Rattlin’ Bones: Rockabilly Rebels
There is just something about a skeleton. The bones are so miraculously joined together and the whole serves to remind us of our mortality. The ‘50s-style skeletons of Burbank artist Mandy Lourenco are particularly evocative. Her bony guys and girls look like they have truly taken the advice of actor John Derek, who famously said “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.” Derek was an expert on good-looking, it should be noted. His brooding face and dark curls steamed up movie screens in the fifties and his coterie of wives included famous “10” Bo Derek as well as lookers Linda Evens, Ursula Andress and Pati Behrs (dark-haired looker Behrs was an actress AND the grand-niece of novelist Tolstoy.
I often use art as a launching-off point for my writing as well as to help inspire my students. When I saw my friend Mandy paging through a book of rockabilly-hip greasers and pin-up queens, teen angels and leaders of the pack, I knew that here was a rich vein of ideas that could be tapped by the Litrus staff. The exercise proved fruitful. A happy married couple whose life ends in a nuclear snapshot, in a parallel universe in which the Cuban missile crisis ends in an A-bomb holocaust. A couple who spend their lives, and eternity, side-by-side, as close as a pair of teens catching a drive-in movie. A pair of beachcombers who remain forever entranced in a romantic seaside reverie. Check out these Rockabilly Rebels who have inspired some of Citrus’ writers to rattle their literary bones!
—Sarah Torribio
Spark
Let’s ride forever, baby
Beyond life, death and time
He told his girlfriend Melanie
On the warm night of June 28, 1959
As they watched the drive-in movie
It was their second-month anniversary
So, like all love-struck teenagers they promised to make history
They wanted to be the first couple that would never lose that spark
That spark everyone always said time would take
The spark that burns when lovers have pleasure
And that dies 30 years after they cut their wedding cake
So they put that spark in their car for safekeeping and sped away
The car roared past everyone else, past difficulty and beyond regret
For miles and miles they drove and watched their life go by
Like a drive-in movie they saw the years fly
Holding hands through good times and bad
Through marriage, children, graduations, birthdays and all of those pivotal miniscule
moments life always randomly has
Even today they lay, still holding hands in that car with their spark that never went out
The Beachcombers
We are the ones who got the thing that all young lovers wish:
“Let this moment freeze forever at the instant of your kiss.”
The tide is still our lullaby, the sand is still our bed.
His shoulder always will remain the place I rest my head.
It’s like that Buddy Holly song, our love’s stronger every day.
The first time I laid eyes on him, I knew it was that way.
Don’t pity us teen angels, though we left you all too soon.
We watch the moon, sing a “wimoweh” croon, together in the dunes.
—Sarah Torribio
Highway Eulogy
Richard was an older boy, he’d been around the block.
He could take apart an engine and replace a pair of shocks.
And the girls he’d had! At school they whispered, he’d laid you-know-who.
They knew what guys like Richard did when parked at Falcon’s View.
He was every mother’s nightmare, he was every girl’s wet dream.
He liked to drive real fast to nowhere taking swigs of old Jim Beam.
Tammy was no fool, herself. She could take care of her own.
She liked to get her kicks in while the other girls stayed at home.
“Life’s too short to stay stock-still,” she said, dragging on a bummed Pal-Mal.
Then she’d hop the door into Richard’s car; you see, she was his gal.
“Drive faster, Rick,” she shouted, drunk with the wind’s touch on her hair.
“Forget drag racing that old Ford, let’s drive to beat the air.”
You might suspect what happened next—dark highway, foggy night.
The kids too fast for a dead-end town took a curve, then their bows. Flash your brights!
—Sarah Torribio
