KBLA – Bob Dayton Program – December 27, 1965 – Tom Howard Collection –
It’s 1965 – everything is happening all at once. You’re about to graduate Elementary School and start Junior High. You have discovered girls, but they haven’t discovered you. You borrowed your dad’s razor and cut your face trying to shave for the first time. Your voice is changing. You stole your first copy of Playboy Magazine and nobody noticed when you jammed it in your notebook and walked out the Rexall to your friends waiting outside. Miss June has taken on a whole new turbulent meaning for you. Your friends have started smoking. They gather behind the school cafeteria at Nutrition to extol the virtues of Pall Mall versus Marlboro, but only one of them inhales – he’s the one who has also discovered a taste for Hamm’s Beer. You don’t really like Beer and you’re practicing how to hold a cigarette without looking like a dork. Your teenage years are looming.
You have big doubts about growing up – all of a sudden the world is jammed with responsibilities and experiences and everybody seems to be handling it a lot better than you. Your friends are starting to grow their hair long, but your parents won’t let you. Your mom still buys your clothes at Sears but you can’t get a raise on your allowance. You’re stuck.
You’re convinced – your teenage life is heading into uncharted territory and leaving you behind. Funny feelings and the ability to inhale aren’t quite happening for you. You haven’t learned how to dance yet. You’re working on it – the only thing that’s saving you is rhythm – you have that. And you can keep a beat – and you have a natural ability to play drums. And you listen to music constantly – you spend every penny of your allowance on 45s – and your dad hinted he might loan you the money for a set of drums.
Maybe your teenage years won’t be so bad after all. But for now . . .
As a reminder of the soundtrack that went along with the awkwardness, here’s a half hour of Bob Dayton from the all-new KBLA on December 27, 1965. A pile of memory joggers, to be sure – including one very creepy song by Noel Harrison. Who said growing up in the 60s was easy?
Editors note: the above is a work of fiction – it never happened to me, nor to anyone I knew. It all sprang from an imagination that was using Top-40 radio as a backdrop.
