Author: DOuG pRATt

Friday Morning at 7:30

This post is set to appear at the scheduled start of my cancer surgery. If there are no complications, it should take about an hour.

Please be seated in the waiting room.

Here’s some waiting room music.

Follow-up: The nurses said the surgery was routine. The fact that I didn’t see the surgeon post-op is, in itself, a good indicator. Of course, he may have left to get an early start on the Memorial Day weekend. 😉 I will, of course, have a follow-up appointment with him.

There is significant swelling at the site, which is very tender, but the pain is, so far, manageable with Ibuprofen. Final biopsy results should be available by the end of next week.

The Fabulous Batles

A girl with a surprising resemblance to my big sister, at the Beatles 1965 Shea Stadium show

My eldest sister occasionally likes to remind me that she attended both of the Beatles shows at Shea Stadium. The legendary 1965 concert was held two weeks before Mary Quant’s New York fashion show, where Prue introduced miniskirts to America.

Sandy Moss, Sarah Dawson, and Prue Bury: NYC – September 1, 1965

The unprecedented success of the Beatles at Shea Stadium gave promoters the idea that the venue would be good for other acts, as seen in this 1966 poster.

Here’s the batty tale of how Batman followed the Beatles to Shea Stadium, and why Bob Dylan didn’t.

https://fredbals.medium.com/holy-shea-stadium-the-batman-beatles-and-bob-dylan-connection-5e3b20b50196

The Other 1967

Besides all of the great comic books and songs I love, what else is from the Summer of Love, 1967? Internationally, there was the 6-Day Arab-Israeli War. Domestically, there were race riots.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/riot-report/#part01

I’ve watched the documentary, and I’m thinking about a black girl I was friendly with in the 7th grade, ’67-’68. I’m trying to remember her name, without success. We had a couple of classes together, sitting next to each other in one of them, and I genuinely liked her.

The date of the Riot Report’s release, March, ’68, strikes me as being near the time when the girl stopped being being friendly. One day at the start of music class, out of nowhere she dismissively said to me, “you’re a white tuna.” I’ve always remembered her calling me “tuna.” It was such an unexpected word, and it hurt when she turned on me that way. That was the last time she ever spoke to me. There was no explanation for the sudden change in her attitude.

That same year, I connected with a black kid who was into comic books. I don’t remember his real name, but he called himself “Lucky.” As comic book fans, the contrast between myself and Lucky was black and white, and it had nothing to do with race. My focus was on the artists. “Look at how good Jack Kirby’s art is when it’s inked by Joe Sinnott!” Lucky was in the fan camp of, “Do you think the Thing can beat the Hulk in a fight?”

The summer of ’68, I spent an afternoon with Lucky at the apartment where he lived with his family in South Norwalk. It was a rough neighborhood, and I was scared to see Lucky was carrying a knife for protection. We traded some comics, and he gave me a copy of the 1966 Spider-Man Annual. He had written his name inside the front cover, as I was also doing at the time. I still have that comic book in one of my boxes. I’ll try to find it and take a picture of Lucky’s name.