I have often said that my home in Clarkston, MI, was the place where the event now referred to as The Culture Wars began. I am not referring to the town here, but the actual home. (I would put in the actual address, but there is a different family living there, and would not put it here without their express permission.) I double checked this with my father, and this matches his memory of the event, so, here then is the first real Adult moment in my childhood that I recall as clearly as if I were able to travel there and watch it like a movie.
My mother, Wanda (now gone, died 5/5/96) had returned home one evening from work, carrying her latest purchase. She opened it, pulled the long playing record from its sleeve and put it on the old Motorola. (Fine machine, had to wait a few seconds before using it: tubes had to warm up, don't you know...) She placed the album on the turntable, and played all of side one, and turned it over and played all of side two.
It was the then hot new release: Meet The Beatles.
She locked eyes with my father, and the two glared at each other, and I honestly don't recall a word spoken or an eye blinked. I know I had to be breathing, else I would have died! Regardless...
At the end of side two, my father, never speaking, just turned and walked out of the house. My mother put the album away into the family collection, which was a rather minuscule thing, as I recall. About an half of an hour later, my father returned with his newest purchase.
Like my mother, he opened the long playing record, pulled out the album, played all of side one, and then side two. Again: staring contest. Nothing was said, and when it was over, my father put his album next to hers. His: 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong.
Tension in the Allard house then at that time normally would reach a boil-over point, angry words would be followed by bitter recriminations, and on stand out occasions, air borne furniture. (Never any actual physical violence, no one beat on anyone else. I think they were afraid of not being able to stop once it begun.)
I could not understand the problem. After all, at the time, the greatest music I'd ever heard in my (very limited) life was home grown from Hitsville USA. Who needs some Southern boy or some long-haired hippies when you could listen to The Temptations? How silly!
Be that as it may, take into account that this happened when the first Beatles album had just been released in the US. This was 1964 or 1965. It remains the touchpoint to the way I look at the world, and that whole batshit insane time of the 60's and 70's.
Tensions built up over things that could so simply have been approached with a Live And Let Live response.
My parents never argued about those records, and I never even attempted to convince them of the obvious errors in judgment they were showing. There was no attempt by anyone to just talk. Better to be angry, and wasn't that America, then?
As Rodney King said, and I agree with him 100%: "Why can't we all just get along?"
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