Deep in the 50’s McCarthy red scare era, our neighbor and my dad’s friend happened to be a loud, in your face, communist.  Two floors above lived a spooky guy who only communicated with tight lipped nods.  Everyone said he was an undercover FBI agent.  My parents were school teachers, terrified of losing their jobs because of my dad’s association with his friend.   My mom taught at the same elementary...

Carla’s parents would be home any second.  We had stripped her bedroom of valuables, which included black light posters.  Our $50, ‘61 Chevy station wagon had been resurrected from the near dead with love and the addition of curtains.  With gentle coaxing and a cable massage I got six of her eight cylinders firing. “Let’s get out of here, before they get back!”Me and dog looking for...

In high school we were jealous of those lucky enough to be born premature.  Although they were biologically the same age as the rest of us, they were able to get their driver’s license from weeks to months earlier.  A month of waiting in teen time equals about two eternities.  I even wrote a few letters to newspapers and politicians about the gross injustice.  We were given three attempts to pass the driving...

High school is hell, but a high school bully, self-named Danger, contributed more than his share to my hell on earth.  Not just in school.  Everywhere.  Even my after school jobs.  I longed for revenge. After school jobs were easy to get in the 60’s.  Job hunting meant getting three jobs in one day and picking the best.  The winner was a drug store.  A sixteen year old’s dream: being able to gaze and...

I just returned to Chicago from a trip down the west coast.  Adding to the usual amount of sporadic shooting and hassles hippies and psychedelic VW microbuses got, I picked up a heated debate on a Newport, OR radio talk show.  Newport is on the coast highway.  You have to pass through.  The locals didn’t see it that way.  They wanted roadblocks on both sides of town to keep the freaks out.  Hippie vehicles...

According to the ad on the back cover of my comic book I could get a working model train for selling only 12 boxes of Christmas cards.  It didn’t occur to me that selling them in a Jewish highrise could be a problem.  They opened their door to a four foot kid, sweating beside a four foot carton of cards I pushed in and out of the elevator.  They felt sorry for me, probably because they thought I was an idiot. ...

The SIU Acid Queen was exotic and bizarrely out of place in the supermarket checkout line, helplessly trapped in unrelenting white fluorescent.  The cashier was uneasy.  “Three fifty six.” “The chicken is still conscious,” she replied, “It’s screaming.”  The cashier called security. I followed the Acid Queen out.  “Taj!” She turned sharply.  I felt her eyes pierce me all the way to the back of...

In my single digits, my first love was a Bell & Howell 16mm Filmosound projector. Its appearance always meant a good time. The magic light pouring out of the little door in its hard shell home. Film night at summer camp was a sheet stretched between two trees. Mosquitoes flying in the light. And a couple making out behind the sheet. Or in school when the classroom door opened and a Filmosound projector appeared...

Although I dreamed of someday owning a Caddy, with big, black mammary glands for bumpers, I inherited my first car from my cousin – a planet size Olds Ninety Eight convertible. Of course it had white wall tires. An easily scuffable, pristine white layer three inches from the road. What a concept. Saturdays were spent scrubbing grime off, and trying to make the abrasion marks go away. I drove to Florida on spring break...