Upon My Mama and Aunt's Birthdays

My Aunt was born on Sept. 26. The year is not important. What is significant is that my mother was born exactly four years and 364 days later on Sept. 25. She was an early birthday present, my aunt told me once. For their entire lives they've shared their birthday. Now they are fortunate enough to live next door to each other and share their lives.

There are so many things I could tell you about these two women. Some of it happy, some of it sad. But I think that there is one story that pretty much sums up their relationship together. It's become something of folklore in our family, and unless they are in the right mood neither one of them will tell it to you. Perhaps it's because I have actually heard it from them so infrequently that it my favorite. And there is potential that they wouldn't want me to share it, but I'm going to throw caution to the wind.

My Mama, My Aunt and the Beatles

It was the middle of the British invasion and my mother and aunt were enamored by the original Fab Four. Every girl had a favorite Beatle and you can tell a lot about someone's personality based on which Beatle they align themselves with. This was very true for my mother and aunt. Not surprisingly, Mama preferred Paul, while my aunt most liked John. (Paul was the sweet one John was the rebel.)

On Sept. 16, 1964 the Beatles played the City Park Stadium in New Orleans, a two-hour bus ride from the town I grew up in. Mama was 11 and her sister was 16. It was less than ten days from their next birthday, and the one thing they wanted most in the world was to travel to New Orleans for this concert. But my grandparents refused on the grounds that it was being held on a Wednesday night in the middle of a school week and would take the girls away from their classes for at least two days. Plus the tickets were $5 each, a small fortune to country girls. So the decision was easy. There would be discussion. No bartering. The answer was no. They were not going.

This was basically a death sentence to my mom and aunt. They were heartbroken. This was a once in a lifetime chance for them. How could they miss it! The girls shared a room together and would stay up late at night discussing ways to convince my grandparents to let go. Nothing worked. No argument could be made to change their minds, so eventually they agreed to take matters into their own hands.

On the Wednesday morning of the concert, mama and auntie took the school bus to the school as normal. But instead of going to class, they walked a block over and climbed to the top of the county courthouse and watched as my grandfather park his truck in a nearby spot to meet up with the guys he rode to work with 40 miles away in Natchez. As soon as he was out of site, the girls climbed down from their perch and proceeded to his truck. There they put a note that read: Gone to New Orleans to see the Beatles. Will go to Aunt Jimmie's house afterward. Please don't be too mad. Love you and Momma.

Then they proceeded to catch the first bus to New Orleans. Two hours later they were downtown in the Crescent City, looking for City Park Stadium and sticking close together. They held their combined savings – a few dollars -- in my aunt's purse, the girls spent the day window shopping. That afternoon they ate an early dinner in the French Quarter. Just before 8 p.m. they were standing in line with thousands of other fans to enter the stadium. They didn't have money for tickets and even if they did, there were none left for the sold out show. So they waited until just before the concert and entered with the rush of girls their own age. Only one person stopped them to ask for their tickets and my aunt convinced them another concert worker had already taken them. They were admitted with no other questions asked.

They watched the entire show from the floor pressed up against hundreds of other screaming girls. They were so close to the Beatles that they could see the sweat on Paul's face and the calluses on John's fingers from strumming the guitar. It was a defining moment of their adolescence. Disobedience, trickery and theft never felt so good. At least until the show ended. At which point they were forced to return to the reality of what they had just done and seek asylum at their Great Aunt Jimmie's home in the city. It was a silent trip on the trolley to their aunt's home. When they arrived her parents were already there.

And that's where the story ends. I can't remember my mom or aunt ever saying what kind of trouble they go into, but you have to assume that it was significant. I guess that after you've had the balls to runaway from home to see the greatest band of your generation, everything after that kind of pales in comparison, even a punishment of epic proportions.

Once, when I was a little girl, my grandfather pulled a worn piece of paper from his billfold. It was the note his own daughters had written and he had kept it in his wallet ever since he found it on the dash of his truck all those years ago. I asked him that day what he did when he finally caught up with them after the concert. He paused, then smiled as he ran his fingers across the note. "I was just so happy they were okay…" he said. "But between you and me, I could have killed them."

When my grandfather died a decade later, that note was still in his wallet.

If you ever wonder where I get the fearlessness from, you need not look any further:

This picture was taken at my mama and aunt's birthday party in 1980. My mother was 28, the same age I am now. My aunt was 33. That's me in the middle. I'm not even going to comment on the fact that it looks kind of chilly and how I seem to be totally under-dressed.