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One day in 1958, when I was ten years old and living with my three brothers in Burbank, California, we decided to ride our bicycles to Hollywood, which was about ten miles or so away. Besides just doing goofy kid things, we checked out Grauman’s Chinese theater, where various movie stars have immortalized themselves since 1920 by putting impressions of their handprints and signatures, and in the case of Jimmy Durante, his nose, in wet concrete. Of course I found riding our bikes in the pedestrian tunnels below the enormous Highland Av/Cahuenga Blvd intersection much more exciting at the time.


Looking back, though, I would have to say the highlight was our good fortune of visiting the Hollywood Bowl. It so happened that The Champs, whose “Tequila” was tops on the charts at the time, was rehearsing for a performance that evening (or perhaps the next evening---I can’t remember), and we had a front row seat . Other than Dick Clark and a few technicians, we had the place to ourselves. What a treat it was to hear their hit song performed for us---I can still hear it as if it was yesterday:

Tequila!



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