"Please Stand By" Episode 2 "Evil- It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it!"

1964 and rock and roll had officially reared it's ugly head to take over the sleepy US midwest. It was as sure as the approaching summer.
And this was not your parents rock and roll either.
Elvis was no longer the threat. Television censors didn't know how good they had it.
The Beatles were ushering in change. They were the unwitting majordomo's of the generation and of the global cultural change. The revolution was being televised.

Long before the Beatles came across the pond my dad had this whole rock and roll thing figured out. He believed it started with Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. My mother was not "allowed" to play Jerry Lee Lewis records when children were in the house. If my parents wanted to throw down a little Elvis that would require drawing the shades and locking the doors so the neighbors wouldn't know. Dad knew something was in the air and it was pure evil. He was keeping an eye on this whole rock and roll thing.
He knew it would never die.

Let me just clarify that my dad was in NO WAY a religious man. His actions and opinions were more formed by the events of the McCarthy era than any black letters of the Bible. He never attended church but had a strong moral compass.
He never ran around on his wife and never drank yet he cussed like a sailor and was a chain smoker- not necessarily "sinful" acting but not conformed to any religious rules. He left the church thing up to my mother, who also loved to chain smoke and laugh at her friends dirty jokes.

Dad was a fan of conspiracy theory's. It was his way of connecting with thinkers and in his own odd way he felt this made him "open minded".
That's hard to say about a guy who couldn't accept seeing anyone eat outside of their own culture- like seeing a black person eat spaghetti cracked him up. We didn't see a lot of that in Miamisburg, Ohio anyway. He'd never heard of a taco or an egg roll, a strictly meat and potatoes guy my dad.
Anything out of the ordinary was way too much for him to handle. Everything had to fit inside the lines.

He invested a lot of time trying to wrap him mind around rock and roll.
Here's where his conspiracy thinking helped him explain what was happening in America; it was all about the Communists trying take over our country.
And how do you do that? Simple, you attack the youth.
And how do you get control of young people?
Drugs and sex. It was that simple in his mind: Drugs + Sex + Music = Communists
And just WHO did the Commies recruit to do this?
Imagine with me if you will, a super secret Kremlin meeting in the wee hours of the morning at a round table littered with 8x10 glossies of Jerry Lee Lewis, Chubby Checker, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Little Richard, etc.... now, who shall be their leader?
(read with heavy Russian accent)
"Bring me someone with all American boy next door look. Someone with perfect hair and teeth and nice suit. No time to build robot, how about this from USA Philadelphia name of DICK CLARK? FIND HIM! FIND HIM NOW! Must take over American youth!"
That's right.
My father believed Dick Clark was part of the communist movement to destroy America, one teen at a time. (well, one "white" teen at a time.)
His theory was that American Bandstand was formed to lure young people off the street, pay them with barbiturates to scream and gyrate in front of the camera to influence other teens to go out and spend their money on rock records, therefore funding the communist movement. (hmmmm, I always thought the owner of the record store looked like Boris from Bullwinkle.)
In his mind, "if it's got a good beat and you can dance do it" = "come to the dark side children- we have cookies and Clearasil!"
For this reason "American Bandstand" was banned from our Zenith.





When dad wasn't home and mom was in charge, the atmosphere was more liberal.
Looking back on it I think she was secretly bohemian, disguised as a housewife in an apron, a duster and rolled down nylons. Maybe SHE was a "Commie"?
SHE had no idea of the liberation that was on the horizon for her as a woman.
She would never had imagined what the future held for her daughters.
And HE had no idea of the lack of control he really had over the minds of his wife and children.
Things were only getting started.


Episode 3: "Downtown"

"Please Stand By" Episode 1 "Indians & Beatles & heathens, Oh My!"

I love television. I love music. Together they tell my story.
Give me a song or show title, I can tell you what year it was and what was happening in my life.
My life is defined by it's soundtrack.

I was born in a sleepy little burg in Southwest Ohio named after the Miami Indians.
Miamisburg had it's roots firmly planted in the past and was sprouting new ones into the atomic age. This was evident on the city limits welcome sign, a drawing of an atomic particle circling the indian mound- two major contributors to the Miamisburg skyline. The Monsanto nuclear weapons facility, part of the Manhattan Project, was ironically named Mound Laboratory because it stood in the shadow of the 70 ft. high ancient burial ground of what were called the "damn dirty heathens", the Adena Indians. We just called it "The Mound". It was home base for every family reunion, school outing and church picnic within 20 miles. The city swimming pool was at the base of the foothills where the laboratory was perched. Mutant crows were plentiful and the plant emitted a low vibration across the valley that you could almost hear on cold crisp nights. No matter where you lived in town you could tell the time of day from the shadow of the towers over the yards, houses and small shops. At night the blinking red lights on the towers would serve as a hypnotic sleep aid if you left your shades up. Many nights as a small child this was a metronome, rocking me to sleep after I stopped crying for my mom to let me stay up past my bedtime. I suppose this was one of my first exposures to self rhythm.

My father worked the over night shift at the Frigidaire plant. He ruled the house with an iron fist and showed love by providing. Mother was a gregarious lady who never held a job outside of wife and motherhood. She took in ironing for cigarette money and saved S&H Green Stamps for shopping. She was the spitting image of Edith Bunker- from the red hair right down to the hosiery and house dresses with loafers and an apron. I used to wonder if she wore her apron to bed. I never saw her without one, except for church. She never drove a car and loved to talk on the phone. That was her only way of getting out of the house, to have long conversations with her friends on the phone. We must have had a 200 ft. phone cord. People were always getting tangled in it.

One of my earliest memories was February 1964. I'm 3 years old with bright orange hair. I have a sister in 10th. grade and a brother in 9th. grade.
It was a really cold winter Sunday night and my mother had just finished making me a new flannel night gown. I was sitting on our plastic covered "davenport" playing with my favorite doll, "Pitiful Pearl".
My mother loved that doll too. She would kiss it on the head and say "Oh poor ole' pitiful Pearl- ain't nobody as pitiful and cute as you." I somehow knew that she was really talking to me. Thinking back on it years later I was sure of it. On this night I decided to ask her what pitiful meant. I tried to understand how this applied to our neighbor Mr. Garlow whom my father used to refer to as the guy with the most pitiful lawn he'd ever seen.
Dad was leaving for work and I remember my damp curls leaving circle patterns on the collar of his coat after hugging him goodnight.
No sooner than the door shut and the cold air vanished, my sister came running out of her room.
"Is he gone? Is he gone yet?"
"Yes- calm down you're going to get an upset stomach Margie" my mother said.
"I can't calm down. Don't tell me to CALM DOWN!!" She ran to take a second look out of the drapes and got tangled in the phone cord. "I'm going to cut this cord to pieces if I get....." about that time she fell and knocked over the lighted picture of Jesus on the television. This was upsetting to my mother as you can imagine.
"Okay everybody just SHUT UP". "Everybody" was just my mom and I, for a moment.
My brother Mike comes running from the basement, model paint and miniature car parts still in his hands. "Did I miss it? Is it time? Is dad gone?"
"Alright- I want all of you to sit down and be quite" my mom yelled while holding them back as she propped up the lighted Jesus frame and turned the tv on.
"Isn't it time for her to go to bed?" they both said looking at me.
"No, her hair is still wet."
"But mom", Margie protested, "she's gonna tell dad on us and I just can't handle him yelling about rock and roll this and rock and roll that and...."
"Margie, if you don't shut your mouth you're going to bed."
"No way. I'll run down the street in my nightgown all the way to Dixie's house and you can't stop me!"
"If you will shut your mouth I will turn the tv on."
I had never seen this kind of behavior out of Margie. She had such a fire in her eyes that night. Her whole countenance had changed. The word "possessed" was not in my 3 year old vocabulary but I would use that word to describe her. The energy being produced at the Mound Labs on the hill was no match for what was being generated in the living room of the house on Buckeye Street.

By this time the tubes had warmed up and the picture was beginning to come on, bending first horizontally, then vertically and back again until the speaking grey figure took shape in the center of the black and white screen.
My brother was poised and ready for action if the antenna needed any adjusting.
"And now ladies and gentlemen, we have a really big treat...(drowned out by screaming crowd)..." Ed Sullivan was at his mark on the stage as cameras wheeled in closer to him in an attempt to trick the viewer into thinking they could hear him better if the camera shot was tighter. Mike and Margie were as close to the set as humanly possible. Not knowing what was coming, I braced myself against the back of the davenport holding Pearl closer and tighter to protect her from whatever wave of hysteria was to come across the floor, splash over the cushions and drag me down onto the rug.
What was going to happen that dad shouldn't know about? Was there going to be a murder?






I watched in horror as Margie threw herself down on the floor screaming and crying hysterically, tearing at her clothing, her bobbie pins and curlers flinging thru the air like small missiles. The screaming from the television audience, Margie on the floor crying and Mike sitting in stunned and wide eyed silence, frozen with model car parts still clinched in his hands- it was more than I could wrap my mind around.
Margie made her way closer to the couch. She looked in my face, I looked in hers. She screamed then I screamed. Every sight and sound was in slow motion. I was paralyzed with fear as I tryed to run into the kitchen to hide under my moms apron.
"Mommy what's wrong with her? Is she okay? Is she going to swallow her tongue like grandpa did in the nursing home?"
Pulling me off of her legs and prying my fingers off her apron pockets, she broke free and accomplished lighting another cigarette with her souvenir Florida lighter. "Oh don't be silly." She looked down at me and exhaled her first smokey drag, "It's just that damn rock and roll."


My father never found out about the night the Beatles invaded our living room. Had he known those "damn dirty heathens" had been let into our home that would have been, well, pitiful.








*( Archaeological investigations of the surrounding area suggest that it was constructed by the prehistoric Adena Indians (800 BC - AD 100). Built on a 100-foot-high bluff, the mound measures 877 feet in circumference. It was originally more than 70 feet high.)


Thoughts to ponder: who were the real "damn dirty heathens"? The indians, the Beatles, the screaming mobs or the people who hated all the above?