Days in the Life

Chapter One

Well, folks, if you think it’s been too long since you last heard from me, that’s probably because it’s been a over a year and a half since anything extremely noteworthy has happened in my life. Before I start rolling out my latest adventures, I should probably re-introduce myself. I’m Lauren Ashley Donaldson, age 21 as of last March. I’m finally in my senior year of college at Rosary College in River Forest, Illinois, where I’ve almost completed my major in English literature and my minor in history; I have seven more classes to take before I graduate in the spring of ‘67. The past three years of my life have flown by much faster than I expected them to; for example, my little sister Claire was in sixth grade when I started at good ol’ RoCo, and now she’s a freshman at Danford High in Pine Lake. Time really does fly when you’re having a great time, doesn’t it?

Pine Lake is the really upscale town we live in just north of Chicago, quite a commute from Rosary in the western suburbs; that’s why I’ve dormed at school since freshman year. Our house is in the ritzier section of town, located at number 12 on the six-block-long stretch of Cold Creek Street that runs alongside Pine Creek. The house is pretty big--four bedrooms, spacious kitchen and living rooms, a huge backyard, three-car driveway--not a bad place to live, really, when I’m not at school on weekends or during the summer.

Obviously my dad receives a pretty penny as the assistant of Corbett Vanderbilt, owner of the world-famous (and highly expensive) Vanderbilt Hotel in downtown Chicago, or we wouldn’t be living in such a classy shack. . .and I probably couldn’t afford to go to Rosary, either. He’s worked for Mr. V ever since he graduated high school, so he’s seen some of the most rich and famous people in the world in his work over the years. . . the most notable, at least in my humble opinion, being the Beatles just last year.

Well, actually, they had been booked to stay at the hotel while they did a show at the International Amphitheater last January, but Mr. Vanderbilt didn’t want a group of rock and roll stars disrupting business-as-usual there. However, not wanting to completely turn them out, Mr. V designated my father as their host for the weekend. I honest to god screamed when I heard the news; I love the Beatles! I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since February of ‘64, when they first came to the U.S. and did the Ed Sullivan show three Sundays in a row. Claire also loves them a lot, as do my friends Cheryl Hawthorne and Anna Brocklehurst. It works out quite well, actually; we each like a particular Beatle: Claire likes John Lennon, Anna likes George Harrison, Cheryl likes Ringo Starr, and I like (okay. . .love!) Paul McCartney, so none of us have to battle over one particular Fab.

Anyway, getting back to my story, the Beatles--along with their manager Brian Epstein, their assistant Neil Aspinall, and roadie Mal Evans--came marching up the driveway at 12 Cold Creek on a freezing cold Friday afternoon just after I’d arrived home from school for the weekend. Brian and Mal left not long after and went back at the hotel so they could be closer to the Amphitheater and make sure all the necessary preparations for the concert were in order the next day, but John, Paul (sigh), George, and Ringo spent the entire weekend at my house. They even invited me to go with them to their concert, since months earlier I hadn’t been able to buy a ticket to the show. And to top it all off, the night before they were due to leave, a huge snowstorm hit the Chicago area; the entire town was buried in about four feet of the white stuff for an entire day. The Fabs ended up leaving my house on the Tuesday following the concert--two extra days with my favorite guys in the world! Talk about a dream come true! Cheryl and Anna didn’t stop talking about how jealous they were of me for months, even after I’d managed to invite them over for an hour on that Tuesday to meet the Beatles. Claire, who, up until the end of the visit, had kept her crush on John a secret and tried to sabotage their visit, finally confessed her feelings about them and appreciated that hour of conversation with the lads almost as much as I enjoyed goofing around with them the whole weekend.

For months and months after that, I’d been hoping and praying to meet them again, especially when we were in London this past summer, but it just wasn’t meant to be, I guess; they were on a brief tour of Germany the same three days we were in London (my stupid luck--the same thing happened to me in ‘64; they were in Chicago while I was in England visiting my Aunt Sheila and Uncle Joseph). The closest encounters I had with anything to do with the Beatles after last January were buying their records as soon as they were released and going to see their new movie Help! the day it came out last summer. Those brief moments of ecstasy kept me satisfied, I suppose, but I still kept hoping for something more--another meeting with them.

Anyway, after our visit to Europe, we headed home for what would become probably one of the most boring summers of my life up until mid-August. My only entertainment besides driving Claire to the pool and going out with Anna and Cheryl was reading through the newspapers and watching television in order to keep up on the latest happenings with the Beatles. Their appearance at the Nippon Budokan Hall in Japan during late June and early July caused quite a stir with the Japanese, who regarded the hall as sacred; there were protesters outside the hall during all the shows, and the police presence, according to what I’ve read, was unprecedented--3000 cops in a 10,000-seat auditorium during every show! They were under heavy security even in their hotel room; they practically weren’t allowed to breathe on their own without having to notify the police. I mean, the only time that they had some kind of freedom to just walk around on their own while they were on tour anywhere was probably when they were visiting my house last year, and even then they had to play it cool so they wouldn’t be mobbed by the whole neighborhood.

And if that experience in Japan wasn’t bad enough, their trip to the Philippines was a million times worse. At the exact same time I was celebrating the 4th of July holiday with my family at Oak Street Beach on Lake Michigan, the Beatles were receiving death threats over their telephone in their hotel suite as a result of their unintentional snubbing of Imelda Marcos, the First Lady over there; she had invited them to the palace in Manila for a three o’clock luncheon, but they never made it there because their first concert of the day was at 4pm. There was a mess of confusion and terror at the airport the next day as they were repeatedly delayed from leaving the country for a number of stupid reasons--tax problems with the profits from the concerts, problems loading the instruments onto the plane, missing passports and physical attacks from the security guards in the terminals; really, they were lucky they made it out of the country alive! I felt so bad for everyone involved, not only the Beatles, but Brian and the rest of the entourage. What a rough couple of weeks they had!

Luckily they had an entire month at home to recuperate before heading to the States for another concert tour, starting with a show at the International Amphitheater here in Chicago on August 12th. . .for which I had acquired a ticket the minute they went on sale weeks earlier. There was no way I was going to miss seeing them again like I had back in ‘64, and that little slip of paper with second-row seats listed in black ink guaranteed me another close-up glimpse of my idols. I was even going to bring Claire with, but my mother balked at the idea. Claire was furious that my mother wouldn’t let her go to the show. But there was little I could do about that once I bought that five-dollar slip of paper; come hell or high water, I was going to see the Beatles live and in person again!

Little did I know towards the end of that summer that all of my expectations would be exceeded by a million miles. . .

Continue to Chapter Two...