Ringo Starr takes me back

Denise Kuethe Strudthoff

Stoddard, WI

Dad bought a Beatles album from the drug store. Yep the drug store in Tripoli sold them.

I had a record player in my room. I played albums but had the adapter for ’45s too.

It was the Beatles one with the brown background, and they were dressed up and all had short hair.

When I turned 16, my friends threw a surprise party. Gary Bergman gave me a ride to Cathy Weidler’s house where the gang was waiting and Ringo Starr was on the radio singing. I loved that song Photograph so much but he was singing “She’s 16, she’s beautiful and she’s mine.”

I remember thinking he was singing it to me.

And I loved the Stones.

Like Tumbling Dice, I can hear it playing. I was in Big B, my parents’ car, driving to my guitar lesson in Waterloo.

I played that guitar for weddings and at church until I heard the Wedding Song so many times that it made me sick. I sold my guitar to John Poock so I had an excuse to say no. It was a damn sexist song. I hate it to this day.

Photograph