High School Reunion

[57Gregy]

Not my high school. My brother the programmer's wife decided not to go, so he asked me to tag along. Carl was a 1968 graduate of Frankfurt American High School in Germany, and my brother Steve graduated from there in '71. He met us in Asheville, NC for the all-classes event. My brother Mike also went to the school for a year, but he couldn't join us, RIP.
I only made it through Frankfurt American Junior High School before we rotated stateside, but I knew some of the folks, or knew of them.
Amazingly, they had arranged for not 1, not 2, but 3 of the bands that played in Frankfurt during that era to be there: Poor Man's Children, George and the Rockets, and The Naked Truth. They were all composed of (mostly) children of servicemen in Frankfurt.
Poor Man's Children and George and the Rockets only differed by their bass players.
It was pretty cool. Even though they probably only had a couple of run-throughs before the gig (they weren't still together and may not have seen each other in the flesh for decades), you could still tell what they were playing. Hits from the sixties.
They also had a silent auction to raise money for their organization. Lots of memorabilia from the school and the era. 
I saw these unopened Yellow Submarine Beatles action figures. I don't know if they sold.
All in all, a good week with the brothers, and Carl paid for everything!

[57Gregy]

Another Frankfurt alum, Stanley Whitaker, played a 20-minute acoustic set, All You Need Is Love, Here Comes The Sun, Wish You Were Here, and more.
He was a long-time member of the band Happy The Man.

[bitflipper]

My best friend is a graduate of Frankfurt AHS, class of '69. We met the following year in Munich, where we formed a band comprised of 2 Yanks and 2 Krauts. We  Yanks couldn't legally play out without work permits, so we mostly played American service clubs, high schools and AYA clubs. However, our local guys also got us cash-under-the-table gigs at German college parties. Those were some chaotic Animal House grade alcohol-fueled bashes. Forget the stereotypes of serious, humorless Germans - it ain't so. Polite and friendly, yes.  Reserved, no.

I graduated from Upper Heyford AHS, in Oxfordshire, England in 1969. There were 33 students in my graduating class, not quite enough to populate a rock 'n roll band, so I joined up with four Brits who became my best friends during my time in England. We played some wild gigs there. Again, forget the stereotypes of staid, well-mannered Brits. There were always brawls. Most important to 18-year-old me, though, were the liberated ladies. It was an eye opener, having come there from uptight conservative Nebraska.

[craigb]

Cool stories up there! ?

My personal opinion is that the stereotypes for most countries are pretty exaggerated mostly for political propaganda reasons.  Almost everyone I've met from many different countries have been easy to get along with.  But, as with most things, it's always the a-holes that make a bad name for the rest.

I passed up my 40th High School reunion.  Even without the current world stupidity, I really couldn't come up with any reason why I would want to go!

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by craigb
Yes, "have" is the correct plural for "has."

[Wibbles]

47 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

Again, forget the stereotypes of staid, well-mannered Brits. There were always brawls.

Well you do get the staid Brits, and then you get the pissed-up Brits. They are often the same people.

Unfortunately, drinking to excess seems to be an excepted part of our culture.

[Bapu]

My 50th HS reonion was last year. Never even bothered to hunt it down. Half of the boys are probably dead now. And 50%of those were from drugs and the other 50% from Vietnam.

My HS girlfriend (first wife) is still alive and lives about 30 miles from. I still converse with three bandmates from that era. So that's all the reminiscing I need.

[paulo]

2 hours ago, Bapu said:

My 50th HS reonion was last year

Did it make you cry ?

[craigb]

5 hours ago, Bapu said:

My 50th HS reonion was last year

 

3 hours ago, paulo said:

Did it make you cry ?

 

Only when he cut it. ?

 

[57Gregy]

22 hours ago, bitflipper said:

My best friend is a graduate of Frankfurt AHS, class of '69.

Not meaning to be impertinent, but do you remember his name?  ? Maybe me or my brothers knew him.
We went to the teen club and AYA often, so there's a pretty good chance we saw you play.

[57Gregy]

22 hours ago, craigb said:

I really couldn't come up with any reason why I would want to go!

 

It's an easy decision when someone offers to pay for everything.

[mettelus]

On 6/26/2022 at 1:38 PM, craigb said:

?Almost everyone [...] have been ...

 

Since you posted this in your edit... everyone is an indefinite (singular) pronoun, which takes a singular verb.

[craigb]

.

Edited June 27, 2022 by craigb
Weird... I edited it and it created a new reply!

[craigb]

3 hours ago, 57Gregy said:

It's an easy decision when someone offers to pay for everything.

Not sure I'd even go then! ?

[InstrEd]

1 hour ago, mettelus said:

Since you posted this in your edit... everyone is an indefinite (singular) pronoun, which takes a singular verb.

I hope this won't ever be on a standardized test ?

[InstrEd]

27 minutes ago, craigb said:

Not sure I'd even go then! ?

Have to agree

[bitflipper]

3 hours ago, 57Gregy said:

Not meaning to be impertinent, but do you remember his name?  ? Maybe me or my brothers knew him.
We went to the teen club and AYA often, so there's a pretty good chance we saw you play.

It's more likely they'd have seen his band than mine, as we mostly played in and around Bavaria with an occasional road trip north. I don't remember the name of his high school band, I'll ask next time I see him. My first Munich-based band was called Last Hopes Lost (with a mushroom cloud as our logo). The second band was called Bilbo's Tired Head, from a line in The Hobbit. Everybody'd ask which of us was Bilbo, so that became my nickname for many years.

We were booked to play the Frankfurt AYA at one point but it got cancelled and when we arrived there was just a note on the door. This after driving all day down from Bitburg, but we were young and full of energy so we just jumped back into the van and headed for Munich. Wrecked our van on the way there, but that's another story.

[DeeringAmps]

15 hours ago, bitflipper said:

that's another story

Do tell!

[craigb]

19 hours ago, bitflipper said:

The second band was called Bilbo's Tired Head, from a line in The Hobbit. Everybody'd ask which of us was Bilbo, so that became my nickname for many years.

And then Bilbo evolved into Gandalf! ?

[bitflipper]

6 hours ago, DeeringAmps said:

Do tell!

We didn't have a van at first, and had to hire someone to drive us to gigs. Our drummer's dad offered to buy him a VW bus. But the drummer, Rafael, grew up in Puerto Rico and had never driven a car before, never had a driver's license or instruction, or had any idea what a clutch was for. So the rest of us traded off driving duties, not wanting to risk giving him driving lessons with our precious gear loaded in the back.

And loaded we were. That little motor wasn't meant to haul so much weight. Every trip was a slow trip. At one point, we were pull over by the Polizei for driving too slowly up a hill. We all pretended not to speak German, so he grumbled something about keeping up with traffic and sent us on our way. Cops in Germany were mostly pretty cool. They would stop you on the sidewalk and ask where you're going and make you show ID, but then wish you a good day.

We had a long drive from Frankfurt to Munich, at night, in winter. But a few hours out of Munich Rafael insisted that dammit, it was his van and he was going to drive the rest of the way home. So we stopped at a Gasthaus and everybody but Rafael downed a number of beers with Schnapps, with the intention of sleeping through the certain terror that was coming. With 5 of us aboard, 3 could fit up front and 2 had to travel horizontally, lying atop Marshall cabs. Planning to sleep anyway, I took a spot in the back, atop my cushy Kustom cabinet with the stuffed Naugahyde.

The night before, we'd played in Bitburg, at a large US air base near the Luxembourg border. That night, I'd had an unsettling dream; the van was spinning around and I was being assaulted by flying mic stands. So in the morning I convinced everyone to take all the gear out and re-pack it in such a way that we wouldn't be crushed or impaled in an accident. No one was happy about that, but all agreed the move seemed prudent, even if seating would be less comfortable.

So there I am, trying to sleep with the aid of alcohol in the back of the van, but every time I closed my eyes that dream came back and I was again spinning around in the van. Except that on the third time, I opened my eyes and the spinning didn't stop. We were actually going in circles, then the van hit a guard rail, jumped it, flipped on its side and slid in the snow for a good 50 feet before stopping. The side doors flew open, and the only thing holding the amps from exiting the door was my Vox Continental. When we stopped, our roadie was on his knees in the snow, in the doorway. My poor organ was bent in a U shape, supporting the weight of all our gear. I had to crawl out through the back window.

What had happened was we'd come over a hill and there were two cars blocking the Autobahn from a fender-bender. Rafael, who had only recently seen snow and ice for the first time in his life, panicked and slammed on the brakes. Anyone who's grown up in a snowy place knows exactly what happened next. The van was totaled.

Rafael then called his dad in Nuremburg. I don't remember how, as this was long before cell phones. Poor Ralph, he was sure his dad would be extremely angry. If you've ever known a Puerto Rican dad, they don't take no sh*t, and his dad was a hard-as-nails Army sergeant with a mustache that he trimmed with a Dremel tool. He scared all of us.

But Ralph's dad was cool. The kind of guy you'd want as your platoon leader in combat. He calmly told us to stay with the van and he'd send someone. He called some contacts at the base in Ulm, and they sent an Army tow truck. We're talking a serious tow truck that was designed for pulling BIG trucks. Our crumpled VW bus looked like a sad minnow on a hook, dangling from the back. They drove us to Ulm and let us sleep in the brig. Next morning we called our old contact back in Munich to come pick us up.

Despite the accident, the only injury sustained was by me, when I slipped on the ladder climbing up in to the monstrous tow truck. The organ, though, never fully recovered and had a noticeable bow to it until its retirement. But it still worked, a testament to Italian construction.

It was only the first of many calamities experienced during my rock 'n roll road journeys. Every band has such stories. This one's remarkable only because it was my first. And one of the few road tales that are G-rated and can thus be told to a mixed audience.

 

 

[craigb]

Ok, that was totally worth reading!  Thanks Dave! ??