There were  rules for our neighbor’s visits.  His or our apartment door remained wide open. My dad kept the decibel level of “conversations” at a stone shattering level by screaming stuff toward the open door like, “Communists are godless, immoral goons who only want to destroy America!”

I hadn’t a clue what an immoral communist goon was, but goon sounded like a hairy cartoon character that always caused goofy trouble.  “Communist goon, goon, goon,” I said to myself, enjoying the funny sounding word. I suddenly felt someone else was in the elevator.  I turned.  It was the FBI guy.  The air turned cold.  I was too scared to say hi.  He didn’t even nod at me.  He just looked at his watch and wrote in his black note pad.

It was easy to spot communists.  When they weren’t disguised as real people with greased pompadours or crew cuts, they had uncut, wild, long hair – like me.  Generations ago, our principal had been named Old Witch Hazel.  Out of nowhere, her bony fingers were on my neck.

“Hat off.  You know hats aren’t allowed inside!”  My hair exploded out.  “Put your hat back on.  I’m telling your mother to get you a hair cut.”

“I don’t need one because I’m a communist goon.”

When I got home, my mother was trembling.  “You told my principal we’re communists?!”

“Yeah.  Goons are more fun than Jewish.”

“She’s coming for dinner…”

“Old Witch Hazel – here!?!”

“That’s no way to speak of her.  It wasn’t easy to get here to come.  Your father and my job are dependent on dinner going well.  You’re getting a haircut.  Then you’re putting on your blue suit.  You will not say a word the whole time.  When you get back, help me set the table.  Napkins go under the forks.”

It was the first time I’d seen my mother scared.  It scared me.  I wanted the dinner to go well.  In my closet safaris I discovered a large purple box labeled “Feminine Napkins.”  What a strange place to keep the good napkins.  That’s probably why my mom forgot she had them.  I’ll surprise her.

I took one out.  It didn’t look very feminine, dressy or dainty, but I was still in my single digit, so what  did I know.  They were sure to impress.  One under each fork.

My school principal was the first to see the table set with Kotex pads.  She turned white, tried to scream, but couldn’t.

No one spoke.  I sensed things weren’t going well.  Maybe the napkins were too dressy.  So I jumped in to save my folks’  job with humor and an explanation.  “We’re immortal communist goons.”

I’ve never seen an old person run so fast. Instead of her coat, she grabbed a pillow.  She filed a report against my parents.

A week later, while exploring the pipes and mysteries of the basement, the FBI spook instantly appeared.  My fright was obvious.  I worked up courage to speak to him.  “They’re going to fire my mommy and daddy.”

It was like his granite face was holding back a smile.  I don’t remember his mouth moving as words came out.  “You didn’t hear this from me, son.  I know your father’s not a communist by the way he screams at that commie neighbor of yours.  They have nothing to worry about.”

They kept their jobs.  I was never again asked to help set the table.

“Let’s get out of here, before they get back!”

Me and dog looking for America

Plans for our future had only gotten as far as buying the wagon and stripping her bedroom.  Carla had told her parents she was leaving home, but they chose not to believe her.  They simply said, “Don’t.”

“Where are we going?”  It wasn’t just a physical destination we needed.  I was asking about the rest of our lives.  Or at least the next day.  Those seconds before one of us answered was an experience of total freedom.

“West.”

We headed west from Evanston, Il. with dog, cat, bird and black light posters. Simon and Garfunkle called it looking for America; Jack Kerouac, Easy Rider and all that.  Hippies on the road.  Everyone felt obligated to visibly scorn us, or smile in admiration and envy.

We bought 50 pounds of potatoes in Idaho for $5 and cooked them on the engine block.  It takes 100 miles to bake a potato.  Ten miles for crisps on the manifold.

On the Oregon coast, I put on my non smelling, looking for work shirt and got my dream job  – radio DJ.  The entrance to our new life.  Start date was in a week.  We had $40 left.  For $30 we rented a combination room, bathroom and kitchen in a self demolishing shack signed “BORIS’S MODERN COTTAGES”.  It had running water, mostly on the floor, from a combo shower and sink without a drain.  Boris gave us an extra month to pay the damage deposit.  We’d hear the ocean as we made love on our damp floor mattress.  Life was working the way it should.  We were pretty much in heaven.

The ocean was more water than the cat could handle

The night of my first shift, I was told my DJ job was given to a returning Viet vet.  We had $1.23 left.  Our station wagon’s battery had died.  We couldn’t even catch up with the world, or have a bit of music from the car radio.  It was summer.  I had to be enrolled in a university in fall for a student deferment, or get drafted.  Our only escape, the dying, rusted wagon was parked right by our window.  I laid awake, staring at it.  The ocean in the background, as I imagined the day the wagon would again magically rescue us.   Freedom doesn’t last.

My dad drove me to where the examiners waited.  He didn’t notice the examiner walking toward our car.  To avoid being run over, the examiner jumped on the hood.  He got off and into our car.  Still shaking, he gave me a dirty look.  I flunked the test before I even started.

Round Two:  I finished the test.  The examiner totaled my error points.  Chicago, under the original Mayor Daley’s iron rule: You pay your way.  Even school children knew that.  I must have been absent that day.  “How did I do?” I asked him.

“This is close.  Very close.”

“Did I pass?”

“It’s right on the edge.  By one point.  I’m going have to total it up again to be sure.”   I waited an inordinately long time for him to do simple arithmetic.  “Close, very close,” he repeated, “It could go either way.”

Front center of hood: Indent where the driving examiner jumped on to it. Touch up paint never matched and rust always came through.

“Yes, yes…”

He extended his open palm to me.  Obviously there was some protocol I wasn’t aware of.  “Very close.  Anything could influence it.”  He rubbed his thumb and fingers together.

Suddenly insight sloshed in.  I knew what he expected.  “Thank you for being such a great examiner.”  I shook his hand, and flunked.

Round Three:  Crunch time.  If I flunked, I’d be the only sixteen year old in Roger’s Park, possibly the world, without a drivers’ license.  Time for desperate measures.  I swallowed my male teenage pride and asked my mother to take me.  The examiner got in.  My mother refused to get out of the car.  For the entire test she screamed at the examiner about the unfairness of the previous two rounds and how much this means to me.  She told him about my saintly grandmother, that I needed to drive to daily, to bring the special soup that keeps her alive.  The shriller my mom’s voice got, the faster the test went.  I passed.

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 be near the prophylactics, kept behind the counter, and absorb their maturity.  Unfortunately my job was mostly delivery boy, using their battered “professional delivery bicycle.”  The bike’s metal sign caught wind blasts that almost blew me down a few times.   A toy, handlebar bell, alerted Chicago traffic to my invisibility.  Ever ride the bicycle in a foot of snow, as cars spinning on the ice, head toward you?

Rain was great, though.  I’d shower under clogged roof gutters and my tips doubled.

So I’m in the center of a busy intersection, terrified as cars from all directions are doing the yellow light, pedal to the metal stomp.  Rain slick pavement.  Sound of a car radio blaring rock, an Ooooooga horn and I know Danger is near.  “Hey fairy!” he screams.

“Get him!” cries Danger’s second in command.

I’m deluged with sticky soft drinks and milk shakes.  Girls giggling and the smell of the car’s exhaust.  The wind punches the bike’s sign, my feet slide on the slick pavement, and I hit the ground as hubcaps blur by.

I returned to the pharmacy, still shaking and white from the precipice of death.  “You’re dripping again,” barked the pharmacist.  I fought to keep my thoughts to myself, but he wasn’t making it easy.  “You represent the pharmacy.  How does that make us look?”

Bursting, my face went from white to red : “As cheap as that broken down, dangerous bike I have to ride.  I hear businesses make make deliveries with cars these days.  By the way, I don’t think your breath adds anything to our image.”  Oh what the hell;  I was on a roll.  “And none of your jokes are funny – no matter how many times you tell them or what stupid voices you use.”

After being fired, I moved up a dime an hour to eighty five cents working as a theater usher.  With Danger.  We communicated with insults and dirty looks.

In place of a starched white dress shirt, we wore a cardboard dickey.  And one size fits all pants.  We pulled them up and stapled them to our cardboard dickey.  A smelly, oversized sport coat hid all that and kept the ensemble from looking totally ludicrous.

Maybe it was Danger’s attitude that made him look cool even through he was similarly dressed in old cardboard and shapeless, colorful cloth.  I hated him.

We were told to throw out three twelve year olds, who were screaming and throwing more food than was allowed.  Danger loved assignments like that.   He shined his flashlight in their face and in his best Elvis/Brando tone, growled, “Get out.”

Two of the kids got up.  The third just sat there.  “My dad’s a rich lawyer and he said you can’t make me.”  The kid took it up another notch.  “You Auntie Cement!”

The audience’s gasp sucked the screen back a foot.  No one ever challenged Danger.  Food stopped flying.  Danger’s friends, who he snuck in for free, were watching.  His reputation was on the line.  Danger was uneasy.  I jumped in with an idea.  “Get out or Danger will bash your teeth down your throat.”

Danger looked at me, trying to figure what the hell I was up to.  The twelve year old nervously held his ground.  “If he does, my dad will sue him and throw him in jail.”

The twelve year old had thrown down the gauntlet.  Danger’s eyes betrayed his helplessness.  “Twelve year olds don’t scare Danger,” I loudly announced.

The game of chicken was on.  I turned to Danger.  “You don’t want to get blood on your sport coat when you smash his teeth out.  I’ll hold your coat.”  Danger had no other option.  Staring down the kid, he took off his coat.

Suddenly there he was:  baggy pants stapled to a cardboard dickey, looking like a clown.  Everyone’s imagination added the floppy shoes and red nose.  The audience burst into laughter.

Danger quickly turned to me with an “I’m going to kill you” look.  The quick turn tore the staples from his dickey and his pants felt down.

He was never able to revenge that.

Back in Chicago.  I was staying at a crash pad, which back then was pretty much any hippie’s place.  Long haired freaks unquestionably took each other in.  I was enjoying a break from being hassled.  Easy Rider an’ all.  Darin ran in, let out a hit, and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him to a concert in New York.  “Why would I want to go to New York?  There’s plenty of concerts here.”

“It’s outdoors.”

“Outdoors?  That’s going to make for lousy acoustics.  Hey, wait… is that the freak show they pulled the permit for?”

“They moved it to a farm.”

“A rock concert on a farm? What if it rains?  Do you have a car?”

“We’ll hitch, man.”

“I just did that, man.  One of two things is going to happen.  It’ll be rained out and all the wandering freaks will be like shooting fish in a barrel.  I mean, hey, they already threw us out of one town before we even arrived.  Or, since they already have us all in a fenced in field, they won’t even have to take us anywhere when they bust everyone.”

“Wow,” said Darin, confused.

I took a hit of Darin’s joint, but it didn’t make the concept seem any better.  “So you’re hitching to New York, might get shot at, for a rock concert, in the rain, in the middle of a cow field with lousy acoustics?”

And that’s why I didn’t go to Woodstock.

Darin smiled as he headed out the door, with a hand scrawled Woodstock sign.  “Sometimes you just gotta believe.”

I knew I was onto to something.  Maybe if I sold Christmas cards in January they’d think I was even dumber and I’d sell even more.  Unfortunately the sales company wasn’t offering them in January.  So I scurried through the back covers of my comic books for a substitute:  Seeds for farm crops – grain, corn, watermelon, etc.  My highrise Jewish clientele could plant a rye crop in a flower pot and in a few months harvest a slice of bread.  It worked.  I quickly sold all my seeds.

Next came something called Salve, which I sold with subscriptions to something called Grit, “The Nation’s Newspaper.”  I didn’t know what Salve was, but it sold.  My carton came with myriad other drugs and cosmetics, including laxatives. Hey, a door to door laxative salesman.  I didn’t know what a laxative was either, but that didn’t stop me from selling all my Salve.  The sales instructions gave a tip: “Establish a need.”   They opened the door to, “Hello sir or madam.  You look like you need a laxative!”

I went back to selling farm seeds.

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 my head.  I had inadvertently uttered the forbidden name. “Taja!,” she corrected me.  “No one must ever say Taj.  Ever.”  My throat locked.  I couldn’t even begin to apologize.

She’s leaned against the building.  Her palms pressed against her head, struggling to keep her brain from exploding.  “They ate my dreams.  The crucial ones.  Do they do that to you, too?”

Any chance I have of getting balled, depended on instant cosmic bonding.  “Yeah. I had three dreams eaten just last month.  Damn dream eaters.”

Taja smiled, feeling she’d found a kindred spirit.  The sunset splashed against her blowing raven hair, and sunk deep into the darkness of her eyes.  She’s was a creature of the night, awakening.  I was in way over my head.

Anyway, the SIU Acid Queen lived in a dorm.  Freshmen co-eds had to.  Women had to be back in the dorm before lockdown.  There were bed checks.  Engaged in spiritual and sexual pursuits at my trailer, the Acid Queen missed bed check.  Her punishment would include restricting her outdoor privileges to daytime only. This would be especially hard on an Acid Queen, who is a creature of the night. Daylight isn’t kind to her image.

Around the same time Taja lost her nighttime privileges, there was going to be a massive Woodstock like concert at a large state park near SIU.  Hippies and radicals were pouring in from all over.  At the last minute, finding themselves overrun with long haired “outside agitators,” the locals of southern Illinois pulled the permit for the concert.

Now we had thousands of very pissed hippies and radicals hanging around Carbondale, all drugged up with no place to go.  Okay, pissed hippies you don’t have to watch out for.  They’ll just out karma you and walk smugly away.  It’s the radicals and activists you have to be scared of.  They’re on a mission.

But getting back to Taja and me, into this rabidly foaming cauldron, I convinced her to hang around reality long enough to overthrow the entire concept of women’s hours by calling in the ACLU.  I got us press coverage.  Things mushroomed.  They needed to defuse a volatile situation.  Taja was called in for a private meeting with the chancellor.

She returned, unusually comfortable for one not used to visiting reality for long periods. “His aura is the same as mine.  He said if I drop the case, he won’t do evil to me, and I won’t have hours anymore.”  Her eyes feasted on the tabs in her hand.  “Window Pane or Orange Sunshine?”

I was aghast.  Well, as aghast as I could be stoned.  “What about the other girls?  That’s not right.  No one is free till everyone is free.”

She returned to the dean.  “No one is free till everyone is free.”  They freed her.  Expelled was the word they used.  That was all the masses of angry, concertless freaks needed.  It was the spark that ignited the riot.  SIU closed for summer break two weeks early.

That didn’t bother The Acid Queen.  “Doris Day and I share a space.  She sends me messages.   She knows I’m coming to see her.”

We took off for Hollywood.  I was in for the summer of my life.

To Be Continued

BoomerFlashbacks is where those of us lucky enough to grow up in some of the most exciting, changing, amazing times can share stories, thoughts and photos.

We were born into the afterglow of the “War To End All Wars.” Rock and roll didn’t exist. The economy was booming. Everybody loved America. Nuclear power was to provide electricity too cheap to even meter. Once we got rid of those evil commies we’d have an even more perfect world.

B&W TV burst into colors. Instead of hand copying we could Xerox. Air pollution was the benign sign of bustling factories. Muscle cars raced on twenty five cents a gallon gas.

Segregation was legal. Females weren’t allowed to wear pants in public schools. Liquor stores had to be closed on Sunday. Only bad girls did it. Divorcees were shunned. We wore a coat and tie on planes and buses. We lived in a Beaver Cleaver world. Father always knew best.

And then, for the first time in history, the sons and daughters of the ruling class wanted to blow up their birthright and remake the world. The young no longer looked to their elders for answers. “Twenty-Five and Under” was Time Magazine’s Man Of The Year.

Great times live forever.

Join us (it’s free) and share your stories and photos.

Enjoy BoomerFlashbacks!

Kyle

Or in school when the classroom door opened and a Filmosound projector appeared with its servant – the Projector Boy. I longed to be older and on the AV Crew. Run and care for those cherished machines. Bask in applause when I pushed the AV cart into the room. Keep them dusted and oiled. Replace their brilliant bulbs.

We couldn’t wait to mock the Encyclopedia Brittanica films’ stuttering voices due to torn sprocket holes. We applauded the hectic Scotch tape splice that stuck in the film gate, treating us to film melting and burning on the screen, as the teacher made a mad dash to the projector.

On the TV show THIS IS YOUR LIFE the honoree would get a kinescope recording of the entire show, and his very own Filmosound projector to show it on. How incredible. Someone, not a movie star, having 27 minutes of themselves in a black and white movie with sound. The most I could ever hope for was five minutes of 8mm, silent for about $10 with processing.

I imagined owning a Filmosound projector. The ability to watch a movie in my room, whenever I wanted. Just like Hollywood stars could. Wow!

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 with a friend. The top was down. It was night. Stretched out full in the back seat, the stars were motionless as earth sped by in a ninety five mile an hour blur.

Looking out over the expanse of trunk, in the darkness, I could barely make out the fins rising in the distance. She was my Tara.