In the early 1960's (many decades before drivers of cars just relied on GPS voices to let them know which highways or roads to take to reach a particular long-distance destination), I was my father's map-reading "navigator" in his car, whenever we drove from Indianapolis to either Chicago or to Bloomington, Indiana, between January and June of 1963.
So it was during these six months that I also developed an interest in collecting road maps of many of the individual states in the continental USA. And for about a year in Indianapolis, I spent some time mailing letters to various tourist boards of some of the individual states, requesting that the different state state tourist boards mail me a free road map of their state, for me to add to my "road map" collection.
By the time I was attending Columbia College in NYC, though, in the Fall of 1965, I had pretty much lost my previous interest in continuing to collect "road maps"--in the same way I had lost my previous interest in collecting postage stamps to put in my stamp collection book before, when I first entered the 7th-grade in junior high school.
Yet even as late as 1965, I was still interested enough in road maps to unsuccessfully put in an application for a summer job inside an AAA office, that used to be located in Manhattan around East 42nd Street, near Grand Central Station, on the ground floor of some skyscraper (that then housed the corporate headquarters office of some transnational oil corporation like Texaco or Socony Mobil); and which provided AAA "Trip-Ticks"/road map route guiding material for AAA members who came to this AAA office for road trip route-planning assistance.
Friday, April 10, 2020
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 41
Once we reached Chicago's North Side, my father would end up parking his 1959 Pontiac car in some spot near the 1920's-built, rundown, slum apartment building, in which my mother's parents and my grandparents lived, near Humboldt Park and Division Street. By the early 1960's, most of the residents of this slum apartment building and the neighborhood in which my grandparents lived seemed to then be mostly white, Spanish-speaking people from the U.S. colony/"commonwealth" of Puerto Rico.
My grandfather used to leave his slum building apartment each evening and walk through the neighborhood to take a bus downtown to the Chicago Tribune newspaper printing facility; where he then spent the night and early morning hours loading newspapers onto newspaper delivery trucks, in exchange for union wages (until he was in his mid-70's), before returning back to his apartment to sleep during the day in the late morning and until the early afternoon hours. But I can't recall ever walking around this neighborhood, myself, either alone or with my mother, father or sister during any of our one-day, Sunday visits to my grandfather's apartment in this neighborhood.
Usually, we would all just walk from our family's parked car on the street, from a spot that was usually close to the apartment building in which my grandparents lived, enter the unlocked door of the building which had no elevator and then walk up one or two flights of stairs to my grandparents' very small 1-bedroom apartment. Then, after two or three hours in the apartment--in which most of the time was spent sitting around the kitchen table listening to my mother talk to her parents in English about how all their relatives, most of whom I had never met, who still lived in Chicago were doing--my parents, my sister and I would then say goodbye, leave the apartment building and just walk back to my family's car.
Afterwards, my father would then drive us all further north to the 1920's-built two-family house in Skokie that my mother's younger sister and her husband had only purchased a few years before; after selling their 1920's-built house near North Kedzie Avenue, not far from Wrigley Field, that they had previously owned during most of the 1950's. Arriving in Skokie, maybe a half-hour later, we would then usually spend three to 4 hours in the more Americanized, more inwardly modernized house of my aunt, uncle and my two younger boy cousins; and we would all converse with each other and eat dinner together there, before my own nuclear family drove back to Indianapolis from Chicago at around 7:30 or 8 p.m. on Sunday evening.
My grandfather was a good-natured fellow who--despite being brought up in Russia (but speaking mostly Yiddish and only a bit of Russian)-had learned to speak enough English to converse in English with people in a Russian-Yiddish accent and read portions of Chicago's. daily newspapers, during the over 50 years that he had spent living and working in the USA, prior to 1963. He was a member of one of the unions at the Chicago Tribune/Tribune media conglomerate where he had worked since World War II; and, at least verbally, expressed strong support for his union's leadership and shop steward. But he was the type of union member who had no interest in either attending any union membership meeting or following the union's internal politics. And although he was of Russian-Jewish religious background, he had no interest in Zionism, the Zionist movement, the fate of Israel or what was happening in the Middle East during the 1960's.
Having lived and worked in the United States for over 50 years, my grandfather probably would have thought that any Zionist movement supporter who suggested that he consider moving from the USA to Palestine in the 1960's was suggesting a crazy idea. And like most other elderly U.S. working-class people who had immigrated to the USA from Eastern Europe, Russia or Italy in the early 20th-century, in the early 1960's neither my grandfather nor my grandmother in Chicago had much interest in talking about U.S. electoral politics or how the capitalist economic and political system might need to be changed; especially since they felt, despite still living in a slum apartment building, that they were much less economically impoverished personally in the early 1960's than they had been during the Great Depression of the 1930's.
In 1963 both my grandfather and grandmother still seemed fond of my mother. But my grandfather then seemed to be sadder than my grandmother that my mother had moved from Chicago to New York City after she had married my father in the early 1940's. And although, twenty years later, she now lived in a city much closer to Chicago than New York City, my grandfather still seemed to miss my mother in 1963 and regret that she wasn't then living in Chicago again.
My grandmother was, in 1963, less Americanized than was my grandfather and more religiously orthodox; perhaps because her own father had apparently been some sort of a rabbi in Lithuania. But despite being less good-natured than my grandfather, when in their 70's in 1963, both my grandfather and my grandmother in Chicago, with the three daughters they had raised married and living with their husbands by now for over 13 years, still seemed devoted to each other.
My mother's younger sister (who was in her late 30's in 1963 and was probably still considered physically beautiful by most men during the 1960's) and her husband in Skokie, like both my parents, were also not that interested in talking much about U.S. politics or changing the System in 1963; now that they all seemed to have gained more economic security and working-class affluence after World War II than what their immigrant parents had had during the Great Depression of the 1930's.
Between my uncle's blue-collar job as some kind of factory worker at a Bell and Howell plant and the elementary school teaching job that my aunt had obtained (after she decided to go to college in her early 30's, when both her sons had reached school attendance age), my aunt and uncle in Skokie seemed pretty much satisfied in 1963 with the economic opportunities the System in the USA provided them. And when I first became interested in taking 8mm moving pictures on a Kodak brownie moving picture camera in 1963, I was able to take advantage of having an uncle who worked for Bell and Howell; by having him buy for me, at the wholesale price, a Bell and Howell 8mm motion picture, automatic threading projector--which I paid for with part of the money I was earning on my own during my sophomore year in high school, by working between January and June 1963 as an Indianapolis Times newspaper delivery carrier in my neighborhood.
My grandfather used to leave his slum building apartment each evening and walk through the neighborhood to take a bus downtown to the Chicago Tribune newspaper printing facility; where he then spent the night and early morning hours loading newspapers onto newspaper delivery trucks, in exchange for union wages (until he was in his mid-70's), before returning back to his apartment to sleep during the day in the late morning and until the early afternoon hours. But I can't recall ever walking around this neighborhood, myself, either alone or with my mother, father or sister during any of our one-day, Sunday visits to my grandfather's apartment in this neighborhood.
Usually, we would all just walk from our family's parked car on the street, from a spot that was usually close to the apartment building in which my grandparents lived, enter the unlocked door of the building which had no elevator and then walk up one or two flights of stairs to my grandparents' very small 1-bedroom apartment. Then, after two or three hours in the apartment--in which most of the time was spent sitting around the kitchen table listening to my mother talk to her parents in English about how all their relatives, most of whom I had never met, who still lived in Chicago were doing--my parents, my sister and I would then say goodbye, leave the apartment building and just walk back to my family's car.
Afterwards, my father would then drive us all further north to the 1920's-built two-family house in Skokie that my mother's younger sister and her husband had only purchased a few years before; after selling their 1920's-built house near North Kedzie Avenue, not far from Wrigley Field, that they had previously owned during most of the 1950's. Arriving in Skokie, maybe a half-hour later, we would then usually spend three to 4 hours in the more Americanized, more inwardly modernized house of my aunt, uncle and my two younger boy cousins; and we would all converse with each other and eat dinner together there, before my own nuclear family drove back to Indianapolis from Chicago at around 7:30 or 8 p.m. on Sunday evening.
My grandfather was a good-natured fellow who--despite being brought up in Russia (but speaking mostly Yiddish and only a bit of Russian)-had learned to speak enough English to converse in English with people in a Russian-Yiddish accent and read portions of Chicago's. daily newspapers, during the over 50 years that he had spent living and working in the USA, prior to 1963. He was a member of one of the unions at the Chicago Tribune/Tribune media conglomerate where he had worked since World War II; and, at least verbally, expressed strong support for his union's leadership and shop steward. But he was the type of union member who had no interest in either attending any union membership meeting or following the union's internal politics. And although he was of Russian-Jewish religious background, he had no interest in Zionism, the Zionist movement, the fate of Israel or what was happening in the Middle East during the 1960's.
Having lived and worked in the United States for over 50 years, my grandfather probably would have thought that any Zionist movement supporter who suggested that he consider moving from the USA to Palestine in the 1960's was suggesting a crazy idea. And like most other elderly U.S. working-class people who had immigrated to the USA from Eastern Europe, Russia or Italy in the early 20th-century, in the early 1960's neither my grandfather nor my grandmother in Chicago had much interest in talking about U.S. electoral politics or how the capitalist economic and political system might need to be changed; especially since they felt, despite still living in a slum apartment building, that they were much less economically impoverished personally in the early 1960's than they had been during the Great Depression of the 1930's.
In 1963 both my grandfather and grandmother still seemed fond of my mother. But my grandfather then seemed to be sadder than my grandmother that my mother had moved from Chicago to New York City after she had married my father in the early 1940's. And although, twenty years later, she now lived in a city much closer to Chicago than New York City, my grandfather still seemed to miss my mother in 1963 and regret that she wasn't then living in Chicago again.
My grandmother was, in 1963, less Americanized than was my grandfather and more religiously orthodox; perhaps because her own father had apparently been some sort of a rabbi in Lithuania. But despite being less good-natured than my grandfather, when in their 70's in 1963, both my grandfather and my grandmother in Chicago, with the three daughters they had raised married and living with their husbands by now for over 13 years, still seemed devoted to each other.
My mother's younger sister (who was in her late 30's in 1963 and was probably still considered physically beautiful by most men during the 1960's) and her husband in Skokie, like both my parents, were also not that interested in talking much about U.S. politics or changing the System in 1963; now that they all seemed to have gained more economic security and working-class affluence after World War II than what their immigrant parents had had during the Great Depression of the 1930's.
Between my uncle's blue-collar job as some kind of factory worker at a Bell and Howell plant and the elementary school teaching job that my aunt had obtained (after she decided to go to college in her early 30's, when both her sons had reached school attendance age), my aunt and uncle in Skokie seemed pretty much satisfied in 1963 with the economic opportunities the System in the USA provided them. And when I first became interested in taking 8mm moving pictures on a Kodak brownie moving picture camera in 1963, I was able to take advantage of having an uncle who worked for Bell and Howell; by having him buy for me, at the wholesale price, a Bell and Howell 8mm motion picture, automatic threading projector--which I paid for with part of the money I was earning on my own during my sophomore year in high school, by working between January and June 1963 as an Indianapolis Times newspaper delivery carrier in my neighborhood.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 40
Because my father would drive me and my mother in his 1959 Pontiac car up to Chicago on a Sunday about once a month (usually leaving only a few hours after I finished delivering the Sunday morning edition of the Indianapolis Times to my newspaper route customers in the early morning darkness), between January and June 1963 I became as familiar with the drive northwest to from Indianapolis to Chicago as I became with the drive south on State Route 37 from Indianapolis to Bloomington during this same period. The reason for the usually monthly drives up to Chicago was to visit my mother's parents and her younger sister, her brother-in-law and my cousins.
In 1963, only a small section of the Interstate 65 highway, that later enabled a driver to reach Chicago from Indianapolis by only driving on divided limited access highways at 65 mph, but which bypassed most of the small Indiana towns you used to have to drive through in order to travel by car between Naptown and the Windy City during the early 1960's, had been built. So to get to Chicago from Indianapolis , most of the drive at that time was done by first driving northeast on U.S. Highway 52 about 50 or 60 miles to Lafayette, Indiana--where you drove near the campus of Purdue University; and, afterwards, continue on U.S Highway 52 until you connected to the intersection with U.S. Highway 41 in Kentland, Indiana.
Because where U.S. Highway 52 intersected U.S. Highway 41 in Kentland, Indiana was both around a 2-hour drive from Indianapolis and a 2-hour drive from Chicago, in 1963 it was then also the location of a highway rest stop with a gas station and a fairly large restaurant and parking lot; at which drivers or passengers of cars, trucks and Greyhound buses stopped to stretch their legs, eat and use restrooms, when driving or traveling in either direction between Indianapolis and Chicago. So on the early Sunday mornings and late Sunday evenings when my family's car would stop at this Kentland, Indiana rest stop and restaurant on our monthly visits to Chicago and back, between January and June 1963, the restaurant was usually crowded with customers.
Once you reached U.S. Highway 41, the highway going straight north was all divided, yet not a limited access one like the section of then-partially-completed Interstate 65 had been, until you reached the Indiana Turnpike toll road and then the Calumet Skyway leading into Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway, near Hammond and East Chicago, Indiana.
In the early 1960's, until you reached the Hammond and East Chicago area of, Indiana, Lafayette, Indiana was pretty much the only city you drove through in Indiana after you left Indianapolis, on your way to Chicago, The rest of the time, until you reached Gary, Indiana, most of what the small portion of completed Interstate 65 and the U.S. 52 and U.S. 41 highways passed through on each side was either farms or streets of small towns. And in the early 1960's, you drove by very few strip shopping malls or Wal-Mart stores on either the U.S. 52 Highway or the U.S. 41 Highway in Indiana.
Once you reached the Hammond and East Chicago, Indiana area in the early 1960's, however, the air around you started to smell and look more polluted, and suddenly you found yourself driving past a lot of steel mills and factories; many of which, by the early 1980's, would later be shut down by the transnational U.S. corporations that owned them, throwing thousands of previously high-waged unionized industrial workers in northern Indiana out of work and into the ranks of the army of unemployed people in the USA.
Then, not too long after you passed by through this northwest corner of Indiana, you reached the South Side of Chicago and, from the expressway with many lanes, that at some point became the Dan Ryan Expressway, you could easily see a lot of high-rise public housing projects in which many African-American working-class people seemed to live and seemed to have been ghettoized; by a Chicago city government that was still controlled by the corrupt Chicago Democratic Party political machine of Chicago's long-time political boss and mayor: Richard Daley I.
In 1963, only a small section of the Interstate 65 highway, that later enabled a driver to reach Chicago from Indianapolis by only driving on divided limited access highways at 65 mph, but which bypassed most of the small Indiana towns you used to have to drive through in order to travel by car between Naptown and the Windy City during the early 1960's, had been built. So to get to Chicago from Indianapolis , most of the drive at that time was done by first driving northeast on U.S. Highway 52 about 50 or 60 miles to Lafayette, Indiana--where you drove near the campus of Purdue University; and, afterwards, continue on U.S Highway 52 until you connected to the intersection with U.S. Highway 41 in Kentland, Indiana.
Because where U.S. Highway 52 intersected U.S. Highway 41 in Kentland, Indiana was both around a 2-hour drive from Indianapolis and a 2-hour drive from Chicago, in 1963 it was then also the location of a highway rest stop with a gas station and a fairly large restaurant and parking lot; at which drivers or passengers of cars, trucks and Greyhound buses stopped to stretch their legs, eat and use restrooms, when driving or traveling in either direction between Indianapolis and Chicago. So on the early Sunday mornings and late Sunday evenings when my family's car would stop at this Kentland, Indiana rest stop and restaurant on our monthly visits to Chicago and back, between January and June 1963, the restaurant was usually crowded with customers.
Once you reached U.S. Highway 41, the highway going straight north was all divided, yet not a limited access one like the section of then-partially-completed Interstate 65 had been, until you reached the Indiana Turnpike toll road and then the Calumet Skyway leading into Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway, near Hammond and East Chicago, Indiana.
In the early 1960's, until you reached the Hammond and East Chicago area of, Indiana, Lafayette, Indiana was pretty much the only city you drove through in Indiana after you left Indianapolis, on your way to Chicago, The rest of the time, until you reached Gary, Indiana, most of what the small portion of completed Interstate 65 and the U.S. 52 and U.S. 41 highways passed through on each side was either farms or streets of small towns. And in the early 1960's, you drove by very few strip shopping malls or Wal-Mart stores on either the U.S. 52 Highway or the U.S. 41 Highway in Indiana.
Once you reached the Hammond and East Chicago, Indiana area in the early 1960's, however, the air around you started to smell and look more polluted, and suddenly you found yourself driving past a lot of steel mills and factories; many of which, by the early 1980's, would later be shut down by the transnational U.S. corporations that owned them, throwing thousands of previously high-waged unionized industrial workers in northern Indiana out of work and into the ranks of the army of unemployed people in the USA.
Then, not too long after you passed by through this northwest corner of Indiana, you reached the South Side of Chicago and, from the expressway with many lanes, that at some point became the Dan Ryan Expressway, you could easily see a lot of high-rise public housing projects in which many African-American working-class people seemed to live and seemed to have been ghettoized; by a Chicago city government that was still controlled by the corrupt Chicago Democratic Party political machine of Chicago's long-time political boss and mayor: Richard Daley I.
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