I suppose rock concerts, or events similar to them, have always been around. At least there have always been popular music concerts. The only rock concert I ever attended ended almost in disaster for Kenneth Kauley and myself. Here’s the way it happened.

As I recall, this trip occurred during during the 1956-57 school year. I do remember that our Music teacher was a Mr. Robertson. I don’t think he taught music too many years at Hammon but I do recall some things about the man. He was a typical "musician" in the sense that making melody was his sole task in life. He was sort of a soft fellow, physically speaking. Mr Robertson had that stereotypical "music teacher" mentality. He came and went from HHS sort of unnoticed and didn’t make much of a mark on anyone. At least not that I could ever discern.

On one occasion, he took most of the High School choir to a music workshop over at Oklahoma A&M. The trip occurred prior to the time the Regents officially changed the name of Oklahoma A&M to Oklahoma State University. I have only vague memories of the workshop itself. However, I do remember gathering into Gallagher Hall, which is now called Gallagher-Iba Arena. We gathered with hundreds of other HS choirs from around the state to sing as one large choir. It was the first time I had ever sung with such a large choir.

The guest conductor stood on the floor of the arena and the entire east side of the arena was filled with high school students. I particularly remember us working up and performing the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel’s "Messiah." It brought chill bumps up my spine when we sang that magnificent piece with several thousand other high school kids.

The workshop concluded at about 2:30pm.  Mr. Robertson had scheduled a side trip was to Oklahoma City to the Municipal Auditorium in the downtown section of the capitol city. We were treated to  The featured musician at the concert was Jerry Lee Lewis. There were several other musicians who put on their shows prior to Jerry Lee Lewis. I can only remember one. He was a black singer whose name was "Screaming" Jay Hawkins. Hawkins was the very first black music star I ever saw perform live. Man, he was good. He was doing "Rock" music before there was such a thing as Rock music.

I remember that Jerry Lee Lewis’ hottest song at the time was, "Great Balls of Fire." He was the last performer to mount the stage. Lewis was a fantastic piano player and I loved his style. He performed "Great Balls of Fire" several times that evening with predictable results. During the last time he sang the song he rose up from his piano bench and began playing and singing in a standing posture. Really, he was doing more jumping around than standing. As he jumped to sing, he kicked the piano bench back with one leg, sending it careening off the stage into a mass of broken pieces. Of course, that brought the wild screams to a rousing crescendo from all the girls in the house. Frankly, I didn’t know girls could holler that loud. Mercy!! It was loud in that old auditorium.

The concert wasn’t over until around the midnight mark on the clock. We were told to board the bus as quickly as we could so we could begin the trip back to Hammon. Jessie Hines was our bus driver and he didn’t cotton to any of this late stuff on the part of riders on his bus.

Kenneth Kauley and I had been sitting together and decided that we needed to make a quick trip to the restroom before boarding the bus. When we got to the restroom, there was a line longer than the one over on the girls side. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know how long the line was. We were hurting pretty bad, being in desperate need to dump the remains of the cokes we had been drinking during the concert. We had refrained from going to the restroom during the concert because we didn’t want to miss a single note of the performances on stage.

As we stood in the long line waiting for a space in the restroom, we were hurting two ways. One was from the mounting pressure on our bladders. The other was the pressure of making it to the bus before it left. We decided that surely there must be a better place to relieve ourselves and not have to wait in line so dad-gum long. We remembered there were some high bushes on the back side of the auditorium. We would go there, get between the bushes, do our thing, and head for the bus.

Having made that decision, we exited the auditorium and headed for the bushes. As we pass through the front door, we noticed a bowling alley immediately across the street which was still open. The bowling alley was about a hundred yards beyond where our bus was parked. We opted to make a run to the bowling alley instead of the high bushes, which turned out to be a big mistake. We had no problem getting in line at the restroom in the bowling alley because we were first in line there. But that was little consolation to us because when we exited the bowling alley the bus was gone. We were literally between a rock concert and a hard place at that point.

We were shocked beyond words to describe on the sudden revelation that the bus had left without us. Although it was well past midnight, I had no fear whatsoever of being in downtown Oklahoma City. But I did have one incredible fear which gripped my soul. The thing I feared most was a "who," not a "what." And that "who" was my father. He wasn’t going too take lightly the fact that I had fooled around and missed the bus home. This further intensified the feeling of being between a rock concert and a hard place.

Dad was always a stern man and when I pulled stupid stuff like missing the bus, he never cut any slack on obtuse and dim-witted decisions like the one I had just made. And this was definitely an act of pure feeble-mindedness. Kenneth was not at fault because the whole idea about going to the bushes and the bowling alley had been mine.

Such actions always led to grim consequences even when I was home. If I failed to get the morning chores done before school and missed the bus, I had to walk to school. Many a time I have walked the more than two miles to school when I missed the bus from being dilatory about getting the chores done. Here I had missed the bus in downtown Oklahoma City. Not only had I missed the bus, I had influenced a friend to be in the same trouble I was in. I felt I was in certain trouble with my earthly father, not to mention my Heavenly Father and the school officials...

There was nothing else for Kenneth and me to do but set out for Hammon on foot. And that we did. The Municipal Auditorium was located at 7^th and Chartel in downtown OKC. I knew which direction to go and what streets to take to get out of the City. I knew we had to get over to Northwest Classen Blvd and make our way out to old US-66, which runs through Bethany and toward home. It took about 40 minutes to get to NW Classen, which was and still is a main four lane thoroughfare going out of the City toward Bethany, Yukon, El Reno and points west.

When we got to NW Classen, we began the task of doing some serious hitch-hiking. We began thumbing a ride. Much to our joy, a man in a huge Cadillac pulled over an picked us up. I’ll not attempt to describe what I think was going through his mind when he picked us up. We told him our tale of woe, omitting the part about the high bushes, and declared that we were having to hoof it home because of opting for the restrooms in the bowling alley rather than the ones in the Municipal Auditorium. No matter, we were in tall trouble for having missed the bus. I knew we would be in trouble with school officials for our delinquency but I had no fear about that. It was Dad’s wrath that I was concerned about. I was sure he would send me to prison for twenty years and I’d have this record hanging over my head the rest of my life.

As it turns out, the guy in the Cadillac was going to Bethany. He agreed to take us to the west edge of Bethany and drop us off at the city limits on highway 66 and we could continue hoofing it from there. We rode in perfect comfort of that plush Cadillac. I don’t remember having ridden in a Cadillac many times before that.

As we approached the west city limits of Bethany, he pulled over and let us out. The highway was four lane at that point. Just as we exited the car to begin our "thumbing it" again, we looked over into the eastbound lane of 66 and saw the Hammon bus zip by, heading for downtown Oklahoma City. I think Kenneth and I cried in unison, "Hey, there’s our bus!!"

So we hopped back in the car and the guy whipped that Caddie around and began to chase the bus. We asked him to pass the bus and get about two blocks ahead of it and then let us out. He did this. When we had established a good distance ahead of the bus, the man stopped his car and we jumped out and hailed the bus down. I think it was along about 2:00am at this point.

I recall that Jessie Hines was none to happy about what we had done. He was a member of the School Board and I knew he had an inside track of the exact location of the "board of education," which would most certainly be applied to our sit-upons the following day. Again, I had no fear of Jessie himself. I was afraid of what he was going to tell Dad. I remember feeling like a criminal who had willfully broken a law of the land. I was extremely embarrassed in the presence of my peers, who were themselves none too happy with Kenneth and me. I could handle facing the Principal on the next day and knew that I would be in trouble with him... But Dad? How was I going to handle explaining this to him? I don’t think anyone said a word as we boarded the bus. Jessie didn’t say a solitary thing. That was a sure sign to me that he would tell Dad what mischief I had gotten Kenneth and myself into.

A strange thing happened out of that. Oddly enough, nobody said a thing to either of us about the incident. We were not called into the Principal’s office. Jessie did not tell Dad about the incident. Jessie took it good and always teased me about that. Even today, we laugh about my fear that he would tell Dad about the incident. I never told Dad and even today, he does not know about me getting Kenneth and myself between a rock concert and a hard place.