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.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
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.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 39
Rather than being some kind of academic center of political subversion or non-conformity, Indiana University in 1963, at least to me, seemed be mainly a campus in which most students seemed to still be more into fraternity and sorority life and attending Big Ten football and basketball games, in big college stadiums and sports arenas, than into either their academic work, hanging out in academic libraries or being involved in some form of political activism.
But the new and old dormitory buildings and the big student union building on Indiana University's large campus still impressed me in 1963 and caused me to feel that I was in a small city of large numbers of young people in their late teens and early twenties, whenever I visited IU's campus; and in a city that was filled with even more physically attractive female "co-ed" students than Broad Ripple High School was then filled with.
I assumed, between January and June 1963, that my family would remain living in Indianapolis during the rest of the decade and did not think, at this time, that I would develop any particular desire to apply for admission in a few years to a college in New York City like Columbia or NYU. So I also assumed in 1963 that, especially because now being a resident of Indiana would enable me to be charged the lower in-state tuition fee, after graduating from Broad Ripple H.S., Indiana University in Bloomington was where I would spend my 4 years as an undergraduate. Hence, as early as the spring semester of my sophomore year in high school, I had started looking through the IU college catalog and begun to consider which courses I intended to take, when I eventually enrolled there; and what subjects I would want to major or minor in when I got there.
What's surprising, in retrospect, is along with considering a major or minor in subjects like history, journalism, music or theater, in 1963, at least, I also was thinking, for a brief period, that "police administration" might be an interesting major or minor subject for me to get into. Perhaps I had been influenced by watching too many cops and robbers shows on television, like Dragnet, during the 1950s as a child?
So, for a brief period, I thought being prepared at IU to become a "detective" for some police department, after graduating and fulfilling the then-required two years of U.S. military service for U.S. men under 26-years-of-age, was a possible road I might follow. But by the Fall of 1963--perhaps after viewing on the television screen more images of white cops brutalizing and arresting singing Civil Rights Movement demonstrators on the streets of Southern cities like Birmingham--I had completely ruled out forever the possibility that I might want to major or minor in "police administration" when, as I then expected, I would enroll at Indiana University in the Fall of 1965.
But the new and old dormitory buildings and the big student union building on Indiana University's large campus still impressed me in 1963 and caused me to feel that I was in a small city of large numbers of young people in their late teens and early twenties, whenever I visited IU's campus; and in a city that was filled with even more physically attractive female "co-ed" students than Broad Ripple High School was then filled with.
I assumed, between January and June 1963, that my family would remain living in Indianapolis during the rest of the decade and did not think, at this time, that I would develop any particular desire to apply for admission in a few years to a college in New York City like Columbia or NYU. So I also assumed in 1963 that, especially because now being a resident of Indiana would enable me to be charged the lower in-state tuition fee, after graduating from Broad Ripple H.S., Indiana University in Bloomington was where I would spend my 4 years as an undergraduate. Hence, as early as the spring semester of my sophomore year in high school, I had started looking through the IU college catalog and begun to consider which courses I intended to take, when I eventually enrolled there; and what subjects I would want to major or minor in when I got there.
What's surprising, in retrospect, is along with considering a major or minor in subjects like history, journalism, music or theater, in 1963, at least, I also was thinking, for a brief period, that "police administration" might be an interesting major or minor subject for me to get into. Perhaps I had been influenced by watching too many cops and robbers shows on television, like Dragnet, during the 1950s as a child?
So, for a brief period, I thought being prepared at IU to become a "detective" for some police department, after graduating and fulfilling the then-required two years of U.S. military service for U.S. men under 26-years-of-age, was a possible road I might follow. But by the Fall of 1963--perhaps after viewing on the television screen more images of white cops brutalizing and arresting singing Civil Rights Movement demonstrators on the streets of Southern cities like Birmingham--I had completely ruled out forever the possibility that I might want to major or minor in "police administration" when, as I then expected, I would enroll at Indiana University in the Fall of 1965.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 38
I still have some memories of my life in Indiana unrelated to school between January 1963 and late June 1963, during the time I spent part of each day earning money on my own for the first time, as an Indianapolis Times newspaper delivery carrier.
In 1963 the most influential newspaper in Indianapolis was the Indianapolis Star morning newspaper, which was then owned by a white right-wing anti-communist conservative publisher named Pulliam. Pulliam was a political supporter of the right-wing anti-communist "New Right" conservative and then-U.S. Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, who, the following year, was the 1964 GOP presidential nominee who ended up losing to then Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in a big way in the November 1964 election.
Pulliam's newspaper publishing firm also owned and published an afternoon newspaper in Indianapolis, the Indianapolis News (which competed with the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain's Indianapolis Times afternoon and Sunday morning newspaper that I delivered), that was distributed on every afternoon except Sunday afternoon. Not surprisingly, the editorial slant of both Pulliam's more influential Indianapolis Star and his less influential Indianapolis News generally reflected his right-wing anti-communist conservative politics. So the politically influential Indianapolis Star's version of the daily news it provided its Indianapolis readers in 1963 resembled the version of the daily news provided New York City readers in 1963 by newspapers like the then-right-wing anti-communist conservative Chicago Tribune--owned New York Daily News tabloid, rather than the version of the daily news provided by the more liberal anti-communist newspapers like the New York Times in 1963.
Consequently, when a local District Attorney in Bloomington, Indiana decided to apparently attempt to prosecute or jail some of the students involved in the Socialist Workers Party's Young Socialist Alliance [YSA] Trotskyist sect group at Indiana University around this time, front page coverage of the D.A.'s case against "the Reds" at Indiana University was provided by the Indianapolis Star, to encourage this kind of 1950's-type McCarthyite red-baiting in Indiana as late as the early 1960s.
But because I was still just an anti-communist liberal in 1963 and 1964 when I lived in Indianapolis, I have to confess that I didn't realize the degree to which the right-wing extremist-owned Indianapolis Star was unfairly characterizing in its headlines what the political goals and nature of the Socialist Workers Party/YSA activists' work in Bloomington was actually about.
Yet because my parents and I spent around one Sunday a month between January and June 1963 either driving my older sister, who was then a freshman at Indiana University, back down State Route 37 thru Martinsville and back to IU's Bloomington campus after a veekend visit or driving down to visit her on campus, I also realized that the Socialist Workers Party-supporting students, that the D.A. in Bloomington was attempting to prosecute, did not reflect the then-political mood of the vast majority of IU's student body or faculty in the early 1960s.
In 1963 the most influential newspaper in Indianapolis was the Indianapolis Star morning newspaper, which was then owned by a white right-wing anti-communist conservative publisher named Pulliam. Pulliam was a political supporter of the right-wing anti-communist "New Right" conservative and then-U.S. Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, who, the following year, was the 1964 GOP presidential nominee who ended up losing to then Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in a big way in the November 1964 election.
Pulliam's newspaper publishing firm also owned and published an afternoon newspaper in Indianapolis, the Indianapolis News (which competed with the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain's Indianapolis Times afternoon and Sunday morning newspaper that I delivered), that was distributed on every afternoon except Sunday afternoon. Not surprisingly, the editorial slant of both Pulliam's more influential Indianapolis Star and his less influential Indianapolis News generally reflected his right-wing anti-communist conservative politics. So the politically influential Indianapolis Star's version of the daily news it provided its Indianapolis readers in 1963 resembled the version of the daily news provided New York City readers in 1963 by newspapers like the then-right-wing anti-communist conservative Chicago Tribune--owned New York Daily News tabloid, rather than the version of the daily news provided by the more liberal anti-communist newspapers like the New York Times in 1963.
Consequently, when a local District Attorney in Bloomington, Indiana decided to apparently attempt to prosecute or jail some of the students involved in the Socialist Workers Party's Young Socialist Alliance [YSA] Trotskyist sect group at Indiana University around this time, front page coverage of the D.A.'s case against "the Reds" at Indiana University was provided by the Indianapolis Star, to encourage this kind of 1950's-type McCarthyite red-baiting in Indiana as late as the early 1960s.
But because I was still just an anti-communist liberal in 1963 and 1964 when I lived in Indianapolis, I have to confess that I didn't realize the degree to which the right-wing extremist-owned Indianapolis Star was unfairly characterizing in its headlines what the political goals and nature of the Socialist Workers Party/YSA activists' work in Bloomington was actually about.
Yet because my parents and I spent around one Sunday a month between January and June 1963 either driving my older sister, who was then a freshman at Indiana University, back down State Route 37 thru Martinsville and back to IU's Bloomington campus after a veekend visit or driving down to visit her on campus, I also realized that the Socialist Workers Party-supporting students, that the D.A. in Bloomington was attempting to prosecute, did not reflect the then-political mood of the vast majority of IU's student body or faculty in the early 1960s.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 37
With respect to my experiences inside Broad Ripple High School when outside of classrooms or study hall periods and outside my lunchtime period in the school cafeteria, during the Spring of 1963 in the second term of my sophomore year, pretty much the only thing I can recall are the pep rallies in the school's gymnasium. After the school's all-white basketball team won the Indianapolis High School Sectional tournament that was played in the Butler College sports arena (located within walking distance from where I lived in Indianapolis), it looked for awhile like Broad Ripple's basketball team actually had a chance to possibly win the Indiana State High School basketball state championship in 1963. And that's why special pep rallies were held to cheer on the school basketball team during the school day that semester.
In the early 1960's, basketball team competition between Indiana high school teams was a much bigger deal than it was between the New York City high school teams who then played against each other in the Public School Athletic League [PSAL] games in New York City. The high school athletes/jocks who were on Broad Ripple's basketball team, for example had a much higher status within that school, whether they won or lost, than the athletes who were on the high school basketball teams in New York City ever enjoyed. And the Indianapolis-based local television stations broadcast live many of the high school basketball games of Indiana's state high school basketball tournament in a way that none of the local New York City television stations ever did.
During my sophomore year at Broad Ripple, I--like most of the other students in the school--didn't think there was any cultural significance in the fact that the male students who were on the school's sports teams and the team's female cheerleaders had much higher status and popularity socially within the high school relative to the more intellectual students in the school than did their counterparts in New York City's public schools; where there wasn't as much encouragement of students to attend and cheer at their school's football team and basketball team games as in the Indiana public high schools.
After all, despite never having any interest in even ever trying out for any junior high school or high school sports team, prior to the second semester of my sophomore year in high school in Indianapolis, much of my time outside of school all-year-round in New York City was spent playing basketball, football, stick-ball and softball in school playgrounds, on basketball courts near parking lots, on parking lots used as stick-ball fields and in nearby city parks, with older neighborhood guys.
In retrospect, by the time I was in junior high school, I think I realized that unless I was willing to spend hours and hours of all my free daylight time outside of school during the week, and all day on weekends, by the basketball hoops in the parking lot field a few blocks from where I lived, practicing my jump shots, outside set shots and foul shots over and over again, until I would be able to automatically shoot the basketball through the hoop over 90 percent of the time during a game at school, making the junior high school or high school basketball team as a guard would always be unlikely. And by junior high school, spending some of my time practicing saxophone then seemed more interesting to me than spending all of my free time practicing shots alone on the basketball for long hours; until I got to the point where the basketballs from my shots always fell through the hoop during a game over 90 percent of the time.
But still, as a Broad Ripple H.S. sophomore in the Spring of 1963, I was as excited as everybody else at the school who may have watched Broad Ripple's basketball team play, in games that were televised by a local television station, and begin to come close to possibly winning the Indiana State high school basketball tournament in 1963.
Yet, despite my still avid interest in whether or not Broad Ripple's basketball team was going to be able to go on to win the Indiana state basketball tournament that year, I did not even consider attending in person any of the basketball games at Butler University's sports arena in which Broad Ripple's team was playing.
In retrospect, I think the reason I only watched the Spring 1963 Broad Ripple H.S. basketball team's tournament games on television that year was that--since in New York City prior to 1963 I had always attended a basketball game as a spectator along with a friend, a group of friends, classmates or my father--as a high school sophomore I was not used to ever attending a sporting event in which, alone, I sat in the stands as a spectator. And because, having just moved to Indianapolis in the Spring term of 1963, I had no friend or friends with whom I could go with to watch the school basketball games in person, that meant I still felt uncomfortable about sitting alone at a high school game, when all the other students there seemed to be attending the event with a friend, friends, or dates.
Ironically, by the time I completed my first play, "A Ball In A Basket," during the first term of my freshman year at Columbia in the Fall of 1965, I had ended up utilizing some of my memories of how the basketball coach at Broad Ripple and the Broad Ripple principal addressed the students in the school's gymnasium and led them in a "Yes, you bet! We want another net!" chant in the Spring of 1963; to create a dramatic play that criticized social and mass conformity and the over-emphasis on "sports" in an "all-American" U.S. high school and city in the Midwest. Despite the fact that only two years before I, myself, had still been as much into enjoying the over-emphasis of sports and jock culture as everybody else at Broad Ripple H.S. in the Spring of 1963. And that pretty much ends what I now recall of my experience attending Broad Ripple H.S. during the second term of my sophomore year that ended in early June 1963.
In the early 1960's, basketball team competition between Indiana high school teams was a much bigger deal than it was between the New York City high school teams who then played against each other in the Public School Athletic League [PSAL] games in New York City. The high school athletes/jocks who were on Broad Ripple's basketball team, for example had a much higher status within that school, whether they won or lost, than the athletes who were on the high school basketball teams in New York City ever enjoyed. And the Indianapolis-based local television stations broadcast live many of the high school basketball games of Indiana's state high school basketball tournament in a way that none of the local New York City television stations ever did.
During my sophomore year at Broad Ripple, I--like most of the other students in the school--didn't think there was any cultural significance in the fact that the male students who were on the school's sports teams and the team's female cheerleaders had much higher status and popularity socially within the high school relative to the more intellectual students in the school than did their counterparts in New York City's public schools; where there wasn't as much encouragement of students to attend and cheer at their school's football team and basketball team games as in the Indiana public high schools.
After all, despite never having any interest in even ever trying out for any junior high school or high school sports team, prior to the second semester of my sophomore year in high school in Indianapolis, much of my time outside of school all-year-round in New York City was spent playing basketball, football, stick-ball and softball in school playgrounds, on basketball courts near parking lots, on parking lots used as stick-ball fields and in nearby city parks, with older neighborhood guys.
In retrospect, by the time I was in junior high school, I think I realized that unless I was willing to spend hours and hours of all my free daylight time outside of school during the week, and all day on weekends, by the basketball hoops in the parking lot field a few blocks from where I lived, practicing my jump shots, outside set shots and foul shots over and over again, until I would be able to automatically shoot the basketball through the hoop over 90 percent of the time during a game at school, making the junior high school or high school basketball team as a guard would always be unlikely. And by junior high school, spending some of my time practicing saxophone then seemed more interesting to me than spending all of my free time practicing shots alone on the basketball for long hours; until I got to the point where the basketballs from my shots always fell through the hoop during a game over 90 percent of the time.
But still, as a Broad Ripple H.S. sophomore in the Spring of 1963, I was as excited as everybody else at the school who may have watched Broad Ripple's basketball team play, in games that were televised by a local television station, and begin to come close to possibly winning the Indiana State high school basketball tournament in 1963.
Yet, despite my still avid interest in whether or not Broad Ripple's basketball team was going to be able to go on to win the Indiana state basketball tournament that year, I did not even consider attending in person any of the basketball games at Butler University's sports arena in which Broad Ripple's team was playing.
In retrospect, I think the reason I only watched the Spring 1963 Broad Ripple H.S. basketball team's tournament games on television that year was that--since in New York City prior to 1963 I had always attended a basketball game as a spectator along with a friend, a group of friends, classmates or my father--as a high school sophomore I was not used to ever attending a sporting event in which, alone, I sat in the stands as a spectator. And because, having just moved to Indianapolis in the Spring term of 1963, I had no friend or friends with whom I could go with to watch the school basketball games in person, that meant I still felt uncomfortable about sitting alone at a high school game, when all the other students there seemed to be attending the event with a friend, friends, or dates.
Ironically, by the time I completed my first play, "A Ball In A Basket," during the first term of my freshman year at Columbia in the Fall of 1965, I had ended up utilizing some of my memories of how the basketball coach at Broad Ripple and the Broad Ripple principal addressed the students in the school's gymnasium and led them in a "Yes, you bet! We want another net!" chant in the Spring of 1963; to create a dramatic play that criticized social and mass conformity and the over-emphasis on "sports" in an "all-American" U.S. high school and city in the Midwest. Despite the fact that only two years before I, myself, had still been as much into enjoying the over-emphasis of sports and jock culture as everybody else at Broad Ripple H.S. in the Spring of 1963. And that pretty much ends what I now recall of my experience attending Broad Ripple H.S. during the second term of my sophomore year that ended in early June 1963.
Friday, December 27, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 36
Around 55 years after the second term of my sophomore year in high school which I spent at Broad Ripple, I also now only barely remember much what else about what happened inside my Broad Ripple classes that term. Except for my memory of Mrs. Griggs reading aloud my character study about an African-American classmate in my World History class at Bayside H.S. during the fall 1962 school term, whose name was "Benny," during one of her English "G" class sessions of the more academically-oriented students, in which I was now assigned in the spring 1963 term at Broad Ripple.
Because, like I've mentioned a number of times already, in retrospect, it was likely Mrs. Griggs' Indiana-based recommendation which persuaded Columbia College to admit me, that's probably one reason why her reading aloud my "Benny" character study essay in class is what I remember.
Also, in retrospect, remembering Mrs. Griggs' reading of the "Benny" essay in class once again reminds me that it was pretty much what my writing produced that : 1. got me into the "G" English class that Mrs. Griggs taught at Broad Ripple H.S., because my previous English teacher, Miss Barker, had been impressed by "The Ideal President" story my writing had produced in response to one of her homework assignments; 2. got me into Columbia College in September 1965 because the "Benny" essay my writing had produced for an English "G" class assignment to write a character study had apparently impressed Mrs. Griggs so much that she remembered me favorably enough, even over a year after I had been one of her numerous students, to write a favorable letter of recommendation to Columbia College's admissions office that persuaded it to admit me there; and 3. got me elected to the Columbia SDS steering committee in the spring of 1967 because my writing had produced the "Columbia's IDA Connection" paper of "The Columbia SDS Research Committee" (of which I was the sole creator and sole member) that first revealed Columbia University's institutional membership in the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank to Columbia's students, faculty and student newspaper, during the 1960's Vietnam War Era.
In retrospect, what prompted Mrs. Griggs to read aloud my "Benny" character study essay in her class was for one or the other following reasons: 1. Although Broad Ripple High School's student body and teaching staff was about 99.5 percent white in 1963, Mrs. Griggs was an anti-racist white liberal in 1963. So the fact that I was likely the only one in her "G" English class who had produced an essay devoted to describing an African-American former classmate probably made the essay seem like a more interesting one to read than the essays others in the class had written; or 2. Since the essay also included a paragraph describing Benny's humorous reaction when I mentioned to him that my family was moving from New York City to Indianapolis in a few weeks, Mrs. Griggs might have felt that reading this "Benny" essay in her class would cause my new classmates to Broad Ripple to tend to relate to me in a welcoming way for the rest of that spring term of 1963.
But whatever Mrs. Griggs' reason was for reading the "Benny" essay in class, to the degree that the essay led Mrs. Griggs to recommend me for Columbia College admission, it turned out to be an historically significant document. Because, without a recommendation or knowing somebody who's a "tapper", an individual without any upper middle-class or upper-class family background, prep, private school or elite public high school background or some kind of referral from an individual with special influence, someone from my family's class background generally did not get admitted to an Ivy League school like Columbia College in the early 1960's.
Because, like I've mentioned a number of times already, in retrospect, it was likely Mrs. Griggs' Indiana-based recommendation which persuaded Columbia College to admit me, that's probably one reason why her reading aloud my "Benny" character study essay in class is what I remember.
Also, in retrospect, remembering Mrs. Griggs' reading of the "Benny" essay in class once again reminds me that it was pretty much what my writing produced that : 1. got me into the "G" English class that Mrs. Griggs taught at Broad Ripple H.S., because my previous English teacher, Miss Barker, had been impressed by "The Ideal President" story my writing had produced in response to one of her homework assignments; 2. got me into Columbia College in September 1965 because the "Benny" essay my writing had produced for an English "G" class assignment to write a character study had apparently impressed Mrs. Griggs so much that she remembered me favorably enough, even over a year after I had been one of her numerous students, to write a favorable letter of recommendation to Columbia College's admissions office that persuaded it to admit me there; and 3. got me elected to the Columbia SDS steering committee in the spring of 1967 because my writing had produced the "Columbia's IDA Connection" paper of "The Columbia SDS Research Committee" (of which I was the sole creator and sole member) that first revealed Columbia University's institutional membership in the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank to Columbia's students, faculty and student newspaper, during the 1960's Vietnam War Era.
In retrospect, what prompted Mrs. Griggs to read aloud my "Benny" character study essay in her class was for one or the other following reasons: 1. Although Broad Ripple High School's student body and teaching staff was about 99.5 percent white in 1963, Mrs. Griggs was an anti-racist white liberal in 1963. So the fact that I was likely the only one in her "G" English class who had produced an essay devoted to describing an African-American former classmate probably made the essay seem like a more interesting one to read than the essays others in the class had written; or 2. Since the essay also included a paragraph describing Benny's humorous reaction when I mentioned to him that my family was moving from New York City to Indianapolis in a few weeks, Mrs. Griggs might have felt that reading this "Benny" essay in her class would cause my new classmates to Broad Ripple to tend to relate to me in a welcoming way for the rest of that spring term of 1963.
But whatever Mrs. Griggs' reason was for reading the "Benny" essay in class, to the degree that the essay led Mrs. Griggs to recommend me for Columbia College admission, it turned out to be an historically significant document. Because, without a recommendation or knowing somebody who's a "tapper", an individual without any upper middle-class or upper-class family background, prep, private school or elite public high school background or some kind of referral from an individual with special influence, someone from my family's class background generally did not get admitted to an Ivy League school like Columbia College in the early 1960's.
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's--Part 35
The last memory I still have of my first month of being a transfer student at Broad Ripple H.S. in January 1963, during the last month of my first term as a high school sophomore, is of feeling myself being unexpectedly pushed and shoved hard in an unfriendly way, from behind, by some white freshman or sophomore student guy, who was about my height and weight, as I was putting a textbook inside my assigned locker in the school hallway. And, when startled by feeling myself being pushed and shoved hard from the back without warning, I turned around suddenly to see who was pushing me and to find out why I was being suddenly shoved, my elbow accidentally hit the nose of the white bully, accidentally causing his nose to bleed. So with his nose bleeding, he quickly made his retreat from the space where my locker was located in the school hallway.
Although in my previous years as an elementary, junior high and first term high school student within New York City's public schools in Queens in the 1950's and early 1960's I had never been especially targeted in a school hallway in this way by either another student I was acquainted with or by some student, like this particular white bully, that I had never met before, I pretty much immediately forgot about the incident.
But about a week later in late January 1963, while I was in the middle of delivering that weekday afternoon's edition of the Indianapolis Times newspaper on my route and walking back from a subscriber's home to my parked bicycle near the street, on either Winthrop, Guilford or Carrolton Avenue, I suddenly noticed the same white bully who had shoved me inside Broad Ripple's school hallway, jumping out of a double-parked car on the street, that was driven by a teen-aged companion, and rushing toward me. And then he began to punch me until he apparently felt he'd proven to his teen-aged male companion in the car that he had gained revenge for the bloody nose my elbow had accidentally given him inside the Broad Rippel H.S. hallway.
The white bully then ran back to the double-parked car on the street that was driven by his teen-aged male companion and jumped back into the front passenger seat of the car, just before his male companion drove the car away quickly. And after the car disappeared, I finished delivering that day's issue of the Indianapolis Times to those subscribers that I still had not yet delivered newspapers to before being assaulted; and then rode on my bicycle back to my home.
In retrospect, I probably could have told my parents about being punched by the white bully, filed a complaint with the police, gone to Dean Jackson's office at Broad Ripple and told him about this out-of-school incident involving the Broad Ripple freshman or sophomore who had previously shoved me inside the school by my locker, or telephoned Mr. Evans at the Indianapolis Times office to notify him about this assault on an Indianapolis Times newspaper carrier.
But not having suffered any particular injuries from the white bully's flurry of out-of-school punches, and having previously been socialized to not be a "tattle tale," a "stool pigeon," an "informer," or someone who ran to adult authority figures like parents, teachers, deans or cops to resolve conflicts with fellow students or playmates, I ended up telling no one about this out-of-school bullying incident.. And since I never encountered or ever noticed this particular white guy either inside Broad Ripple H.S. (since it turned out he and I were never scheduled to be in the same classroom at any time) or on the street outside Broad Ripple again before my family moved back to New York City in June 1964 , and was also never bothered while delivering the Indianapolis Times on my newspaper route again, memory of this particular bullying incident quickly seemed to recede; and it seemed not to have impacted my life's direction in a significant way.
Ironically, it was only when watching James Dean in the Rebel Without A Cause movie again in the 21st century that I began to, retrospectively, recall and then reconsider why I had been particularly targeted in the Broad Ripple school hallway and, later on the street after school, by this white student, who didn't know me from Adam, only a week or two after I first began attending Broad Ripple as a transfer student in January 1963.
An individual high school student who has transferred from another high school in another neighborhood, another city or another state is less likely to know other students who might align with him or defend him in response to being picked on or targeted by a student or group of students who might neurotically get their kicks out of bullying others, than a student who is not a newly arrived transfer student at the high school; and who is, thus, more likely to be able to call on other students who have attended the same grade schools with him, in previous years, to align with him in response to any attempt by bullies to target him. So that might explain why, like the James Dean character in Rebel Without A Cause, I was immediately targeted by some freshman or sophomore Broad Ripple student misfit who was apparently looking for some student to bully, after he apparently had taken notice, unbeknownst to me, that I was a newly-arrived student at the school in the last month of the fall term in early 1963.
Although in my previous years as an elementary, junior high and first term high school student within New York City's public schools in Queens in the 1950's and early 1960's I had never been especially targeted in a school hallway in this way by either another student I was acquainted with or by some student, like this particular white bully, that I had never met before, I pretty much immediately forgot about the incident.
But about a week later in late January 1963, while I was in the middle of delivering that weekday afternoon's edition of the Indianapolis Times newspaper on my route and walking back from a subscriber's home to my parked bicycle near the street, on either Winthrop, Guilford or Carrolton Avenue, I suddenly noticed the same white bully who had shoved me inside Broad Ripple's school hallway, jumping out of a double-parked car on the street, that was driven by a teen-aged companion, and rushing toward me. And then he began to punch me until he apparently felt he'd proven to his teen-aged male companion in the car that he had gained revenge for the bloody nose my elbow had accidentally given him inside the Broad Rippel H.S. hallway.
The white bully then ran back to the double-parked car on the street that was driven by his teen-aged male companion and jumped back into the front passenger seat of the car, just before his male companion drove the car away quickly. And after the car disappeared, I finished delivering that day's issue of the Indianapolis Times to those subscribers that I still had not yet delivered newspapers to before being assaulted; and then rode on my bicycle back to my home.
In retrospect, I probably could have told my parents about being punched by the white bully, filed a complaint with the police, gone to Dean Jackson's office at Broad Ripple and told him about this out-of-school incident involving the Broad Ripple freshman or sophomore who had previously shoved me inside the school by my locker, or telephoned Mr. Evans at the Indianapolis Times office to notify him about this assault on an Indianapolis Times newspaper carrier.
But not having suffered any particular injuries from the white bully's flurry of out-of-school punches, and having previously been socialized to not be a "tattle tale," a "stool pigeon," an "informer," or someone who ran to adult authority figures like parents, teachers, deans or cops to resolve conflicts with fellow students or playmates, I ended up telling no one about this out-of-school bullying incident.. And since I never encountered or ever noticed this particular white guy either inside Broad Ripple H.S. (since it turned out he and I were never scheduled to be in the same classroom at any time) or on the street outside Broad Ripple again before my family moved back to New York City in June 1964 , and was also never bothered while delivering the Indianapolis Times on my newspaper route again, memory of this particular bullying incident quickly seemed to recede; and it seemed not to have impacted my life's direction in a significant way.
Ironically, it was only when watching James Dean in the Rebel Without A Cause movie again in the 21st century that I began to, retrospectively, recall and then reconsider why I had been particularly targeted in the Broad Ripple school hallway and, later on the street after school, by this white student, who didn't know me from Adam, only a week or two after I first began attending Broad Ripple as a transfer student in January 1963.
An individual high school student who has transferred from another high school in another neighborhood, another city or another state is less likely to know other students who might align with him or defend him in response to being picked on or targeted by a student or group of students who might neurotically get their kicks out of bullying others, than a student who is not a newly arrived transfer student at the high school; and who is, thus, more likely to be able to call on other students who have attended the same grade schools with him, in previous years, to align with him in response to any attempt by bullies to target him. So that might explain why, like the James Dean character in Rebel Without A Cause, I was immediately targeted by some freshman or sophomore Broad Ripple student misfit who was apparently looking for some student to bully, after he apparently had taken notice, unbeknownst to me, that I was a newly-arrived student at the school in the last month of the fall term in early 1963.
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