May 2017 – Tim Younkman

Catching Up With Chuck

cwd100 May 23, 2017 Just Yesterday

I never met Chuck Berry but, like all kids from the Fifties and Sixties, I knew him through his hit songs.
His music was brought to mind after hearing that Berry died at the age of 90 in his Missouri home. His funeral is planned for April 9 in St. Louis.

A few years ago, I went to his home, although uninvited but not looking for an autograph or photo op. I happened to be in Missouri on a research mission and a local historian was showing me some of the historical sights of the area around Wentzville in St. Charles County.

“Want to see where Chuck Berry lives?”

I didn’t even know he was still alive, I mean he was kind of old when I was a kid, but I said, “sure.”

We drove way out in the country and stopped in sight of a sprawling brick ranch house with a long wrought-iron fence with wide brick posts. The front gate was closed although there was no sign of guards.
“I think he’s about 85 or so and doesn’t get out much anymore,” my guide said.

I supposed that at one time he had enough money to hire a crew of gardeners and grounds keepers, but obviously not for some time. The place looked okay from a distance, but a closer view showed the grounds needed tending and the fence required some repair.

“This was some place in its time,” he said. “Parties all the time and that’s how he got into so much trouble. Kids from the town would come out, underage girls especially, and that caused bad feelings from their folks.”

He said some of it was due to the fact that Berry was black and the local kids were white, but it also was a fact that he was a man in his thirties entertaining teenagers.

Of course, his music was aimed at underage kids for the most part.

When I first heard Chuck Berry songs—“Johnny B. Goode,” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”—no one thought he was as old as he was. It would have been kind of creepy for a 32-year-old to have the hots for a girl on her 16th birthday.

He also delved farther into the creepy world with upbeat love songs about “Carol,” Beautiful Delilah,” and “Little Marie.”

His attraction for young girls caused him even more problems. During that time, Berry had bought a nightclub in nearby St. Louis and was quite successful until he was arrested for transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines for immoral purposes, supposedly to work in his club. Regardless of his reason, he was sent to prison under the Mann Act.

After several appeals, he eventually served 18 months in prison.

He tried over the years to endear himself to the townspeople in Wentzville by buying and distributing bicycles to underprivileged kids each Christmas, although it often was met with skepticism, according to my guide.

Still, he was known and liked around the world and had many songs in the top 40 with a few going all the way to the top on the R&B charts. His humorous songs, too, were memorable, such as his Christmas hit “Run Run Rudolph” and familiar teen anthem of “No Particular Place To Go,” not to mention his curious offering in 1972 of “My Ding-A-Ling.”

He was an inspiration to many other performers including The Beatles who had a big hit with Berry’s smash hit “Roll Over Beethoven.” I’m sure his homecoming tune of “Back in the U.S.A.” when he returned from his British concerts suggested The Beatles’ “Back in the USSR.”

Berry’s first hit of note was “Maybellene” in 1955 which foreshadowed his 1964 offering of “Nadine (Is That You?).”

His body of work, which garnered him the nickname “The Godfather of Rock and Roll,” also was his ticket into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, being in the first class ever enshrined in 1986.

Despite his personal shortcomings, Berry was a true pioneer in R&B and Rock-n-Roll compositions, plus he did offer a stage presence that was polished enough to cross over onto the big screen in which he appeared in several rock movies.

And who could possibly not recall his appearances without commenting on his famous “duck walk” in which he skipped across the stage, back and forth, playing the guitar while more-or-less throwing his knees out of whack. He also incorporated the splits while gyrating in the middle of one of his big hits. Those were things he had to do in every performance or the fans would have felt cheated.

In short, to paraphrase his song: He could play a guitar just like ringing a bell—Go, Chuckie, Go.

WAR WITH MEXICO

cwd100 May 23, 2017 My Times

The dispute with Mexico over a “great wall” that will keep pesky foreigner out of our country is only the latest in a historical contest between the two.

Are we ready to cede land to Mexico? We will if a wall is built because one cannot build such a thing on any land but one we own so the wall will be built on American soil, meaning the land on the other side will belong to Mexico which could do whatever it wants with the land.

There has been ill-will between the two nations based on the events of 1846 to 1848. Most of the people listening to the White House chatter probably don’t know how the U.S. stole half of Mexico.

It started a decade earlier when Americans moved into the sparsely populated land of Texas, a province of Mexico, bringing with them slaves to work the land. Slavery was illegal in Mexico and therefore Texans were ordered to free them or leave.

Instead, the Texans declared the province independent and all sorts of provocateurs descended on the land forcing a series of military battles in which the poorly-led Mexican army was defeated. However, Mexico insisted Texas was part of its nation and not independent.

Then the U.S., planning on expanding slavery westward, annexed Texas as a state leading to more armed conflict that expanded into a full-fledged war. Under Generals Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, the American army overwhelmed Mexican forces in a series of battles and eventually occupied Mexico City itself forcing the Mexican government to sue for peace.

In the ensuing treaty, Mexico was forced to give up half of its territory including what is now all of California, Nevada, Utah, and most of Arizona, plus parts of New Mexico and Colorado, along with recognition that Texas was part of the U.S.

To make matters worse, the occupying American forces went insane, raping, pillaging, and murdering private citizens, and to such an extent that soldiers like Lt. Ulysses Grant wrote home questioning the morality of the war.

The U.S. nearly went to war again when it was learned that during World War I the Germans had made overtures to the Mexican government to align with Germany to defeat the U.S. noting that when the war was over, Mexico would be able to regain all of that land lost 75 years earlier.

When the German-Mexican contacts were discovered, there was talk about declaring war on Mexico, but that soon fizzled. Still the ill-will was evident.

That persisted in World War II when there was apprehension the Japanese might offer the same incentive to Mexico if it would align with Japan thus allowing the Japanese army and navy to use Mexico as a staging area to invade the U.S. mainland.

That didn’t occur, but the ill-feeling was there and the distrust lasted for decades.

The odd thing about all of this talk of a wall is most of the people coming into the U.S. illegally are not Mexicans, but are those fleeing oppressive governments in Central America (which are backed by the U.S.). If a wall is to be built, it should be on Mexico’s southern border.

Gangs control much of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, with most of these founded by foreign gangsters in the U.S. who were deported back to their home countries where they continued to build their organizations.

So, blaming Mexico for the increase in undocumented aliens is a stretch at best, and an ill-informed president, babbling off the top of his head without knowing the history, can only lead to another sad chapter in an already unhappy situation.