The Sixties--1964 Poem by Sandy Fulton

1964
Folk Festival came to Newport like the circus!
The town's avenues swarmed with tourists;
penniless kids slept on beaches
and wandered dazed with drugs.
That was the year jukeboxes began to blast
the Animals, the Beatles, the Stones,
but not during Festival week.

The house I lived in,
a hundred thirty years old, with fourteen rooms,
became a dormitory for performers:
a troupe of Scots sword dancers,
the Olatunjis from Nigeria,
Pete Seeger and his family,
Jean Ritchie and her Lawn Guyland spouse,
his Jewish hair as red as her Scots-Irish tresses.

I followed those elegant Nigerian women
in their flowered togas,
wished I could be as beautiful, as graceful;
listened in awe while Pete Seeger practiced and spoke,
worshiped at the shrine of Jean Ritchie's dulcimer.

Her redheaded sons,
bored and ready to destruct,
punched a hole through an upstairs closet,
discovering a secret staircase—
a hideaway for runaway slaves?
When we explored it
with flashlights and giggles
it was a scene
straight out of Nancy Drew.

No drugs, no alcohol, no tobacco allowed in that house.
On Wednesday afternoon, ninety-five in the shade,
A Scots dancer in full beard and woolen kilt,
red and sweating,
knocked softly on my door:
"Ye wadna hae a wee drap o' scotch,
wad ye, lass? "
I didna, but
a wee drap o' bourbon sufficed.

After the turmoil of the Pacific
and the shock of last year's assassination,
the hope of the election
and the new voice of a black preacher,
made Sixty-four into a year of hope.
I remember all of that,
and the folk festival,
the hidden staircase,
and that British quartet
who impressed us folkies,
with good modal melodies, stark harmonies
in the English folk tradition,
intriguing music.

But with dumb lyrics, a name like "Beatles"
and those Stooge haircuts,
they were bound to be forgotten.