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.