Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Bring in proximity to one another, we listened to each others records, read each others books and magazines and comics, would see movies in common and so on.
We would rub off on each other in other ways, too.
For instance, when I was drifting into becoming a Suzy Rotolo kind of character, complete with trench coat and flowing scarf draped across my shoulders, with boots (though those were my riding boots), and listening to the early (very good) finger picking on Bob Dylan's first record ... With a bit of practice, I could fingerpick like Bob on that record ... I could play a few of the instrumental background and did, though I had to play the record over and over and learn each portion separately before reassembling them together,
Candy, Frank's sister, once issued a warning to me: Beatniks are conformists.
This was back at the time Candy looked a little like the girl who was assigned to me in History class, to prepare a joint paper on John Marshall, Supreme Court Justice (I took the biographical side to show how his past and the events he faced in his past and his movement into being a jurist and his decisions there may have helped shape his selection and his later decisions in famous cases in the supreme court, and I was awarded a National Rotary Award for Research Into American Heritage, and got a big plaque. My big theme and argument, as did Marshall's, rested on the Constitution. The girl I was assigned to work with I did not like so much as she was typically Claremont, which for the kids typically meant they were know-it-alls just like their parents.
I was kind of a smart kid and ended up on the Student Council, supposedly to help coordinate the student part of what was going on. The only reason I went on the student council was from the urgent plea from a friend who was sinking there in a project she held close to her heart. I went in to help her, and the school was going to put in vending machines on the upper campus for student sandwiches for the rich kids ... while the lunch room and lunches obviously would be impacted and in all likelihood eventually shut down ... and that meant the nice ladies who served lunch would have less jobs ... but our big argument was that if the machines came in, the moneys to provide free lunches and free milk for the kids who needed it would be seriously curtailed as well, as that filtering down of wealth was determined proportionally, the governmental largess was not based on the actual number of students in need. We lost I think. But we worked in how the companies would lie coming in and give a good show of good sandwiches to get everybody in agreement they were swell during the trial period and then we warned they'd turn to inedible crud, which they did. Automat tuna fish sandwiches on a high school campus, delivered from a machine. This is 1962. Who ever would have imagined! Our world was changing so fast it was hard to resist the onslaught sometimes, especially when clever adults skilled in business conspired against us.
Although at that time of my life, on a warm spring or summer evening, some other boys would serenade me with mandolin played under the moonlight in front of my house ... and I would hear their soft music coming through the open window of my bedroom and I would smile to myself because that was sweet. But I would just be satisfied they kind of liked me and I wouldn't go out to meet with them.
¶ 9/24/2013 05:29:00 AM
We would rub off on each other in other ways, too.
For instance, when I was drifting into becoming a Suzy Rotolo kind of character, complete with trench coat and flowing scarf draped across my shoulders, with boots (though those were my riding boots), and listening to the early (very good) finger picking on Bob Dylan's first record ... With a bit of practice, I could fingerpick like Bob on that record ... I could play a few of the instrumental background and did, though I had to play the record over and over and learn each portion separately before reassembling them together,
Candy, Frank's sister, once issued a warning to me: Beatniks are conformists.
This was back at the time Candy looked a little like the girl who was assigned to me in History class, to prepare a joint paper on John Marshall, Supreme Court Justice (I took the biographical side to show how his past and the events he faced in his past and his movement into being a jurist and his decisions there may have helped shape his selection and his later decisions in famous cases in the supreme court, and I was awarded a National Rotary Award for Research Into American Heritage, and got a big plaque. My big theme and argument, as did Marshall's, rested on the Constitution. The girl I was assigned to work with I did not like so much as she was typically Claremont, which for the kids typically meant they were know-it-alls just like their parents.
I was kind of a smart kid and ended up on the Student Council, supposedly to help coordinate the student part of what was going on. The only reason I went on the student council was from the urgent plea from a friend who was sinking there in a project she held close to her heart. I went in to help her, and the school was going to put in vending machines on the upper campus for student sandwiches for the rich kids ... while the lunch room and lunches obviously would be impacted and in all likelihood eventually shut down ... and that meant the nice ladies who served lunch would have less jobs ... but our big argument was that if the machines came in, the moneys to provide free lunches and free milk for the kids who needed it would be seriously curtailed as well, as that filtering down of wealth was determined proportionally, the governmental largess was not based on the actual number of students in need. We lost I think. But we worked in how the companies would lie coming in and give a good show of good sandwiches to get everybody in agreement they were swell during the trial period and then we warned they'd turn to inedible crud, which they did. Automat tuna fish sandwiches on a high school campus, delivered from a machine. This is 1962. Who ever would have imagined! Our world was changing so fast it was hard to resist the onslaught sometimes, especially when clever adults skilled in business conspired against us.
Although at that time of my life, on a warm spring or summer evening, some other boys would serenade me with mandolin played under the moonlight in front of my house ... and I would hear their soft music coming through the open window of my bedroom and I would smile to myself because that was sweet. But I would just be satisfied they kind of liked me and I wouldn't go out to meet with them.
¶ 9/24/2013 05:29:00 AM
