----- The day we went to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan was FRIDAY, July 17, 1964. Naturally it was moy mothers birthday and I felt guilty about leaving. I don't recall how we got to the Port Authority Bldg but I CLEARLY recall standing downstairs waiting in line for the bus and it was surprisingly crowded. I remember looking around and I can picture where I was and the area around me. Interestingly, some famous person on a talk show, I forget who, said that he was making the bus announcements there at that time. We sat on the roght side near the front of the bus. On the way we passed through thousands of boy scouts near Philadelphia and my aunt was at first surprised but then said, "That's right. I read about them all meeting here now". At Philadelphia we went upstairs and there was a restaurant to the left where we ate something. They sure had more money than we did and we had more than anyone else on our block. I don't recall us getting on the next bus. There was no new US 30 superhighway then. I remember them announcing Harrisburg and watching us go off the highway and off the ramp. I would be on that same one many times in the future. We then went down a wide street without many buildings and the depot was a bit up in the air in a wide open area. We went up a wide ramp that seemed quite strange looking. I was always good at geography compared to other kids but I had no idea where we were. I never paid attention to the area between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. I thought we had gone straight west from Phila. and were now closer to Pittsburgh. Their father, my uncle, was there, waiting for us. I recall being in the car. I don't remember the ride down. I think I remember pulling in to stop and get out. I may have noticed the big green grandstand just before doing so. I know it would be a future landmark of arrival and I'd wake up to see it above my head. I looked it up a few years ago and there was a HEATWAVE going on but it didnt feel all that bad. But the highs every day was 90* to 92* except for one of 88*. I dont recall going into the house. After this my sequence may not be perfect.... (I think that either while we were on the bus or after we got off, Barry Goldwater was nominated for the Presidency). Our first day there was Friday July 17, 1964. We went to the A&P right away some blocks away on the main street. I very vaguely recall being inside it. But I left carrying the most packages as I wanted to show off. So I walked faster and up ahead and made a turn left too quickly. I went two blocks north instead of one and turned right again. I didn't recognize anything so I kept walking, worried about having been lost already while carrying all those groceries and not even knowing the name of the street I wanted. I just kept walking wondering if I had gone East too far. Then I saw the street about to come to an end. I was in real trouble now! But suddenly there was a burst of recognition. I was here before!! Sometime in the 'far' past. This was the same corner that strange girl cousin asked me if I knew where I was a year before (Or was it TWO years?) Same corner! Same girl cousin! I luckily managed to get stuck at the one point in Pennsylvania where I had been asked if I knew where I was before and then shown the way. I didn't even realize before that that it was the same people we had visited before. Now I had an idea where I was. I managed to get home before they saw me coming from the wrong direction. Just imagine if she hadn't taken me that way the last time I was there and then made a point of my knowing how to get back from that specific place!.I recall asking the older boy cousin if we were near Pittsburgh and he said no so I must have asked that before the A&P trip. But I still got home before and stood waiting on the porch. There was a big tree out front, long gone now. I remember it seeming to me that their bathroom did not have a lock. I had no idea that some doorknobs had button locks. Never heard of them before. Now I knew I'd have to time my bathroom visits to when noone was around so noone would barge in on me. And no baths. Amazed me how we were to change towels after every use. My aunt said it was not because of me but, "You don't have kids in your house. We have all these kids". My height and IQ fooled her. My mind was more immature in many ways. ..age14... Wonder of wonders, in the garage out back there was a refrigerator filled with PEPSIs and beer! They were so rich they went to some place called a 'distributor' and bought it by the CASE! The fact that I could occasionally have ONE soda made me the richest kid on the block back in Astoria. The others were lucky back there to get a nickel for a Carbonated water. I was told that the brick building across the street contained ducks in the winter from some place called "Kiwanis Lake". But I missed the strange name as we had no such clubs I had ever heard of in NYC. It also had two bathrooms for the softball teams nearby and there was supposedly a hole through which they said the boys spied on the girls. I thought THAT was horrible. I could just imagine what a Priest would do to me if I told him tHAT in the Confession Booth. The main softball field had a huge green grandstand that I had by now remembered from the previous visit. The backstop had a poster on it of some country character. I thought that moving from Greenpoint to Astoria was like moving to the country. These things made me REALLY feel like I was WAY out in the country even though it was a small city's edge. They told me I had just missed the National Softball Tournament Championships there. In their house they had a huge expensive fishtank, a color TV! with a remote!! in 1964! and air conditioning! (Years later when I got AC I read so much about it aging faces that I feared to use it). The mother was a good cook. And we ate at tray tables with milk. (Never drank milk at home. Have now done so ever since) while always watching Woody Woodpecker. I never saw that cartoon at home since the 50s and these were also the ones that brought them in the 50s to Greenpoint).age14. Kitchen wall was covered with plates from all the places my aunt had been. My mother started to mimic that. I was always drinking water from the kitchen sink for some reason. 8-3 241pm, 8-3 824pm: Once at breakfast one of the boys got angry because the butter was still cold and hard and he couldnt spread it. He asked how i could. Thin slices, I said. I was surprised his parents didnt show him. We ate breakfast at the kitchen table together each morning. I wasn't used to such family atmosphere. It was a nice way to live that was new to me. They had a high chair in the kitchen by the back door. Had those fold out from under legs that were everywhere in the 50s/60s. We had one, too. Once my girl cousin was going to draw me while sitting on it but we got distracted and nothing happened. (Years later a friend's wife said I had such 'nice features' that she wanted to do the same and the same thing happened). In my GCs room where she slept in a double bed with her sister (who was almost never home but out with her boyfriend)to the left going through the door. Between it and the door a table with radio. On the wall on the other side of the bed the wall was covered with Beatle's pix. The bay window over the front had an air conditioner in it. The nozzle could be turned to blow them off (the older boy showed me that). She'd get semi-upset, say 'Ohhh!" and jump across the bed to reach down and get them. She had a record player in there and played Beatles music loudly a great deal. First time I heard the flip side songs and I still relate them to that time and place. Much more than the big ones I heard 1/64-5/64. Also first time I heard the Hard Days Night album she got in Astoria. (Did she play it in Astoria? I dont remember her doing so). The different scents, music, and air conditioning made a VERY different Summer world than what I was used to just sitting quietly on my bed alone reading or going out on the subways by myself. Between her bedroom and the small room was the boys room. Two single beds with a nighttable in between. My bed was closer to her room on the left coming in. They were now together on my other side and there was a window, To go out of that room would mean to gointo the little hall and the bathroom was to the right and, around a small corner, the parents room which I was never in. The laundry basket was outside in the hall and on the hall wall was the father's certificate for crossing the equator during WWII. Across from the two beds were the chest of drawers and a mirror. From the girls room on the immediate right was the stairs to the attic. I don't know the exact chronology anymore. It normally took six hours between NYC and York and if we left at 8am?? we would have gotten there at 2pm. Plus the father picked us up at Harrisburg. We may THEN have gone to the A&P or to the railroad bridge or to the other main street (going east, a block farther south) to the candy store or downtown or a combination or to the softball fields or any combination as the sun didnt go down until late. But either Friday or Saturday we went "downtown" (which I never understood as it wasn't 'south' but in the center of town). We went out the back and through the alley westwards. At the first street we passed behind another older sister's house on the corner...age14.. Friday 8-6-99:: And on the left was a barber shop on that corner with a rear entrance. Across the street was a soda fountain called the Delphia, also with a rear entrance, and on the opposing corner. Garages down both sides of the next alley. Then the alleys ended, or actually, continued to the right but we would be headed left. On that corner was Wagner's grocery (very Kraut sounding name to me) with a rear entrance. Really laid back and trusting here with all the rear entrances. I think we went right into Wagner's where they were very forward with the adults who owned the place, something I never was in Astoria. Then out to the main east to west street (Philadelphia Street. I wondered if it actually went all the way to the city of Phila. (This may be where I asked about Pittsburgh). Digonally across and back was the Sunshine Restaurant/Fountain. Going down towards town for the first time I noticed a church on the corner. I checked and it wasn't a Catholic one I could go to. Crossed street. Ridge Avenue school was there and was still a city elementary school. Front schoolyard way up stairs above us. Boys went up and walked along top of low stone wall. Too high for careful me. Farther on was State Street. I wondered if it had any connection with the song that had the phrase, "where all the Hippies meet". But that was 'South Street' (I knew little of rock 'music'). "Hippie" used differently years later. They told me that York Barbell was a block north of us. I had never heard of it. I wasnt into physical stuff, just science. After the school a residential half-block. Then we reach an open area I found intriguing as I didnt recall anything in NYC quite like it. A gas station on the right and that A&P on the left!! NOW I had my bearing a little. Wide open vista now. Gas stations (plural) on both sides visible for a while. Followed by railroad tracks. (I always loved Pa. RR tracks. As a kid my image of Pa. was RR trains everywhere. ) Street curved to left. The rear of the New York Wire Company was visible and they joked about that. I couldnt understand the name. Was it the NEW YORK Wire Company and why was it here? Or was it the NEW York Wire Co.? On the right above a gas station a big billboard of a pretty little blonde girl eating buttered bread. It would be there for years. A lot(small) around tracks on our side. Phone booth there. Street curved. (Now there are concrete blocks protecting the houses there but not in 1964). A half block on a huge building way back from the street on the lefet (Turned out to be the Childrens Home but I never saw any outside until a night in 1966-67 and they looked mean). One and a half blocks farther on an alley with a short building that had the metal sign, "Empire Building" on it. Bill says, "That's our Empire State Building". Then I saw a wider street in the distance (Duke Street). I saw it in the half block distance and across diagonally on the corner was a vertical sign and there was a small store on at least three corners. I thought it to be the main street of a small town like this. So we got there and I peered up to the left looking for stores. It wasn't the mani street. We continue on and I see more up ahead. A vertical sign before the end of the block with time and temp for the "York Dispatch". A hotel across the street. Increasingly more stores on the way down to it. This must be it at last. I'm surprised. I thought it would be like Seldon, Long Island in the Early 60s. Much bigger! So we reach the corner of East Phila and South George. I think the hat shop was on the corner but Im not sure. But diagonally were two theatres showing two movies simultaneously. Weird! In NYC competing theatres arent next to each other. Never saw that before. "Ensign Pulver" was showing at The Strand and "The Carpetbaggers" (That figured, Jimmy's movie. I was surprised it would be shown in a small town) at The Capitol. We crossed (south)and stayed on the East side of the street (George). Half way up the block was a restaurant (Ramona) and just before it was a doorway to a stairway entrance and some girl came out and stared at me and I turned away. Kids teased me for my shyness. That happened to me a few other times while I was there. Girls in a MUCH safer town like that were more outgoing. More importantly, I was starting to notice that the guys my age werent obnoxious and looking for fights with strangers like back in NYC. I never once heard, "What are you lookin' at?" for just glancing in someone's direction. So I guess we continued up to the exact center of town. It was a regular intersection but the stores were all way back and there were huge flower pots. They told me, "They just put these in". It had been a traffic circle the last time we were there. But I dont know if we went through town the last time. To the left under a HUGE wall clock was Murphy's 5&10. Just like the name of Dale's dog! I'd have to tell him. I don't know if we went right in or on the way back. But we went in and downstairs and all around looking at things and joking. It had also just annexed the little store next to it for towels and like-stuff.This was the era when 5&10s were GROWING and swallowing the stores around them even though they ALREADY had beautiful basement sales floors! The HEIGHT of American affluence. The lunch counter inside and to the left (There was a doorway punched through to the new annex behind the lunch counter). The counter and its seats were quite low to the ground. But I know I got a malted as I was supposed to every day. Think they were 30c then. Somehow we got diagonally across the street to where the big stores were. On that corner was a People's Drug Store. Inside on the right they had Rock Candy! Just like in Boston in 58. That was a sure sign of "The Country". That and Royal Crown could only be gotten in "The Country". Also a bunch of other starnge brands besides the ones I recognized. (At some point I also learned Hershey made icecream) Straight ahead was another soda fountain. Amazing how many fountains there were in those pre-fast-food days. However, on second thought, I dont think we went into Peoples the first day downtown. Because I just had a memory of just reaching that corner and the younger? brother saying, while pointing at a Hallmark Shop, "That's where Lora's dog won the dogshow last year.". So I think we went to the 5&10 first. (I later looked up that contest in the paper)(I also stumbled onto a full length photo in the paper of my Aunt taken earlier that same year when she won a bank contest by finding a coin of some sort in the Farquar Park complex's last section.)..age 14.. Down West Market (I didnt even know the street names then) was next some small womens store (now a donut shop) and then a McCrory's. And a really fancy one at that. Out front someone was selling ice cream sandwiches for the store from a stand they moved outside. One person stood behind it and cut the Hershey (I doubt if I knew what it was then) ice cream block and one would get three flavors in a big fat ice cream sandwich on waffle wafers. Dont think I saw one like that before. Indoors on the left was a magnificent soda fountain with a long, long counter and a table area beyond. Inside many of the counters had their very own employee to wait on you. The candy was in the middle and all was loose. Woman inside it to dole it out. To the right front were stairs with fancy bannisters to go downstairs. Farther back on the right by the wall and were the records with all the Beatles stuffbeing promoted. Something came over the radio about Mickey Mantle and the Yankees and I remember actually hoping the Whitesox would win for a change as the Yanks had already just won four in a row. I think it was mostly women stuff and household stuff in the back. There was another stairway down to the basement. But I think we all took the front won going down. It was just as nice downstairs but not as many workers. In the far left were the toys ans plastic models. And dioramas were built!! Suspended scenes of dogfights in the air with built airplane models! Cotton as clouds. Red/brown painted cotton as smoke. Many of them! They couldn't possibly do that in NYC!! And they had many models I had never seen in NYC. Including a Monitor/Merrimac. (I grew up in Greenpoint and went to John Ericcson public school but I never knew the Monitor was built in Greenpoint and I thought he was a Viking, not the inventor). When I was waiting in the Port Authority for the bus my mother shocked me by giving me five dollars as spending money. I wasn't expecting any. But I was going to wait before buying it as I couldnt get more money. I must have gotten more though as that five was intact until the last day or two and I was buying those malteds and other smaller things. I guess that whenever my aunt gave the kids money she gave me some. Upstairs by the records they also had another special little eating stand inside where one could get hotdogs on buttered rolls. Never saw them before ( Although Nedick's on 34 St by Macys I believe had them and maybe I had one once with those mass-produced kind. )(Today I was speaking to a woman who was born in York in 1930 and recalled the 5&10s since 1937 and she said that this McCrorys also had a big restaurant DOWNSTAIRS until after WWII where they actually sat people. She said that Downtown lost people after WWII!!. Why? TV??)

After leaving McCrorys we went farther down Market and I dont know if we went into the two smaller 5&10s but we went to the Woolworths in between them. (And between the two BIG 5&10s there was a 'Weist" Dept store which shocked me by having Avalon Hill Wargames- but I dont know if I discovered it that July). Woolworths was much like the McCrorys in being huge and two-leveled with a long, long counter on the left. It had its records in the left front window in a special section and Beatles stuff right there. I think their 45s were 88c then. In the rear on the left wall was a huge bronze plaque saying a signer of the Declaration of Independence was buried there. I thought, "They built a 5&10 on top of him?" (Later I learned it was on part of the old cemetary of the church between Weists and the small 5&10 (Grants)before Woolworths and they had moved the body) In the backs of all these 5&10s were OPEN doors to the alley. They had registers and sometimes someone would be there and sometimes not. It was an Honor System! People shopped along the alley! and/or left that way. Then we went out and farther west. Past another 5&10 (Kresge's - the sign is STILL visible in the back after 35+ years). Then a jewelry shop (still there) and then a street (Beaver) to cross. We went over and into the Bon-Ton. {[ At this point I am going to stop and try to figure out some chronology. The morning we left the Port Authority Terminal for York was on FRIDAY JULY 17, 1964. It normally took six hours to get to York from NYC when I was doing it all the time in 66-67. However, their father picked us up in Harrisburg AND we may not have waited very long in Philadelphia as the bus from NYC to Harrisburg was the same one and then one changed for York while when one went from York to NYC one had to change at Philadelphia and wait one hour. So maybe only Vi went into that restaurant in Phila as maybe she nly picked up something quick. I dont recall. So we might have arrived in York as early as 1pm. And as it was a Friday the stores would have been open until 9pm. And in July the sun is up late. So we could have gone downtown on the first day OR the kids could have shown me around their home area on Friday and brought me downtown on Saturday. }] Friday Aug 6, 1999 341pm........ Mon 8-9-99 1120am: The "Bon-Ton" was the biggest store in the county. I was amused by the name because in so many things I read or saw on TV the "Bon Ton" was the store the small- towners went to. I always thought it was a made-up name to joke at but here it was for real! It was mostly an upper-middle class type store with the only escalator and a few floors and a mezzanine with a restaurant on it. All I think I recall is their pointing out the escalator to me as we rode it for the first time. (No, I think I also recall walking along the mezzanine with them from back to front on the right of the store). We didn not go any farther down the street. I dont know if we went back on the same side or crossed the street. On the other side were all small non-browsing stores. They mentioned the Farmers Market a half block away at some point but I dont recall us ever going into it. Back in the center of town was Bears Dept Store which actually may have been as big as the Bon Ton with all the annexed parts. It was on the northwest corner of the square. Murphys on northeast. peoples on southwest. On the southeast corner was a jewelry shop and a pretty tall bldg (cut down when I was in high school 66-67. Shaved off a couple of floors). There were some BIG billboards over the town. At least over Murphy's. I dont recall ever going into Bears with them but we must have. Newspaper said lefties were taking signatures on a petition. I dont recall if they were there when we were. Photo shows them in front of big flowerpot in front of Peoples Drugs with table.!!!!! FIND DATE OF NEWSPAPER! !!!!!!! !!!!! !!!!!!! We walked home on East Market. I dont recall them pointing out anything along the first block to Duke St. But I think we were on the north side, not the Courthouse side. i would guess the Courthouse and the Yorktowne might have been mentioned. At the end of the next block was the library and it may have been mentioned. Across the street in a churchyard another signer of the Declaration of Independence was buried. (John Smith, the other was David Livingstone) And there was ALWAYS the same white wooden sign just on the other side of a bldg after the churchyard at a hidden driveway designating that church. That same sign was there from at least 1964 to about 1995? when it was replaced by a metal one. But just up a few yards from the church and across the street was the Historical Society. I dont know how we got there. Where did we cross? But I recall walking up to it on that side of the street. There was a guest book on a podium outside and the door was open. I signed my name and address and they signed weird things in it. Lor put a Beatles name ( As probably did every other girl her age going by) We went in. Noone around. Local exhibits. In the far rear was an ancient auto. Roped off. Steve didnt care. He went past in and got into the auto. Lor was surprised and laughing. I never did things like that. (Actually, it was the way the kids were happy so often that struck me the most. None of the kids in my classes were ever happy. Neither were the kids in my neighborhood. All meanness and poverty. Dour children who were serious.) He eventually got out and we later left. Probably joked about many other things in there. At some point I believe we went back to the other side. Next to a shoe repair place (which was there until the guy retired in about 1997?) there was an art(?) store. And one brother said, "That's where mom bought Lor her Beatle's cap". Then on past where my present physician is at the alley. And on to Broad Street. Broad Street in those days ENDED there. Across the street there was no extended street and no tall housing projects for the elderly. Instead there was a gas station with ice cold sodas under ice water in a big cooler. i often got them out of there later. The street is punched through now. And there was a restaurant beside it that I dont think I was ever in. Across Broad was the Christian Science center my aunt mentioned at the Fair. Then a row of tall old rowhouses (Razed in 97 or 98). Then the street bent around the New York Wire Company. On the other side of the tracks we crossed were a row of small stores: a 5&10, a newstand, etc. and a big movie theatre. (Hmmmm. Maybe we didn't go downtown right away. When we went to see a movie I think it was new to me. Perhaps we did other things Friday afternoon and Saturday? No, that's hard to believe.) Across from the stores and theatre were a car lot and building. State St. again. Tiny stores across street. Plus a hairdresser on every block back then. Farther up the street York Barbell was 1/2 way down from the other side. And across the street a 'nursery school'. I had no idea why parents put their kids in nursery schools back then. I was the only one whose mother worked where I had lived and I was a 'latchkey kid' (modern name). I thought that nursery 'schools' were just that- for kids whose parents wanted them to be going to school and start learning earlier. Now they're called 'daycare centers'. They were just for kids whose parents both worked like mine. I guess my mother waited until I went to kindergarten to start working. .age14. On the corner, Ridge Ave, was a floorcovering place that stayed unchanged until it closed in 1998. But now it just reopened and looks the same in 1999! Up a small hill and a big petshop on the corner. And across the samll street the 'Spring Garden Hotel'(bar)whose name confused me as I had never heard of Spring Garden and I thought this was supposed to be York. Farther up a little and across the street they had just laid the cornerstone (1964) for the new church. Never knew what was there before. Maybe I should look it up someday. On this side farther up a pizza shop and then a candy store of sorts. It was a HALLWAY!! Owner ansd customers squeezed in. (Many years later it moved next door into a real storefront). Across was a Maytag place. Until 1998! Now antiques (8-99). Beyond newstand/candy store was a tavern (still there) and then a diner pushed back where I got a coke once. Now long a vacan lot. Then a corner pharmacy that looked the same until the late 1980s and then became a tattoo parlor but now is deserted since Spring 1999. Across was Connolly's Masury Paint. With a revolving clock/thermometer. Giant wooden soldiers. Ten feet high? I called Masury Connolly's for years as the first times I saw it I was always walking up Sherman and towards it and then turned right at Market Street. The two piece sign was designed to face the East-bound one-way traffic and I always approached it from the other way. This makes me wonder if I didnt go up there a couple of times BEFORE we went into town as if I had noticed it first from returning from town I would have read it correctly from the beginning. Across Sherman from the Pharmacy was a churchhouse on the corner with a church on the other side. It had a grocery on the first floor and the second floor hung over the sidewalk. I was never in the grocery and dont recall what it looked like at all. (A half block south of the post office on the other side of George Street was another bldg that hung over the sidewalk like that). I think that was the first time I ever spent any length of time at all with two or more kids without an adult along and them NOT being nasty to me in any way!!.. So then we turned up Sherman Street to 'home' two blocks north and 1/2 East........ I think we went into town every day or almost........ Once I went up to town alone with Lor. I dont recall walking up there alone with her as she was just some unknown relative then but I do recall she wanted a new needle for her record player. We went into Murphy's and asked the woman there but she didn't have it. (In 1969 I went in there for the same thing to the same woman). I dont recall if we tried any of the 5&10s on West Market St. Next I recall our going into the little record store at 23 South Beaver (around the jewelry store at Market/Beaver at the end of the 5&10 block, instead of crossing to the Bon Ton) and her talking to the young guy there and he didnt have it. (I know the number 23 because a friend of mine had his store there in the 1980s and I sometimes watched it for him.) I know that after that we were in the post office. So we might have then gone a half-block down and turned left. I do know that the very first time I saw City Hall I was shocked- because there was my Lionel City Hall, cupola exactly the same and all! Gee! I really was in the country! And that's where Lionel got its toy buildings and where books and movies got the 'Bon Ton'. So I'm just guessing that she took me that way but we could have also gone thru the alley or backtracked through town but thats not very logical. But we could have also walked TWO streets south before turning left. At the post office she had to get stamps for her mother. It had a newsstand then with a blind guy and where the recessed machine area is now is where the windows were then. There were also vending machines in it back then. Next we went north on George St to Sol Kesslers where she finally got the needle. We then went north towards town and on a street corner they were tearing up the sidewalk. (S.George/ W.King). That patch was there until 1997. .age14..I have no idea what else, if anything, we did then. Did we come straight 'home'? ................... The only other time I was alone with her occurred when she took me to Hudson park and showed me the little brick building with a green canopy over it. (There is a photo in the paper of a few days before. They had just put the canopy on it.) Maybe it was the same day or the same trip? If so, where were the boys? ......... One day we went to the movies. We went, I believe, up Sherman to Philadelphia St. Then reached Ridge Ave. We might have been on Philadelphia St when suddenly Lor took off running up Ridge and I asked Bill where she was going. He said there were alleys up there that also led to the movies. (Or else we were on the edge of the first alley and she ran up to the second but I dont think so). I think she beat us there. I think we went to State St and then up to Market. (When I was there I always had my directions upside down. I kept thinking of going from Wallace to Market as 'up' or 'north'. Obviously, my just coming into puberty erased my talent for knowing where north is. Monday Aug 8, 1999 427pm:: Tues 8-9-99:: The theatre was around the corner from State/Market as we went down State and turned right. We went in to see "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", the very movie I kept noticing as I traveled all over the subways during Early 1964 to get away from people. Never crossed my mind I'd finally see it in some place called York,Pa whose name I didnt remember existed just a couple of weeks before. I don't recall entering but i recall that the two boys and I sat towards the rear as we came in on the right and Lor did not sit with us but went up front and in the middle alone in a rather empty afternoon theatre. Then some adult weirdo comes in and sits right behind her. One boy says, "Did you see that? He sat right behind her". We watch. Lor jumps up and comes back to us. was that the first time that happened in front of them? On the one hand I was shocked to see anything degenerate in such a nice small town. On the other the fact that it surprised them even though they had been going to this theatre in the past meant it was rare. But she came back and watched the movie with us. I recall most of the movie from that day very well. It was also the very first movie that made me laugh. And i think the town and the people were a lot of it. I forget anything else but watching the movie. I do recall having something there to eat but i dont recall what. I think there was an intermission where we bought some stuff. I don't remember the conversation on the way home. My guess is that we were there either Sat. July 18 or Sun. July 19........... Now I knew that when I went to Pa. with these strange relatives that I would probably wind up eating meat on Friday which was a Mortal sin but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. However, it did bother me all the time I was there. But what DID offend me was that I got no help in getting to church. I asked my aunt a couple of times where the Catholic church was and got the brushoff. "Oh, there's one on the other side of town somewhere" I was told. I had this vague image of it being in some place way farther than even the center of town and my getting up early on a Sunday, annoying everyone by doing so, and walking far away and getting lost. (A year later I discovered the churches by York High and down George Street. Later I found there was one just a few blocks down Sherman that I could have gotten to easily but had no idea it was there. It's unbelievable that one woman would agree to take care of another woman's only son and then not allow that woman's son to go to church!!. The one on Sherman was near her beer/soda distributor). That was the FIRST time I had ever missed church except for a BAD disease or HORRIFIC weather. To a Conservative Catholic like me that meant my soul would now be as black as a murderer's and if I died it was the same Hell for me. But my aunt intimidated me. Look at the position I was in. She never took her own kids to church which does, in the end, cause problems for others more than the parent who don't. (Years later she would get mugged by a kid whose parents probably never took him to church either). It was probably 20 years before it struck me how close that church was.......... I wonder what we did that first Sunday when all the stores were closed for the Blue Laws they had back then? Was it the movie day?........... Leaving the garage with a Pepsi once I was about to chuck the empty bottle through the air when they stopped me. I didnt know the whole case of empties went back for deposit. Knew nothing of 'distributors'. ....... Once when we went into town we must have turned RIGHT where Wagner's was and kept going through the alleys. Because they then end at State Street and we'd have to turn left. We were across from where Walnut Street ended at State Street and they told me that Walnut was the ONE street they were never allowed to on as it was the one bad block around. It went farther than a block but Broad Street was so wide it was effectively an end. But now I know it's REALLY a constricted street on the OTHER side of Broad and may have even been worse on the other side. It's just that this was the only block on this side. Walnut was the 'white trash' street. A block north of Walnut along State was Philadelphia St. (Nowadays the white-trash center of York is is at East Market and State St and it spreads back to Walnut/State. Actually, every year the white-trash area moves up another block or two).......... The whole town was covered with huge black ugly antennas on almost every house. To get TV programs there one had to turn the handle on a box on the TV and the huge antenna would slowly turn a 'kachung' at a time towards that city. I was surprised to see that networks showed them the same shows as us. As so many TV shows were so NYC themed/based I thought only NYC area people got them. I noticed, however, that the time between about 3pm and 7pm was for local programming............... ............... ................ .............. .............. ................ .................. They brought me down to an old gas station where Sherman St went right and north and Windsor Street went left and over a tiny bridge over a track. Dont recall if we went there via the driveway and lot across from their house or via Wallace to Sherman and north a block. Cleaners on corner. It was a RED BALL service center at the triangle. Big red ball over the edge of the triangle corner. Faded on one side over the years. Tiny "Atlantic". As in WWII red ball service in Europe I had vaguely heard about (June 6, 1964 was the 20th Anniversary of D-Day, which was a BIG day back then when my fathers WWII generation ran things. Dale was born on it. Gas station had a cheap bottle soda machine out front. And it had ROYAL CROWN!!. Couldn't get that in NYC. Also had a nickle coffee machine just inside where they worked on cars and candy and ice cream in the office. Eskimo pies and cheap ice cream sandwiches, etc. Behind it on Windsor Street was the BIG "IH" sign for International Harvestor. Now that was REAL country. I didnt quite understand it but I had a vague notion it had to do with vehicles and farming. Then up the hill to the bridge. The first time I had ever smelled Honeysuckle! They showed me how to get the drop of honey out. (Just a year ago, 1997, new people owning part of the area deliberately DESTROYED ALL THE FOLIAGE there including the trees and the Honeysuckle! I complained to the govt authorities supposedly protecting such things on a public road beyond the edge of their property but they sent me a letter saying they were doing nothing about it. Claimed they investigated. Now, Summer 1999, it's all overgrown again but NO Honeysuckle returned and obviously no trees.) So we go up to the bridge and I look down at the tracks for the first time. Then to the other side and they go down the steep hill. They were used to it. I wasn't. I knew my legs never developed the type of muscles necessary to inch down that steep slope. I made some lame excuse about not being allowed to climb. Actually, it was true as my mother overly doted on me and told me not to but I did get permission from my father to learn to climb on top of that Garbage Pit which they all saw so it wa sprobably not in effect. But I recalled how I lost control when trying to get back down the steep slope of Bear Mountain just a couple months before and I saw that this slope was shorter but steeper. I was just a shy, weak nerd (But not as bad as I was from 1959- 1963. I was in my transition period as a late maturer.) They told me there was another way down but now I dont know which it was. My guess is that I continued on the same path around the circle until I reached a part of the slope I could handle. The only other way would have been all the way to Sherman where it crossed the tracks. They went under the bridge with a steep slope heading down to a ledge and then the tracks. Scary to me. New to me. And my body was new as well, growing at such a fantastic rate.) Now there is a pipe completely exposed about 18 inches above the ground. Back then it was under the dirt. Erosion over 35 years. But there was a way down to the right. Steep but not as steep as the initial one to where I was. And a tree to grab onto to slow one down. A tree is still there. The same one? But still steep. Actually, I don't really recall how I got down there. I wonder now if I went around that curve, directly left to the tracks and all the way back but I doubt it as I recall being under that bridge with them. I think I went farther around and walked back over the field and that they showed me stuff under the bridge with probably Steve going the farthest and then I made it down that smaller slope under the bridge. Yes, I do recall all of us looking under the bridge with him out there. (Where did the 35 years go?).

Anyway, we got down. I had no strength in my legs then. I've done it a thousand or more times since then. Thousands? We were under the bridge which had no graffiti in those days. Kidding around under there. (I do recall they had tried to get me there a couple of times before but I wasn't interested at first so maybe it wasnt until Sunday July 19, 1964? that I got there? We walked west on the tracks. A trough below ground level. My head was still below ground level. A railroad 'cut'. Trees growing on top of the edges. A tiny bit of trash along tracks. But bridge above virtually unused then. (Since about 1991 its become VERY used. And when they built US 30 in 1969 use went up. But about 1991 they cut Sherman Street through the tracks just before Mt Rose Avenue and now people get off Mt Rose and go all the way down Sherman and over the bridge and through Windsor Park to US 30. Plus people now constantly walk to the all-night mini-mart where the little gas station used to be). We kept walking down the tracks until there is a spur to the right that goes to the back of a factory. Loading dock. Steve goes to the dock, gets up on it, and walks over and looks inside. We can't believe how forward he is. Everyone laughs. He didn't get caught. Steve was younger than Bill and I but much more aggressive. (Remnants of spur tracks still there. Bldg was closed for years. Reopened a few years ago. Went there a couple of days ago and saw they were working on the back for the first time since 1964. Renovation? (( Now there two days ago. They enclosed the whole back loading dock for some reason)) ). I dont know where we went after that. We might have gone up to where one track turns right or we may have turned around sooner. I dont know if we went all the way up to where a street that started at the tracks and went on into windsor park along the little park on the main street. I think we just went back. Tuesday 8-10-99 152pm, 8-10 345pm: We may have gone back under the bridge and then climbed up the other side and up to the top or we may have gone all the way down to Sherman Street about a block away and then turned right towards Allen field. Probably the latter. Back then there was nothing but a BIG lot to the right along the tracks all the way to Sherman (Where the paper place is now and where the spur was added for ten or more years). But around 1970? they built a bldg and that spur that started under the bridge. To the left has always been the back of the MolyCorp plant or whats left of it. Closed in 1980s. Dead bldgs........... The first night I discovered my mother (NOT my 'mom' which the kids kidded me about but which i still refuse to use) forgot to pack my pajamas so I had to wear my uncle's HUGE pair. How I kept them up I dont recall. On the first night my aunt surprised me by bringing me tea and toast just like my mother did. But just that night as a joke. (I just thought, this instant, was she on the phone to my house? I dont recall ever being on the phone home while there). I was also allowed to stay up later to read than the two younger boys who were sharing the same bed nearere the window but I rarely did. (However, I recall that the aunt broght hime a hardcover on the JFK assassination that i read in bed). The kids always had to go to bed before the father came home. He worked to about 11 or 12pm midnight. He worked on the boilers at Caterpillar which they always bragged about but which I didnt understand the meaning of. (Turned out it was the best paying place there was). I had NO idea where it was then. Now I know its right up Sherman about six blocks and a few miles due East on what was then a main road but not yet US30. (Now Im across the street from it at the mall every weekend). I said a few words to him a couple times, probably on the weekend. .. I could not believe the SILENCE when I went to sleep there for the first time. We had the main 21st boulevard and the sirens and Triboro Bridge overhead and tugs and the elevated train and freight trains over the Hellgate Bridge. That was the first time I strained to hear ANYTHING!! I heard nothing....... The first night was Fri 7-17 to Sat 7-18. Silence in big pajamas..... I think after the first night I taught some card game to the kids and we'd quietly play cards on my bed. I had always been playing solotaire in those days (That figured). I may have taught them either regular Rummy or Gin Rummy. I also played some solotaire on the bed alone. I know that they said that we were getting up each morning at a time that was late for them! Heck, it was my NEW EARLY time I started in 1963-64. I used to sleep to NOON 1959-62....... After going to town or whaerever each day we'd go to the softbal fields and sit in the big green stands. There was a church steeple way in the distance and I finally located where it was later that year but not on the first trip. The kids hoped for the Caterpillar team to show up and play and win. At 7pm we'd hear the same train go by two blocks north and blow its whistle as it crossed Sherman which had no gate. Once Lor saw a boy she liked who was standing behind the backstop and she mentioned it. I teased her by telling her I'd go tell him and she said for me to go ahead. I was shocked by her forwardness and I never spoke to strangers. I SHOULD have told him. The boys also told me she had jumped up and kissed some boy in a garage (The name of the garage owner escapes me but the kid was Tim Shifflet. There was also some joke about couples in a place called 'Bummys Woods' and there was a small woods at where the tracks went over Sherman and I think Steve walked towards them and I asked Bill if those were the woods and I think he said no. ...... They mentioned York Barbell a few times as it was between Philadelphia St and the theater but I had no interest and never heard ofg it. (In 1983 it would be the place responsible for my second biggest change when I got into weight-training)..... I got into FROSTY Rootbeer with the gnome or whatever on the label. And some bite-less cream soda so good that Jimmy and other NYC visitors would take cases back...... She'd walk her dog and one night the boys said it would probably be okay to walk him into Windsor Park and around right after dark as long as I was along. So we went over the little bridge at night, right down the center of the street on the other side (Amazing with all the traffic now)and to the end of the little community. They stopped at an intersection and, across a softball field and through large trees along the sidewalk, pointed out and bragged of "The Bypass" I-83 from Baltimore to Harrisburg. The cars could barely be seen in the distance. (The softball field is long gone. It was deserted in the 70s. The trees were chopped down. There is a recycling plant there now and one cant see the same way. One now must move farther down the sidestreet.) It was dark and quiet and peaceful and wonderful then and one could walk or stand in the middle of the street without the cars coming. (Not anymore). Beyond the moving Bypass they pointed out the "Four Towers of Power" of WSBA, the only radio station they listened to and the only rock one they had. ("WSBA. Dial Ninety-Wonderful. Boop, boop, boop". The lights on the four towers blinked in the distance. (Little did I know that those four lights would someday mark where my mother would be buried in the Catholic Cemetary right behind them. And I heard that WSBA no longer uses them but keeps them up). Being from NYC I couldn't understand why these were supposed to be impressive things. I certainly never thought about bragging about NYC as a place between two bigger cities or about radio towers. .... Then we walked the dog all around a chemical plant. (Where I would work ten years later for grad school money) through an area with no lights. (It's still the same.) The nights were very bright. Waxing moon going up to Full and clear skies. The two weeks I was there had the 14 brightest days of the Lunar Cycle along with perfectly clear skies and 90* daytime weather virtually every day. Tues 8-10-99 425pm,,,, Wed Aug 11: Upon bring the dog back to the edge of a field a car with one light went by. Lor said, "Spadiddle". I had no idea what was going on. The boys said that meant she could now kiss someone. "I'll kiss Yoda" (the dog) she said, and did. ( A 'tradition' like that would never be done in a place like NYC). ..... One day I noticed everyone else was gone. Maybe they tended to get up before I did. So I walked into town alone. Got a malted at Murphys by myself. Looked at the models. Maybe it was the day I bought the softcover book as I was carrying that $5 bill intact for a long time (Maybe even until the last two days). I bought, one day, "The Brothers Mad", Mad #5, 50c, New enlarged edition. Dec. 1963 (Did it sit there for months?). I still have it. Inside the front cover in my handwriting it says '7-23-64' (which was a Thursday) and I see I was figuring out the distance light travels in one year on the front and back covers. I missed an extra zero, I see. Ten times too small. But what I did was just revel in the place alone. No one bullying me after 5 years of that in school. No one being obnoxious to me as on my block. No one I pass trying to pick a fight with me. I could actually walk outside for the first time in my entire life and not be all tense and worried about the predators. No one trying to corrupt me. No perverts grabbing at me. No sleazy looking people around town. No nasty, violent ones to be seen. Town was peaceful, prosperous and immaculate. I probably went into each 5&10 and each Peoples Drugs (and probably got a box of rock candy there). Maybe even went back into the two department stores by myself. When I got back I went upstairs and Lor came in and told me she was going up the alleys looking for me. I wondered where she'd thought I'd go other than town by myself. I was also surprised that she'd look for me. ........... I also recall sitting alone on the front porch swing and my aunt bringing me 'ice milk' which I had never heard of. And some young guy walking by as I sat there and his NOT picking a fight, unlike NYC. (I might have both gone downtown by myself and sat on the porch with the icemilk on the same day. ...... One of the first days we were there I was with Lor alone in the living room wondering where everyone else was. She wanted to ride on my back like a horse. I thought it was weird but I said okay, hoping noone would come in. Then she wanted me to ride on hers. I didn't think she could hold me up but she did so easily. She was much more athletic than I was. (Did the Buddha's girl cousin ride on his back before she married him? I doubt it). ....... In the kitchen there was a song voting thing on WSBA and she wanted me to call in after her and say something silly like, "I want to vote for that fab Beatles song, cakes". I was too shy to do it in ANY way but THAT weird way was impossible. ..... I had actually thought, from watching too many westerns that, SF was bigger than LA. The kids corrected me....... They had bicycle LICENSES on their bikes. I was amazed...... I was in 'my' room one day and she brings in her record player and asks me to fix it as it stopped working. I had never owned a record player and never saw the inside of one and was no good with my hands. But I was logical. So I opened it, noticed immediately that one thing was out there all by itself and looked like something should be connected to it. So I pushed what looked like what should be touching it over against it and it worked immediately....... The local hero was someone named Howie Bedell of the York White Roses. (Who would end Don Drysdale's scoreless streak in 1968)... age 14. .. I avoided all flavors except chocolate then. Every now and then I wanted to try something else but was intimidated by my father who I knew would go ballistic if I did. By God, if your tastes weren't exactly the same as his he'd get angry and insulting. What a nut. And he had me controlled 200 miles away....... The kids referred to the man next door as 'Barney' rather than 'Mr Barnett' as I was brought up to do....... They , especially Lor, liked to tease me about liking David Janssen of 'The Fugitive' and the Astronomer Royal using a drawn-out sing-song way of saying the names. But it was innocent, unlike the NYC bastards. Also joked about my NYC slang ('feeble', 'ouch', 'my eye')..... Lor used Beatlmania terms like 'cakes','gear', 'fab'. She was amused by "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" (Even at the time I realized she'd be old herself someday. Young Catholics are taught to think about their future deaths). Boys would tease me about "How Do You Do What You Do To Me" but I had never thought like that with sexual inuendoes as I was always alone and a Catholic. I liked 'Wishin and Hopin' by Dusty Springfield (Who died just days before getting into the Hall of Fame. She was supposedly a big star to Gays. Funny how often I have things in common with them. No wonder many people think Im different)...... In NYC, when one guy thought he caught another guy glancing below his belt (usually when the first guy tricked him into looking down) he'd say 'Snag!'. I tught them that but they used it on Lor and I told them it didn't work that way...... They liked Archie Comix and thought that high school was a big deal. I recall reading their Archie Comic about Reggie's AVANTI car (Just saw one near Hardees on Mt Rose Ave). I was afraid that I mught be assigned to Long Island City High School when I returned as it was the toughest in the city and far away from my home...... Lor would dance to Beatles music in the basement with her friend Sharon. I never even noticed the way people danced then until I watched them at it. I was surprised that I vaguely recognized one of the songs and then realized it was a remake but I didnt know its name (Mr Postman). I had no idea singers could do each others songs until then. I didnt pay attention to 'rock' enough. The two of them took me down the alley to the back of Sharon's house on the other side and went in to ask if I could come in. I thought that was crazy. So did her mother. I wasnt insulted. And what was I going to do with the company of two girls? I had no interest in female company..... One day, perhaps that one, we went across Allen field. The two girls down one alley on the other side and we three guys down the other one. They started to run so we did. I slipped on pebbles (They said 'stones' in York) and fell down forward with palms out. They thought I did it on purpose for some reason. No,I was a weak stumblebum. There was a Millers Pet Shop on the other side where Lor would buy things for her dog. (Even though they were quite expensive there) The place stayed open well into the 1990s until the couple who owned it and ran it finally both died. They were unbelievably ancient since the 1980s! They lived 20 years after I expected them to die at any time. The store always looked the same and smelled the same. (I now went by. Most of the stuff is gone but some is still in there on the left). ......... We played a lot of cards at night on my bed and whenever we thought a parent was coming the kids would scatter to their beds. .... One night the father came out of his room and to the door and stood there on the outside. I heard him say to the aunt, "I thought I heard something in there" The aunt finally did catch us one day. She came in so fast the light was still on, the cards on my bed, and the kids in mid-scatter. But they admitted everything that had been going on and she saw the cards and laughed. She didnt mind. ...... Late one afternoon (after supper?) the older sister Linda was in the doorway and Lor was on the side as I did a Hitler impression beating one boy with a pillow, and everybody laughed. Then I beat Lor but she said, "I like it when you do it to him better"....... So I was there Fri July 17, Sat July 18, Sun July 19, Mon July 20, Tues July 21, Wed July 22, Thurs July 23, Fri July 24, Sat July 25, Sun July 26, Mon July 27, Tues July 28, Wed July 29, Thurs July 30, Fri July 31, and left the morning of Aug 1........ I recall walking up the little steep hill behind the gas station (Where the all-night mini-mart is on Sherman now). There were no metal barriers on the top of the rills then. I was all the way to the right and Lor was about 15 feet to the left and I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she said a model. Never crossed my mind that anyone would say that. The studious girls in my honors classes never said that. (Funny how the feminists say that everyone expected women to be housewives in those days. My mother always worked and all the girls in my classes expected to work and I automatically thought in terms of girls my age eventually going to work.) I have no idea how often we went to town or along the tracks. But we were probably downtown much more often. I KNOW we weren't there the one Sunday I was there. ... age 14 .... Each morning I'd get up and read the sports section of the Gazette and Daily and follow the Yankee, Whitesox, Oriole pennant race as well as check the 'Eastern League' standing I had never heard of. I never read the NYC papers every day like that. Of course, we only got afternoon papers in NYC. (Long Island Star-Journal and L.I. Sunday Press, NY News)....... I thought it was weird that the garbage cans were picked up in the back alleys..... I was only supposed to be there for one week but I asked for and got the second week. I was probably on the phone after all with my mother and she probably said she'd have to ask Viola. So that may have been Friday July 24? or thereabouts.....Viola used to watch Alfred Hitchcock. She also had a copy of Doc Magnus whom I was introduced to for the first time..... I recall talking to Sharon in the alley between houses near the front with at least one brother there. But not Lor...((((( ADD MEMORIES LATER THOUGHT OF TO RIGHT OF THIS)))))..Wed 8-18: The two girls hated someone named Jane Asher who they said was Paul McCartney's girlfriend. I later learned that she was also the little girl in the Robin Hood TV show I liked as a kid........ Lora thought I looked like George Harrison. I didn not know the Beatles names after hearing them for 6 months until they told me them..... I callously stated to Lora that Billy shouldnt be a Beatles fan as it was something for girls. Rude of me. ..... FRIDAY the 13th, August,1999::: One brother, I think it was Steve, took his plastic JFK head that he got in Macy's and punched a hole in the head with his thumbs like JFK actually had. Wow, I wouldn't dare do that at home with a Democrat father and a Catholic mother.... The boys told me that in Woolworth's Lor had won a banana split by choosing the right balloon so it only cost a penny...... On the wall outside the bathroom was a certificate the father had gotten in WWII stating he went through the initiation for sailing across the equator (or was it the dateline?) during WWII....... I was sitting on Deena's front porch with Lor and Dwayne was riding his tricycle. I was also in Deena's house but I forget if they had the Billiards table that early.... In the boys' bedroom on the wall over their bed by the window was there older brother's York High diploma and I had no idea where it was and certainly did not think I'd ever go to some school I had never heard of in a town I didnt know until just then...... They had a metal swing in the front and a wooden on hanging from the porch roof in the back. Or was it the other way around. Anyway, Vi gave us the wooden one later along with her old 1964 phonebook..... The boys pointed out some hill way beyond Allen Field and some house on it and said it was some famous DJs house and one of them got the guy to sign his sneakers.... I had to get a haircut but I dont recall if it was Wed, Thurs or Fri of the second week. Went to the barber who was then at Sherman/Philad where one could get in the back door. Still recall being in the chair. Later Lora didnt like it. I preferred it long myself 8-19-99.... (((( PUT LATE ADDITIONS TO THE LEFT OF THIS))))) Vi took us to see the movie ZULU at the Capitol theatre downtown. That had to be Wednesday, July 29, 1964. We sat up in the left balcony (where i still sit) and the kids giggled at the natives bare breasts. It was Michael Caine's FIRST movie. When we left the ground was all wet and we were surprised as it hadnt rained in all the time I was there. There was a heat wave going on. It was DARK when we came out and we must have taken a cab back but I dont recall the ride......... The next morning, Thursday, July 30, 1964 the GAZETTE had two photos of flooding by the short but heavy downpour. One was on Mt Rose Avenue and the other on Prospect St. I had no idea where they were. (Both photos were taken two blocks on either side of the Hardees on Mt Rose a few times a week now is. And one runs into the other at Hardees). ..age 14.... On the afternoon of Thursday July 30 I was standing in 'my' room talking to Lor in her room. We were on either side of the doorway. Then I think Aunt Vi came in behind and said something. I turned around and got the shock of my life. My mother was standing there!!! MY eyes bugged out. "MOM!!???", I said. They had brought her up secretly to surprise me and take me home. Jeez, somehow she looked very different. Puberty changes in those two weeks? It's like I saw her as a 'person' for the first time ever. I had never been separated from her for that long before. "What are you doing here?", I think I said. Well, it was to take me home on Saturday morning. Later Lor told me to ask my mother for still another week and I recall sitting on Lor's bed alone with my mother and trying but she said it couldn't be done. I don't know what we all did before or after that on that Thursday ....... .age 14 ... ..... On Friday I do recall that I went downtown (or that could even have been on that Thursday) and looking for a way to spend all that money I still had. I either still had the $5 bill or almost all. I bought a model from the basement of McCrory's (Where I still drink coffee a few times a week at 1030am). It was the Monitor and Merrimac model. I recall thinking how I had wanted it during my Washington DC trips in 1961 and 1962 but couldnt afford it. I still have it/them and the box they came in. I recall going there alone but may be wrong. It was definitely Friday that I recall really stretching the day out. And I went up to Market street, turned left and went to a coin shop (Deena's husband would later buy that same shop) and brought back a pile of blue coin collectors books where one pushes them into slots. When I got them back he told me he could have gotten them for me cheaper. I recall being in Deenas front room in front of the couch which was under the window then. ........ Going to bed one night I recall going up the stairs when the photos from the Ranger moon probe came on Vi's TV. According to the records it was on Friday night July 31, the night before I left. So that was my last trip up those stairs to bed. But where was my mother? Did she sleep at Deena's? ....age 14 ......... On Saturday August 1, 1964 the new month began. We kids were all awakened EARLY so it must have been before 10am. I sat at the table eating breakfast right in front of the cellar door. A brand new Four Seasons song was being played on WSBA for the first time. (Toy Soldier? I forget). I looked at the Gazette and Daily sports page of Sat 8-1-64. (The very NEXT edition on Monday, the VERY first one I couldnt read, had the beginning of the Vietnam War as its headline!!!). We went out and it was COLD!!! The heatwave broke the day I left.. We drove west as that was the way the one-way was then, to the end, turned right to the tracks, and then left to the Greyhound Depot/Railroad station. First time I saw any of that. Went inside and got tickets. The kids and I played outside. There was a tunnel there then to walk to the middle platform the kids showed me. And on the end where we mostly were some wooden slats in the ground serving as a walk between the tracks. We were running around. Inside I put a penny in the machine that presses them and I put the date on it as a souvenir. I still have it in my glass piggy bank. I was standing on the rear left step and Lor looked up at me and said, "I wish you didn't have to go." I sure did not want to. (And little did I know that that was the LAST time that Lor would ever be kind to me.).... The bus came and we got on it. I sat by the window and waved at them looking up. And off we went. I was determined to get back for good as I loved the place and the people and hated NYC. .. I recall bits of memories from the trip back of watching the scenery go by. And someone had put up a billboard saying the Phillies would win the Pennant. But I dont recall any more about the trip home. But when I got back in my room I now HATED the quietness in it. I had spent the past three weeks with three people I really liked for the first time in my life. Now began the struggle to get back... (According to the NY Times there was the Miss Universe Beauty pageant on August 1, 1964 (and Miss Greece won) but I wasnt in York then. However I recall a beauty contest on their TV. But the Times says that the Miss America contest wasnt until August 14th). So I wont know which one it was until I check the old newspapers of York.... 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ALL LATE ADDITIONS ARE PUT IN BETWEEN THE TWO DESIGNATED AREAS ABOVE.....

DURING MY TWO WEEK TRIP TO YORK::::::::: ..... _______ _______ ________.FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1964;; USSR supports Indonesia against Malaysia,,,,, Rockefeller criticizes Goldwaters 'Extremism' speech in his nomination exceptance, Eisenhower wants clarification on it, Dean Burch (of Goldwater campaign)takes over for William Miller as Republican Party Chairman (Miller will be VP candidate),,,,,, Three atomic-detection satellites put up by USA, Brit Donald Campbell sets new land speed record of 403.1 mph,, ,,, ___ ____ ____ ________ __SAT JULY 18::: LBJ reports Fed. Budget debt lower than expected,,,,, ____ ____ ____ ______SUNDAY JULY 19:: S.Viet Premier Khanh calls for full scale attack on N.Vietnam,,,,, Bobby Nichols wins 1964 PGA,,,,, Dennis Ralston wins US clay courts tennis champ,,,,, ___ _____ ____ _________MONDAY JULY 20:: FBI reports serious crime in USA increased by ten percent in 1963,,,, ______ ____ _____ _____ TUESDAY JULY 21:: Resigned Italian Premier Aldo Moro succeeds in reorganizing new center-left coalition goverment (This is the guy who will years later be kidnapped and murdered),,,, S.Viet students damage French embassy after DeGaulle calls for neutral SE Asia,,,,, _____ ______ _____ _____ ___WEDNESDAY JULY 22:: NEW YORK CITY erupts in race riots. 100 injured including 35 police! following FOUR NIGHTS of rioting and looting. Mayor Wagner returns from vacation. Started over fatal shooting of negro teenager on JULY 16. (I had NO idea that this was going on while I was in York!!! I didnt know of it for months afterwards! I left JUST before it happened.),,,,, First test of 1964 Civil rights act orders Lester Maddox 'Pickrick Restaurant' to admit negroes,,,,, ______ _____ ______ ___THURSDAY JULY 23:: Rioting continues in NYC Bedford-Stuyvesant section,,,, FBI arrests three whites under new Civil Rights law for beating negro,,,,, Anti-poverty bill passed by Senate,,,,, ____ _____ ______ ______FRIDAY JULY 24:: Reps from 18 countries agree to sharing ownership of international communications satellite system,,,,, ________ ________ ___SATURDAY JULY 25:: Civil Rights Commission announces 155 of N.Carolinas 173 school districts remain segregated, _____ ______ _____ _____ ____ (HAD THIS AS SATURDAY,TOO. CHECK AND CORRECT)::OAS votes to impose many sanctions on Cuba,,,,, Rocster NY race rioting. Rockefeller sends 1,000 Nat Guardsmen,,,,, Jimmy Hoffa convicted of fraud and conspiracy,,,,, US defeats USSR in track and field in Los Angeles,,,,, ______ ___ _______ ______SUNDAY JULY 26:: Cypriote Pres. Makarios says lost hope for negotiated solution to Cyprus crisis and wants it placed before UN,,,,, Saigon announces that USA agreed to commit 5,000 more men to 16,000 already there,,,,,, Grain shortage in India leads to rationing,,,,, ___ _____ _____ _____ ___ MONDAY JULY 27:: House of Commons extends Winston Churchill, 89, a rare official motion of gratitude upon his retirement from Parliament. Algerian Pres Ben-Bella blames counter-revolutionary forces for July 23 bombing of UAR freighter that killed 1,000,,,,, Brit Guiana 171 day strike ends, 200 killed in related racial clashes,,,,, ML King meets with Mayor Wagner over riots,,,,, Post Office bill passed by Congess and sent to LBJ,,,,, _____ _____ _____ ______ WEDNESDAY JULY 29:: Congo uprisings increasing,,,,, Vit Cong Est at 28,000- 34,000 regular troops and 60,000- 80,000 parttime irregulars. Way above previous estimates,,,,, ML King, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph call for ending mass demonstratons until after Nov elections. James Farmer of CORE refuses,,,,, ______ ___ ________ THURSDAY JULY 30:: LBJ rejects RFK as running mate. Leans towards HHHumphrey or Eugene McCarthy as VP cand,,,,, Sen Clair Engle dies of brain tumor. Last in Senate to nod approval of Civil Rights bill June 26,,,,, Tass announces Cosmos 36 launched,,,,, ____ ____ ______ _____ FRIDAY JULY 31:::: Negro Baptist church destroyed by arson near Jackson, Miss,,,,, US Ranger 7, launched July 28 televises back photos of moon before crashing in sea of clouds. Shows large area of moon okay for landing,,,,, Country music singer Jim Reeves, 39, dies in plane crash,,,,, ___ ______ _____ _____SATURDAY AUGUST 1:: New Sect Gen of NATO,,,,, LBJ claims Ranger 7 proves USA now has 'leadership' in space,,,,, Don Schollander sets new swimming record at AAU champ. in Cal,,,,, SUNDAY AUGUST 2: Jersey City has race riots,,,,, THREE NORTH VIETNAMESE PT BOATS SAID TO HAVE ATTACKED US DESTROYER IN ""GULF OF TONKIN"" !!!!!!! ___________ _____________ ________________ New York Times, Tuesday July 21, 1964 (what was going on in Astoria when I was away from home): July 20: 84-72, cldy (was about 91 in York),, July22: Loews Triboro: Viva Las Vega,,,, RKO Greenpoint- McHales Navy, Black Sabbath (B.Karloff),,,,, Astoria-Brandts-Strand: The Carpetbaggers,(Hmm, same as downtown York),,, Skoras Astoria: Island of the Blue Dolphins, Tammy and the Bachelor,,, 730pm- 2-Eye on NY, 4-Mr Novak, 7- Combat!,,, 740-ch 11- Red Barber , 755 ch11- Yankees vs Senators in NYC,,, 1000pm-ch7- THE FUGITIVE- Nightmare at Northoak,,, The ROCK radio stations were wmca 570, wabc 770, wins 1010, and wwrl 1600. Not wqxr., 8-27-99,,,,,

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