The Apartment

Hopes are something you carry in your heart when you flee from one place to another. Once you get to where you're going things kind of just fade away. When you're a kid taken from the world you were born into and put into another one you hold on to dreams that some day you will see the ones you love once again. You come to a point in your life when things look really dim. This happened to me.
I was six years old living in a new country, fleeing from the old one for reasons that are not worth mentioning. Apart from my mother the only other woman I had loved up to that point was my grandmother; my dad's mom. I missed her deeply, at the same time I knew it was going to be quite a while before I would see happy days. In fact it was all blue Mondays for a while.
The thing was or is, is that humans have to have some kind of hope to keep their hearts going. As far as I knew I was human. I needed something to hold onto, something to keep me going.
As most immigrants of the time we lived in what can be called a common apartment. This roughly translates into a small apartment shared by way too many people. Most immigrants of the time were men. Women hardly left the home country; the journey was too long and too dangerous. Some how my mother and I had made it to the great Babylon as one of my friends says.
We shared an apartment with many men. My mother and I claimed the living room as our living quarters, which sucked. I slept on a real crappy couch and my mom slept on the floor. I didn't know any better back then, so I didn't consider these conditions as bad. Innocence saves you from feeling sorry for your self.
The thing about those days I regretted in those days was that I only saw my mother once a day for a couple of hours. She had to work so much and she was so tired I had no one to really spend time with. There were no other children. I would come home from school and the house was empty…my mom at work...all the men at work. It was quite lonesome. I learned to adapt though.
I don't know if it was funny or tragic but the weekends the apartment was full, and it was full of drunks. Like I said most of the people who we shared the apartment with were men. Men from my country tend to drink. Men from my country who are home sick tend to drink a lot. They would buy card decks and make circles and gamble. My memories of those days have a clear picture of what the old can of Miller Lite used to look like. They loved that stuff.
These guys who had claimed one of the bed rooms in the apartment would make their powwows there. It wasn't all laughs because sometimes they would end up fighting. Guys would come flying out of the bedrooms swinging. I don't think it was the typical thing that any kid is supposed to see in any culture growing up. Eventually my mom got so scared of the week end beer fests that when Friday morning would come around she would hide the kitchen knives before she went to work. She didn't want anyone with a third corn chute.
So being surrounded by this type of atmosphere I was not looking forward to too much of a future. Little by little I began to see that we were not in the best conditions. I was quite in school which didn't win me too many friends. Quite kids tend to be the ones picked on. So there was not much to brighten the day.
Thank God for drunks. Every once in a while on the weekends the apartment was so full of people that some drank and socialized in the living room where my mother and I had our bed room, if you want to call it that. One thing that every culture has is drunks. The other thing is that in most cultures where there are drunks there of course is music. The apartment was no exception. The guys had a little jam box. They would sit on the floor and open their beers. They would take out their collection of tapes and play the music.
Most of the music they played was stuff that I really didn't care for. I am surprised of how easily I could sleep in those days. There was a bunch of drunks jamming some real annoying Spanish music and I was out like a light. They would party like that all weekend and when Monday came around I would find this jam box with all these tapes thrown about. Once again, thank God for drunks.
One Monday after school I was bored and since no one was around I started messing with these tapes I found and the jam box. I would put one in and of course I didn't like what I heard so I would take it out. I would put another one in and so on.
Well eventually I came across this white tape with the letters somewhat faded on it. It didn't matter I couldn't read anyways. I popped this tape in. A song that I now know by heart started playing. I couldn't understand because it was in english but, man did it sound great.
I don't know which of the many drunks that visited the apartment on the weekends was a Beatle fan but he never found that Beatle tape again. I would listen to it constantly until it just wore out. My mother bought me another one. Eventually I would get all kinds of Beatle stuff.
Like I said, for a long time it was all blue Mondays. For a long time I stayed quiet. I didn't really have any friends. When I would get home the first thing I would do is crank up the Beatle music. Tape or long play, and all of the sudden after a day of having no friends at school, at home I had four friends from Liverpool, England. I sang along with them even though my English sucked. It got better though.
Eventually my mother and I moved out of that apartment. My mother met up with whom would be my step father. Things got worse for me. I didn't get along with this man and to avoid conflict with him I stayed in my room. I ate in my room. I only left the room for school and for the bathroom. It wasn't a big deal. I adapted. I had a record player, I had a tape player. I would sing "Please Please Me", "From Me To You" and "Love Me Do" to keep my spirits up. That music kept me going. It kept me from going insane.
For those who know me, those closest to me, when they hear the Beatles, they think of me. Why? This is because the Beatles are a part of me, my personality, my life. I've had arguments and fights with people who tell me that the Beatles aren't that great. To me they are more than just the greatest pop group of all time, they are saviors. After the first notes hit my ears, I knew that there was more than just a bunch of drunks to life. There was more. The music gave this unspoken message that life is out there, you just got to look for it. Even in the bad times I could count on listening to the Beatles to lift my spirits, something I'm sure has happened to millions of people.
Many years have passed since I wore out that first Beatle tape. In fact the apartment complex where all this happened burned down. I saw the whole thing go up in flames. It had been condemned for some time when the blaze happened. I was out one night with a friend and we saw the streets blocked off and the great bright flames go into the night sky. We parked so we could watch as the fire department tried to put out the fire. I looked through my tapes and popped in one of my Beatle tapes in. I watched it all burn down while listening to some songs from the album "Let It Be". How appropriate. My heart broke a little that night.
Some people might think that this is just an exaggerated rambling of a fan, and that might be true. This is what happened to me. I'm sure similar experiences happened to other people, but this is my story.