Boy Scouts and Beatle Boots

I ran into Clifford Waldeck today, an old classmate from Tamalpais High School. We talked about mutual acquaintances from the past and also about Facebook. Yes, I did sign up for it a year or so ago, but the problem is that I’m not allowed to access my account at work, and when I get home I am so sick of computers that I can’t bring myself to log on. By now, I am also so terribly far behind on my invites that I despair. But as my old classmates continue to contact me, I wonder how far back into the past I dare go?

I had a crush on Janet Sullivan. Frankly, in third grade, I think everyone did. She had that rare combination of looks, brains, a quick wit and an off-beat sense of humor that I found alluring. I remember that she once brought a little project to the playground one day. It consisted of a simple drawing she had made of a girl wearing a dress and when you lifted the “skirt,” the girl’s derriere was revealed, which was actually two of Janet’s knuckles poking through a cut-out in the paper. I had never seen anything so clever in my life.

Both of our fathers and older brothers were involved in Boy Scouts at the time, so Janet and I were often at troop meetings together. We spent most of our time giggling and crawling around under the tables in the multi-purpose room at Strawberry Point Elementary School where the Scouts gathered. But time has a way of moving on and before long Janet joined the Brownies and then the Girl Scouts. I still have a class picture of her in her uniform. It seems so incongruous on such a free spirit. I made my way through Cub Scouts and then into the hallowed ranks of Boy Scout Troop 33, where conformity loomed.

Unlike today, when the dress code for Scouts seems to be mostly non-existent, when I joined it was a different story. You were expected to sew on your own badges (no help from mom) and every meeting started out with an inspection of each patrol by the Assistant Scoutmaster. Heaven help you if you showed up missing a uniform piece: khaki Scout pants (ironed-check!), Scout shirt (ironed-check!), web belt and regulation buckle (check!), kerchief with slide (check!), black shoes (polished-check!). The only acceptable deviation was if you had carved a kerchief slide out of something woodsy, as part of a sanctioned project. Or so we thought. Apparently, there was one other loop-hole, and I was destined to exploit it with the help of the “Fab Four.”

When the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan, the Clark children begged and pleaded with our mother to let us watch the show during dinner, and she happily caved. From that point on, I was hooked. My mother’s tennis racquet from college (a wooden Dunlop “Jack Kramer” model) was put into use as a “guitar” and I started to spend all my allowance on Beatles bubble-gum cards. Naturally, I dreamt of one day actually getting to “Meet the Beatles” and perhaps even be invited to join their group despite my glaring lack of musical talent. The closest I ever got was when my sister, Kathy, went to one their last concerts at Candlestick Park, but I did convince my mother that I absolutely had to have a pair of genuine Beatle Boots.

Andy Warhol illustration of Beatle boots

In case you’ve never seen them, these trendy kicks were black ankle-high boots with pointy toes, an elastic insert on the outside and a zipper on the inside. This was before the era of branded merchandise, so we trundled off to Penney’s in Corte Madera to see what we could find. Lo and behold, they did have them. Unfortunately, they were cheaply made and, though they had my size, they still hurt like hell. My father, an orthopedic surgeon, would have had a fit if he had known, but I held my tongue when asked how they felt, and took my brand new purchase home.

Now that I had them, I had to figure out how to show them off. It was out of the question to wear them to school, because I would be in agony until they were broken in. Then I guessed I might just survive wearing them to the next Thursday night troop meeting. But would they be approved?

Of course none of the adults saw anything amiss as I walked in; my khaki pants covered the top of the boots. But among my peers they were a sensation. Look how high they are! No laces! Are they real Beatle boots? Are you actually allowed to wear them? As I stood for inspection I fidgeted nervously, but if the ASM noticed my anarchic cry for individuality, he didn’t say a word. I had gotten away with my openly subversive gesture.

The storm soon passed, as it did after the first bloomers made their appearance at Wimbledon or when Elvis gyrated shamelessly on T.V. Within a few months, I was not the only one sporting avant-garde British rock-star footwear in Troop 33, but I can claim to have been the first. I wonder if Janet Sullivan would have been impressed?