Sat. Aug 1, 1964- Dec 31, 1964:::: ______________ AUGUST 1964::: ______ Saturday AUGUST 1, 1964 to Sunday AUGUST 9, 1964::::_______ ::::The moment I got back, a Saturday, I ran into Dale and started telling him everything that happened in the starnge town of York,Pa and how it was a zillion times nicer than NYC, especially for someone like me. I recall the moment I was telling him in front of the candy store 1 1/2 blocks around the corner from our houses. It was a bright day. Now I wanted back to that twon as quickly as possible. My parents had been trying to get a house in Eastern Pa so why not there instead? Of course, as a kid I had no idea that they had been looking within commuting distance to NYC so they wouldnt have to give up there jobs there. At least I now THINK they were trying to do. I had no idea of 'pensions' or how it was for people without degrees to start over in a small city far away. ............. Wed Aug 11, 1999 1054am: Now here is a mystery I have been trying to figure out. As badly as I wanted to move to York for some weird reason I have no memory at all of when I knew we would or when we actually bought the house. I have the following bits of info: 1) My father has always complained of how my mother "bought the house without his knowing it". How and when could she have done that? The one day she was in York to bring me back? (Friday, July 31, 1964). When she was in York with him later on? And where was I then? 2) I know my father was in York with the three kids and I wasn't. He took them to see "It's a Hard Days' Night" at the drive-in. I certainly wasn't there when he did that. I looked it up in the Gazette and Daily. That movie played at the Stony Brook Drive-In (I had no idea where that was at the time) for $3 a carload from Wednesday, August 4, 1964 until Tuesday, August 11, 1964. It ran with Jerry Lewis' "The Patsy". Open 7pm. 3) Now I also know that one night I was sitting up in bed with the kids talking about my father and how he might spend money on them. That was in July. Did I then SPECIFICALLY know he would be coming up? And how? My mother arrived on the afternoon of Thursday July 30 and did she tell us he'd be coming up? And why? Why wasn't I just brought back and that end it and then I never hear of York again for years? (Recently, in 1997, a friend of mine shocked me with a theory that I had never thought of. My mother wanted to move out of NYC much more than my father. My friend suggested that she may have deliberately sent me ahead to York as an excuse for her to go there alone to pick me up with plans of moving there. That would explain why my mother, who always feared sending me away for the Summer where someone could sexually move on her Catholic boy would send me off like that. She figured that it was worth the gamble to get away from perverted NYC forever.... NOW, unless my father was on vacation he went to York the very next weekend after my mother took me home: That would be Friday August 7 through Sunday August 9, 1964 in order to coincide with that movie. But did he go there without my mother? Did he go with her and I was to stay home and watch Major, my dog? Beats me. Did my mother go along that weekend and then agree to the house without his knowledge? (I know that my mother told me that my Uncle Gene, one of the nastiest people I ever met, bluntly said to the real estate agent, "Now dont you go and put my sister-in-law in any nigger neighborhood" (He made Ty Cobb look like a nice guy. Well, if a man won't let his own kids in the same room with him he's obviously not very friendly.).... / NOTE WHAT HAPPENED DURING THIS PERIOD ABOVE:______ SUNDAY AUGUST 2, 1964: DEFENSE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES US DESTROYER ATTACKED AT PLACE NAMED "GULF OF TONKIN" BY NORTH VIETNAMESE.__________ TUESDAY AUGUST 4, 1964: US DEFENSE DEP ANNOUNCES TWO US DESTROYERS, MADDOX AND C. TURNER JOY WERE IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS WHEN ATTACKED.____ LBJ GETS ON TV TO ANNOUNCE AIR RAIDS ON NORTH VIETNAM IN RETALIATION, __________ WEDNESDAY AUGUST 5, 1964: AIR ATTACKS STILL GOING ON AGAINST NORTH VIETNAM WHICH CLAIMS IT NEVER ATTACKED US SHIPS, The three missing civil rights workers, Schwerner, Goodman, Chaney found dead, LBJ ASKS CONGRESS FOR GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION, __________THURSDAY AUGUST 6, 1964:: SENATE AND HOUSE BEGIN JOINT HEARINGS TO GIVE LBJ GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION,,,,, S.VIET PREMIER DECLARES MARTIAL LAW, KHRUSHCHEV ANNOUNCES WILL "STAND UP FOR" NORTH VIETNAM, LBJ GETS HIS GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION. VIETNAM WAR BEGINS.// So between my returning to NYC on August 1 and my father taking the kids to see A HARD DAYS NIGHT a week later, the whole process beginning the Vietnam War took place. ______________ _________________ _______________________ Friday the thirteenth, August 1999: While waiting to take my father to the physician yesterday I went to the library and courthose. I was surprised to see that my parents did NOT buy the house in the Summer of 1964. Here is the info: deed Book 56Z, page 592, House purchased NOVEMBER 27, 1964. 11:51 am, Cumberland Valley Savings and Loan, West Market St. The Friday during Thankgiving vacation. Parents neglected to use the zip code that existed since 1963 and still called our home Astoria, 2, New York. The owner was Lewis J.Hyde and his wife Lillian had died on my fathers birthday in 1962. Notary Robert Stover. And Jack Barton's name was there. I met him in 80s when he was in same politics as I. Yet, my image of seeing the house for the first time was of it being on a warm sunny day with Billy leading us there from Vi's. (Sun 8-15-99 910pm)Now August 27 was when the house was officially signed over but when did my mother first see it, and when did she agree to it. I asked my father and he said that she came up by herself and my aunt and uncle took her out looking and that's when she decided all by herself to get it. I also had always been told that the owner wanted out of it quickly because his wife had died in it but she died way back on 8-24-1962!. Anyway, if my father didnt come up when she agreed to it exactly when DID she come up? I have no idea. _________________ Monday AUGUST 10 to Monday AUGUST 31, 1964:::: Actually, all through August from my return I was trying to get myself interested in the rock music that they were into in York. I would take a pocket radio with me every night and go to the Astoria Park with it. I'd sit on the swings or sit on some steps by the north little-used entrance to the park listening at night. I did that a lot from early August 1964 until June 1965 but I never could develop the teenage excitement about it all. I learned to like it enough to make it more pleasurable than not listening to anything. And for someone so excited about getting back to York I sure don't know when I next got back. If we didn't own the house until Nov 27 that means it wasn't in August or September that Billy took us there. So maybe I didn't return in August at all. Maybe it wasn't until September or even later. I did continue following the pennant race, though. And I made up my own game to play on the bed and my own standings. But I knew nothing about the individual players as yet, at least not enough to make a logical game. I recall that the two pennant winners were the Kansas City Athletics and the Mets, which were the two worst team in baseball in real life..... I think I went back to using that string and pencil thing to strengthen my eye muscles.... I don't even know if I got back to York before school started in September..... I do recall that once I went to the United Nations Bldg and headed towards the downstairs stamp collectors counter. There were a group of girl tourists standing a couple of yards in front of it. It was recessed and I would have had to go through them as I couldnt get around. One of them goes, "Look"- at me. Another goes, "God, he's cute". I embarrassed easily so I suddenly turned right and got out of there. ......Mon Aug 16,1999:: I remember lying on the couch a lot bored while watching TV while my parents were at work and counting off the seconds to when I'd return to York....... I don't recall when I finally got back to York but it eventually happened. Either in August or September. I THINK it may have been the time we wound up in Harrisburg late at night and had just missed the bus. (Why didnt we take the car? I recall going many times by car.). I recall standing there looking out at the night with my parents as they must have been discussing things. The night we were stuck there we then took a cab to York which cost a fortune. Anyway, whether it was the 'missed bus/cab night' or not I DO recall winding up at Vi's house before Sunrise! I remember standing in the living room when it was still dark with morning not far off and we were all by the television and, I believe, the fishtank light was on in the dark and making noise. Vi and gene were down with us. Then Billy and steve came down and were cheering my return. And I wondered where Loralee was. For some strange reason she didn't come down. I dont remember when she finally came down but for some reason she had now turned on me like a snake and I couldnt figure out what had happened! She now either snubbed me or was rude to me! Suddenly, for no reason I could figure, I now seemed to have an enemy within my own family. And she stayed that way for the next TEN YEARS!!! I recall the boys and I went along the railroad tracks together without her and we turned right at the street that ends at the tracks. There was a little gulley there and trees around it. And for some reason a bunch of male and female underwear and beercans. When we went back later the boys told Lora and she suddenly wanted to go and see it! I couldnt believe it, I thought it would be too obscene. What sort of female was this? She was nothing like the girls in my Catholic Catechism classes. The boys and I also walked farther down Wallace Street and I think I might have brought a few firecrackers to set off at night which was a big thing in York then. I dont know if it was that trip or a later one but I do recall the three of us going downtown like the old days and my trying to get on Lora's good side by buying her a soda at McCrory's and the kids teasing me about it. (At that age I did not know what a 'user and golddigger' was but that was what Lora was but it would take me years to realized it as one never believes one has one in ones own family or especially that one would act like that towards her own cousin!). I don't recall how long we stayed on that return trip but just that I slept in the same bed and that Lora was now a total s.o.b. towards me. Now she suddenly hated everything about me. And when we tried to play cards on the floor of her room she said, "This isnt what we played". Well, I couldnt recall if we played 500 Rummy or Gin Rummy so I tried both but neither seemed to please her. She had turned into a bitch and stayed that way forever. ________ _________ ___________ _______ SEPTEMBER 1964: My cousins may have looked forwards to going to their Archie Comic Book type high school in York but my first year of high school was a nightmare. I had to go to Long Island City High School LICHS (I still have the gym shirt) which was the most dangerous one in New York City!.. "60 Minutes" TV show would later do a segment on it as such. ....... The dilapidated school (which was only recently closed in the late 90s) was FAR away on the other side of the borough of Queens. Close to Greenpoint but on this side of the Pulaski Bridge. Near where my father left me off by his shop (Todays Displays) for the Fair and not too far from my mothers job at Macys Central Warehouse. We were now ALL in Long Island City..... ... The school was also overcrowded so I had to take the later shift. Instead of 830 to 300 or whatever I now had to be there at 930 or 1000 and was there until 430 pm! So I'd get up as my parents were ready to leave. I'd say goodbye to them and then I'd turn on the radio to the British Invasion music stations as they reminded me of York. ....... I'd leave at the last minute and walk around the corner to where the stores were but now I had a new favorite grocery store. I'd walk down 24th Ave past the candy store, bar, regular grocery, drugstore, cleaners?, butchers, corner grocery, and turn left as there was another little grocery a few yards up where the people were very friendly. Each and every day i got the best roastbeef sandwich i ever had on a seeded roll for 35c with the best round French Crueller I ever had. And we'd talk about central Pa. They knew someone who lived in Reading and I thought that Reading was much farther from York than it really was. I was 14/15 and didn't know.......... 8-16-99 303pm... 317: ..... Then I'd either take the bus or the elevated train. In the beginning I always took the bus as I knew it best. At least in the OTHER direction that i had taken it since Feb 1959. I think these were the first times I ever took it southwards under the Triboro Bridge, thru Astoria Square, past Broadway,Queens and its shopping center, past the projects, past where Dr Bizarro was in early 64, past the new power plant by the river whose photo showed up all over Environmentalist books many years later. It was a long, LONG ride each day and I was one of the first ones on it if not THE first. Miserable with my head against the window where I tried to always sit: in the far rear seat on the left. Day after day. All the way south for many miles without knowing anyone and not wanting to. More and more LIC students getting on as we went. Then we'd eventually pass under the Queensborough Bridge (see 1978-1983) turn left and go along side of it. Past a fancy car that was always parked diagonally to us that had a round eagle on the back (Chrysler New Yorker?) with an AuH2O bumper sticker (Goldwater). Then a couple blocks to the main Queens stop with a row of buses next to the elevated train entrance. The whole huge crowd of us would then get out, me usually last, go up the metal stairs shoulder to shoulder, and into the huge elevated station above the huge Plaza. Had to zig zag in at the top of the stairs. The token booth (15c) was on the left. Many turnstiles and metal doors on the right (and left?). It was quite a LONG walk up in the air over the wide, wide plaza. It was at least a BIG block wide as it contained all the lanes to and from the bridge plus the avenues on either side. Its amazing how one could do something that seemed as one was doing it forever and suddenlt its 35+ years ago! Each morning I'd go up the same stairs, through a metal barred door, through a turnstile, past the ticket booth, thru the crowds way above the street, thru the long long station with all the turnstiles. On the other side one could either go down the metal stairs onto the sidewalk and then rightwards to the corner and then left to the school or straight ahead into a building with stores in it and then down the steps onto the sidewalk. For some reason my misery at my situation always got worse when I reached the top of the stairs and passed the booth on the left. Crowd and gloom in there? Then I'd walk the 2,3 blocks to the school. Felt like I was doing thsat forever from Sept 64 to Jan 65. Time goes slower at that age, especially when you want out of a situation badly. I probably only did it about 80 times but it seemed like a thousand. Meanwhile Dale was somewhere else in LIC at Aviation High School and Jimmy was at another high school there somewhere. At some point I started taking the elevated train. Possibly because Dale could and he went to Aviation. But the train was much farther away. The switch may have been about December 1964 or Jan 65. But shortly before switching to the train I started taking the bus one more stop, just like I did at JHS 141. It then went a long block up along Queens Plaza and turned right. Then it stopped next to the Queens Plaza subway stop and its tunnels under the huge plaza. To get to the train from that grocery store I had to walk about a mile or more to the elevated station at Grand Central Parkway/Triboro Bridge. Where we took the train to the Fair. I never knew when the train would come. Sometimes right away. Sometimes I'd see it sitting at Ditmars (last stop) for 45 minutes and I'd be very late for school. (I still owe detention). I recall a "Thoroughly Modern Millie" poster and times I was standing in the wooden stairhouse at the top of the stairs when it rained outside. For the first time I wondered about my physique in relation to what girls might like. I started wondering if my rear end was too pronounced. Actually, it was because the rest of me was so very skinny. Way too skinny. Even with the malteds... The train would take me in a usually empty car across Queens looking down on the rooftops to the Queens Plaza elevated train stop. Come to think of it I still took the bus half the time (maybe) so it may have been 130 times I walked over that plaza. Well, whichever mode of transportation I was taking in Jan 65 to June 65 I then almost went UNDER the huge plaza rather than over (see 1978- 1983). Mon 8-16-99 350pm. Tues 8-17,148pm: Of course, being back in NYC was quite an anti-climax from the previous summer. But at least I wasnt back in JHS 141. On my first day in class the homeroom teacher sat me right up front. First seat in second row from the window on the left of me. Oh, great. I was used to hiding in the back whenever possible. And the girl in the seat next to me in row one looked like a homecoming queen. Worse, a PATRICIAN- looking Homecoming Queen. And, wonder of wonders, she immediately took a shine to me. She went out of her way both semesters tp be friendly to me. Even doing my homework for me without my asking. It had all gotten so bizarre. From 4th grade thriough ninth grade I was the lowest of the low, flaming, picked on nerds. No one was lower. Not even another nerd. Now all of a sudden good looking girls were acting like I was at the Top rather than the bottom of the teenage pecking order. All because I grew 14 inches in one year? ?? Beats me. Maybe my bone structure proportions changed as well. And there were other girls in other classes who started giving me things. Naturally, no one from JHS141 or PS122 was there to tell them what a supernerd I was considered for years before. I totally lost my interest in comic books. Amazing how sudden that was. I built my world around them and worried about them and now, suddenly, it all stopped. I now sometimes wonder what was the last comic book I bought before my cousins showed up and I went off to Pa. with them. There was a book out showing the covers of Superman comics in that period and I may have found it. And the first one I missed as well. My TV habits changed. I came home much later now so I could no longer see the ones I saw in June. Actually, it was even later as now I would often wait a couple blocks down for my father and then we'd wait an hour for my mother. At night I was always out although I watched whatever was the first rock show was (Shindig? Hullaballoo?). But I couldn't develop the rock-fanaticism of normal IQ teens. I think I may have purchased my Waterloo military game about then. .......... There were no doors on the lockers at LICHS due to drugs and weapons so i had to carry all my stuff everywhere each day. During the FIRST week, though, I was waiting in the back schoolyard for classes to start and a bunch of white guys jumped me and wrestled my pocket radio from me. The one with the arrow dent in it. But it wasn't psychologically damaging like getting picked on as they would have gone after anyone not in a gang. And it take a bunch of them while I tried to fight them off. But I was still disgusted at being sent to the worst school in NYC after sampling Pa. I 'played hooky' for the first time in that I just walked out of the building and walked all the way home up the street that was parallel to 21st St or maybe Crescent Street. First and only time I did that. Walked miles to home. Told my parents. They told the school. I was called to the Asst Principal's office. He mostly lectured me about taking a pocket radio to school. I told him I didnt know anyone there and it was a long, long busride. They didnt find them and I didnt expect them to. I really wasnt disturbed though as they didnt actually pick on me. The whole school was full of such people attacking anyone. But the attack may have been fortuitous. My parents went to the Board of Education in Brooklyn to get me transferred ANYWHERE but there before I got killed. They refused to budge. It made my mother DETERMINED to get me out of that school as quickly as she could. She really pushed for a move to York after that. ........ The high school brought in a psychiatrist from NYU with a tape recorder and once a week I went down one flight of stairs from homeroom and to the end of the hall and into this little room where this guy would ask me questions and talk to me for an hour. About why such a former whiz kid from 1955-1959 who was still pulling huge scores on IQ tests wasnt working up to his potential. More 'potential' crap. But I wasn't about to come out of the closet as being a battered, terrorized nerd for five years with a crazy violent teacher and an only child/latch key kid dodging perverts of both sexes grabbing me between the legs while I was a deeply religious Roman Catholic. All I wanted from New York City was OUT!!! But what I did do, as LICHS was MUCH easier than JHS141 and I had no bullies attacking me specifically each day, was to get my grades up that first semester so they'd get off my back. (Every now and then I'd run into some tough guy jerk but I was now 6'2" and confident and wouldnt take any crap so word got around and I was left alone.)
Once a dog followed me under the Plaza and I couldnt get rid of him in a way that would protect him from being run over in all that traffic. I finally ditched him in a safe place but i was then so late I just went home. Screw it. I didnt really care about school that much any more. I had enough detention just with the trains being late all the time. One time while taking the bus south I heard a girl on the side of the bus facing the sidewalk go "Ohhhhhh! LOOOK!!" and other girls ran over. I looked out and saw two big bodybuilders walking along. They had weights in our gym class but they were just the handweights and noone showed us how to build up. I would just lift one and thrust it one time into the air. I got to where i could put increasingly heavier ones up one time apiece but thats not how one builds muscle but I didnt know that. .... I always, if possible, sat in the very back of the bus. I never trusted people behind me as I got attacked from behind for those 5 years too many times. I figured that most people were evil and degenerate as thats how they always acted towards me...... I recall once hearing the song Liberty Valence on my radio and wondering why I never heard of the movie or the song as the song was so good. Well, when it had come out I didnt listen to the radio and I only went to those matinees.... I'd usually just sit back there alone miserable about my situation in that evil city.....____________ ____________ ______________ OCTOBER 1964: I do remember the 1964 baseball pennant race very well. I had really gotten into it. I kept voting for St Louis to win at the Worlds Fair NY Daily News booth and I bet some money against long odds and I won. The Phillies flopped, losing 10 straight when 6 1/2 ahead and the Cards and Reds came up in a roar of ten straight wins themselves. And it was my METS who determined it! The Cards came into NYC in first place and had to win just one game out of three from the last place 1964 Mets. The Mets beat them once. Then beat them again, knocking them down into a tie with Philly. Then Cinn beat Philly and they were tied for second place one game behind. If the Mets could also win the third game there would be a three way tie for the pennant! But this was the ONLY time in my life I rooted against my Mets as I wanted St Louis to win the pennant. The Cardinals won and went on to play the Yanks. So, weirdly, I would now also be rooting against the other team my father worked for. ....... In Early 1964 I listened to the World Series on my pocket radio. I must have replaced the stolen one. I listened in class and then on the bus. I used to get the bus home right where I got off in the morning where it just turned out of the huge Queens Plaza. I recall listening to it daily on the bus going south farther down in Queens before turning right (east) and then right again to come all the way up north. I recall well the seventh game of the Series going south and then west as the homeruns were hit, especially the one by Mantle off Schultz. What a topsy-turvy year. I rooted against my fathers teams, the Worlds Fair, the new school, discovering York, greatest pennant races, growing so much, peoples attitudes towards me reversing themselves, etc.