On The Road In The 1970's: Part 81

By the end of June 1964, I was living back in Queens again and no longer living in Indianapolis. And, in retrospect, if U.M. & M had not been willing to let my father move back to some lower-paying job in "the Firm" in Manhattan (and I had then spent my senior year of high school at Broad Ripple H.S. in Indianapolis, instead of at Flushing High School in Queens), it's doubtful that Columbia University's undergraduate Columbia College would have admitted me--even with Mrs. Griggs's recommendation letter.

The Broad Ripple H.S. administrators apparently indicated, by correspondence to the Flushing High School administration clerks, that, under their school's letter-grading system, an "A" report card final letter grade for a class was equivalent to a "94 to 100 percent" mark; and a "B" report card final letter grade for a class was equivalent to an "87 to 93 percent" mark. So the Flushing H.S. clerks, who "translated" my class final grade letter marks from my three terms at Broad Ripple H.S. into the numerical final grade percentile number system that New York City's public school system used, magically transformed all my "A"'s at Broad Ripple into "97"'s and all my "B"'s at Broad Ripple into "90"'s.

And as a result of this numerical inflation of the final grades for each class I took at Broad Ripple, my high school academic grade average and senior class ranking status at Flushing H.S. rose much higher than what my high school academic grade average and senior class ranking would have been if I had attended Broad Ripple during my senior year and ended up graduating in Broad Ripple H.S.'s classs of 1965, rather than Flushing H.S.'s class of 1965, would have been.

So, despite Mrs. Grigg's recommendation, it's likely that the Columbia College admissions office would have considered my high school academic grade average and class ranking position, as well as my SAT verbal and math test result scores not high enough to "merit" my being admitted into Columbia College's Class of 1969, were it not for the inflation of my grades that moving from Indianapolis to New York City produced on my school record card.

Since, as it turned out historically, I was the Columbia College sophomore who, in the Spring of 1967, first discovered Columbia University's institutional connection to the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank (a discovery that eventually helped spark the 1968 Columbia University Student Revolt), my family's move from Indianapolis back to New York City in late June 1964 turned out to have some 1960's historical significance.

But if my family hadn't moved back to New York City, I likely would have spent my senior year at Broad Ripple H.S. and in Indianapolis taking a high school driver's education course, learning to drive at a younger age and getting more into cars; before likely just enrolling at Indiana University in the Fall of 1965 and spending the next 4 years at a much less politically alive and less politically radicalized campus scene than the campus scene that existed at Columbia between 1965 and 1969.  

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 80

 During the last few months of living in Indianapolis, I also developed a crush on the one other Broad Ripple H.S. marching band member, a white high school sophomore woman, who lived, with her older sisters and parents in a house her parents owned, on the same block where I lived in the part of the duplex house that my parents rented.

Her mother seemed to feel that, as a sophomore high school woman, she was still too tomboyish and may have feared that she might end up becoming a lesbian (in an early 1960's historical period when the U.S. mass media and many U.S. psychiatrists seemed to regard woman who were attracted to other women sexually or emotionally as being in need of being "cured" by psychiatric treatment, etc.); unless she began showing more interest in using make-up, dressing up and trying to attract boys to date; instead of then still being more interested in athletics and playing the trumpet in the band.

So one Spring morning in 1964, on a day when she happened to be driving her daughter to school while I was walking on the sidewalk to the bus stop on College Avenue, I was surprised when my "bandmate"'s mother, who seemed to be in her late 40's, pulled her car up beside me on the sidewalk; and then invited me to hop into the car and get a lift, along with her daughter, uptown to Broad Ripple High School.

Yet after we reached the high school and her mother dropped her and me off together in the front of the school building, I still didn't get any indication from the "bandmate" from my block that she was particularly interested, herself, in getting to know me better. And, although by this time I realized I had a crush on her, thought her face pretty despite her not using lipstick and make-up, and was physically attracted to her, the thought didn't even cross my mind that I might ask her if she wished to go with me to Broad Ripple High School's "Junior Prom," that year.

In New York City, the public high schools had "Senior Proms" each year for the high school seniors who were graduating that June; but not also "Junior Proms," for the high school juniors, who weren't graduating that June. Broad Ripple H.S., however, held a "Junior Prom" each year.

Yet, by the second term of my junior year in high school, attending either a high school "Junior Prom" or, during the next year, a high school "Senior Prom," was not something I felt I would enjoy doing; and in my junior year at Broad Ripple H.S., the thought of attending its "Junior Prom" was not one that I ever even considered.

So when, surprisingly, I received, in the mail at home, some kind of an invitation in late May, from one of the white high school women who had been in one of my English "G" classes, inviting me to a "pre-Junior Prom" party that she was holding, I was not glad to have received the invitation because I had never considered going to the "Junior Prom," itself. In addition, I don't think I had ever had any kind of one-on-one conversation with this particular English G classmate inside or outside school during the three terms I had attended Broad Ripple and had never felt any particular interest in getting to know her better.

But I was able to escape going to a "pre-Junior Prom" party, that I assumed I would likely find uninteresting for me, by sending her, by mail, an RSVP note which thanked her for the invitation, but indicated that I was unable to attend her party "due to other plans;" although I likely spent the evening and night of her party and the "Junior Prom" in 1964, just staying at home and watching TV.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 79

My main memory, decades later, from April and May 1964 of my junior year at Broad Ripple High School is that, as did other members of the high school's band, I memorized my instrumental part of "The 500" song, that some composer had especially written for Broad Ripple H.S.'s marching band to play that year; when marching in the annual Downtown Indianapolis 500 Parade, which was held each year before the Indianapolis 500 Speedway automobile race on Memorial Day.

The teacher who taught the Band classes and was the Broad Ripple H.S. Band Director, Mr. Decker, had been given a copy of "The 500" song music scores for each musical instrument part by the composer; and Mr. Decker was very enthusiastic and excited about the fact that his high school band was to be the first one to ever perform this song at an annual Indianapolis 500 Parade.

Earlier in the semester, Mr. Decker had also arranged, in an enthusiastic way, for the Broad Ripple band to spend a weekday afternoon out-of-school, in order to play some band songs at the Indianapolis School for the Blind. And I found it inspiring, myself, to see how attentively and eagerly the students at that school for young people with visual disabilities listend to our school band's performance and applauded us so appreciatively.

In addition, there were two other daytime events in which I remember performing with Broad Ripple H.S.'s marching band outside of school, after the weather became warm, during April and May of 1964. One event was where our school band played with other schools' bands on a weekend day, while sitting on chairs around Monument Circle in Downtown Indianapolis.

And the other outdoor weekend day event, outside of school, that I recall, took place on a very hot afternoon in late May 1964; when our band marched into Broad Ripple Park (which was across the street from Broad Ripple High school's building) along with Broad Ripple High School's Junior ROTC unit, to provide some band music for some kind of Memorial Day-related event. At this event a white right-wing American Legion-type World War II veteran speaker, who appeared to be in his late 40's gave a speech that I remember feeling, at the time, was too pro-militaristic and too right-wing anti-communist, from my anti-communist liberal point of view at that time.

Also, in April and May of 1964, Broad Ripple's marching band began practicing its marching formations to Sousa marches and the "Hail To Broad Ripple" school song for the upcoming Fall 1964 high school football half-time shows, under the marching band leadership of Bill. The Music Department Director, Mr. Posten, and the Band Director, Mr. Decker, had selected Bill for the honor of succeeding Dick as the Broad Ripple High School's Drum Major for the 1964-1965 school year.

Because Bill had played alto saxophone a few seats away from me in Band class and at various band school performances at which I was playing tenor saxophone in the band, I was better acquainted with him than I had been with the previous band drum major, Dick. And I thought that Bill--who was enthusiastic about being selected as the next school year's drum major and as musically talented as Dick--was going to be a more popular drum major than Dick had bbeen with most members of the band. Because Bill had always related to everybody else in the band class in more interpersonally sensitive, friendlier and less authoritarian ways.

But, having moved back to New York City with my family by mid-June of 1964, I never did see what kind of a Broad Ripple High School band drum major Bill did turn out to be during the Fall 1964 high school football season in Indianapolis.  

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 78

 In the Spring of 1964, I assumed that, if I did apply for admission to Columbia College during my senior year in the Fall of 1964, it was unlikely that such a selective college would admit me. But NYU-Uptown's undergraduate college (which then had more dormitories on its campus than did NYU-Downtown's Washington Square campus did) had a reputation for being an undergraduate college for "dumb rich students," whose high school grade averages were too low to gain admittance to the then-more slective undergraduate CUNY commuter schools like CCNY or an Ivy League undergraduate college like Columbia College.

So I assumed, in the Spring of 1964, that even if I applied and was rejected for admission to Columbia College in the Fall of 1964, I would still have the option of attending NYU-Uptown's undergraduate college, if I didn't want to just attend Indiana University. Because NYU-Uptown was likely to consider me "less dumb" than the usual type of high school seniors who applied to or attended NYU-Uptown's undergarudate college in the early 1960's.

In retrospect, if I had realized in the Spring of 1964 that, despite Barnard College being across the street from Columbia University's campus, the undergraduate classes at Columbia College were generally much more "males-only" and less co-educational than the academic classes in the public schools I had always attended or the academic classes at NYU-Uptown, I probably would have just only had my PSAT exam score results just sent to NYU--even though Columbia College's catalog of course offerings looked more intellectually interesting than NYU's.

Realistically, though, if my family hadn't ended up moving back to New York City by the Summer of 1964, I likely would have just ended up enrolling at Indiana University in the Fall of 1965 (despite my desire to go to college in NYC), because my father's income would not have been high enough in the Fall of 1965 for me to be able to afford, even with the aid fo student loans, the cost of tuition, dormitory housing and travel to New York City from Indianapolis during my freshman year at either Columbia or NYU, given the lack of the $500/year New York State Regents cholarship that I only became qualified to receive by living in New York State rather than in Indiana.

In the Spring of 1964, the only particular thing I associated with the University of California-Berkeley was that its college football team generally lost more NCAA Pacific Coast League college football games than it won. So, prior to the Fall 1964 student revolt in Berkeley, the though ot possibly applying to University of California-Berkeley never even crossed my mind, despite my mother's chidless older sister and her husband then living near Berkeley.

Yet if I then had not been mainly focused on living in New York City near the world of theater during my college undergraduate years if possible, I might have been able to figure out a way to gain eligibility for California's in-state tuition to UC-Berkeley that residents of California enjoyed. By, perhaps, utilizing my aunt and uncle's California residential address when applying to the University of California-Berkeley.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 77

The second occasion when I entered a Butler University campus building in the Spring of 1964 was on a sunny Saturday when, along with some of the other eventually college-bound high school juniors from Broad Ripple (and perhaps from some other local high schools), I spent the day inside a classroom in one of Butler University's academic buildings; taking the PSAT class-biased and racially-biased standardized "idiot test" exams.

In the early 1960's, the PSAT tests were standarized tests (purportedly measuring a college-bound high school junior's verbal and mathematics knowledge, aptitude and intelligence), similar to the SAT standardized tests that high school seniors took during their fall terms, in order to have SAT exam results, then required by all the undergraduate colleges, they wished to be submitted in a timely way with their applications for college admission.

The PSAT exam results one scored during the spring of one's junior years were also submitted to the colleges a junior then thought he or she would apply to. But taking the PSAT was seen in the early 1960's more as a way of practicing for the SAT exams one would take in one's senior year. Because, in determining whether or not a college would admit you as a matriculated freshman, it was the SAT scores you had which was used to help finally determine whether a selective college would admit you--not your PSAT scores.

In the Spring of 1964, I had already examined the information about various U.S. colleges and universities contained in the most recent edition of Lovejoy's College Guide and read through the college catalog of Indiana University, which my sister was then attending, before I took the PSAT exams in the academic building on Butler University's campus.

And, at the time I took the PSAT exam in the second semester of my junior year of high school, Indiana University, Columbia College of Columbia University and New York University were the three colleges that I had indicated I wanted my PSAT standardized test results sent to, at that time.

During the late 1950's and early 1960's, I had watched on a fairly regular weekly basis, on every Sunday afternoon/early evening, "The G.E. College Bowl" television show, in which two teams of four undergraduate students from two different colleges or universities competed against each other; to see which college or university undergraduate team could answer correctly and most quickly the various intellectual/academic trivia questions that the show's moderator, Allen Ludden, would read. And, as part of the "G.E. College Bowl" television show, some film footage of campus scenes, of each of the two colleges whose schools were competing that week, were shown for a few minutes to viewers.

So, although there were no youtube videos advertising a particular U.S. college or university's campus visual scenes, in a way that might "sell" the idea to a high school student of applying for admissions to that particular school, available (like there is in the 21st-century), in the Spring of 1964 I did have a little familiarity with how other U.S. college campuses, besides Indiana University's, Butler University's or Queens College's campuses (that I had all personally been to) looked like.

Before the Spring of 1964, I had always associated going to college, after graduating from a public high school, with going away to college and living away from home while attending college; rather than just going to a commuter college for four years, while still living at home with my parents.

So when I looked through Lovejoy's College Guide, in the Spring of 1964, I don't think I even considered reading its description of Butler University; because that college was too close to the neighborhood in which I lived with my parents in Indianapolis; and, in the Spring of 1964, not just commuting when I lived so close to Butler University and, instead living in a Butler U. dormitory, would have made no sense to me. Even if I hadn't already been associating going to college with not being a commuting student.

So, for obvious reasons, if I ended up attending college in Indiana, beginning  in the Fall of 1965, Indiana University, with its in-state tuition for Indiana residents, its impressive-looking campus and its longer distance away from the neighborhood in which my parents lived and from where I attended Broad Ripple H.S., was where I was going to apply to. And that was why my PSAT scores were sent to Indiana University in the Spring of 1964.

Another reason why, if I ended up going to college in Indiana, I felt, in the Spring of 1964, that Indiana University was the university I would be applying to, was because many more young people attended a public state "Big Ten" university, like Indiana University, than the number of young people who attended smaller, private liberal colleges like Swarthmore, Oberlin or Antioch, etc. And, already seeing myself as some kind of writer, playwright or possible journalist, whose "thing" was to be an observer of people, who wrote the truth in a way that changed U.S. society in a more democratic direction, it seemed to make more sense for me to go to college where there were a lot of students; and, consequently, a greater variety of individual young people around me than a private small college, with only a limited number of young people to observe, would provide.

In addition, because the number of students attending a small private college was so much less than the number of students attending a large state university like Indiana University, I felt, in the Spring of 1964, that at IU I would be more likely to find other students to befriend and less closely noticed or monitored by either less non-conformist classmates or faculty members, than I would probably be if I attended a small private college.

Also, Indiana University had a Big Ten football team and a big football stadium, which most small private colleges lacked; and, in the Spring of 1964, I was still into being an NCAA college football fan who associated the going-away college experience with spending, at least five Saturday afternoons each Fall, sitting in your university's football stadium, with a lot of other students, and rooting for your collegel's football team. Even though, despite being in Broad Ripple High School's marching band, I don't think, by the Spring of 1964, I particularly envisioned myself as someone who would be in in Indiana University's Marching Band while attending there.

Yet, by the Spring of 1964, I also did not particularly want to attend college at a university in which most of the students were in college fraternities and sororities, and where fraternities and sororities dominated campus life. But in the early 1960's, Indiana University was still a university in which student campus life seemed to be dominated by the frat and sorority student members.

When reading through the Lovejoy's College Guide book pages in the Spring of 1964, I can recall generally checking out the information in the book which indicated the percentage of students at each college who were members of fraternities or sororities. Because, by that time, I felt that college fraternities and sororities were inherently undemocratic entities; since they allowed their members to exclude, even in a racially or religiously discriminatory way, anyone they didn't want to let into their social clubs.

So perhaps one reason I then requested that my PSAT exam score results be sent to Columbia and NYU, as well as to Indiana University (despite still then assuming that IU was where I would end up enrolling as a freshman in September of 1965), was because campus life at neither Columbia University nor NYU appeared to be as fraternity and sorority-dominated as Indiana University's campus life then was?

Yet the main reason I think I requested my PSAT exam results also be sent to Columbia College and NYU, as well as to IU, was because, by that time, I think I had then concluded that going away to college in New York City, in the Fall of 1965, would likely turn out to be a more intellectually stimulating, interesting and emotionally satisfying experience for me than just going away to college in Bloomington, Indiana would turn out to be.

In retrospect, there seemed to be two reasons for my conclusion, in the Spring of 1964, that going away to college in New York City might make more sense for me than just going away to college at Indiana University in Bloomington.

The first reason was that, after I began thinking of myself as a possible aspiring playwright in the theater world, it seemed to me that--despite Indiana University's reputation as being a university with an excellent theater arts departnet--it made more sense for me to, if I could, attend college in the city where the most Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theatrical productions were staged in the early 1960's: New York City. Why waste four years, after entering college in the Fall of 1965 before being able to watch live performances of plays in Manhattan and checking-out Manhattan's theater world activity on a regular basis, when, if I was attending Columbia or NYU in New York city, I would be able to begin doing the same thing as early as the Fall of 1965?

The second reason that I concluded, in the Spring of 1964, that applying to two colleges in New York City, like Columbia and NYU, made more sense for me (as a potential alternative to just attending IU) was possibly, in retrospect, that (because I was still then unaware of the history of Palestinian people or Arab people's history) I still did not question the validity of the liberal Zionist ideology I had been indoctrinated with in Hebrew School, prior to my birthday. And, as a member of a family of assimilated Jewish religious background, I then felt it would be more intellectually interesting to attend a college in which a larger percentage of the students would be of assimilated Jewish religious background than the percentage of students of assimilated Jewish religious background that there then was at Indiana University.

When reading through the Lovejoy's College Guide book, my recollection is that in that book there was some indication as to which U.S. universities or colleges had Hillel student chapters with larger number of students. So that may have been where I might have noticed that Columbia and NYU then had a greater percentage of students of assimilated Jewish religious background than did IU, in the early 1960's.

Because Columbia University's liberal arts undergraduate Columbia College catalog seemed to indicate that Columbia College offered more interesting college courses than what the courses that the catalog of NYU's then-uptown undergraduate college in the Bronx offered--and because Columbia also had a college football team, while NYU no longer had a college football team in the early 1960's--Columbia College, not NYU-Uptown was the one I was hoping to get admitted into more in the Spring of 1964, when I had my PSAT exam result scores sent there.

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 76

Although it took less than a half-hour to walk west to Butler University's campus from where I lived in Indianapolis, in the Spring of 1964 I only entered the inside of Butler University building on two occasions.

On once occasion, I walked to the Butler University Fieldhouse athletic arena/indoor stadium, where the Indiana state high school basketball teams' regional, semi-finals and finals tournament championship basketball games, as well as the Indianapolis sectional tournament basketball games, were played each spring.

Because Broad Ripple High School's basketball team had won the Indiianapolis Sectional tournament the previous year, I was hoping to, in-person in Butler University's fieldhouse, see Broad Ripple's basketball team win the Sectionals again in the Spring of 1964. But that did not happen. And after watching Broad Ripple High School's basketball team get eliminated from the Indianapolis Sectional basketball event in the Butler University arena, I never entered that particular Butler University building again in 1964, or at anytime during the following decades.

 

On The Road In The 1970's: Part 75

There still wasn't much very visible Civil Rights Movement protest activity going on in Indianapolis in the Spring of 1964 that I was aware of. So my main recollection of what was happening, on an historical political level, in Indianapolis and in Indiana during the first six months of 1964 is that, during that period, the then-white segregationist Democratic governor of Alabama, George Wallace, came to Indiana and campaigned for the 1964 Democratic presidential nomination in Indiana's 1964 Democratic Party presidential primary; on a platform which opposed enactment of the proposed 1964 Civil Rights Act, that would legally prohibit states in the South from enforcing any of their  Jim Crow state laws allowing public accomodations like hotels, motels, restaurants, stores, etc. to discriminate against African-Americans on the basis of race.

The white segregationist Democratic Party presidential primary candidate Wallace--who had previously gained a lot of mass media publicity for defying a federal court decision that required the University of Alabama to end its institutionally racist policy of still refusing to allow any African-American college students to attend that publicly-funded state university in the early 1960's--was expected to attact a lot of white voters in the 1964 Democratic Party presidential primaries of the states in the South. Especially in those Southern states where, before enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, large numbers of African-Americans were being blocked from being able to vote, by various state rules that were applied in a racially discriminatory way by local and state officials.

But what ended up surprising a lot of people in 1964 was that in the Democratic Party's presidential primaries in some states in the North, like Indiana, where legalized segregation did not exist, Wallace was also able to attract a lot of white voters in 1964; although not enough votes to win the 1964 Democratic Party presidential primary in Indiana.

Despite its only morning daily newspaper, the Indianapolis Star, being then-owned by the anti-communist, right-wing extremist publisher, Pulliam (who backed the GOP national convention's 1964 presidential nominee and opponent of enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater, in 1964) and being the city in which the anti-communist right-wing (and then-still politically influential) American Legion had its headquarters in 1964, the majority of Democratic voters who lived in Indianapolis in 1964 still seemed to be supporters of LBJ's wing of the Democratic Party in the Spring of 1964.

So when the then-Democratic Governor of Indiana in the Spring of 1964, Matthew Welsh (who then lived in Indiana's Governor's Mansion on North Meridian Street in Indianapolis, less than two miles southwest from the neighborhood around East 52nd Street and College Avenue where my parents and I then lived), was put on the Democratic Party's presidential primary ballot--as a "favorite son" stand-in candidate for LBJ--to make sure that the primary would not automatically be won by Wallace because he had no other opponent campaigning against him, the majority of Indiana's 1964 Democratic Party primary voters voted against the white segregationist Wallace in 1964.

The fact that a white segregationist Democratic governor from the South, like George Wallace, could come to a Northern state like Indidana and actually win as many votes (nearly 30 percent) as he did in the Spring 1964 Democratic Party presidential primary in Indiana, also surprised me, somewhat.

Yet because Wallace did not actually win the 1964 Democratic presidential primary in Indiana, despite the degree to which right-wing conservative media political influence in the state seemed much greater than it had been in the state of New York, I also thought, in the Spring of 1964, that George Wallace would always only be no more than a politician who voters of just one region of the USA, the South, would ever end up casting voters for, in any future U.S. presidential campaigns by Wallace. In retrospect, though, I think I did not anticipate in 1964 that, when Wallace did run again for U.S. president as a third-party candidate, he would be able to attract as many white voters in states outside of the Southern region, as he did in the November 1968 election.