Teen Idols

My Boogie Woogie Piano Aunt has an amazingly gifted grandson who has captured the attention of my thirteen year old grand daughter. Although they are cousins and she has talked non stop about him for weeks, they had not met until today. A chance meeting, a brief hug, and the subsequent swooning reminded me of the summer I saw the Everly Brothers in concert in Oklahoma City.

Link here to listen to this extraordinary young man

I think it was the summer I was fourteen that my parents put my two years older uncle and me on a bus headed to Oklahoma City for visits with my grandma and with his sister. Although we have always enjoyed a close relationship, my uncle was a boy of few words, as evidenced on this long bus ride with a stop at every town alongside Highway 64. We sat silently together in the same seat until I noticed after returning to my place at a bus stop that he had bought a couple of comic books. When I asked him to go back in and get me one he finally uttered these three little words, "Get it yourself." I love him to this day.

Isn't she lovely?

My beautiful aunt picked us up at the bus station in Oklahoma City and took me to Grandma's house in Midwest City. It was on an earlier visit with her in Oklahoma City that she bought me my first McDonald's hamburger. I remember them being ten cents and a special treat we could not get in Clarksville. She is as pretty, kind, and caring today as she was then and I love her.

Mama and Grandma

Undoubtedly Grandma was heartbroken when her only daughter chose to move so far from home and, despite Grandma's admonishment that Mama had made her bed and she should now lie in it, they had a special bond. We visited there as frequently as possible and although a visit to this Grandma was different from the times I spent with my Grandma from home, it was also special. This Grandma had boxes full of sparkly costume jewelry that I thought was real rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. She had a metal woodpecker on a log toothpick holder I was so fascinated with that my son bought me one like it.

Note the authentic fifties dinette

This Grandma was a seamstress and had scores of wooden thread spools she kept for us to play with. This Grandma had been to Las Vegas and old Mexico and she took me to the zoo. This Grandma's neighbor let me read Movie Time magazines. This Grandma bought me the thin yellow sweater I wanted instead of the heavier and warmer red one. This Grandma had pretty china and real silverware and displayed it in the china cabinet I now have. This Grandma soaked brown paper sacks in vinegar to soothe my blistered and sunburned back. This Grandma drove a '57 Chevy and she kept it in her garage. This Grandma saved her McCall's magazines so I could cut out the Betsy McCall paper dolls. This Grandma kissed me on the lips long after anyone else did.

And this Grandma took me and another teenage friend of mine to an amusement park for an evening concert with the very popular at that time Everly Brothers. Today that is who we would call a cool Grandma. And I loved her.