Purple Daze Read Free Page B

Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Memorial Day, Sunday, May 30, 1965, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I call upon the people of the Nation to pray for a lasting peace in which all mankind may reap the fruits of His blessing...”
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    â€”Lyndon B. Johnson, Memorial Day, 1965

FBI’s Golden Record Club
    The White House and Justice Department are aware that the FBI is conducting an “intelligence investigation” not a “criminal investigation” in an all-out war to discredit civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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    Wiretaps in phones, in homes, and microphones hidden in hotel rooms to “obtain information” about “private activities of King and his advisors” to “completely discredit” them in a “personal attack without evidentiary support.”
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    An FBI agent is dispatched to the Vatican to warn about the “likely embarrassment that may result if the Pope should grant Dr. King an audience.”
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    The FBI responds to Dr. King’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize by attempting to undermine his reception by foreign heads of state and American ambassadors in several countries he plans to visit.
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    The FBI prepares to promote someone “to assume the role of leadership of the Negro people when King has been completely discredited.”

Ziggy
    Today we saw the movie PT 109 in
Social Studies class. Cliff Robertson
played John F. Kennedy in the Navy,
World War II.
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    I fell asleep and dreamed I was in the
White House, classy as Jackie before
Lee Harvey Oswald,
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    looking cool in silk taffeta.

Mickey
    In kindergarten I had these plastic army men.
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    I’d march them into the fireplace,
watching them melt into mutilated
green globs.
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    Dad laughed like crazy when he
saw them. “That’s my boy!”
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    Think I’ll drop out and enlist.
It’d be a blast to blow up stuff.

Ziggy
    I picked up the extension when my
step-dad was on the phone, telling
my real dad horrible things about
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    me.
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    â€œDaddy never interrupted him.
Not once. Guess the whole world
is full of adults you can’t
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    trust.

Rock ’n’ Roll
    Raggy rock and rollers whang electric guitars,
a sledgehammer rhythm on radios, rooftops,
stages, alleyways.
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    A raucous beat heaving patent leather feet
into discotheques from sea to shining sea:
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    Whisky A-Go-Go, California
Frisky A-Go-Go, Texas
Bin-Note A-Go-Go, New York
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    Parents barely survived
Pat Boone’s white bucks
and Johnnie Ray’s histrionics
when four Liverpool blokes took Ed Sullivan’s stage
last year in high-heeled boots, shrinking suits,
and sufficient hair to stuff an easy chair.
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    â€œI Want to Hold Your Hand”
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    To distinguish themselves from the Fab Four,
the butch bluesy Rolling Stones are the band
“parents love to hate.”
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    Mick’s thick lips suggest how his nights are spent.
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    â€œ(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
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    Teens rarely touch one another while dancing,
nor do they gaze into each other’s eyes.
Yet psychiatrists and sociologists view
the orgiastic gyrations with horrification.
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    â€œSick sex turned into a spectator sport.”
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    A Senate subcommittee is formed to investigate
the link between rock ’n’ roll and juvenile delinquency.

Cheryl
    Six of us sway shoulder to shoulder
on a blanket a mile from the stage:
Don, Ziggy & Mick, Nancy & Phil.
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    A new band from San Francisco is playing,
Jefferson Airplane. Hazy pot smoke clouds
the park, but we’re sipping cherry Cokes.
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    Ziggy dances in a stretchy halter top,
ankle bells keeping time to “Tobacco Road.”
Mickey picks out rhythm on his guitar,
his strings solo singers.
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    Don and Nancy pay a visit to porta-potties
and Phil takes my hand, pulling me up.
“Wanna dance?”
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    â€œOkay,”