After I read Kevin Cullen’s column “Returning to the lyric little bandbox” (Metro, Sept. 23), in which he connected his childhood memories of seeing the Red Sox play with going to a game with his son this year, and in which he extolled the importance of a “fleeting diversion” in view of the news these days, I was walking through Downtown Crossing. Two men walked toward me, one wearing a Beatles T-shirt. As they walked by, I said, tongue in cheek, “The Beatles, isn’t that that old British beat group?” The guy in the T-shirt said, “They were from Liverpool.”
I told him I went to the last Beatles concert in Boston, at Suffolk Downs in 1966, pulled along by my older brother. I described how everyone was standing on their seats screaming, so you could not hear the beat. Fans on the field ran toward the stage with police chasing them. One guy got through and touched John, Paul, and George, and as he tried to touch Ringo, he was tackled by a police officer.
The T-shirt guy asked, “How old are you?” I said 69, and he said he was 74. Then he tapped me lightly on the shoulder and said, “immediately I’ve touched you.” Two Beatles fans connecting after all these years.
As he and his friend walked away, I said, “That was very touching” (corny, but it was).
The year after the Beatles concert was 1967, the “Impossible Dream” season, and like Cullen, I was bitten by the Red Sox bug.
Bill Hahn
Stoughton
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