Where Were You in '62? I Was Up On The Roof.

In 1962 I was eight years old and, almost every night, I would fall asleep listening to WSGN, 610 on the AM dial. The Big Six Ten was one of the two, mainstream rock and roll radio stations in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama (nobody knew who made these rules, but “cool kids” listened to WSGN, while "rednecks" listened to WVOK, even though both stations had identical playlists (1)). 

Up On The Roof by the Drifters was in heavy rotation and I lay in bed, night after night, listening to the lyrics.

“When this old world starts getting me down and people are just too much for me to face...I climb way up to the top of the stairs and all my cares just drift right into space. 

On the roof it's peaceful as can be...and there the world below can't bother me...I’ve found a paradise that's trouble-proof...up on the roof.” 

2324 Farley Terrace, Hoover, AL, where I grew up

Certainly, as a sensitive, introverted, introspective eight-year-old boy, I had my share of cares and woes, or so I thought. People were frequently "just too much for me to face". And, over time, night after night, listening to The Drifters, I found myself thinking, “This song makes a lot of sense. The roof sounds like a pretty good place to ponder my own place in the universe.”(2)

Now, from the perspective of a third-grader in the Wonder-Bread-and-Bama-Apple-Jelly suburbs of Birmingham, my mental image of “the roof” was different from that of a pair of urban songwriters (Carole King and Gerry Goffin) who probably lived in a New York brownstone, with ready rooftop access via a stairway or fire escape. The only roofs I knew about were on top of three-bedroom-two-bath, brick and clapboard houses in blandly well-groomed subdivisions. They were covered with scratchy, asphalt shingles and, if you were going to “climb way up to the top”, you needed the ladder from the garage or, in my case, an advantageously situated hickory tree. 

Also, I’m not clear now what “hustling crowds” and "rat race noise down in the street” I was trying to escape - Farley Terrace was generally a tranquil stretch of asphalt -  or how much escaping would actually be possible elevated a mere dozen feet above street level.  But, nevertheless, one summer night - actually early morning, it was around 2:00 AM - I found myself in a particularly pensive state of mind and decided to take The Drifters’ advice. I dressed, opened the window, detached the screen and climbed out into the warm dark. 

Shinnying up the hickory tree took just a few seconds and, then, there I was, my legs dangling over the gutter, my butt perched precariously on the sloping shingles. I scooted to the peak, stretched out on my back and waited for the stars to "put on a show for free."

It was nice. Really nice. After a few seconds of staring into space, I really did feel my cares drifting away. The air really was fresh and sweet (hickory pollen?). The world below really couldn’t bother me. Of course, I hadn't thought about how the sound of me scooting across the roof at 2:00 in the morning might bother my parents pretty seriously. After calling the police, they hurried to my room and, finding the bed empty, the window open and the screen off, they drew the only rational conclusion. Obviously I had been kidnapped by a child-molesting cat burglar and was being carried away into the night, for some reason, across the roof. 

Here, you need to keep in mind that my mother was the head nurse of Emergency Recovery at The 

University Hospital, around 1955

University of Alabama Hospital and often worked the 11:00PM to 7:00AM graveyard shift because she “felt more needed there". Shootings, stabbings, grisly auto accidents, drunken brawls and drug overdoses were the quotidian components of a good night’s work for her. She was the queen of the Worst Case Scenario because she had seen The Worst Case up close. “Don’t run with a screwdriver, you’ll poke your eye out” was not apocrypha to her, she’d personally seen a medical technician plop a kid’s eyeball back into the socket. She'd personally wrapped that kid's head with gauze until an eye surgeon could be summoned.

“You can’t play with Mark’s lawn darts, you boys will kill each other,” was not just something overly cautious parents said. She’d seen at least one kid with a lawn dart embedded in his skull. Acrobatic pedophiles were not beyond my mother's imagining and my dad, bless his heart, had learned over the years not to try to bring her theories down to a more rational level. It wouldn't do any good to try. A hangnail really could get infected, lead to gangrene and result in the amputation of an arm.

I was snapped out of my rooftop reverie by my parents yelling my name into the night, the barking of our dogs, Mike and Rebel, and by the arrival of a police car which, fortunately, did not pull into our driveway with lights flashing and siren wailing (3). The situation was quickly sorted out and the police were sent away. I shinnied down the tree and, since my parents were demanding an explanation, I began giving them a perfectly reasonable one.

“You know that song, Up On The Roof, well…". 

Before I got very far, I was encouraged to come back inside and have a seat on the edge of my bed. My mother and father took up flanking positions, one beside me on the bed and the other in the chair by the door (cutting off any route of escape) and began the process of disciplining me. My folks were pretty progressive for 1960’s parents. They never spanked me, not even once, and never, ever raised their voices (that was how rednecks disciplined their children, but Lee and Louise Mount were too smart for that and, doggone it, so was their child). 

Instead, we talked things out. We discussed things. At length. In depth. There was no moment that was not teachable, no childhood transgression that was not an opportunity for us all to grow wiser together as a family.

Many were the times that I would have welcomed a sharp smack on the ass, a steaming earful of approbation and a quick dismissal to my room. “What kind of stupid child climbs onto the roof in the middle of the night?! Are you stupid? I didn't think we were raising a stupid child! Go to your room and think about what a stupid thing you did!”

By the way, the word “stupid” was completely off limits in our house. I might as well have called somebody a goddamned cocksucking motherfucking shitty asshole bastard as to call someone “stupid”, the discipline would’ve arrived just as quickly and surely. The same went for the word “snot”. But I digress.

Instead of being spanked and yelled at, I endured ceaseless, Socratic questioning and probing discourse. Did it really seem like a good idea, now that I’d had time to think about it, to climb a tree and lie on the roof? Was I so unhappy that I really needed to escape something or someone? Was it something at school? Something at home? Did I understand now that I could have fallen and hurt myself badly? What if I’d fallen off the back of the house onto the brick patio? I could’ve cracked my skull open and died on the spot (there was my mother’s lightspeed leap to The Worst Case Scenario in fine form).

Maybe I shouldn’t listen to the radio at night. Or maybe I should limit my listening to the classical music station (that was WBHM).

Dave "Rockin'" Roddy of WSGN (The Big 610)

In the end, everything was ironed out. We all went back to bed and, in days and months to come, I would still fall asleep listening to WSGN. My favorite DJ was named Dave “Rockin’” Roddy and I would soon have a personally inscribed picture of him - Hi, Bill, Thanks For Listening, Keep On Rockin’ With Roddy! -  because he ended up in my mother’s emergency room after passing out drunk at a party - 100% true. And, of course, the presentation of the autographed photo was another teachable moment for my mom and dad. Just because a “celebrity” does something doesn’t make it a good idea for all of us to do it. That goes for DJ’s drinking too much and singers climbing up on the roof in the middle of the night.

______________________

FOOTNOTES

1. It was rumored that WVOK's callsign was an acronym for The Voice Of The Klan. This rumor was almost certainly propagated by WSGN, proving that spreading disinformation about a competitor is not a 21st Century innovation. WVOK didn't help to dispel this rumor by signing off every broadcast day, not with The Star Spangled Banner, but, with Dixie (Thank you Gene Thompson for reminding me about this).
2. I'm sure this isn't exactly what I thought at the time, but it approximates my eight-year-old mental processes pretty well.
3. Although this would've made a better story.