tattooed the floor with each beat.
I’m not sure what Idie and Helen thought. It wasn’t their music at all and it wasn’t aimed at their generation, but they had their own thing with the music of an earlier era. Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman were particular favorites, and the twin stereos would blast those sounds at their weekend barbecues and get-togethers, where the adults would gather and mix cocktails. I tried to absorb it all. While I could appreciate those records, they didn’t speak to me like rock and roll did.
At first, it was the Beatles. Then came the surf-and-car-culture music of the Beach Boys and the teen-protest, us-against-the-world posture of Sonny and Cher. My sisters were sold on rock and so was I.
Idie, fueled by his booze, could be a character. I was his little buddy. My dad loved to spend money as fast as he made it, and we did all right, especially me. I got what I wanted, mostly. I went to basketball camp every summer, and we had a boat that Idie would use to take me fishing or water-skiing at the Salton Sea. I’d be asleep, and he’d come into my room before the sun was up.
“Get up, Bobby!”
“What?” I’d say as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
“We’re going fishing! C’mon, get dressed! Time’s wasting!” he’d say as he clapped his hands for emphasis. I’d fumble with my clothes and we’d pile into the car and head to the Salton Sea, a vast body of water that had been created when the Colorado River jumped its banks during a heavy flood in the early twentieth century and filled an ancient lake bed. Since that time, evaporation, agricultural runoff, and the lake bed itself had given the waters an ever-increasing level of salinity. But there were fish in its salty depths. Corvina, mostly. It was a fun place. In the 1950s and 1960s the area around it had been developed as a resort and there was boating, swimming, hotels, and bars. Now, through years of neglect, it’s nearly a ghost town and an environmental nightmare with huge seasonal fish die-offs and plagues of flies. But back then, with Idie, the Salton Sea was an ideal place for a kid to spend time with his old man.
Idie and Helen liked to drink. Idie especially. He was a naturally gregarious and energetic man, and under the influence he could be a handful. As a businessman and a father, he had to contend with the average day-to-day pressures of a job and a family. He dealt with it by drinking. Booze was his wonder tonic, the magic cure-all for whatever might ail a man. Drinking temporarily freed him from his worldly concerns, so it wasn’t all bad, I guess. I was a just a kid, and to me, it seemed to make him happy. Idie noticed my interest in music and came home one day with a little plywood acoustic guitar. It didn’t sound great, and its stiff steel strings rode high above the fretboard. I didn’t even know how to tune it. I learned a few rudimentary chords from a Mel Bay instructional book, but I didn’t become proficient. Where I shined was when I posed with my six-string machine gun as if I were Elvis or Johnny Cash. I adjusted the strap so that it hung low and cool like a weapon, and then I’d bend a knee and twitch a hip and become a six-year-old rock star, adored by the masses and the envy of my peers. I had a favorite song that inspired this routine: Roger Miller’s “Dang Me.” I loved the twang and Miller’s goofy lyrics. I was obsessed with that song. I fancied I could sing, and I’d belt out Miller’s comically guilt-ridden lyrics in the reedy voice of a prepubescent pipsqueak. Somehow, my act was a hit with family and friends.
“Bobby! Get your guitar and play that song! You know the one I mean!” Idie would say after he’d had a few at one of his barbecues. “Get a load of this kid,” he’d say. I’d scramble to grab
