See, it was all about me, really...
I had always been the tallest kid in my class. And the smartest. The best singer. The best looking. The most popular. The most charismatic.
I remember the first day of Kindergarten, 1958. (Ok, for me it was Round Two of Kindergarten. My mother had tried to start me in 57, when I was almost 5. We lived across the street (albeit a very busy street called "The Highway") from the school. My mother walked me across the street and into the classroom. About an hour in, I was playing with some trucks and then this lady says Ok, come on over here into this circle. I mean, I'm having fun here, lady! In the rush of kids putting things down and finding a place in the circle I got up and left the room. I went out the back door of the school and down the driveway and across the busy street, opened my front door and went about playing. My mother nearly had a heart attack. What are you doing here?!?! Playing. Why aren't you in school??? That lady told me I couldn't play anymore. I figured, clear thinking 4 year old that I was, why the hell should I be here playing with somebody else's toys when I could be playing at home with my own toys without this lady telling me what to do? Needless to say, my mother and the teacher decided I "wasn't quite ready" for Kindergarten that year...) There was this kid. He came to school on the first day clutching a really cool looking Mexican coin, 10 pesos. It had Mayan symbols on it. He was showing it around. I coveted it.
Well, without me asking for it, he comes up to me and gives it to me. He says I can keep it. You sure? Yeah, keep it. I was amazed - why would this kid give up his prized possession to me, without me even asking or it? I also got the message that there was something special about me... (I still have it to this day...)
I was an American, and Italian and a Catholic. Upon meeting my grandfather's new wife (my Grandmother had died in 55) in 57, she told me, I introduced myself by saying "I'm a 'Talian boy - best kind there is!" Italians had the best food, we had Columbus, we had Sinatra, Connie Francis, Perry Como, Mario Lanza, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Joe Bellino, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Pepitone, the Roman Empire and the Pope. For some reason, other kids in school treated me with a kind of fearful respect, like I was dangerous or something. (You didn't talk about organized crime in those days, if you were Italian, particularly in a family that was proud of its progress in this country in the legal and honorable spheres, so I had no clue about the Mafia.)
Later I found out about the Roman Empire, how it lasted 2000 years, how it not just conquered the world, it civilized it. How everybody conquered was better off for it. And all this Latin stuff - in Church, on buildings, even on coins ("E pluribus unum") came from the Romans who, of course, were Italian boys, just like me - best kind there is!
I liked reading encylopedias and almanacs, and they said Catholicism was the largest religion on Earth. We had a cool Pope, John XXIII. The nuns told us ours was the only religion that came directly from Jesus himself, via Peter and all the subsequent popes - an unbroken skein. We had the best looking and biggest churches around. We were the best.
And being American - we hadn't lost a war, and those we did fight (like "THE War", WWII, the big one) we had to, and we did for good causes - proclaim liberty (Revolution), preserve liberty (1812), free the slaves (Civil War), stop them bad Germans from doing bad things TWICE, stop Communism in its tracks. And then, we would rebuild our enemies countries, be it Reconstruction or the Marshall Plan.
We were the first and oldest democracy, and we had the best of everything - all the sports records were ours, all the Nobel prizes, all the wealth. My family's history was like virtually everyone else's I knew - grandparents came out of poverty from somewhere else - Italy, Poland, Ireland, Russia - and now look at us: We have running water in nice houses with cars and TV! All because America is a great place, not like the "old country". God shed his grace on us!
And it was all me! Italian, Catholic, American. Tallest, smartest, best looking, best athlete, most popular...
By the time I was in 8th Grade, I was tall (5'11"), star of the basketball team (24 pts, 20 rebs a game), star of the track team (220, long jump, high jump, shot put), number one in my class academically, and so popular that I hung out with HIGH SCHOOL KIDS. (Of course, as I mentioned before, this was largely due to my ability to reliably get served...)
There was music, too. In sixth grade, at a local fire department wet-down, I got up out of the crowd and went up to the band and had them play the Rascals' "Good Lovin'", and I sang it - brought the place down! By 7th grade I had a group which played at all the school functions - talent shows, assemblies, dances, graduations - and we always made the crowd go wild! Add that to the list - Rock star!
Ever since 6th grade I called perhaps 10 girls a night, flirting, sweet talking. I always played the field, such as it was. Girls would giggle and talk amongst themselves about me, I knew it. They played up to me. I dug it.
By freshman year, in the fall of 1967, I was way too cool for school, as it were. I was very popular at dances. I had lots of girls hanging with and on me. I had developed what amounted to a cult following. My sister called them my "harem".
I would go steady from time to time but only for effect - you know, only the best looking ones du jour. Helped my reputation. Breaking up was not hard to do, because there were always dozens of others waiting in line to comfort (so to speak) you.
I had other guys, in awe of me, coming up to me telling me this girl was interested in me, that girl wanted to "sleep" (whatever THAT meant) with me. I would handle the news so cooly, so confidently. The guys dug it - I was their hero. Popular with the older guys, popular with the ladies.
I even had girls who were years older than I chasing after me. That year, in 1968, I took up with a girl from another school, who was really hot and hot for me. Things were going great until by accident it was discovered that her father was my geometry teacher... Another time, a girl from the senior HS came over to the Junior HS where I was a frosh and found me waiting to see the Vice Principal (for disciplinary reasons, of course). She was shocked to find out I actually was a student there, a freshman! You could see her blush with embarrassment...
In sum, the deal was, I was the center of the universe. I was the baddest of the bad. And I knew it. Life was good.
I was a despicable, conceited little twerp.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Had
Here's another backgrounder related to the Graduate one. Again, this is not about 1968 per se, but then again, it is...
From Sara Robinson (an American-expat in Canada, essentially a Canadian) in "Born-Again Americans and That Old-Time (Civil) Religion" on http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/born-again-americans-and-old-time-civil-religion
[Bellah [sociologist Robert Bellah, probably in his book The Broken Covenant] writes: “Once in each of the last three centuries America has faced a time of trial, a time of testing so severe that...the existence of our nation has been called in question...the spiritual glue that had bound the nation together in previous years had simply collapsed."
For the current cycle, the glue started coming loose during the 1960s -- and the resulting collapse was the defining event of the decade. The Boomers, who had been raised deep in the cradle of postwar patriotism and inculcated early with the themes of American greatness and exceptionalism, were brought up short by some brutal realities almost as soon as they reached adulthood. Between the lies that fed the Vietnam War and the intractable injustice evident in the civil rights battles being fought at home, they confronted the sickening realization that the institutions they'd been taught to trust were deeply corrupt, and that the civil religion was being used to justify actions that ran completely contrary to the high ideals they'd been told their country stood for.
They'd been had -- by their parents, by their teachers, and by every single institution in society. Their response: "Don't trust anyone over 30." Don't trust any institutions run by them -- schools, churches, governments, professions, any of it. And especially: Don't trust the civil religion, which is nothing more than a pack of establishment lies.]
From Sara Robinson (an American-expat in Canada, essentially a Canadian) in "Born-Again Americans and That Old-Time (Civil) Religion" on http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/born-again-americans-and-old-time-civil-religion
[Bellah [sociologist Robert Bellah, probably in his book The Broken Covenant] writes: “Once in each of the last three centuries America has faced a time of trial, a time of testing so severe that...the existence of our nation has been called in question...the spiritual glue that had bound the nation together in previous years had simply collapsed."
For the current cycle, the glue started coming loose during the 1960s -- and the resulting collapse was the defining event of the decade. The Boomers, who had been raised deep in the cradle of postwar patriotism and inculcated early with the themes of American greatness and exceptionalism, were brought up short by some brutal realities almost as soon as they reached adulthood. Between the lies that fed the Vietnam War and the intractable injustice evident in the civil rights battles being fought at home, they confronted the sickening realization that the institutions they'd been taught to trust were deeply corrupt, and that the civil religion was being used to justify actions that ran completely contrary to the high ideals they'd been told their country stood for.
They'd been had -- by their parents, by their teachers, and by every single institution in society. Their response: "Don't trust anyone over 30." Don't trust any institutions run by them -- schools, churches, governments, professions, any of it. And especially: Don't trust the civil religion, which is nothing more than a pack of establishment lies.]
Graduate
Technically, this is not about 1968, per se. The movie "The Graduate" came out in 67, altho it did win the Academy Award for Best Director for that year, in ceremonies held in April 68. Nonetheless, my cousin read this excerpt of an email I wrote to a young person about the movie and encouraged me to post it here, which, in deference to him, I will.
Anyway, it does serve a a backgrounder...
Here it is:
"The Graduate is one of the most iconic films of the 60s. Altho it came out in 67 (the last "nice" year) it was actually filmed in 66 and written in 65, just as the "agonizing reappraisals" were beginning. This is before the Summer of Love, before Hippies, before Tune in, Turn On, Drop Out, before Nam really got going and before Newark/Detroit. JUST before.
Benjamin's parents' generation represent The American Dream - nice house, pool, money, comfort - and its dark side: ennui, desperation, hopelessness. It is no accident that Benjamin contemplates this in the pool, underwater, floating, directionless. That's where it all leads to. Drowning...
(In those days, having a pool was a big, big status symbol. Only the well off had them. Around that time, gratia largely to Zappa, it became a symbol, particularly on the West Coast, of all that was wrong with suburban surfeit and despair.)
(In fact, if you have never heard it, you might want to listen to "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" by Zappa on the "Absolutely Free" album, which not so ironically came out right at the same time. That whole album is a scathing satire/critique of the whole desperation and meaninglessness of the material American Dream...)
Elaine and Benjamin's lives are all laid out for them - best schools (Berkeley, Ivy), comfort, connections, privilege - but all around them all they see is desperation - embodied (literally!) by Mrs Robinson, the dark underbelly of it all.
Bullshit ("I have one word for you - PLASTICS" (Now, hows THAT for getting hit over the head with symbolism??) (Which reminds me, listen to "Plastic People" on that same Zappa album) (Zappa, BTW, was from LA, just like where the Graduate takes place...)) reigns everywhere. And duplicity - Mrs Robinson with Benjamin, Elaine with Benjamin, Benjamin with Mr Robinson, etc.
Elaine and Benjamin represent a literal and symbolic running away, escape from all that. Again, we have symbolism - the older generation is trapped in the church with its own cross. E & B don't ride off in his Alpha Romeo - another symbol of decadent, meaningless wealth - but instead take the bus.
The final scene, as you astutely mention, is ALL ABOUT "Now what?" and this too is symbolic, as they sit in the back of the bus (sound familiar) with the great unwashed masses, contemplating fleetingly their triumph and having no clue what to replace their rejected, all-set-up lives with.
If that ain't the 60s I don't know what is!
I don't think many people resonate with the symbolic power of the movie any more because if you didn't live with what came before the 60s you have no clue how stifling and desperate and depressing it was for many if not most people.
You got all the personal stuff, but not very much of the symbolic stuff, that I can tell, anyway. And not surprisingly. You, right now, in your life, have much more in common with Benjamin that Elaine. It's hard to communicate this to young women, but if that were 1957, Elaine's life was done. Fully determined. Fully figured out. She marries that guy right out of college (as did I and most of my cousins, BTW...), They will settle down in a house in an affluent suburb. She'll have kids, join the Junior League, have cocktails with the "ladies who lunch" (cf Sondheim's "Company", another period piece of the time - check it out - actually, I have a tape of a recent production where all the cast play musical instruments, very cool. I told my daughter I'd digitize it and send it to her. If so, I'll send it to you as well...), have cocktails at the end of the day with an aloof and distracted hubby by the pool and leading a life of quiet desperation...
And Benjamin? Join the firm. Make the bucks. Pork the secretary. Have cocktails by the pool at the end of the day with a bored and depressed (and probably medicated) wife and leading a life of quiet desperation...
All laid out. Cut and dried. No surprises.
Say what you will about the 60s but having lived thru the 50s and 60s and subsequently the 70s (ugh!) and 80s (double ugh!!), I will take the 60s any day, riots and Nam and the whole magilla, because there was at least the hope that things could be different.
I would take sitting in the back of the bus with no clue as to what to do next over a predetermined sentence of a life. Any day."
Anyway, it does serve a a backgrounder...
Here it is:
"The Graduate is one of the most iconic films of the 60s. Altho it came out in 67 (the last "nice" year) it was actually filmed in 66 and written in 65, just as the "agonizing reappraisals" were beginning. This is before the Summer of Love, before Hippies, before Tune in, Turn On, Drop Out, before Nam really got going and before Newark/Detroit. JUST before.
Benjamin's parents' generation represent The American Dream - nice house, pool, money, comfort - and its dark side: ennui, desperation, hopelessness. It is no accident that Benjamin contemplates this in the pool, underwater, floating, directionless. That's where it all leads to. Drowning...
(In those days, having a pool was a big, big status symbol. Only the well off had them. Around that time, gratia largely to Zappa, it became a symbol, particularly on the West Coast, of all that was wrong with suburban surfeit and despair.)
(In fact, if you have never heard it, you might want to listen to "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" by Zappa on the "Absolutely Free" album, which not so ironically came out right at the same time. That whole album is a scathing satire/critique of the whole desperation and meaninglessness of the material American Dream...)
Elaine and Benjamin's lives are all laid out for them - best schools (Berkeley, Ivy), comfort, connections, privilege - but all around them all they see is desperation - embodied (literally!) by Mrs Robinson, the dark underbelly of it all.
Bullshit ("I have one word for you - PLASTICS" (Now, hows THAT for getting hit over the head with symbolism??) (Which reminds me, listen to "Plastic People" on that same Zappa album) (Zappa, BTW, was from LA, just like where the Graduate takes place...)) reigns everywhere. And duplicity - Mrs Robinson with Benjamin, Elaine with Benjamin, Benjamin with Mr Robinson, etc.
Elaine and Benjamin represent a literal and symbolic running away, escape from all that. Again, we have symbolism - the older generation is trapped in the church with its own cross. E & B don't ride off in his Alpha Romeo - another symbol of decadent, meaningless wealth - but instead take the bus.
The final scene, as you astutely mention, is ALL ABOUT "Now what?" and this too is symbolic, as they sit in the back of the bus (sound familiar) with the great unwashed masses, contemplating fleetingly their triumph and having no clue what to replace their rejected, all-set-up lives with.
If that ain't the 60s I don't know what is!
I don't think many people resonate with the symbolic power of the movie any more because if you didn't live with what came before the 60s you have no clue how stifling and desperate and depressing it was for many if not most people.
You got all the personal stuff, but not very much of the symbolic stuff, that I can tell, anyway. And not surprisingly. You, right now, in your life, have much more in common with Benjamin that Elaine. It's hard to communicate this to young women, but if that were 1957, Elaine's life was done. Fully determined. Fully figured out. She marries that guy right out of college (as did I and most of my cousins, BTW...), They will settle down in a house in an affluent suburb. She'll have kids, join the Junior League, have cocktails with the "ladies who lunch" (cf Sondheim's "Company", another period piece of the time - check it out - actually, I have a tape of a recent production where all the cast play musical instruments, very cool. I told my daughter I'd digitize it and send it to her. If so, I'll send it to you as well...), have cocktails at the end of the day with an aloof and distracted hubby by the pool and leading a life of quiet desperation...
And Benjamin? Join the firm. Make the bucks. Pork the secretary. Have cocktails by the pool at the end of the day with a bored and depressed (and probably medicated) wife and leading a life of quiet desperation...
All laid out. Cut and dried. No surprises.
Say what you will about the 60s but having lived thru the 50s and 60s and subsequently the 70s (ugh!) and 80s (double ugh!!), I will take the 60s any day, riots and Nam and the whole magilla, because there was at least the hope that things could be different.
I would take sitting in the back of the bus with no clue as to what to do next over a predetermined sentence of a life. Any day."
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Wine
Down in New Orleans where everything's fine
All them people just sockin' down wine
Drinkin' wine is their delight
And when they start drinkin' start fightin' all night
Bustin' out windows and breakin' down doors
Guzzlin' down a gallon and shoutin' for more.
Now you got a nickel, I got a dime,
Let's get together and buy us some wine!
Some by a pint, some buy a quart
But if you buy a half gallon you're playin' it smart
Drinkin' wine, wine, wine, hey buddy -
Pass that bottle to me!
From "A Long Time Comin'" album of The Electric Flag, released March 1968
I've always had what you might call a complex relationship with wine. I've been drinking it since before conscious memory. My grandfather, Gavino Villapiano "the elder", as it were, made wine in the basement, and I, as his namesake out of 17 grandchildren, had the honor of being a taster, or partner in crime or just object of his amusement. "Non lascia lu bev'", my grandmother would call down from the kitchen, Don't let him drink any! "Shoo, shoo" the old man would say in broken English, then sneak me a drink. Even still, my grandmother allowed me to have wine on Sundays after church with the "gavadeel", the homemade cavatelli, as long as it was watered down with, well, water... Even my mom approved.
I got "faced" the first time when I was 12, in 1965, at my great aunt and uncle's anniversary party, I believe their 50th. My cousin, who was a year older than I, joined me. Wine didn't play a role - the multicolored cordials did the trick. He got sick as a dog. I "held my liquor", but the next morning my stomach felt like it was the size of a pea and hurt like hell. But it was clear that it was cool to get drunk, so when the social opportunity presented itself in the fall of '67, I took full advantage.
I was 14, but 5'11" and was shaving a full beard which made me look older, a lot older, than the 15 and 16 year olds I was hanging with. I was the only one who could get reliably served. [Ed Note: I was never "carded" until I was 55. Really! This year! Such is the CYA nature of our society nowadays. I'm so clearly over 18 it's a joke, like times 3...] I could go into any bar or "package goods" store and buy whatever I wanted. One time the guys I was singing with and I went to hear our idol Nicky Addeo perform at the Banjo Palace in Long Branch NJ in early October 1967. They all were stopped at the door. I milled right in. And I was the youngest by 2 full years!
Despite my obvious ability to pass, money was still an issue. Altho I could easily buy bourbon or vodka or gin, they were pricey for a 14 year old with (or without) a job. Wine, on the other hand, was cheap - you could get a pint for less than a buck, and get just as drunk as on a six pack, but for half the price.
Of course, we're not talking Chateau Neuf du Pape here. We're talking Thunderbird, Ripple, Boone's Farm. Classic rotgut. Had you seen me with a siphon in my hand you'd swear they were gasoline. There was one called Twister that was peppermint flavor and actually tasted like mouthwash. Nonetheless, this is what we could afford and it did the job. You got high. We got high. Our singing group drank so much cheap wine we were thinking about calling ourselves the Four Roses.
And of course it made you sick. You'd guzzle it (we drank on a path in a field formerly used for Ku Klux Klan rallies in the 30s, oh yeah, up north, that had tall grass, and as it got cold, you drank faster), get a buzz on for an hour or two, go to a CYO dance, spin around, get in a rumble and then go outside and puke your guts out, and I mean that literally. Many times I swore I was going to throw up my stomach right out of my body, I was puking so hard.
So it was with great interest when, right after Christmas, I overheard my older cousin (my drinking compadre, just a year older, but taking biology) mention that all wine was was grape juice that had been fermented by yeast. Hmmm...
I got thinking... How much is grape juice? Welch's Concord Grape juice in 1968 was pretty cheap, like 65 cents for a half gallon. Yeast. 15 cents a package, max. For like 80 cents you could make wine, and have twice as much! And you knew what was in it!
I did a little research. Seems like you could use a big glass bottle, stopper it up, run a tube thru the stopper and into a glass of water to allow the gasses of fermentation (CO2) to pass out of the bottle without letting air in. Sounds doable...
I must've had an allowance in those days. (I had had a paper route in 7th and 8th grade for a year as I saved up $100 to buy an electric guitar. But once I had that amount I dropped the route like a hot potato, so I hadn't earned any money for over a year by this time.) Like, $1.50 a week or something like that. Nonetheless, I scrimped up enough money and went to the local hobby store. I bought stoppers, tubing. I got my hands on an apple cider bottle. Conscientious little JD that I was, I boiled everything, even the gallon bottle, in a big corn pot. Then I bought my 80 cents worth of ingredients and put the "still" together and let nature take its course.
I had no idea what to expect, how long the fermentation process would take. I knew it was less than a year, less than six months, because my grandfather used to make wine every year (until he died in 1960). I thought, a month, maybe?
Since this was not gonna be an overnight thing, I needed some secure location for my fermenting. The cellar was the obvious candidate for fermentation, but it sure as hell wasn't secure, with the washing machine and dryer located there, as well as the cupboard, which was visited virtually every day, several times a day.
Turns out I lived in a post war ticky tacky development Cape Cod style house, and back in '61 my father had finished off the upstairs so we could expand from a 4 room house to a 6 roomer. My sister and I were the beneficiaries, with her getting the east room and me the west. Finishing off the attic meant that there would be eaves on each side of the room where the roof slanted to the top of the first floor. These places were used as storage or left empty. They were not heated, but lay under the asbestos roof and next to the new bedrooms, so they were effectively the same temp in the winter as the basement would be. And much, much more secure. NOBODY went into the eaves.
My sister was in her freshman year at college, so I had the entire upstairs all to myself. The eaves would indeed be the perfect location for my incipient winery.
Thus armed with my equipment and ingredients, and a flashlight, I went into the south eave next to my room and set up the operation. It was quite simple - dump a couple of pints of Welch's into the gallon bottle, stir in the Fleishmann's Dry Active Yeast, stopper up the bottle, run the tubing into a nearby glass of water. Then wait.
For a few days nothing seemed to be happening. I began to wonder, is this really the way wine is made? Then I feared the eaves were too cold, it being winter and all. But it didn't feel cold in there... It was a frustrating few days...
Then, nearly a week gone by, I woke up and opened the eaves opening panel to discover the water in the glass was sizzling - bubbles were coming out of the tubing into the water and escaping into the air above the glass. It was a happy Fizzies party, like in the 50s! A wonderful sight to behold.
A few days later I was in my room, dreaming... The CYO dances were on Saturday nights, and this week I was pumped with anticipation. I had dreams that the wine would be just like my grandfather's - dry, smooth, full bodied and potent, enough to get your buzz on but never to make you sick like that crap you bought in the store. I had inherited my parents' Depression-era cheapness, er, values, and was thinking about all the money I was saving.
The rate the fermentation was proceeding it looked like I had a good shot at being able to drink it soon. Once the bubbles stopped. They had gotten more steady and larger. I could just hear it in the middle of the night, comforting like a heartbeat... Wow! I can get smashed and not have to puke my guts out, and save money to boot! This was great!
My father worked two jobs - on the railroad from 5am to 1:30pm, and then at night from 5pm to 9:30. He had originally taken the second job in 1958 to make up for his blunder of getting aluminum siding on the house, which he later congratulated himself for, it being more insulating and all. He had it paid off a few years later, and by 68 he was doing it more as a pastime than out of economic need. In the interim Mom had gotten a teaching degree and become a teacher. Her income more than made up for the difference, but it also took her out many evenings, as she strove for her masters and played an active role in teacher organizations. So rather than "sit around and do nothing", the old man continued to work most nights.
Round about 11pm, I've already turned out the lights, he calls up to me. Hmm. That's weird. He NEVER calls up to me, especially this late. Especially with the lights off.
"What?" Monosyllabic speech is the preferred adolescent dialect when dealing with parents.
"Come on down here a minute, willya?"
I didn't answer but made sure I didn't hurry, either. His tone of voice wasn't angry, so I wasn't worried. My grades were passable by his standards - as long as you were not flunking out and weren't in trouble with the cops, you were okay in his book.
I ambled downstairs.
"C'mere for a minute." He didn't look up but sensed that I had descended. He was in the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling. I walked into the kitchen. As soon as I came in he stopped me and (preventatively) hushed me at the same time. "You hear that?"
We stood in the kitchen. The TV was off. The clock was electric and soundless. There was a faint electrical buzz emitted by the ca. 1952 circular neon light that ill-luminated the room. And there was also an adumbrating pulse, beating with regularity like the heart of some great beast who had devoured both of us whole, we now in its stomach.
Bloop! Bloop! Bloop!
The kitchen was located in the southwest corner of the first floor. Directly underneath the south eaves next to my room. Not only were you the closest to the fermenting bottle works aside from my bedroom, the bare plywood floor upon which the still rested that formed the ceiling of the kitchen actually amplified the sound. It was unmistakable and LOUD.
Bloop! BLOOP! BLOOP!!!
"Hear what, pop?" It was my only defense.
"That! Hear that? That sound - THAT!"
I paused pensively, for effect. I tried to look as earnest as possible, though I felt a small trickle of sweat roll down the back of my neck. I looked up, looked at him, looked up again.
"You mean that buzz? The buzz that's comin' from the light?" I pointed, as if there were more than one cheesy Fifties fixture in the room.
"No! Listen!" He paused to make sure I could hear it without mistake. "Hear it? Bloop bloop bloop bloop... " He egged me on with his hand in that circular motion that means, you know...
"I don't hear any bloop, pop..." I was really good at sincere. I had been a no trouble kid, as opposed to my sister, so it was believable. He musta thought for a second that I was losing my hearing or he was losing his mind. But then he got back to the issue.
He turned around and turned on the faucet. He let it run for a second. The blooping continued. He ran it for a few more seconds. Still there. He opened the doors of the cabinets under the sink. He listened intently. Having given up on asking me if I heard it, he answered for me. "I hear a goddamned bloop!"
He picked up the wrench that lay in a small Tupperware-knockoff tub under the sink and began tapping one of the pipes. Bloop bloop. Now the other. Bloop bloop. He slumped a little. "I'll be goddamned..."
He got up and pushed me aside, and went down into the basement. I didn't dare follow. He went over to the pipes connecting the washer, right below the kitchen. Tap tap! Bloop bloop! Tap tap tap! Bloop bloop bloop!
I was gazing blankly at the open doors under the sink, trying to come up with an explanation when he would finally go upstairs and locate the source of his irritation, when suddenly I got an idea - there, directly in front of my eyes, was a sponge. A sponge! That's it!
Clearly the blooping was coming from the glass of water releasing the big bubbles. The glass was sitting on the naked plywood floor, which was serving as a resonator. If I can place the glass on top of the sponge it might soften the bubble action and muffle the sound...
Sponges in those days were sold rigid - you had to get them wet. I quickly grabbed the turgid sponge package, bit open the cellophane cover, ripped out the hard sponge and put it under running water in the sink to hydrate it.
"What the hell is that?" He thought he was onto something, but then realized he wasn't. "Is that you??"
"Just getting a drink of water."
"Turn that damn thing off! I'm trying to solve a problem here!"
"Sorry!" The sponge was hydrated. I ran back upstairs and as carefully and soundlessly as I could, lifted the cover off the opening and crawled into the eaves. There had been no time to grab a flash light, but I could follow the bloop noise which, oddly, was less loud in the eaves than it had been in the kitchen. I carefully lifted up the glass. It blooped in my hand as I held it while I put the sponge down to receive it. This is gonna work, baby! I put the glass down on the sponge. The bubbles kept coming out thru the glass, but the blooping was almost silent. It works, baby!!
The old man continued to tap pipes alternately with attempting to tighten joints. Suddenly, after a particularly aggressive set of taps, the blooping stopped. He tapped again, just for good measure. I could hear it resonate thru the pipes in the house. He waited. A minute. I could not hear the blooping from my room. I heard him come back up to the kitchen. He was satisfied.
Sometime in the middle of the night - mighta been a half hour later for all I know, or a couple of hours - I am awakened by the sound of him coming up the stairs. He knocks on the door.
"What?"
He opens the door and turns on the light. He was in his underwear.
"You hear anything?"
This time I could be honest. "I don't hear a thing." I listened and couldn't hear a bloop. "You still hearing it?"
He stopped for a few seconds and listened. It was essentially silent. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible bloop, but you really had to strain to hear it.
"Aah, I don't know. I think I hear it but I don't know what I'm hearing any more. Maybe I'm crackin up in my old age."
I said nothing.
He kinda shook his head and snarled in resignation, turned off the light, closed the door and went downstairs.
The blooping attenuated the next day, and by Friday it had stopped altogether. I tested the product on Saturday morning, before basketball practice, and it was fizzy, but fine. I had made my first wine! It was sweet and concordy, and bubbly. Kinda like Cold Duck! Cold Duck was like champagne! Cold Duck is EXPENSIVE! I've made Cold Duck, for Christ's sake!
A side benefit, actually borne of necessity, was that I bottled the new product in the same Welch pint bottles it came in, having no other appropriate vessels. It looked just like grape juice. We could bring it anywhere, and drink it anywhere. It was grapey smelling. No cop or chaperrone would challenge us!
I got smashed that Saturday night, as did a few of my friends. We got a pretty good buzz on, and nobody got sick!
I had a bottle left over which I drank the next week before the CYO dance. I was high as a kite and danced up a storm, whirling and swirling. And again, didn't puke a lick!
By the time my second batch was ready a couple of weeks later, my cousin, who had unwittingly given me the inspiration, heard about my homemade wine and wanted some. We got drunk together, just like we had done when I was 12 and he was 13. This time neither one of us got sick.
I ramped up operations. I learned I could do a gallon safely in the same bottle, and that's what I did. I stopped sharing with friends, deeming it too risky, but was garnering a truckload of cachet all the while as my reputation spread. Kids in 4 high schools knew me and what I was up to, but no one spilled the beans, which also added to my celebrity status.
I drank and drank and drank. And for a few weeks it was great...
Then, of course, the trouble started...
All them people just sockin' down wine
Drinkin' wine is their delight
And when they start drinkin' start fightin' all night
Bustin' out windows and breakin' down doors
Guzzlin' down a gallon and shoutin' for more.
Now you got a nickel, I got a dime,
Let's get together and buy us some wine!
Some by a pint, some buy a quart
But if you buy a half gallon you're playin' it smart
Drinkin' wine, wine, wine, hey buddy -
Pass that bottle to me!
From "A Long Time Comin'" album of The Electric Flag, released March 1968
I've always had what you might call a complex relationship with wine. I've been drinking it since before conscious memory. My grandfather, Gavino Villapiano "the elder", as it were, made wine in the basement, and I, as his namesake out of 17 grandchildren, had the honor of being a taster, or partner in crime or just object of his amusement. "Non lascia lu bev'", my grandmother would call down from the kitchen, Don't let him drink any! "Shoo, shoo" the old man would say in broken English, then sneak me a drink. Even still, my grandmother allowed me to have wine on Sundays after church with the "gavadeel", the homemade cavatelli, as long as it was watered down with, well, water... Even my mom approved.
I got "faced" the first time when I was 12, in 1965, at my great aunt and uncle's anniversary party, I believe their 50th. My cousin, who was a year older than I, joined me. Wine didn't play a role - the multicolored cordials did the trick. He got sick as a dog. I "held my liquor", but the next morning my stomach felt like it was the size of a pea and hurt like hell. But it was clear that it was cool to get drunk, so when the social opportunity presented itself in the fall of '67, I took full advantage.
I was 14, but 5'11" and was shaving a full beard which made me look older, a lot older, than the 15 and 16 year olds I was hanging with. I was the only one who could get reliably served. [Ed Note: I was never "carded" until I was 55. Really! This year! Such is the CYA nature of our society nowadays. I'm so clearly over 18 it's a joke, like times 3...] I could go into any bar or "package goods" store and buy whatever I wanted. One time the guys I was singing with and I went to hear our idol Nicky Addeo perform at the Banjo Palace in Long Branch NJ in early October 1967. They all were stopped at the door. I milled right in. And I was the youngest by 2 full years!
Despite my obvious ability to pass, money was still an issue. Altho I could easily buy bourbon or vodka or gin, they were pricey for a 14 year old with (or without) a job. Wine, on the other hand, was cheap - you could get a pint for less than a buck, and get just as drunk as on a six pack, but for half the price.
Of course, we're not talking Chateau Neuf du Pape here. We're talking Thunderbird, Ripple, Boone's Farm. Classic rotgut. Had you seen me with a siphon in my hand you'd swear they were gasoline. There was one called Twister that was peppermint flavor and actually tasted like mouthwash. Nonetheless, this is what we could afford and it did the job. You got high. We got high. Our singing group drank so much cheap wine we were thinking about calling ourselves the Four Roses.
And of course it made you sick. You'd guzzle it (we drank on a path in a field formerly used for Ku Klux Klan rallies in the 30s, oh yeah, up north, that had tall grass, and as it got cold, you drank faster), get a buzz on for an hour or two, go to a CYO dance, spin around, get in a rumble and then go outside and puke your guts out, and I mean that literally. Many times I swore I was going to throw up my stomach right out of my body, I was puking so hard.
So it was with great interest when, right after Christmas, I overheard my older cousin (my drinking compadre, just a year older, but taking biology) mention that all wine was was grape juice that had been fermented by yeast. Hmmm...
I got thinking... How much is grape juice? Welch's Concord Grape juice in 1968 was pretty cheap, like 65 cents for a half gallon. Yeast. 15 cents a package, max. For like 80 cents you could make wine, and have twice as much! And you knew what was in it!
I did a little research. Seems like you could use a big glass bottle, stopper it up, run a tube thru the stopper and into a glass of water to allow the gasses of fermentation (CO2) to pass out of the bottle without letting air in. Sounds doable...
I must've had an allowance in those days. (I had had a paper route in 7th and 8th grade for a year as I saved up $100 to buy an electric guitar. But once I had that amount I dropped the route like a hot potato, so I hadn't earned any money for over a year by this time.) Like, $1.50 a week or something like that. Nonetheless, I scrimped up enough money and went to the local hobby store. I bought stoppers, tubing. I got my hands on an apple cider bottle. Conscientious little JD that I was, I boiled everything, even the gallon bottle, in a big corn pot. Then I bought my 80 cents worth of ingredients and put the "still" together and let nature take its course.
I had no idea what to expect, how long the fermentation process would take. I knew it was less than a year, less than six months, because my grandfather used to make wine every year (until he died in 1960). I thought, a month, maybe?
Since this was not gonna be an overnight thing, I needed some secure location for my fermenting. The cellar was the obvious candidate for fermentation, but it sure as hell wasn't secure, with the washing machine and dryer located there, as well as the cupboard, which was visited virtually every day, several times a day.
Turns out I lived in a post war ticky tacky development Cape Cod style house, and back in '61 my father had finished off the upstairs so we could expand from a 4 room house to a 6 roomer. My sister and I were the beneficiaries, with her getting the east room and me the west. Finishing off the attic meant that there would be eaves on each side of the room where the roof slanted to the top of the first floor. These places were used as storage or left empty. They were not heated, but lay under the asbestos roof and next to the new bedrooms, so they were effectively the same temp in the winter as the basement would be. And much, much more secure. NOBODY went into the eaves.
My sister was in her freshman year at college, so I had the entire upstairs all to myself. The eaves would indeed be the perfect location for my incipient winery.
Thus armed with my equipment and ingredients, and a flashlight, I went into the south eave next to my room and set up the operation. It was quite simple - dump a couple of pints of Welch's into the gallon bottle, stir in the Fleishmann's Dry Active Yeast, stopper up the bottle, run the tubing into a nearby glass of water. Then wait.
For a few days nothing seemed to be happening. I began to wonder, is this really the way wine is made? Then I feared the eaves were too cold, it being winter and all. But it didn't feel cold in there... It was a frustrating few days...
Then, nearly a week gone by, I woke up and opened the eaves opening panel to discover the water in the glass was sizzling - bubbles were coming out of the tubing into the water and escaping into the air above the glass. It was a happy Fizzies party, like in the 50s! A wonderful sight to behold.
A few days later I was in my room, dreaming... The CYO dances were on Saturday nights, and this week I was pumped with anticipation. I had dreams that the wine would be just like my grandfather's - dry, smooth, full bodied and potent, enough to get your buzz on but never to make you sick like that crap you bought in the store. I had inherited my parents' Depression-era cheapness, er, values, and was thinking about all the money I was saving.
The rate the fermentation was proceeding it looked like I had a good shot at being able to drink it soon. Once the bubbles stopped. They had gotten more steady and larger. I could just hear it in the middle of the night, comforting like a heartbeat... Wow! I can get smashed and not have to puke my guts out, and save money to boot! This was great!
My father worked two jobs - on the railroad from 5am to 1:30pm, and then at night from 5pm to 9:30. He had originally taken the second job in 1958 to make up for his blunder of getting aluminum siding on the house, which he later congratulated himself for, it being more insulating and all. He had it paid off a few years later, and by 68 he was doing it more as a pastime than out of economic need. In the interim Mom had gotten a teaching degree and become a teacher. Her income more than made up for the difference, but it also took her out many evenings, as she strove for her masters and played an active role in teacher organizations. So rather than "sit around and do nothing", the old man continued to work most nights.
Round about 11pm, I've already turned out the lights, he calls up to me. Hmm. That's weird. He NEVER calls up to me, especially this late. Especially with the lights off.
"What?" Monosyllabic speech is the preferred adolescent dialect when dealing with parents.
"Come on down here a minute, willya?"
I didn't answer but made sure I didn't hurry, either. His tone of voice wasn't angry, so I wasn't worried. My grades were passable by his standards - as long as you were not flunking out and weren't in trouble with the cops, you were okay in his book.
I ambled downstairs.
"C'mere for a minute." He didn't look up but sensed that I had descended. He was in the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling. I walked into the kitchen. As soon as I came in he stopped me and (preventatively) hushed me at the same time. "You hear that?"
We stood in the kitchen. The TV was off. The clock was electric and soundless. There was a faint electrical buzz emitted by the ca. 1952 circular neon light that ill-luminated the room. And there was also an adumbrating pulse, beating with regularity like the heart of some great beast who had devoured both of us whole, we now in its stomach.
Bloop! Bloop! Bloop!
The kitchen was located in the southwest corner of the first floor. Directly underneath the south eaves next to my room. Not only were you the closest to the fermenting bottle works aside from my bedroom, the bare plywood floor upon which the still rested that formed the ceiling of the kitchen actually amplified the sound. It was unmistakable and LOUD.
Bloop! BLOOP! BLOOP!!!
"Hear what, pop?" It was my only defense.
"That! Hear that? That sound - THAT!"
I paused pensively, for effect. I tried to look as earnest as possible, though I felt a small trickle of sweat roll down the back of my neck. I looked up, looked at him, looked up again.
"You mean that buzz? The buzz that's comin' from the light?" I pointed, as if there were more than one cheesy Fifties fixture in the room.
"No! Listen!" He paused to make sure I could hear it without mistake. "Hear it? Bloop bloop bloop bloop... " He egged me on with his hand in that circular motion that means, you know...
"I don't hear any bloop, pop..." I was really good at sincere. I had been a no trouble kid, as opposed to my sister, so it was believable. He musta thought for a second that I was losing my hearing or he was losing his mind. But then he got back to the issue.
He turned around and turned on the faucet. He let it run for a second. The blooping continued. He ran it for a few more seconds. Still there. He opened the doors of the cabinets under the sink. He listened intently. Having given up on asking me if I heard it, he answered for me. "I hear a goddamned bloop!"
He picked up the wrench that lay in a small Tupperware-knockoff tub under the sink and began tapping one of the pipes. Bloop bloop. Now the other. Bloop bloop. He slumped a little. "I'll be goddamned..."
He got up and pushed me aside, and went down into the basement. I didn't dare follow. He went over to the pipes connecting the washer, right below the kitchen. Tap tap! Bloop bloop! Tap tap tap! Bloop bloop bloop!
I was gazing blankly at the open doors under the sink, trying to come up with an explanation when he would finally go upstairs and locate the source of his irritation, when suddenly I got an idea - there, directly in front of my eyes, was a sponge. A sponge! That's it!
Clearly the blooping was coming from the glass of water releasing the big bubbles. The glass was sitting on the naked plywood floor, which was serving as a resonator. If I can place the glass on top of the sponge it might soften the bubble action and muffle the sound...
Sponges in those days were sold rigid - you had to get them wet. I quickly grabbed the turgid sponge package, bit open the cellophane cover, ripped out the hard sponge and put it under running water in the sink to hydrate it.
"What the hell is that?" He thought he was onto something, but then realized he wasn't. "Is that you??"
"Just getting a drink of water."
"Turn that damn thing off! I'm trying to solve a problem here!"
"Sorry!" The sponge was hydrated. I ran back upstairs and as carefully and soundlessly as I could, lifted the cover off the opening and crawled into the eaves. There had been no time to grab a flash light, but I could follow the bloop noise which, oddly, was less loud in the eaves than it had been in the kitchen. I carefully lifted up the glass. It blooped in my hand as I held it while I put the sponge down to receive it. This is gonna work, baby! I put the glass down on the sponge. The bubbles kept coming out thru the glass, but the blooping was almost silent. It works, baby!!
The old man continued to tap pipes alternately with attempting to tighten joints. Suddenly, after a particularly aggressive set of taps, the blooping stopped. He tapped again, just for good measure. I could hear it resonate thru the pipes in the house. He waited. A minute. I could not hear the blooping from my room. I heard him come back up to the kitchen. He was satisfied.
Sometime in the middle of the night - mighta been a half hour later for all I know, or a couple of hours - I am awakened by the sound of him coming up the stairs. He knocks on the door.
"What?"
He opens the door and turns on the light. He was in his underwear.
"You hear anything?"
This time I could be honest. "I don't hear a thing." I listened and couldn't hear a bloop. "You still hearing it?"
He stopped for a few seconds and listened. It was essentially silent. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible bloop, but you really had to strain to hear it.
"Aah, I don't know. I think I hear it but I don't know what I'm hearing any more. Maybe I'm crackin up in my old age."
I said nothing.
He kinda shook his head and snarled in resignation, turned off the light, closed the door and went downstairs.
The blooping attenuated the next day, and by Friday it had stopped altogether. I tested the product on Saturday morning, before basketball practice, and it was fizzy, but fine. I had made my first wine! It was sweet and concordy, and bubbly. Kinda like Cold Duck! Cold Duck was like champagne! Cold Duck is EXPENSIVE! I've made Cold Duck, for Christ's sake!
A side benefit, actually borne of necessity, was that I bottled the new product in the same Welch pint bottles it came in, having no other appropriate vessels. It looked just like grape juice. We could bring it anywhere, and drink it anywhere. It was grapey smelling. No cop or chaperrone would challenge us!
I got smashed that Saturday night, as did a few of my friends. We got a pretty good buzz on, and nobody got sick!
I had a bottle left over which I drank the next week before the CYO dance. I was high as a kite and danced up a storm, whirling and swirling. And again, didn't puke a lick!
By the time my second batch was ready a couple of weeks later, my cousin, who had unwittingly given me the inspiration, heard about my homemade wine and wanted some. We got drunk together, just like we had done when I was 12 and he was 13. This time neither one of us got sick.
I ramped up operations. I learned I could do a gallon safely in the same bottle, and that's what I did. I stopped sharing with friends, deeming it too risky, but was garnering a truckload of cachet all the while as my reputation spread. Kids in 4 high schools knew me and what I was up to, but no one spilled the beans, which also added to my celebrity status.
I drank and drank and drank. And for a few weeks it was great...
Then, of course, the trouble started...
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Pueblo
As I write this, the US is officially at war. In fact, officially we are engaged in 3 wars - can you name them? Iraq, Afghanistan and... Korea.
Even without Korea, it would be hard to tell we were at war. People live lives, party, get in trouble, are born, die, go to the mall, go on vacation, go to jail and get out, add on that wing of the house, send their kids to preschool and college, have extramarital affairs, attend AA meetings, everything.
Iraq and Afghanistan make it a bit easier to describe the surreality of most of the 60s when we were in Nam. The war was on; intellectually we knew it. We all, even us detached teenagers, knew it was going on. The network news, at 7:30pm in those days, showed us the numbers - here's the Dow, here's the sports scores, here's the body counts. Kids got drafted, but in 1968, you got college deferments, deferments for being married, sole surviving son (hence the name of the popular band at the time, the Soul Survivors), 4F. In rich towns everybody knew a "Dr. Fake", who could find some reason to dole out a 4F to your son. In rich towns somebody knew somebody who could get you into the National Guard, or Coast Guard. And that was if you were literally dumb enough not to go to college.
Nam clattered on in the background in 68 and few cared. Each town, especially a low middle class town like mine, had one or maybe two guys killed during the entire war, and, let's face it, he usually wasn't the captain of the football team type. In 1968, in that one year, we actually lost more boys to underage driving than we did to combat deaths for the entirety of the Viet Nam Conflict, as it is officially known. In January 1968, Nam didn't really get many people worked up, one way or another. My old man, Normandy vet, VFW member, kept complaining that our home front "propaganda" was the problem, that maybe if more people "felt" the war in SE Asia, if more people had to change their lives in some way - rationing, women working, price controls, newsreels, SOMETHING - that would facility a better groundswell of support and help bring the war to a speedy, victorious end.
But none of that was gonna happen. Not during the gogo Sixties, not even for his generation of WWII vets, who just now were beginning to reap the full benefits of the Postwar Boom, the crowning piece of the puzzle - sending their kids to college. My own sister was in her frosh year at college. Rosy the Riveter wasn't only not needed - she wasn't even desirable in such an environment.
Nam clattered on, and we all expected it to be over soon, anyway. Look, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, all lasted less than 5 years. Even the American Revolution, from first shot to last shot, was 6 years. Those were the BIG wars. The little ones - 1812, Mexican, Spanish American - lasted less. Our own government, the good guys, the guys who had pushed for and backed the Civil Rights advances of the last 5 years, told us there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe if you were 18, unmarried, no prospects for college (which in those days meant, no interest in college, since virtually any college would accept a young male in those days, and "community colleges" were springing up to help address the deferment needs), you might worry about going off to fight in a war, but if you were 15, like me, by the time you were 22 and out of college, this war would be long over. Probably even by the time you were out of HS...
Nam clattered on. I knew no one who was in Nam. A couple of friends of mine had older brothers in the service, but they were either in the Navy or were stationed in Germany. Germany was not only easy duty, it was downright fun, to hear them talk. The Navy or Germany. Nobody in Nam, and certainly nobody in Korea.
So it was truly weird when the first really big war story of 1968 that cropped up was NOT about Nam but about Korea. Yeah, Korea, remember them? We're still technically at war with them! You may have thought that Korea ended in 1953, but that was only a cease fire, as we found out in Western Civilization class. We still had a lot of troops stationed there, something like 40,000, which until only very recently was more than in Nam itself. Some guys had re-upped just to stay "on the front lines against Communism" back in the 50s and had been there 15 years or even more. But nobody died there. So it was kinda like Germany, right? A little less fun. But overall, a piece of cake.
So it was definitely weird that on January 24 the news was not about Nam, but about, of all things, Korea! Korea?
This is 1968, remember, not 1952. Korea? There was a kid that I had gone to Kindergarten and into HS with; his FATHER was killed in Korea before he was born! Korea?? Guys signed up for duty in Korea so as not to go to Nam! Korea???
How passe'! How "retro"! How weird!
Some right wingers used the opportunity to remind us about the larger Cold War and Soviet threat, even tho the Soviets were never really involved in Korea at all - it was the Red Chinese who swarmed across the Yalu. But this is January 1968 - we still had Nam, still had the Wall, still had proxy wars in the Mideast, shows like I Spy and the Man from UNCLE as well as the whole 007 series were popular because they were placed in the context of the Cold War - nobody needed a reminder about the Cold War.
So the whole thing was a blip. The North Koreans captured a ship, unjustly. Guys were held prisoner. We would negotiate their release. There was not gonna be renewed armed hostilities.
A blip. It came and went.
Just like the riots. Just like the JFK assassination. Just like Nam...
A blip.
Such was the state of mind of January 1968...
Even without Korea, it would be hard to tell we were at war. People live lives, party, get in trouble, are born, die, go to the mall, go on vacation, go to jail and get out, add on that wing of the house, send their kids to preschool and college, have extramarital affairs, attend AA meetings, everything.
Iraq and Afghanistan make it a bit easier to describe the surreality of most of the 60s when we were in Nam. The war was on; intellectually we knew it. We all, even us detached teenagers, knew it was going on. The network news, at 7:30pm in those days, showed us the numbers - here's the Dow, here's the sports scores, here's the body counts. Kids got drafted, but in 1968, you got college deferments, deferments for being married, sole surviving son (hence the name of the popular band at the time, the Soul Survivors), 4F. In rich towns everybody knew a "Dr. Fake", who could find some reason to dole out a 4F to your son. In rich towns somebody knew somebody who could get you into the National Guard, or Coast Guard. And that was if you were literally dumb enough not to go to college.
Nam clattered on in the background in 68 and few cared. Each town, especially a low middle class town like mine, had one or maybe two guys killed during the entire war, and, let's face it, he usually wasn't the captain of the football team type. In 1968, in that one year, we actually lost more boys to underage driving than we did to combat deaths for the entirety of the Viet Nam Conflict, as it is officially known. In January 1968, Nam didn't really get many people worked up, one way or another. My old man, Normandy vet, VFW member, kept complaining that our home front "propaganda" was the problem, that maybe if more people "felt" the war in SE Asia, if more people had to change their lives in some way - rationing, women working, price controls, newsreels, SOMETHING - that would facility a better groundswell of support and help bring the war to a speedy, victorious end.
But none of that was gonna happen. Not during the gogo Sixties, not even for his generation of WWII vets, who just now were beginning to reap the full benefits of the Postwar Boom, the crowning piece of the puzzle - sending their kids to college. My own sister was in her frosh year at college. Rosy the Riveter wasn't only not needed - she wasn't even desirable in such an environment.
Nam clattered on, and we all expected it to be over soon, anyway. Look, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, all lasted less than 5 years. Even the American Revolution, from first shot to last shot, was 6 years. Those were the BIG wars. The little ones - 1812, Mexican, Spanish American - lasted less. Our own government, the good guys, the guys who had pushed for and backed the Civil Rights advances of the last 5 years, told us there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe if you were 18, unmarried, no prospects for college (which in those days meant, no interest in college, since virtually any college would accept a young male in those days, and "community colleges" were springing up to help address the deferment needs), you might worry about going off to fight in a war, but if you were 15, like me, by the time you were 22 and out of college, this war would be long over. Probably even by the time you were out of HS...
Nam clattered on. I knew no one who was in Nam. A couple of friends of mine had older brothers in the service, but they were either in the Navy or were stationed in Germany. Germany was not only easy duty, it was downright fun, to hear them talk. The Navy or Germany. Nobody in Nam, and certainly nobody in Korea.
So it was truly weird when the first really big war story of 1968 that cropped up was NOT about Nam but about Korea. Yeah, Korea, remember them? We're still technically at war with them! You may have thought that Korea ended in 1953, but that was only a cease fire, as we found out in Western Civilization class. We still had a lot of troops stationed there, something like 40,000, which until only very recently was more than in Nam itself. Some guys had re-upped just to stay "on the front lines against Communism" back in the 50s and had been there 15 years or even more. But nobody died there. So it was kinda like Germany, right? A little less fun. But overall, a piece of cake.
So it was definitely weird that on January 24 the news was not about Nam, but about, of all things, Korea! Korea?
This is 1968, remember, not 1952. Korea? There was a kid that I had gone to Kindergarten and into HS with; his FATHER was killed in Korea before he was born! Korea?? Guys signed up for duty in Korea so as not to go to Nam! Korea???
How passe'! How "retro"! How weird!
Some right wingers used the opportunity to remind us about the larger Cold War and Soviet threat, even tho the Soviets were never really involved in Korea at all - it was the Red Chinese who swarmed across the Yalu. But this is January 1968 - we still had Nam, still had the Wall, still had proxy wars in the Mideast, shows like I Spy and the Man from UNCLE as well as the whole 007 series were popular because they were placed in the context of the Cold War - nobody needed a reminder about the Cold War.
So the whole thing was a blip. The North Koreans captured a ship, unjustly. Guys were held prisoner. We would negotiate their release. There was not gonna be renewed armed hostilities.
A blip. It came and went.
Just like the riots. Just like the JFK assassination. Just like Nam...
A blip.
Such was the state of mind of January 1968...
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Beginnings
I can't for the life of me remember where I was when the ball dropped on 1968. Funny, I can remember where I was in 1969, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, but not 68. Of course, this is consistent with my experience and life story - it was the last year of my youth, my "preconsciousness". After my spiritual awakening of August 1968, my life has been a consistent, accountable whole. From that point on I was an actor, an intention, a will, upon the world. Before then, I was merely a passive entity in it.
I don't remember much about the tumultuous events that were happening around me in January 1968. That is, I remember them, but they had little or no impact on me. I, as I believe most of the country, still felt that the JFK assassination was a tragedy, a random act of violence, and that nonetheless it did not, was not, deterring us from going about the business of perfecting the world. I did not really understand Viet Nam outside of the paradigm that it was a just and necessary war simply because we were involved in it, and we were, after all, the good guys - the purveyors of truth, justice, prosperity for the regular guy. My father, the WWII/Normandy vet stood for what we were all about - doing what had to be done to straighten out the mess back in the old country. Once we won we would help them get back on their feet and then go away and everybody could live a decent life. The stories of the first generation, the immigrants, still weighed heavy in our, the Boomers', consciousness - many if not most were of the immigrants were still with us and could aver that life outside this country was brutish, hard and unfair.
And look around! We were not rich, by any means, and by today's inflated expectations we would be considered quite poor, but we felt so materially well off that even as a freshman in HS we had discussions, debates really, about how materialism was somehow ruining us as a generation. More than once I had brought up what was the true feeling of most of my generation, yes, even us low middle class kids - our parents wanted us to have everything they did not have. Of course, that was material goods and comfort. Unfortunately, what we wanted most was everything they DID have - community, family closeness, a sense of belonging.
I didn't really get the civil rights movement either, despite the fact that I had been listening to "black" radio stations since 1965. In those days, in the NYC metro area, there had been 3 Top 40 stations - WINS, WMCA and WABC. By 1965 I was bored with it, with the Beatles and the British Invasion, with the inanity of most music they purveyed outside of the Beach Boys and Four Seasons, my great influences. My cousin, who was in HS in an integrated school, told me about the "black" stations - WWRL, WLIB and WNJR, the latter out of Newark. I began listening to these stations instead, and discovered a whole new world, both musically and culturally. They had relatively weaker signals, and I actually had to go to Two Guys and get a better transistor radio (which I got from my paper route money) and had to position it in certain spots to get these stations in. There was an optimal spot for each of the three stations.
I had never gotten the racial thing - It just never made sense to me. So Negros are dark. So what? Chinese have slanty eyes. So what? They have brains, right? They can speak, right? They can think, right? I used to try to listen to a local show on the local radio station, WJLK, the "Gospel Train" - I loved the music. Mysteriously, my mother used to change the station at that point, to WNEW. I chalked it up to her not liking Gospel music for some unknown reason (she was very religious). I never got the message that it was a racial thing. My father worked two jobs, and one of them was at a local supermarket, frequented by many blacks, but also many whites. I never saw my father treat black people any differently than whites. Both local high schools were totally integrated. Back in the early 60s, during the Freedom Rider days, I can remember being in the car with my family and the radio on, and when the news came that Wallace had to let the blacks into the University of Alabama, we all cheered!
If there was race hate around, I never got the memo. I found it odd when, by 7th grade, I was called by some a "nigger lover". I didn't take it as an insult - I just found it a really odd thing to be called. Of course I'm a nigger lover! I'm a whitey lover, too! And a Chink lover! Isn't that what they're teaching us in Sunday school? Ridiculous...
It's not that I didn't know racism existed - the Huntley-Brinkley Report demonstrated night after night that it did exist - in the South. But here in the north things were okay. We lived in an all white town, but had to drive through all black neighborhoods to get to church, shopping and Grandma's house. I could not tell the difference between their neighborhoods and ours - the houses looked the same, the cars looked the same. There were no riots, no violence. When I met black people I smiled and was friendly as I would be to anyone, and they smiled back and were friendly like anyone. Sure, they spoke differently, but so did my grandparents. What's the big deal?
So by January 1, 1967, when there had been riots, they seemed remote - Watts, Detroit, even Newark seemed like they were as far away as Selma and Jackson and Mongomery. More importantly, they seemed to be a continuation of the inexorable drama of justice, just like Nam seemed to be part of the inexorably pageant of freedom. And just like all the new housing developments going up all around were part of the inexorable march of progress and a better life. It would be a stretch to say that I took such movements for justice, freedom and progress for granted, but only a slight stretch.
And they were part of my own family's story as well. The first generation came here to escape poverty. The second generation fought to ensure and spread freedom. And now it would be our turn to forward progress - scientific progress, social progress, hygenic progress. It was all part of the inexorable plan.
The Communists would eventually be defeated, just as the Nazis had been and the Huns before them. Freedom and democracy would prevail because it just made sense. I mean, look at us! We had freedom, democracy, and nice houses and cars and schools and good health and all the toys and stuff you could ever want. They were all part of the same thing. Who wouldn't want that?
And now we knew our destiny was space - we not only had the Jetsons, we had the reality of Mercury and Gemini and now Apollo. Sure, there had been a set back - 3 astronauts, including the popular Ed White and Gus Grissom, had died. But it had been an accident, and we weren't about to slink off. The moon was in reach! Can you believe it? We will be on the moon before I am out of HS! At this rate I'll be able to take my kids on vacation to Mars!
(Later in 1968, when "2001 A Space Odyssey" came out, its depictions of Pan Am flights and Bell video phones and Hilton Hotels seemed not just plausible, but inevitable.)
We were just a couple of years removed from the 1964-65 World's Fair, which I had the great fortune to live nearby. My family and I went perhaps 4 or 5 times. The Fair was steeped in the promise of technology, of progress, changing our lives dramatically in the very near future. AT&T, GM, GE all had pavillions that stressed how exciting and better the world was on the precipice of being, thanks to American technology. We were indeed the good guys!
It was hard not to see a sparkling, sterling future ahead, nuclear annihilation be damned!
Even given all this, the fact of the matter was that I was 15, a great student, a great athlete, attractive, into girls, sports, music and most of all, the aggrandizement of my own ego. I had grown up in the 60s, and living in the 60s more stuff happened of serious note and import in one week than we could expect nowadays in an entire year. That we had Nam, Civil Rights, Space, an impending presidential election, the Cold War (even Korea, as we would soon be reminded, by the Pueblo Incident in late January) going on in the background did not register much except as discussion topics in social studies classes. We had lived thru Civil Defense drills in grammar school, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy Assassination, all by 5th grade. It was part of the scenery, of the pageant, but not the substance of my life at that time.
No, it was all about, as Reggie Jackson would later put it, the magnificence of me.
I was also somewhat of a juvenile delinquent at the time - drinking heavily on the weekends, roaming the streets with a gang, doing petty prankish things, rumbling, intimidating. Later that year, when I ran for class president, one kid came up to me in astonishment and said, "Wow! I had no idea you were smart!" I was truly someone of multiple minds...
The only thing of note of that January in 1968 that I can recall is a basketball game where I came in off the bench and became the high scorer, grabbing rebound after rebound, getting steal after steal, making shot after shot. The next game I was benched again. I asked the frosh coach why? He told me the varsity coach wanted to develop taller players. I lost interest in basketball after JV the following year...
Oh - and there was this brief romance with Barbara. Barbara was beautiful, shapely, and had the sweetest personality. We went steady for pretty much the whole month. She dumped me and felt guilty about it. No matter. My ego wasn't dented - after all, it was she who had cheated. Boy, I must really have been overbearing...
Such a little thing like that was not about to dent the ego of the Imperial Me!
So that's how we entered 1968 - full of optimism, of inevitability, of egotism. Both me, and the country.
I don't remember much about the tumultuous events that were happening around me in January 1968. That is, I remember them, but they had little or no impact on me. I, as I believe most of the country, still felt that the JFK assassination was a tragedy, a random act of violence, and that nonetheless it did not, was not, deterring us from going about the business of perfecting the world. I did not really understand Viet Nam outside of the paradigm that it was a just and necessary war simply because we were involved in it, and we were, after all, the good guys - the purveyors of truth, justice, prosperity for the regular guy. My father, the WWII/Normandy vet stood for what we were all about - doing what had to be done to straighten out the mess back in the old country. Once we won we would help them get back on their feet and then go away and everybody could live a decent life. The stories of the first generation, the immigrants, still weighed heavy in our, the Boomers', consciousness - many if not most were of the immigrants were still with us and could aver that life outside this country was brutish, hard and unfair.
And look around! We were not rich, by any means, and by today's inflated expectations we would be considered quite poor, but we felt so materially well off that even as a freshman in HS we had discussions, debates really, about how materialism was somehow ruining us as a generation. More than once I had brought up what was the true feeling of most of my generation, yes, even us low middle class kids - our parents wanted us to have everything they did not have. Of course, that was material goods and comfort. Unfortunately, what we wanted most was everything they DID have - community, family closeness, a sense of belonging.
I didn't really get the civil rights movement either, despite the fact that I had been listening to "black" radio stations since 1965. In those days, in the NYC metro area, there had been 3 Top 40 stations - WINS, WMCA and WABC. By 1965 I was bored with it, with the Beatles and the British Invasion, with the inanity of most music they purveyed outside of the Beach Boys and Four Seasons, my great influences. My cousin, who was in HS in an integrated school, told me about the "black" stations - WWRL, WLIB and WNJR, the latter out of Newark. I began listening to these stations instead, and discovered a whole new world, both musically and culturally. They had relatively weaker signals, and I actually had to go to Two Guys and get a better transistor radio (which I got from my paper route money) and had to position it in certain spots to get these stations in. There was an optimal spot for each of the three stations.
I had never gotten the racial thing - It just never made sense to me. So Negros are dark. So what? Chinese have slanty eyes. So what? They have brains, right? They can speak, right? They can think, right? I used to try to listen to a local show on the local radio station, WJLK, the "Gospel Train" - I loved the music. Mysteriously, my mother used to change the station at that point, to WNEW. I chalked it up to her not liking Gospel music for some unknown reason (she was very religious). I never got the message that it was a racial thing. My father worked two jobs, and one of them was at a local supermarket, frequented by many blacks, but also many whites. I never saw my father treat black people any differently than whites. Both local high schools were totally integrated. Back in the early 60s, during the Freedom Rider days, I can remember being in the car with my family and the radio on, and when the news came that Wallace had to let the blacks into the University of Alabama, we all cheered!
If there was race hate around, I never got the memo. I found it odd when, by 7th grade, I was called by some a "nigger lover". I didn't take it as an insult - I just found it a really odd thing to be called. Of course I'm a nigger lover! I'm a whitey lover, too! And a Chink lover! Isn't that what they're teaching us in Sunday school? Ridiculous...
It's not that I didn't know racism existed - the Huntley-Brinkley Report demonstrated night after night that it did exist - in the South. But here in the north things were okay. We lived in an all white town, but had to drive through all black neighborhoods to get to church, shopping and Grandma's house. I could not tell the difference between their neighborhoods and ours - the houses looked the same, the cars looked the same. There were no riots, no violence. When I met black people I smiled and was friendly as I would be to anyone, and they smiled back and were friendly like anyone. Sure, they spoke differently, but so did my grandparents. What's the big deal?
So by January 1, 1967, when there had been riots, they seemed remote - Watts, Detroit, even Newark seemed like they were as far away as Selma and Jackson and Mongomery. More importantly, they seemed to be a continuation of the inexorable drama of justice, just like Nam seemed to be part of the inexorably pageant of freedom. And just like all the new housing developments going up all around were part of the inexorable march of progress and a better life. It would be a stretch to say that I took such movements for justice, freedom and progress for granted, but only a slight stretch.
And they were part of my own family's story as well. The first generation came here to escape poverty. The second generation fought to ensure and spread freedom. And now it would be our turn to forward progress - scientific progress, social progress, hygenic progress. It was all part of the inexorable plan.
The Communists would eventually be defeated, just as the Nazis had been and the Huns before them. Freedom and democracy would prevail because it just made sense. I mean, look at us! We had freedom, democracy, and nice houses and cars and schools and good health and all the toys and stuff you could ever want. They were all part of the same thing. Who wouldn't want that?
And now we knew our destiny was space - we not only had the Jetsons, we had the reality of Mercury and Gemini and now Apollo. Sure, there had been a set back - 3 astronauts, including the popular Ed White and Gus Grissom, had died. But it had been an accident, and we weren't about to slink off. The moon was in reach! Can you believe it? We will be on the moon before I am out of HS! At this rate I'll be able to take my kids on vacation to Mars!
(Later in 1968, when "2001 A Space Odyssey" came out, its depictions of Pan Am flights and Bell video phones and Hilton Hotels seemed not just plausible, but inevitable.)
We were just a couple of years removed from the 1964-65 World's Fair, which I had the great fortune to live nearby. My family and I went perhaps 4 or 5 times. The Fair was steeped in the promise of technology, of progress, changing our lives dramatically in the very near future. AT&T, GM, GE all had pavillions that stressed how exciting and better the world was on the precipice of being, thanks to American technology. We were indeed the good guys!
It was hard not to see a sparkling, sterling future ahead, nuclear annihilation be damned!
Even given all this, the fact of the matter was that I was 15, a great student, a great athlete, attractive, into girls, sports, music and most of all, the aggrandizement of my own ego. I had grown up in the 60s, and living in the 60s more stuff happened of serious note and import in one week than we could expect nowadays in an entire year. That we had Nam, Civil Rights, Space, an impending presidential election, the Cold War (even Korea, as we would soon be reminded, by the Pueblo Incident in late January) going on in the background did not register much except as discussion topics in social studies classes. We had lived thru Civil Defense drills in grammar school, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy Assassination, all by 5th grade. It was part of the scenery, of the pageant, but not the substance of my life at that time.
No, it was all about, as Reggie Jackson would later put it, the magnificence of me.
I was also somewhat of a juvenile delinquent at the time - drinking heavily on the weekends, roaming the streets with a gang, doing petty prankish things, rumbling, intimidating. Later that year, when I ran for class president, one kid came up to me in astonishment and said, "Wow! I had no idea you were smart!" I was truly someone of multiple minds...
The only thing of note of that January in 1968 that I can recall is a basketball game where I came in off the bench and became the high scorer, grabbing rebound after rebound, getting steal after steal, making shot after shot. The next game I was benched again. I asked the frosh coach why? He told me the varsity coach wanted to develop taller players. I lost interest in basketball after JV the following year...
Oh - and there was this brief romance with Barbara. Barbara was beautiful, shapely, and had the sweetest personality. We went steady for pretty much the whole month. She dumped me and felt guilty about it. No matter. My ego wasn't dented - after all, it was she who had cheated. Boy, I must really have been overbearing...
Such a little thing like that was not about to dent the ego of the Imperial Me!
So that's how we entered 1968 - full of optimism, of inevitability, of egotism. Both me, and the country.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
A Personal/Cultural History of 1968
It's New Year's Day, 2008. I just read Bob Herbert's essay in the NYTimes:
Still Reeling After all These Years
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/opinion/01herbert.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=e08b95da8ccddfaa&ei=5087%0A
I have a great interest in that year, 1968, a year when I turned 16. My first interest is as a historian - I consider it the midpoint of the pivotal decade in the history of this country, a decade that started full in the blush of Kennedy optimism, and ended in the jadedness of Nixon and the OPEC price shocks, changing the American scene (to this point) permanently. It was the end of the 5 years of trying to make this country live up to its ideals, and the beginning of a five year period of disillusionment after disillusionment, leaving us with a cynicism that we have not yet been able to cast off.
I have interest in 1968 for personal reasons - the end of youth, the beginning of adulthood. The year I fell deeply in love, seriously in love, for the first time; the year of my improbable and life changing spiritual awakening.
1968 was the beginning of my life as a creative person, and as a mathematician.
In 1968 I read the most influential books of my literary life - Moby Dick and The Grapes of Wrath - and saw the most influential movie of my life so far - 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It is hard to communicate to young people today what life in the Sixties was like, how much change went on, how many events happened, how they came at you on a daily basis. Even within such a decade, 1968 was special in that it was the most eventful of all of the 60s.
I decided to create this blog as a kind of personal journal of a restrospective journey. There is so much about that year, that time, both personally and as a person awake and aware at the time (and by the end of the year even moreso...), that I would like to document, to express, if for no other reason than to add to the colloquial history of the time.
I don't know, at the moment, what shape this will take, how it will evolve, what impact it will have, whether anyone will choose to read it or keep up with it.
All I know is that everything in it will have deep connection to 1968, the most important year in the history of the US, if not the world, post WWII, and the most important year in my own life.
Let's see where it leads...
Still Reeling After all These Years
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/opinion/01herbert.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=e08b95da8ccddfaa&ei=5087%0A
I have a great interest in that year, 1968, a year when I turned 16. My first interest is as a historian - I consider it the midpoint of the pivotal decade in the history of this country, a decade that started full in the blush of Kennedy optimism, and ended in the jadedness of Nixon and the OPEC price shocks, changing the American scene (to this point) permanently. It was the end of the 5 years of trying to make this country live up to its ideals, and the beginning of a five year period of disillusionment after disillusionment, leaving us with a cynicism that we have not yet been able to cast off.
I have interest in 1968 for personal reasons - the end of youth, the beginning of adulthood. The year I fell deeply in love, seriously in love, for the first time; the year of my improbable and life changing spiritual awakening.
1968 was the beginning of my life as a creative person, and as a mathematician.
In 1968 I read the most influential books of my literary life - Moby Dick and The Grapes of Wrath - and saw the most influential movie of my life so far - 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It is hard to communicate to young people today what life in the Sixties was like, how much change went on, how many events happened, how they came at you on a daily basis. Even within such a decade, 1968 was special in that it was the most eventful of all of the 60s.
I decided to create this blog as a kind of personal journal of a restrospective journey. There is so much about that year, that time, both personally and as a person awake and aware at the time (and by the end of the year even moreso...), that I would like to document, to express, if for no other reason than to add to the colloquial history of the time.
I don't know, at the moment, what shape this will take, how it will evolve, what impact it will have, whether anyone will choose to read it or keep up with it.
All I know is that everything in it will have deep connection to 1968, the most important year in the history of the US, if not the world, post WWII, and the most important year in my own life.
Let's see where it leads...
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