----- 1959/1960 ----- _____________ ____________ 1959______ 1959____ age 9/10___ 4th/5th grade___ 1959___::::: .(NOT PROOFREAD) 1959 had same calendar as 1970, 1981, (Note: 1959, 1970, 1981 were worst years of my life) 1987, 1998, 2009, 2015, 2026, 1953, 1942,1931:::age 9:: My father was rubbing the new puppy, Major, on his belly and went, "Look! he's getting hypnotized"...... (August or Sept. 1959)One day I had a bunch of toys and models on the floor, including my three stage Disney rocket ship and I put a screen up to keep the puppy out. I went somewhere, came back, and the puppy had gotten into it and messed everything up. For some reason it bothered me so much that I walked down to 24th drive by the Cheesebox Park crying. It was night. My parents weren't around as usual. And when they were they'd just send me to bed......(Feb. 1959) The very first time I walked to school with Dale and Gary in Feb. 1959 we stopped at the grocery next to the liquor store at a right angle from most of the stores. That street ran parallel to 21st ST one block east. We came out and Gary had a pack of two cupcakes I had never seen before. We didnt have them on Clifford Place. Dale said something about them. We were in front of the store, dale was to my front left and Gary to the right. Without a word Gary offered me one and I liked it. The next day I had forgotten all about it. I bought a pack of them. (What were they? They were two in a pack and in those days Ring Dings were huge and one in a pack and Yankee Doodles were 3 in a pack. Were they Hostess Snowballs?) Then Dale says, "Aren't you going to give him one back? my father says to never give anyone anything unless you're sure you'll get it back." (Probably, his father meant 'lend', not 'give'). So I gave Gary one back....... We alked up that way many times and just past the grocery there was a steep driveway down that let to a concrete strip behind most of the houses on that long, long block as they all had garages under their houses. Way up north we could go back up again or cut right through a small yard to the other side of the block's same system. ..age 9 ... Once while cutting thru that little dirt spot to the other side I found a coupon and added it to others I gave my mother. She gave me money for them out of her register at the A&P. (But that may have been later than 1960)...age 9.. .. Once when walking to school along 21st St I got up to the very last house across the street from the school and noticed a ceramic green frog on a birdbath. There was thick snow. I threw a snowball at it and knocked him into the snow. I ran across the street.. age 9 ... 1959 was one of the fanatical years of the SPACE RACE. Also of worrying about being Atom Bombed in our sleep... age 9 ... The Collier's Encyclopedia used photos of "LANCE' foods as examples of things such as advertising. I had never heard of 'Lance' foods.I wondered where they had them. When I got to York,Pa years later it was everywhere....age 9. .... Sometime in 1959 I got my bike. Probably in Fall 59. My parents were happy to see me get something 'normal' and that would get me out of the house. I thought of it as a way to escape bullies. I forget where we went but I still have the mental image of all the bikes along the wall. I, as a 9 year old kid who liked red, naturally picke dout the biggest, reddest bicycle there. And it was WAY too big for me. It was a, I believe, '28', which was not even available in that size for many years afterwards and I had a terrible time trying to find tires for it as it was a European size, I was later told. A giant red 'truck' bike with all the heavy metal available. This was an ear when ONLy American CHILDREN rode bikes. Maybe they did in Europe but certainly not here. I never saw even a college student on a bike until 1970 when I had been at college since 1967. My parents tried a little to talk me out of it but not much. This was one time they SHOULD have put their foot down and said "NO! IT IS MUCH TOO BIG FOR A REGULAR SIZED BOY YOUR AGE AND MUCH, MUCH TOO BIG FOR YOU" They should have let me try to get on it right there to see that my feet could not possibly push the pedals all the way around. But noone did. And we got the bike. It cost FIFTY DOLLARS. That was like a weeks pay for many men back in those days when stamps were 3c and Hershey bars 5c (Multiply by ten). That huge bike caused years of consternation trying to ride it correctly.. 7-16....______________ _______________ __________________ _______________________ _______________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________1960 ____________ 1960 _____age 10/11___ 5th/6th grade_______ ::::: 1960 leapyear calendar same as 1988, 2016, 1932, 1904 (possibly Jan/April 1960)::: Parents agreed to have milk delivered. Believe was another of these guys saying they were working through college. One cold night it was so bad that the front door froze shut when milkman came. So he left it on the front top step where all the milk bottles froze and broke!!! ...... While in my father's car I thought it was 'funny' to joke that the hubcap fell off and was rolling by. Hey, I was ten....... When was it that the Gielbedas got that cats-eyes clock? The one that was black and white and the eyes and tail would go back and forth. It was the latest thing then...... While standing on the corner of Ditmars/21st St waiting for a bus I opened a pack of baseball cards and got a 'Wally Moon'. I had no idea who he was even though I wanted the Dodgers to win the '59 series. Instantly, the kids around me got all excited and even tried to trade me MICKEY MANTLE cards for it. Turned out that L.A.s getting Moon from the Cardinals probably got them the pennant and Mantle had a bad year in 59. Moon had that one long caveman eyebrow....... My father still kept going to the horseraces. Considering how much was going to and from the hockshop he couldnt have been winning...... The big thing in school they were pushing, including in My Weekly Reader was "Brasilia" the new model synthetic city that they destroyed much of the rain forests for. Back then it was always 'good' to 'develop'........ I learned to never ask my father to help with my homework. What he'd do is just what I could have done; go to the Collier's encyclopedia and try to look everything up. If it wasn't under one subject, he'd try another one. But it would take FOREVER to get one answer done and I had MANY questions to write answers for....... We went to a furniture store on Steinway street right after my parents bought me two bottles of bubble blowing soap. Two colors, I believe. I'm carrying them. To the back of the store. They seemed big to me. In those days bottles were all glass and bags were all paper. Suddenly the bottles break through ther wet bag and explode on the floor. I figure I'm in BIG trouble with my father's hair trigger explosive temper always ready to go off. (When I got into my 40s I realized that much of it came from his fantastic sugar addiction) But the salesman doesnt get a bit upset. Instead he goes and somehow brings me back two bottles of another brand from somewhere........ I guess I was able to take St Patricks day 1960 off. Thursday, March 17, 1960. This habit seemed to have started in Astoria where I began to hate the people at school. (Possibly April-June 1960):: We took our nightly drives in the car, usually around Queens. Went to White Castle burger places where the girl would put the tray of 12 cent burgers I loved on my father's window. They also had great coffee but at that age my mother put a LOT of milk in mine or I got sodas. We went to Ditmars stores area. Went to Lower Manhattan, usually to 34th St for Macys/Gimbels but sometimes to 14th St (Kline's Dept Store) where they still had those big, long wooden subway entrances.. The Mellingers stil had Taffy the black spaniel..... A chinese guy transferred into my class and i tried to make friends with him as he wasnt one of the monsters picking on me. I even visited him where he lived a few blocks east of the school. But he was just too far away... age 10. ...I'm sure that the Easter Bunny left me LOTS of candy in my Easter Basket I couldnt wait to get up and get each year. It was almost as exciting as Xmas even though I wasn't the candy eater my father was. (I have no idea what day Easter was on in 1960 but I know we all went to church. My mother always took me and dragged my father along whenever possible)...... The Sink The Bismarck song was big in April 1960, especially with kids...... I had a rifle made to shoot a cork out. You pulled back on a rod underneath, put the cork in, and pulled the trigger. Looked just like a small army rifle with the wood and strap. But I preferred to just jam the muzzle in the dirt and fire as it would give off a puff of 'smoke' and a few bits would fly..... At John's Bargain Store on 31st St past the 5&10 but not as far as the Library they had a whole shelf full of Korean War Comics really cheap. In them the NORTH Koreans were incredibly ugly bright-red faced monsters (The heads were oval but much wider horizontally than vertically). The SOUTH Koreans looked like slightly sunburned white men....age 10..... At the candy store just west of PS122 they had wonderful brown chocolate licorice in long ropes..... Adults would buy illegal Irish Sweepstakes tickets. My father got one once... age 10. .. Once the tooth fairy forgot to pick up my tooth but my mother went into my room and the next thing I heard was, "Here it is! He left your quarter here on the dresser instead". My mother was always good at finding things, even when supernatural beings misplaced them..... At 3pm on the last school day of the year everyone was running out past me excited as I left the building. I went. "Aaaaah. What's the big thing? We'll all be back in a few months" My mother just happened to come up, surprising me as I expected her to be at work. She smiled and was surprised that I didn't care. I figured just Summer bullies and more in September. (June 1960: That had to be the end of 5th grade) (Possibly June-August 1969):: Photo of me shows me with a BLONDE CREWCUT. Weird. I had black hair at the moment I was born and still had it in a 1956 school photo. I also had a huge head. But now I realize it's because I had a sickly, scrawny body. An invitation for every cowardly bully who saw me anywhere... age 10. .. The Gielbeda's youngest daughter Loralei stayed with us for a while. That was weird. I recall that my parents cut the points off our scissors so she wouldnt get hurt and that we played Candyland and we stopped in that butcher shop on 21st St. But I don't think I was very nice to her. She came because she liked my mother but as an only child I never had to share anything with anybody before especially my mother....age 10.... Don't know what we did in Astoria on Monday, July 4, 1960 ... age 10 .. My father had a friend called "Dutch" from work (I believe). He took us out to his house on Long Island. Really by itself in the woods. Long Island was still country before the big highway was built in 1962(??). I saw praying mantises for real for the first time and learned how they were good guys and how it was illegal to harm them. It was BETWEEN the two Patterson/Johannssen Heavyweight Champ fights. They were discussing them and I knew about what happened. Dutch was later DEPORTED back to Holland and my father was quite upset... age 10. ... The mosquitoes ate my mother alive. They buzzed me all night and even landed on me but never bit me. My father was never bothered by them. Much sleep was lost in my house as we tried to find and kill mosquitoes all night long... age 10. ..I went to Confession every Saturday at Immaculate Conception, Mass every Sunday to take the Host, and Catechism every Wednesday to learn morality, morality, morality.... I read what sci-fi I could understand.....age 10.. I read Science Digest and discussed it with my father..... We got Life Magazine (And 'Look' for a short while one year)... My mother bought the occasional movie magazine....age 10 .... My mother worked on her own hair in her room..... When my mother sent me to the store it was sometimes for a mysterious something that she would give me a folded note for. Then the grocer would put a box in a paper bag and fold up the top....age 10.... I also had Little Doctor kits in the 50s and 60s. The Doctor's Bag was always a cardboard square box with handle and inside were hard brightly colored doctors "instruments".. age 10. .. Wed 7-14-99 12:21pm. .... Read Disney comics... age 10 .. Cold War was going on with constant reminders that we could be atom bombed at any moment..... SPACE RACE was really big then. I thought it would be that way forever and that I had a head start as I was into 'Space' a couple of years BEFORE everybody else. Thought 'space' would have the best jobs ever when I became a grownup and that I should never let my interest wane.. age 10 .. Visited the Temborskis, Johnny, Loretta, Eddie, Marie, Stashu or they visited us... age 10. .. Parents never home to help me it seemed.... kids all seemed corrupt to me except for the Catholic ones..... To movies on Steinway with Mellinger kids who were only a little rebellious... age 10. .. Terrorized every day at school 1/60 to 6/60 and 9/60 to 12/60....... Picked on on way to stores most of the time..... I don't know when I started shovelling the coal but it may have been in 1960....... I guess 1960 was also when I was allowed to ride the subways by myself. Wasn't anywhere as bad then as now.. age 10 ... Played in the dusty coal basement at times.. age 10 .. Played in my father's car..... Sometimes kids would set fires in the garbage pit next to my home and we'd have to put it out... age 10 .. Someone in the Subways was going around with chalk writing, "Who is Zev?". First wide spread graffit I saw..... My mother would rail about "tramps" and she would never tell me what it meant. I always thought it just meant a male bum who rides trains but she said woman tramps were different. She was quite Catholic.. age 10 ... When my mother didnt leave for work before I got up she was the one who always woke me up.... Ate Knickerbocker chocolate covered raspberry jelly candies. Still far and away best candy I ever ate.... Went over to Triboro Bridge, Astoria Park, Astoria Pool. . age 10. .. Played in backyard and once in a long while in Dale's. Read zillions of superman comics. There were many titles: Superman, Superboy, Action, Adventure, World's Finest, Jimmy Olson, Lois Lane, Justice League. (My mother corrected me when I had first pronounced it like Louis Lane). Unbelievable how much I knew about Superman then.... Dont think I found the sled in the trash yet..... Still taught chivalry by mother... age 10. .... Parents played poker with relatives.... Saw Gielbedas.... Jimmy around now and then.... Went to corner candy store but it MAY have been sold by Molly in late 1960... age 10 .. Dont recall when grocery changed hands but it was after Molly's.... Read Little Lulu and Tubby. Once when i was sick I asked my mother to find me the one which had Tubby at a vending machine that was malfunctioning. She came through..... Read Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space. One was about the year 1999 turning to 2000 and aliens were walking non-chalantly on Earth and there was life on EVERY planet and cities were WAY beyond what they now are..... My parents fought. My mother would always bring up a place called "Chummy's Bar" my father went to and she didn't like. He would always bring up some man named "Mel" whom I never learned anything about.. age 10. ... Was this the year of Provincetown, Mass? We drove up there (It seemed like forever since our 1958 Boston trip) and all around Cape Cod. We got there and it was a weird little town on the tip of the Cape. There was a moniment out of town that we could walk to. There was one other couple there. The monument marked where the Pilgrims stopped BEFORE going on to Plymouth Rock. The houses were all small and in rows. Like a miniature village. The streets were pretty quiet. We walked out onto a wide nicely maintained dock jutting out over the water. I was reading a GOOFY comic as we did so. So we must have bought it there somewhere. The story was about how Goofy was RICH when younger. I do have mental pictures still of standing in some spots.. age 10. ...Maybe 1960 was when my father started plunking his guitar. He never learned to play it but strummed it for 20+ years. Usually The Streets of El Paso...age 10..... I saw a woman in a SACK DRESS. I was on 24th Road looking towards 21st ST with all it's traffic and she suddenly appeared from the right (north) behind the houses and walked (waddled) south across the street and towards the bridge. I wondered where she was going as there was nothing much in that direction. In the other was Riccardo's fancy restaurant. (Maybe she had parked down there and was returning).....(Possibly 1960 Sept-Dec):;; I was standing on 21st ST just north of 24th Rd and here comes this convertible of young men throwing things . They then threw some at me: Kennedy for President buttons..... My father played the accordian a bit and I was teaching myself how to play.... My father would sometimes get us pretzels in the subway....I only watched a little of the JFK/Nixon debates....... My 11th Birthday was Sunday Oct 30, 1960. I'll bet that that was the first of two years when I moved the party up TWO Saturdays instead of just one. I''l bet that instead of Sat. Oct 29, I had the party on Sat. Oct 22. I wonder if that was the year I won my own first prize. I wanted to have a scavenger hunt. I wanted my parents to think of things that could be found in the street by groups of kids. Then the winning group would get the best prizes and then they'd draw to see who got the best of those. Well, my parents put down things like bobby pins, rubber bands, and bottle caps and stuff and we went out around the neighborhood. I organized my team while the others werent so resourceful. My team honestly found everything. Then I let the other kids draw prizes first and I still one the best. Mine was a bag of those little Hershey chocolates of different flavors. Those were the ONLY way to get DARK chocolate in those days...... Was 1960 when Hershey tried to compete with M&Ms by coming out with the little candy covered chocolates that were tiny cones? Hersheyettes?..age 10 .. Sure I went trick or treating on Halloween, Monday, Oct 31 1960. Had a costume those years. Forget which one I had when. Once I had a Superman. Another a Skeleton (I wondered why they drew the feet at the cuffs instaed of just forgetting them). Another an Astronaut with a mask I recall as it was rather rectangular. I must have had them in 59?, 60, 61. Perhaps I had only three. .... Probably went to the Macys Thankgiving Parade. Maybe my mother came or maybe she stayed home and made the turkey dinner. maybe I sat on my father's shoulders or maybe they let me in front of the crowd. ...... I had a castle fort toy with many knights of all kinds. made of metal. Came flat in a big box and had to be bent and tabs put in place. Building inside walls with plastic cone turret. Maybe I got it for Christmas 1960, Sunday Dec 25, 1960. Probably also got Lionel stuff and maybe Remco was around by then. .... ETCETERA: My bike had training wheels. Read comics. Built models. Played board games when home sick from school. Either used bus pass from Riccardos stop to school or walked with Dale and maybe Gary... Played stickball once in a whil... Did Mellingers go to summer Camp that early??...age 10... Always watched Walt Disney show. Liked Tomorrowland segments best. Went to CHILDREN'S section of Library upstairs... Always pushed about 'Great Potential"... Wondered what would happen with military draft when older... No friends in either 5th or 6th grades..... Did not like being touched.... Nightmares all the time . Feared waking up for school in morning... Had to deal with all the rude, aggressive, loud 'Big Family People"...... We had 'gym' in both 5th and 6th grades but we didnt have to wear uniforms, just change our sneakers and werent pushed into much..... Always late to let other kids go in first.... Went fishing with father a number of times each year.... Saw Mary Seuffert upstairs.... Mother worked at A&P..... Always daydreamed about future when the nightmare would be over...... My mother was into Baroque Style, late 1700s and Classical Style, early 1800s figurines and paintings..... I dont recall anything about New Year's Eve/Day 12/31/59 to 1/1/60 except the Movie I mentioned AND I did go out onto the back porch and bang two pots together. ....age 11... Dont recall 12/31/60 to 1/1/61 unless that was the one I spent at the Gielbeda house.

----- 1961 ---1961---age 11/12---6th Elem///7th JHS-- 1961 has the same calendar as 1967, 1978, 1989, 1995, 2006, 2017, 2023, 1950, 1939, 1933...... (Possibly Jan-March 1961):::: I watched JFK inaugurated. Guess that was FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 1961. I forget if my father allowed me to take the day off (But I think so) or if I ran home during lunch. The TV was in the front room to the right and i saw the podium go up in flames and heard people said it was a bad omen and he might die and the country may go haywire. All thru 1960 they were talking how every president dies in office who wins on the year ending in zero. 1960, 1940, 1920, 1900, 1880, 1860...... I built plastic models. Aurora, Testors, Rex-something, Monogram,.... Space Race still at it's hottest. As a kid it never crossed my mind that it had anything to do with the ability to missile-bomb each other. I really thought it was all about both countries wanting to be the best in doing the smartest things.After all, this was the era of Chemistry Lab sets for kids, Erector Sets, Engineering kits by mail, Girder and Panel Building sets. 'Science' was 'cool' for kids...... i got a magic set (For my birthday? For Xmas?) and Chrissy was my assistant as I did a show for our parents at her house in their second room from the front..... I saw an Archie comic in which he asks his father for an 'advance' on his allowance. Obviously that was a word I didnt know then as I asked my father for one thinking it meant 'raise'..... comics, comics, comics. And was this the year that DC (superman) went from 10c to 12c and Dell (Disney, Lulu) went to 15c before dropping back later? I recall being on the floor by the kitchen entrance of the Gielbeda house when it was on the radio but I THINK I heard it before then....... We played 'Telephone' at the Gielbedas when we had a bunch of kids lined up to pass the phrase on...... (Possibly April-June 1961):: We were at some Chinese restaurants. One in Queens on Steinway Street and another somewhere else in more Central Queens (Where the Chinese Tea was so wonderful I drank an amazing amount of it)...... When i was a kid my father read like crazy. But he got more and more into TV and never read anymore. Now it became impossible to ever talk to him without his steering every story to himself. Now that I'm older I realize that it was because he stopped reading completely and no longer had any NEW info to impart..... My father and I dueled with rubbery plastic foils. One was stiffer than the other and thus more fun. Were there plastic masks? I think so..... EASTER 1961: This was the era of the chocolate cross! They were tring candy for adults and as bunnies didnt work, they tried Christian Crosses made out of chocolate. I dont think they had Crucifixes though. (As a kid I did not know that 'Crucifix' meant 'fixed to the cross'. I also did not know what 'hallowed' meant, I thought it was 'hollowed'. I also thought that 'Immaculate Conception' referred to Jesus, not Mary.). Was this the time when all three of us went to church on Easter when there was MUCH snow on the ground. I especially recall walking to the car which was a half block south down a street from the church and snow everywhere. Perhaps I can look up the snowy Easter or at least when it fell in March unless it was an April snow.... I was in the backyard talking over the fence in the concret part by the house to Dale and gary and Dale said something about Wayne once doing somethin bad in the front room. I guessed and said, "Like set the curtains on fire?" Dale looked angrily at Gary and Gary went, "What?! I didnt tell him". I guessed it was all. Wayne would do a lot of such things later on..... We loved the Army/Navy store at Astoria Square. We got green packpacks for like 35c and wore them a lot..... I used to get Major to really puff up and wrinkle his nose by slowly saying, "Ooooo. What- I'm- Gonna- Do- To- You- " and he'd puff and eventually growl and then growl in a cadence but he never bit me. Even when I went to feel his puffed up nose. Then I'd go, "OKAY!!!! And he'd suddenly get happy..... age 11...... If we were gone for a while he'd be so happy to see us he'd pee himself. And my mother would say just that, "Look, he's so happy to see us he's peeing himself". Spaniels do that. We usually took him with us. (I think we didnt take him on the trip to Provincetown, Mass and we laid out paper. We were gone from early morning to late night and he didnt go. After that we made sure he went right before we left or we took him with us everywhere we would be for a long time..... They suddenly made DEVIL DOGS smaller in 1961? and I was so angry i foolishly said I'd never buy another one. I eventually gave in and I think it was gary, in front of the main grcery store Dicks/Georges who called me on it. I learned then to never make sudden promises...... I had a Cape Canaveral set. Much like my knights set. Metal buildings to fold and tab together. Lots of different types of rockets and missiles with spring launchers and vehicles and people. I may have gotten this one by default. My father was supposed to be the godfather for one of uncle Johnny's kids. Something happened where wires were crossed and I recall that the father of William!! of older sister thinking I cant read her book fame wound up becoming it. I recall my father not learning to the last moment after he had bought a gift certificate for Johnny at this big toy store on Steinway that had stuff for babies, too. I recall my father sitting there all dejected, being told at the last moment. (At who's house? Johnny's? William's father's?). After it was all done my father was disgusted and he gave me the gift certificate and I went with my mother. I don't know which shocked me more; that my father didnt know until the last second that he was being passed over (And whose fault was that? His or Johnny's?) or that the one who took his place was William's father when I knew of no connection between them before that..... Some song, " r-a-g-g, m-o-p-p: Ragg Mopp" was on the radio a lot. I recall my father taking me to another guy's house way out in Queens or Nassau (A boss?) and I heard it while there on a radio and again on the car radio on the way home. I was there so long in their fancy garage under the house in front that I recall its image well but have no idea where it was..... A cat was run over on 21st St. Flat as a pancake. Crowd of people watching it.One vehicle after another runs over its remains. One guy says, "Somebody call a vet" ...... My fathers car was parked on our north side of 24th Rd on the last spot before 21st St. For some reason while going by I put my hand on it. It came right up in my hand! Gunk on the bottom. I went to tell my father. He said, "I just fixed that! Someone pulled it out. Did you put it back? Now leave it alone to dry."..... I bought a kit with eight seeds in eight little cube containers, a thin green plastic sheet with eight little seed holders 1"x 1". I gew the seeds and transplanted them to the backyard...age 11... Don't know when i was finally able to climb the telephone pole at the rear righthand corner of my yard and thus get over the fence...age 11...... every time they fixed or changed the fence between our yard and the Mellingers they gave them more of our yard. it was ridiculous when we first came as theirs was already almost three times bigger than ours. In 1961 when they removed the wooden one for a metla mesh one they moved it over AGAIN!!! Now our drain was WAY over on their side and their kids could sit on our bathroom window while being in their own yard!.... We had the REGENTS Exams in NYC. A series of tests. One long one each day for the whole stae and your half-year grade would always be within one grade of your REGENTS Grade. We took them in, I believe, January and June. But it could have been December and June. 7th, 8th, 9th grade and high school......(Possibly Summer 1961):: The Mantle, Maris, Ruth homerun race was going on.... I think Dale got braces.... Wed 7-14-99..... I preferred teachers who made boys and girls line up separately because it was even more embarrassing to be shorter than many girls..... My trip to the Oral Surgeon: We went up to Steinway Street, north side. He told me to go to the bathroom and I was in their too long. He went to put up the gas mask on my face and asked me if I'd like to play jet pilot. I thought that was a bit silly as I wasn't THAT young and niave. I said something like, well, no, lets just do this,with a grin as the mask came to my face. I recall that scene vividly. Next thing I knew I was waking up on a leather or thick plastic couch in a little room facing left as my mother was staring at me. I recall going into the front room as she talked to the woman behind the 'window' at the little entrance foyer. We were out on Steinway Street in the bright sun and my father was along. I was really woozy and out of it. And my mouth was really sore. Then we went down a little ways where the big toystore always was and I got a FASCINATION Game which I recall carrying out of the store and in the same south direction (which always seemed East for some reason). ("Fascination, Remco's Fascination. Fascination, The game we love to play" It was the latest big craze game, expensive. Two plastic mazes of two colors and metal balls to maneuver into the holes in the end. Then it lit up and buzzed. Big square maze on one side and smaller round maze on other)Then I was home playing with it. What had happened was that the teeth got harder and more painful to pull as we went along. And I recall the dentist telling my mother only an Oral Surgeon could do it from now on as the roots were intertwined and I was in bad pain. "I was lifting him out of the chair", I recall him telling my mother. (My Childhood: School bullies, Neigborhood bullies, Sickly, Alone, Nightly Nightmares,'Great Potential' to reach and the damn teeth problems)..... Some kid who lived on 21st St. in the second house from 24th Road was in his back yard which was right behind the garbage pit. He either said or did something bad. So a bunch of kids were telling him off. Then his mother comes out to see what is going on. The kids tell her. He lies blatantly to his mother. The kids contridict him. The mother says to the kids, "My son doesn't lie". The kids jump all over her with information. I was just a witness but it was unbelievable to me how easily that kid blatantly lied to his own mother with all those witnesses and she believed him. He lied. All non-Catholics always lied. They had no from-birth installation that they'd burn in Hell.... Mosquitoes ate my mother alive again. Don't think we discovered citronella until 1962. Kept me up all night..... Mellinger kids went off to Summer Camp for six weeks. I know that I went with my parents and their parents one year to see the place. It was a Sunday and the three of us tried to hide from the children's service but got caught by a smiling man who was quite friendly. My parents went to the adult one. In the Catholic church we had a children's area but it was the same Mass. I worried about the fact that Catholics were not allowed to go into Protestant 'Churches' and wondered if this meeting counted. My parents said not to worry and the priest didn't get angry. The Mellingers were talking about me going to camp but I was afraid and so was my mother. Kids without siblings arent very safe too far from home for two long....age 11... .. Fallout shelters!!!..... Took the nightly drives thru Queens.... Went to the White castl under the elevated train in central Queens.... Went to Ditmars Blvd and Lower Manhattan..... When we went to North Carolina my uncle drove us out and showed us his plane. I also recall driving thru a narrow street with high tobacco on each side. And I recall going thru Winston-Salem and realizing it was where they got the names of the cigarettes from. We stopped to eat either there or Richmond and I was surprised how run-down the area was..... Set off a firecracker under the Triboro Bridge. Just outside of where the first street under goes thru a tunnel. Then we went into the tunnel and there was a copcar there. Two cops in it. One cop sits in the car and says, "Let's have them!" and I gave them my remaining ones. he lets me go...age 11....... Later on I would rig up time delay crackers in the tunnel as it was so loud in there.... I went up on the Triboro Bridge with Dale. He climbs out of the pedestrian walk and onto the concrete slab. He actually sits on the edge!!!! With his feet dangling down. I back away as I'm afraid any sudden move on my part could startle him and he'd fall over 20 stories to his death....... Timmy visited from Greenpoint. I dont know if I went down and he came back up with me on his bike or what. He comes into my room for the first time and sees my Washington Monument thermometer I brought up from my trip to D.C. I had been taking careful daily reading on it every day. He says, "Watch how I can make this go up." Then the idiot squueezes it as hard as possible even though it is just thin glass on a thick metal piece. I go "DON'T!". he does anyway. He breaks it!! Every Goddamn time I let anyone near me or my stuff they do something bad to me either out of evil or stupidity!!!..... I love Yoo Hoo chocolate drink. Drank it all the time. It was 15c for a 10 ounce bottle when everything else was 12c for 12oz. One day i'm drinking and there is a paper STRAW in the bottle from someone else that was actually bottled inside!!! Nowadays I could sue for that!.... The Mellingers went fishing on an Uncles cabin cruiser. I had a nice toy cabin cruiser. They each made a big deal about coming home with one or two fishes apiece. My father and I brought home bushel baskets full. Cabin cruisers are for fun and prestige, not fishing...... (Possibly 9/61-12/61);;;; There was a rake on the grounf in the yard. One of my parents warned me about someone stepping on it. Dale was out there with me. I joked that it only happened in cartoons. Then i turn around to see Dale holding his face as the rake fell back. He actually stepped on it right at that moment and it went up and hit him in the face..... I was sick and my father bought me my fiirst six pack of Yoo Hoo. But it tasted terrible due to my illness. It sat a long time. And it was a long time until I could really taste it correctly again.... age 11...... Father had wonderful miniature binoculars that were high speed. Used them at night for Astro. They wound up hocked, unhocked, and hocked for good. Horseracing!!..... One bully came into class with a boyscout uniform! Everyone surprised as thought not old enough. Boy scout!!! Ha!!!.... Bought a cartoon book at Johns Bargain Store. Read in bed. Saw that many of the jokes were risque and had to do with scantily clad women. Took it right to my mother to tear out all risque pictures. Almost nothing left.... Maris got 61 homers and the Yanks played the reds in the 1961 World Series.....I turned the cellar into a Haunted House type thing and charged admission. Jimmy took his little brother threw it a couple of times as I narrated. Funny how outgoing I could get INSIDE my building but not outside it. I had a black bucket that moved 'on its own' and Jerry grabbed at it to see how.He couldnt find out. Still asked many years later how I did it. Just a black fishing line rigged that I could flip it off of someone grabbed the pail. Had many exhibits.....Dale and I found a fold-out thing that said Merry Christmas in individual letters to hang along a wall. We ingeniously changed it to read Happy Halloween and STILL hang as it did......MY 12th BIRTHDAY WAS MONDAY OCTOBER 30, 1961.. I'll bet this was the other time I pushed it up TWO Saturdays for the party.(Saturday Oct 21,1961). This was probably the first birthday I really tried to design out of that Lulu Halloween Fun comic and had all these ideas and parts for games on paper and them lost them and didnt find them until a couple weeks after the party so I had to just do what I remembered at the party....age 12..... On Halloween I went out Trick or Treating and I had my new black raincoat and a fancy skeleton mask that I bought at the Towne Square Shoppe that was then the best one there was. Some kids outside "Molly's" attacked me a smashed eggs on me and the raincoat. My mother was peeved about eggstains on my new raincoat and I reminded her that I was attacked. Never could get them out. (Hold it! That may have been 1962, not 1961).(I think I wore boxed costumes in 59,60,61)(Well, I'll have to find out and edit later)(Kids were/are scum. To this day I STILL hate the sight of little boys. I know that if I were their age that 90% would be attacking me and the other 10% at least trying to corrupt me. Children are not cute, they are evil)....... I had a bag o plastic dinosaurs with the name of each on the bottom..... This may have been the year of the poisoned cranberry scare where they were all recalled and we had none for Thanksgiving...... We always had those huge state wide REGENTS exams to worry about each year. When they got rid of those the NYC school system went to hell... age 12.... This may have been the year I got roller skates for Xmas. I didn't ask for them but my parents were always wanting me to turn into a REAL boy (Like Pinocchio). I put them on a couple of times while holding onto the front fence but I said the hell with them. The problem was that my parents werent helping me learn on them and I would be even EASIER prey if I had those things on trying to learn and the bullies saw me unable to get away..... And there was still the constant pressure about my "great potential" and the local and school bullies causing me to stay indoors most of the time.... And I missed many weeks of school sick and watched those daytime shows a great deal and played boardgames on the floor with just Major, age 2/3 for company.... I had no friends in 6th grade or 7th grade....... Didnt like to be touched for obvious reasons..... Nightmares. Feared to fall asleep due to them and the fact it would then quickly be morning and back to the tormenting..... Usually late to a school I now hated..... Went fishing with father...age 12.... Would often wait for the bus either under the Triboro Bridge with the concrete 'park' behind me or in front of Riccardos. Probably a hundred times a school year. Other times I'd walk with Dale or alone...... Bike still had training wheels. Too chicken..... Lived in dream world of comic books like many unliked nerds.... Built plastic models...age 12... Mellingers went to camp for weeks..... Rode subways every weekend alone at 11/12. Ran/hid from perverts..... Went to dentist and oral surgeon early in the year.... Went to 31st ST library a lot, almost always upstairs in childrens library. Only downstairs very rarely in adult part with parent..... Did work for landlord Siegel for 10c to 35c for hard work!....Visited mother at A&P.... Lived only for future as present so bad..... Went to Church three times a week, real Christian Catholic..... Read Science Digest.... Read science fiction..... Read LIFE magazine..... Mother got rare movie mag..... Still sent to store with mystery notes from Catholic mother..... Taffy was still alive next door.....Mother into 1700s Baroque and early 1800s Classical styles.... When Uncle Stashu's roomie died he brought us there to choose what we wanted of his. My mother chose a larg framed print of a woman at apiano she always liked. It is in my room now. I wanted his dog photos but he said they were to be burned...age 12.... I dont recall what I did for New Years Eve/Day 12-31-61 to 1-1-62.... Thurs 7-15-99 253pm

----- 1962 ---1962--- age 12/13--- 7th/8th grade-- I didnt realize it at the time but the Great Years of the SPACE RACE would be 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1962. The moment John Glenn orbited it was all downhill from there which would also grieviously affect the future of anyone planning to go into it as a profession. It took so long to get the necessary education that it was like going into a tunnel to a cheering crowd and coming out on the other end, ten, fifteen, twenty years later to nothing and noone. The Space race deflected the 'Best and Brightest' studious students from the other fields they would have gone into into 'Space' instead and many years later when they finally got the degree(s) necessary everyone had lost interest, the jobs were gone, and they were stuck with Esoteric degrees noone wanted despite their difficulty. (One guy in my class applied for a job in a steel mill in Gary,Indiana he was so desperate for work and they said, "Astrophysics? What's that?" We, as kids, did not foresee the flightiness of America. In 1962 it was all in the far future. 7-14-99..age 12.. They were putting up fallout shelters all over Long Island. I recall seeing them out on open areas for sale when we went fishing. I knew we couldnt afford one and kept reading how if the Russians sent the missiles that people without them would die....... There were so many people in NYC in the 50s and 60s using marijuana and practicing promiscuous sex, especially in the neighborhoods by the rivers, that I was smugly amused when I got to collge and all these spoiled middle-class boys thought they were into something 'new' and 'cool'. What they were trying to get into I was trying to get away from.....We took the nightly drive around Queens. I always had the automatic ability to know where North was at all times, even if I just woke up in the back seat. i heard of an article in the 90s saying that it has to do with metal in the nose bridge of youngsters that they have until puberty..... We ate at White Castles where the food was brought to the parked car. We also went to a White Tower once on the way fishing as it was open all alone in the middle of a triangular block on the way out of Queens but they jsu had regular burgers and one only ate inside at a long, long counter..... We went to Ditmars Blvd as always...... And to Lower Manhattan to browse and shop. ....... Some kid talked me into helping him deliver newspapers for money. Then he cheated me. I went to the place where they gave them to the paperboys partway between 24th St and Ditmars on a street parallel to Crescent. I was in the back and I heard the boss up front say that he didnt want to hear anymore kids complaining about that guy and he'd take care of it. So he rooked many. (Why did I ever trust ANYBODY??)..... Along my house on the side of the garbage pit was a walkway about 5" wide that was at an increasing slant as it went along the house. I never could walk the whole way along it without sliding off when the angle got too steep. My father told me about the story of the dejected, often defeated king who saw the spider that kept trying until he made it and how the king finally won. So I kept trying until I won and did it. (The king, I later learned, was the one who defeated Richard III)..... NOTE: The previous part may have been 1961, not 1962..... (Possibly Jan 1962 to March 1962):::: Building plastic models. Usually too much in a rush...... COLD in the house. No central heating. ..age 12.....To Gielbedas who had the weird cat-clock with moving eyes and tail. When did the Grandfather die? Was it 1962?...... (Possibly 4/62-6/62):::; Play in cellar.... From one of the stadia one could see the other one while sitting in the stands. But I forget which. The Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium were right across the little Harlem "River" (More like a deep-dug stream) from each other and just a subway stop apart. The Harlem River is where Washington Irving's "Anthony the Trumpeter" tooted his horn while drowning when New Amsterdam was on its way to defeat New Sweden in the 1600s..... I was on the swings in the parks a lot. Shows how behind I always was as i would just get into things others were about to outgrow. ((I recall how I had also just got into shooting a lot of marbles with Dale and the rest in Summer 1963 and in Ceramics class Mr Chalupka told us to bring in those marbles we outgrew)). ...age 12.... This was the year of my Confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church. We trained for weeks for it. I recall being out in the church concret yard in the back for the first time along 31st St. The church property must have bent all around from 31st St to the next one west and then all the way to the corner where the entrance was. We marched in and out of the church repeatedly in practice. Went thru all the motions repeatedly inside. Took all the tests to prove we were worthy. Chose our own Confirmation Names at age 12 to have the rest of our live. I chose Joseph as my father did. Also the patron saint of Poland. The day is getting closer and Im this perfect Catechism student as always who really, really acts like a good Catholic boy in my daily life. I keep going to church without fail. But then one day my parents arent going, the weather isn't decent, and I feel like I'm coming down with something so I miss church. Well, no problem. I'll just go to Confession and take my punishment. The priests know I'm a True Believer and how in the past I'd brave the worst weather and get sick for a week just to not miss church. So I go into Confession to tell the priest my two or three sins including that one. The priest jumps all over me!!! For the first time ever a priest refuses to give me absolution!! And it's right before Confirmation which is the very last step that six years of Catechism leads up to!!! I could not believe it!! he doesn't do it to the others who are worse than I am. Just me as more is expected of me!! Just like the damn "Great Potential" crap. So I don't know what to do. I go home and tell my mother. She gets my father. All this work for six years. All the invitations out! The new suit purchased. They get ahold of another priest. I have to see him. I go into a priest's quarters for the first time. Small! He smiles and tells me not to worry about it. He wants me to kneel on a the kneller he uses with surprises me because I thought they were never supposed to see who you were during Confession (Even though they can tell by your voice). So I do it right there and he goes thru his part and then I have to go down to the church itself to say my prayers. On Confirmation Day (When was that?) I'm on the right about half way back. Huge bunch of 12 year olds. Each one goes up and kneels before the bishop while a priest reads off one's chosen name to him. Everyone watching. I'm nervous as hell as always. I am NOT an outgoing person. It's my turn. I go up and up the steps to him and kneel. The priest reads off my name and the chosen name. The Bishop hauls off and smacks me in the face as he did with the others and says something like, "You are now a knight of the Holy Roman Catholic church. Defend ye the church onto death" And somthing about my name now being engraven in Rome's books. Heady stuff for a small sickly 12 year old with a mind less mature than 12. But sure made me even more determined to remain decent...... Thurs 7-15-99 413pm.... ___________ ... Friday 7-16-99 343pm:;... We went to Washington DC by train twice. We got to go twice because we were the SPE class and it was a perk. Jimmy's mother, Doris (She was always Mrs. S...... to me), was picked as a chaperone and Jimmy was there. Due to this she got to stay in the room with a couch that was next to the bathroom and we got to sit there as well. I think that on the First Trip we went to The White House tour and the girls saw Caroline's pony Macaroni. One one of these trips we went to Ford's Theatre and across the street to the bed where Lincoln died. I was in front of Ford's theatre backing up and trying to get the whole thing in my viewfinder and BAM, I thought someone gave me an awful blow on the head. (more bullying?) but it turned out hat I backed into a signpost. I know that on one of the two trips we went to the Archives and saw all the famous documents. And we went to the FBI building and saw their museum. And were all over the green Mall. And in the Smithsonian. And the busdriver pointed out the house Truman staye din when they were renovating the White House (I didnt even know that happened until the driver told us). And we RAN up the Washington Monument. We saw money being printed....______________ .......... Went to church three times a week. Confessed my sins. Read Scince Digest, played with chemistry set, read science fiction, read LIFE magazine, mother's occasional movie magazine, ...age 12... I FINALLY learned to ride a bike without training wheels. As always when I do something for the first time something bad happens. My father and I went down to the concrete park which had trees in square dirt area that was across 21st St from The Cheesebox and between the Cheesebox and the Astoria Park. The most unused concret 'park' around. Took the training wheels off and I kept trying and failing. The pedals were still too far away from my feet and when sitting on the seat my feet were way above the ground. My fathers hair-trigger temper came as I knew it would as it always does even if I didnt get something right on the first try. He blew up and walked off saying I would NEVER learn to ride. I had to prove him wrong so i took the bik back to the end, which was the top of a slight hill, and he was around the park and a half block away when I jumped UP on the bike and took off. But I couldnt control it. I couldnt even keep my feet on the pedal all the way around as I was too small for the bike. So I'm out of control and I have too choices: I can keep going straight out into the traffic going into the only auto entrance to Astoria Park or I could deliberately smash into one of the trees, all of which have smashed glass all around them. I chose the latter. I went into a tree on the right and I flew over the handle bars and face first into the tree, bloodying my nose and then fell down onto the broken glass. Then my father came running over. So I bled from many points as I was crying and then had to limp home. But after that I rode it. I learned how to kick the pedal around to catch again...age 12... (Possibly June 62 to August 62):::: My father took me to some man's house on Long Island and his son and I quietly watched Mighty Joe Young on TV right near the front door. It was to our right about seven feet away. The kid's parents were getting a divorce and the woman was angry as hell. She was really ranting at this kid's father while he calmly watched TV and ignored it. i was shocked that it bothered him so little but he was probably used to it. She then stormed past us yelling at him and he said not to do it in front of us and she said he had some nerve bringing his friend over unexpectedly in the first place at a time like this. Then she stormed out. I never before or after, as a kid, saw a mother so angry at the father..age 12.. Went to visit Gaylord at his new place miles and miles out at the end of the farthest subway line in Queens out by Far Rockaway. We had been there by car previously. Gaylord and I took the train into Times Square and he was into all this girl stuff that I wasn't and how he and his girlfriend kissed each time the subway lights blinked out. I was irritated and embarrassed but kept quiet. As a good Cathlic boy I thought talk like that was dirty. We went to the arcade right behind all the big ads on the north end of Times Square. I didn't know it was there but I was never into that stuff. I was a museum person. I watche dhim shoot against a lifesized gunslinger. We were there for quite a while but I was always bored by such things so when he never seemed to want to leave I just told him I was leaving and left. Going anywhere with anyone else never helped things. They never had my interests and always expected me to hang around waiting for them while bored..... Th front of my house had a short, steep brick bannister kids and I would sit on. the only way to do so without sliding down though was by putting ones feet on the brick jutting up at the bottom. But in 62 or 63 someone somehow removed it and it was no longer easy to sit there...... At the very doorway there were a couple of round indentations where, I guess, the slat/plate at the front door was screwed down to the ground. I'd put gunpowder in them from unexploded firecrackers and light it....... On my bike once way out in Central East Queens along a major boulevard with bumper to bumper traffic moving quikly with me to the right of it all (south). Going fast. All of a sudden I hit this patch where they dug out the street a couple inches down and its all dirt and gravel. No warning! I'm desperately trying to keep my bike stable as it wavering all over the place at full speed. If it goes down I go under the whells of all that traffic inches away to my left. All parked cars to the right and Im sandwiched in. This mess goes on for about ten seconds and Im struggling to keep it up. Finally I bump UP at the end. I pull over and park and rest my crazed heart for a while....... I'm walking along on the pedestrian walk over the Triboro Bridge a couple of stories in the air with some guy a couple years younger than me. The idea is to go up a ways and then come back. Some gang below sees us and says that they are going to get us and throw us off the bridge. The run east to where the stairs to get on are. They are all bigger than us. We start running West. The kid with me is really scared. "They're going to throw us off the bridge", he keeps saying. There is no way to run left or right as the pedestrian walk is also at least ten feet above the lanes for cars. We can only head west over the East River. We keep running, I have to go slower so he can keep up, and we go all the way over the water to Randall's Island. We saw them catching up all the way. We reach a point where the walkway is on the same level as the cars. I had never gone that far before. I take him through the cars paying toll. We go to a Transit Cop of some sort on the other side. I tell him our problem. He flags down a bus and tells the driver to take us across for free. We pass the guys still running over to get us and the driver lets us out at where the bridge traffic is about to go under the Elevated train on 31st ST. Then we run home....age 12 ... I'm in front of my house one day. Playing by myself in front of my window in the street. Some kid I don't even know (or didnt think so) comes up and starts talking about girls. All slightly crude stuff having to do with handling them. I didn't say a word. Typical non-Catholic I was thinking. Eventually I went into the house. I go in and don't see my parents. I go through the house and there they are in the very front room by the front window. My mother turns to my father and asks, "Did you hear THAT?". My father doesnt says a word but just nods his head. I realized they heard it all through the screened window. But I hadnt said a word out there so that maybe now they'll know why I rarly bother with other kids. ...age 12.. That Summer we turned my hall into a bowling alley with plastic pins and plastic ball. I played inside that hall a lot that year. Safe place. Dale was home by then from Summer camp I guess..... I made the mistake of giving in when I was playing in my car alone and the other kids, whose parents did not have cars, wanted to come in. The car was parked across the street from my home. The moment Gary, Dale's brother, got in he started yelling, "My finger, look at my finger". Another kid closed the door on it. He lost the nail. Other kids were always so stupid and unthinking when it came to possible accidents. I forget who closed the door on Gary...... Was it 62 or 61 that I was really into pumpkin seeds for a while?? Someone else had discovered that the corner candy store just started getting them in..age 12... I was across 21st ST on the other side of 24th Road on the north corner, just twenty yards? from my house in the empty lot that was there on the corner. Suddenly a bunch of kids appear with a red hot piece of iron and they announce that that they are going to burn my eyes out. They hold me to the ground while the oldest one has the rod. I struggle and slip out and run through the busy traffic, almost getting killed, to get home. ("Hell is other people" : Jean Paul Sartre) (God! I hated other kids! Pure evil at worst. Trying to use and corrupt me at best)...age 12... We went to Asbury Park and Atlantic City quite a few times in the early sixties. Once we discovered this place in Atlantic City where there was a huge room of machines where items moved on carousels and a rod swept over to push stuff out for you. It was 2c a try. My mother and I were getting numerous things with each push and we'd clean out a machine and they'd come and fill them again. We stayed until the place closed for the night. This was way before they legalized gambling there. We were then outside in the street by a little traffic island talking late at night in the dark. In the 1980s I went there with those bus trips and I stumbled upon the very place where my late mother and I were. But it was abandoned and the little traffic island was crumbling. I forget where my father was playing that night..age 12.. I wanted to deliver papers but I wasn't old enough. This one delivery boy told me that if I helped him he'd pay me. So I did and he welched! And I went to complain and lots of other kids were there to complain about him, too. (Repeat?)...age 12... We'd play biketag on my bike and the other kids were surprised that I'd let them ride it and adults told me I shouldn't but they didn't hurt it. The idea, which I invented, was to just get within so many feet of the person. I recall that I tagged Frank so he got on and he was gone awhile so I figured he just wanted to ride it and i didnt care but then he came back thru the parking lot and thru the opened gates from it to the garbage pit where we were.... It may have been 62 when they completely closed 21st ST for repairs. The entire roadway was removed for a new material. They left the stemrollers by 24th Rd at night and we'd climb on them. We tried to carry a tornout stoplight away by using lots of kids. It was so QUIET with the main avenue closed so long. There were piles of dirt. Once, we were thrwing dirtballs (clods of Earth) and one kid, on a hill of dirt, hit me right in the open eye. I was alawys careful to not aim at faces but others werent. (I also NEVER drank out of water fountains by putting my mouth on them, like my mother said, but all the others did) That was the worst pain in my eye I ever felt in my life (even to now). It was tearing a flood uncontrolably. My right eye was never the same after that. I always wondered how much of my 1963 eyeglasses were due to that hit...age 12 We were out on Long Island (before the new highway days?). Going up this street with a few house on the right and we had to make an extremely tight turn and go back up a very steep hill facing the opposite direction. Hairpin turn and up. We do and suddenly we hear all this noise. The whole muffler and exhaust pipe system is dragging on the ground. We get out and a guy on the porch (both parents?) invites us to use his phone to call help to tow the car and fix it. We then stay at his house for hours. I also go out with his son into the nearby woods. He takes me back to where some hillbilly-type barefoot girl is smoking and he smokes, too. He tells me not to tell. I don't. They ask if I want some. No thanks. Later, while back in the parents kitchen I watch the sun set over the water that reaches to the horizon. Were we on the NORTHWEST side of Long Island and is the Long Island Sound THAT wide??? According to maps L.I. actually points rather northwards as much as eastwards. Was this the time we rode the Long Island Railroad for the first (and only??) time? I recall waiting on the station to get home and how the platform was between the tracks and there was no building there. You got on and paid. And it was all flat with just some houses all the way in. No, I must have been on it twice at least as I recall My Fair Lady posters on standup signs and that it was bright daylight. I don't recall staying in their house over night........ I'm bicycling home from Ditmars down 23rd St late one afternoon and I run into three sailors, about 18, whose car ran out of gas. They ask where a gas station is. I tell them where they are as I alwas use them to get air for my tires but they are all far away by Astoria Square. They want me to lend one of them my bike to go get gas. Well, Im intimidated, so what can I do? One takes off and he's gone forever. Over an hour or more and the sun is going down. Then he finally comes back saying how he had to go from one station to another due to problems. (No gas can? No checks cashed?) But when he returns my headlight is smashed to pieces!!! He crashed it into something. And after putting the gas in they are about to leave just like that. No remorse. No payment. Then one says, "Hey, give the kid a buck for his light". Then they leave and my light is still broken. Can't buy a new headlight for a dollar. After that I got yelled at at home for letting it happen and the kids teased me for years about liking sailors. Whenever they'd see one they'd tell me to go let him destroy something of mine. But what's a small, sickly 12 year old going to do about three 18/19 year old sailors? I did my BEST to avoid people but they always screwed me over....... Mosquitoes continued to eat my mother alive and buzz me all night. But maybe this was the year we started using Citronella next to the beds and it stunk but it sure helped....... Whenever I did go out to play stickball the kids would sometimes take on the names of Yankee players. I was Kubek and I didn't even know he was Polish...... (((((Have not yet checked for repetitions)))).... Think I already did about the Halloween exhibit in basement but can't locate it........ (Maybe Sept 62- Dec 1962):::: Really sick in bed. Father brings me my frst and only 6-pack of Yoo- Hoo to cheer me up. But my taste buds are no screwed up it all tastes lousy!!!.....(Dick Young in the 80s once described it as a 'chocolate drink without much chocolate in it". I liked it MUCH better than chocolate milk...... Wayne grabbed a bunch of eggs out of the refrig, ran in front of our houses and was thring them in the air. Bet he got his butt beat by Howie for that.... I painted a SKELLIES board in the street right in front of my house. Black paint was all I had. I placed my red game boards out there to warn away cars and watched from my window as adults creeped around it. (I used to call Skellees 'skivies', which was underwear). Skellies was a game where you drew eight numbered squares around the edges of a big square and more squares in the center and you shot bottle caps from one to the other...... In school, Mr Cenerino was both the typing teacher and the Playboy. Once the whole school was changing classes, big mob shoulder to shoulder, and we went by the teacher's lounge to see one of our young female teachers lying down as Mr. C had his arm across her diagonally while talking to her.... Two other guys and I squeezed through the gate to the locked off concrete park under the bridge (Not MY idea) and went to the other side. Suddenly they saw other guys coming, panicked, and went right up the huge fence and out. I tried but I couldnt possibly do it. So they talked me into going in and now I was trapped as they ran. But it turned out they knew the kids and nothing happened. I recall one guy saying, "We saw this guy trying to get over the fence".....Was on the crowded bus to JHS 141 and heard the kids talking how 'Make Room for Daddy' had just done a show about the mother dying! In a comedy!..... The Yanks beat the Giants in seven games. (A year later Charles Shulz had a Peanuts character say, "Oh, why couldnt McCovey have hit that ball six inches higher!?" I thought that was awful for two reasons: He related the characters to the real world and he had them all be Giants fans, thus annoying everyone else.....I absolutely did NOT want to TURN THIRTEEN. I did NOT want to be a 'teenager'. ...... Then the Cuban Missile crisis hit and I almost got my wish. We in NYC knew we'd be the first to die in a Nuclear War. I went out at it's height (JFKs announcement was Oct 22, 1963) and saw the streets were dead. Almost no cars or pedestrians...age 12 I was really into Halloween in 62 and 63. Frank sat on the swing near me and said how much HE was excited about it as well. I did not know that 63 would be my next to last one...... I really don't recall my next to last Birthday party but it was probably the Saturday before Oct 30, 1962. And I would have made it traditional......... On my last Trick or Treat I had just turned 13 the day before which was probably two years too old in those days. But I had the mind of someone younger and more naive. However, my body was really growing. (Upon which Halloween did it snow on me??)... Mon 7-19-99 359pm....... I had a "Lie Detector" game that I considered to be quite ingenious. There were quite a few such games in those pre-computer days. Did I get it for my birthday??....We went on our nightly drives around Queens after eating.... Hopefully stopped at the White Castle...... Went to Ditmars/31st St with parents and by self.... Went to Lower Manhattan, usually with mother. But sometime in 1962 she introduced me to Hoyt/Schermerhorn......Sick at home many weeks a year.... Walked to Junior High with Dale or by self or used my bus pass. Was that three miles?...... Rode the subways with my mother or by self. On weekends had to get away from the perverts that frequented them....... Was quite the Mets fan in 1962. Father took me to numerous games. Also to Yankees. met 'Greenie' who had worked in a stand there forever. He once tried to offer me a ham sandwich but he and my father couldn't seem to understand i wanted ballpark food when in the ballpark, not what I often ate at home. "Ah, these kids today don't know anything" my father said to him and he agreed.... Rode on bike a lot..... Brought home a model to build every other week or so from either Manhattan, Hoyt-S, or Ditmars.....Mother introduced me to Flushing stores but forget if 1962 or 1963. The first time we didn't evn get off right in the main part. I recall we got off a bus at the end of the line where a bunch of them were parked by a block with no houses. She asked where to and then we walked south. After some blocks (five?) we wound up at Main Street, Flushing where a dept store was on a busy side street a half block from Main and near the main dept store on Main.....At some point I went from the upstairs Children's Library to the downstairs Adult library. I recall the first times were special privilege ones as we were SPE students...... I don't recall if I worked for Siegel in 1962 as I did in the previous years.....Went to FREEDOMLAND two, three times that year...... Had a birthday party.....Went to Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade..... Had a good Xmas 1962...... Mother still worked in A&P so I visited her.... Still lived entirely for the future..... Watched Disney on TV....... In Math class I really studied for a test, knew I got every answere right and couldnt wait until I got my test back. Then it was just an 88!!???? How??? Well, the idiot teacher thought it would be interesting to reverse two columns of numbered questions so everyone who didn't notice got ALL of them wrong. I said what's the use?? and wished I was back in Greenpoint.I don't recall that jerks name. I also recall my eyes first started acting funny in that idiots class. I was in the second or third seat from his desk on the left front of the room and my eyes would go in an out of focus. The dirtclod or puberty?.....In gym, which I really feared and hated, I at least learned how to climb a rope. Told us to wrap it around ankle. I did it and went right to the top...... In homeroom, the prettiest girl in class by far, Kathleen, came in one morning and the guys were all kidding her about having a suck mark. She blushed.( Reese's room? I think so. 8th grade 62-63)...age 13... No doubt went to Thankgiving Day Parade and came home to eat. Balloons GENERIC in those days. No plugs!!..... Mother was into 1700-1850 styles..age 13... Dont recall what did for NEW YEAR'S EVE/DAY 12/31/62 to 1/1/63..... Always COLD in that house. Pile clothes on me to sleep at night..... (UNKNOWN TIMES 1962:):: Became a PEANUTS fan in 62 or 63,,, Started referring to Vanilla ice cream as 'unflavored ice cream' as I was tired of them only having vanilla types at store, surprised when Dale later picked up my phrase,,,,Towards the end of my Catechism Years which went up to Confirmation, the subject of sex and marriage increasingly came up and the Church was extremely strict on such things and I took it as objective fact that sex outside of marriage and divorce were horrifically evil and disgusting things. And their telling us that it was okay to marry a cousin with a simple 'dispensation' simply made me avoid girl cousins..... Kids in class laughed at me in front of room when I told them there really was a country named CAMBODIA,,, Went bowling with Sadolskys near Long Island City H.S., also maybe on Ditmars,,, Made my own little museum in my room withany science stuff I had,,,, Started calling my self a non-conformist (62? 61? Earlier?),,,,, Used reverse psychology from moment I heard of it. Helped me in dealings with idiots I had to deal with,,, Tues 7-20-99 314pm...

-----1963-----

My Snazzy List of Links