Musical Saturday Morning

It was 1964 and I was living in the little town of Quessy Centre, in northern France.  It was in one regard, a death sentence from all I knew.  An artistic German kid was abandoned in a French speaking town, where art meant nothing.  On the other hand, I learned how to cook from my chef neighbor, Isabelle Bourdoun.  And I got to speak french for the next 8 years!  Though some of those I was to be in the United States and French as at least one class I could pass - they offered nothing in German.

So I lived with my radio.  Radio Verdun was turned over to some young GI's whom would play rock and roll, only tame stuff, it was after all still a military radio station!  But, at 5:00 - you could set your watch by it - they took over the radio station and through to the shut down in 1967, it was Wipeout by the Safaris, blasting across the radio waves!  All of us kids loved that song and we destroyed hundreds of pencils trying to drum that beat on the 70 mile school bus ride every morning.

So, forty years later, but here are the Safaris and their two hit wonder:



I was thinking about my departed sister and brother this week, very morose to remember them and then this song came beating back into my mind.  Nicky had wanted to be a drummer and could do the drum beat, when he was sober.

So it might seem strange but that is a happy memory of the two of them. Carmen dancing like a demon, Nicky drumming away and me laughing my fool head off at them.