"Postcards Of Seagrove"

[Garrett Horn]

"BEATLES PEOPLE"


“…and marmalade skies…” This was perhaps the exact point, in


the poetry of the Beatles, where the world changed. Before this time

we were simply on a boat, on a river, with tangerine trees. It was still

the normal world. And then, with one phrase, we entered something

new. Someplace with newspaper taxies…and looking-glass ties…a

girl with kaleidoscope eyes… We know from our history, our photos,

and our record albums that the Beatles evolved before our very eyes

and ears. No musical group changed so much in their career, and in

doing so, they changed us, too. We all know that it was a by-product

of the psychedelic era, the times of LSD and mind altering drugs.

It was a time of freedom. It will be interesting to see how the young

people of today will embrace this music. It may not have the taint of

“drugs” to them, but might simply be seen as imaginative whimsy. The

Beatles started off as a rock n’ roll band, but the body of their work is

something different, something timeless. Melodic whimsy, cute ditties,

interspersed with elegant, haunting images, perfect melodies, and just

an incredible ensemble of interesting characters. They truly created a

world.

In all the punditry and profundity surrounding the Beatles, I find

it very strange that little mention was ever made of their storytelling

abilities. Although a majority of their greatness became evident in their

simple, short, songs filled with unique beautiful melodies, beneath the

surface of many of their songs was a personal story written about

people we felt like we knew. Have you ever thought about all the named

characters that populated the world of Beatles songs?

Of course, the famous ones pop into mind first. We all know who

Sgt. Pepper is, and who cannot have beautifully haunting visions

of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Billy Shears was the gentleman

that introduced us to the celebrated Mr. Kite and his partners, the

Hendersons. A splendid time was guaranteed for all. Lovely Rita, meter

maid, was, of course, the girl that got away.

But, this was hardly the only album that was filled with Beatlespeople.


Eleanor Rigby was a perfect portrait of someone’s sad, lonely


aunt, and Father McKenzie will always be darning his socks when

there’s nobody there. Somewhere out there Lady Madonna is trying to

make ends meet.

There were some very early people we didn’t know much about: Mr.

Moonlight, Anna, Michelle; the Beatles were young and in love and

everything and everyone was rather simple. Then there were others

we were introduced to on the White Album that filled a world with so

much more depth, variety, and satire. There was always the beautiful

Julia, but now there was Sexy Sadie, Dear Prudence, Honey Pie, and,

of course, the silly Desmond and Molly Jones. What sort of imagination

can produce a fellow like Bungalow Bill living next door to the Mother

Superior?

Of course, some of the most memorable people stood out in their

short story of Rocky Raccoon. A whole story wrapped around an

ensemble of characters. There was Doc, Danny Boy, and the gal “whose

name was McGill, but she called herself Lil, and everyone knew her as

Nancy.” In one line, this woman had not one, but two mysterious

pasts. It was like an entire opera in a three-minute song.

When you talk about mystery, who in the world was Semolina

Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower? The Walrus? The Eggman? All

just characters weaving through a tapestry of astonishing sounds and

musical imagery.

Near the end of their musical journey, the Beatles brought even

more of their characters into our lives. “Here come ol’ Flat-top, he

come grooving up slowly.” We get a short glimpse into the lives of Mean

Mister Mustard and Polythene Pam, as well as a beautiful vision of the

Sun King.

I’m sure there are Beatle-people I have forgotten through the years.

I’m reminded of Sweet Loretta Modern, and JoJo, who was trying to get

back. And Jude, who was reminded that “the movement you need is on

your shoulders.” I’ll always be able “to put an old LP on the turntable”

and revisit these people that the Beatles brought into our lives through

sheer imagination, and I’ll always be able to rekindle that hope that all

you need is love.


-Excerpt from "Postcards of Seagrove"-

 

[Garrett Horn]

THE FUTURE



Sometimes, I get a little bit annoyed with the phrase, “Where’s my jetpack? This is supposed to be the Future!” Of course, this is a reference to all the great new wondrous things that we, as kids growing up in the fifties, were promised. We watched the Jetsons, a cartoon from that era, and everything we saw there, we felt like were promises of our future. When we got a little older, there would be flying cars and trips to the moon, and now I hear some people grumble about it, but I just don’t get it. When I look around me, it surely seems to me that we are in the Future. This Christmas, 2017, we were driving into Dallas, and the car we were in was talking to us, telling us precisely where we were and where to turn. Meantime, I was searching the Internet on a computer the size of my hand, and could easily view any piece of information known to mankind that I wanted to search for. Actually, I was checking my bank account, to see if I could afford to click one more time, and send a late Christmas package to California, overnight. My wife, who was driving, had the car on cruise control, with driver assist, and was using Facetime on her iphone to see the beautiful faces and hear the lovely giggles of her grandkids, who were in Little Rock, in real time. “Real time” is a weird term we use these days to differentiate from all the “fake time”, I guess, which really means recorded time, I suppose. And everything, yes, I mean, everything, is recorded these days. While we were zooming through the freeways of Dallas, it really wasn’t so free. Cameras were taking pictures of our car, and we were being billed instantaneously for each mile we drove on this toll road. We both gazed into our personal screens, and glanced occasionally onto the car screen that flashed intermittently from a dayglow map, to a screen that told us the song title and author of every song that played on the Sirius XM Radio station we were listening to. It was the Beatles, of course, a musical group that had stopped recording music about a half century ago, and they were still filling my mind and heart with beautiful music. Sometimes, while we propelled through downtown Dallas at seventy five miles per hour, we peered out the windows, and saw hundreds and hundreds of other vehicles traveling over, under, and around us, along the arching concrete conduits, and we could marvel at the speed and efficiency with which all these vehicles conveyed their way to their various points of interest. Sometimes we could actually see the screens inside their capsules, and we could see motion pictures playing on the backseats of them. The motion picture “Top Gun” was playing in the car next door, and I could see jet fighter planes dancing in the sky, on their screen, as we both zoomed towards Ft. Worth at seventy five miles per hour. Sometimes, the arching highways looked like fantastic art to me, so, instantaneously, I changed my hand held computer into a camera, and took a variety of still pictures, and motion pictures, which I instantaneously electronically “mailed” to all my friends, and anybody else in the world who was interested. I gazed out the window, again, sitting in our dual climate controlled metallic capsule, propelling through downtown Dallas at seventy five miles per hour, and I saw even larger metallic tubes, filled with people, launching, effortlessly, into the air at five hundred miles per hour, bound for Boston or Dubai. All those people in those silver tubes had screens connecting them to all the other screens on the planet. It was just an average day in Dallas. I switched my camera back to internet searcher, and watched videos of a thousand pound robot do a back flip. I tapped another screen and watched the Tangerine Bowl, live. I instantly found out that it was seven degrees below zero in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I called my brother who was on a ski-lift in Breckinridge. I adjusted the portable EKG monitor that was clipped to my belt and made sure the electrodes were still sending data to my doctor in Florida. Then I flipped back to my phone and watched a few second of live video feed from my home surveillance camera, and I knew that everything was well and good. No, we still didn’t have jetpacks, and flying cars, but we do have a space station that has been orbiting the Earth for over 17 years, and we have cameras flying past Saturn and driving on the surface of Mars, and it sure does feel to me, right now, that we are in the Future.


-an excerpt from my future book-

 

[Garrett Horn]

There's a new store, now open, called "Original 30-A" located on 30-A, of all places. This store has memorabilia that will surely take you back to a place of days gone by. There's a menu from the Wheelhouse, for instance, and there's a rotary phone that still works, and there is more than one copy of my book, "Postcards of Seagrove", still in stock. In addition to my book, I have some DVD's of home movies and slide shows featuring what it was like in those days. Where is this new old place? For locals, it's in the old Seagrove Glass building just a little east of The Old Florida Fish House. For newbies,with that new fangled GPS, it's at 5297 East Highway 30-A. And, don't forget, it's only 100 days until Christmas!