Both Ends of a Scream
When Cliff and I first got together, he loved recounting his teenaged summers with friends, traveling across America to hear Janis Joplin, The Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, The Allman Brothers, Jefferson Airplane…The whole suede fringe set. He’d often ask: “Do you know who that is?”
I listened politely. Every time.
One day he told me again about attending The Who concert at an Oklahoma City amusement park when Keith Moon threw his drums into the pool. “Do you know who that is?”
I’d had enough and replied, “I saw The Beatles at Cincinnati Gardens. Do you know who that is?”
He stared in awe.
A mic-drop moment if ever there was one.
It was August 1964 and Patty and I, tickets in hand, squeezed between our parents in our Chevy Impala. We rolled down I-75 until traffic stopped. Helicopters whirled overhead. I think that concert caused the first multi-mile tie-up in its history. Between us, Patty and I had cornered the market on Beatlemania merchandise, so our distress shifted into overdrive. Because my dad commuted between Middletown and Cincinnati for work, he knew a back way.
Arriving to parking-lot chaos, he pointed to a lamp post where they’d meet us. Our mothers worried they’d never see their daughters again.
I don’t remember much until the auditorium went dark. A WSAI DJ announced The Beatles. Lights up. Fourteen thousand fans rose in a screaming tsunami. The concert lasted thirty minutes because that’s all the music John, Paul, George, and Ringo knew. The hall’s temperature soared to 115 degrees. Girls fainted from heat, joy, and the mesmerizing effects of popping flashbulbs.
At first, I had no idea I was screaming, too. But I was. I had never been out of control in my life. It was heaven. All those ecstatic girls and I were in this together.
A pilgrimage.
A declaration.
A cord cutting of appropriate behavior as we divorced our parents’ generation.
We might not have known it intellectually, but we felt it. We didn’t need to hear The Beatles sing. We already knew every word.
We needed to hear ourselves.
And we fell in love with our power.
Anything felt possible as I sailed through junior and senior high school.
Then I entered Ohio University in 1969. Because the courses I wanted typically filled quickly, I stood in long lines before each quarter, angling for substitutions. I never did get into a writing class. Students were stacked to the rafters in all my classes. Cafeteria lines extended out the door. It was assembly-line education.
But we were the lucky ones. It was either this or Vietnam for many. While none of my male friends fought, many of Cliff’s did. They either died there or had their souls crushed by what they saw there. War protests split our country.
Then one afternoon on my way to class, I stopped where students read a teletype announcement taped to the record shop window. Four students had been killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State.
Normalcy vanished.
Sit-ins closed streets. Barricaded buildings prevented classes. Rioters stormed the book store. When the power plant shut down, we studied by flashlight. Bomb scares emptied out our large women’s dorm several times.
For a fine arts course, my roommate Susan and I worked on our outdoor installation at Art Park while law enforcement helicopters circled the area. They believed the park was a hotbed of unrest.
Suspicion prevailed on both sides.
In short order, our campus closed with instructions for students to evacuate in twenty-four hours. Somewhere in a box, I have a picture of armed soldiers lining the streets of Athens, Ohio. We left silently. The iconic picture of a girl screaming over the body of a dead boy at Kent carried our rage. Forever.
Defining moments happen.
It took a long time to recognize the length of mine. Beginning in August 1964, bursting with confidence and hope, it ended in May 1970 after I learned how it felt to be the perceived enemy.
I live my days forever caught inside both ends of a scream.
