How Could You Leave and Not Take Me?

Commentary/Satire by Bill the Butcher

If you are my age, think back. Back to the sixties. Not all the sixties, just that last half. The world changed on November 22, 1963. It is said that everyone who was alive on that day can remember exactly where they were, and what they were doing when the shots rang out in Dealy Plaza, and the world stopped on that day. Plaza! It’s not a plaza. It’s an underpass to a freeway. And the so-called Texas School Book Depository? While that evokes a mental image of a majestic storehouse for schoolbooks, actually it’s just a crumbling brown stone building, that looks more like an old downtown hotel than an institution for higher learning where you would book a room only as a last resort.

It took us a full minute to get over those shots, if we ever did. Camelot had fallen! After that we welcomed The Beatles and Vietnam welcomed Lyndon Johnson. The universe is like that. For every positive there is a negative. For every Paul McCartney there is a Lyndon Johnson, and for every Frank Sinatra there were The Mamas & the Papas! When The Beatles hit the boards on February 9, 1964, on the Ed Sullivan Show to entertain 73,000,000 of their screaming enthusiasts, Kennedy’s brains went out the window and Elvis weren’t nothing but a hound dog. All the rules changed, and it was understood that England had won the war of entertainment. But while janitors were mopping up pee left at the last venue the Fab Four had played California was paying close attention. California’s good about that. And they jumped from Paul Anka to Puff the Magic Dragon in a New York minute. The Beach Boys, Creedence, Jan and Dean, all competing for a slice of the pie or the girls hanging out in Haight Ashbury sans bras. Free love was in the air, only women bled and that’s where the Millennials were conceived just so you know.

But in this melee one group appeared that was real. The Beatles were produced by George Martin, a super slick product of the very British music industry and Brian Epstein, who put them in matching suits and sold them to Capitol Records. Acapulco Gold produced the Mamas & the Papas! And they were the real deal. The real California deal. In spite of their traditional folksy sound, they were outhouse crazy and had a stage presence to die for. There were two males. This was back when you could still be male. Boy meets girl, girl gets knocked up, girl has a baby, boy meets another girl. Ah, the good old days! And one of the Papas was very PROlific. Hell! He prolifed his own daughter but what the heck. . . free love, right? Have you seen Mackenzie? God had to find somebody for her. Now, where was I! There was the traditional “hottie.” A spitting image of what you’d see on the beach or in every Cheech and Chong movie. And then there was who you really came to see. Mamma Cass! 238 pounds of pure Californian, and it showed! She appeared in a sack dress! But damn, could that kid sing and dance. Please notice that I was so unimpressed by the other three members of the group that I completely forgot one of them. But Mamma Cass! I’d buy her a hot dog any time.

Mamma Cass exemplified every woman. She was the girl you could walk up and talk to. The girl who would eat that hotdog with you and you’d follow her home. She was proof that money won’t buy everything, and the California image was just a well constructed myth because most of us were constructed just like Mamma Cass Elliot.

Eventually the group separated and went their own ways. The Mamas & the Papas were soon forgotten, and the Beatles were deified. But if you were in high school in the sixties you will remember California Dreaming and Monday Monday. And you’d remember Mamma Cass singing and swaying in her muumuu. My baby girl has problems with her weight. She struggles every day. And I tell her there’s an angel watching over her. The sixties faded into history and so did Cass. Mama, how could you leave and not take me?

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