It was 1957, and not one teenager in the country wanted to be anywhere after school but on the set of Dick Clark's "American Bandstand", then America's most popular television show, an after school production out of Philadelphia that featured local kids dancing on the Bandstand Committee, and grandstanded popular acts of the day like Bill Hailey and Fats Domino, Theresa Brewer, probably, Sandra Dee, for sure. The kids would dance, the acts did their thing, the kids danced some more: that was the basic format for each show, and you would mangle your best friend to be a member of that committee, to especially be a member of that committee when a viewer calls in a request to see you dance, just you, and your partner , of course (Nobody ever danced alone). If it were me - Here I'm getting ahead of myself - it would have been a request for Steve & Phyllis. Phyllis had buck teeth, but she could make out like she wanted to eat your face and and she was very smart and very funny, and, oh, boy, could she dance - a very athletic version of the jitterbug, lots of twirls. As you might expect, "American Bandstand" metastasized to cities all over the country, including ours, Baltimore, Maryland. WAAM TV. Channel 13 - Buddy Deane's Bandstand!
Every day after school, if you didn't have practice or detention, you were glued to the twelve inch screen on your Philco or Dupont or Emerson television set as the bandstand committee danced to the latest pop hit. To be a member of that committee was to be a god. To be anywhere near was to be radioactive. My friend who is, by now, a respectable elder and noted pickle ball addict but then was a f***up in good standing like the rest of us and shall thereby henceforth go by the nickname, Blum. Well, Blum (aka The Blumster) had a crush on Gail, a petite, cute as hell, adorable dancer who was a star on the bandstand committee. The problem was he didn't know her and knew no way of meeting her. That vaunted bandstand committee. The Untouchables. How was a mere mortal to breach Valhalla? Who was he? Who were we? "Just do it," I said to myself, "Just do it!" How? Blum thought I was crazy. "Tell you what," I told him, "Dress in chinos and a button down shirt tomorrow, and bring a tie."
"Why?"
"We're goin' on Bandstand."
"You're nuts."
"Trust me."
I was so sure of myself back then. Nobody just "got on" Bandstand. One was Selected. Mortals simply sat and watched.
WAAM -TV sat on a hill top. The studio entrance was out back which is where the kids on the Bandstand Committee congregated after school before the guard let them in. Mind you, not everyone got in, only the elite, the Committee. This particular afternoon most of them were in place when Blum and I got off public transit and simply tagged onto the crowd of maybe thirty kids. I tied his tie, and he tied mine, just as if we were regulars, very cool, maneuvering step by step into the middle of it all so that when the guard finally opened the door we nonchalantly swarmed in with everyone else. Phyllis was the sister of a kid in my class, so we connected right away. We were pretty good, too. Every so often we'd get a special request to dance on camera where we'd jitterbug our hearts out to whatever record Buddy Dean had spun. I don't remember how Blum connected with Gail, but he did, and they became stars on the show. Everybody wanted to see them dance. Everybody.
Fade out, as they say in the movie business, and Fade In. Thirty years later. Blum is big into racquet ball, and plays a series of matches with a woman ranked tenth in her home state (not his). She was visiting friends who belonged to this same club. Her name was Gail and, yes. she did look vaguely familiar, but that was it until it dawned on Blum that Gail was actually the Gail as in the Buddy Dean Bandstand Gail! The Very One! Born and bred in the city of Johnny Unitas. The one. Only she drew a blank. Moved from Baltimore long ago. Remembered nothing. Not a flip. Not a dip. Not a twirl. Nada. Blum was crushed. I was talking to him just the other day. Now, pickle ball is in, but he's still crushed.
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