My best childhood summers were 1961-1965; 1964 being an especially good one, as I recall. As long as I can remember we had a big, above-ground backyard pool. Made by a firm named Doughboy, Sears marketed them in the Sixties.
1964: Jimmy and I used to spend long hours in the pool, with a transistor radio on in the background tuned to KHJ (later called "Boss Radio") which, in that particular year, played Beatles music practically non-stop. All day, we were two hyper-active boys, splashing, yelling, diving and swimming. From this I got a good ability to get around in the water, and therefore feel confident swimming - even though my stroke is unpracticed. Jimmy’s sister Kathy was the president of the Beatles fan club for all of California, which (as I learned forty years later) got her into the interview with them when they arrived at Los Angeles airport. One day her friend came by; she drove a white Ford Falcon, which had a garish images of the Beatles on the four doors in Day-Glo pink - Kathy's idea.
Kathy’s contribution to the cause was a sign on canvas or vinyl that was erected over our tiki hut. It was a hand-painted affair of the Beatles’ faces with something about "Leverpool" and "We Luv You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!" I think. At some point it occurred to us that we had misspelled "Liverpool," but my mom suggested that it was acceptable since that was how the Beatles probably pronounced it; this seemed to pacify Kathy. I wish I had a photo of that sign - I’m surprised Mom didn’t take one.
When the Animals’ hit "House of the Rising Sun" came out, it briefly unseated a Beatles tune as the #1 top pop hit. On the occasions when Kathy was in the pool with us, she’d get so angry and emotional about it she would dunk me or Jimmy, whomever she could reach first. (Dunking was holding the head under water for what seemed a long amount of time.) I used to thrash and thrash to get away from Kathy, but to no avail - she was a teenage girl and faster and bigger than I was. To this day, when I hear the opening chords of that song, I can recall the sensation of pool water going up my nasal passages.
One of the things that greatly enhanced the pool experience of Jimmy and I was sugar - loads of it. It was mostly ingested in the form of Shasta soft drinks. I understand that you can now get Shasta drinks outside of California, but I don’t see it often; perhaps it’s mainly a Western thing. Anyway, I got a jolt from my past in the woods of Virginia, while on a church father-son campout. At about midnight it started to rain, so we broke up our campfire conversational circle and began clearing the picnic table to leave camp (the forecast called for it to pour all night). There on the table was a can of Shasta root beer (shown at top), in what I recognized as their original design from the Sixties. It was a special commemorative can to celebrate a windstorm that damaged some aluminum siding on a San Francisco building, which revealed a giant can of Shasta Cola from the 1950’s, painted on the side of the building.
Back in the Sixties Shasta was what was called a "family brand" - meant to be consumed in large quantities, I guess - and came in all sorts of fun flavors, with each can having its own color-coding. Let’s see if I can remember them all:
Shasta Flavor Color-Coding
|
Root Beer |
Brown |
|
Cola |
Red |
|
Ginger Ale |
Green |
|
Yellow |
|
|
Punch |
Red-orange |
|
Orange |
Orange |
|
Grape |
Purple |
|
Black cherry |
Dark red |
|
Lemon-lime |
Light green |
|
Strawberry |
Pink |
|
Club soda |
Light blue (?) |
|
Grapefruit |
Yellow-green |
I’m not sure about that last one, grapefruit - my wife remembers it, but I don’t. I mainly liked the creme soda and root beer.
Another source of sugar in 1964 was Funny Face drinks, which Pillsbury introduced. The novelty of either adding sugar or not to the drink mixes appealed to Jimmy and I, as did the cartoon characters. I recall that the pre-sweetened drinks didn’t taste very good and had a wicked after-taste. (This was due to the use of Pillsbury’s Sweet 10 formula, based on cyclamates, which were banned by the FDA in 1969.) What did appeal to us, however, was some incredibly sweet "sun tea" my mother used to fix. She must have dumped a load of sugar into it - anyway, Jimmy and I loved it. She didn’t make it very often, but when she did we were on it like ugly on an ape.
Sugar, pool water, the Beatles and being a boy - yeah, yeah, yeah.
POSTSCRIPT: After forty years I have made e-mail contact with Kathy, who has corrected a few inaccuracies in this article as I originally had it. As it turns out she was a far bigger Beatles fan than I had realized, back then. She was backstage at their first Hollywood Bowl performance, which led to Capitol placing her on a record of Beatles interviews. She tells me she documented all her various adventures in a book; I'd love to read it!