Reminiscences – Page 6 – GEORGE ROTHERT

The Ironic “Louie Louie”

The version of “Louie Louie” recorded by Portland band the Kingsmen reached number 2 on the pop music charts in 1963. Parents were outraged by the song’s supposedly obscene lyrics. Teenagers reveled in what they thought was a dirty song being played on the radio. The Federal Bureau of Investigation even delved into it, analyzing whether “Louie Louie” was smutty. The band was close-lipped but enjoyed the controversy that drove record sales higher.

The Kingsmen had paid $50 to rent the studio. They recorded the song in one take, gathered around a single microphone. The singer Jack Ely stood on his toes shouting at the boom mic, place too high.

July 26, 1919

This is the centennial anniversary of my mother’s birth. Marion Yvonne Riley was a product of the Heartland, born and educated in Iowa. She was the first woman reporter for the Mason City Globe-Gazette newspaper. During World War II she taught Army Air Corps (now the Air Force) servicemen who were training to be radio operators on bomber aircraft. (It was then she picked up the nickname “Mike” that stuck with her the rest of her life.)

A World Gone MAD

It was 1960… or thereabouts. I was sitting in the principal’s office, across the desk from Mother Mary I-forget-the-rest-of-her-name. (Why nuns of the Holy Child order were addressed as “Mother” and not “Sister” I never learned.) Sitting in a chair next to me was my mother, who had been summoned to this meeting addressing my egregious behavior.

“Do you approve of your son’s reading this?” she scowled, holding up the MAD magazine that had been confiscated from me.
“If that was the only thing he read I’d be concerned,” Mom replied. “But it isn’t.”
Thanks, Mom. Unfortunately for me, she agreed that it wasn’t what I should have been reading in class.

100 Years Ago: Black Sox

As Major League Baseball takes a break for its annual All-Star game, let’s take our time machine back to 1919. A year after the end of the Great War, the U.S. was recovering from the Great Influenza Pandemic and beginning a decade of prosperity. Baseball was truly the national pastime. But a hundred years later, the 1919 World Series is still remembered in infamy for the “Black Sox” players who conspired with gamblers to lose the Series.

The White Sox were World Series champions in 1917. The following year several of their players, including star outfielder “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, went off to war and the Sox fell to sixth place. Back to full strength in 1919, they won the American League pennant and faced the Cincinnati Reds in the Series. Several Sox players followed the lead of ace pitcher Eddie Cicotte: In exchange for $10,000 each ($146,000 in 2019 dollars) they made a deal with gamblers to lose.

No Gurlz Alowde

“The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time — it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine.” – Richard Nixon

Passenger traffic at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS) has steadily increased since Alaska/Horizon Air began service in 2007 ending six years of no commercial flights to Santa Rosa. (Alaska retired the Horizon brand in 2011.) The airline offered five flights a day — Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles — on 76-passenger turbo-prop aircraft. TSA had plenty of time; there was a one-hundred percent chance your checked bag would be inspected. Alaska has since added flights and destinations; they now also serve San Diego and Orange County. It worked out well for me. It saved me the usually tedious drive to the Oakland or San Francisco airport. Last year about 200,000 passengers passed through STS. American, United and Sun Country now also serve Santa Rosa.

It’s still mostly uncrowded and slow-paced with usually only one plane at a time on the tarmac. Except for a couple weeks in July, during the annual boys-club campout at Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, a few miles northwest from Santa Rosa. That’s when the airport is cluttered with private jets, as many as fifty at a time, bringing Bohemian Club members to the airport from whence limousines carry them to the annual male bonding among the redwoods. The private-jet congestion at STS is almost comical.

This Land Isn’t Your Land

“Shed American blood on American soil!”

1846
After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, it addressed the problem of its northern region. The sparsely-settled area was subject to harassment from Comanche, Navajo and Apache tribes who felt they had some right to the land just because they were there first. Mexico thought attracting settlers from the United States might help. They tempted Americans with promises of cheap land grants, if the new settlers became Mexican citizens, spoke Spanish and converted to Catholicism.

Immigrants from the U.S. poured into the Mexican province of Tejas. Most came from slave states. By the early 1830s, the 5,000 Mexicans in the province were overwhelmed by the 20,000 settlers and their 5,000 slaves.