Regina resident remembers the day The Monkees came to town

Only a daydream believer could come up with something like this.

Imagine spending a magical night singing with The Monkees around Regina’s Whitmore Park neighbourhood in the late 1960s.

That’s exactly what happened to a then-13-year-old Jim Sax. It is a memory he is sharing following the death Thursday of The Monkees band member Peter Tork.

At the time, Sax lived a couple of doors down from the Thorkelson family. H. John Thorkelson, Tork’s father, was an economics professor at what was then the University of Saskatchewan Regina campus.

Sax befriended Tork’s younger brother Chris.

“Chris called and told me to come over and swore me to secrecy before I went downstairs,” Sax recalled. “So, I get downstairs and there are The Monkees, all of them, just hanging in the rec room.”

The band was visiting Tork’s family home.

“I’m basically trying not to trip over my own jaw. I’m just 13 at the time so I’m just trying to be cool,” Sax said.

The memory-filled night didn’t end there for Sax, who found himself caroling around Flamingo Crescent where the family lived.

“I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely I’m going with you guys. In fact, I’m picking the house because I know where all the pretty girls live,’ ” Sax laughed.

Sax described “instant insanity, possibly some incontinence,” when doors opened and it was discovered the famous group was on residents’ doorsteps.

He believes there are some Polaroid pictures floating around Regina somewhere, but he didn’t get a picture with the band.

“I was being too cool; are you kidding?” Sax said.

Sax had to keep his memory a secret until the band left Regina, “but I was almost stoned to death by the girls in my class” when the night was revealed.

The story of The Monkees visiting Regina certainly grew louder, especially as Tork returned on numerous occasions to visit his family.

Green Zone contributor Darrell Davis lived one block away and came home from a shinny game to hear from his parents that The Monkees had sung on their doorstep.

Don Young played in a band at the time and knew of such visits to the Whitmore Park neighbourhood.

“The story was that some of the young girls would go over to the house and go by the window and try and hear him snoring or catch a glimpse of him,” Young recalled.

For people like Young and Sax, looking back now seems like an almost unbelievable time, especially as the Thorkelson family left Saskatchewan to return to Connecticut to allow Tork’s father to continue teaching at the university there.

Sax believes that a lot of fun was had that special night and by the end of its trip, the band members likely were sorry they had to leave.

Editor’s note: This story has been amended to reflect that there is uncertainty as to when The Monkees came to Regina.