PEPPERLAND

My copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, brought home 50 years this summer, still sits in my record collection, which today is a time machine frozen in the year 2000, which was probably the last time I bought vinyl.

I say “brought home” because I didn’t buy Pepper. Back then, if you had enough quarters and patience, you could win albums at the spinning-wheel games of chance at the Seaside Heights boardwalk. My father would whip a buck out of his wallet, lay it down on 5, and the kid working the booth would change it into quarters. One quarter would go to me, to place on my choice, a number or a symbol.

The old man had impossibly good luck on the boardwalk and we had the records, boxes of candy, cartons of cigarettes, AM/FM radios and stuffed animals to prove it. Of course, 5 came up and my mother mentioned a Tony Bennett album. I was only 12, but I kept my cool. I looked my parents in the eyes and said, evenly and unemotionally, “Sgt. Pepper. I gotta have Sgt. Pepper.”

The kid behind the booth, probably a college student making some summer money, handed it over and said to me, “Good choice.” My parents and sister in the lead, I kept a few steps behind as we made our way down the boardwalk. A gang of teens, probably locals, walked past. They were hanging with girls and not their parents. And one of them saw what I was carrying under my arm, nodded and said to me, “Great record.”

I was with my parents. No doubt dressed like a nerd and wearing glasses. I probably had sunburn. But I now belonged, the latest member of the community called Pepper Land.

I played that record incessantly and knew every moment of it the way I knew any other essential corner of my 12-year universe: the streets of my hometown, the faces of my plastic soldiers, Fantastic Four plotlines. In high school, when I had to write an essay dissecting a popular song, I went with She’s Leaving Home. An easy A. When I bought my first expensive stereo, with the giant EPI speakers that sat on the floor, Pepper was the first platter that went on. Guesses on what was the first CD I bought or the first time I smoked weed  and purposely set up a soundtrack that would fit my mood?

I waited too long to order my copy of the 50-year anniversary deluxe edition of Sgt. Pepper and wound up buying it from a dealer in London on eBay. With economy shipping. Each day I come home from work and look around. So far, mostly just catalogs and credit card solicitations.  

It would have been so much easier to get in my car and zip down the Garden State Parkway to Seaside Heights. Find the right booth, the one playing Lovely Rita at this very moment, the one near the guy who sells lemonade with the giant plastic lemons hanging in his stand. Lay down a buck on 5 and listen to the wheel tick as it spins. Then, as it slows down, your heart beats faster. Another winner.