Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (14)

 After the drive back from Liberty, New York to Brooklyn, I only saw Joe one more time during summer I was workin' at Travelers Aid-ISS.

Around the same time Richard Nixon was being threatened with impeachment and being forced to resign by the then-Nelson Rockefeller-led faction of the U.S. power elite, the CIA-Deep State-FBI, the corporate mass media owners and their stable of journalists and the Democratic Party loyalists within the U.S. military-industrial complex (after Nixon's role in the 1970s Watergate Scandals were exposed by U.S. Congressional hearings and Deep Throat/Deep State/FBI leaks to the Washington Post), Joe again stopped by my apartment one night and invited me to get into his car and watch Nixon's scheduled resignation speech on TV with him, in the apartment of Joe's co-worker's apartment.

But so many decades later, the main thing I remember from this last get together with Joe in the summer I was working at Travelers Aid-ISS, is that after getting stoned together with Joe's co-worker, the brother of Joe's co-worker, and Joe (inside the Flatbush area apartment of Joe's co-worker, which was located in a building with a storefront on the street, 1-floor below), by means of some extremely potent pot, I was so high as we played a board game, with a name like "Battleship" with Nixon's resignation speech on television playing in the background, that it proved impossible for me to quickly learn enough about the rules of this board came that Joe attempted to explain to me, for me to be able to understand how to play the game.

And once the board game was finished and I, by then, only slightly felt the effect of the pot, I felt like getting back to my apartment before Jew was planning to leave himself, drop me off at my apartment and return to his mother's apartment to sleep.

So I then said goodbye to Joe, told him I felt like now splitting, and then rode back to my apartment in Red Hook via the subway.

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (13)

During the 2 hours that it took to drive out of Brooklyn and onto the highways leading to Route 17 and up to Liberty, NY, the four of us in the car shared a few joints and, while driving, Joe's co-worker also drank a can of beer.

But, during the middle of the highway drive up to Liberty, NY, Joe's co-worker suddenly became nauseous, drove his car slowly into the highway's break-down lane, got out of the car, vomited for a minute or two, and then quickly returned to his car's driver's seat and continued to drive up the highway towards Liberty, NY.

Yet before the car reached Liberty, NY, however, Joe persuaded his co-worker to stop off at one of the campsites in the Catskill Mountains, around Monticello, so, while we were passing through the area, could check out what the scene there was like.

And what we soon discovered, after driving around one of the campsites, was that the campsite was overcrowded with a lot of culturally-straight families who had parked their oversized campers next to the oversized campers of other culturally-straight families. So that the campsite resembled a New York City street or highway traffic jam in the country filled with similar-looking campers, rather than cars. 

Then, while laughing and still high on pot after our brief visit to the campsite, Joe's co-worker soon drove his car and us away from the campsite and again continued driving up the road towards Liberty, New York.

But by the time the four of us arrived at the summer house in the country of the social service professional who had "invited" Joe and his Joe's co-worker/colleague to spend some time on the weekend there, it was nighttime. And after Joe knocked on the front door of the house, the white upper middle-class liberal social service profession who had extended him the invitation to visit answered the door and seemed surprise to see that Joe had followed up so quickly on his invitation, by showing up that same night.

 And, after entering the house's living room and standing there for a few minutes, Joe and the rest of us were quickly led back out of the house, through the front door by Joe's social service professional colleague, to the front yard and then into a barn that was located around 15 yards to the right side of the house. And then, we were quickly told that the four of us could sleep on the hay loft there that night.

Apparently what had happened was that Joe's co-worker, who lived in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn and was also a friend of a member of the 1970s Movement-oriented rock band, The Human Condition, which a late 1960s and early 1970s former Newsreel radical left filmmaking group member, named Bev, had organized (after she had left Newsreel and decided to focus more on becoming a revolutionary socialist Movement singer-songwriter and rock band leader, who sang in a bluesy way that reminded one of how Janis Joplin had sung in the late 1960s).

And for some reason, despite having apparently casually invited Joe and Joe's co-worker colleague at some point to spend part of a summer weekend crashing at the upper middle-class social worker colleague's summer country home, the white upper-middle-class professional social worker colleague at the Staten Island Drug Addiction medical health care center of Joe's wasn't eager to allow Joe, Joe's co-worker, the brother of Joe's co-worker and me--all of whom weren't part of the U.S. liberal professional upper middle-class like he was--mingle or perhaps share a joint or get drunk with the 1970s radical left musicians he was allowing to use his inherited summer home as their place to hand-out in and practice at during the summer.

So naturally, when Joe, Joe's co-worker, the brother of Joe's co-worker and I were in the barn along with each other, sharing a joint and preparing to get ready to stretch out and sleep there in our clothing for the night, the brother of Joe's co-worker quickly blurted out: "He seemed to want to get us out of his house right away, as if we weren't good enough to hang out there."

And Joe, Joe's coo-worker and I generally agreed, right before, Joe jokingly said, "I wish I had some heroin on me to inject right now," prior to everyone else in the barn now agreeing with Joe.

To be fair to Bev (who had apparently noticed how quickly her band's host had pushed out of his summer house and into his barn when we arrived there late on the previous evening), she appeared inside the barn the following morning, in a white bathroom, to make sure we were awake by then; and to let the four of us know that there was some breakfast leftovers in the house for us to eat, if we felt like it. And, if I recall correctly, I think the four of us, who were already awake when Bev appeared in the barn, quickly walked back to the house and grabbed a few bites of the breakfast leftovers.

Then, before Joes co-worker started to drive the car of his back to New York City later that morning, I can recall joining Joe, Joe's co-worker, and Joe's co-worker's brother in tossing a football that was previously left on the grass , in front of the upper-middle-class professional social worker colleague at their workplace's house, to each other for around 10 minutes.

And, during the ten minutes of tossing around the football, Bev seemed to remember who I was and walked up to me, smiled and said, "Great to see you're O.K.;" before then quickly walking back into the house there, in a way which seemed to indicate she had no particular further interest in conversing with me.

Despite the fact that three years before I had once advised Bev, in a letter to her, that it might make much more political sense for her to get more into being a singer-songwriter radical feminist musician than just working as a Movement organizer for a Newsreel left documentary filmmakers group which (in the absence of then having access to some kind of mass media distribution way of airing its films) was not likely to be able to create enough revolutionary feminist consciousness in the 1970s among U.S. working-class people that would be required for creation of a revolutionary feminist and democratic socialist society in the USA.

 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (12)

 Perhaps because by the mid-1970s Joe still felt nostalgic for the days when he had shared joints with me, or often interacted with me, within the Richmond College Social Change Commune late 1960s hippie student scene, when most of us still assumed that a cultural, political and economic Revolution would happen in the USA in the 1970s, and, to him, I apparently still symbolized that time he felt some nostalgia for, in a friendly way Joe offered to drive me back to my slum apartment on the Brooklyn waterfront; before driving himself back to his mother's apartment in Queens in which he now lived?

Or it could be that, because he might not have yet realized how economically impoverished I still was in the mid-1970s and how much of a dump my Brooklyn apartment was, Joe might have been wanting to check out my apartment to see if it could possibly be a hipper place for him to live than was his mother's apartment in Queens, perhaps?

So many decades later, I no longer can recall much of the conversation we had while Joe shared a joint with me as he drove from Manhattan, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and towards my apartment near the Battery Tunnel entrance from Brooklyn, along the streets I directed him to take. But what I do recall is that in our conversation I made the observation that "in the Sixties, we learned that the System was morally corrupt, when it failed to stop its endless war in Vietnam, despite all the the student protests. And in the 1970s, we've learned that the System in the USA can no longer provide automatic economic affluence for most of the working-class people who went to college in the Sixties, after they leave the campus.

"In the Sixties, the System hit us morally. And now, in the Seventies, the System is hitting most of us materially and showing us that having to work in a capitalist economic system when you're in your 20's is still a total drag for most people."

And I also recall that when I noted that some of us from Richmond College were getting closer to reaching the age of 30, after which it would be unlikely that they would be able to do much more to change the world, Joe looked a bit uncomfortable, since he was a few years closer to reaching 30 than I was at that time.

After Joe's car arrived in front of the slum apartment building in which I lived, he expressed an interest in checking out where I lived. So I invited him to park his car and come inside with me.

And once inside, Joe looked around the apartment, seemed to notice how little furniture I owned and commented: "Well, at least you have a lot of space in this apartment." And, apparently quickly concluding there was no way he would ever consider moving from his mother's apartment into my apartment as a roommate paying a cheap rent, instead of continuing to sleep rent-free in his mother's rent-stabilized apartment, while living in his car the rest of the time when not at work.

As a recovered heroin addict, Joe was then getting paid to work at some kind of healthcare facility on Staten Island in the daytime, on Monday through Friday, as a drug counselor. And a few weeks after I bumped into Joe at the Judy Collins concert at South Seaport I was surprised when, early on a Friday evening after work, he and another recovered heroin addict , who was also now being paid to work at the same health care facility where Joe worked, knocked on my door and invited me to hop in the car of Joe's friend that was parked on the street outside.

It turned out that Joe and his co-worker had been "invited" by one of the yuppie male social worker professionals, who also worked at the Staten Island health care facility where they worked, to, if they felt like spending part of their weekend in the Catskill Mountains, stop by at a summer house in the country, which their yuppie workplace colleague had apparently inherited from his parents (after they retired and likely moved then to Florida).

So on this particular Friday night, Joe and his co-worker were driving up to this country house near Liberty, New York, and Joe, perhaps because he had felt sorry for me when he had visited the apartment I lived in and realized how economically impoverished I now was, decided that he'd offer me the opportunity of also getting out of the city during that hot summer weekend.

Not having previously planned to do much alone in my apartment in the evening after work at Travelers Aid-ISS on that Friday or on the upcoming Saturday or Sunday, except maybe go to Coney Island's beach, perhaps, I quickly followed Joe out of the slum apartment in which I slept in and hopped in the car of Joe's co-worker, who was driving; and then sat down in the back seat, next to the brother of Joe's co-worker; who was a tall white guy who lived with Joe's coo-worker.

As I later learned, the older brother of Joe's co-worker had worked as a bouncer in some Brooklyn bar, before later, when in his early 20's, becoming eligible for a disability welfare payment, apparently due to either previous drug use causing him to flip out and then being labeled "mentally disable" or "slow-learning; and therefore not required to do work from 9-to-5, despite still being able-bodied.

By the time I met the brother of Joe's co-worker, though, he considered himself now able to do some kind of 9-to-5 manual work , if required to do so. But somehow, despite having indicated to the government agency which had initially certified him as disabled, that he could now work 9-to-5, because of some bureaucratic mistake by the government agency, disability check payments were still being mailed to him--even 5 years after he had indicated to it he felt able to work.

So when, apparently after attempting a second time a few years later to again indicate that he was able to work 9-to-5, the government's disability checks still kept arriving in the mail, the brother of Joe's co-worker then, just shrugged, and decided he might as well just keep living off his disability check payments; and, rather than spending his days or evenings working at a dead-end job, just spend his days and evenings at home in his apartment smoking pot, listening to vinyl records or watching television shows, in-between preparing his own meals to eat.

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (11)

 While working at Travelers Aid-ISS and living on Van Brunt Street near the Brooklyn Battery tunnel in the mid-1970's, I came to feel that the way to replace the then-existing militaristic U.S. imperialist society's undemocratic political system was for the 1970's New Left Movement in the USA to start calling for establishing a culturally-hip, anti-imperialist and anti-militarist classless and democratic "youthocracy" in the USA.

It then seemed that the vast majority of people under 30 in the USA were still much more antiwar, anti-capitalist and anti-work ethic, as well as more leisure-oriented, politically hip and non-materialistic than were the U.S. citizens over 30 and all the old fogey U.S.-elected officials and U.S. power elite members, who had previously politically repressed the New Left Movement of the 1960s and then taken away the post-World War II economic affluence that most U.S. white working-class people had had, prior to 1973.

But although I then wrote a few columns for the New Jersey-based alternative newspaper, The Aquarian, in which I called for a "youth-led Revolution" in the USA, that would establish a socialist youthocracy in the 1970's, no youth-led revolution in the USA happened; and no political system of "youthocracy" was established in the USA in the 1970's.

Instead, the U.S. corporate media encouraged a more politically reactionary "me" generation of U.S. youths to develop and an older generation of "hip capitalists"--some of whom were born during and after World WarII--who began to transform the U.S. capitalist economic system; which then, on the surface, appeared to be more "hip" and less overtly culturally straight, and  less money-oriented, than what 1950's and early 1960's U.S. capitalist society had looked like.

I also at this time, then began to again feel that the corporatization in the 1970's by the hip rock capitalists, as previously symbolized by the early 1974 Dylan comeback tour, in which concert ticket prices were higher than anyone else's previous concert tour ticked prices, was something that the New Left Movement of the 1970's needed to prioritize in exposing and resisting.

So I also then wrote a column or two urging hip youth to again start resisting the hip capitalist complex's takeover of the youth cultural music scene in the 1970's.

And to get more of a sense of what the Rock concert scene was still like in the 1970's, I even took a Long Island Railroad [LIRR] out to Long Island one summer weekend day and snuck into an overpriced Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young outdoor concert; while on another Friday or Saturday night I went to an outdoor Eagles and Beach Boys concert in Jersey City, where a young stoned teenage girl jumped on my shoulders during  the time when the Beach Boys were signing their "Good Vibrations" pop song.

While working at Travelers Aid-ISS in the early summer, I also spent one evening going to a free concert at the South Seaport venue in Downtown Manhattan area, near where the Fulton Street Fish Market used to be located at, that 1960's folksinger Judy Collins was then giving a one-night performance at.

Although when I had attended a Judy Collins live concert in the mid-1960's I had found her performance both entertaining and artistically interesting, after hearing her perform for free at the South Seaport in the mid-1970's, I felt that Judy Collins had, by then, become more of a careerist and commercially-oriented, mainstream-type pop female vocalist-type singer than a folksinger; and less artistically interesting and less entertaining than she had been in the 1960's.

The main reason, though, that, so many decades later, I still remember attending this free South Seaport Judy Collins early summer concert, is that it was there, after the concert had ended, that I bumped into an old Richmond College Social Change Commune member that I hadn't seen since the Spring of 1969, named Joe, who had also been attending the free Judy Collins concert that night.

Enrolled in the experimental college on Staten Island, Richmond College, in the late 1960's, when he was then in his mid-20's, Joe, a white guy of average height who, despite seeming to be high on pot all the time, never dressed particularly like a hippie, was then a supporter of Richmond College SDS; probably because he opposed the Vietnam War and because New Left groups like SDS favored the legalization of pot use as early as the late 1960's.

But although Joe might be willing to attend a demo or sit in the audience to hear a white New Left activist or a Black Panther Party organizer speak about the need for Revolution in the late 1960's, he wasn't the type of antiwar student hippie who would ever consider doing any Movement organizing work, himself. And, insofar as he thought politically, in the late 1960's his political leanings pretty much reflected Abbie Hoffman's then politics and concept of Revolution more than late 1960's National SDS's politics.

Yet Joe, in the late 1960's at Richmond College, was someone whom you could always count on to offer you a joint to share at anytime or place, in a friendly way; and he was politically perceptive enough to both recognize sooner than nearly all the other students which of the U.S. liberal-left or radical left academics were more into their careers than making the Revolution and which of the Staten Island Black Panther Party members were the most likely ones to be NYPD infiltrators.

Before I bumped into Joe again in the mid-1970's, my recollection is that, around the last time I had seen him in the Spring of 1969, Joe, who had been rooming on Staten Island with an apolitical African-American student at Richmond College who shared his interest in being high all the time, was now moving into a Staten Island apartment with his new white woman student womanfriend.

But, by the time I bumped into Joe by accident at the free Judy Collins concert, Joe was then residing in his mother's apartment in Queens, working at a mental health facility on Staten Island with ex-addicts as some kind of drug rehab counselor, and spending most of his non-working weekend and evening hours away from his mother's apartment and "living in his car," as Joe put it

By using his mother's apartment in Queens as his place to sleep each night, Joe was able to avoid having to cough-up a lot of money to pay rent on his own apartment, thus enabling Joe to more easily afford to pay for both his car's gasoline costs and for all the recreational drugs and marijuana that he might want to buy each month. 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (10)

 Not being involved romantically with anyone in New York City in the Spring when I was working at Travelers Aid-ISS in the mid-1970's, I decided to try to find a possible female companion by replying to a "wishing to meet" personal ad that appeared in some kind of poetry magazine newspaper, in which a poetess expressed an interest in exchanging poems and corresponding with a poet; and possibly developing some kind of friendship.

And, after she mailed me some of her poems and I mailed her some of my poems, we then each mailed a photo of ourselves to each other.

From the photos we mailed each other, we both seemed to feel that, besides liking each other's poetry, we might be two people in their 20's who would find each both emotionally and physically attracted to each other, if we met each other in person.

So, by an exchange of letters, it was arranged that one Saturday in the Spring I would take a train up to New Haven and walk from there to where the poetess then lived in Hamden, Connecticut; where we could then hang out together for an afternoon in-person. And so I took a train up to New Haven one Saturday in the Spring, during the period when I was working at Travelers Aid-International Social Services.

But after I got off the train at the New Haven railroad station, walked north through New Haven, then past a shopping mall in Hamden and finally reached the culturally-straight-looking middle-class private home at the the address where the young poetess had indicated she lived at and rang the bell, it was answered by the older sister-in-law of the poetess.

And after the sister-in-law, a white culturally-hip-looking woman in her late 20's who talked as if she had attended college before marrying, had gone upstairs to tell the younger white poetess that her expected visitor had arrived, the sister-in-law and the poetess's white father (who looked to be in his late 50's and apparently also lived in the same house) came downstairs to the first floor living room to apparently "look me over" more carefully.

And then, during the few minutes while we were all waiting for the poetess I had been corresponding with to come downstairs, the poetess's sister-in-law indicated to me that she--not the poetess--had actually been the person who placed the ad in the poetry magazine newspaper for her sister-in-law, that I had responded to initially.

Although, after the white poetess I had been corresponding with, herself, cam downstairs to greet me still looked physically attractive to me, the photograph of herself which she had previously mailed to me, unlike the photograph of myself I had sent her, seemed to have been one that was taken a few years before. Because in the photograph of herself she had sent me, the poetess had looked a few years younger than she now looked; and now she was somewhat heavier in weight than she had been a few years earlier.

Seeing me in-person, however, the white poetess in her early 20's still seemed friendly; although my impression was that her sister-in-law (who had apparently been hoping that placing the classified personal ad for the poetess in the poetry magazine might help the poetess find some compatible male companion who might enable the poetess to move out of the family house) quickly realized that, having not driven up in a car and not being an owner of a car, I was unlikely to turn out to be the male companion that she was hoping to find for the poetess, whom she hoped to see move out of the family's house soon.

But only moments after coming downstairs, the poetess suggested I follow her outside to the car which she apparently owned; and that we both then visit a friend of hers, whom she also wanted me to meet.

So many decades later, I can't now recall much of what we talked about in the car as she drove to a local park, where she had apparently previously arranged to meet her friend; in order to let her friend, who turned out to be a Black woman in her early 20's, whom most men would then have not considered particularly attractive, help the poetess determine whether I was a man who was worth getting involved with.

But what I do recall concluding in the car, as she drove and we talked, was that, although I had been impressed by the poetry she wrote, because it seemed to reflect, lyrically, the sense of emotional loneliness and emotional emptiness I then felt about living within mid-1970's U.S. society, however desperate both she and her sister-in-law might be to find some male companion for her to help her escape from the family's private home in which she felt then trapped, I was not someone who could offer her a better daily life situation. 

There  would be little likelihood that the slum apartment in Brooklyn's Red Hook section and much more economically impoverished situation that I could then only offer her if she became involved with me would provide a more satisfying or happier lifestyle alternative for her than what her then-current lifestyle situation in Hamden, Ct. provided her with--especially because, despite being also antiwar and anti-racist, 1970's New Left Movement politics or 1960's New Left Movement history was of little interest to her.

After the poetess and I arrived at the local park where the poetess's Black woman friend was waiting inside her own different car, the two women friends and I both left the cars and walked inside one of the lean-to-type structures in the park. And inside the lean-to-type structure in the park alone with the two young women, I didn't get any particular sense that, at that time at least, they were interested in inviting me to have some kind of immediate sexual-type encounter with them in the lean-to-type structure.

But after we conversed for a few minutes in the lean-to-type structure in the park and the poetess's Black woman friend looked me over, the poetess's woman friend then asked me to let the poetess know of any guys I knew in New York City who might want to get involved with her.

Turned off both by the realization that the poetess had both mailed me an old photograph of herself from a few years before, rather than a photograph indicating how she currently looked, and that she had seemed more interested in showing me off to her woman friend when I visited her, than in spending the time together alone with me to see whether or not here was an actual basis for us to develop some kind of love relationship, I caught the next scheduled train from New Haven back to New York City, as quickly as I could.

Following my visit to Hamden, CT, the poetess wrote to me and expressed some disappointment that, after we had met in-person, I no longer seemed interested in exchanging poems with her or writing any letters to her.

But having concluded that, aside from then being an unattached, available man for a young woman who was looking for some kind of a boyfriend, I really couldn't offer her enough in the way of either common interests or economic security to really satisfy whatever eventual escape from her current unhappy living situation she was then looking for, I did not reply to the poetess from Hamden, CT's last letter to me.

In retrospect, perhaps I should have then invited her to visit me in Brooklyn and seen if she was open to becoming sexually involved with me, despite neither of us then feeling any particular romantic love for each other, after meeting in person in Hamden?

Yet once she saw my slum apartment, realized how economically impoverished I then was and found that I couldn't even then afford to have a telephone connection installed in my apartment and just relied on public telephone booths, when I needed to make a phone call, I think it's doubtful that she would then have been interested in developing a sexual relationship with me; and would then have likely been just eager to rush back to Hamden, CT from my slum apartment in Brooklyn, as quickly as she could.

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (9)

 After discovering in the 1970's the then-Hearst Corporation corporate board member's Westchester County residential address, I then checked out a New York City metropolitan area map that contained a detailed map of Westchester County and, on the map, located more exactly the road on which this then-East Coast-based Hearst media conglomerate board of directors member then, historically, lived.

And, to check out how possible it might be to respond to the massacre of the mid-1970's SLA members with some kind of militant action by the house (and likely mansion) of an East Coast-residing Hearst media conglomerate executive, I took a commuter train from Grand Central Station, on one Friday night after work at the Travelers Aid-ISS office, up to its last stoop in White Plains, New York, in Westchester County.

And, from the train station, I then continued walking north to the outskirts of White Plains, until I started to reach the more exclusive, more forested neighborhoods and much more deserted roads around Purchase, New York--but not around the area adjacent to or near SUNY's Purchase College campus.

Locating the general and exclusive Westchester County neighborhood of mansions and estates in which this particular then-Hearst Corporation board of directors member then lived, however, I realized that, having seen only one other person walking along the road in the early evening hours (a young white woman who looked like she was still of college age, lived with her super-rich family in one of the mansions, and who seemed to automatically assume, because I was white and young, that, like her, I also just lived in one of the mansions in the neighborhood and, therefore, posed no male threat to her personal safety on the deserted road), it would be difficult for any individual on foot to initiate some kind of militant action at the East Coast Hearst Corporation board member's mansion and estate; and still be able to walk back to a more populated neighborhood soon enough to avoid being noticed by cops or witnesses.

U.S. Left Movement people on the East Coast who wanted to respond to the massacre by fire of SLA urban guerrillas by doing some kind of militant action at the East Coast mansion of this particular then-Hearst Corporation board of director member would need to have access to a car, in order to have the possibility of making a quick getaway, without first being detected by local cops or witnesses.

After checking out the exclusive Westchester County neighborhood scene for awhile, I then continued walking west on deserted roads all night until, shortly after dawn on a Saturday morning, I arrived near a small airport, which the rich local residents who owned private plans in Westchester County used to land their private planes on.

And, from the airport, I then walked on, until I reached one of the commuter train stations, bought a ticked for the next Saturday morning train going back to Manhattan, and then hopped on the earlies morning train that went into Grand Central Station each Saturday morning. 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (8)

 In the mid-1970s, the Billionaire Hearst Dynasty's mass media conglomerate then edited and marketed the magazines, like Cosmopolitan magazine, which it published, in an East Coast, Midtown Manhattan-based (perhaps still Hearst media conglomerate-owned) Hearst Building, near 57th Street on the West Side of Manhattan.

And, during the 1950's, this possibly could have been the building in which the, by the mid-1970's long-defunct Hearst-owned New York Daily Mirror tabloid and Hearst-owned New York Journal-American may have also been edited, marketed and printed; although I don't know for sure if that was the case, historically.

So after the 6 SLA urban guerrillas were allowed to be massacred in a fire by the Hearst Dynasty's LAPD and FBI cops, my first thought was that one particular possible way the then- revolutionary New Left Movement on the East Coast might be able to respond to the massacre of the SLA, on the East Coast, would be to just do some militant action at this Hearst media conglomerate skyscraper in Mid-Manhattan one night.

Yet, on further thought, I quickly realized that, in "the City that never sleeps," the streets in Midtown Manhattan surrounding the Hearst Dynasty's media conglomerate building there would likely never be empty of at least some pedestrians, passenger cars, tourists, theatre-goers, residents, bar and restaurant patrons, night workers leaving their jobs and NYPD cop cars, in either the dark late evening hours or the dark early morning hours.

Hence, any East Coast New Left Movement supporter who might had wanted to respond to the massacre by flame of the Hearst Dynasty's SLA political opponents, by doing some militant action at Hearst's NYC headquarters building might have had a hard time, in the mid-1970's, escaping into the nearest subway station, without being detected by somebody and then captured.

So a day or two later, I decided a possible alternative way for East Coast New Left Movement folks to express their outrage at the massacre by fire on the West Coast of the SLA urban guerrillas who had challenged the censorship and media monopoly power of the Billionaire Hearst Dynasty might be to possibly do some militant action at the mansion or on the estate of some member of the Hearst media conglomerate's board of directors, who might have then been residing on the East Coast.

Long before some addresses of some members of U.S.-based corporation or media conglomerate boards of directors could sometimes be found in the 21st-century more easily, after the internet browsers became more technically sophisticated, the quickest way one could then discover the residential addresses of the U.S. corporation or media conglomerate board of directors' members in the mid-1970s was still to go to a public library's then-reference section; and then look through the most recent editions of Standard & Poor's Register of Corporation Executives and a Who's Who In America reference book.

So in the mid-1970s, following the massacre by fire of the SLA, that's where I then looked and located a residential address of one of the Hearst media conglomerate's then-corporate board members; who then lived, historically, in some exclusive suburban town enclave in Westchester County. 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (7)

 The only other workers I can vaguely recall who worked in the building in which the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace office in Manhattan was then located were two African-American men, seeming to be in their late 20s or early 30s, who worked behind the counter of the small cafeteria, which was located in the basement of the building.

Each workday I would spend my morning and afternoon 15-minute coffee break time down in the small basement cafeteria of the building, usually buying and eating a buttered roll, a danish, or some other cake snack; and sometimes conversing with the two friendly African-American men behind the counter who were always dressed in their chef-suit workclothes.

But, so many years later, the only conversation I can now recall having had with them was one in which one of the African-American cafeteria workers expressed surprise when I mentioned to him that I didn't particularly mind it, if a woman lover I may have been involved with wanted to also be involved sexually with another lover, because I wasn't into monogamy and was in favor of multiple relationships for women, as well as for men.

It was also while I was working at Travelers Aid-ISS that the LAPD police officers attacked the house in Los Angeles in which six of the Symbionese Liberation Army [SLA] anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist and anti-racist left urban guerrillas- who had kidnapped the billionaire Hearst Dynasty heiress, Patty Hearst, a few months before to demand that the Hearst Dynasty set up a "free food for the poor" program and publish the SLA communique texts in the newspapers it then owned--were then hiding out.

And, like most 1970s U.S. left Movement supporters, after it was revealed that, rather than just surrounding the house in which the SLA members were hiding and waiting until some kind of negotiated surrender and arrest of SLA members would then be arranged by left Movement lawyers, the FBI-backed LAPD cops had chosen to just burn out and massacre, on the spot, the six SLA members who were inside the Los Angeles house, I then felt enraged. 

In the mid-1970s, the degree to which the U.S. West Coast FBI office and the U.S. West Coast police departments were able to be in immediate contact with the U.S. East Coast FBI office and the U.S. East Coast police departments seemed to apparently be much less than it became in later decades; after the development of more advanced computer technology had enabled FBI offices and local police departments to apparently substitute the use of emails for the use of telephones, telexes and faxes, as a means of communication among themselves.

So when I thought to myself that one way U.S. left Movement people on the U.S. East Coast might be able to respond to the FBI and LAPD's fascist-type elimination, on behalf of the billionaire Hearst Dynasty, of the six SLA members, I then assumed that the East Coast FBI and East Coast police department offices would be unprepared then to respond to some U.S. left East Coast act of revolutionary resistance, which focused on a Hearst Dynasty media conglomerate-related symbol.

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (6)

The fourth Travelers Aid-International Social Services [ISS] social workers whose dictaphone tapes I helped transcribe was a friendly and sweet Japanese woman, named Sato, who seemed to be in her 40s, and who lived alone in a small high-rise Midtown Manhattan apartment building, within walking distance from the Travelers Aid-ISS office in which she worked. And of the four social workers at Travelers Aid-ISS for whom I transcribed dictated tapes, Sato was the one who, by far, produced the most dictaphone tapes to be transcribed each week.

Unlike the two U.S.-born social workers and the Scandinavian-born social worker, Sato apparently spent nearly every minute of her 8-hours in her office dictating her case histories into the dictaphone as rapidly as possible.

So, although the two U.S.-born and the Scandinavian-born social workers at Travelers Aid-ISS provided the dictaphone-typist pool's basked with an adequate amount of work to be typed for what the social workers were being paid to do and completed all the work that Travelers Aid-ISS required and expected them to do, if one ever compared the amount of work they did during a workweek with the amount of work Sato produced, one might mistakenly have concuded that the U.S.-born and Scandinavian-born social workers were "slackers."

Having grown up in Japan during the 1930s and 1940s and worked in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s, before apparently arriving to work in Manhattan during the late 1960s or early 1970s, the work ethic and attitude to doing work that Sato had seemed to differ from the more leisure-oriented, more laid-back work ethic that had developed in both the social democratic societies of Scandinavia and in the then-affluent U.S. society during the first few decades of the post-World War II era.

But despite being a work-freak at Travelers Aid-ISS, Sato was the only Travelers Aid-ISS social worker who apparently felt some personal obligation to express her thanks for me being one of the dictaphone-typists who spent much of their worktime transcribing and typing up what she produced each week.

And for that reason, apparently, she surprised me in the office one workday and invited me to attend with her a classical music concert at Lincoln Center after work later in the week, for which she had purchased two tickets.

Given the age gap between the culturally-straight-looking dressed Sato and me in the 1970s, and the fact that I had never previously felt that Sato was particularly interested in getting to know me outside of work, I did not regard Sato's invitation to attend a Lincoln Center music concert with her as any kind of attempt to try to form some kind of out-of-work friendship or relationship with me.

And prior to Sato's invitation, I, myself, had not thought of her as someone I might be interested in getting to know better outside of the workplace office.

But, not wanting to risk making Sato feel embarrassed that she had gone out of her way to invite me to attend a Lincoln Center classical music concert with her, I agreed, with a thankful smile on my face, to join her at the concert.

So many years later, I no longer can recall which classical music composer was being played by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the Lincoln Center concert that I attended with Sato.

But what I do recall more is that when Sato treated me to some dinner in her Midtown Manhattan high-rise apartment, prior to the concert, we conversed about U.S. foreign policy in Asia and U.S.-Japanese foreign relations. And Sato was surprised that I was so critical of U.S. foreign policy, historically, in Asia and had some understanding of why, both before and after World War II, the Japanese people had had some legitimate grievances about U.S. government foreign policy in relation to Japan, that the U.S. government had unwisely ignored.

 And Sato also seemed surprised to hear me mention that I thought the Truman administration should not have ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, especially because, prior to August 1945, the Japanese government has already indicated to some Soviet Union diplomats that it was interested in negotiating an end to its WWII military conflict with the U.S. government.

In addition to then being interested in befriending me because I now also seemed more sympathetic to and understanding of Japanese people than the other people who had grown-up in the USA after World War II whom she had meet while living and working in the USA, my impression was that, being lonely in New York City in the mid-1970s, Sato also felt that, possibly, I could be a younger person with whom she could develop a friendship, similar to one that she might have had in Japan with a nephew who might have been in his 20s, like I then was.

But, despite recalling that I exchanged some public library books which examined World War II history in the Pacific ocean area, from a viewpoint that was critical of some U.S. government foreign policy and military decisions (like the decisions to firebomb Tokyo and drop the A-bombs on people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), while in Sato's apartment,, I  no longer recall the content of any of the conversations inside Sato's apartment, that occurred before I eventually left my job at Travelers Aid-ISS and never saw Sato agaon.

In retrospect, I probably should have attempted to keep up my acquaintance with Sato, even after I no longer was transcribing her dictaphone tapes at Travelers Aid-ISS, because her kind and sensitive personality did cause me to feel some emotional fondness for her and Sato seemed to like me.

But, given the age gap between us, and the fact that she lived in a high-rise apartment in Midtown Manhattan and I lived in a slum apartment in Brooklyn's Red Hook section, my conclusion in the mid-1970s was that our generational difference and different economic class situation meant that it wasn't logical for me to try to keep in contact with Sato, once I was no longer working at the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace.  

 

 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (5)

 One of the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers whose tapes of social or case histories and correspondence I would sometimes transcribe and type-up during my work day was a culturally-straight-looking white woman who seemed to be in her 40's, wore glasses all the time and was someone whom most men at that time would likely have considered not particularly attractive on either a physical or personality level.

So many decades later, I can't recall ever having exchanged more than a few words with her, whenever she appeared near my desk to either drop a tape to be transcribed in a basked or to pick up a typed transcription of one of her tapes, during the time I worked at Travelers Aid-International Social Services [ISS].

All that I recall about this particular social workers is that, despite being a conventionally married woman, her husband was then working in some southern U.S. city, Monday to Friday, while she worked in Manhattan at Travelers Aid-ISS, Monday to Friday. And apparently, the only time they slept together as husband and wife was when her husband would fly up to New York City for the weekend or when she would fly down South for the weekend.

And I remember thinking that it seemed that she and her husband's apparent desire to have a more affluent and conventional middle-class standard of living had led them to develop the kind of long-distance marriage relationship that most women I had previously known would not have found very emotionally or sexually satisfying.

The second Travelers Aid-ISS social worker, for whom I helped transcribe tapes and type-up social and case histories, was a more culturally-hip-looking white woman with shortly-cut dark brown hair, who seemed to be in her early 30's, whom most men at that time would have likely considered physically attractive and "pretty."

But although this woman social worker was the only woman in the Travelers Aid-ISS office who then wore a pants suit, rather than a dress or shirt, to work, she never indicated any interest in ever chatting with either me or any of the other transcription-typists, when she either dropped her tapes into the transcription-typist pool baskets or picked up the typed pages of her dictations that we all produced for her.

Apparently, she then had either a husband or a boyfriend. But since I can't recall ever exchanging any words with her, there's really nothing else I can now recall about her, so many decades later.

The third Travelers Aid-ISS social worker for whom I transcribed tapes was a white woman, with light brown hair, from some Scandinavian country, who seemed to be in her 40's, whom most men at that time would likely have still considered "pretty" and physically attractive. Apparently, she had ended up working in the USA for Travelers Aid-ISS in the 1970s because she had married a white middle-class or upper middle-class man from the USA, whom she had met in Europe after World War II who wished to bring her back with him to live in the USA as his wife.

After having some children and raising them at home while her husband went to work during the 1950s and 1960s, this social worker from Scandinavia, who still spoke English with a slight Scandinavian accent, had returned to the work world in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Although the Travelers Aid-ISS social worker from Scandinavia always came to work in the office wearing a dress or skirt and blouse, rather than slacks or a pants suit, and still used lipstick and makeup in the mid-1970s, she was still the only other person in the Travelers Aid-ISS office who then seemed to be some kind of a socialist in her political beliefs other than myself. Probably because she had grown up within a social democratic-led Scandinavian country and because her parents had likely voted Social Democratic party candidates and raised her to be a socialist in her political views?

Also perhaps because, besides being personally happy with her life and family situation in the USA, she was a socialist, the Travelers Aid-ISS social worker from Scandinavia was the only social worker there who noticed I likely would then have preferred to be earning my economic survival money by having a job other than the dictaphone-transcriptionist/typing job I had in the Travelers Aid-ISS office?

Because a month or two after I had been working at Travelers Aid-ISS and, as my hair grew longer, I had begun to reveal myself as being some sort of a hippie-freak, she stopped by my work desk and suggested to me, in a friendly, slightly Scandinavian accent, that I look into the possibility of trying to get some work during the summer on one of the New England-based fishing boats, that she had learned were looking to hire some men, like myself, who were in their 20's, that summer.

Although I expressed my thanks for her thoughtful suggestion and admitted that a job on a New England-based fishing boat for the summer would, indeed, be considered by me to be a more interesting work world situation than the job I then had at Travelers Aid-ISS, I also indicated that I was still reluctant to yet move out of New York City in the mid-1970s and give up my relatively low-rent apartment.

But, aside from having this particular conversation with this third Travelers Aid-ISS social worker, whose dictated tapes I helped transcribe, about possible job openings on New England-based fishing boats in the mid-1970s, I don't recall anything more about this social worker from Scandinavia. 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (4)

 So many years later, I can only vaguely recall three of the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers whose case histories and correspondence I transcribed. And I can also only vaguely recall the contents of the dictaphone tapes I transcribed each day in a general way.

But what I do recall less vaguely is a fourth Travelers Aid-ISS social worker, whose case histories and correspondence I also transcribed, whom I did come to know a little better outside of the office workplace, during the time I worked at Travelers Aid-ISS in the mid-1970s.

The post-1965 escalation of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam had, by the mid-1970s, produced large numbers of orphaned Vietnamese children in South Vietnam. And, by the 1970s, some of these orphaned children of the cities in South Vietnam, that were still then-controlled by the U.S. government-armed and funded Thieu regime, were being housed in South Vietnamese orphanages affiliated in some way with some U.S.-based religious or missionary organizations, that had been involved in "humanitarian relief projects" in South Vietnam; at the same time hundreds of thousands of U.S. military troops had been waging war in rural South Vietnam against South Vietnamese National Liberation Front [NLF] guerrillas, and the South Vietnamese civilians who had supported the NLF, for many years.

In addition, besides housing some of the South Vietnamese children whose parents had been killed by either the U.S. military or the troops of the U.S. government's puppet regime in South Vietnam during the many years of war, the South Vietnam orphanages were also housing some of the babies given birth to by the South Vietnamese women whom some of the U.S. GIs sent to South Vietnam had knocked-up while stationed or on leave in South Vietnamese cities like Saigon. Before these U.S. GIs were either killed or wounded in battle returned back home to the USA.

Because some of these babies were half-white, some of the culturally-straight, usually conventional middle-class or upper middle-class, U.S. white couples who wanted to become adoptive parents, but preferred to adopt a half-white infant or child, rather than an African-American infant or child born in the USA, were the adoptive parents to whom Travelers Aid-ISS provided some of these half-white orphaned or abandoned Vietnamese infants or children.

Apparently, by mid-1970s the number of U.S. white couples in the USA wishing to only adopt a white infant or white child then exceeded the supply of orphaned or abandoned U.S.-born white infants or white children then available for adoption.

Hence, the half-white/half-Asian orphaned or abandoned Vietnamese infants or children being housed in some of the South Vietnam city orphanages, who were then being placed by Travelers Aid-ISS with white U.S. adoptive parents apparently were used to provide one way of responding to the shortage of available U.S.-born white infants or white children then existing for white couples in the USA who weren't willing to consider adopting an orphaned or abandoned African-American infant or child.

Transcribing and typing up the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers' case reports or social histories, I couldn't help noticing that, during the 1970s at least, the culturally-straight, usually middle-class or upper-middle class U.S. white couples who adopted South Vietnamese orphaned or abandoned children and infants usually all then changed the first names of the children they adopted from their Vietnamese language-sounding original names into more common English/U.S. language-sounding first names; whether or not the child they were adopting was born of two South Vietnamese parents or of a South Vietnamese woman who some white U.S. GI had knocked-up while on leave, before returning to the States.

By the time the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers were taping the social histories and case histories of the prospective adoptive parents, which I transcribed and typed up, the couples who were not considered culturally-straight enough or economically secure enough to be then seen as appropriate adoptive parents seemed to have been already rejected or screened out by social workers of other agencies. Because I can't recall ever typing up a case history or social history related to an adoptive parents couple and the child that was being adopted in which any of the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers expressed any negative concerns about whether or not the adoptive parents couple would make good parents for the child they were adopting.

If the South Vietnamese child or infant being adopted had some physical disability or developmental problems, the Travelers Aid-ISS social worker would make reference to the disability in that particular child's case history. But the content of case histories and social histories that the Travelers Aid-ISS tapes which I transcribed mostly consisted of a final summary of all the facts which demonstrated in a detailed, conclusive way how the best interests of the particular South Vietnamese orphan or abandoned infant or child were, indeed, being served by moving forward with the adoptive process.

In addition, the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers also seemed to be involved in doing at least one follow-up visit to the homes of the U.S. adoptive couples with whom they had placed a South Vietnamese child or infant; in order to confirm that the adoption had worked out well. Since I also  vaguely recall transcribing tapes in which the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers briefly summarized how well the adoption had worked out, as evidenced by what they had observed in their follow-up visits. 

 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (3)

The last of the three other dictaphone-typists/transcriptionists working in the Travelers Aid-ISS dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist pool was also another woman in her 20's who apparently had also moved to New York to find office work, from some other city or town in the USA.

But, unlike the white culturally-straight woman from Scranton, PA., she was a short-haired woman of Native American background, who likely would have been considered neither physically unattractive nor physically attractive by most men of her age in that decade. But her sarcastic way of relating to men like myself in the office, whenever she responded to some remarks she had had heard me make (in the rare general office conversation that happened during the few times when the baskets weren't overload with tapes of case histories and social worker correspondence to be transcribed), seemed to indicate, though, that she distrusted men for some reason; and that she was more personally unhappy with her current personal life situation, in general, than any of the other women workers in the office.

Yet after a few weeks of occasionally chatting with the woman of Native American background and realizing that (despite her identifying herself as a Native American who seemed to resent the fact that Native Americans were still being discriminated against in the USA in the 1970s), she wasn't into being a supporter of the American Indian Movement [AIM] or any other liberation movement in the USA or elsewhere and also seemed too self-centered in her personality, I concluded that, even if I had felt an interest in asking her out to lunch for a date, it was likely that she would feel there was no real basis for socializing with me outside of the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace office.

The only other office workers who did some typing that I can recall from my days working at Travelers Aid-ISS were two typists sent in from a temp agency; after the pile of ISS social worker reports and correspondence in the dictaphone-typist pool's basked which needed to be transcribed or typed grew so high that the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel director needed to call in a request for some temps to the temp agency she sometimes used to obtain temp workers.

One of the temp typists was a white man who seemed to be in his late 40s or early 50s, with slightly-graying hair, whose temp assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS lasted for about three or four weeks. He apparently lived rent-free in a residential building somewhere in Manhattan's midtown or upper east side, which he had inherited from his parents, whose family had purchased the small brownstone building before the neighborhood's block had turned into a white upper and white upper-class residential neighborhood.

So prior to registering with the temp agency which assigned him to work temp at Travelers Aid-ISS, he didn't seem to have felt much economic pressure to find himself a straight 9-to-5 permanent job; perhaps because, prior to the post-1969 economic recession deepening in New York City by the mid-1970s, he may have possibly been able to obtain money by renting out one of the follors of the brownstone he had inherited.

But apparently the impact of New York City's economic decline in the early 1970s was being felt enough by him so, despite his rent-free personal situation, he still felt the need to pick up some extra money by doing temp work?

The late 40 to early 50-year-old white male temp typist at Travelers Aid-ISS had a straight-looking short haircut and was beardless. But although he didn't seem artistic-oriented, interested in current events and the 1970s U.S. and world political scene or intellectual, and did seem non-rebellious, after his first day as a temp worker at Travelers Aid-ISS, he no longer came to work dressed in a suit and tie. And, like me, he just came to work dressed more casually, wearing neither a tie nor a sport jacket.

When I noticed the pile of typing to be done inside our dictaphone typist office pool's basket was starting to increase, I advised this white male typist in his late 40s or 50s to try to stretch out the length of his temp assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS by working more slowly. But although he had hoped to collect more temp agency paychecks from his Travelers Aid-ISS temp job for a few weeks longer, he apparently was still too new at working at temp jobs to take my advice; and once there was no more work for the temp to do at Travelers Aid-ISS he disapppeared from the scene, after about three or four weeks.

The second temp office worker who appeared at the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace while I worked there was a tall Black woman with an Afro hairstyle, and a gold tooth in her mouth, who lived in a Harlem apartment.

But after only one week working on her temp assignment at the Travelers Aid-ISS office, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager signed her temp time sheet on Friday afternoon and told her that the temp assignment had ended and she would no longer be needed to work at Travelers Aid-ISS in the following weel.

Because I had chatted with the African-American woman temp a few times during the wook in the office, she started to chat with me on the Manhattan street after we left the East Side building in which the Travelers Aid-ISS office was located, and walked towards the different subway stop stations we used to commute home.

Apparently, the Travelers Aid-ISS white female personnel manager had accused her of taking too much time on her breaks and lunch hours and not working fast enough. But the African-American woman temp in her late 20s or early 30s felt the real reason her temp assignment at the Travelers Aid-ISS was ending was because of racial bias; and she expressed anger at the assignment ending.

I agreed with her that, since this particular Travelers Aid-ISS workplace didn't seem to employ any Black clerical workers (except maybe the office worker who was the mailroom clerk) or any Black social workers in the 1970s, it was likely that the white middle-class female personnel manager's racial bias had led to the temp job assignment ending.

But, after stopping to converse with each other on the street for about 10 minutes, we both concluded that, unless her temp agency stopped giving her new assignments because Travelers Aid-ISS had ended her assignment after just one week, it made more economic sense for her to just call the temp agency and get assigned to report to a different workplace during the following week. Since there was a possibility that, in the short-run,  if she complained now to her temp agency about Travelers Aid-ISS's racial bias, she would then be seen as a "troublemaker by her temp agency; and the temp agency, itself, would start going out of its way, in a racially-biased way, to avoid giving her temp work assignments with any of the temp agency's other clients.

After our 10-minute sidewalk chat, I felt somewhat physically and intellectually attracted to the African-American temp woman worker whose assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS had just ended. But, not knowing whether or not she was already now involved in a relationship with another person, not wanting to use the fact that I had provided a sympathetic ear for her to vent her anger at the temp assignment ending so suddenly at Travelers Aid-ISS as a means of getting her inclined to feel willing to exchange phone numbers with me, and not feeling any vibe from her indicating she wanted me to ask her out for a date, I didn't ask her for one.

So although I felt attracted to her somewhat, I quickly decided that she would likely consider it illogical if I said anything more to her other than just wishing her luck, before we went our separate ways.

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (2)

 After so many decades later, I now can only visualize slightly the dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist area of the Travelers Aid-International Social Service [ISS]'s two-floored office in the many-floored East Side Midtown Manhattan skyscraper building, in which I spent most of my workday; or the basement area of the building, to where I would take the elevator down once in the morning and once in the afternoon. And there spend my 15-minute morning and 15-minute afternoon coffee breaks away from both the desk I worked at and from the three or four co-workers who were also working as dictaphone-typists/transcriptionists, at desks within a few feet of me.

What I can still remember and visualize a bit more than how the work space area and the basement setting looked are some other workers in the Travelers Aid-ISS dictaphone typist/transcriptionist pool, as well as the four ISS social workers whose dictation tapes I spent transcribing each workday.

Of the two dictaphone-typist/transcriptionists whose work desks, electric typewriters and dictaphone machines were nearest to my work desk, one was a white, culturally straight-looking woman, who always wore a dress to work each day and who seemed to be in her early or mid-50s. Occasionally, she conversed with me in a friendly way at the beginning and end of the workday; and during the rare times in the workday when there wasn't some social workers's dictation tape--of a prospective adoptive child's case history and report on the suitability of the prospective adoptive parents--or some social worker's correspondence, that needed to be transcribed and typed-up.

Although she was a liberal Democrat, New York Times newspaper reader who, by the 1970s was anti-Vietnam War as well as anti-Nixon, and didn't seem less friendly towards me, after I had let my beard and hair grow long again and revealed that, despite looking culturally straight when initially hired, I was, in actuality, some kind of hippy-freak guy in his 20s, I felt we had little common intellectual interests.

And since, besides not feeling, like I did, that working 9-to-5 as a dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist job under the U.S. capitalist economic system was a form of wage slavery, she was also a woman to whom I wasn't physically attracted; perhaps because she was the then-older white woman that most men at that time would likely have considered neither "pretty" nor "ugly", but just "plain-looking."?

The other dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist whose work desk was closest to my work desk was a young white woman with black hair, in her 20s, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who possessed a face that most men would have then considered to be "pretty". And I might have come to be physically attracted to her, despite her still coming to work each day still only wearing either a skirt or a dress and never slacks or jeans, if she had indicated during the workday that she was interested in getting to know me or that she shared any of my values, beliefs, intellectual interests or political/philosophical views.

But by the end of the first week, my impression was that this white co-worker in her early 20s had quickly decided that I wasn't someone she wanted to know better, because she already had a boyfriend who was still living in Scranton; and, while now living alone in New York City, the only kind of men then in their 20s she would likely want to know better would be the culturally straight white business-oriented executive or future executive types or male professionals, who were by then earning more money than she or I then earned as dictaphone-typists/transcriptionists. And only white men who would also eventually be interested in marrying her, having children and supporting her, by filling some kind of job slot that produced a weekly salary check large enough for her  to be able to escape from the 9-to-5 office work world she found dull; so that she  would be able to just be a stay-at-home mother raising children, like her own mother had been.

So, many decades later, I can't recall having any particular conversations with this particular culturally-straight white co-worker in her 20s from Scranton, Pennsylvania during the whole time I worked at Travelers Aid-International Social Services in the mid-1970s.

 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (1)

 After spending three or four days visiting a woman friend in the Midwest, who was then working for some Midwest campus town lawyer as a clerk-typist, I eventually hitched a ride with a white, short-haired, long-distance truck driver, who seemed to be in his 50s, at a break-down lane near one of the Ohio Turnpike entrances.

And the truck driver drove all night with me sitting next to him and keeping him awake by conversing with each other about our respective lives, his oppressive working conditions and the state of U.S. society in the mid-1970s--until we reached the unloading dock of a wholesaler in central Brooklyn, who resold meat and chicken to New York City supermarkets.

At the Brooklyn meat and chicken wholesaler's unloading dock, I ended up--in exchange for my free ride--unloading all the boxes of meat and chickens the truck driver had brought in his truck to Brooklyn from his Omaha, Nebraska pick-up point, while the truck driver stood and watched me unload his cargo for him, seeming to be grateful that he wouldn't have to risk hurting his aging back while unloading, himself, all of the heavy boxes which he had delivered.

And, afterwards, I got on a subway train and returned back to my slum apartment in Red Hook, by the Brooklyn waterfront, in late morning and quickly fell asleep for the rest of the day.

But by the next following Sunday, I had given myself a haircut, shaved off my beard and dug a thrown-out classified "Want Ads" section of that Sunday's New York Times newspaper out of one of the on-the-street-sidewalk garbage pails on Court Street in Brooklyn; because I needed to find a new 9-to-5 wage-slave job situation again, in order to obtain the money for the next month's rent.

Prior to late 1974--when the Wall Street bankers started to intensify their effort to push the City of New York's municipal government's eventual Fall 1975 drift into bankruptcy and subsequent cuts in NYC government city services, mass layoffs of NYC government workers, increases in NYC subway and bus fares and ending of free tuition for CUNY matriculated college students residing in NYC--a white male office worker could still get hired for some kind of permanent clerk-typist-related private corporate sector job, rather than just for a temp clerk-typist-related private corporate sector job. As long as you were still in your 20s, dressed-up in a suit and tie for your job interview, had short-hair and no beard, and falsely indicated on your job application that you were only a "high school graduate with a few years of college," rather than indicating that you actually were a college graduate with a B.A. in the liberal arts.

So when I noticed a want-ad in the Sunday New York Times classified want-ad section, which indicated that the Manhattan office of the Travelers Aid-International Social Services  [ISS] was advertising an available permanent job position opening for a dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist, I telephoned the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel office early Monday morning, from a Manhattan telephone booth inside Grand Central Station, to get a job interview at its Midtown Manhattan eastside office arranged later that same day.

And when I telephoned the following day, on Tuesday, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager who had interviewed me the day before, to ask if Travelers Aid-ISS had decided to hire me for the permanent job position I had been interviewed for, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager, in a friendly way, informed me that I was hired and should report for work on the following Monday.

The Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager who hired me so quickly was a culturally straight-looking white woman who seemed to be in her mid-30s and whom most men would likely have considered neither particularly unattractive nor particularly attractive on a physical level.

But after I demonstrated that I could then type over 60 words per minute with no errors on my 5-minute typing test, and indicated that I had had some previous experience working as a dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist for a few months at one of the Downtown Manhattan courtrooms, transcribing probation/social worker reports, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager related to me in an even friendlier way and appeared eager to hire me by the end of the interview; even without taking the time to check the references or accuracy of what I had written on the job application she had had me fill out, before I took the typing test.

Perhaps because I was either the first applicant she had interviewed for the dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist position and/or the first applicant for the permanent job position who had passed the the typing test and had some previous experience as a dictaphone-typist?

Or perhaps because I was not only the first qualified applicant she had interview, but was also an office work job applicant in the mid-1970s who may have then still possessed some "white skin privilege" in NYC, in relation to how some NYC business and non-profit organization personnel departments then still decided which people to hire as their office workers? (Despite all the then post-1970 U.S. liberal Establishment's rhetorical claims about how purportedly committed U.S. corporations and non-profit organizations were to implementing "affirmative action" programs in the1970s that would finally eliminate racial discrimination against Black office workers and Black professional white collar workers in their hiring practices by the and of the 1970s.)