I'm listening to an Internet radio station right now. They are playing "Listen" by The Beatles. You know, "listen (oo-oo-oo) do you want to know a secret (oo-oo-oo)." When I was about eight or nine, my cousins Gerald and Chris lived close to us in North Carolina. It was the only time ever growing up that they lived that close. They were born in Georgia. My aunt and uncle both were originally from our county, and I guess they knuckled under pressure from their brothers and sisters and moved. They didn't stay long, I guess about a year or so, and then they moved back.

Their time in North Carolina coincided with one of the greatest events in the history of mankind--the invasion of The Beatles. All of us were ga-ga over them. Our sisters would watch them on TV and scream. Robin and Sandra were only fiver or six, and Sherry was my age. They had seen how the girls screamed at the Beatles' shows, so they knew exactly how to do it. They would scream and pretend to faint on each other. We all knew their hits by heart.

Chris and Gerald were a little older than me. Not only did they have Beatles records, but their parents had bought them guitars. I seem to remember that they had an acoustic and a small electric guitar. It turned out that they were incredibly talented musicians. They played in bands for a long, long time. Gerald still jams with some people, and I know Chris still plays.

So, one afternoon that summer, we got the bright idea of putting on a concert. We sat up the stage on the carport. We brought out the guitars. Since they knew how to play some by then, they got to use the guitars. Besides, they were their guitars, and they were bigger than me. Their house had a window from the kitchen to the carport. We sat a record player in the window, one of those old 45 players that had the spindle in the middle that you could stack the records on and it would drop them one at a time. Our other cousins, Peggy and Kathy and Angie and Debbie Jordan, all girls and Beatle devotees, were building a house next door to Chris and Gerald's. We did not have a drum set, so we went over and got a couple of metal 5-gallon buckets, and turned them upside down. I don't remember having microphones. I was relegated to being Ringo.

So we got our sisters to sit in the driveway in front of the carport. We took up our positions, and Gerald ran in and cued up the music. We played "Listen", or at least it looked like it. Chris and Gerald stroked their guitars, without making any noise, and I pretended to play the buckets, and we mouthed the words along with John.

Our sisters sat out in the driveway and screamed like maniacs. The would pretend to faint on each other, and then spring back to life. And then they would faint again. That went on through the whole record. We also performed "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Later that evening, we did an encore performance, except this time the audience had grown to include all of the Jordan girls old enough to watch, and a couple of youngin's from down the street. We were a hit.

Forty years later, I hear that song, and I don't just remember it all. I go there. I can remember the reflection of the sun off the top of the white bucket. I remember seeing the girls sit on the concrete, fainting and screaming. I remember that I had to work not to hit the bucket too hard, so it wouldn't actually make any noise, because I knew even then the importance of keeping the illusion. I can remember that it was hot, and that it was much cooler on the carport. In fact, it may have the coolest I ever was.