America in the Sixties: a most interesting decade

By Larry Porter

America in the Sixties: A Most Interesting Decade, is all about the decade of the nineteen sixties in the U.S. This was the only decade in U.S. history that saw four prominent leaders of the country assassinated. It was a decade that began with the country nearly creating a nuclear holocaust. Then, the country was forced into a war nearly everyone now agrees should never have happened. While the Vietnam War raged, another war was taking place in the streets of all of our big cities. The civil rights war raged, as inner cities burned, blacks trying to bring their injustices to the general public. But the Vietnam War so overshadowed it, it was nearly forgotten. The poem tells of the many good things as well. The country began the flight to the moon and saw men land there before the decade closed. Hippies gave the nation a smile and a cry, as the people enjoyed their antics. But they were also frightful of the drug scene that brought such pathos. Music changed and it changed the nation. So many genres came forth, giving many the claim that much of this music will live long after most are gone. This was a decade that brought influential, impactful, divisive scenes to the nation that have lasted to this day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Porter
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370282876

Larry Porter

Larry Porter has been writing since 1976, when he had his second project, a children’s play, Treehouse, produced in Atlanta, Ga. He has written fourteen full-length plays. Another, The Gospel According to Jesus, was produced in Asheville, NC. He has written numerous short stories, eight novels including Chance Mountain, Ivan the Backward Man, True Globalization, The Carousel, The Blue Barrel, The Visitor, and After America: Rebuilding. He has a memoir, Self-Storage Business and a collection of short stories titled Heaven? dealing with the afterlife. He has written four screenplays. His latest project is writing history in verse. A compilation of four epic poems titled History in Verse includes The Experiment, a history of the US, The Reconstruction of a Nation, a history of the Civil War, The Quest for the West, a history of the settling of the US west, and The Sixties, a history of the decade of the 1960s in the US. Look for a new series of totalitarians of the twentieth century coning soon. He lives in the North Carolina Mountains where he continues to write.

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America in the Sixties: A Most Interesting Decade

By Larry Porter

Copyright 2018 Larry Porter

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The Sixties

The decade opened with TV debates

And ended with a horrible massacre.

It represented the country's fate,

The good, the bad; these stories occurred.

This decade provided dichotomies

Hardly seen in just one decade.

Setting up numerous coteries,

They each carried their own grenades.

The fifties had their problems, of course,

But mostly people worked as one.

The Cold War gave the reason, perforce.

They'd hardly believe the divisions to come.

Elections

In sixty, a new buck entered the race,

Running against Landslide Lyndon.

Senator Johnson came late in the chase,

Thinking, by then, young Kennedy was done.

But he missjudged Jack Kennedy's charm,

Thinking he'd cause a Party division.

LBJ planned to attack and disarm

This young one, using political precision.

He came too late to the Party's big dance.

Jack Kennedy won on the very first ballot.

But Kennedy gave him a second chance,

Using Johnson's political talent.

They ran together, made the Democrat's slate,

Against Nixon, Eisenhower's former VP.

Nixon chose as his running mate,

Henry Lodge, who knew foreign policy.

With new technology at their beckon call,

Television provided a most unique occasion.

The candidates debated with cameras installed.

The chance was there to address the whole nation.

The TV debates didn't go too well,

As Nixon bumbled several facts.

His people told him he looked swell,

But on TV, makeup, the man lacked.

However the vote was the closest since sixteen,

The popular vote was point seventeen percent.

But Kennedy won the electors he needed,

To become the thirty-fifth president.

Through circumstances in sixty-three,

Johnson became the President.

In sixty-four he was the nominee;

His opponent seemed heaven sent.

Barry Goldwater, from Arizona,

A long-standing Senator, opinionated.

Many thought his extreme persona

would certainly get him eliminated.

Vietnam under Johnson was gathering steam.

But Goldwater was ready to nuke Southeast Asia.

The voters thought he was much too extreme,

And so, gave Johnson, an historical invasion.

Goldwater carried just six of the states;

Thirty-eight percent of the electoral vote.

Johnson's landslide allowed him dictates,

Which he used for his story of Vietnam boats.

The joke went around as the War exploded,

That