Mid-South Coliseum （My Beatles Disaster） Memphis, Tennessee
Mid-South Coliseum (My Beatles Disaster)
Memphis, Tennessee
Dad eased his Cadillac into the entrance of the Mid-South Coliseum, driving slowly through the crowd, where thousands of girls had lined both sides of the street.
I ducked my head, praying to go unnoticed.
The only reason I could breathe was the bag in my lap.
I had left the top open on purpose. To look at him.
Like chocolate diamonds, Paul’s eyes sparkled at me from his best photo.
Just underneath, more of his other magazine pictures created a thick pile.
Each and every one colored my world cherry red, introducing me to fire and passion and a stirring between my legs that I could neither explain nor expel.
All I knew was that I had fallen in love. How on earth would I live without him?
After circling the parking lot twice, Dad chose a spot not far from the front door.
Before turning off the ignition, he glanced at my lap.
“One day you’ll thank me for this, Suzannah.
When you’re raising children of your own, you’ll look back and know that your father was right.
” He held up a finger to emphasize his words.
“Your Heavenly Father will bless your obedience. I know what I’m talking about. ”
Not wanting to look at him—any square inch of him—I kept my head down. Surely my Heavenly Father wouldn’t punish me like this. Exactly what had I done wrong?
“Can’t you feel his Spirit urging you? Right here?” He tapped his chest, over his heart. All I could feel was rage. Shifting my eyeballs toward my father, I caught a glimpse of the short black hairs poking from his nostrils. Revolting.
“Pastor Ralph will be quite pleased with you.”
I didn’t utter a word.
Dad slipped the keys from the ignition, stepped out of his Cadillac, and then opened the back door. I heard him removing the protest signs he had made earlier that morning. One for him. One for me.
I fantasized about staging a protest of my own, staying in the seat, making him drag me out.
Hardly an option. My earthly father was a strict, hardcore military man who rarely considered anyone’s opinion but his own.
He commanded authority over me, Mama, and especially Ron, who was en route at that very moment from basic training to a blistering jungle.
Resigned, I took a deep breath and reached for the door handle, then stepped outside into my own jungle. The rush of hot stagnant air felt like I had opened the door to an attic.
Dad was waiting for me with a sign in each hand. One read Thou shalt have no other gods before me. The other: Go back to England! You aren’t welcome here! Angst rose in my throat when he handed me that one.
“May I hold the other sign? Please, Dad.” No doubt, he could hear the panic in my voice.
With one eye squinted in the sun, he calmly remarked, “It will be more effective if you carry it.”
“Why have you gotten so—”
“So what?”
“Mean.” I yanked the sign out of his hand. Shame covered my body like a coat of heavy plaster. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run. I wanted to never see my earthly father again.
What should have been the start of the best weekend of my life had drastically changed course because of something stupid someone had said. Words so powerful they had upended a nation, affecting not only me but millions of other teenagers.
This was all John’s fault.
As I walked five feet behind Dad toward the small crowd gathered at the front doors, the back of my throat burned with bile. With each step closer, the whole thing became real, and I became desperate.
“Dad!” I called from behind. “Please. Don’t make me do this. I’m begging you.” I gripped my stomach. “I’m about to throw up.”
He turned around slowly, glaring at me with his sign in the air.
“Suzannah! We’ve discussed this. The first commandment clearly states that you shall have no other gods before him.
Look at that bag you’re holding. Idols. All idols.
The Bible tells us to flee from idolatry.
” He stepped toward me, waving his hand over my Beatles collection.
“Beatlemania, sheesh. I should have never allowed this trash in my home to begin with. I knew better.”
“Look at all the girls in the street, Dad. They love the Beatles too.” A lump had formed in my throat, which made speaking difficult.
Dad murdered me with his eyes. “I don’t care about them,” he said through gritted teeth. “I only care about you. Enough of this talk.”
His frown morphed into a counterfeit smile as a man from our church broke away from the small crowd.
“Colonel Withers!” the man exclaimed, with sweat trickling down the sides of his cheeks.
Disgusting rings stained his armpits. Two children lagged behind him—his own, I supposed—who couldn’t have been older than ten.
Two boys swinging their own protest signs without a clue of what they were doing or why. They thought this was fun.
“You know my daughter, Suzannah,” Dad said, stretching an arm across my shoulders. It made me flinch.
The man dipped his chin with a smile. “Of course I do.”
Forcing myself to grin back, I noticed a pile of records scattered on the ground.
No other mementos, just LPs and forty-fives.
A pimple-faced dork around my age stood close by, kicking at the pile.
He probably hated the Beatles—felt Pastor Ralph was right—and was happy to be there.
I made up my mind to not acknowledge him.
“You can go ahead and empty your paraphernalia,” the church man said, ogling my bag. “We’ll be burning it all once the concertgoers arrive.”
Dad nudged me. But shots fired in the pit of my stomach, causing me to revolt. In a last-second act of defiance, I stood still, muttering, “I can’t.”
Dad pressed his hand into my back. “Of course you can, Suzannah. Empty your bag.”
“I can’t, Dad!” I said, surprised at my sharp tone.
With stifled anger, my father smiled at the churchman.
I’d pay for my outburst later. No telling how many times he’d make me write Suzannah was a bad, disrespectful girl in perfect penmanship.
Or how many weekends I’d have to stay home, grounded to my bedroom with no TV or music or novels to keep me company, just the Bible to convict me of my sins.
The churchman reached out his hand. “Here, I’ll do it for you.”
The bag was my ventilator, keeping me alive.
How was I supposed to let it go? I considered throwing the protest sign down onto the pile, making a run for it, and hiding in the bushes until the concert was over.
I’d call Livy from a pay phone to pick me up.
She had offered to share her room with me if I ever got up the courage to run away.
But there was no point. I could never outrun my father. He’d been a marathon runner. Even at fifty-eight, he would still catch me.
With no other choice, I narrowed my eyes at Dad, defiantly pushed past the churchman—there was no way I would let him do it—and stepped up to the mound.
I turned my bag over and emptied my paraphernalia.
With every record, every button, every doll, every Beatles card, and every one of Paul’s pictures that fell to the pavement, I felt that lump in my throat growing.
I forced back tears when my favorite record, Rubber Soul, slipped out of its cover and hit the ground.
I never stacked my records together without a sleeve the way Livy did.
I kept mine pristine and was extra careful not to scratch them.
As Rubber Soul landed with the A-side up, I narrowed my eyes on track one, “I’ve Just Seen a Face.
” I’d spent a hundred hours playing it over and over while picking it out on guitar.
And there it was, scratched to kingdom come, never to be listened to again.
The little boys pushed past me. They jumped up and down on top of Rubber Soul, laughing and giggling as if they were stomping on bugs.
While each of my records shattered into a hundred pieces, so did my heart, my dreams, and my faith.
With tears stinging my eyes, I turned away.
I couldn’t stand to look at it a second longer.
“‘Go home to England! You aren’t welcome here!’” the churchman read aloud. “Bet you got that idea from the mayor.”
Dad gave him a slow nod.
When the hysteria had broken, Mayor Ingram issued a proclamation saying the Beatles weren’t welcome in Memphis. He urged them to cancel their concert. But they didn’t.
After John apologized, the mayor lifted the ban. The paper said the real reason he lifted it was because of all the money the city would have lost had he kept the Beatles away.
But that’s not what had sealed my fate. Lots of pastors around the country—including Pastor Ralph—had stood at their pulpits the Sunday before the concert informing their congregations that anyone who attended would have their church membership revoked.
Pastor Ralph encouraged the ones who had already bought tickets to attend a rally at Ellis Auditorium’s North Hall instead of going to the concert.
He said it would give the youth of the Mid-South an opportunity to show that Jesus was more popular than the Beatles.
Unfortunately for me, Dad felt protesting at the venue was a much better way to show “our family’s disapproval. ”
“Boys,” the churchman called in a harsh tone. “Come here.”
Out of nowhere, four men in robes and pointy hats walked toward us. Though I didn’t want to be close to him, I hid behind Dad and peeked around his shoulder like a child.
Earlier in the week, Channel 5 had broadcast an interview with a Klansman in front of the Coliseum. He claimed they were a terrorist organization promising to use terror in any way they wanted to stop the show.
You’d have thought that would have swayed my father from coming here in the first place. But no. As he’d pointed out, War colonels aren’t afraid of anyone.
When the Klansmen got to our group, they never uttered a word.
They simply laid a hundred or more records on the pile.
I noticed the two little boys staring at them as if they were Halloween creatures.
One of the Klansmen reached down, picked up my John Lennon doll, and lit it on fire.
With a hateful laugh, he threw it back on the heap, causing the pile to ignite.
As quickly as they had arrived, they left. I watched them walk toward the waiting girls at the street. As if on cue, a loud chorus of screams at the entrance startled everyone.
Everyone but me. I knew what was happening. The girls weren’t screaming in fear of the Klansmen; they were screaming at the long gray bus turning into the entrance. It moved slowly while fans jostled and jockeyed, moving toward the bus as if it were a giant magnet.
I could see the lads in the distance. Four brunette heads hanging out the windows, waving at the screaming girls as they ran alongside, flapping paper in the air.
The bus halted, and a Beatle hand appeared through the window. A screaming girl reached up with her paper. Another did the same. Like water in my palms, my one and only chance to meet Paul was slipping from my fingers.
I was grateful the Beatles had not come closer. Paul didn’t need to see me like this.
Once the bus disappeared behind the Coliseum, the concertgoers headed straight toward me.
The majority were girls my age, seventeen.
They wore cute hairdos and adorable dresses, each one cuter than the next, a stark contrast to my Bermuda shorts and Peter Pan collar shirt, an outfit Dad had insisted I wear.
As each girl hurried past, tickets in hand, I heard their squealing and laughing .
. . right before . . . silence . . . followed by .
. . stares. There I stood in front of a burning fire, twenty yards from the front door—on display to the whole world—while eight thousand people approached from all directions.
The Coliseum had only one way in. Right past me. And the burn pile.
Each person gawked at me like I was a freak and the burning was my freak show. There was no prayer of anonymity.
A startled cry escaped my throat when I eyed Laurie and Leslie from my class. I spun around, hoping they hadn’t seen me. Every cell in my body screamed, Run! I even heard Ron’s voice urging me to do it: Run, SuSu, run!
Run where, Ron, run where?
A man with a press badge clipped to the pocket of his short-sleeved shirt walked over to snap our picture.
As he lifted his box camera to his eye, I whipped my head around to avoid the shot and happened to see Livy hustling through the crowd.
Making up my mind to leave Dad behind and suffer the consequences later, I stepped toward her. After one more step I froze.
Where was Kim? After John’s proclamation, Dad had given my Beatles ticket to Livy’s family so her little sister could go, too, but Kim was nowhere to be found.
Neither was Mrs. Foster. Yet a blond-haired girl wearing a miniskirt with mod designs of hot pink, lime green, and lemon yellow scurried behind Livy.
Marianne! It was that lying black widow spider, Marianne Gentry.
She had my Beatles ticket. And had gotten her wish.
She’d finally managed to come between two lifelong best friends. She must have convinced Livy that I was the one who had betrayed her, when in fact it was her all along.
Our gazes met. But I didn’t look away. With the most hateful glower humanly possible, I stared that backstabber down as if poison arrows were shooting from my eyeballs straight to her heart.
Livy didn’t react when Marianne smirked at me or come to my rescue when she saw the protest sign. She simply hurried past, pretending she hadn’t seen me. Of course she’d seen me. Everyone had seen me.
With that, a dam of shame broke loose, flooding every vein in my body.
It was 97 degrees outside; I was used to the heat.
Yet my skin perspired in a way it hadn’t before, clammy to the touch.
I couldn’t catch my breath. Each time I tried to breathe, nausea set in.
My hands and feet tingled. I trembled uncontrollably.
A surge of overwhelming panic paralyzed my body.
What was happening? Was I going crazy? My heart started to pound. A dull pain spread through my chest. I was certain I was dying.
The one man I should have been able to trust more than any other had done this to me.
“Dad, I think I’m having a heart—” As the strength left my legs, I peered in desperation at my father, then crumpled down onto the pavement below.