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.

On The Road In The 1970's--Part 44

The other guest from the UM&M Homestead branch office where my father worked in Indianapolis, when my family lived there, who came over by himself for dinner, was the sales manager and executive who headed UM &M's branch office in Indianapolis; whose last name was Crater.

Crater was a white, well-dressed, crew-cutted guy, who appeared to be in his mid-to-late 40's; and who was an ex-Marine who seemed proud to be an ex-Marine. He seemed like someone who probably had voted for the Republican candidate Eisenhower in the 1952 and 1956 U.S. presidential elections, rather than for the liberal Democratic presidential candidate Stevenson, like both my parents had done in 1952 and 1956.

My recollection now is that Crater was married and had children. But I think the reason he didn't bring his wife along, during the weekday evening he came for dinner with my parents and me, was that his wife and kids still lived in another U.S. city; because he and his wife had apparently not yet found a buyer for the house in which his wife and kids were still living in. And only after that house was sold would Crater then be able to purchase a new house in Indianapolis at which he could move his wife and children to there live with him in Indianapolis. In the meantime, when Crater was not on the road making sales calls, he just housed himself, at company expense, in some motel in Indianapolis.

Although Goldberg and Crater each spent a lot of time selling drapes and textile material for clothes and piece goods to department stores and small merchants around the Midwest, Crater, unlike Goldberg, was not of Jewish religious background. And perhaps for that reason, Crater didn't seem to feel that the Midwest was as "strange" a "territory" to be a salesman in as Goldberg apparently did.

About the only other thing I now remember about Crater (who, when not on the road selling, was the person in the UM&M  Homestead office who supervised my father at work) is that my father once mentioned that Crater was the kind of guy who, in the early 1960's, would still wake up early to do push-ups each morning before heading off to work--despite apparently being in his mid-to-late 40's.

Other than Goldberg and Crater, the only other person I can remember meeting once who also worked at the office in Indianapolis where my father worked, was a white man named Kelly, who was the office manager that supervised the small number of typists who also worked in this office.

Kelly seemed to be in his early 30's. My father felt he was a friendlier person than was Crater and "a very decent chap." Kelly and his wife of about the same age, Kay, never visited the house my family rented in Indianapolis, for dinner. But one Saturday or Sunday evening, my parents and I visited Kelly and Kay for dinner at the small house in another neighborhood in Indianapolis in which they lived, alone with their child, who was less than 4 years-old at that time.

Kay and my mother seemed to enjoy chatting with each other, despite being of different religious backgrounds. But probably because Kay (who, like her husband, was of Catholic religious background) was saddled with the heavy responsibility of having to spend all her time at home caring for her child alone during the day, she probably felt she lacked enough spare time during the week to spend chatting again with my mother; and her weekly evenings and weekends were the only time that she had for being with her husband.  And because my father and Kelly saw enough of each other five days of the week at work, they likely felt, especially given the likely 15 years or more age difference between them, no special desire to pal around together on weekends, rather than each just spend their weekend time with their nuclear family.

Aside from seeing Kelly and his wife at their small house that one time, I think the only time I likely saw them again was at some kind of late spring or early summer Sunday afternoon office picnic later in 1963. And the only thing I can remember now from that picnic is that I was surprised that one of the young white woman office secretaries, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, seemed at the picnic to be more skillful at throwing a softball around than were most other U.S. women of her age in the 1960's then were. 

On The Road In The 1970's--Part 43

I can't recall now much else of what I experienced in Indianapolis-- when not inside Broad Ripple High School, not delivering the Indianapolis Times, not doing my homework, not watching television and not being driven down to Bloomington or up to Chicago--between January and June of 1963. But among the other things I do recall were two separate visits to my family's rented house for dinner of two men who worked for the same downtown Indianapolis-branch of UM&M's Homestead textile, piece goods and drape wholesaleing subsidiary, where my father was also then employed.

The first employee of that UM&M/Homestead branch office that came over for dinner, came over one evening during the week in the early part of 1963. He was a guy from Brooklyn, in his mid-or-late-20's, whose last name was Goldberg.

Goldberg was a good-natured fellow who, after being on the Abraham Lincoln High School football team in Brooklyn, and after apparently serving the required two years in the then-peacetime U.S. military (that every guy growing up in the 1950's and early 1960's in the USA automatically assumed they would be required to serve in), was now working for UM &M/Homestead in the Midwest; as some kind of drapery and piece goods wholesale traveling salesman, who was being paid a salary and a commission on whatever sales he made in his assigned territory, and who had an expense account.

Because Goldberg didn't strike me as being that intellectual, he also didn't strike me then as someone who had graduated from college--although it's possible he had. But in the early 1960's, a white guy could get hired by corporations like UM &M to be a traveling salesman without having a B.A. in either the liberal arts or in "business administration" or "merchandising" from some U.S. college; as long as he had a high school diploma, was willing to dress in a suit and tie each weekday, had short hair and was beardless and well-groomed-looking, knew how to drive a car and had the kind of outgoing, friendly "sales personality," that Goldberg certainly had.

Having grown up in Brooklyn during the decades when large numbers of assimilated New Yorkers of Jewish religious background lived there, Goldberg seemed unused to being in a city like Indianapolis and a state like Indiana, in which people of Jewish religious background were such a small percentage of the general population. But  Goldberg, himself, wasn't particularly religious and, like my father, was the kind of assimilated U.S. citizen who would now only attend a religious service in a synagogue on Rosh Hoshanna and Yom Kippur, or if invited by one of his relatives to attend their son's bar mitzvah service in a synagogue.

The main memory I still have of the evening Goldberg came over for dinner in early 1963 when my parents and I lived in Indianapolis is of how Goldberg brought with him his copy of the My Son, The Folk Singer vinyl record album, on which Allan Sherman had recorded. himself, his humorous parody versions of folk songs; wherein his parody lyrics reflected the humor of different aspects of daily life within communities of various types of Jewish background in the USA. during the post-World War II late 1940's, 1950's and early 1960's era.

After dinner, Goldberg, because he thought Allan Sherman's My Son, The Folk Singer album was very funny and witty, was eager to play the record album for us and listen to the album with us. He apparently thought both my parents and I would also find the My Son, The Folk Singer album as entertaining as he did.

Because I was still mostly into just listening in 1963 to the vinyl albums with the melody-emphasized songs of "hit" Broadway musicals and even "flop" Broadway musicals, I did not expect to have much interest in listening to My Son, The Folk Singer album as much as Goldberg then seemed to have. Also, before moving from New York City to Indianapolis in late 1962, a member of the Queens boy scout Troop 363 had played some tracks from his copy of this same album once at one of our monthly boy scout troop meetings; and I hadn't then previously thought the My Son, The Folk Singer album was worth listening to over and over again, myself.

But, surprisingly, after listening again more carefully and attentively to the My Son, The Folk Singer album with Goldberg and my parents that evening in Indianapolis in early 1963, I found it more entertaining and interesting to listen to than I had when I half-listened to parts of it the first time in New York City; and I purchased a copy of Allan Sherman's My Son, The Folk Singer album the following week.

In 1963, like many U.S. music fans, I listened more to the melody and rhythm of a song's music than to the lyrics of a song. And although the more I played and replayed the My Son, The Folk Singer album on my family's cheap hi-fi record player in 1963, the more I started to notice how clever and witty the lyrics of Allan Sherman's parodies were, I think it was actually the melodies of the songs parodied which Allan Sherman had recorded that led me to replay his album a lot in 1963.

Not having heard much Irish folk music or Irish rebel folk music or heard any Clancy Brothers records played on the radio prior to 1963, the melody of Allan Sherman's "Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max" parody of an Irish folk song, for example, was what caused me to want to listen to the song again and again, rather than the funny parody lyrics which I listened to less attentively.

And although I had watched Harry Belafonte perform some of his songs on television and had heard his 45 rpm hit single records on my transistor radio during the 1950's, because I had never purchased a vinyl album like Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, (seemed to expensive for me) that contained a lot more other songs that Belafonte sang, I actually heard first the melody of the "Matilda" song only after listening to the parody of "Matilda" that Allan Sherman sang on his My Son, The Folk Singer album.

Of course, if you had told me in 1963 that I would end up writing so many folk songs myself and that, by the early 1970's, my mother might have legitimately characterized her son in conversation with others as "My Son, The Folk Singer," I would have thought you were out-of-your mind.

Although I wrote a few songs in 1963 and began to think that getting into writing Broadway musicals might be a long-range possibility, it wasn't until 1965 and 1966 that I began to both write a lot of a cappella folk songs and purchase some albums of folk music; and it wasn't until the summer of 1966 that I taught myself to play basic open chords on a guitar and started writing folk songs with guitar chord accompaniment.

But once I got more into listening to the folk song repertoire, from which Allan Sherman had taken the folk song melodies he used for his clever parodies, I pretty much no longer played his My Son, The Folk Singer album and his follow-up album that included his "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadda" hit single novelty song, after 1966. 

On The Road In The 1970's--Part 42

In the early 1960's (many decades before drivers of cars just relied on GPS voices to let them know which highways or roads to take to reach a particular long-distance destination), I was my father's map-reading "navigator" in his car, whenever we drove from Indianapolis to either Chicago or to Bloomington, Indiana, between January and June of 1963.

So it was during these six months that I also developed an interest in collecting road maps of many of the individual states in the continental USA. And for about a year in Indianapolis, I spent some time mailing letters to various tourist boards of some of the individual states, requesting that the different state state tourist boards mail me a free road map of their state, for me to add to my "road map" collection.

By the time I was attending Columbia College in NYC, though, in the Fall of 1965, I had pretty much lost my previous interest in continuing to collect "road maps"--in the same way I had lost my previous interest in collecting postage stamps to put in my stamp collection book before, when I first entered the 7th-grade in junior high school.

Yet even as late as 1965, I was still interested enough in road maps to unsuccessfully put in an application for a summer job inside an AAA office, that used to be located in Manhattan around East 42nd Street, near Grand Central Station, on the ground floor of some skyscraper (that then housed the corporate headquarters office of some transnational oil corporation like Texaco or Socony Mobil); and which provided AAA "Trip-Ticks"/road map route guiding material for AAA members who came to this AAA office for road trip route-planning assistance.

On The Road In The 1970's--Part 41

Once we reached Chicago's North Side, my father would end up parking his 1959 Pontiac car in some spot near the 1920's-built, rundown, slum apartment building, in which my mother's parents and my grandparents lived, near Humboldt Park and Division Street. By the early 1960's, most of the residents of this slum apartment building and the neighborhood in which my grandparents lived seemed to then be mostly white, Spanish-speaking people from the U.S. colony/"commonwealth" of Puerto Rico.

My grandfather used to leave his slum building apartment each evening and walk through the neighborhood to take a bus downtown to the Chicago Tribune newspaper printing facility; where he then spent the night and early morning hours loading newspapers onto newspaper delivery trucks, in exchange for union wages (until he was in his mid-70's), before returning back to his apartment to sleep during the day in the late morning and until the early afternoon hours. But I can't recall ever walking around this neighborhood, myself, either alone or with my mother, father or sister during any of our one-day, Sunday visits to my grandfather's apartment in this neighborhood.

Usually, we would all just walk from our family's parked car on the street, from a spot that was usually close to the apartment building in which my grandparents lived, enter the unlocked door of the building which had no elevator and then walk up one or two flights of stairs to my grandparents' very small 1-bedroom apartment. Then, after two or three hours in the apartment--in which most of the time was spent sitting around the kitchen table listening to my mother talk to her parents in English about how all their relatives, most of whom I had never met, who still lived in Chicago were doing--my parents, my sister and I would then say goodbye, leave the apartment building and just walk back to my family's car.

Afterwards, my father would then drive us all further north to the 1920's-built two-family house in Skokie that my mother's younger sister and her husband had only purchased a few years before; after selling their 1920's-built house near North Kedzie Avenue, not far from Wrigley Field, that they had previously owned during most of the 1950's. Arriving in Skokie, maybe a half-hour later, we would then usually spend three to 4 hours in the more Americanized, more inwardly modernized house of my aunt, uncle and my two younger boy cousins; and we would all converse with each other and eat dinner together there, before my own nuclear family drove back to Indianapolis from Chicago at around 7:30 or 8 p.m. on Sunday evening.

My grandfather was a good-natured fellow who--despite being brought up in Russia (but speaking mostly Yiddish and only a bit of Russian)-had learned to speak enough English to converse in English with people in a Russian-Yiddish accent and read portions of Chicago's. daily newspapers, during the over 50 years that he had spent living and working in the USA, prior to 1963. He was a member of one of the unions at the Chicago Tribune/Tribune media conglomerate where he had worked since World War II; and, at least verbally, expressed strong support for his union's leadership and shop steward. But he was the type of union member who had no interest in either attending any union membership meeting or following  the union's internal politics. And although he was of Russian-Jewish religious background, he had no interest in Zionism, the Zionist movement, the fate of Israel or what was happening in the Middle East during the 1960's.

Having lived and worked in the United States for over 50 years, my grandfather probably would have thought that any Zionist movement supporter who suggested that he consider moving from the USA to Palestine in the 1960's was suggesting a crazy idea. And like most other elderly U.S. working-class people who had immigrated to the USA from Eastern Europe, Russia or Italy in the early 20th-century, in the early 1960's neither my grandfather nor my grandmother in Chicago had much interest in talking about U.S. electoral politics or how the capitalist economic and political system might need to be changed; especially since they felt, despite still living in a slum apartment building, that they were much less economically impoverished personally in the early 1960's than they had been during the Great Depression of the 1930's.

In 1963 both my grandfather and grandmother still seemed fond of my mother. But my grandfather then seemed to be sadder than my grandmother that my mother had moved from Chicago to New York City after she had married my father in the early 1940's. And although, twenty years later, she now lived in a city much closer to Chicago than New York City, my grandfather still seemed to miss my mother in 1963 and regret that she wasn't then living in Chicago again.

My grandmother was, in 1963, less Americanized than was my grandfather and more religiously orthodox; perhaps because her own father had apparently been some sort of a rabbi in Lithuania. But despite being less good-natured than my grandfather, when in their 70's in 1963, both my grandfather and my grandmother in Chicago, with the three daughters they had raised married and living with their husbands by now for over 13 years, still seemed devoted to each other.

My mother's younger sister (who was in her late 30's in 1963 and was probably still considered physically  beautiful by most men during the 1960's) and her husband in Skokie, like both my parents, were also not that interested in talking much about U.S. politics or changing the System in 1963; now that they all seemed to have gained more economic security and working-class affluence after World War II than what their immigrant parents had had during the Great Depression of the 1930's.

Between my uncle's blue-collar job as some kind of factory worker at a Bell and Howell plant and the elementary school teaching job that my aunt had obtained (after she decided to go to college in her early 30's, when both her sons had reached school attendance age), my aunt and uncle in Skokie seemed pretty much satisfied in 1963 with the economic opportunities the System in the USA provided them. And when I first became interested in taking 8mm moving pictures on a Kodak brownie moving picture camera in 1963, I was able to take advantage of having an uncle who worked for Bell and Howell; by having him buy for me, at the wholesale price, a Bell and Howell 8mm motion picture, automatic threading projector--which I paid for with part of the money I was earning on my own during my sophomore year in high school, by working between January and June 1963 as an Indianapolis Times newspaper delivery carrier in my neighborhood.