Freewheelin' In The Bronx 1971 (i)

It felt great to finally be free again from having to report to a 9-to-5 cage in the Death Culture skyscraper world of Manhattan in late 1971. I felt freer than when I was a college student since I also didn’t have to sit in boring classroom cages listening to dull white middle-class academics ramble on in monotones, while mumbling the same lecture they gave months or years before, to their previous captive audience of young people. Nor did I have to do any homework or academic shitwork for the college classroom managers-profs anymore. Or have to stay up all night to finish overdue term papers.

I was free to sleep late, free of having to ride in the cattle car subway train from the Bronx to Manhattan, to try to rush into the office by 9 o’clock on the dot, despite the rush-hour crowds and daily subway train delays, and free to just spend my weekdays writing more protest folk songs and folk love songs, reading books that weren’t on some middle-class prof’s reading list, listening to vinyl music records and getting high. And when the warm weather of spring came in 1971, I was now free to spend my weekdays outside in the Bronx parks or hanging out on some Bronx college campus.