This is my very own little
tribute to the greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band of all time: The Beatles. I was 12-years-old (1990) when I wrote this as
a class assignment in the sixth grade.
I left misspellings, grammatical errors, typos, and all other errors the
way they were on the original. This
story had been packed away for about 10 years, and trust me, I had a wonderful
time reading it and looking back. Not
bad for a sixth grader, I must say.
Thank you, Mary, for
reading it and laughing right along with me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
“Ticket Please?” the conductor asked us. Jamie and I gave him our tickets to
Manchester and got on the train. When
we got our seats we both got out a book (Jamie got out a Laura Ingles Wilder
book and I got a book about the Beatles) and started reading. Since Jamie and I had nothing to talk about,
we both got out our walkmans and turned them to a 60’s station. Slowly I drifted off to sleep.
When they were getting off, I saw something totally
strange: Grandma and Grandpa, younger,
were waiting for some one. Why they’re
in Liverpool, England, I’ll never know.
Why was I in Liverpool. So I
waved and yelled “Hi”. Then they walked
right past me as if they had never known me.
I turned around and saw them with a person with brown eyes and brown
hair. He looked like he must have been
about 20 years old or so. Little did I
know that he was my dad. I looked at
the styles other people had on. Some
women had their hair bobbed and teenagers had their hair up in ponytails. A few girls went past me talking about how
cute the Beatles are and more. The way
this dream was going I was expecting the Beatles to come off the train any
minute. Just as I had thought that, a
streak of black went right past me. I
jumped so hard I fell right into somebody’s arms. I looked up and saw a familiar face. My eyes got as big as volleyballs. My mind was racing with pictures of this guy.
“Are you okay?” he asked me in a Liverpulian accent.
Suddenly the name bounced back in my head. “Bobby?
No! Davey? No!
Rickey? Ah-ah. Paul?
Could be.”
Then I squeaked out a name.
“Paul?”
The man laughed.
“No, I’m not Paul. Paul was the
one who ran past you. You know who I am
don’t you?”
I fainted then.
The next time I woke up, I was in a very huge house. My foot stung bad. Four men were looking at me.
One was sitting on a black leather chair, another was sitting on a piano
bench, the short one was just standing, and one was sitting on the couch next
to me. I noticed the “Beatle Boots”.
One said something to the short one. I guess he meant for them to show me around
because he came over and introduced everyone to me. He was Paul, the one on the leather chair was John, the one
standing was Ringo, and the one sitting next to me was George. They took me from room to room. One room’s carpet was grass, another’s was
brown with the floor sunken in. That
must be where his bed was. It was lined
with books. He also had a book-shelf
just filled. In another room, a huge
organ came up out of the floor. This
room was white. Everything was
white. The short person’s room was
blue. Even his pop machine was blue.
I was begining to get scared. I bumped into George by mistake.
I turned around so fast that I tripped on my crutches and fell right
back in the arms that I fell in at the train station. He lifted me back up.
“I think we’d better know your name,” he asked.
My mind froze.
“Ahhhh, Anna.”
The tall slender one walked over to me.
“Where do you live,” he asked. “So we can take you back to wherever you live when your ankle is
okay.”
“My ankle, what’s wrong with it?” Boy what a dumb question.
“You twisted it badly or maybe you broke it.”
No wonder there were crutches next to me, and I had to
hop around on them. Just to be cute, I
asked,
“Who owns these crutches?”
Unbelieveably, I got an answer.
“Ah, they were Ringo’s when he was little.” George replied.
Ringo’s face turned bright red with embarrassment.
“Oh, Copper lane is where I live.”
“Do you work?” the short one asked.
“I don’t work.” I answered. “Well, I babysit sometimes.
Why?”
“Oh nothing, I just wondered.”
“Ha! That’s our
Ringo, sticking his BIG NOSE into other people’s business!” Paul remarked. He emphasized the words “BIG NOSE” to Ringo and looked at him
square in the face.
Ringo’s face turned redder with embarrasment.
“Well, get on, pick on your own nose.”
Then John asked a question
“Are you a Beatles fan?”
Now that made me blush redder than ever.
“Ahhhh yeah. you
can call me one, but where I come from, you aren’t popular........” after what I just said I could have chopped
my tongue off.
“Gosh! Who hasn’t
heard of us?” Paul and George said in unison.
Then I asked John and Paul a question.
“How was your childhood days.........”
Then I could’ve chopped my head off.
John answered slowly and Paul didn’t answer at all.
“Well, since school was only three miles from home, I
took a bus that went past Strawberry Fields and dropped me off at Penny
Lane. There were some things about
Dovedale Primary School that I didn’t like.”
“What?”
“The school uniform.
We had to wear a black woolen jacket with a dove sewed on the pocket, a
cap, grey short pants, knee socks, and a tie.”
I wanted to laugh by I knew that would probably hurt his
feelings. So I held my breath.
“Did you really hate them or are you just teasing me.”
What a dumb question.
Of coarse he hated them. If I
was him, I’d hate ‘em too.
I could’ve fallen over backwards, hic-cupped, and died
because he laughed. HE LAUGHED! The first time in 20 minutes (which seemed
like forever) that somebody even decided to even utter a sound accept John
because he was the one who was telling the story and even he didn’t sound so
cheerful. Well, I don’t really expect
people to sound very happy when they talk about their school days, I know I
wouldn’t. But he sounded as if he would
cry or something.
“The jacket and tie were the worst of the bunch. So as a result, I wore them the sloppiest I
could get them. But I had to wear them
to keep out of trouble.
Then I knew the next thing they’d ask me: “Do you have to wear uniforms at your
school?” and I gave them my answer “No”
Then he talked about his school days at Quarry Bank
Grammar school.
“There, we were always getting canned for something.”
After he said that, he turned a pinkish color as if he
had been stung by a bee.
“Well I suppose that you want to know about my life out
of school?”
“Well, I suppose so, if you want to tell me, but if you
don’t, don’t bother.”
“It’s okay. Well,
I was born October 9, 1940. My Aunt
Mimi, well, I called her my second mom, because Julia was my real mom. Since she didn’t have enough money to feed
both her and me, she sent me to my Aunt Mimi’s and Uncle George’s. My dad was away somewhere so he didn’t live
with mother and I. On weekends and
nights I was with mom. Sometime around
my teenage life, mom,.........”
He paused a minute to gulp.
“Mom...........
Mom was, was hit and killed by a swerving car as she walked across the
street.”
I could see that he was trying to hold back the tears,
but one got away.
George went over and asked John and Paul something. They went and got some photo albums. they each took out one picture and showed
them to me. One was a picture of Paul’s
mom, Mary, and the other was a picture of John’s mother, Julia.
A book I was reading about the Beatles was right! John does look like his mom.
That night in, Liverpool, I rented a hotel room. I looked it over. I looked out the window, and saw a whole patch of stars. They seemed to call out to me, so I
recited: “Bright Are The Stars That
Shine, Dark Is The Sky, I Know This Love Of Mine, Will Never Die. And I Love Her.” Of course I was thinking.
I wrote that down on a piece of paper there in the room,
for I was trying to remember on of the Beatle’s songs called And I Love Her and
couldn’t remember it. Now I finally
remembered it.
I guess that I must have been a very good friend to the
Beatles because they asked me to a concert for free, taken me out to dinner,
and more. Then I told them what I said
last night. I got out the piece of
paper that had: Bright Are The Stars
That Shine, Dark Is The Sky. I Know
This Love Of Mine, Will Never Die. And
I Love Her.
John liked it at first but Paul liked it better.
“Where did you get that?” Paul and John said in unison.
I knew the Beatles had written the song called AND I LOVE
HER, but I didn’t want to tell them since it was popular and was on a record in
late 1964, and this was only early 1963.
I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND wasn’t even popular yet. They had asked me back to their house to
help them write the song. We got pretty
far on the tune, but I only gave them that idea, they made up the rest. Paul got out his guitar and made up a tune
and stuck the words in it. John and
George got out their guitars and played too.
Ringo got out his drums and began to play. I couldn’t believe it but it sounded so much
like the song they did in the movie A HARD DAYS NIGHT.
In a few weeks, we got this song down good. And for helping them write the song, I got
an autographed picture of them, got to go to a party and a free concert with
them, and they even gave me $20.00 (and then $20.00 was a lot of money) and I
even got to play John’s guitar and Ringo’s drums.
Years and years went by.
They had written songs about me.
They sang (didn’t write) ANNA GO WITH HIM. John sang that, of coarse in 1963. YOUR GONNA LOSE THAT GIRL, AND PAPERBACK WRITER. Paul had written HEY JUDE for John and his
son Julian Lennon, and AND I LOVE HER because I helped them write the song.
BEFORE IT ALL HAPPENED
John had married Cynthia, George married Patty, Ringo
married Maureen. Paul didn’t marry
until 1969, but he had a girlfriend:
Jane Asher. During the years,
they had made many albums. They made
the White Album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Yellow Submarine, and
Let It Be. The movies they were in
were: A Hard Day’s Night, Help, Yellow
Submarine, Let It Be, and Get Back.
While John was still married to Cynthia, he had fallen in
love with Yoko Ono, a Japaneese artist.
That was when the Beatles were in their psycadelic years. When Cynthia had come home from vacation in
Ireland, She found him with Yoko.
THEIR LATER YEARS
It was 1970 when the group split up. When John divosed Cyn, and married Yoko,
they had a son named Sean. He made some
records with her. Paul , in 1969
married Linda Eastman and formed the group, Wings. George went and did a few records of his own. He did a hit called “MY SWEET LORD” and got
sued for plagiarising a song from the Chiffons called “HE’S SO FINE” only to go
home one day and find out that Patti had left him for Eric Clappton. Ringo made some records of his own and some
movies.
On the tragic night of December 8, 1980, Just outside the
Dakota. I knew something would happen
that night. JOHN LENNON WOULD BE
SHOT! I wanted to see what really
happened, so I waited there. I saw a
man creep up the yard. I could tell
that he was waiting for John because he took out a gun, loaded it and cocked
it. It seemed like hours before John
and Yoko would come out.
The man was startled when John and Yoko’s limo slid to a
hault in front of the Dakota. The
chauffeur opened up the door so the couple could walk the few steps across the
pavement to the Dakota’s entrance. (The
Dakota is were John and Yoko live. They
live in the States now. New York is the
state.)
They walked by as if they didn’t have a care in the
world.
“Mr. Lennon,” a voice called out from the shadows. John turned around to look into those mad,
feverishly glittering eyes once more.
(Before John had autographed a record album for the man before he went to
the studios to record his last album.)
Then for a moment all time stood still.
The man (Mark Chapman) smiled slightly as he dropped into
a combat stance, pulling something shiny from his pokcet. Still John stared, really confused, into his
eyes.
Then he said something that I couldn’t understand to
John. Now I was the confused one.
Then after a few words, he stopped and calmly raised his
gun and shot him five times.
“Stop stop!” Yoko screamed hysterically. John still held on to a cassette tape of
their last recording together, in his right hand.
“I’m shot.” John mumbled to to the door man and he
dropped the cassette. Everybody was
screaming, crying, going hysteric, and wild.
I felt some-one shaking me. When I awoke I was looking at myself in a mirror. Now that scared me. My walkman was playing “HEY JUDE”.
“Come on Anna,” said Jamie, “your all sweaty. Let’s go get our hotel rooms.”
It took us a few minutes to get our things together. When we got to our hotel, it was all
run-down but the inside was all Londinium style.
When we checked into our hotel rooms, I thought back to
my dream. It seemed so real that I
thought that I did go back in time. I
looked in my diary that I put my autographed pictures and other pictures
in. Oh crud! No pictures that was a real let-down. Then I got another idea.
My pockets! My 20 dollar
bill! I checked them. There was a $20 bill in my pocket. I danced and danced around the room. Then my eyes cought the date. “Made in 1987”. “Oh well” I thought.
I looked in my “Special Moments” section of my
diary. Nothing but photocopied
pictures.
Although the dream was fake, I knew that I’d run into
Paul McCartney sometime. But for now
I’m glad that I’m not listening to or dreaming of the Beatles. I wanted to meet Paul McCartney (again) when
I’m at one of his concerts.
Afterwards, Jamie had said to me that she knew what I was
dreaming about. She was right. So I gave her a sheepish look and said,
“How did you know?”
“Well, first you fell asleep, then you made a fool of
yourself.”
THE END
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