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CAMPSITE FRIENDS



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AT RADIO MADRID



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THE MADRID VESPA FACTORY



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LEARNING THE SPANISH GUITAR

My Story # 29

There I was. It’s a funny feeling. You’re in a city you’ve never been in before. You’re talking to people you’ve never seen before. You’re wearing clothes you’ve never had on before (except your underwear), and it’s all in a language you hardly understand. And we are sitting there in the vestibule of the national Vespa Club of Spain. We got there an hour early. No one’s around and who should walk in but that bastard, Senor Moreno.

“Well, good evening, my good friends, Rohn and Rudi. I saw the picture of the two of you in the newspaper. Very good, very good, smiling showing his large group of white pearly teeth.
Ugh! I thought myself. That slimy ass-kisser now cuddling up to us. No wonder he’s the manager. He’s brown-nosed his way all the way up to manager of this place.
We’ll, what do we do in a situation like this? Punch him in the nose? Ignore him? Stand up? Sit down. ?
Rudi had it right. He stood up, saluted Moreno and stuck out his hand and shook hands with the slimy guy. I followed suit. I shook hands with the slimy bastard.
I was learning my first important lesson of public relations when on a world tour. If you want to survive, smile, even if it hurts.
I also learned that with hard-nose bastards like Moreno, you have to look tough, almost like you could snap your finger and two gangsters would come up behind him and stick a knife in his back. No kidding. These kinds of guys are all over the world. You never know when you’re going to meet one that’ll be a roadblock for you. And you’re never quite sure who is one and who isn’t. I guess if you exposed yourself enough to them, like we did, you learn to smell ‘em out.
This is particularly hard for me. I didn’t grow up in a dog-eat-dog environment like Rudi did. I’m kind of a softie by description. I’m trusting as hell. This doesn’t work when you’re meeting new people everyday. But whatdahell. I didn’t have any money to lose, or reputation, or girl friend, -all those things men usually try to be macho about. By the way, I looked that word up, macho. It means manly, virile, arrogant. -I’m not like that. And I guess I’m proving, so far anyway, you don’t have to always be that way if you want to travel on a world trip.
Anyway.
Moreno sat down in a plushy chair next to us. He sat closest to Rudi. You can learn a lot from a guy like Moreno. He sized both of us up. He knew Rudi was the less emotional of us and if he played his cards right he could twist things to even telling the president of the club that he, Moreno, was the guy that arranged for the newspaper reporter to interview us at the Vespa Club. The Law of Probability was on his side. No one would suspect that that wasn’t so. Now, mind you, I didn’t realize all this right there on the scene. It’s just that I’m telling you the kind of things I learned on a trip like this. I began to see a pattern in people. And it just wasn’t in one country; it was everywhere, even in black Africa.
I can’t remember what we talked about. My concentration was more on how I could prevent myself from offending Moreno.
Rudi on the other hand acted as though he had met Moreno for the first time and was unaware of the nasty way Moreno treated us the day before. . He was good at that.
Like that guy that tripped Rudi on the way out of the tavern back in Belgium. Rudi lay there for a split second and then started doing push-ups! Just two or three and then turned and stared at the guy doing a couple more push-ups at the same time, with one arm! And that stare! He gave that guy the stare. I saw it. It was like a couple of zaps that Batman or the Green Hornet could produce.
And then again, I’ve learned since then that if it were important to Rudi for getting where he needed to go, Rudi would’ve gotten up off the floor and bought the guy a beer!
I learned also this about Rudi as we traveled on through France. There were no rounded corners about his diplomacy. He always came straight to the point. He did exactly what needed to be done to smooth out some rough corners on our trip.
Yes, he had principles and he had respect for himself, but if he had to stoop to conquer, so to speak, he always chose stooping. It’s not that he didn’t have any pride or that sort of thing. He knew what to do if you want to survive.
Back to our waiting period with Moreno. How do you ‘small talk’ in a language you can’t speak, and with a guy who almost threw you out of the place you are now sitting? I don’t know, maybe I’ll learn that later on in the trip because Señor Ibarra arrived.

“Hello, Muchachos! I see you made it on time!” Señor Ibarra greeted us, as he entered the club a few minutes late. “Let’s have a drink, and then we’ll head on over to the hotel.
“You sure have a nice club.” I commented to him.
“Yes, motor scooters are very popular in Spain. People here don’t have money to buy cars like they do in your country, so they buy scooters. We don’t get much rain, and besides, they’re very economical.”
“Are they manufactured here in Spain?” Rudi asked.
“Yes, and oh, that reminds me. You fellows are invited to visit the Vespa factory day after tomorrow. Take your scooter down with you and they’ll make any necessary repairs.”
“Well, that’s wonderful!” I commented.
In an hour, we were in the lobby of the Emperador, waiting for the elevator to take us to the top floor to the gala banquet room.
Upstairs we found at least a hundred and fifty people mingling, sipping cocktails and talking motor scooter talk. The visiting club was from Valladolid to the north, a city of a hundred thousand or more and a center of the Castile country. Señor Ibarra introduced us to the President of the Valladolid club, and other dignitaries who were present for the affair. For dinner, we had chicken consommé, vegetables of all kinds, and a juicy steak with a fiery Spanish wine sauce. Pretty fancy for two guys who just 48 hours ago were grateful for a bowl of rice.
Near the end of the meal, the president of the gathering rang a little bell, made a few announcements, and then introduced various personages who were sitting at his table, including us.
“Let’s have a song!” someone shouted. They had probably read the story about us in the newspaper that morning. We got out the guitars and sang a few examples of songs we had learned in our travels. When the meal was over, we stood around in little groups for a while, and then retired to an adjacent room where an orchestra had begun to play. Señor Ibarra introduced us to some of his friends.
This all felt like I was back in Baltimore. You attend these kinds of things and your face hurts the next day from all the smiling you had to do. But for your career, it pays off.
“And this is José Bermudez. He’s Spain’s most popular radio comedian.” This guy had the twinkle of a clown in his eyes when he spoke to us - - a small, jovial man in his late forties.
“I sure enjoyed that singing, fellows!” he could speak a little English. “How about coming around to visit me at the radio station tomorrow?” he said, handing us his card. “Would you like to see what a Spanish radio station looks like?”
“Sure,” we both answered and then joined him in a drink at the bar that had been set up. He introduced us to other radio people friends.
Señor Ibarra came by, “Checkin’ up on you two. “You enjoying yourselves, boy?” he asked.
“Yes!” Rudi answered. “This isn’t much like the surroundings of a stable we generally know at this hour.
“Ha!” he laughed. “Which do you like better?”
“Give you one guess!” Rudi said.
At two o’clock the crowd began to thin out. “Let’s go have some coffee,” Señor Ibarra suggested.
Out in the street once again, it seemed that the city was living and moving like a noon rush hour. “Why are all these people in the streets at two in the morning?” I asked Señor Ibarra.
“We have a different day here than you have in America,” he began. “In the summer time, our working day begins at ten in the morning. At two in the afternoon we close our shops, have our midday meal, and take a siesta until four-thirty. The working day is over at eight-thirty p.m., which puts the evening meal at nine o’clock and the beginning of nightlife around eleven. So if you go to a movie, or a dance, or just sit around in a café, you can expect your evening to be over around two o’clock!”
“Why so late?” Rudi asked.
“It’s cool! It’s cool!” Senor Ibarra said. “No one likes the heat of midday in Spain in the summertime.”
Our evening was over at 3:00 a.m. After a coffee and a visit to a few cafes, we wearily bid Señor Ibarra buenas noches.

The next day we visited Señor Bermudez at the Radio Station.
“You boys want to take that tour now?” he asked after we were in his office a few minutes.
“Fine, we answered as we went out into the halls lined with studios and engineering booths. The radio station supplied most of Madrid and affiliate stations with everything entertaining over radio.
“Radio’s an important item in the Spanish home.” Señor Bermudez said, “We don’t have television in Spain,” he said as we passed into one of the engineering booths, where a technician was taping a program of some local singers in the adjoining studio.
“Will that program be played later on?” Rudi asked.
“Several times!” Señor Bermudez answered. “Not only here in Madrid, but in Barcelona, Seville, many places, all over Spain.”
“Are they paid for making that tape?” I asked.
“Sure,” Senor Bermudez said.
As we looked into other studios, getting an idea of the technical operations of the place, I got an idea myself.
Rudi and I had sung before- -why not at Radio Madrid- -especially if they paid for entertainment? I didn’t know how to go about asking Señor Bermudez; I hoped I wouldn’t make any blunders. I simply said, “Rudi and I are professional singers. We’ve sung together in Belgium, Holland, and France. How ‘bout if we make a tape for your station?”
Rudi gave me an evil look. He knew I had never sung over a microphone before, and before today, he had never even seen one.
Señor Bermudez paused for a while and then said, “Well, fellows it sounds like a good idea, but I’ll have to talk it over with my superiors, first. How ‘bout coming by tomorrow at this same time, and I’ll let you know their answer?”
I felt a sigh of relief that he didn’t turn the idea down, and also that he didn’t ask us to go into an empty booth and make a test tape that very moment.
We finished our visit and left the studio to return to camping site. As soon as we got outside, Rudi turned to me boiling mad, “Now what the hell did you go and do that for? You know damn well we’re not professional signers. I wouldn’t know the first thing to do when I got in front of a microphone. You’re not going to make a fool out of me in front of those studio people. After the first song they’ll tell us to come back some other day! No, sir! You can go up there tomorrow but you’re not going to get me to go!
“Now wait a minute!” I said. “This is a chance we might have to make some money.”
Rudi was pretty mad. “It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll go out and sweep streets before you get me to make a fool of myself in front of all Spain!”
“Who’s going to make a fool of himself? We didn’t do anything like that in the Rotterdam tavern, where we met, or in Paris, or in the rest of France did we?”
“But that’s something different!’
“It’s no different at all. Whether you sing for twenty people or twenty hundred people.”
“Yes, but if you make a mistake, a helluva lot more people hear it!’
“So, that’s what’s bothering you; you’re afraid to make a mistake? What’s this all about you were just telling me a couple days ago -- Americans can’t take it. I think when the cards are down they can take it just as well as any other people faced with a problem. In fact they’re willing to go out and make asses of themselves in the chance of stumbling on something good. That’s why you Europeans have remained small, and petty, because you’re afraid you might make fools of yourselves. If you want to do things big, and like we do them in the States, you’ve got to allow for blunders. If we’re going to do big things on this trip, we’ve got to think big, and not consider our personal feelings. You said the day before yesterday to give me a chance, to see if something would turn up. Well it has. Here it is. And if it works out, it’ll be something we can earn money at in every town. Give me a chance. If we’re going to be failures, let’s be real good ones!”
If Rudi has one attribute, he has the talent of knowing what’s good for him. He will listen to reason, and chuck any antiquated ideas out of his head if he hears a better one.
“Well, what makes you think we can sing professionally like those people we saw in that other studio today?”
“Look, we can sing better than them! They didn’t have much polish at all. I had some experience with group singing, choir, and quartets, when I was in school. We can go back to the tent and practice. We’ve got twenty-four hours, and work up about five songs that we know best. How does that sound?”
He was convinced; he shook his head and jumped on the scooter. “This is your baby, Rudi said. “Just tell me what to do!” and we headed back to the park.
All morning and afternoon the next day we worked over songs that we thought would be appealing to the Spanish listeners, getting the harmony correct, the rhythm, the accompaniment. We welcomed the camp residents as our listening audience, to prepare. They all wondered why we were singing so intently, but we didn’t let on that we had told Radio Madrid we could sing professionally.
As it grew dark, Rudi said, “My throat’s getting awfully sore; can’t we stop for a while?”
“We’ve got two numbers where the accompaniment isn’t quite right; let’s practice them until we get them down like we want them.
“You’re driving me like a work horse!” Rudi moaned.
I shot back. “That’s the prelude to success, man!” and we spent the next two hours ‘til sundown, working out chords and fingering on the guitars.
“Good! – We got it!” I complimented him.
“O.K., O.K., let’s stop!” Rudi said.
“You’re right, it’s time to stop. We won’t do any more singing ‘til shortly before our audition tomorrow. Now keep this towel around your throat the rest of the night,” I said handing him one.
That night in our sleeping bags, Rudi stared off into the sky. “What if the directors of the studio aren’t interested in making a tape of our songs?”
I thought for a moment and then said, “Couldn’t you have waited ‘til morning to ask that?”
It was a long time before we fell off to sleep. I hoped during the night, as I lay awake, that all would go right for us. If it did, it would mean we could look forward to a small income in each city we visited that had a radio station. If I didn’t, Rudi might be so humiliated that I would never be able to coax him in a studio again. I fell asleep wondering.
During the course of the next day we practiced guitar chords ‘til our fingers were sore. Shortly before it was time to report to the studio we went over the songs a few times. “How does your throat feel?” I asked Rudi.
In a crackly voice he said, “O.K. “
Now Rudi has a beautiful baritone voice. The people always remark about it when we sing. But since the radio station management didn’t know this, all that mattered was that he preformed.
We headed off for the studio, and waited in the reception room until Señor Bermudez arrived. He came waddling down the hall with a load of papers in his hand, and with a stern expression on his face.
“I’m sorry boys,” he began, and our hearts sank, “…that I’m so late. I’ve just come from an important conference that took a lot of my time. It had nothing to do with you fellows.” He saw our serious faces. “The directors think your idea a very good one, Rohn. We’d like you to record immediately. We have a studio all prepared.” And he led us down the hall to a pretty big studio, with a large engineer’s window on the opposite end. ” To add to his feeling of injustice at being put in such a predicament, when Rudi passed the control room window he looked in and saw several secretaries and other clerical girls were gathering. For what? We were in the adjacent booth. I detected a pause in Rudi’s pace. He was looking for their approval. Was he at a point of no return? Was this when he should turn around and escape down the hall and out the front door? He looked over at me, and for a fleeting moment I saw him give up; then something happened inside him, and he continued his stroll, into that realm of the unknown. He would do his best. It wasn’t like Rudi not to try his best. We tuned the guitars while technicians began making volume adjustments. Señor Bermudez had a script prepared, and asked, “Could you give me the names of six songs you can sing?”
I took a slight gulp and repeated, “Six?” he had already prepared the script; I couldn’t ask him to change it, and besides, we were professional; I couldn’t let him know our repertoire was limited to five.
“Yes, six” he answered. “Would you like to sing more?”
“Oh, no” I gulped and managed a smile. “I just didn’t think you’d be giving us that much air time.” I gave him the names of the five songs and added on one that I thought we might be able to struggle through.
I could tell the request for an additional song had made Rudi uneasy, and together with his stage fright, I expected him to bungle the whole thing by passing out.
“Rudi! Manage a smile!” I whispered as Senor Bermudez left the room. “Keep smiling! That’s a one-way window. Those girls are looking at us.”
When he left the room, it was like someone took away the lifesaver we were hanging on to it a stormy sea.
But then a voice popped on over the speaker system.
“Well, are you boys ready?”
Señor Bermudez smiled at us through the technician’s window, signaling to the engineer. He motioned for silence. All was quiet except for the thunderous thumping sounds of our hearts. I was relieved when a red light appeared above the control room window and Señor Bermudez began shuffling his script to begin the program.
We gathered around a professional-looking microphone in the middle of the studio, and after an introduction and a short description of our trip, he motioned for us to sing a song. There was a horribly long pause of five or six seconds as we signaled each other for the beginning note; it gave me time enough to gather up all the nerve and spunk I had in me, and I let loose with a Hollywood confidence Rudi had never seen before. Not to be outdone, he followed suit, and surprisingly enough, our first song turned out as we had hoped.
Señor Bermudez’ script continued, describing our journey, and we supplemented it with comments in Spanish and songs we had learned in our travels. All went well until the last number, which either Rudi started off in the wrong key, or I played the wrong chords. Señor Bermudez pretended not to notice it, and finished the program on a humorous note.
The engineer signaled the program was over, and a green light came on again in the studio. Relief! It was over. Whether good or bad, we had done our best. It was all in the hands of the directors to decide.
“Well, boys would you like to hear the playback?” Señor Bermudez asked.
“Yes! That would be fun!” I answered.
“It’ll be the first time we’ve heard ourselves sing,” Rudi said, feeling his old self again. I almost kicked him. We were supposed to be professionals.
“You’ve never made a tape before?” Señor Bermudez asked.
I quickly interrupted, “No, Sir, we’ve never made one together.”
“Well, you’re going to hear yourselves together now.” He opened the door of an adjoining studio and flipped on the switch near a loud speaker.
“Is that us singing?” Rudi asked when our voice came over the speaker.”
“Sure is,” Señor Bermudez smiled.
“Well, it doesn’t sound bad at all!” Rudi said, not really taking in that it was really our voices, our guitars.
“It sounds very good, in fact,” Señor Bermudez answered. “One of the directors is tuned in also at his office. He’ll give me his decision when the program is over.
The sixth song came up on the tape, and the discords were reminiscent of a grade school orchestra. We both lowered our heads, wishing there was a way we could escape the embarrassment of what Señor Bermudez would have to say about it.
The tape ended, and Senor Bermudez got up to check with the director on the results of our program. “I’ll be back in a few moments, boys. You just hold your seats a while.
“Well, Thurau, I’m proud of you. You stuck through.”
“I feel like I just had a couple of teeth pulled. All I want to do is relax.” Rudi said.
“Well, we can’t really relax until he comes back with an answer about our program.” I said.
“We did a mighty poor job on that last song. I sure wish we’d never sung that one!”
All was preserved on the tape. The evidence was there. Now we could only wait for an answer. We sat in the small studio as if it were a maternity waiting room. After fifteen minutes, the door flew open. “I’ve got good news for you, boys. They liked the program!”
We had won. We smiled, relieved. The road was open to sing in other cities now as we traveled along. We could take a copy of the tape along with us to play in other cities.
“When will they play the program in Madrid?” I asked.
“They’ve scheduled it for tomorrow evening at eight o’clock. Will you be able to hear it?”
“We sure will!” Rudi answered.
I didn’t know exactly how to ask him, but I was curious what the director had thought about the last song. I tried to be kinda confidential in my tone. “How about that last song? We stumbled. Weren’t they a little dissatisfied with that one?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it! We’ve decided to simply cut that one out.”
Rudi looked at me. I looked at Rudi. He could see my expression said, “All that worry for nothing!”
As we were about to leave, Señor Bermudez handed us an envelope. “Good luck, fellows!” he smiled. When we got outside I opened the envelope and found a check for six hundred pesetas!
“That’s enough to get us to Lisbon!” Rudi shouted.
“Yippee!” I hollered, throwing my arms in the air. People on the sidewalk stopped and stared until we parted on our motor scooter. Happy times! Those six hundred pesetas sure brought us out of the dumps. We felt like kings! Money had done a big thing for us that day. It seemed like the most necessary thing in our lives. But later we were to learn different. Especially when we found ourselves in the middle of the Sahara.
The following day we spent at the motor scooter factory where we saw hundreds of machines, parts, and men, and how, after an eight-hour day, the combination produced seventy-five Vespas such as ours. While we lunched with one of the directors, a team of mechanics inspected our scooter and brought it back to new.
That night we surprised our friends at the park by turning a radio on to the station where they could hear our program. At first they didn’t believe it was us, but then they found it amusing when we told them how we had made the tape.

NEXT: The bullfight