On The Road In The 1970's--Part 47

Besides riding around on my bicycle in the neighborhood on side streets, going to local libraries and spending time at the local Jewish Community Center of Indianapolis pool during the day, and still watching a lot of television in the evening on weekdays in Indianapolis in the summer of 1963, I also sometimes hopped on a bus that went downtown on College Avenue or on a bus that went east on 52nd Street towards the Jubilee City discount department store, mini-shopping mall.

In Downtown Indianapolis, I generally would spend a few hours at the Central Library and usually borrow a biography, a history book, a novel or an anthology of plays or an individual play to read. Perhaps because fewer people in Indianapolis seemed to be interested in using the central library downtown in the 1960's (long before most U.S. central libraries no longer were places that people visited to use books and were transformed primarily into computer centers, study halls for students with laptops and a place for homeless people to hang out in during the winter months, etc.), than the number of people who used the New York City Public Library in Midtown Manhattan, teenage high school students who entered the central library in Indianapolis were never harassed by any library security guards.

Yet less than two years later, when, as a teenage high school senior, I walked into the reference room of the New York City Public Library's central library in Midtown Manhattan one afternoon, an Afro-American library security guard, ironically, immediately escorted me out of the New York City Public Library central library reading room; while saying "You're not old enough to be allowed in the Reading Room."

Despite being disgusted with being forced to leave the reading room for ageist reasons, I saw no point in getting into a loud argument in the then-card catalog area for the central library's reading room with the security guard or with his supervisor at that time. So I just then quickly made my exit from the library and walked out the front entrance and past the lion sculptures, with disgust. But I imagine the 1964 or early 1965 incident in Manhattan did help increase my consciousness, somewhat, about the injustice of ageism and youth oppression in the 1960's USA society.

Taking the bus alone that went east on 52nd Street until it reached Keystone Avenue and the Jubilee City discount department on some weekdays in the summer of 1963, I would usually spend my time in the store mainly examining which long-playing vinyl records were on sale that week. In the summer of 1963 I was still mainly into buying vinyl records of Broadway musicals or Hollywood movie musical versions of Broadway hit musicals, to listen to on my cheap, single speaker, hi-fi vinyl record player.

But because the original cast albums of the hit Broadway musicals usually cost $3.98 or $4.98 in 1963, which was a price that I considered too expensive for me at that time, most of the original cast albums of the Broadway musicals that I bought that summer were either the albums of flop Broadway musicals that sold for a cheaper sales price or "non-original cast" cover versions of the hit Broadway or movie musicals that were being sold for the cheaper "on-sale price." I also sometimes spent some money at Jubilee City that summer purchasing some all-music movie soundtrack vinyl albums that were on sale and some only-music big band music albums that were on sale.

Surprisingly, although I was still into practicing my saxophone at home on a regular basis during the summer of 1963, to, in part, keep me "in shape musically" for being part of Broad Ripple High School's marching band during the 1963-1964 academic year, I can't recall purchasing any vinyl jazz records that featured saxophonists to listen to. Could be that Jubilee City's discount record department didn't sell many jazz saxophone records or that the jazz saxophone records Jubilee City did sell were never on sale, perhaps?

In retrospect, I think I was probably still more into John Philip Sousa-type marching band music, with respect to the saxophone, than into Illinois Jacquet or saxophonists who played jazz or even dance band music, at this time. And insofar as I ever thought of possibly earning a living in the music field, the only idea I toyed with in the summer of 1963 was maybe becoming some kind of high school music teacher.

Of course, again in retrospect, I probably should have focused more during the summer of 1963 on preparing myself to possibly play jazz or to play in dance bands at hotels, in the summers that lay ahead during the rest of the 1960's. But, for me, playing the saxophone was always seen as just a fun hobby in high school, that also enabled me to be part of a high school band, which was a school activity that both still interested me personally and also seemed to be useful to be involved in, when applying to some college. Since it would show I wasn't just someone who only just tended to do well academically, but  that I was also a "well-rounded" college applicant.

From starting to occasionally read Lovejoy's College Guide by the end of my sophomore year, and from what some of my junior high school teachers and guidance counselors had indicated, I probably had realized by this time that it "looked good on your college application" if you showed that you were involved in some school extra-curricular activity like "Band" in high school. (Although, like I may have written earlier, in the summer of 1963 I still just assumed that, like my sister was then doing, I would just be attending Indiana University in Bloomington--with the in-state tuition cost advantage I was now eligible for, after my then expected graduation from Broad Ripple High School in June 1965; and I had no thought at all, at least in the summer of 1963, of even considering applying to an Ivy League school like Columbia University. 

On The Road In The 1970's--Part 46

After so many years, my memories of how I spent the summer of 1963 in Indianapolis are now also somewhat vague. During the week, I spent part of the day riding my bicycle either north towards Broad Ripple Avenue or south toward East 38th Street, on the usually deserted side streets that were located between the more major north-south streets of College Avenue to the east and Meridian Street to the west.

Usually I was the only person riding a bicycle on these north-south side streets. Sometimes I would stop by either the local public library near 42nd Street or at the local public library near Broad Ripple Avenue, and maybe check out one library book. My recollection is that in the summer of 1963 I was also beginning to think about trying my hand at writing a play. So I first checked out one of John Gassner's Best Plays of the American Theater anthology from the public library. And after reading through the Gassner anthology, I wrote a few scenes for a musical play that reflected my experience at the Ten Mile River Camp Kiowa Boy Scout Camp in New York State the previous summer, for which I wrote my first composed folk song, "Camp Wellington," in 1963.

Because I was still somewhat of a TV addict in the summer of 1963, who usually spent most evenings just watching various television news and TV news department documentary shows, old movies, variety TV shows or TV series shows that were being re-broadcast during the summer, I pretty quickly, however, lost my interest in spending much time trying to complete this play, rather than just spending my evening time mostly passively watching television in the evening.

Another way Indianapolis was unlike New York City was that, at least in the neighborhood where I lived, in Indianapolis there were no outdoor playgrounds with basketball courts near public schools, in any parks or in parking lots--where a teenage guy (in the early 1960's teenage women were almost never seen playing basketball on New York City's outdoor basketball courts) could just go alone, and either find another guy or group of teenage guys, he might have not previously known, to play basketball with, or just shoot baskets into the hoop alone, if no one else appeared on the court--like there were in New York City.

So unless you, or some other teenage guy you knew, had a basketball hoop over the garage in a house where you or he lived, there was no place outside, in the neighborhood in which I lived, to go outside and get into a pick-up basketball game in the summer of 1963. Because the rented house my parents and I lived in didn't have a garage and basketball hoop over a garage, and I didn't know any teenage guy in Indianapolis whose house did have a hoop on its garage or noticed anyone during the summer living in a house with a hoop over the garage who looked like he needed someone to play basketball with, the only basketball playing I did during the summer of 1963 was playing alone a few times, on the inside gym court of the local Jewish Community Center of Indianapolis on Hoover Road, on a few of the days when my mother and I spent part of the afternoon there, sitting by the side of the swimming pool.

Aside from bumping into Debbie once in the Jewish Community Center's gym that summer, I can't recall bumping into anyone else there during the summer of 1963 who also attended Broad Ripple High School. And while at the Jewish Community Center that summer, during the week, most of the several hours in the afternoon I spent there, in-between swimming in the pool to cool off on the hot summer days, was just spent reading some book, while sitting next to my mother, who also spent most of her time there sitting in a beach chair by the side of the pool, reading some novel or biography.

Most of the other people sitting around the pool or swimming in the pool were housewives, who probably would not have been considered as physically attractive as my mother did in her bathing suit, by most men in the early 1960's. But I do recall noticing, on a few occasions, a buxom teenage high school white woman, who probably would have been considered more good-looking in her bathing suit by most men in the early 1960's (before the Marilyn Monroe look in a bathing suit became less fashionable as a bathing beauty standard in later decades, in the eyes of more men and women, perhaps), who did not attend Broad Ripple High School,  also sitting around the pool; generally surrounded by two or three other teenage high school white guys flirting with her all the time.

On The Road In The 1970's--Part 45

By early June 1963, I pretty much lost forever my interest in just working for money, and I began to feel that having to be responsible for delivering the Indianapolis Times each day of the week tied me down too much. Also, I realized that if I was going to be free during the summer to spend some hot weekday afternoons swimming in the Jewish Community Center of Indianapolis's pool, or to spend time between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.in the afternoon, late in the summer and in the fall, practicing with the Broad Ripple High School marching band, that I would then be a member of, I could not also have time to continue delivering newspapers.

So in early June 1963, I quit my newspaper carrier job and I was no longer earning my own money. And between June 1963 and mid-July 1965, the only money I had to spend just came from the small allowance my father continued to give me, during my junior and senior years of high school--except for some money I earned once babysitting one evening for two children of my father's cousin--until I began earning some money on my own from the summer clerical job I had at UM & M's 1407 Broadway corporate office in Manhattan; before I entered Columbia University in September 1965.

Another way that public high school life at Broad Ripple in Indianapolis was different than public high school life at Bayside H.S. and Flushing H.S. in New York City is that more students at Broad Ripple H.S. attended summer school than students did at Bayside H.S. or Flushing H.S.

In New York City, the only high school students who attended school during the summer were the ones who had flunked the required high school regents exams in one of the courses they heeded to have passed, in order to receive an academic high school diploma. In Indianapolis, however, it was much more common for high school students who wished to get their driver's license at 16 years-of-age to eagerly spend their summer mornings taking the driver's education course, that high schools like Broad Ripple provided for free, to prepare themselves for quickly passing their road tests as soon as they reached their 16th birthday.

Also, if, like high school students in New York City who weren't permitted to get a driver's license until they were 18 years-of-age, you or your friends were mostly not yet into spending your summer driving around or making out with a steady date in your own car or one you borrowed from a parent, there were less interesting things on weekdays available to do during the day in Indianapolis in the summer than there was in New York City on summer days in the early 1960's. So, if you were a high school student not yet "on wheels," who wasn't yet into getting a summer job, taking a morning high school summer course at a school like Broad Ripple might also be a way that you'd be more likely to be interacting with teenagers your own age during the summer months, than if you just slept late and spent much of the day just hanging out alone in your own house or backyard or going shopping, perhaps?

Having grown up in Queens in New York City, of course, the notion of spending a summer going to school still seemed like an alien one to me, during the summer of 1963. So once I lost interest in making money by delivering the Indianapolis Times and quit that job in early June 1963, I did not even consider the possibility of taking a summer morning course at Broad Ripple during the summer.