I hadn't been in an English honors student class for the sophomore students at Bayside H.S. whose 9th grade junior high school English teachers had felt were their highest-achieving students. So for the last month of my first term as a sophomore, that I spent at Broad Ripple H.S. in January 1963, I was in a morning English class, taught by Miss Barker (in the early 1960's the women teachers were either called "Miss" or "Mrs." and the term "Ms." was not yet being used in the USA), which wasn't a "G students" class. At Broad Ripple, the "G students" classes were like the "honors students" classes at Bayside H.S.: composed of the students whose previous teachers in the same subject had felt them to be the academically best students in their classes.
I don't remember much now about what was being taught in Miss Barker's English class, except that during my month in her class we were assigned (after we finished reading Silas Marner) to read parts of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe book as homework; which Miss Barker would then discuss with us on the following morning.
Most of the students in the class seemed to find Ivanhoe as boring to read as I did at that time (although when I had seen the movie with Elizabeth Taylor as a child and read the Classics Illustrated comic book version of "Ivanhoe" in New York City before I was even 9 years old, I had found the Ivanhoe story interesting and entertaining). So most of the talking about Ivanhoe each period was just done by Miss Barker, in front of a class of students who rarely raised their hands to volunteer to make any comments about the novel.
Unlike my memory of the Classics Illustrated comic book version of Ivanhoe, the text of the original novel that we were assigned to read in this first term sophomore English class seemed to place more emphasis on Rebecca's father being a "Jewish money lender." And the white guy sitting next to me in class who, like nearly all the students at Broad Ripple H.S., wasn't of Jewish religious background like I was, seemed to feel that the "Jew money lender" character in Ivanhoe was the obvious "villain" of Sir Walter Scott's novel and was the character in the novel that he seemed to mention the most during the few occasions he spoke in class, after Miss Barker called on him to make some comment related to what he felt the novel was about.
A second thing I remember about my one month in Miss Barker's English class was that it was in that class that I wrote a fictional short story, titled "The Ideal President," after Miss Barker assigned members of this class to write some kind of fictional short story; following a lesson she gave explaining the difference between a novel like Ivanhoe and the short stories that were contained in the 10th-grade English literature textbook we were using in this class.
Apparently Miss Barker, who wore glasses and was probably not considered that physically attractive by most men around her age or most of her English class students, felt that "The Ideal President' short story I wrote was more grammatically correctly written, more imaginative and reflected a greater writing ability and willingness to put in time creating a short story than the short stories the other students in the class had handed in to her (especially since the length of "The Ideal President" short story I handed in was much longer than the length of the short stories the other members of the class had written).
So after reading "The Ideal President" story herself at home, Miss Barker summarized what the story was about to the other students in the English class and cited the story as an example of the kind of well-written short story she felt was one of the better ones that a member of the class had produced. And apparently it was because I wrote "The Ideal President" story, which she was impressed by, that Miss Barker decided that I belonged in the "G" English class with the more higher academic-achieving and more intellectual Broad Ripple H.S. sophomores who generally received "A", "A minus" and "B plus" grades; rather than in the English classes with the "average" students, who generally only attained grades of "C" and, at most "B", in the classes they took, during the second term of my sophomore year in high school.
In retrospect, of course, if Miss Barker hadn't recommended me for the "G" English sophomore class that Mrs. Griggs taught in the spring term of 1963, I likely wouldn't have ever been admitted into Columbia College in the fall of 1965. Since, as I've previously indicated, it was probably only because Mrs. Griggs, an Indiana-based "tapper"/scout for Columbia's admissions office, had written a favorable letter of recommendation for me that was part of my application to Columbia, that Columbia's admissions office decided to let me attend Columbia College. And, of course, if, historically, I had not been on Columbia's campus between 1965 and 1968, Columbia University's institutional membership in the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank might not have ever been discovered and proven before the 1970's.
"The Ideal President" story, itself, was a long fictional short story about an idealistic male teenage high school student who, worried about the terrible state of the world, the risk of a nuclear war, the denial of civil rights in the South, and the lack of world peace, places his hope for saving the world from nuclear war and changing U.S. society in a more democratic way on electing as U.S. president a white elderly person who--not being a corrupt politician or a personally ambitious political office-seeker of personal political power--would be "The Ideal President." And of how this teenage male high school student persuades a reluctant, non-politician-type elderly white man to "save the world," create world peace and personally transform U.S. society in a more democratic way, by announcing his presidential candidacy, campaigning and winning the 1964 election as a political independent.
I still saw myself as an anti-communist liberal supporter of 1952 and 1956 Democratic Party presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in early 1963, had wanted the Democratic Party to nominate Stevenson again as its 1960 presidential candidate rather than the less historically politically liberal and less intellectual son of multi-millionaire Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK, and (despite then still believing that JFK hadn't needlessly risked provoking a nuclear war by imposing a naval blockade of Cuba and pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles from Cuba during October 1962 "Cuban Missile Crisis"), felt that JFK hadn't been the liberal savior, "ideal president" I then felt the USA required. So the fictional character of the elderly white man in my January 1963 story, whom the teenager viewed as the person who could be "the ideal president" was probably based, somewhat, on the favorable view I still had of Adlai Stevenson, at that time.
Because of Miss Barker's praise of "The Ideal President" story, I, naively, thought it might provide a good plot for a musical (and a few months later I even wrote my own chorus for an uncompleted a cappela song, "The Ideal President," with the following lyric: "And that's our President. The Ideal President. When will he come? When will he appear? We need our Ideal President."). So I naively looked up the business address of Richard Rodgers in the most recent edition of Who's Who In America and naively mailed a copy of "The Ideal President" story (in a manila envelope that contained inside another folded up stamped manila envelope with my return address on it) to his office, with a letter saying that I thought he might be interested in adapting the story into a musical. But, naturally, the copy of my text was soon returned to me in the stamped manila envelope with my address on it, along with a polite form letter from one of Rodgers' office secretaries, indicating that Richard Rodgers' office had probably not bothered to check out the story, before mailing it back to me.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Monday, October 14, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 29
Another difference between going to school at Bayside High and going to school at Broad Ripple High was that at Bayside High School sophomores, juniors and seniors all had to include a period of physical education/gym in their scheduled program each term. At Broad Ripple, however, after a student's freshman year, no student was required to take any period of physical education/gym in their sophomore, junior and senior years.
In the fall of 1962 at Bayside High School, most days of the week your individualized program required you to spend one period during the school day going into the school gymnasium's locker room to change into your gym suit, prior to being led by some authoritarian gym instructor in exercises, running around within the school's football stadium's track, a few blocks away from the school, or spending a portion of the gym period involved in some sports game with the other male students who were taking gym class in the same period with you. And since Bayside High School, besides having a gymnasium and small football stadium with a track, also, inside its school building, had its own pool, gym period also sometimes meant a period showering in school and, if you were a male student, then swimming during most of the period in the nude in its high school pool.
Both Broad Ripple High School's gymnasium and its football stadium with a track, however, were larger than Bayside's gymnasium and football stadium; and, unlike Bayside's small football stadium, Broad Ripple's football stadium included a lighting system that enabled its high school football team to play opposing high school football teams under the lights on Friday night games, whereas Bayside's football stadium lacked a similar lighting system. So Bayside's football team generally only played their high school opponents in afternoon games after school at 3 p.m. or, perhaps, on Saturdays sometimes. In addition, the spectators' seating capacity of Broad Ripple's gymnasium and stadium was much greater than was the spectators' seating capacity of Bayside's gym or small stadium's spectators' stands.
One reason Broad Ripple (and other Indiana public high schools) may not have required their sophomores, juniors or seniors to take gym/physical education classes after their freshman year is that a greater percentage of the male students at Broad Ripple H.S. seemed to be members of one of its school sports teams than the percentage was at most New York City public high schools in the early 1960's. So school administrators in Indiana may have felt that most male students at their schools were already getting enough physical exercise by being part of their school's teams; and school administrators could, therefore, save some money by substituting a period of "study hall" for a required gym period for those male high school students who had no interest in being some kind of high school team "jock", after their freshman year was over.
Another reason why physical ed or gym was not required after the freshman year of high school in Indiana may have been that in Indiana, unlike in New York City where most high school students only could get their licenses at 18 years of age and usually only started driving in their own cars after high school, most Indiana high school students usually got their driver licenses at 16 years of age and began driving their own car (or their parents' cars) by their junior year of high school. So, by their sophomore year, most Broad Ripple High School sophomores were also both more in need of and more interested in taking driver's education courses in their sophomore, junior or senior years than in continuing to take physical ed/gym during their last three years of high school.
Another advantage of not having to include a period of gym in your daily individual program at Broad Ripple in your sophomore, junior and senior years was that it also enabled students who felt like joining schools clubs or getting part-time jobs at 16 years of age in stores after school to have some more free time from having to be in a class than Bayside H.S. students had.
In the fall of 1962 at Bayside High School, most days of the week your individualized program required you to spend one period during the school day going into the school gymnasium's locker room to change into your gym suit, prior to being led by some authoritarian gym instructor in exercises, running around within the school's football stadium's track, a few blocks away from the school, or spending a portion of the gym period involved in some sports game with the other male students who were taking gym class in the same period with you. And since Bayside High School, besides having a gymnasium and small football stadium with a track, also, inside its school building, had its own pool, gym period also sometimes meant a period showering in school and, if you were a male student, then swimming during most of the period in the nude in its high school pool.
Both Broad Ripple High School's gymnasium and its football stadium with a track, however, were larger than Bayside's gymnasium and football stadium; and, unlike Bayside's small football stadium, Broad Ripple's football stadium included a lighting system that enabled its high school football team to play opposing high school football teams under the lights on Friday night games, whereas Bayside's football stadium lacked a similar lighting system. So Bayside's football team generally only played their high school opponents in afternoon games after school at 3 p.m. or, perhaps, on Saturdays sometimes. In addition, the spectators' seating capacity of Broad Ripple's gymnasium and stadium was much greater than was the spectators' seating capacity of Bayside's gym or small stadium's spectators' stands.
One reason Broad Ripple (and other Indiana public high schools) may not have required their sophomores, juniors or seniors to take gym/physical education classes after their freshman year is that a greater percentage of the male students at Broad Ripple H.S. seemed to be members of one of its school sports teams than the percentage was at most New York City public high schools in the early 1960's. So school administrators in Indiana may have felt that most male students at their schools were already getting enough physical exercise by being part of their school's teams; and school administrators could, therefore, save some money by substituting a period of "study hall" for a required gym period for those male high school students who had no interest in being some kind of high school team "jock", after their freshman year was over.
Another reason why physical ed or gym was not required after the freshman year of high school in Indiana may have been that in Indiana, unlike in New York City where most high school students only could get their licenses at 18 years of age and usually only started driving in their own cars after high school, most Indiana high school students usually got their driver licenses at 16 years of age and began driving their own car (or their parents' cars) by their junior year of high school. So, by their sophomore year, most Broad Ripple High School sophomores were also both more in need of and more interested in taking driver's education courses in their sophomore, junior or senior years than in continuing to take physical ed/gym during their last three years of high school.
Another advantage of not having to include a period of gym in your daily individual program at Broad Ripple in your sophomore, junior and senior years was that it also enabled students who felt like joining schools clubs or getting part-time jobs at 16 years of age in stores after school to have some more free time from having to be in a class than Bayside H.S. students had.
Friday, October 11, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 28
In early 1963 Broad Ripple High School's band director was a white music teacher named Mr. Decker, who seemed to be in his early 40's. Mr. Decker was a short and stocky guy, who was also a much friendlier guy inter-personally, in relation to his students and the concert band members he conducted, than the teacher who directed and conducted the school band at Bayside High School had been. When they made fun of him behind his back in a good-natured way, in and out of class, some of the band members usually referred to him as "Wally."
Mr. Decker had apparently been teaching band classes and directing Broad Ripple's band for nearly 20 years by 1963, but he still seemed to lead his classes and conduct the school concert band in an enthusiastic way. In addition, he seemed to possess the ability to play a variety of band instruments himself, like most other high school band class teachers did in the 1960's.
Yet despite his friendly Midwestern personality, I suspect that Mr. Decker was just a moderate Eisenhower-type Republican who had automatically accepted as true, without much thought, most of the Cold War Era myths about how democratic and moral U.S. society, the U.S. military and the U.S. government's foreign policy were during the McCarthy Era; which both the national corporate liberal mass media and the local Indianapolis newspapers still propagated in early 1963.
But since I, myself, was still just an anti-communist liberal Stevensonian Democrat in early 1963, even if I had then realized that Mr. Decker might have been an Eisenhower Republican, at that time it wouldn't really had mattered to me what Mr. Decker's personal political beliefs might be; especially since he was such a friendly and good-natured teacher, on a personal level.
On the first day I entered the Broad Ripple band classroom, for my last period of the day band class, Mr. Decker greeted me with a smile; and, before we began rehearsing a band march-piece, welcomed me and briefly introduced me to the rest of the band class members and band members, mentioning that I was from New York City. As a result, one of the clarinet players in the band, a tall guy named Fred (who also acted in the musical that Broad Ripple's music department staged with students during my junior year at Broad Ripple), nicknamed me, in a good-natured way, "Bronx." Especially after he realized that my Eastern accent differed from the Hoosier regional accent that most of the other students at Broad Ripple High School then still had.
What I remember most about my first few days of being in Mr. Decker's last period band instruction class that played jointly with the school band that played alone each day in the next-to-last period, is meeting the two white students, Bill and Steve, who played alto saxophones and sat next to me in my band classes for the next year and a half; and also noticing a white woman student named Ginny, who played clarinet, while she sat in the clarinet section of the band on the opposite side of the band rehearsal classroom.
Because of the way I had been socialized growing up in 1950's anti-feminist U.S. society, in high school I was generally more attracted by how the high school women who put noticeable lipstick and makeup on their faces before going to classes looked, than by how the high school women who didn't noticeably use lipstick and makeup looked. And it really wasn't until I became a big fan of Joan Baez in college and also began being attracted to Movement women (who mostly didn't noticeable use much makeup and lipstick) later in the 1960's, that I tended to start associating women around my age who still used lipstick and makeup in a very noticeable way as being "plastic" and physically unappealing to me.
In addition, in high school in the early 1960's, high school women whose facial features appeared most "pretty" to me were generally the ones whom I regarded as most desirable. Thus, during the first term of my sophomore year, when I was at Bayside High School, a classmate in both my first term biology class and my first term geometry class, named Ellen, was the high school woman whom I felt most like getting to know eventually at that time. Because she seemed to me to have the "prettiest" face of the women who were in all my high school classes at that time.
The clarinetist named Ginny that I noticed on my first day in my Broad Ripple High School band class, had both a "pretty" face, in my view, and used make-up and lipstick. But although Ginny also seemed to me to be a friendly, gentle and non-snobbish person, despite possessing a physical beauty that attracted men easily, I can't recall ever conversing with her individually; because she wasn't in any of the other classes I ever attended while I was a Broad Ripple student and she didn't live in the same Indianapolis neighborhood that I lived in.
In the early 1960's it wasn't unusual for high school women like Ginny to be more interested in possibly just getting some kind of office secretarial or receptionist job, or just finding a man she loved to get married to after finishing high school; rather than being interested in having to spend yet another 4 years as an unpaid student in a classroom at some college. So it could be that, despite both being in the band together at Broad Ripple High School, even if we had conversed, it would have been unlikely that she would have felt that there was any real basis for getting to know each other better outside of school; especially if her post-high school life aspirations were too different than what mine were in the early 1960's.
Mr. Decker had apparently been teaching band classes and directing Broad Ripple's band for nearly 20 years by 1963, but he still seemed to lead his classes and conduct the school concert band in an enthusiastic way. In addition, he seemed to possess the ability to play a variety of band instruments himself, like most other high school band class teachers did in the 1960's.
Yet despite his friendly Midwestern personality, I suspect that Mr. Decker was just a moderate Eisenhower-type Republican who had automatically accepted as true, without much thought, most of the Cold War Era myths about how democratic and moral U.S. society, the U.S. military and the U.S. government's foreign policy were during the McCarthy Era; which both the national corporate liberal mass media and the local Indianapolis newspapers still propagated in early 1963.
But since I, myself, was still just an anti-communist liberal Stevensonian Democrat in early 1963, even if I had then realized that Mr. Decker might have been an Eisenhower Republican, at that time it wouldn't really had mattered to me what Mr. Decker's personal political beliefs might be; especially since he was such a friendly and good-natured teacher, on a personal level.
On the first day I entered the Broad Ripple band classroom, for my last period of the day band class, Mr. Decker greeted me with a smile; and, before we began rehearsing a band march-piece, welcomed me and briefly introduced me to the rest of the band class members and band members, mentioning that I was from New York City. As a result, one of the clarinet players in the band, a tall guy named Fred (who also acted in the musical that Broad Ripple's music department staged with students during my junior year at Broad Ripple), nicknamed me, in a good-natured way, "Bronx." Especially after he realized that my Eastern accent differed from the Hoosier regional accent that most of the other students at Broad Ripple High School then still had.
What I remember most about my first few days of being in Mr. Decker's last period band instruction class that played jointly with the school band that played alone each day in the next-to-last period, is meeting the two white students, Bill and Steve, who played alto saxophones and sat next to me in my band classes for the next year and a half; and also noticing a white woman student named Ginny, who played clarinet, while she sat in the clarinet section of the band on the opposite side of the band rehearsal classroom.
Because of the way I had been socialized growing up in 1950's anti-feminist U.S. society, in high school I was generally more attracted by how the high school women who put noticeable lipstick and makeup on their faces before going to classes looked, than by how the high school women who didn't noticeably use lipstick and makeup looked. And it really wasn't until I became a big fan of Joan Baez in college and also began being attracted to Movement women (who mostly didn't noticeable use much makeup and lipstick) later in the 1960's, that I tended to start associating women around my age who still used lipstick and makeup in a very noticeable way as being "plastic" and physically unappealing to me.
In addition, in high school in the early 1960's, high school women whose facial features appeared most "pretty" to me were generally the ones whom I regarded as most desirable. Thus, during the first term of my sophomore year, when I was at Bayside High School, a classmate in both my first term biology class and my first term geometry class, named Ellen, was the high school woman whom I felt most like getting to know eventually at that time. Because she seemed to me to have the "prettiest" face of the women who were in all my high school classes at that time.
The clarinetist named Ginny that I noticed on my first day in my Broad Ripple High School band class, had both a "pretty" face, in my view, and used make-up and lipstick. But although Ginny also seemed to me to be a friendly, gentle and non-snobbish person, despite possessing a physical beauty that attracted men easily, I can't recall ever conversing with her individually; because she wasn't in any of the other classes I ever attended while I was a Broad Ripple student and she didn't live in the same Indianapolis neighborhood that I lived in.
In the early 1960's it wasn't unusual for high school women like Ginny to be more interested in possibly just getting some kind of office secretarial or receptionist job, or just finding a man she loved to get married to after finishing high school; rather than being interested in having to spend yet another 4 years as an unpaid student in a classroom at some college. So it could be that, despite both being in the band together at Broad Ripple High School, even if we had conversed, it would have been unlikely that she would have felt that there was any real basis for getting to know each other better outside of school; especially if her post-high school life aspirations were too different than what mine were in the early 1960's.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 27
Another difference between Broad Ripple High School and overcrowded Bayside High School was that at Broad Ripple every student was assigned their own individual hallway locker. So they all didn't have to carry all their textbooks at once when shifting from classroom to classroom during the school day.
At Bayside, you were assigned a locker in the band room in which you could store your musical instrument during the week, like the locker in which I kept the saxophone I individually practiced on during my daily Band class periods each day, as a first-term sophomore. But students at Bayside did not have individual hallway lockers assigned to them like the Broad Ripple students did in the early 1960's.
The number of students who had previously played in their previous lower schools' bands before entering Bayside High School or who were newly interested in being in Bayside's school band was greater than the number of students who wished to be in Broad Ripple's band in early 1963. So there was a much greater need for a student who could play tenor saxophone in Broad Ripple's band than there had been in Bayside's band in the fall of 1962. And since I had shifted from taking weekly alto saxophone private lessons to taking tenor saxophone private lessons out of school during my 9th grade in Queens, one gain for me from transferring to Broad Ripple was that I was able to become part of my high school band more quickly than I would have been able to have done if I had continued to attend Bayside in 1963, 1964 and 1965.
Between the last month of my first term as a sophomore and the end of my second term as a sophomore at Broad Ripple, I was able to spend the last 45 minute period of the day playing tenor saxophone with the band; prior to finally officially becoming a full member of both Broad Ripple's marching band and its concert band between August 1963 and June 1964, during my junior year of high school.
Had I not been in Broad Ripple's high school band and, during my senior year, in Flushing High School's band, there's a good possibility that, even with Mrs. Griggs's letter of recommendation, Coulumbia College's admissions office would not have accepted me into its Class of 1969. I probably would not have then seemed "well-rounded enough;" and would probably not have been seen then as a Columbia College student who would probably be able to eventually fill one of the tenor saxophone player positions in Columbia College's undergraduate marching band and concert band.
Because the person who interviewed me on Columbia's campus, prior to Columbia's decision to admit me, was both from Indiana and some kind of a music department instructor (whom I never bumped into again afterwards while attending Columbia), my impression is that the Columbia admissions office just expected me to mainly spend my time outside of class on Columbia's campus playing tenor saxophone in its band for four years. And, after graduating in 1969, just enrolling at Columbia Teachers College for a year, so that I could then teach high school social studies in the inner city public schools to support myself, at the same time I tried to "make it" as a playwright or writer (which is what I indicated on my admissions application were then my post-B.A. career plan).
Instead, of course, once I was on Columbia's campus as a freshman, I had no interest in being in Columbia College's marching band or concert band; and, also instead, in the second term of my sophomore year at Columbia College just discovered that Columbia University had secretly become an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank in 1960.
At Bayside, you were assigned a locker in the band room in which you could store your musical instrument during the week, like the locker in which I kept the saxophone I individually practiced on during my daily Band class periods each day, as a first-term sophomore. But students at Bayside did not have individual hallway lockers assigned to them like the Broad Ripple students did in the early 1960's.
The number of students who had previously played in their previous lower schools' bands before entering Bayside High School or who were newly interested in being in Bayside's school band was greater than the number of students who wished to be in Broad Ripple's band in early 1963. So there was a much greater need for a student who could play tenor saxophone in Broad Ripple's band than there had been in Bayside's band in the fall of 1962. And since I had shifted from taking weekly alto saxophone private lessons to taking tenor saxophone private lessons out of school during my 9th grade in Queens, one gain for me from transferring to Broad Ripple was that I was able to become part of my high school band more quickly than I would have been able to have done if I had continued to attend Bayside in 1963, 1964 and 1965.
Between the last month of my first term as a sophomore and the end of my second term as a sophomore at Broad Ripple, I was able to spend the last 45 minute period of the day playing tenor saxophone with the band; prior to finally officially becoming a full member of both Broad Ripple's marching band and its concert band between August 1963 and June 1964, during my junior year of high school.
Had I not been in Broad Ripple's high school band and, during my senior year, in Flushing High School's band, there's a good possibility that, even with Mrs. Griggs's letter of recommendation, Coulumbia College's admissions office would not have accepted me into its Class of 1969. I probably would not have then seemed "well-rounded enough;" and would probably not have been seen then as a Columbia College student who would probably be able to eventually fill one of the tenor saxophone player positions in Columbia College's undergraduate marching band and concert band.
Because the person who interviewed me on Columbia's campus, prior to Columbia's decision to admit me, was both from Indiana and some kind of a music department instructor (whom I never bumped into again afterwards while attending Columbia), my impression is that the Columbia admissions office just expected me to mainly spend my time outside of class on Columbia's campus playing tenor saxophone in its band for four years. And, after graduating in 1969, just enrolling at Columbia Teachers College for a year, so that I could then teach high school social studies in the inner city public schools to support myself, at the same time I tried to "make it" as a playwright or writer (which is what I indicated on my admissions application were then my post-B.A. career plan).
Instead, of course, once I was on Columbia's campus as a freshman, I had no interest in being in Columbia College's marching band or concert band; and, also instead, in the second term of my sophomore year at Columbia College just discovered that Columbia University had secretly become an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank in 1960.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 26
Besides not at least being somewhat racially integrated like Bayside High School had been in the Fall of 1962, Broad Ripple High School differed from Bayside H.S. in other ways. So the experience of attending Broad Ripple, as a high school student in 1963 and the Spring of 1964, differed from the experience of attending Bayside in the Fall of 1962.
Compared to Bayside, Broad Ripple was much less crowded with students, despite it being a 4-year high school of 9th-grade freshmen, 10th-grade sophomores, 11th-grade juniors and 12th-grade seniors. Within the Indianapolis public school system in the early 1960's, students attended a grammar school until the end of the 8th-grade and then began attending high school in the 9th-grade as freshmen. In New York City's public school system in the early 1960's, however, you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader and just spent only three years as a public high school student.
Unless you maybe went to one of the specialized elite public high schools (like Brooklyn Tech, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School, Hunter High School or Music and Art), a Catholic parochial high school or a public vocational high school in New York City, you first attended an elementary school until the end of the sixth grade and a junior high school until the end of the ninth grade. So if you were seeking either an academic high school diploma (that you needed to get if you planned to apply to college), a commercial high school diploma (if you just planned to enter the 9-to-5 skyscraper business office work world without looking to go to college) or a general high school diploma (if you just planned to get some kind of blue-collar factory job or join the U.S. military if you were a man, or just get married and have children rapidly if you were a woman), you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader.
Yet even though Broad Ripple H.S. included a freshman class of about 400 students, as well as sophomore, junior and senior classes of about 400 students each and Bayside H.S. only included sophomores, juniors and seniors, because Bayside was located in a much more heavily populated area of the United States--New York City's borough of Queens--than Indianapolis, in the early 1960's it had so many students attending the school that it was a "triple session" school.
What Bayside H.S. being a high school on "triple session" meant in the early 1960's was that some of Bayside's students began their school day at 8 a.m. or 8:15 a.m. in the morning in what was called "zero period," a second group of Bayside students began their school day at 9 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. in what was called "first period" and a third group of Bayside students began their school dat at 10:30 or 10:45 a.m. in what was called "third period." As a consequence, if you began your school day at zero period, your school day would end after 7th period at around 2:15 p.m., If you began your school day at first period, your school day would end at the end of the 8th period, at around 3 p.m. And if you began your school day at 3rd period, your school day wouldn't end until after the "10th period" at around 4:30 p.m..
In contrast, at Broad Ripple H.S., all students just reported at the same time to their first period class at 8:15 a.m. each day; and at Broad Ripple all the students were released from classes at the end of the 8th or 9th period by 3 p.m., at the same time.
Another difference between Bayside H.S. and Broad Ripple H.S. was that Bayside was so overcrowded with students in the early 1960's that a portion of each year's entering 10th-grade sophomore class at Bayside was assigned to attend classes as a group not inside the Bayside H.S. building, but in a different, separate building a few blocks away, that was called "The Annex."
Were it not for the fact that the Bayside H.S. administration clerks assumed that, since I had been enrolled in a group music class as a 9th-grader at Jr. H.S. 67 learning to play the cello, I also was going to want to be in a group music class at Bayside H.S. as a sophomore learning to play the cello well enough to become a member of the high school orchesta by my junior or senior year, I would have ended up spending my first term as a high school sophomore in Bayside's annex, and not in Bayside's main building.
So even though, by the time I entered Bayside H.S. as a sophomore in September 1962, I was now into the saxophone and not the cello, I felt happy that the assumption by the school administration clerk that I wanted to be still studying a string instrument in high school had enabled me to avoid being assigned to attend "the annex;" which I felt would just provide a sophomore year high school experience too much like still being in junior high school. And which would deny me the opportunity of having an individual program of classes, where I would have a greater chance of having different classmates each period than I would, if I just mostly moved from classroom to classroom each period with the same group of 30 classmates in "the annex."
Of course, as soon as I received my program card on the first day of high school, I got my program changed, in a way I no longer can recall. So, instead of being in a morning music group class studying cello, I was in a group band class practicing saxophone.
Yet, unluckily, during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside I was still one of the 10th-graders who began school at the 10:30 or 10:45 hour third period class and whose last 10th period class didn't end until around 4:30 p.m.. So starting to attend Broad Ripple in early 1963, where I reported for class at 8:00 or 8:15 a.m. each day and got freed from school by 3 p.m. each was was what I liked more; although the 10:30 or 10:45 start of my Bayside High school day did allow me to sleep an hour longer in the morning. Since I didn't have to catch one of the crowded NY Transit Authority city buses that picked up the Bayside H.S. sophomores, who lived in the Beech Hills and Deepdale garden apartment developments in my Douglaston-Little Neck neighborhood, for the 30 minute bus ride to Bayside H.S., until around 9:30 or 9:40 a.m..
At Bayside H.S., daily attendance was marked for each student during their 15-minute homeroom period; and when I attended Bayside the 15-minute sophomore homeroom period for all the sophomores who began classes in the third period, was located in the school's auditorium, rather than in a classroom. Each "homeroom teacher" was assigned to take the attendance of 4 or 5 rooms in which their "homeroom class" of around 30 students sat.
While I no longer can recall whether or not students had to report to a "homeroom" for attendance taking each day at Broad Ripple, I recall having to attend homeroom at Bayside for a reason other than it was in the school auditorium and not in a classroom: A white guy of Italian-American background named Alfred, whose assigned auditorium seat was next to mine because his last name also began with "F", who ad apparently attended Catholic parochial school for 8 years before entering Bayside H.S., apparently tried to ridicule me and another guy sitting in our row, who was also of Jewish religious background, by repeating our names aloud in an imitation stereotyped Yiddish accent a number of times. In a way that made me feel he was somewhat anti-Semitic on an inter-personal level.
Prior to sitting next to Alfred in my 10th-grade homeroom class at Bayside, I had never personally experienced even any hint of inter-personal anti- semitism during a day in the local public schools. Maybe because, until I entered the 10th grade, about 90 to 95 percent of the students in the public schools I had attended were also of Jewish religious background.
Compared to Bayside, Broad Ripple was much less crowded with students, despite it being a 4-year high school of 9th-grade freshmen, 10th-grade sophomores, 11th-grade juniors and 12th-grade seniors. Within the Indianapolis public school system in the early 1960's, students attended a grammar school until the end of the 8th-grade and then began attending high school in the 9th-grade as freshmen. In New York City's public school system in the early 1960's, however, you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader and just spent only three years as a public high school student.
Unless you maybe went to one of the specialized elite public high schools (like Brooklyn Tech, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School, Hunter High School or Music and Art), a Catholic parochial high school or a public vocational high school in New York City, you first attended an elementary school until the end of the sixth grade and a junior high school until the end of the ninth grade. So if you were seeking either an academic high school diploma (that you needed to get if you planned to apply to college), a commercial high school diploma (if you just planned to enter the 9-to-5 skyscraper business office work world without looking to go to college) or a general high school diploma (if you just planned to get some kind of blue-collar factory job or join the U.S. military if you were a man, or just get married and have children rapidly if you were a woman), you usually only entered a real public high school as a 10th-grader.
Yet even though Broad Ripple H.S. included a freshman class of about 400 students, as well as sophomore, junior and senior classes of about 400 students each and Bayside H.S. only included sophomores, juniors and seniors, because Bayside was located in a much more heavily populated area of the United States--New York City's borough of Queens--than Indianapolis, in the early 1960's it had so many students attending the school that it was a "triple session" school.
What Bayside H.S. being a high school on "triple session" meant in the early 1960's was that some of Bayside's students began their school day at 8 a.m. or 8:15 a.m. in the morning in what was called "zero period," a second group of Bayside students began their school day at 9 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. in what was called "first period" and a third group of Bayside students began their school dat at 10:30 or 10:45 a.m. in what was called "third period." As a consequence, if you began your school day at zero period, your school day would end after 7th period at around 2:15 p.m., If you began your school day at first period, your school day would end at the end of the 8th period, at around 3 p.m. And if you began your school day at 3rd period, your school day wouldn't end until after the "10th period" at around 4:30 p.m..
In contrast, at Broad Ripple H.S., all students just reported at the same time to their first period class at 8:15 a.m. each day; and at Broad Ripple all the students were released from classes at the end of the 8th or 9th period by 3 p.m., at the same time.
Another difference between Bayside H.S. and Broad Ripple H.S. was that Bayside was so overcrowded with students in the early 1960's that a portion of each year's entering 10th-grade sophomore class at Bayside was assigned to attend classes as a group not inside the Bayside H.S. building, but in a different, separate building a few blocks away, that was called "The Annex."
Were it not for the fact that the Bayside H.S. administration clerks assumed that, since I had been enrolled in a group music class as a 9th-grader at Jr. H.S. 67 learning to play the cello, I also was going to want to be in a group music class at Bayside H.S. as a sophomore learning to play the cello well enough to become a member of the high school orchesta by my junior or senior year, I would have ended up spending my first term as a high school sophomore in Bayside's annex, and not in Bayside's main building.
So even though, by the time I entered Bayside H.S. as a sophomore in September 1962, I was now into the saxophone and not the cello, I felt happy that the assumption by the school administration clerk that I wanted to be still studying a string instrument in high school had enabled me to avoid being assigned to attend "the annex;" which I felt would just provide a sophomore year high school experience too much like still being in junior high school. And which would deny me the opportunity of having an individual program of classes, where I would have a greater chance of having different classmates each period than I would, if I just mostly moved from classroom to classroom each period with the same group of 30 classmates in "the annex."
Of course, as soon as I received my program card on the first day of high school, I got my program changed, in a way I no longer can recall. So, instead of being in a morning music group class studying cello, I was in a group band class practicing saxophone.
Yet, unluckily, during my first term as a sophomore at Bayside I was still one of the 10th-graders who began school at the 10:30 or 10:45 hour third period class and whose last 10th period class didn't end until around 4:30 p.m.. So starting to attend Broad Ripple in early 1963, where I reported for class at 8:00 or 8:15 a.m. each day and got freed from school by 3 p.m. each was was what I liked more; although the 10:30 or 10:45 start of my Bayside High school day did allow me to sleep an hour longer in the morning. Since I didn't have to catch one of the crowded NY Transit Authority city buses that picked up the Bayside H.S. sophomores, who lived in the Beech Hills and Deepdale garden apartment developments in my Douglaston-Little Neck neighborhood, for the 30 minute bus ride to Bayside H.S., until around 9:30 or 9:40 a.m..
At Bayside H.S., daily attendance was marked for each student during their 15-minute homeroom period; and when I attended Bayside the 15-minute sophomore homeroom period for all the sophomores who began classes in the third period, was located in the school's auditorium, rather than in a classroom. Each "homeroom teacher" was assigned to take the attendance of 4 or 5 rooms in which their "homeroom class" of around 30 students sat.
While I no longer can recall whether or not students had to report to a "homeroom" for attendance taking each day at Broad Ripple, I recall having to attend homeroom at Bayside for a reason other than it was in the school auditorium and not in a classroom: A white guy of Italian-American background named Alfred, whose assigned auditorium seat was next to mine because his last name also began with "F", who ad apparently attended Catholic parochial school for 8 years before entering Bayside H.S., apparently tried to ridicule me and another guy sitting in our row, who was also of Jewish religious background, by repeating our names aloud in an imitation stereotyped Yiddish accent a number of times. In a way that made me feel he was somewhat anti-Semitic on an inter-personal level.
Prior to sitting next to Alfred in my 10th-grade homeroom class at Bayside, I had never personally experienced even any hint of inter-personal anti- semitism during a day in the local public schools. Maybe because, until I entered the 10th grade, about 90 to 95 percent of the students in the public schools I had attended were also of Jewish religious background.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 25
After the new year of 1963 began, my parents also brought me to first the Broad Ripple High School principal's office and then to the high school dean's office, on the first morning that school term continued; and, after about 15 minutes of conversing with Dean Jackson, they left the school.
Dean Jackson then quickly figured out which classes I would be put into during the last month of Broad Ripple's fall term, based on what subjects my mid-term report card from Bayside High School indicated that I had been taking in New York City. After next handing me a program card which indicated the particular class and room numbers that I was assigned to attend for each different day of the week, Dean Jackson then sent for his tall, well-dressed son, Keith.
Keith, who was both a member of the school's "Key Club" service organization (whose members were apparently selected in an undemocratic way, similar to how most fraternities and sororities selected their members, in that you couldn't become a member of the "Key Club" if the majority of members of the group didn't want you in their exclusive club for some reason) and a sophomore like I was. Shortly after he arrived in his father's office, Keith then gave me a guided orientation tour of the school's layout and showed me where my school locker would be, in a friendly way for about a half-hour; and then I began reporting to my assigned classes for the remainder of the day, after about the 3rd period of the school day.
In January 1963, along with the Indianapolis real estate industry and real estate agents' racially discriminatory unofficial policy of not allowing African-American families or individuals to rent or buy homes north of East 38th Street on Indianapolis's northeast side, there seemed to be a policy of de facto segregation with regard to which students could attend Broad Ripple High School.
Being part of a family that was white and not African-American, I was both able to live north of 38th Street on Indianapolis's northeast side in early 1963 and able to attend Broad Ripple, whose student body and teaching staff was then nearly 100 percent lily-white in early 1963. But, if my parents had not been apparently advised by the local white real estate agent, who rented them their half of the duplex private home where we lived near East 52nd Street and College Avenue, that Broad Ripple (which was located on Broad Ripple Avenue, northeast of where we then lived) was a better school academically than was Shortridge High School (which was located near 34th Street and North Meridian Street, southwest of where we lived), it's possible I would have ended up attending the more racially integrated Shortridge Hill during my sophomore and junior years of high school in Indiana in 1963 and 1964. Since high school students living on my particular block had the option of attending either Broad Ripple or Shortridge, based, officially, on the neighborhood's geographic location.
I had lived in a Northeast Queens neighborhood in the 1950's and first two years of the 1960's that had apparently been made racially segregated in an unofficial way by local real estate agents and real estate developers, whose residents (about 90 percent of whom were of assimilated Jewish religious ethnic background) were nearly all racially white, during my elementary and junior high school years. So it was only after graduating from 9th-grade at the then-nearly all white Louis Pasteur Jr. H.S. neighborhood school in June 1962, and then entering Bayside High School as a sophomore in September 1962, that I first attended a school with a more racially integrated student body, that wasn't also composed of such a high percentage of students who were of assimilated Jewish religious ethnic background.
But if my parents hadn't previously made the decision to enroll me in Broad Ripple H.S. rather than Shortridge H.S. when they first went out to Indianapolis to rent their half of the duplex house we ended up moving into in late 1962, I probably would have ended up, myself, choosing to attend the more racially integrated Shortridge High School. Especially if I had been told in advance that, unlike Bayside High School, Broad Ripple High School was still a lily-white high school in 1963.
Of course, since a major reason for me gaining admittance into Columbia College as part of its Class of 1969 was that the former Broad Ripple English teacher of mine to whom I wrote, in the first semester of my senior year at Flushing H.S. (after my family had moved back to New York City), asking her if she'd be kind enough to submit a teacher's letter of recommendation that Columbia College required all its applicants to get mailed to its admissions office, was apparently one of the Indiana "scouts" that Columbia relied on to recommend which Indiana applicants it would admit to Columbia College. Although I did not realize at this time that this English class teacher apparently then had a kind of special relationship to Columbia College's admissions office, when I asked her to submit the letter of recommendation that probably was what got me admitted to Columbia College.
So if I had attended Shortridge High School rather than Broad Ripple High School, when living in Indianapolis, the letter of recommendation that likely persuaded Columbia College to admit me to the Class of 1969 would never have been written; since I then would never have ever met Mrs. Griggs, the Broad Ripple H.S. English teacher, whose class I was in for one term during my sophomore year, who wrote the letter of recommendation. And since it turned out that I was the Columbia Class of 1969 member of Columbia SDS who first discovered in March 1967 that Columbia had secretly been an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank since 1960, it's possible that, if I had attended Shortridge instead of Broad Ripple in 1963 and 1964, the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt might not have happened; and late 1960's New Left Movement and SDS history might have developed in a different way, perhaps?
Yet a writer named Kurt Vonnegut had apparently attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis years before the early 1960's. But in the early 1960's I had no awareness that, if I ever developed any literary aspirations in future years, it perhaps would have been better to attend the racially integrated Shortridge high school rather than Broad Ripple for an additional reason; since attending Shortridge might have provided me with the future possibility that I'd be able to establish some kind of networking alumni connection with a published writer like Vonnegut, at some point.
Dean Jackson then quickly figured out which classes I would be put into during the last month of Broad Ripple's fall term, based on what subjects my mid-term report card from Bayside High School indicated that I had been taking in New York City. After next handing me a program card which indicated the particular class and room numbers that I was assigned to attend for each different day of the week, Dean Jackson then sent for his tall, well-dressed son, Keith.
Keith, who was both a member of the school's "Key Club" service organization (whose members were apparently selected in an undemocratic way, similar to how most fraternities and sororities selected their members, in that you couldn't become a member of the "Key Club" if the majority of members of the group didn't want you in their exclusive club for some reason) and a sophomore like I was. Shortly after he arrived in his father's office, Keith then gave me a guided orientation tour of the school's layout and showed me where my school locker would be, in a friendly way for about a half-hour; and then I began reporting to my assigned classes for the remainder of the day, after about the 3rd period of the school day.
In January 1963, along with the Indianapolis real estate industry and real estate agents' racially discriminatory unofficial policy of not allowing African-American families or individuals to rent or buy homes north of East 38th Street on Indianapolis's northeast side, there seemed to be a policy of de facto segregation with regard to which students could attend Broad Ripple High School.
Being part of a family that was white and not African-American, I was both able to live north of 38th Street on Indianapolis's northeast side in early 1963 and able to attend Broad Ripple, whose student body and teaching staff was then nearly 100 percent lily-white in early 1963. But, if my parents had not been apparently advised by the local white real estate agent, who rented them their half of the duplex private home where we lived near East 52nd Street and College Avenue, that Broad Ripple (which was located on Broad Ripple Avenue, northeast of where we then lived) was a better school academically than was Shortridge High School (which was located near 34th Street and North Meridian Street, southwest of where we lived), it's possible I would have ended up attending the more racially integrated Shortridge Hill during my sophomore and junior years of high school in Indiana in 1963 and 1964. Since high school students living on my particular block had the option of attending either Broad Ripple or Shortridge, based, officially, on the neighborhood's geographic location.
I had lived in a Northeast Queens neighborhood in the 1950's and first two years of the 1960's that had apparently been made racially segregated in an unofficial way by local real estate agents and real estate developers, whose residents (about 90 percent of whom were of assimilated Jewish religious ethnic background) were nearly all racially white, during my elementary and junior high school years. So it was only after graduating from 9th-grade at the then-nearly all white Louis Pasteur Jr. H.S. neighborhood school in June 1962, and then entering Bayside High School as a sophomore in September 1962, that I first attended a school with a more racially integrated student body, that wasn't also composed of such a high percentage of students who were of assimilated Jewish religious ethnic background.
But if my parents hadn't previously made the decision to enroll me in Broad Ripple H.S. rather than Shortridge H.S. when they first went out to Indianapolis to rent their half of the duplex house we ended up moving into in late 1962, I probably would have ended up, myself, choosing to attend the more racially integrated Shortridge High School. Especially if I had been told in advance that, unlike Bayside High School, Broad Ripple High School was still a lily-white high school in 1963.
Of course, since a major reason for me gaining admittance into Columbia College as part of its Class of 1969 was that the former Broad Ripple English teacher of mine to whom I wrote, in the first semester of my senior year at Flushing H.S. (after my family had moved back to New York City), asking her if she'd be kind enough to submit a teacher's letter of recommendation that Columbia College required all its applicants to get mailed to its admissions office, was apparently one of the Indiana "scouts" that Columbia relied on to recommend which Indiana applicants it would admit to Columbia College. Although I did not realize at this time that this English class teacher apparently then had a kind of special relationship to Columbia College's admissions office, when I asked her to submit the letter of recommendation that probably was what got me admitted to Columbia College.
So if I had attended Shortridge High School rather than Broad Ripple High School, when living in Indianapolis, the letter of recommendation that likely persuaded Columbia College to admit me to the Class of 1969 would never have been written; since I then would never have ever met Mrs. Griggs, the Broad Ripple H.S. English teacher, whose class I was in for one term during my sophomore year, who wrote the letter of recommendation. And since it turned out that I was the Columbia Class of 1969 member of Columbia SDS who first discovered in March 1967 that Columbia had secretly been an institutional member of the Pentagon's Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA] weapons research think-tank since 1960, it's possible that, if I had attended Shortridge instead of Broad Ripple in 1963 and 1964, the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt might not have happened; and late 1960's New Left Movement and SDS history might have developed in a different way, perhaps?
Yet a writer named Kurt Vonnegut had apparently attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis years before the early 1960's. But in the early 1960's I had no awareness that, if I ever developed any literary aspirations in future years, it perhaps would have been better to attend the racially integrated Shortridge high school rather than Broad Ripple for an additional reason; since attending Shortridge might have provided me with the future possibility that I'd be able to establish some kind of networking alumni connection with a published writer like Vonnegut, at some point.
Monday, June 17, 2019
On The Road In The 1970's: Part 24
A day or two after I telephoned the now-defunct Indianapolis Times' office, Mr. Evans, a very friendly white fellow in his mid-twenties, who was responsible for training and supervising the teenagers who delivered the newspaper to homes in my neighborhood each day, arrived at my family's rented portion of the duplex house in the afternoon, after 3:30. Only a few years after graduating from the all-male student-bodied (and still all-male student-bodied in 21st-century) Wabash College in Charlottesville, Indiana, Mr. Evans had gotten married in his early 20's; and in early 1963 was now responsible for supporting both his wife and their newly-born child.
Mr. Evans's friendly and warm Midwestern-accented personality seemed much more genuinely friendly than the personalities you'd tend to find in most New York City white men of his age with similar jobs on the East Coast, who tended to relate in a more gruff and impatient way to people they worked with in the 1950's and early 1960's. And besides relating to me in a very and friendly way, Mr. Evans also seemed to enjoy conversing for awhile in a non-sexist but warm and friendly way with my mother; before he, afterwards, led me outside and into his car, to show me how I should go about picking up my bundle of Indianapolis Times newspapers that the firm's newspaper delivery truck dropped off at the corner of College Avenue and North 52nd Street each afternoon and before dawn on Sunday mornings.
In her early 40's at this time, still considered very pretty and physically attractive by most men she encountered and, having grown up in Chicago, also possessing both a Midwestern accent and a friendly personality, my mother was probably someone whom Mr. Evans found both pleasant and interesting to converse with for awhile during his workday; and my mother seemed to also enjoy conversing for awhile with the younger man, since he was the type of man in his 20's who was able to converse with an older married woman he found attractive without making her feel uncomfortable and sexually harassed, or that he was flirting with her in an inappropriate way.
Besides driving me, on the first weekday afternoon we met, up and down College Avenue, Carrollton Avenue, Guilford Avenue and Winthrop Avenue, between North 49th Street and North 52nd Street (and across 49th, 50th, 51st and 52nd streets between these four avenues), and pointing out the houses on whose front porches I was to deliver the Indianapolis Times newspapers to each afternoon, Mr. Evans also drove me around on my newspaper route two other times.
The second time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was when he showed me how to collect the weekly newspaper subscription payments from the folks to whom I delivered the newspapers on my route. And the third time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was, before dawn, on the first early Sunday morning that I delivered the Sunday morning edition of the Indianapolis Times.
Many decades later, my most vivid memory of being driven around by Mr. Evans during my time as a newspaper delivery boy is of that initial Sunday morning time in Mr. Evans's car. For most of the hour that it took to deliver the Sunday newspapers to the homes of the 60 or so customers on my route, Mr. Evans's car was the only vehicle that was being driven on the completely deserted streets; and I was the only person walking on the street in the neighborhood during that whole hour I took copies of the newspaper in and out of Mr. Evans's car and dropped the newspapers in front of the subscribers' homes.
In the car during the hour, Mr. Evans kept the car radio on to make the time for him go by faster, while I went in and out of the car or while he drove me near the next house delivery destination on my newspaper route. And I can recall that the two pop hit songs that were played most during that morning in early 1963 were Steve Lawrence's 45 rpm vinyl recording of "Go Away Little Girl" and Peter Paul and Mary's recording of "Puff The Magic Dragon," in which Peter Yarrow's voice sung the lead on the song he had written.
But if anyone had said to me in early 1963 that, by the end of the decade, I would be writing the kind of protest folk songs, topical folk songs and love songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were recording and singing in the early 1960's, I would have looked at that person in disbelief. Although I played the tenor saxophone in early 1963, I had not yet developed any interest in learning how play the guitar. Nor had I yet discovered that I possessed any ability to create original folk song melodies and original protest folk song, topical folk song and love song lyrics similar to the kind of folk songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were then singing.
In early 1963, I still assumed that I would likely just spend my life just working as either a non-academic historian, a high school history teacher, some kind of newspaper journalist or some kind of writer of fictional novels someday; and the notion that I would end up spending so much of my leisure time during my life writing original folk songs, myself, had never ever crossed my mind.
After Mr. Evans quickly saw that I was a rapid learner, who could be relied on to both deliver the Indianapolis Times each day in a timely fashion and collect the money from the newspaper subscribers on my route with no problems, I did not have much more personal contact with him during the first 6 months of 1963, when I was a newspaper delivery boy in the second term of my sophomore year in high school. I no longer recall what the procedure was for me to transfer the portion of money each week that I collected which was due the Indianapolis Times to Mr. Evans; or how I informed Mr. Evans whether or not I needed more or less newspapers to be dropped of in the following week for my newspaper route.
It could be that he came by in his car while I was delivering the newspapers at an arranged regular late afternoon time on Thursday or Friday to quickly pick up the money I collected and find out if there were any changes in the number of newspapers I required for the following week. Or it could be that I just telephoned him at the Indianapolis Times office each week and mailed him a check equal to the percentage of what I had collected which the Indianapolis Times took, after I deducted my weekly salary and tips from the money I had collected.
During the six months I worked as a newspaper delivery boy in my neighborhood, 7 days a week, I used my bicycle while making deliveries by myself, rather than just delivering the newspapers while on foot. Filling up a newspaper delivery sac that draped over the rear of my bicycle and being able to get the newspapers onto the front porch and/or front doors of some houses by just heaving the folded-up newspapers, while still on my bicycle, was a much quicker way of getting done with my day's delivery task than delivering the newspapers by foot.
Over 50 years later, I can only recall the faces of just a few of the newspaper subscribers I collected from, because collecting money from newspaper subscribers on my route each week was like going around to houses or apartments in your neighborhood as a child on Halloween and saying "Trick or treat." You usually just spoke to the person who answered the door that you collected subcription money from for only a minute; and in some cases, if the subscriber paid you by the month for 4 weeks of deliveries, you might only see that subscriber for 6 minutes during the whole 6 months you delivered newspapers to that subscriber.
What I do recall is speaking to a white housewife, by the front door of a house on Carrollton Avenue, who seemed to be in her late 40's, who found it interesting that I had just moved to the neighborhood from New York City; since she, her husband and he daughter, who was in high school like I was, had just recently moved into the neighborhood from Cleveland, Ohio. In retrospect, I think she also spent some time conversing with me because she wanted to determine whether or not I might be the type of neighborhood high school guy her daughter might be interested in getting to know. But since I can't recall ever bumping into her daughter in school or in the neighborhood when I lived in Indianapolis, I don't know what was her final determination about me in early 1963.
I also recall a brief chat I had through the front doorway of a house on College Avenue, while making a collection, with an elderly white woman, who seemed to be in her late 60's, named Mrs. Schmidt, as well as collecting from a young married white woman, who seemed to be in her 20's, who was breastfeeding her newly arrived baby; and who lived with her husband and child in a small cottage in the backyard of the house that was adjacent to Winthrop Avenue. But that's all I can now remember of which people I delivered the Indianapolis Times to during the first 6 months of 1963. (end of part 24)
Mr. Evans's friendly and warm Midwestern-accented personality seemed much more genuinely friendly than the personalities you'd tend to find in most New York City white men of his age with similar jobs on the East Coast, who tended to relate in a more gruff and impatient way to people they worked with in the 1950's and early 1960's. And besides relating to me in a very and friendly way, Mr. Evans also seemed to enjoy conversing for awhile in a non-sexist but warm and friendly way with my mother; before he, afterwards, led me outside and into his car, to show me how I should go about picking up my bundle of Indianapolis Times newspapers that the firm's newspaper delivery truck dropped off at the corner of College Avenue and North 52nd Street each afternoon and before dawn on Sunday mornings.
In her early 40's at this time, still considered very pretty and physically attractive by most men she encountered and, having grown up in Chicago, also possessing both a Midwestern accent and a friendly personality, my mother was probably someone whom Mr. Evans found both pleasant and interesting to converse with for awhile during his workday; and my mother seemed to also enjoy conversing for awhile with the younger man, since he was the type of man in his 20's who was able to converse with an older married woman he found attractive without making her feel uncomfortable and sexually harassed, or that he was flirting with her in an inappropriate way.
Besides driving me, on the first weekday afternoon we met, up and down College Avenue, Carrollton Avenue, Guilford Avenue and Winthrop Avenue, between North 49th Street and North 52nd Street (and across 49th, 50th, 51st and 52nd streets between these four avenues), and pointing out the houses on whose front porches I was to deliver the Indianapolis Times newspapers to each afternoon, Mr. Evans also drove me around on my newspaper route two other times.
The second time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was when he showed me how to collect the weekly newspaper subscription payments from the folks to whom I delivered the newspapers on my route. And the third time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was, before dawn, on the first early Sunday morning that I delivered the Sunday morning edition of the Indianapolis Times.
Many decades later, my most vivid memory of being driven around by Mr. Evans during my time as a newspaper delivery boy is of that initial Sunday morning time in Mr. Evans's car. For most of the hour that it took to deliver the Sunday newspapers to the homes of the 60 or so customers on my route, Mr. Evans's car was the only vehicle that was being driven on the completely deserted streets; and I was the only person walking on the street in the neighborhood during that whole hour I took copies of the newspaper in and out of Mr. Evans's car and dropped the newspapers in front of the subscribers' homes.
In the car during the hour, Mr. Evans kept the car radio on to make the time for him go by faster, while I went in and out of the car or while he drove me near the next house delivery destination on my newspaper route. And I can recall that the two pop hit songs that were played most during that morning in early 1963 were Steve Lawrence's 45 rpm vinyl recording of "Go Away Little Girl" and Peter Paul and Mary's recording of "Puff The Magic Dragon," in which Peter Yarrow's voice sung the lead on the song he had written.
But if anyone had said to me in early 1963 that, by the end of the decade, I would be writing the kind of protest folk songs, topical folk songs and love songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were recording and singing in the early 1960's, I would have looked at that person in disbelief. Although I played the tenor saxophone in early 1963, I had not yet developed any interest in learning how play the guitar. Nor had I yet discovered that I possessed any ability to create original folk song melodies and original protest folk song, topical folk song and love song lyrics similar to the kind of folk songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were then singing.
In early 1963, I still assumed that I would likely just spend my life just working as either a non-academic historian, a high school history teacher, some kind of newspaper journalist or some kind of writer of fictional novels someday; and the notion that I would end up spending so much of my leisure time during my life writing original folk songs, myself, had never ever crossed my mind.
After Mr. Evans quickly saw that I was a rapid learner, who could be relied on to both deliver the Indianapolis Times each day in a timely fashion and collect the money from the newspaper subscribers on my route with no problems, I did not have much more personal contact with him during the first 6 months of 1963, when I was a newspaper delivery boy in the second term of my sophomore year in high school. I no longer recall what the procedure was for me to transfer the portion of money each week that I collected which was due the Indianapolis Times to Mr. Evans; or how I informed Mr. Evans whether or not I needed more or less newspapers to be dropped of in the following week for my newspaper route.
It could be that he came by in his car while I was delivering the newspapers at an arranged regular late afternoon time on Thursday or Friday to quickly pick up the money I collected and find out if there were any changes in the number of newspapers I required for the following week. Or it could be that I just telephoned him at the Indianapolis Times office each week and mailed him a check equal to the percentage of what I had collected which the Indianapolis Times took, after I deducted my weekly salary and tips from the money I had collected.
During the six months I worked as a newspaper delivery boy in my neighborhood, 7 days a week, I used my bicycle while making deliveries by myself, rather than just delivering the newspapers while on foot. Filling up a newspaper delivery sac that draped over the rear of my bicycle and being able to get the newspapers onto the front porch and/or front doors of some houses by just heaving the folded-up newspapers, while still on my bicycle, was a much quicker way of getting done with my day's delivery task than delivering the newspapers by foot.
Over 50 years later, I can only recall the faces of just a few of the newspaper subscribers I collected from, because collecting money from newspaper subscribers on my route each week was like going around to houses or apartments in your neighborhood as a child on Halloween and saying "Trick or treat." You usually just spoke to the person who answered the door that you collected subcription money from for only a minute; and in some cases, if the subscriber paid you by the month for 4 weeks of deliveries, you might only see that subscriber for 6 minutes during the whole 6 months you delivered newspapers to that subscriber.
What I do recall is speaking to a white housewife, by the front door of a house on Carrollton Avenue, who seemed to be in her late 40's, who found it interesting that I had just moved to the neighborhood from New York City; since she, her husband and he daughter, who was in high school like I was, had just recently moved into the neighborhood from Cleveland, Ohio. In retrospect, I think she also spent some time conversing with me because she wanted to determine whether or not I might be the type of neighborhood high school guy her daughter might be interested in getting to know. But since I can't recall ever bumping into her daughter in school or in the neighborhood when I lived in Indianapolis, I don't know what was her final determination about me in early 1963.
I also recall a brief chat I had through the front doorway of a house on College Avenue, while making a collection, with an elderly white woman, who seemed to be in her late 60's, named Mrs. Schmidt, as well as collecting from a young married white woman, who seemed to be in her 20's, who was breastfeeding her newly arrived baby; and who lived with her husband and child in a small cottage in the backyard of the house that was adjacent to Winthrop Avenue. But that's all I can now remember of which people I delivered the Indianapolis Times to during the first 6 months of 1963. (end of part 24)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)