The holiday season stirs up memories of friends and family. My friend and guest blogger, Katy Brandes, shares a poignant story about a meaningful gift she received and how The Beatles gave her strength.
GENERATION GAP
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| Katy and The White Album |
When I began working full-time right out of high
school, I met someone who became my mentor. Bill had his own daughter but
served as a father-figure to me. Bill and I last spoke as he lay in a hospital
bed before his death in 2001. I can almost see his warm smile in my mind’s
eye, albeit an unfocused past memory, greeting me from such a cold and sterile
placement beneath bleached white hospital sheets.
Although not my boss, I had assisted Bill and other insurance claim adjusters over those past years and worked particularly closely with him. His special interest in me, at 19-years-old, was something I sorely needed at an impressionable time.
Maybe I wasn’t very perceptive at that point,
not quite as insightful as I’ve grown to become. At Research Medical Center in
Kansas City, where I lived, I visited him one last time but was clueless as to
how soon he’d be gone. It wasn’t obvious to me then how Bill’s illness
from cancer meant his death was imminent and only later would I look back and
see what an impact he had on me.
He asked me, “So do you still like The
Beatles?”
“Well, of course I do,” I laughed in reply.
Though they were no longer in the favored spot I
once held for them, they still rated right up there with the Stones, Janis
Joplin, and Jim Morrison (all the greats without whom we would have modern rock-and-roll).
Stuck in my alt/grunge phase, I grooved more on Soundgarden, Nirvana and Pearl
Jam around then but still felt my old rock roots.
Bill said, “Well, Vicky has something for
you. It used to be mine, and I want you to have it.” Little did I know he
owned the White album by The Beatles
and gifted it to me for college graduation.
It was an original copy released in 1968 when I
was yet a baby, maybe bought when he was a college student himself. Although I
knew that was his era, he’d never openly shared about his love of music. Bill
grew up in a farming community, but I always considered him more of a
“corporate” type person, and never would’ve dreamed him being a rocker back in
his day. All the stereotypes I’d used to categorize him, all the ways I
mentally pre-supposed him, crumbled. We became more than former co-workers at
that moment.
Sure, I’d gone on claims with him, and he’d told
me Mafioso legends about cars with bodies stuffed in trunks amidst Kansas City’s
underground storage. I always felt a kinship with Bill and took off work
specially to travel to his retirement party. Though I thought he held me in
similar regard, I never knew us as such kindred spirits musically until receiving
that present.
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| To Katy (From Bill) |
The Lp came complete with poster inserts, a
genuine collector’s item. One of the first things I noticed, though, was
an inscription inked on the cover. Bill’s wife made it personal to me, destroying
its monetary value. No matter, though, as my gift from my surrogate dad
meant more than that to me. He could have done anything with that album but wanted
me to have it.
Bill was part of the reason I actually finished
my degree. Maybe knowing I wanted more than a secretary job, he went with me to
visit a university admissions counselor. Who
does that for somebody who’s not their own kid?
My parents never went to college. Small town blue-collar
workers want better for their children but may not know how to help them move up
the proverbial ladder. I wanted to break through the glass ceiling but needed
someone to nudge me in the right direction. Bill even offered to help me find
somewhere a full-time student could afford to live. Remember, I was not his kid. He personified the cliché of someone who would give
you the shirt off his back. That was just him. I typed many student reference letters at his
request for scholarship or admission applications on which he scrawled a very
physician-like signature. I can’t imagine how many he, as a school board
member, wrote over the years or the number of kids he helped besides me and his
own daughter.
The irony strikes me of how I used the song
“Blackbird” of the epic Fab album years later. I’d forever worried about never
having any children. Being within a few hours of delivery and scared out of my
wits, I needed to calm down en route to the hospital. Listening to that steady
intro tap like a metronome helped slow my shaky heart. The music settled my
nerves, and the diminutive 2:18 cut played on repeat the entire drive.
The chorus soothed me. “All your life, you were
only waiting for this moment to arise.” That was me. I could only hope to be
someone like Bill, a mentor to my child, readying my child to go out into the world
one day, and I could hear his voice in those lyrics.
Katy Brandes is a self-professed pop culture genius/nerd, sometime
wordsmith, independent writer and yogini, eco-warrior, and reluctant-but-frequent
user of air quotes. She’s a multi-tasking Mother Quoter with short-term memory
issues but no problem remembering song lyrics from 40 years ago. She enjoys
correcting other people’s grammar and spelling with a mental red pen whether
she’s right or not.
@onlyintheozarks (Twitter
& IG)
Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays to you and yours! I highly recommend following Katy @onlyintheozarks - she has some of the best posts about hillbilly country!
And while you are at it, be sure to join my mailing list to receive updates!
You can do it at: www.laneastagg.com
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Recent Interviews:
"Tomorrow Never Knows" - great chat with Bob Wilson and Carol Brown: on this YouTube show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0j3lELYXFM&t=769s
Marilou Regan, award-winning professional journalist and author, interviewed me about "The Rolling Scones-Let's Spend the Bite Together." Stones fans will love her site - check it out here:
"Would you let your daughter eat a Rolling Scone?"
#http://www.loveyouliverollingstones.com/would-you-let-your-daughter-eat-a-rolling-scone#
PEACE & LOVE!
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The Authors of "The Rolling Scones"
Annie Jones, Abby Ritterling, Lanea Stagg |
It isn't difficult for me to admit that this trying time has exposed diverse emotions, as it has for every one else in this world. Here's to hoping that we can start down the path to what life used to be very soon. 
