Grand Finale – Day Two – Saturday - Tido Mambo Performs a Riot
As the sun rose over the open ocean horizon, two
sisters sat on the top steps that led to the beach at the far north end of the
boardwalk, staring at the sun as it rose and failing once again to detect or photo the “blue flash” that has been documented and seen at Cape May Point’s
Diamond Beach and Key West’s Fisherman’s War at sunset. They were conducting a
scientific experiment o see if the “blue flash” can also be seen and documented
by photo at sunrise.
Looking around they could see early beach goers setting
out their blankets, college kids from the Dunes and other after hour joints
already asleep, birdwatchers, metal detecting treasure hunters and some new
comers straggling in from a hard night out.
With the sun safely up the girls begin to walk down
the boardwalk back to their blanket at 9th Street next to the jetty
where they will have ring side seats to the much anticipated appearance of Tide
Mambo and the performance of miracles as well as a free concert by the Messiahs’
of Soul, one of Bay Shores’ hottest bands.
People arrived constantly so by 10 AM it was wall to
wall beach blanket bingo, with lifeguard whistles and boat loud air horns
sounding constantly.
Tido’s band was set up on the Music Pier balcony that overlooks the 9th Street beach, right next to the KYWTV3 News crew, where Tom Snyder was doing the daily weather broadcasts three times daily all weekend.
The authorities wouldn’t let the band play or even
let them turn on the microphone until they had a permit, and they kept putting
them off by saying that Tido had the permit and he would be arriving shortly,
and shortly he did.
While everyone, including the band expected him to arrive
in the coffin in the black hurst, when it arrived and they opened it Tido wasn’t
there, but the noise from the crowd alerted them that he was coming in from
somewhere, but practically everyone was surprised to see him waterskiing behind
Chris’s Flying Cloud PT boat as it came into sight from behind the Music Pier –
Tido in his Jesus Christ motif – waving with one had as he holds on to the
speed boat with the other and then skiing close in to shore he lets go of the
rope and glides in over one breaker and then rides another right into shore, without
missing a beat.
The Flying Cloud - Converted PT Boat run out of Chirs' Restaurnt
The Flying Cloud - Converted PT Boat run out of Chirs' Restaurnt
As he walked in off the lapping surf he began to
preach – “I am here to save you and to save rock and roll. I am here to save
you from the bondage of commercialism and to save rock and roll from the greed
and hypocrisy that has engulfed it.”
When people called out for the miracles, Tido said
he will perform miracles, he will cool things off by making people feel like
they’re in a freezer, and suddenly the crowd began to shiver, and then he said
with a wave of his hand, “the water in these flasks are now wine.”
About two dozen brown leather flasks were being
passed around and one was grabbed by a cop who opened it and tasted it – “water,”
he said almost disappointed, passing the flask on to the hippie chick who took
it from him.
“What kind of wine?” Someone yelled,
“Whatever wine you prefer,” he said.
And the hippie chick,
taking a swig, said “Cherry wine!”
And someone taking a
sip from the same flask said, “Tastes like peach to me.”
And so it went, as the
water was passed around, a public address system announced that “If Todo Mambo
does not possess a legal permit he will have to cease and desist from performing
or face arrest,” and Tido’s band turned on the sound system and began playing
and Tido waved both hands at the crowd and told them to stay peaceful no matter
what happened, as the riot squad appeared on the boardwalk and began heading
down the steps to the beach.
“Do not respond with
violence,” Tido said, “the men should stay put and the women should use their
most effective weapon, their fingers and tickle the riot squad through the
edges of their bullet proof vests and under their arms and in their stomachs
and don’t stop until every riot squad officer is laughing uncontrollably.”
Tido then turned around
and picking up a rope on the beach, waved to a small mahogany and teak Chris
Craft, and was pulled over a short breaker and off water-skiing away, waving as
he went, leaving a crowd of hypnotized and drugged college kids rolling in the
sand with the twelve members of the specially trained riot squad who were succumbed
by the tickling fingers of a bevy of teenagers and college coeds.
One of the girls
unintentionally set off a canister of tear gas that sent beach goers
scrambling, as the pile of heavily outfitted men and scantily clad girls made
its way across the beach like tumbleweed in the wind.
Tido Mambo
Tido Mambo
With all chaos breaking
out on the beach and the image of Tido Mambo in his Jesus Christ mode waving as
he water skied away, Pittsburgh Paul, on the Music Pier, picked up the open
microphone as the band kept playing a solid rhythm and began reciting William
Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming”:
Turning
and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the
falconer;
Things
fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The
blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The
ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The
best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are
full of passionate intensity.
Surely
some revelation is at hand;
Surely
the Second Coming is at hand.
The
Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When
a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles
my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A
shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A
gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is
moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel
shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The
darkness drops again; but now I know
That
twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were
vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And
what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches
towards Bethlehem to be born?
The Federal Barbarian
Task Force, who witnessed the whole spectacle from their upper floor Command
Post above Shriver’s Candy Store, filmed it too, and concluded in their report
that Tido Mambo had apparently utilized some group hypnotic routines he learned
from another Purple Dragon performer – who later became Kreskin the mentalist,
and did spike the water with a special high potent liquid mixture of LSD25 that
was not illegal in the state of New Jersey at the time, but has since been
included among the dangerous and outlawed drugs like marijuana.
While they couldn’t
arrest Tido Mambo for the LSD, they did issue a federal warrant for his arrest
for inciting a riot under 18 U.S.C. & : US Code-Section 2101: Riots.
(1)
Whoever travels in interstate commerce
or uses any facility of interstate or foreign commerce, including, but not limited
to, the mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television, with intent – (1) to
incite a riot, or (2) to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry
on a riot;…..” etc.
Lynda Van Devanter, on duty at the
Shore Memorial Hospital Emergency Room was perplexed by the sudden influx of
victims from the beach – mainly the young men of the Riot Squad who it seemed, had
inhaled and got tear gas in their eyes, but couldn’t stop laughing.
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