tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39099298564671630892024-02-08T10:03:18.750-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971Spring-Summer 1971 memories of former Columbia SDS activist folk musician who lived in Bronx in early 1970s.b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-72511431284739122512012-07-08T15:13:00.002-07:002021-04-23T10:17:34.187-07:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (Conclusion)<span style="font-size: large;">My freewheelin’ days in the Bronx days were now over. Squeezed economically (between the unchallenged economic power of U.S. landlords to keep charging monthly rents for the slum apartments in the apartment buildings they were still allowed to own and the unchallenged economic power of the personnel offices of U.S. private and public business, media, government, health care and educational institutions to deny wage work opportunities or welfare benefits/food stamps to U.S. citizens who required the money that a paycheck or welfare check/food stamp coupon would provide to pay their rent and obtain food), I had been forced back onto the streets. And the freewheeling lifestyle of “emancipated poverty” in which I wished to live during the 1970s in the USA (and in which working-class youths who were on the dole in the UK and other Western European countries--where social democratic reforms and welfare state concessions had previously been won through mass struggle—were still able to live until the late 1980s) had been crushed by powerful U.S. economic and powerful historical forces beyond my control.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the nearly 7 years since the 1964 Berkeley Student Revolt and Free Speech Movement [FSM] spokesperson Mario Savio’s assertions that the end of history has <strong><em>not </em></strong>been reached and our generation “would rather die” than be unfree and historically irrelevant had inspired my own spirit of rebellion against the System, I had managed to escape the chains of the public school and college and university classroom cages, as well as the chains of the Vietnam Era War draft and U.S. military war machine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But for an individual U.S. working-class person in the 1970s, escaping from the economic chains of classism, wage-slavery, corporate exploitation, landlordism, unemployment, poverty and capitalism for more than brief periods of personal freedom, had proven to be a much tougher set of chains to escape from. And since large numbers of U.S. working-class people still felt it was more practical economically to remain chained to their 9-to-5 wage-slave jobs or “careers” in the 1970s than to collectively cut their economic chains and drop out economically enmasse until the classist U.S. economic system was radically transformed and democratized economically, escaping from the chains of U.S. capitalism for most U.S. working-class rebels during the rest of the 20th century and early 21st-century now seemed like more of a remote prospect.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And although I had managed to create, from a revolutionary left anti-imperialist political and artistic perspective, some protest folk songs between 1965 and 1971 (during periods when I wasn’t involved in day-to-day New Left political activism), the white upper-middle class gatekeepers who decided whose protest folk songs were going to be allowed to reach the ears of the U.S. working-class masses did not appear likely to ever allow any of the songs I had written to impact on the consciousness of most U.S. working-class people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So when my freewheelin’ in the Bronx days ended in August 1971, I felt, in some ways, that the personal rebel identity that I had developed for myself since leaving my parents’ apartment in 1965 existed no longer. But my understanding of the level of U.S. working-class oppression in the United States had deepened dramatically over what it had been when I was still attending college and living day-to-day within the fantasy world of a white upper-middle-class U.S. campus enclave scene.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The real world of Off-Campus Amerika in 1971 was, indeed, a Death Culture for U.S. working-class people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. And this Death Culture would probably always end up starving out (or eventually roping back into some 9-to-5 prison or 9-to-5 coffin) any individual U.S. working-class male or female youth who became too freewheeling and “uppity” in his or her personal aspirations during the remainder of the 20th century and early 21st-century. (the end)</span><br />
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b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-39207305537752466312012-07-08T09:08:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:48:22.944-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxx)<span style="font-size: large;">Having been robbed of my cheap, old-fashioned vinyl record player as well as of my cheap acoustic guitar, my cheap electric guitar and my cheap portable amplifier in July 1971, by the end of July 1971 I could petty much fit all of the remaining possessions I wished to keep—some clothes, some songbooks for guitar, and a cheap portable typewriter—in a big duffle bag, a big knapsack and a small suitcase. So when I got ready to move on from my $57/month slum apartment in late July 1971, there was no need for me to rely on anyone else to help me move out of the Bronx by the first week in August—especially since I had no furniture in the apartment except for the mattresses on the floor and a kitchen table and some chairs that I had previously picked up on the street before some garbage truck pick-up, when I had initially moved up to the Bronx in April 1970.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In retrospect, despite both not having the rent for August 1971 and being robbed of my musical instruments, I probably should have stayed in the rent-controlled apartment without paying rent for the 3 months it would probably have taken the absentee landlord to get a final eviction court order from housing court—even if it meant trying to live on bread and water, for as long as I was without any income, unemployment check or welfare check—and continued to desperately hunt around for some kind of job during the economic recession of 1971. And just desperately hope that some job opening in for me in New York City would develop in September 1971, when the college students with summer jobs quit their jobs and moved back into their college dormitories for another academic year of partying and doing academic shitwork--while the endless mass murder of Vietnamese by the Nixon Administration's war machine continued for yet another academic year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But since I didn’t have enough knowledge of tenant rights law, or housing law, or rent-control laws or tenant protection rights laws in late July 1971, and didn’t realize that—under the new law that Billionaire Nelson Rockefeller, special real estate interests and New York City landlords had just recently pushed through the Albany state legislature without much mass media publicity in 1971—once a rent-controlled apartment was no longer occupied by a tenant who lived in the apartment before July 1, 1971, the apartment would no longer be subject to New York City’s rent-control laws; I didn’t realize that, by moving from a rent-controlled apartment in August 1971, I was effectively disqualifying myself from ever having a cheap rent-controlled apartment—as opposed to a more expensive post-1974 rent-stabilized apartment—in New York City ever again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yet because, by late July 1971, I both doubted that I was going to live for many more months and had completely lost any desire to continue living in my Bronx neighborhood—once the theft of my guitars meant that I no longer had the tools to continue to go to my grave as a struggling, starving, rebel young artist and protest folk songwriter—the thought that I might need or want to retain this particular rent-controlled apartment for the rest of the 20th century never entered my mind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The thought that did enter my mind, though, was that, since living in the $57/month rent-controlled apartment had enabled me to become a proletarian protest folk songwriter and proletarian folk musician between April 1970 and July 1971, I should try to pass the apartment on to some other tenant who might need a cheap apartment for his or her own purposes, rather than just simply move out of the apartment without passing it on to some other hip young, impoverished person. So near the end of July 1971, I took a final walk to Lehman College’s campus and posted an index card with my phone number on it—on which I also described the apartment and its location, emphasized how cheap it was and indicated that it was now available as a sublet—on one of the campus bulletin boards, in the hope that some Lehman College student would soon contact me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My original assumption was that my most likely sublet tenant would be some young hippie white guy attending Lehman, who just wished to move from his parents’ apartment, so that he’d be able to have his own space to smoke pot and/or sleep with a lover. But the first telephone call inquiry about the apartment sublet that I received the day after I posted my index card on the Lehman College bulletin board turned out to be from a young woman student at Lehman College. And after conversing about the apartment and its immediate availability for a few minutes, it was agreed that she would come to look at my apartment in the early evening, after her late afternoon class that same day at Lehman.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Since the prospective sublet tenant who had telephoned pretty much had a New York City Eastern regional accent like I did, before she arrived at my apartment I subconsciously assumed that she was a white woman student. So when she arrived at my apartment door in the early evening, I was as surprised that she was an African-American woman student as she was apparently surprised that I was not an African-American man.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But since I was apparently more used to interacting personally, working with and socializing with African-American people in their early 20s because of my past Movement activism, office jobs, inter-racial college friendships and inter-racial apartment sharing experiences than was she, the prospective woman sublet tenant seemed less comfortable, at first, conversing with me about the apartment than was I. And, initially, she seemed to assume that, like most other whites that she had encountered, I would be unable to empathize or identify with her individual feelings, individual needs and individual youthful ambitions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yet after I quickly agreed that--since she was the first person to appear in my apartment in response to the index card advertising the sublet--the cheap apartment was now hers to move into on August 1, 1971, if she wanted the apartment—and after we both signed the brief one-page sublet agreement I had drawn up and (without requiring any security deposit) I simply handed her the keys for the apartment and the mailbox for the apartment—she seemed more comfortable conversing with me and talking with me about her life and ambitions, in an emotionally open and emotionally intimate way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Although she had an Afro hairstyle, she looked somewhat straight since she had come to check out the apartment wearing a tight, low-cut dress and not slacks or jeans. But it turned out that she was preparing for a career in the arts and not a career in the culturally straight world of business and commerce. In her early 20s, she was studying modern dance and soon mentioned how one of the guys she was currently dating had first been turned on to her physically after seeing her perform at a dance concert.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Not apparently having encountered before a man in his 20s who was both into androgyny and unisexuality and who was as much of a male feminist as I was in the early 1970s, she apparently felt that, for a U.S. man in the early 1970s, I was somewhat of a novelty. And she got into conversing with me so much that she ended up spending the next 4 or 5 hours debating with me about what the difference between a man and a woman was, telling me about her recent initial sexual experiences (that she had come to enjoy) with the guy she was most involved with (as well as some of the male chauvinist problems that she had started to experience in her relationship with him,) and getting into a deep philosophical/political/psychological discussion about how to find as much personal freedom as possible, despite the constraints on personal freedom produced by the institutional racism of U.S. society in the early 1970s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Having spent a lot of time in the dance studio increasing the strength and muscularity of her dancer’s legs, she did not think it farfetched in 1971 to assert that many women were physically weaker than many men more because of social conditioning than because they were “naturally” physically weaker than many men; or that a woman who was trained well in karate or the martial arts might be able to overpower an untrained man of equal size in a fair fight. But she was skeptical that most U.S. men in the early 1970s would ever be willing to either become less male chauvinist, more feminist and more androgynous “new men” (like she felt me to be) or form love relationships with U.S. women who were stronger or their equal in physical or intellectual strength and whom they could not overpower in a fair physical fight or intellectual debate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lost in our hours of emotionally intense conversation and philosophical/political/psychological discussion/debate (which was only interrupted when I offered her a glass of wine in the middle of our conversation and we then shared a bottle of wine together during the next few hours), by the time we noticed what time it was on my clock, it was way past midnight. And far too late for her to then start making the 20-minute walk to the nearest subway station through the by-then deserted neighborhood city streets either with me or by herself; and then to ride alone that late on the subway before walking alone through more deserted city streets before dawn, back to the place she was temporarily staying at. So she ended up spending the night on one of the mattresses on the floor that I usually slept on, while I slept on one of the other mattresses that was on the floor of the cheap pad that I was passing on to her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And when daylight arrived in the morning and we both awoke at about the same time, I handed her the stamped envelope, with the absentee landlord’s address on it, in which she needed to put a check for him for the August 1971 rent, before mailing it to him. I then assured her that--since I had sublet the same apartment during June, July and August of 1970 of the previous summer, when I had been working as a summer camp counselor in the country, with no difficulties from the absentee landlord—as long as she moved her stuff into the apartment, began living there and kept mailing in the rent on time, it was unlikely that the absentee landlord would bother her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I also warned her that eventually, when the absentee landlord realized that the tenant who had signed the most recent lease to the slum apartment no longer occupied the apartment, he would probably want her to sign a new lease with him, which might include some kind of minimal rent increase. I reassured her, however, that--since the slum apartment’s neighborhood would likely still be considered too close for comfort to the South Bronx neighborhood by tenants who might be able to afford a much higher rent in the early 1970s—it was unlikely that the absentee landlord would feel any economic incentive to raise her rent during the 1970s or get involved in any kind of too costly legal challenge to her tenancy, instead of just letting her succeed me as the apartment’s primary tenant, with only a minimal rent increase.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Reminding her that I was leaving the apartment for good, myself, before noon that same day, I then wished her good luck in the apartment. And, in reply, she suddenly kissed me goodbye on the cheek before quickly exiting from the apartment. And within an hour after she left, I left my Bronx apartment forever—with a knapsack on my back, a duffel bag in my right hand and a suitcase in my left hand.</span><br />
<br />b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-76691061631417990952012-07-02T08:25:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:47:29.439-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxix)<span style="font-size: large;">By late July 1971, I was no longer eager to even consider fighting against being evicted from my Bronx slum apartment. For it was in July 1971 that Patsy, the local neighborhood white junkie, apparently broke into my apartment from the fire escape window one afternoon and robbed me of my cheap acoustic guitar, my cheap electric guitar and my cheap electric guitar amplifier, in addition to stealing my cheap portable vinyl record player. And since one of the main reasons I had been living in the cheap Bronx apartment was to write protest folk songs there, once my musical instruments were stolen, so that I could no longer create my melodies in the apartment, I took that as a sign that it was time to give up the apartment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Despite my lack of fondness for cops, my initial response to my musical instruments being robbed was to call the local precinct and report the apartment robbery. But after the two straight-looking uniformed white male cops in their early 30s entered my apartment, noticed the wall poster of a liberated radical feminist-looking young white woman who wore tight pants (at a time when most working-class corporate offices still didn’t allow young women workers to wear tight pants or jeans to work), glanced at each other in a way that seemed to imply that I was some kind of “hippie-pervert,” I quickly realized that these cops were not likely to do too much to recover my stolen guitars and musical amplifier. And a few nights later, I was informed by Viola--the 19 year-old white Italian-American woman who lived on a welfare check with her mother in an apartment on the upper floor of the apartment building—that she had heard through the neighborhood grapevine gossip that Patsy, the neighborhood junkie, was the person who had robbed my instruments. But since Patsy’s uncle was apparently one of the cops in charge of the local precinct in the neighborhood, it was unlikely that either I would get my musical instruments back or that Patsy would ever be required to appear in court.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Coincidentally, a few weeks before the robbery of my instruments, Viola and Patsy had visited my apartment for a few minutes before Patsy went on his way and left the apartment, after apparently noticing the instruments he eventually apparently robbed when he apparently broke into the apartment a few weeks later. Viola, however, stayed behind. And, for a moment, I felt that she might be interested in hanging out with me or having me ask her for a date, since she had put on lipstick and make-up and was wearing a new blouse that seemed to make her look more physically attractive for most men than she had previously appeared to be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But the reason Viola was now dressed up was that she was planning to go out dancing and possibly meet some new, more culturally straight Italian-American guy from the neighborhood, who was more like her then-imprisoned old boyfriend, at a local club, Maxine’s. And the main reason that she had stopped by my apartment was that she was now, apparently using heroin that Patsy had obtained for her; and she just wanted to use my apartment now to shoot up in, since she couldn’t shoot-up in her mother’s apartment a few floors above mine, when her mother was at home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Since Viola was both the friendliest young white working-class woman I had met in that neighborhood and a street-tough 19 year-old youth who it was wise for a man to avoid angering, I didn’t object when Viola went into my bathroom while holding her needle, pulled down her dress slacks and panties, and then injected the heroin into her ass—although I didn’t think it was either the healthiest or wisest thing for Viola to now be into. And since I felt that smack should be legalized, heroin addiction should be treated as a health issue, not as a criminal or legal problem, and the civil liberties of individual users of smack should be respected, I didn’t say anything special to Viola about her now using heroin, before she soon left my apartment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I inwardly felt that she was probably going to end up as either a junkie like Patsy or perhaps even O.D.ing, like so many others who had gotten into the needle in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since this was the last time I saw Viola before I moved on from the Bronx and since I never bumped into her again, I do not know whether or not she eventually did become a heroin addict. But, hopefully, by the 1980s the economically impoverished Viola was living the life she still dreamed about in the early 1970s: her own house in a white middle class suburban neighborhood, a husband with a good job and a child or two of her own. Yet, writing these words in 2012, I’m still somewhat doubtful that Viola ever did attain the life she dreamed about in the early 1970s—even if she was able to avoid becoming a heroin addict during the remainder of the 1970s. </span><br />
<br />b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-38848997959649514442012-06-27T09:38:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:46:10.957-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxviii)<span style="font-size: large;">While walking further west on either Fordham Road or Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx toward Upper Manhattan, on a pleasant summer weekday in mid-July 1971, I decided to sit down on a bench in the middle of either a small playground or some vest-pocket-size park of some trees near a sidewalk corner. Still not knowing where my rent for August 1971 was going to come from, I was in the middle of contemplating what survival options were still open to me—now that I had been denied welfare benefits and still seemed unable to earn any money as some kind of freelance writer for a muckraking left-wing publication like <strong><em>Ramparts</em></strong> magazine—when two young white working-class guys with short hair approached me in a cautious way. They both looked culturally straight and to be in their late teens or early 20s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It turned out that the two young white working-class guys had both been drafted into the U.S. Army and had just deserted from the U.S. military while being subjected to basic training. And since I still looked like a bearded, long-haired, anti-war hippie in mid-July 1971, they correctly assumed that I would let them crash that night in my hippie pad.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Being fresh from escaping from a U.S. Army atmosphere which they felt to be totalitarian, the two deserters—both of whom were now dressed in civilian clothes—spent much of their time imitating the way the drill sergeant from whom they had recently escaped had barked bullying orders at them, as walked the few miles across either Fordham Road or Kingsbridge Road towards my Bronx slum apartment in the Belmont neighborhood.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Lombardino! Clean the latrine! Lombardino! Remake your bed!, etc., etc.” the deserter who apparently went by that name repeated in a satirical mimicking way and an imitation Southern regional accent. Both the deserters laughed a lot, as we approached my apartment and they recounted to me their stories about the horrors and the absurdities of U.S. Army life, like two people who were overjoyed because they had finally been released from a prison.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Spending the evening drinking beer and conversing with each other in my apartment, we all seemed to agree that the militaristic set-up in U.S. society in the early 1970s was pretty much insane. And that, for the two deserters, going to Canada now seemed to make the most sense; rather then either returning to their army base and risk being either thrown into a stockade or eventually sent to the infantry front-line in “Nam by the super-authoritarian U.S. military brass whose military discipline each of them now rejected as absurd—especially now that they were out of their military uniforms and back among the real world of U.S. civilian life again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I gave them the address and phone number of one of the anti-war draft/GI counseling groups in Manhattan that I thought might provide them with some leads as to how to escape to Canada most easily. And when they left my apartment early the next morning they indicated that they would probably stop by at the anti-war GI/draft counseling group’s office before quickly heading back to their parents’ home, in order to visit their parents for a few days and gather up some more of their civilian clothes before the U.S. Army concluded that the two youths had gone AWOL and began hunting for them at their parents’ house. In addition, getting some money quickly from their parents was going to probably be necessary by the two deserters for them to be successful in escaping to Canada. Although I was nearly completely out of money myself by mid-July 1971, I gave the two deserters a $10 bill (in early 1970s money) so that they could at least buy a commuter train ticket which would move each of them closer to the white working-class suburban homes of their parents.</span><br />
<br />b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-63066511035266893682012-06-20T21:18:00.000-07:002019-01-21T12:01:28.909-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxvii)<span style="font-size: large;">Not surprisingly, in early July 1971 an official letter came from the New York City Welfare Department stating that I was being denied home relief welfare benefits and food stamps for some technical reason. Although I had been laid off from my night clerical job at the Hunt’s Point Market fruit and vegetable wholesale firm in May 1971, after working there only a week, the right-wing white guy who had investigated me apparently justified his denial of welfare benefits to me on the following grounds: 1. Since I had been on home relief for a month the previous year before finding a job as a summer camp counselor in 1970, there was no valid reason why I couldn’t now find a job again as a summer camp counselor in 1971—even though in the Summer of 1970 there hadn’t been any economic recession like there now was in the Summer of 1971; and 2. Since I had quit my office boy job at the Writers Guild—East office nearly 4 months previously, to protest against the failure in 1971 of that middle-class “talent union” to fight against institutional racism and sexism in the radio-TV network world of CBS, NBC and ABC and against the endless U.S. war in Indochina, that somehow meant that I was not now really “entitled” to a home relief welfare check—especially since I had long hair and was a white hippie, not the “legitimate” type of poor person that New York City welfare checks were supposed to be “meant for.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was, obviously, enraged at the welfare department and the welfare department caseworker/investigator for denying me the home relief benefits I was legally entitled to. But, given the politics of New York City’s welfare department bureaucracy in 1971, I was skeptical that its denial of welfare benefits to me in July 1971 could really be overturned in some kind of bureaucratic appeal hearing. And since I was nearly penniless when the welfare department denied me home relief benefits, I also thought that by the time any appeal ruling which might overturn the welfare department’s denial of benefits to me would be made, I probably would have already been starved out of or evicted from my Bronx slum apartment for many months.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I saw no point in even filing an appeal of my home relief denial and, instead, spent the first few weeks of July 1971 researching and writing an article for <strong><em>Ramparts</em></strong> magazine, from a New Left radical perspective, which indicated why the liberal Democratic Party presidential candidate for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, George McGovern, didn’t really reflect the New Left’s historical anti-imperialist, anti-war and anti-racist radical democratic politics. But when the <strong><em>Ramparts</em></strong> magazine editor rejected the freelance article, I was pretty much at a loss in figuring out what to do to come up with the $57 I needed for my August 1971 rent and for some money to feed myself during the month of August 1971. And I began to feel that August 1971 would be the month that the 1965 to 1971 version of “bob feldman” would cease to exist.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In retrospect, what I probably should have done was to immediately apply for unemployment benefits, since I had been laid-off from my last job as a night clerk at the Hunt’s Point Market fruit and vegetable wholesale firm. But despite our college degrees, neither the welfare department caseworker/investigator who disqualified me from receiving home relief nor I was familiar with unemployment insurance regulations in 1971; and we both just assumed—apparently mistakenly—that an unemployed worker who was laid-off after only 1 week at a job who had quit a previous job of a much longer duration would not then be eligible to receive unemployment benefits.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Also in retrospect, my fear that not having any money to pay my rent in August 1971 meant that I would be quickly evicted by the landlord within 14 or 30 days of receiving a “notice to quit,” was also based on the fact that, despite having a college degree, I—like most U.S. college graduates—had never been taught by either the U.S. public school system or the U.S. higher education system what kind of legal rights rent-controlled tenants in New York City in 1971 and/or all tenants in the USA had under the then-current U.S. housing laws. In reality, a tenant who received a “notice to quit” eviction notice from a landlord for non-payment of rent in 1971—especially a rent-controlled tenant—actually could usually prolong his or her stay in the apartment for over 3 months by just staying put in the apartment, speaking to a tenant advocate at tenants rights groups like the Metropolitan Council on Housing in New York City and challenging the landlord’s eviction notices in housing court. Since only a judge—not a landlord—generally has the legal right to order a tenant out of his or her home in most cities of the United States.</span><br />
<br />b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-22998945850103762142012-06-15T11:13:00.000-07:002019-01-21T11:54:24.353-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxvi)<span style="font-size: large;">It was in June 1971 that my pet kitten, Kitty, became very sick. For over a year she had lived in the Bronx slum apartment with me or my Summer 1970 sublet tenants and been allowed to go outside and up and down on the fire escape near my kitchen window, when the weather was warm. But when I noticed that she was suddenly getting very thin and fragile-looking, I looked in the yellow pages phone book and found the address for a Bideawee animal clinic on Manhattan’s East Side.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">After putting Kitty in a cat-carrying box I had, taking the subway down to the animal clinic and having to wait in the waiting room to see the vet for nearly an hour and a half, I finally was able to have Kitty examined by the vet in his office. After examining Kitty, the vet indicated that Kitty had caught some kind of cat disease and that there was only a slight chance that Kitty would be able to live if she received more medical care. And that this medical care for her would be very expensive to obtain.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Since I had no savings and expected income other than possibly being declared permanently eligible to start receiving regularly a monthly home relief welfare check in July 1971, both the vet and I agreed that the most merciful thing to do was to bring Kitty to the ASPCA and put her out of her misery.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I felt very sad after hearing the vet’s diagnosis. And I felt especially sad when I returned to my Bronx apartment with Kitty and then walked south from my neighborhood for many blocks until I reached the Bronx ASCPA-affiliated facility, said goodbye to Kitty, handed Kitty to the security guard-receptionist, and then walked back uptown to my apartment.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The experience of being too economically impoverished to even have the option of even attempting to save Kitty’s life by bringing her to a vet--who would only work to try saving her if given money up-front—provided me with yet another reason for wanting to transform radically a U.S. capitalist system in which impoverished working-class people were enslaved and trapped at the bottom of a classist U.S. society just because they were born into U.S. working-class families who were neither rich nor the recipients of inherited class economic, political and cultural privileges.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">While waiting such a long time at the Bideawee clinic to see the vet, I had passed nearly three-quarters of the time conversing in an animated way with an African-American woman in her twenties who, with her older sister, had also come to see the vet in order to have her cat (who was older than Kitty) examined. Unlike Kitty, her pet cat was not ill in any serious way. But while talking with each other, both the African-American woman and I seemed to feel some initial love vibrations beginning to flow between us. And we seemed to be on the same wavelength, somewhat, philosophically—although she was more into health foods and new age stuff than was I.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So before I left the Bideawee animal clinic, she was not reluctant to give me her phone number and invite me to phone her later in the week at the Harlem apartment which she apparently shared with her older sister. But although she was still very friendly over the telephone when I called her at the end of the week, between the time I said goodbye to her at the Bideawee clinic waiting room and the time I telephoned her, she (or perhaps her sister) had developed second thoughts about her possibly getting involved emotionally or romantically with me. And after our friendly telephone conversation of about 15 minutes, my feeling was that it made no sense to ask her for some kind of a date to go down to the Village or hang out in Central Park—especially since I was beginning to suspect that the welfare department caseworker/investigator who had visited me in early June 1971 was going to deny me home relief benefits (because he apparently resented the fact that hip white youths who collected home relief seemed to feel more free and less personally frustrated than he felt working in his 9-to-5 welfare department caseworker/investigator straight job) and I then would be facing possible starvation or eviction within a month or two. </span><br />
<br />b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-70562935911511189302012-05-27T20:54:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:41:33.634-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxv)<span style="font-size: large;">It was in either May or June 1971 that I finally got around to exploring the City Island neighborhood of the Bronx on one weekend day. I had read somewhere that some counter-cultural hippie freaks had set up some kind of commune whose living quarters was in a rented house on City Island. But when I walked along the main street of what felt somewhat like a fishing village to me, I didn’t see much evidence that the commune’s presence there had created much of a counter-cultural hippie atmosphere on City Island’s main street in the Spring of 1971. So I did not look any further into whether or not moving into a hippie commune on City Island might be a possible new lifestyle option for me during the remainder of the 1970s.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">What I did do in June of 1971, though, was to explore the possibility of enrolling at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and studying some field related to farming and rural life, like agricultural economics. In the early 1970s, out-of-state tuition costs at certain state universities in the Southeast (like the University of Tennessee) were still less than $300 for either a semester (or perhaps an academic year). And after I wrote a folk song about the advantage and desire to escape the loveless and depressing urban rat race scene of early 1970s New York City working-class neighborhoods for some potentially more liberated, land-based country scene in the rural USA, I thought, for awhile, that one way I might be able to eventually escape to a country farming community and live again in some kind of campus youth ghetto—where I’d feel less culturally isolated than I then felt in the Bronx—might be to try to take advantage of the University of Tennessee’s low tuition costs; and attend school down there. But by the time I got around to actually applying for admissions there in late June 1971, I no longer had enough money to afford to even pay for an application for admissions there, let alone finance some kind of long-distance move from the Bronx to Knoxville.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet I had been so into the idea of possibly studying at the University of Tennessee in the Fall of 1971 that when I exchanged letters with Sue of New Jersey—whom I had met in the summer of 1970 when we both worked at Camp Summit in Pennsylvania—I even mentioned in one of my letters to her that I was hoping to “learn how to feed all the hungry people in the world better,” by studying agricultural economics at the University of Tennessee. But although Sue felt that my possible new goal was a worthwhile one and also seemed to understand a critique of how Camp Summit had been run the previous summer that I included in one of my letters to her, she—herself—had decided that her best economic option in the Summer of 1971 was still to just return to Camp Summit and work there again as a waitress/server, before then probably going off to some college that wasn’t as far from New Jersey as one in Tennessee might be—despite the University of Tennessee’s then low-cost for out-of-state residents.</span><br />
<br />b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-47990065586419282212012-05-05T07:46:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:40:40.951-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxiv)<span style="font-size: large;">It was during June 1971 that Mike—the only guy in the Belmont neighborhood in which I lived who seemed somewhat hip and who, despite still living in his mother’s apartment at around 30 years of age, also hung out in Greenwich Village—suddenly reappeared one evening at the door of my cheap slum apartment. He hadn’t visited me there in about three months, so I invited him to step inside.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After offering me a joint to share with him, Mike then said: “I was hanging out in the Village. And I met this fantastic-looking chick. But the chick doesn’t want to go out on a date with me and go see a movie together, unless I can also find a blind date for the chick’s girlfriend. So that this chick’s girlfriend and her blind date can come along with us to see the movie. Can you do me a big favor and be her girlfriend’s blind date?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After inhaling on the joint, I laughed and asked: “What are they into? She and her friend.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">“The chick has a car and she and her girlfriend are trying to find a cheap pad together in the Village. And I told the chick I know about a cheap pad there that they can move into at the end of the month,” Mike answered.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">“I don’t have much extra bread to spend on dates these days,” I replied.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">“Don’t worry. I’ll pay for the movie tickets if you’re willing to be the blind date for the chick’s girlfriend.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So, despite my growing financial worries, I agreed to do Mike a favor and be the required blind date for his date’s friend. Mike then used my telephone to call up the apartment-hunting woman whom he had met and to tell her he had found a blind date for her friend. And it was agreed that she and her friend would drive up to the Bronx a few evenings later to pick up Mike and me in my apartment. And then she would drive all four of us down to the Upper East Side Manhattan theater in which the movie that Mike wanted to see was playing.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">A few evenings later, Mike arrived in my apartment dressed up in a suit and tie, and looking as if he was about to go out on a job interview. In contrast, I was just wearing jeans and a turtle-neck shirt, and was dressed in a more casual way. And about a half-hour after Mike arrived in my apartment, his date and my blind date knocked on my apartment door.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Mike’s date was a white woman in her 20s, who was dressed in a skirt and blouse, wore earrings, used lipstick and make-up, did not have long hair, and looked pretty culturally straight and somewhat plastic. But most men in the USA likely considered her to be physically attractive and sexually appealing, although not someone who possessed a beautiful face. And since she seemed both friendly and intelligent when we all talked in her car, as she drove us down to Manhattan from the Bronx, I could see why Mike felt she was an appealing woman to date—despite her not appearing to be that much of a bohemian, beatnik or hippie on a philosophical level.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">My blind date was also a white women in her 20s who dressed in a skrit and blouse, wore make-up and lipstick and looked pretty straight and plastic on a cultural level. But unlike Mike’s date, she probably would not have been considered that physically attractive by most men in the USA; and she seemed less interesting and desirable to me than Mike’s date, with whom she was looking for a vacant Village apartment. And also, as we sat in the back seat of the car and Mike and her friend sat in the front seat, I think my blind date quickly concluded that I wasn’t the type of guy she was looking for to get involved with.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It turned out that the movie that Mike had selected for all of us to see was “The Boys In The Band” movie that reflected some of the special problems gay men had to confront within the homophobic U.S. society before the 1970s. And I’m not sure that the two women liked the movie as much as did Mike.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It turned out also that Mike apparently didn’t really know about any cheap Village apartment that would be available for the two women to rent at the end of the month. Because about a week after going to see “The Boys In The Band” with the two women and Mike, I received a telephone call from Mike’s date—to whom Mike had apparently previously given my phone number to call in case she had couldn’t find the building in which I lived when she picked us up for our date together. And in an angry voice, Mike’s date complained: “Your friend Mike keeps telephoning me to ask me for another date and keeps promising me that I’ll be able to rent the apartment he knows about the next day. But every day he telephones, he always gives me some excuse as to why I can’t go see the apartment yet. Do you know whether there really is a Village apartment that Mike can get me?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">“If Mike still hasn’t shown you by now the apartment he says he found for you in the Village, it sounds like you probably shouldn’t count on Mike being able to get you an apartment,” I replied.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">“Well, you can tell your friend Mike to go fuck himself!” Mike’s date snarled before hanging up the telephone receiver.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I did not speak with Mike again, however, until about a month later, in late July 1971, when he again knocked on my apartment door, entered the apartment and offered me a joint again. And, surprisingly, Mike now announced to me that he had decided that he was a gay man and was now going to come out and start hanging out in the Village gay bars. And he urged me to join him there if I ever recovered from my financial difficulties. But since--by August 1971--my financial difficulties had led me to move from the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx and I never returned there to hang out after August 1971, I never bumped into Mike again. And I never learned whether or not he enjoyed his life during the rest of the 1970s and whether or not he survived the 1980s or made it into the 21st-century.</span><br />
<br />b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-42892320104846021162012-01-12T13:17:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:39:45.792-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxiii)<span style="font-size: large;">By performing at this coffeehouse near Jerome Avenue in June 1971, however, I was able to meet an African-American folk singer named Don, who also wrote his own folk songs. Like me, Don played the harmonica in his harmonica holder, at the same time he accompanied his singing of one song with an acoustic guitar before this coffeehouse audience of mostly neighborhood high school-age teenagers</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Don’s harmonica-playing in June of 1971 was much more technically proficient than my harmonica playing would ever be. But the audience that had not paid much attention to me when I had performed my one song also quickly stopped listening to Don, who was as unknown as I was, when he was performing his one song—even though it was probably more unusual for an unknown African-American singer-songwriter to sing before the all-white audience of youths in this particular coffeehouse.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Although I decided not to get into the “open mike circuit” on weekend and weekday nights during the 1970s, when you’re under 30-- like most of the other “regulars” at open mikes generally are—performing at open mikes can sometimes be a way to meet, and perhaps befriend, other unknown musicians of your own generation, who you might not otherwise have bumped into at the time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So after the coffeehouse open mike session had ended, I invited Don back to my apartment for a few hours to share some wine and sing to each other the folk songs we each had written, since it was still only about 10 o’clock on a Friday night.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Don was a gentle, good-natured bearded guy in his late 20s who then lived in Park Slope near 15th Street in Brooklyn—in the days before the Park Slope neighborhood became gentrified with white liberal or left-liberal yuppies from the suburbs. And the folk songs that Don had written were both melodic and lyrically more interesting than what was then getting played on either the AM or FM radio station airwaves.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Although the great songs Don had written seemed real in terms of being about real working-class neighborhood people and their real feelings, they were less political in their themes than the folk songs I had written and contained no rebel protest component in their lyrics, unlike most of the songs I had written contained. So, not surprisingly, although Don seemed to like the songs I had written as much as I liked the songs he had written, after I sang the protest folk song, “He Walked Up The Hill,” that was written following Martin Luther King’s assassination, Don also kidded me, while chuckling in a good-natured way, “You seem to write a lot of political songs, don’t you?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet even though the great songs that Don had written were less political than the ones I had written and contained no protest folk lyrical component, Don was then no closer to getting any of his songs recorded on a vinyl record album by one of the New York City record companies in 1971 than was I. And besides agreeing that the coffeehouse audience, for whom we had both performed a few hours before, wasn’t the type of audience that would be inclined to respond to our type of songs, Don and I also were pretty much both clueless about how unknown singer-songwriters like ourselves, who lacked both money and music or entertainment industry contacts, could get their songs onto some vinyl record album in the early 1970s.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After a few hours of singing songs to each other, in-between sips of wine, it was time for Don to start back on the long subway trip from the Bronx to Brooklyn. But before he left my apartment, Don wrote down his phone number and his address on a piece of paper; and we agreed that we’d get together sometime to sing songs to each other again for a few hours in his apartment in Brooklyn, later in the month. And a few weeks later I actually did telephone Don and did make the subway journey with my guitar from the Bronx to Brooklyn on the D train to spend a few hours in his apartment singing to each other some more of the songs that we had each written, in-between sharing a joint of marijuana.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But given how long it took to travel by subway from where I lived in the Bronx to where Don lived in Brooklyn, Don’s lack of interest in forming a duo with me that would perform both his songs and my protest folk songs occasionally at some open mikes, and my post-July 1971 escalating financial difficulties, I didn’t follow-up on my visit to Don’s Park Slope pad. And, after late June 1971, I never bumped into Don again.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-32827592321375697572012-01-07T08:33:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:38:49.377-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxii)<span style="font-size: large;">Another way that I thought I could possibly break into the local New York City folk music sub-culture scene or into local record industry circles, in order to get the protest folk songs and male feminist love songs that I had written onto a vinyl record, was to start singing in June of 1971 at open mikes in coffee houses or at clubs in the Bronx, in Manhattan and possibly in the other boroughs of New York City. So one Friday night in early June of 1971 I took my guitar, my harmonica and my harmonica-holder to a church basement near Jerome Avenue, that wasn’t too far from Lehman College’s campus, where, at that time, there was a coffeehouse that had a weekly open mike for musicians who wished to sing one song apiece before a live audience.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Not surprisingly--since by June 1971 large numbers of people under 30 all played guitar and hoped to earn their livings as musicians rather than as 9-to-5 wage slaves—I wasn’t the only musician to show up at the coffeehouse who wished to sing and perform.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">None of the other musicians seemed to be singing topical folk songs or protest folk songs. And since the audience seemed to consist of mostly straight-looking neighborhood high school students who didn’t appear to be anti-war folks who were into Dylan or Phil Ochs very much, I decided that the song I would perform would just be the “Open Up Your Eyes” love song that I had written for Helene in late 1969.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But after I started singing into the microphone, I realized that people in the audience at the coffeehouse really seemed more interested in chatting with their friends, while the musicians who performed at the open mike sessions just provided some background music for their conversations, rather than really being interested in listening carefully to the lyrics that a musician was singing. Unless a musician who performed at this coffeehouse’s open mike session was either a friend of some of the audience members’ or some kind of already-established professional musician or celebrity, it seemed that most of the 25 people in the audience felt that they would rather chat with their friends than listen closely to what was being sung by some unknown performer.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I felt that getting some experience in singing into a microphone in front of a live audience, instead of just singing in my apartment to myself or into a cheap portable cassette tape recorder, was of some value and somewhat interesting. But I did not find it very satisfying or worthwhile to sing in front of an audience that really wasn’t that particularly interested in listening to what the songs I had written had to say.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And it struck me that just as the U.S. mass media had created a false political consciousness among large numbers of white working-class youth in the United States (so that they would not quickly mobilize politically in support of an African-American or radical feminist-led New Left Revolution in the USA in the 1970s), the same U.S. mass media had created the kind of mass consciousness among large numbers of U.S. music fans which would tend to make them closed to responding in an enthusiastic way to any of the protest folk or folk love songs that I had written, when sung by an unknown musician in a coffeehouse or small club setting--unless they had previously been able to become familiar with the songs from having heard them previously on either a vinyl record album or on the U.S. radio airwaves.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It might be conceivable that if I was willing to spend all my spare time writing new protest folk songs and folk love songs, memorizing them and performing at open mikes in coffeehouses, bars or clubs around New York City for the next 5 years, I might possibly be “discovered” by somebody in the music industry who might be interested in putting my songs on a vinyl record. But a lifestyle of lugging my guitar around each evening on weekdays and weekends to perform for free at open mikes before small crowds of mostly apolitical musicians and apolitical rock music or singer-songwriter acoustic music fans seemed like an existential trap.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The point of writing the protest folk songs and male feminist folk love songs was to help change mass youth consciousness in the USA more quickly so that there might be an African-American-led or radical feminist-led anti-imperialist revolution in the USA as soon as possible during the 1970s. The point of my activity as a creative artist was not to let myself be co-opted into a working-class person who spent all his or her evenings--when not in the wage-slave cage--running around--in a careerist way--to every open mike that gave him or her the chance to just sit around for 2 to 3 hours listening to other open mike performers; before performing for 5 to 15 minutes before an audience that was not likely to respond very enthusiastically to the songs of an unknown performer.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">What performing every night before an open mike audience for the next 5 years on a steady basis might do, however, would be to give me a heavy experience in figuring out the best way to sing into a microphone before a live audience (without forgetting the lyrics to a particular song) and the best way to possibly use my voice to get an audience to want to hear more songs from me. But since my main artistic objective in June 1971 was more to get my protest folk songs on a vinyl record (with the hope that an already-established anti-war singer--like Joan Baez, for example--might then record a cover version of some of these songs) and reach a mass audience with these songs, rather than spending all my evening time developing into a more skillful performer or entertainer, immersing myself in the world of open mikes for the next 5 years was not the road I was willing to take during the 1970s.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-74259332183874572382012-01-05T10:05:00.011-08:002022-07-29T18:35:51.442-07:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxxi)<span style="font-size: large;">In early June of 1971 the block on Bleecker Street where AJ lived had not yet been gentrified and it looked like a block on which Bowery bums were more likely to hang out and live than would newly affluent yuppies or young Wall Street stockbrokers from the suburbs. Since the bell to the loft in which AJ then lived with his womanfriend or wife did not work, I had to yell on the street “Hey, AJ!” in order to gain entry into the building, before walking up the stairs to the door to AJ’s loft.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After AJ looked out the window of his loft and let me into the building, and I then walked up some stairs, I soon found myself inside AJ’s large loft. AJ and the one or two other freaks he was talking with seemed to be stoned on pot and, after I introduced myself to AJ, he quickly passed me a joint. Predictably, the vinyl album that was being played on AJ’s stereo system in the loft during my visit was Dylan’s autumn 1970-released <em><strong>New Morning </strong></em>album.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">There wasn’t much furniture in the loft. But there seemed to be a lot of papers related to Dylan there and copies of Dylan’s <em><strong>Tarantula</strong></em> book. AJ’s womanfriend or wife at the time, a hip-looking woman in her 20s who would have been considered physically attractive by most men and seemed to be some kind of artist, was also in AJ’s loft at the time, although I did not converse with her.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After I mentioned that I was on welfare at the time, AJ mentioned that before he dropped out of the straight world and became a Dylanologist he had held this 9-to-5 straight job at some Manhattan employment agency. But, after seeing how the private employment agency he worked for helped its Manhattan corporate clients discriminate against African-American job applicants or ripped off the job-hunters it did find jobs for, he had felt compelled to quit that job.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Since AJ had come to feel that by 1971 there were so many freaks in the United States that “freaks were now an ethnic community.” So when I visited him in early June of 1971, AJ was hoping to get some kind of cable show airtime for a show that would have programming designed for a “freak ethnic community” audience. And, if AJ did get such a cable tv show, it seemed like he was open to having me sing the “A Millionaire” and “Livin’ On Stolen Goods” protest folk songs on such a tv show.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">As far as being my “manager” for free, AJ indicated that he thought some kind of master tape that was mixed would probably be needed in order to get some record company interested in recording the protest folk songs. But he’d keep his eyes open for some music industry person who might want to record the songs at some point, and let me know if any interest developed. In the meantime, we agreed that I would mail him cassette tapes (that I recorded on my cheap portable cassette tape recorder) of any new protest folk songs that I might write over the next few years.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Still high from the joint AJ had given me when I left AJ’s loft and was back down on Bleecker Street in front of the building in which he lived, I realized that AJ seemed to be involved simultaneously in so many different Movement projects and activities that he probably wouldn’t really find much time to approach Folkways, Vanguard or Electra or some other record company about recording any of the protest songs I had written. But in June 1971, AJ seemed like both a fun guy and like someone with whom it would be fun to share some of my writing and some of the protest folk songs and folk love songs I wrote during the 1970s—even if no vinyl record album of the songs ever developed from our non-financially-based counter-cultural relationship.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Ironically, by the Fall of 1971, AJ’s Dylan Liberation Front/Rock Liberation Front and the Yippies’ political/cultural freak activism had apparently attracted the attention of John Lennon, after Lennon moved from the UK to Manhattan. And the former Beatle multi-millionaire (who by the early 1970s had written “Working-Class Hero” and decided that he wanted to then write protest rock songs and attempt to now use his musical and songwriting skills to generate more revolutionary mass consciousness among his fans rather than to just entertain them in an “art for art’s sake” way) began to help bankroll some of the Yippies’ anti-war activism and concretely support and promote the anti-hip capitalist perspective of AJ’s Rock Liberation Front.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So AJ (although still interested in things like underground culture and the 1970s Weather Underground, for example) seemed to then feel that it was more politically productive to spend his limited time encouraging Lennon to continue supporting the Yippies and anti-war activism and the Rock Liberation Front in late 1971 and in 1972, rather than to spend much time in a probably doomed attempt to get the protest folk songs of unknown working-class people like myself onto some Folkways, Vanguard or Elektra vinyl record.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But, coincidentally, it was only after AJ and the Dylan Liberation Front had demonstrated at Dylan’s house in the West Village in May of 1971 that Dylan, subsequently, ended up writing a protest folk song, “George Jackson,” that protested against the African-American revolutionary political prisoner, intellectual and writer being slain by guards at San Quentin Prison in California in August 1971.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-73531037659846305912012-01-03T05:58:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:36:33.715-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxx)<span style="font-size: large;">In the Spring of 1971, around the time of Dylan’s 30th birthday, the then-long-haired but beardless AJ—who was then in his mid-to-late 20s—was then a high-energy writer-activist in the Lower East Side’s anti-war, underground press, yippie movement/freak sub-culture and underground freak media world and 1970s counter-culture. AJ had been studying Dylan’s song lyrics as intensely as some of the more culturally-straight and conventional middle-class academics and professors of English at places like Columbia and Harvard then studied the poetry of poets like Robert Burns, John Keats, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, since the mid-1960s. And in the early 1970s—before there was much of a Dylan industry/Dylan studies/pop cultural studies wing set up on U.S. university campuses by the Baby Boom Generation rock music fans who ended up returning to the culturally straight bourgeois academic world to become middle-class academics and professors in order to escape the 9-to-5 work world—AJ, the creator of the Dylanology subject, knew more about Dylan and Dylan’s lyrics, by far, than any other freak or academic in the whole world.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Besides putting together the first Concordance of Dylan’s song lyrics which enabled him to discover that Dylan had apparently become addicted to heroin for a time in the 1960s (long before the mainstream media finally apparently confirmed this fact in the 21st century), AJ also had established a Dylan Archives in his Bleecker Street loft on the Lower East Side that was then the most complete source of information about Dylan and Dylan’s artistic work which existed in the early 1970s.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the early 1970s AJ also wrote a weekly column for the now-defunct <em><strong>East Village Other </strong></em>(<em><strong>EVO</strong></em>) underground newspaper in which he exposed the way the hip capitalists in the U.S. music industry were enriching themselves in various unethical ways by ripping-off and marketing for their personal, individual profit, the anti-capitalist hippie/yippie/freak counter-culture--a counter-culture which had previously been collectively created by hip anti-capitalist, anti-war and civil rights African-American and New Left Movement activists and artists who had been involved with politically radical groups like SNCC, C.O.R.E., SDS, the Yippies and the Black Panther Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">For daring to criticize Dylan for ceasing to write more protest folk songs for the Movement after 1965, for not doing any benefits for late 1960s revolutionary groups like the Black Panther Party and for apparently selling out his early 1960s principles in exchange for being rewarded with millions of dollars in song royalties that Dylan’s financial consultants apparently then used to purchase stock in various transnational corporations, AJ apparently enraged large numbers of loyal Dylan fans and Dylan freaks. He also apparently angered many sycophantic rock music industry publishers, editors or writers who apparently felt that no one had the right in 1971 to question Dylan’s moral integrity, since Dylan was such a “great artist” and “creative genius.” Many of the Dylan fans and Dylan freaks who, in the early 1970s, still regarded Dylan as a kind of “prophet” also felt that AJ had no right and no basis for attempting to raise consciousness among anti-capitalist Dylan freaks about the degree to which images of Dylan that the mass media was still marketing in the early 1970s were more myth than an accurate reflection of who Dylan really was.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet besides the freaks who detested AJ for writing uncomplimentary words about Dylan’s accumulation of wealth and financial activities and Dylan’s post-1965 political shift in his <em><strong>East Village Other </strong></em>column or for criticizing Dylan from a yippie left freak perspective (whenever AJ was allowed to get some radio airtime on WBAI and other New York City local radio stations), there were other anti-capitalist freaks on the Lower East Side (like Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, for example, as well as the freaks who hung around the counter-cultural Alternate University in the late 1960s and early 1970s) who agreed with most of AJ’s critical perspective with respect to Dylan’s post-1965 transformation. And by the time that Dylan’s 30th birthday came around in May 1971, there was a Dylan Liberation Front group that soon developed into a Rock Liberation Front group, which AJ led, that actually marched on Dylan’s house in the West Village, to protest the hip capitalist direction that Dylan and the U.S. corporate rock music industry had taken since the mid-1960s.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So around the time that AJ and his Dylan Liberation Front/Rock Liberation Front had begun to make a big impact within counter-cultural circles (even getting some press coverage in the <em><strong>Village Voice</strong></em>, for example), I mailed AJ a cassette tape of protest folk songs, including the “A Millionaire” protest folk song and the “Livin’ On Stolen Goods” protest folk song (that protested against U.S. imperialism)—which I had recorded on my cheap portable cassette tape recorder in my Bronx apartment--and asked him if he felt like being my “manager” for free. Surprisingly, AJ soon contacted me and invited me to stop by for a chat at his Bleecker Street loft a few days later.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-72343016608210767422012-01-02T10:41:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:35:34.730-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxix)<span style="font-size: large;">After reading the transcript of a telephone conversation between Dylan and AJ (the world’s first Dylanologist)--that AJ had recorded and <em><strong>Rolling Stone </strong></em>magazine had subsequently published—I had concluded that, from a New Left Movement point of view, AJ--in 1971--was a more principled person than was Dylan; and that after 1965, Dylan had, indeed, sold out the Movement in order to become a hip capitalist, corporate media-promoted, multi-millionaire rock star. (Or, as Anthony Scaduto’s late 1971 gossipy biography of Dylan would also indicate, “as big as Elvis,” etc.). And I had then written a protest folk song that condemned late 1960s and early 1970s hip capitalism and hip cultural rip-off artists, titled “A Millionaire,” which was inspired by AJ’s early 1971 writing and Dylan Liberation Front/Rock Liberation Front activism, that contained lyrics like the following:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<em><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh, pig Nixon<br />A millionaire<br />And Bobby Dylan<br />A millionaire<br />And Rockefeller<br />A millionaire<br />And Mick Jagger<br />A millionaire.<br /><br />“You’re such a phony<br />Just blowin’ out wind<br />Makin’ like Woody<br />To win your million<br />You made me cry<br />When I was a kid<br />But now I’m feelin’<br />You’re just a rich pig.<br /><br />“Don’t think we fall<br />For that `working-class’ shit<br />Give us your money<br />And then we might talk<br />We’re sick and tired<br />Of your ego-trip<br />Of making millions<br />While raising your fist.<br /><br />“Now it seems to me<br />It is unfair<br />That some men<br />Are millionaires<br />They steal their money<br />By various means<br />Yet sing us songs<br />To show their pity.<br /><br />“I’m just a poor boy<br />Without any bread<br /><strong>I feel all people<br />Should make the same wage</strong><br />To rip-off culture<br />From people oppressed<br />Is just as bad<br />As burning their huts.”</span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And the thought also then occurred to me in late May 1971 that perhaps if I had a "manager" it might make it easier to interest Folkways, Vanguard or Elektra in recording my protest folk songs and folk love songs. And that if I needed a "manager," in 1971 AJ would be the most politically and artistically appropriate person to be my "manager"—although, given my lack of money, I could not afford to pay any money to AJ to be my “manager.”</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-66210612488886839632011-12-30T20:19:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:34:36.915-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxviii)<span style="font-size: large;">By late May 1971, I had written enough original protest folk songs-- that reflected a late 1960s anti-imperialist New Left revolutionary consciousness--and folk love songs--that reflected a male radical feminist left perspective--for some kind of vinyl record album that I felt a label like Folkways, Vanguard or Elektra might be interested in distributing.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But although I had played tenor saxophone in high school bands for three years, I no longer knew anyone else who was a musician. And I did not know anyone who might be able to get Folkways, Vanguard or Elektra interested in recording protest folk songs and folk love songs like “He Walked Up The Hill,” “Livin’ On Stolen Goods,” “Open Up Your Eyes,” “Bloody Minds,” and “Waitin’ For The People,” that I had already written by this time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Within the Belmont neighborhood in the Bronx where I lived, the Italian-American white guys in their early 20s who hung out on the corner at 188th Street and Cambreling Street were still just into singing Dion and the Belmonts’ hits from the late 1950s and early 1960s a cappella. And they neither needed me to accompany them on a guitar nor had any interest in either listening to the kind of protest folk or folk love songs that I was then writing or to any other kind of folk music.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And the younger teenage guys whom I had heard perform at some kind of neighborhood talent contest that was held one Sunday afternoon in a local school auditorium a few months earlier were just into loudly playing cover songs of 1960s “bubble gum” rock music (that they had heard on the AM radio stations) with their electric guitars in a skillful way, in their Beatles-imitation band groups. And they seemed unaware that there had ever been such a thing as an early 1960s commercial folk music boom in the USA.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So starting out with no New York City folk music sub-culture contacts and no New York City record industry contacts and no money except my initial welfare check payment, it was hard to know where to begin in any attempt to get the protest folk and folk love songs I had written onto a record, on the radio airwaves or into the world outside of my rent-controlled slum apartment in the Bronx.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-41684065132455562192011-07-24T11:17:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:33:23.625-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxvii)<span style="font-size: large;">No longer having the night clerical job at the Hunts Point Terminal Market wholesale firm in early June of 1971, however, did present me with an immediate economic survival problem: Where was I going to get the money I required to pay my unpaid $57 per month rent, my unpaid telephone company bills, my unpaid Con Ed electricity and gas stove bills and my food costs for June, July and August of 1971? So after I spent most of my paycheck from the week’s work on the night clerical job to pay for my next few weeks of groceries, I walked down to the local welfare department office, which was about 20 blocks south of my apartment near Fordham Road, and applied for home relief.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Before I had found my job as a special ed summer camp counselor the previous year, I had been rejected for home relief by the local welfare department’s long-haired and bearded, "liberal" white male caseworker/investigator, who seemed to be in his late 20’s. Apparently because New York City welfare department policy in the early 1970s was to pressure long-haired and bearded white able-bodied male hippies who were under 30 who applied for home relief to either move back to their parents’ apartments (even if they had been living on their own for years, as I had been)--by denying them home relief benefits—or to get haircuts, shave off their beards, start dressing up straight again and find some straight low-paying job in Manhattan.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But just over a year later in June of 1971, New York City was now in an economic recession, the Big Apple’s official unemployment rate was much higher than the previous year and I was now even more economically destitute than I had been in mid-May of 1970 when my first application for home relief had been rejected. In addition, since I had shaved off my beard and cut my hair shorter prior to being interviewed for the Hunts Point Terminal Market night clerical job from which I had been axed, I looked less like a white male hippie than I had looked when the welfare department caseworker/investigator had visited me in my slum apartment the previous year. So I thought that this time around my legal right for a home relief grant from the welfare department would not again be denied illegally.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But when a beardless, crew-cutted, white male, straight-looking welfare department caseworker/investigator in his late 20s or early 30s, with an Irish-American last name, appeared at my apartment door a few days after I had filled out my application for welfare at the local office, my heart sank. And after he interrogated me in a cop-like way for awhile and conversed with me about my current economic situation and anti-war ‘emancipated poverty” lifestyle philosophy, my impression was that he was resentful that the only job he was able to find after graduating from college was being a welfare department casework/investigator; and that he inwardly considered white male hippies under 30 (whether they had beards and long hair or not) who applied for welfare in New York City in the early 1970s to be just “lazy bums” who were trying to “cheat” the welfare department and avoid work—while “solid” right-wing white straight citizens like himself were stuck having to work 9-to-5 in jobs that they hated.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet he was still legally required to provide me with emergency assistance for at least one month, to prevent my possible eviction and possible starvation. So after he returned to his welfare department office following his investigation of my slum apartment (which was still much more sparsely furnished than the apartments of unemployed workers in New York City who were already on home relief in 1971), he did not stall on filling out the forms that were required to get the emergency food stamps and the emergency welfare check required to pay my rent and utility bills for June and July 1971 sent to me within a few days. But it was still unclear to me in early June 1971 whether or not my legal right to be placed on home relief on more than just an emergency, one-month, basis was going to be respected by the New York City welfare department.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">However, when the emergency check from the welfare department and the emergency food stamps authorization letter arrived in my mailbox a few days later, I did feel a sense of economic relief. And I also felt so free of immediate economic survival worries once again that I started to again try to break into the New York City and Village music scene for a brief period in June 1971.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-26749819208420556762011-07-06T18:30:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:30:45.500-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxvi)<span style="font-size: large;">Since the night supervisors were apparently themselves afraid to wait for the bus in the South Bronx neighborhood at the bus stop near Hunts Point Terminal Market, they assumed that I would be grateful if they gave me a lift in their car to Fordham Road—which was on the way to their own home in a more affluent Bronx neighborhood—after work each night. But in the Spring of 1971 I was used to taking buses at night in neighborhoods like the South Bronx. So rather than feeling grateful for getting a lift home from them during the first week I worked at Hunts Point Terminal Market, I felt more that my hours of work were being extended; because I was also being subtly pressured to sit in the car with these night supervisors beyond the hours I was compelled to be with them for pay.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Once the night supervisors saw, however, that I was becoming friendly during the night shift work break with the more intellectual older worker and former radio announcer that they were hoping to replace, as my first week on the night job progressed, they apparently also quickly decided that I certainly wasn’t the night clerical worker they were looking for; especially since I seemed to be quickly forming an alliance and friendship with the older worker they had wanted to dump.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So when I reported for work on the Friday evening of my first week as a night clerk at the Hunts Point Terminal Market wholesale firm, I was handed a paycheck for 5 nights of work by the woman supervisor before work began and told that I was “no longer needed” on the night shift because “I hadn’t picked up the coding and batching system fast enough.” Although I didn’t think it was very fair to dump me after only a week, without really giving me a chance to learn what I was supposed to be hired to do, I had already become ambivalent about whether it really made any sense for me to not quit the night job trap as soon as I could. So, inwardly, I actually felt more relief than surprise, shock, anger or disappointment when I was suddenly informed that I was getting the axe so quickly from this night clerical job.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-87760217575007900922011-07-05T19:49:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:29:20.862-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxv)<span style="font-size: large;">The second catch and problem with the night clerical job (that I quickly discovered by the second night of work there) was that the apparent reason why the couple who were the night supervisors had requested the wholesale firm owner to hire another night clerk was that they were looking for someone to eventually replace an older white male night clerk that they also supervised, whom they were eager to fire.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Not surprisingly, however, by the end of the work break of my second night at work, I had quickly picked up on the fact that the older white guy at work--whom they were apparently hoping I would soon replace—was a lot more intellectually interesting to talk to than were the supervisors.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The older night clerk seemed to be in his early 50’s and was originally from one of the Southwestern states. Before U.S. AM radio stations mostly switched to playing rock’n’roll hit records in the mid-1950s, he apparently had been some kind of radio announcer at some small, independently-owned, non-media conglomerate-owned radio station after World War II, during his late 20’s and early 30’s. And between the late 1950s and 1971, he apparently had been forced by economic necessity to drift around from one menial clerical job to another in New York City and elsewhere in the United States; since there was no longer any need in the U.S. AM or FM radio world for the type of radio announcer that he had been. And by the Spring of 1971, he was already counting the days when he could start collecting his social security checks and finally escape from the wage slavery world that held little interest for him, intellectually.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The night shift supervisors, however, expected him to work each night as rapidly as they did and as if he was a machine. And they weren’t hip or intellectual enough to appreciate how interesting a conversationalist he was, whenever he would pause from coding and batching the orders for a few minutes, and attempt to engage them in some conversation in order to break up the monotony of the night work shift.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">All the night shift supervisors could apparently think, with regard to the older guy who was an ex-radio announcer, was “he’s slowing down the work,” “he’s too slow,” or “he thinks he’s better than us;” and “we have to get somebody else who will work faster than him and never complain that we’re pressuring him to go too fast,” etc.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, in the eyes of the former radio station announcer, the night supervisors were “crazy” for being so wrapped up in their coding and batching process during the night shift that they were willing to work like machines—and expected all the workers they supervised to also work like machines for the low wages the wholesale firm owner was paying them.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-44511576535501532472011-07-04T11:07:00.000-07:002015-01-02T13:28:10.481-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxiv)<span style="font-size: large;">The night supervisors were a married couple in their late 50’s or early 60’s who had apparently been working at this same job on the same night shift for over 20 years; and the one job skill they each possessed, that no one else in the world had, was that they could code all the orders received from stores for fruits and vegetables more rapidly each night than any other people in New York City.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Coding of all the orders by clerical hands was required, in order to enable all the blue-collar white male workers in the warehouses, located on the floor below this Hunts Point Terminal Market wholesale firm, to rapidly know which specific fruits and vegetables should be placed in bags, boxes and cartons and then onto trucks for delivery to which specific supermarkets and mom-and-pop grocery stores.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Computer technology in the Spring of 1971 had still not developed enough, so that small business wholesale firms could automatically match the phoned-in customer-store orders to a code by low-cost personal desk computers; and then automatically batch and create packing order instructions for warehouse workers without the aid of clerical worker intermediaries. So the night supervisors who could rapidly code the orders and rapidly divide the ordered fruits and vegetables into batches were still then considered indispensable by the wholesale firm’s owner.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The problem and catch with this night clerical job, however, was that the night supervisor responsible for training me to code and divide into batches the fruits and vegetables that were ordered was also an impatient, sourpuss, straight, non-intellectual workhorse who also didn’t really know how to train and break-in a new clerical worker. And when the typical newly-hired worker predictably failed to immediately learn rapidly enough the system of coding and batching that she and her husband had been doing for the last 20 years, she would push to get rid of the new hire fast—since the extra task of training a new worker was taking time away from the time she needed to keep the coding and batching that she did going forward at a rapid enough pace during the night shift.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Another incentive she had to quickly prove that any new hire couldn’t do the job was probably that it helped her create the impression in the wholesale firm owner’s mind that she was an indispensable employee; because mastering the firm’s complicated coding and batching system was so difficult a skill to develop that only she and her husband—and not any young eager beaver worker, who might be willing to do the job for a much lower hourly wage rate—were the only ones who were able to master it and do the needed night work rapidly enough year after year.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-34978203320059033312011-07-03T08:35:00.000-07:002019-01-16T11:55:15.905-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxiii)<span style="font-size: large;">After not getting hired for the mental health worker job at Bronx State Hospital in May 1971, I came across an ad in the <em><strong>New York Post </strong></em>for a night job clerical position at one of the fruit and vegetable distributing whole firms that was located at the Hunts Point Terminal Market in the South Bronx. Although my grandfather in Chicago had worked at a night job for the <em><strong>Chicago Tribune</strong></em>, loading batches of newspapers onto delivery trucks for over 25 years from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, and I had previously worked nights at United Parcel Service unloading trucks and in a vending machine manufacturing factory during the late 1960s, I was not that eager to get a night job in the Spring of 1971. By this time I realized that having a night job could end up isolating you politically—since most New York City anti-war and anti-imperialist left political meetings were held in the evening—and socially—since having a night job meant that you lost any chance of meeting anyone to date or to love on any night other than Saturday night and maybe Sunday night(when most of the people you might be interested in meeting were probably more likely into getting ready to start the workweek the following day than into going out after dinner).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But being nearly out of cash and desperate for any kind of a job in late May 1971, I telephoned the phone number that was listed in the <em><strong>New York Post </strong></em>want ad and arranged for an afternoon job interview for the night clerical position with the owner of the Hunts Point Terminal Market wholesale firm.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After taking the bus that passed a few blocks from my apartment near Fordham Road and then went south through the South Bronx and to the bus stop at Hunts Point Terminal Market, I soon found myself walking past the daytime office staff of the fruit and vegetable wholesale firm—that was taking phone orders from various supermarkets and mom and pop grocery stores around New York City for specific deliveries of specific fruits and vegetables and writing these delivery orders on order forms. And I was soon seated on a chair across the desk of owner of the fruit and vegetable wholesale firm inside the owner’s private office.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The owner was a white man in his mid-to-late 50’s of Jewish background who didn’t seem that intellectual and seemed to assume, in an ethnic chauvinist way, that clerical workers of Jewish background would always be smarter, quicker-learners and more hardworking and honest workers than clerical workers from other ethnic backgrounds. So when I walked into his office with my Jewish last name and dressed up in my suit and tie, the owner of the fruit and vegetable wholesale firm seemed to assume he was getting himself a good bargain if he hired me quickly for the night clerical job. And it was agreed that I would start work the following evening at 5 p.m..</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After being hired so quickly, I took the bus back to my apartment and, at first, assumed that I would now be able to survive for at least another year in the Bronx, now that I had been lucky enough to land the night clerical job at Hunts Point Terminal Market, despite the increased unemployment rate that was being created by the 1971 recession in New York City and elsewhere. But by the end of my first few nights at work at the wholesale firm, I soon realized what the catch to the quick job offer was; and that the night clerical job was actually a big trap for me.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-38413761209137097522011-07-02T15:23:00.001-07:002015-01-02T13:26:28.021-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxii)<span style="font-size: large;">It was around this same time in the Spring of 1971 that I experienced the only throbbing, intense toothache pain that I had ever had in my life. After moving out of my parents’ apartment in 1965, I had only been to see a dentist a few times between 1965 and 1971. Not being able to afford any dental care health insurance coverage during these years, I felt that spending the money I needed to pay my rent and buy food or paperback books on paying large amounts of money for regular dental check-ups, when nothing was bothering in my mouth with my teeth, was a middle-class, bourgeois luxury I couldn’t personally afford during these years.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I had vaguely remembered reading in college once that a revolutionary’s teeth were usually the first part of his or her body to break down; and that “you can tell who a professional revolutionary was by just looking at his or her teeth, since most revolutionaries couldn’t afford to go to dentists during most of their lives.” So I was not surprised that by my early 20’s my teeth were apparently starting to rot and to give me problems, despite my having gone to the dentist regularly during my pre-1965 childhood and teenage years, when my parents used to pay for my dental care.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The toothache pain in the Spring of 1971 was so intense, however, that, despite being nearly out of cash, I felt forced to make an appointment with some dentist in order to ease the pain. So I looked in the Bronx yellow pages telephone directory and called a dentist whose office was about 30 blocks south of where I lived near Fordham Road.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After getting an emergency appointment with the dentist later that day, I walked the 30 blocks south to his office, since, by that time, I couldn’t afford to take subways anymore. The dentist was a friendly white man in his late 50s whose son had decided to follow in his footsteps and also become a dentist; and who had recently graduated from dental school. After examining my teeth, the friendly dentist in his late 50s eased my pain by pulling the tooth, after I indicated that I neither had any dental insurance coverage or any pocket money to ever pay for the dental work that saving the tooth would have required.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Being sensitive to my financial situation, the dentist did not charge me anything for pulling my tooth; and he even filled a few cavities for free that he had spotted in my mouth, even without taking any x-rays. In addition, he also was even willing to set me up for a free appointment with his son, who had recently started working as a dentist in his father’s office after recently graduating from dental school, for the following week, to have my teeth cleaned.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But, ironically, when I returned the following week for my free cleaning with the newly-trained dentist’s son, the dentist’s son looked at the free work his father had done on my cavities the previous week and, in an embarrassed way, decided it was necessary to correct the dental work his father had done by refilling the cavities again before giving my teeth a cleaning.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Although I felt grateful to both the dentist and the dentist’s son for both getting rid of my toothache and providing me with some needed dental work for free when I had become nearly destitute economically, by the time I had finally found a job a few times in the 1980s that provided me with some health insurance that included dental treatment coverage, I no longer lived in the Bronx; and no longer could even remember the name or address of the dentists who had given me the free treatment in 1971. And probably, by the late 1980s, the dentist who was in his late 50’s in 1971 was probably retired; and his son was probably, by then, practicing in an office in either Manhattan, Westchester, Long Island or New Jersey, I suppose.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-24703228884764285032011-02-15T18:42:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:25:34.313-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xxi)<span style="font-size: large;">Despite not being helped by my visit to the New York State Employment Agency in Manhattan in mid-May 1971, I finally found one ad in either the <em><strong>New York Times </strong></em> or <em><strong>New York Post </strong></em>want ad section for a job as a mental health care worker at Bronx State Hospital (which later changed its name to Bronx Psychiatric Center), the mental hospital in the Bronx, that I seemed qualified for. So after telephoning in the morning the person who was interviewing job applicants for the position, I arranged an interview appointment for the afternoon and took a bus to the mental hospital, which was about 30 minutes away from my cheap slum apartment by bus.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the Spring of 1971, I was still able to act naturally in a much more enthusiastic, loving, personally warm and charming way in job interviews during my early 20s--before the years at having to repress my true self and mask my actual personality (in order to not get fired because of my dissident political and philosophical views) within the sexually repressive 9-to-5 office work world eventually changed my personality and decreased my ability to naturally appear enthusiastic, loving, personally warm and charming in a job interview. So following my job interview for the mental health worker position in a day patient program in late May 1971, I thought I had actually been able to get hired.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The person who interviewed me, and who would have been my immediate supervisor if I had been hired, was a friendly white woman in her early 50s who wore a dress, but still seemed on the same wavelength, philosophically, as me—in terms of how she felt mental health professionals should relate to patients in mental hospitals. Given my past experience working in the Queens General Hospital psychiatric clinic, in the special ed field and working as a volunteer in day care centers, as well as my ability to now entertain patients in a recreational setting as an amateur folk singer—and given the youthful enthusiasm and warmth I was still able to project in job interviews of this type at this stage of my life—I walked away from the interview with the impression that, when I telephoned at the end of the week, there was little possibility that the job would not be offered to me. And I would immediately be told to start work on the following Monday.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But apparently either one of my former employers bad-mouthed me or else some older job applicant with more experience doing the exact same job was interviewed between the time my interview ended and the time I telephoned the friendly white woman supervisor who had interviewed me. Because after I asked her over the telephone whether she had made a hiring decision about the position I had applied for, in a still friendly voice she informed me that another applicant had been hired.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Although I was disappointed—especially since I was getting even more desperate about how I was going to come up with my rent and food money for June and July 1971 by this time—I did not bother to question her decision. Not because I thought that I might someday apply for a job working for her at the mental hospital in the future. But because I felt that if it hadn’t been obvious to her that I was the person she should have hired originally, then it wasn’t likely that she would actually turn out to be the kind of supervisor I would find it easy to work under.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-66440447513705268932011-02-14T16:46:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:24:09.590-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xx)<span style="font-size: large;">By the Spring of 1971, if you had a B.A. you were only allowed to utilize the Professional Placement division of the New York State Employment Agency, and no longer could also register with the Clerical Office Worker Placement division that was supposed to help high school graduates find non-professional clerical office jobs. But when I dressed up and visited the Professional Placement division of the New York State Employment Agency and spoke with the grumpy, short guy with glasses in his late 50s who was supposed to help job applicants find professional jobs, the only advice he gave me was to “apply for a Civil Service job and register for a Civil Service test”—after reprimanding me for not already having taken a Civil Service test for a professional city, state or federal government job when I had been previously working at my Writers Guild office boy job.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, the problem with his advice was that even if I now took a Civil Service exam and thus became eligible for some kind of government job for college graduates, by the time the government bureaucracy would get around to hiring me months later in 1971 I would probably by then have already either starved to death or been evicted from my Bronx apartment—since I lacked any savings by mid-May 1971 and I couldn’t afford to wait months for a Civil Service job offer to come my way. So if a job applicant needed money right away in the short run, it was really useless advice for the New York State Employment Agency placement counselor to just say to an economically desperate New York City job applicant: “Take a Civil Service exam!”</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-18983401751574737462011-02-11T10:10:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:23:08.833-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xix)<span style="font-size: large;">By mid-May 1971, New York City was in an even deeper recession than it had been in the Summer of 1969, when the job market for recent young white liberal arts college graduates with a B.A. pretty much collapsed. By the late Spring of 1971, it had become almost as hard for recent young white high school graduates or community college graduates in New York City—or recent young white graduates of 4-year colleges with a B.A. in liberal arts (like myself)—to even find a permanent clerical office job in New York City anymore. And because of the 1971 economic recession, there were, of course, hardly any available blue-collar factory jobs in New York City for native-born U.S. English-speaking white workers (whom local bosses seemed to then feel would be more likely to demand higher wages and better working conditions than would U.S. workers who had just recently arrived from other countries who could not speak much English)—unless they had a family member or friend in one of the unions or factory shops who could arrange for them to get a position when another factory worker retired, quit, was fired, or died.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Not surprisingly then, when I started going through the <em><strong>New York Times </strong></em>Sunday want-ad section again in mid-May 1971—after shaving my beard off and getting a haircut so that I no longer looked like a hippie—there didn’t seem to be many jobs available for a man who was a liberal arts college graduate--on either a professional level or as some kind of office worker. And in the late Spring of 1971, if you were a young man in your early 20s, most New York City permanent job employers and temporary job employment agencies would still generally not be willing to hire you for either a clerk-typist or secretarial position on either a permanent or a temporary basis—no matter how fast the man could type—because of the discriminatory and sexist way the division of labor in the 1971 New York City office world still determined which sex would be hired for which jobs. Many U.S. newspapers had actually also only stopped dividing their want-ad employment pages in “male-wanted” and “female-wanted” categories less than ten years before 1971.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So if you were a young white male worker in the late Spring of 1971 who couldn’t land a professional job with your recent, practically worthless liberal arts B.A. or didn’t have a B.A. and just wanted some kind of office job, you were--given the 1971 economic recession--actually in a lot more economic trouble than a young white woman with a recent B.A. or a recent high school or community college diploma, who could just get dressed up and easily get hired--as either a receptionist (if she didn’t know how to type) or as a clerk-typist or secretary (if she knew how to type)—by the still usually male chauvinist or sexist white male office executives who dictated which job applicants should be hired by their personnel offices.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-74955387339180357292011-02-08T17:22:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:21:39.402-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xviii)<span style="font-size: large;">It was on another beautiful Spring afternoon in early May 1971 that, by chance, I bumped into Eileen again, while walking up the hill on Bedford Park Blvd., towards the Grand Concourse.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">To enjoy the fresh Spring air earlier in the day, I had again gone on the 20 to 30 minutes walk from my apartment to Lehman College’s campus, via Fordham Road and Jerome Avenue. And I was on my way back home when Eileen suddenly appeared in front of me on the street. She had just exited from the nearby subway station and was walking with another Lehman College woman student, who was in one of her classes, when we suddenly noticed each other.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Eileen’s classmate continued walking in order to be on time for her next afternoon class. But since Eileen had only been planning to go to the Lehman College library that afternoon to work on one of her term papers, and had not been planning to attend any scheduled class, she stopped and we began to chat with each other again. And, after a few minutes of talking with me, I asked her if she’d mind if I’d walk with her to the Lehman College campus, and she said it was O.K.. I then turned around and we then began walking together down the hill and onto the Lehman College campus.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Eileen was apparently still feeling that something was lacking intellectually, and from a feminist point of view, in her traditional relationship with Vinnie, the guy she was still living with. And, like me, she apparently also felt spring fever from the beautiful Spring afternoon in May.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So by the time we arrived on the Lehman College campus, Eileen was more into hanging out with me outside on the campus lawn in front of the library and the classroom buildings than into spending the beautiful day inside the library working on a term paper. And after sitting close to each other on the lawn for awhile while conversing in the same kind of intense way we had talked with each other when we had first met in the Lehman College cafeteria a few weeks before, we both realized that we were starting to feel some mutual love vibes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So after she started touching me on my back and shoulder in a fond way with her hands, I was soon lying stretched out on my back on the campus lawn with my head resting in her lap, as she stroked my long hair in an affectionate way. A John Lennon fan who passed Eileen and me by at that time would probably have been reminded of the album cover of a then-recently-released John Lennon vinyl album, in which the album cover was a photograph of Lennon and Yoko Ono sitting under a tree together, and on which Lennon had recorded his classic “Working-Class Hero” protest folk song.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">My next memory is then walking with Eileen from Lehman College’s campus later in the afternoon south on Jerome Avenue, until we got to a Jahn’s Restaurant, where we each ate an ice cream sundae, while continuing our intense conversation, oblivious to everyone else around us in the restaurant. Despite the fact that it was now getting late in the afternoon and Eileen was expected to be home by the evening in order to cook dinner for Vinnie, Eileen, surprisingly, expressed an interest in checking out my apartment, after we had finished eating our ice cream sundaes at Jahn’s Restaurant. So we then started walking east on Fordham Road until we arrived inside my apartment.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Although the only furniture inside my 1 ½ room apartment were two mattresses on the floor, a small table and a few boxes, Eileen seemed impressed by the fact that the rent for my then rent-controlled hippie pad was still less than $60 per month in the Spring of 1971. And after checking out the lay-out of the pad, Eileen sat down next to me on one of the mattresses that was on the floor of my living room-bedroom.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">A few minutes later, she suddenly started to kiss me for a few minutes in a passionate way; and we both realized that we could also be attracted to each other on a sexual level , if we let ourselves go—and if she weren’t still involved with Vinnie. But since she had to get home that evening to make dinner for Vinnie and we were both reluctant to get any closer to each other on a physical level as long as she was living with Vinnie, we soon started to pull away from each other.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Eileen then stood up and said quietly: “I have to go now, but can I have your phone number--so I can sometimes call you?”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">“Sure,” I replied, as I stood up myself. Then I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down my first name and phone number on the piece of paper. And a few minutes later, we left my apartment and started walking together towards a bus stop on Fordham Road, where Eileen could catch a bus to drop her off at the Fordham Road D train subway stop, where she could then catch the subway train that would take her back home.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After we arrived at the Fordham Road bus stop, we did not have to wait very long before Eileen’s bus to the D train arrived, since it was still rush hour on a weekday. And I then waved goodbye to Eileen, as she got on the crowded bus.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Since Eileen was already living with Vinnie—and, from the way Eileen had described him, I did not get the sense that he was the type of guy who wouldn’t get uptight if a guy he didn’t know telephoned the woman he lived with at their home—I did not bother to ask for Eileen’s telephone number. And I was doubtful that Eileen would actually ever telephone me when, after a few days, she realized that telephoning me when Vinnie wasn’t around might start to eventually complicate her already apparently shaky relationship with a guy like Vinnie. But after Eileen got on the bus and I returned to my apartment, I did write a love song for Eileen, titled “Ms. Eileen,” which contained the lyric “<em>And I hope that you’ll kiss me, Ms. Eileen</em>,” which described Eileen’s inner beauty and why I felt attracted to her, from a male feminist point of view.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Surprisingly, a few weeks later I did receive a telephone call from Eileen. But, by that time, the money I had saved from the Writers Guild office boy job that I had quit nearly two months before had nearly vanished. And I now only had enough bread left to pay my rent for June 1971, barely enough left to feed myself and my kitten until June 1971. Also, I had been forced to shave my beard off and get a haircut again, in order to start hunting for a 9-to-5 job again.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">So when Eileen telephoned me, I was now in a much more visibly embittered and angry mood than I had been when I had last seen her on the beautiful Spring afternoon and Eileen—not yet being as politically revolutionary in her feelings as I was, despite her developing radical feminist perspective—did not really yet feel the working-class anger I felt at being forced to choose between either 9-to-5 wage slavery again or—if I couldn’t find a job or couldn’t become eligible for the home relief for single individuals that the New York City welfare department still officially provided in 1971—death by economic impoverishment or starvation. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But, ironically, after our philosophical and political differences suddenly became apparent to each other during our phone conversation, Eileen suddenly laughed and said: “You know, before I called you I was thinking I might want to move in with you. But now I see it would never work out.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I also laughed and replied: “Yeah. Don’t think I’d be able to offer you much in the way of companionship until I get my bread situation together again, so that I can keep coming up with the rent money each month.” And a few seconds later, we said goodbye to each other over the telephone.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I felt somewhat surprised that Eileen’s emotional dissatisfaction with Vinnie had apparently increased so much that the possibility of moving into my slum apartment with me so soon was actually something she had even considered. But given my immediate money and economic survival worries at the time she telephoned, I realized that living with Vinnie—especially since he apparently wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever beat her—was still probably a much wiser thing for Eileen to do than leaving Vinnie and then finding herself now sharing my economic misery with me on a daily level, by moving in with me.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3909929856467163089.post-24087940132526674272011-01-24T09:31:00.000-08:002015-01-02T13:18:57.658-08:00Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (xvii)<span style="font-size: large;">Bumping into Earl and then having lunch with Earl reminded me that I had not checked out the scene inside the Richmond College glass tower on St. George Street in Staten Island at all during the 1970-1971 academic year. So one day in late April 1971 I hopped on a D train, and then transferred at 59th Street to the IRT local subway train that took you to the South Ferry station stop. Then I paid my nickel--or by that time it may have been a quarter--to get on the Staten Island ferry. And after the ferry docked at the Staten Island ferry terminal, I walked into the building of the experimental CUNY college on Staten Island for juniors, seniors and mostly ed majors or teachers who were obtaining their needed master's degree in education credits from Richmond College.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After taking the elevator to the floor on which the student cafeteria was located, I immediately spotted a few of my old hippie-left friends from the Richmond College Social Change Commune that I had been a part of there in the Spring of 1969, sitting around one of the cafeteria tables. Dan, a bearded and long-haired Irish-American anti-war rebel leftist, who always wore a Che Guevara-type beret, was there along with others. But by the Spring of 1971, Dan and my other old friends at the cafeteria table had pretty much given up any hope that revolutionary left change was possible in the United States in the 1970s. And they all explained to me that "partying and bull-shit" was pretty much all that the students at Richmond College were now into in 1971. No one was even bothering to pass out any anti-war leaflets to students at Richmond College or to set up any counter-cultural New Left political meetings or campus events with celebrity left speakers in the Spring of 1971, like we all had done in the Spring of 1969, as part of the legendary Richmond College Social Change Commune.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In the Richmond College cafeteria in late April 1971 I also bumped into one of the hip, bearded professors who used to hang out with us in the Ricmond College Social Change Commune's classroom in the the Spring of 1969; and who used to push the white left-liberal middle-class academic left political line that "cultural revolution and anti-consumerism is good" but "New Left-led anti-imperialist political revolution" or "New Left student activism which disrupted the U.S. university system" is "going too far"--without ever revealing that he was being paid over $25,000 a year in 1969 by CUNY when most of his working-class students were still lucky to find jobs that paid over $7,500 a year after they graduated in 1969. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet when we noticed each other as I walked by the cafeteria table where he was eating lunch smugly with some less politically radical and more morally smug professors, he said to me: "How are you? You know we miss you around here. It's much duller politically around here now and getting to be like student life was in the 1950s again."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I also noticed an old womanfriend named Helene in the student cafeteria, whom I hadn't seen since we had smoked some hashish alone together in her Staten Island apartment about a year and a half before. She still looked as physically attractive as a Hollywood movie actress like Jane Fonda did in the early 1970s and we smiled and laughed when we said "hello" to each other again. But since we both realized that our philosophical views and current interests were probably still too different for us to be close friends over the long haul, we only chatted briefly with each other before I left the Richmond College glass tower building and headed back to my cheap, slum apartment in the Bronx.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But because I used to write agitational columns for the school newspaper at Richmond College that presented a radical New Left analysis of the current historical situation during the 1968-1969 academic year, I ended up mailing down to the student newspaper a Spring 1971 column in which I criticized the middle-class academic left "professoriat" at Richmond College for discouraging its students from disrupting the U.S. university system around anti-imperialist demands; and criticized--perhaps in too much of a left-sectarian way--the Richmond College academic left professors for being too chained to their jobs to really want to work for or to see a Black Panther Party-led or a revolutionary feminist-led, anti-imperialist Revolution in the United States in the 1970s.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I also verbally put-down--in perhaps too left-sectarian a way-- the students at Richmond College in the Spring of 1971 who were just into "partying and bull-shit" when the Pentagon was still waging its unjust war in Vietnam, Black Panther Party activists were still being assassinated or jailed on trumped-up charges by the Nixon Administration's law enforcement agents, anti-war Weatherfugitives were still being hunted by the FBI, the majority of U.S. working-class people were still being forced to be 9-to-5 wage slaves in skyscraper offices or in factories to obtain the money they needed to pay their rents and mortgages or purchase their food supplies, and the majority of U.S. women were still being treated as second-class citizens within a racist, imperialist, sexist and patriarchal capitalist society in 1971.</span>b.f.http://www.blogger.com/profile/00907592761685745016noreply@blogger.com0