March, 1969

On March 14, my 18th birthday, I have my first legal drink, bought for me by my friend Danny Moaks father, at the Ontario Bowling Alley. I went on to consume a fair amount of other libations for approximately 34 more years. I believe it was most likely a Genny Beer that night.

I had begun to drink occasionally during the Summer of Love in 1967, though as long as I can remember my parents would allow me a "sip" of beer, usually on Sundays after church. My "sips" later became furtive "gulps" when my parents weren't looking. In 1967, my older brother turned 18 and thus legal in New York, so my friends and I would get him or another older friend to procure alcohol for us. Usually, we consumed beer or malt liquor, but at some point we advanced to blackberry brandy - usually a half pint, which was just enough to get high but not wasted. One night the half pint became a pint, and this produced in me a sudden, but exhilarating state of total intoxication.

Blackberry brandy, when consumed in quantity and then vomited up, produces significant and colorful stains on one's clothing, especially when the intoxicant does not have the common sense to move one's head to the side during the act of expulsion. I arrived home the next morning thus covered and did my best, given the magnitude of my first hangover, to hide this fact from my mother, who to my ever-lasting regret - met me at the door as I was trying to escape upstairs and remove the offending clothing. She knew immediately the cause of my distress and shame, and I was left with no alternative bit to spill the truth after some few feeble attempts to lie my way out of the situation. Worse still, she got me to admit that our source for the alcohol was my brother, who she next attacked while he was sleeping.

For the remainder of that hungover day, she kept warning me of the consequences when "your father gets home." When he finally arrived home from work around 5:30 and had, ironically, fixed himself a drink and sat down in his favorite chair to read the evening paper, I was sent in by my mother to admit my guilt and await his harsh judgment. And I will never forget his words to me after I had blurted out my scandalous admission of my misdeeds -

"How do you feel now?"
"Terrible", I said. And I meant it.
"Well, let that be a lesson to you". And he went back to his paper. And that was it.

I did, at least, learn some lesson from this incident. Though I continued to drink, sometimes heavily, until my early 50s, I rarely crossed that line into extreme intoxication. I would always stop before I reached that terrible stage.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five Or The Children's Crusade is published. The New York Times, in a review dated March 31, says "Vonnegut Jr., an indescribable writer whose seven previous books are like nothing else on earth, was accorded the dubious pleasure of witnessing a 20th-century apocalypse. During World War II, at the age of 23, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned beneath the city of Dresden, ''the Florence of the Elbe.'' He was there on Feb. 13, 1945, when the Allies firebombed Dresden in a massive air attack that killed 130,000 people and destroyed a landmark of no military significance. Next to being born, getting married and having children, it is probably the most important thing that ever happened to him. And, as he writes in the introduction to Slaughterhouse-Five, he's been trying to write a book about Dresden ever since. Now, at last, he's finished the ''famous Dresden book.''

I don't exactly recall when I first read Slaughterhouse-Five, perhaps the next year. But it had a profound affect on me, more so than anything I had read up to that point or seldom since. The section on which Vonnegut describes the bombing sequence moving in reverse helped shape my views of life and war and the utter insanity of how humans can behave.

Supergroup Cream release their final album, Goodbye, featuring the song Badge, co-written by Eric Clapton and George Harrison.

The previous year, I managed to get tickets to see Cream and The Vanilla Fudge perform at the old Auditorium Theater in Rochester. This was before I could drive, so I remember that my Dad drove me and a friend in to the city for the concert. We got in, but before the music started, Cream's manager came out onstage and announced that the band's instruments hadn't arrived and thus they could not perform. The audience was given the choice of seeing just the Vanilla Fudge or getting their money back. We wisely got our money back and Dad had to drive back to get us. So I almost got to see Cream live...but it was not to be and I still regret it....

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President (1953-1961) dies on March 28. "Ike" was President from the time I was about 2 til I was about 10, though I have few memories of being aware at all of that fact. I do remember his re-election campaign of 1956 only because my mother hung an Eisenhower poster in our old kitchen as a joke for my father to see - he was a hard core Democrat and ardent Stevenson supporter - but I didn't at all understand the joke, but I guess it was my first exposure to politics.

On March 12, Paul McCartney marries Linda Eastman at the Marylebone register Office in London. On the same day, George and Patti Harrison are arrested on drug possession charges.

On March 20, John Lennon marries Yoko Ono at the British Consulate in Gibraltar. From March 25 - 31, John and Yoko conduct a "Bed In" for peace at the Amsterdam Hilton, Room 902.

Doors singer Jim Morrison is charged with several felony counts of indecent exposure, public profanity, and public intoxication in Miami after a concert on March 1. He was eventually convicted on two misdemeanors the following year.

The Swedish "cult" film I am Curious (Yellow) is first released in the U.S. The controversial film was the subject of heated court battles, customs seizures, and yes - intense curiosity. I managed to see this film at some point that year, though I remember virtually nothing about it, so other than the sex scenes, I was probably bored with it.



Within a span of seven days, both Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray admit to killing Robert F. Kennedy (Sirhan) and Martin Luther King (Ray) in 1968. I'm glad to note that they both continue to rot in hell, Sirhan still incarcerated, and Ray, who died in 1998, in the spiritual sense.

In South Vietnam, Lieutenant Joseph R. Kerrey, United States Naval Reserve displays tremendous courage and is later awarded the Navy Medal of Honor "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty on 14 March 1969 while serving as a SEAL Team Leader during action against enemy aggressor (Viet Cong) forces in the Republic of Vietnam...Lieutenant Kerrey received massive injuries from a grenade which exploded at his feet and threw him backward onto the jagged rocks. Although bleeding profusely and suffering great pain, he displayed outstanding courage and presence of mind in immediately directing his element's fire into the heart of the enemy camp." This on my 18th birthday that day, while I was having my first legal beer....not very heroic I'm afraid.

Wrestling season was coming to an end. My last match, in the state sectionals, occurred around this time. I'd completely had it with the sport, and had a moment of truth in that match that I simply did not want to do this any longer. If I won the match, I'd have to go on - I was winning, but I simply let the other guy win, on points, to bring an end to it and that phase of my life. My coach was very pissed off at me for losing...my attitude was "screw it." The only wrestling I intended to do in the future was with women. I've had some success with that sport, but have also lost some close matches....

They did sometimes bring the Wayne Central cheerleaders to the matches, which was a plus. I guess the basketball team could spare them on occasion...

I must say with all honesty that I loved these girls - they were my idea of smart, sexy teenage America! And I love them still.

February, 1969

There were just a few months left before I graduated from High School. By this time I had learned how to forge my father's signature on notes to the school for "sick days." We knew that the school did not check with our parents for absences of only a day; so my friends and I often took days off from school to roam around Rochester or perhaps visit my older brother at his dorm. Below, I am 3rd from the left - along with many of my friends and classmates.



Wrestling season was thankfully winding down (sometime around that month I won the county wrestling championship in my weight class - still have the trophy for some reason) and I was looking forward to my last season on the golf team. After that Spring I rarely played golf for the remainder of the century. I was young and feeling pretty cocky. February may have been the month I drove up with Mindy and Brett to visit the state college in Potsdam, and I'd likely decided to enroll there for the Fall semester by then. I planned on becoming a history teacher.

Little did I know.....

In New York City, the "Lindsay Storm" on February 9-10 dumped unexpected amounts of snow across the Northeast, shutting roads and transportation, and causing a political firestorm for the city's high-profile mayor, John Lindsay, due to a slow response from city officials to clear the streets. The mayor's presidential ambitions were certainly another casualty of the storm.

1969 was truly a rocking year, with major festivals on the horizon. Songs topping the charts in February: Crimson and Clover by Tommy James & The Shondells, Everyday People, by Sly & The Family Stone, Touch Me by The Doors, Build Me Up Buttercup, by The Foundations. I was particularly fond of Sly Stone as well as The Doors.

James Taylor's first album, on Apple Records, is released in the U.S. Bob Dylan begins recording Nashville Skyline.

Judy Collins recording of Ian Tyson's Someday Soon makes the pop charts. This is one song I've listened to constantly for 40 years, on record, CD, and now I have it on my IPod.



Yasser Arafat is appointed head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The population of the United States officially reaches 200 million on February 5. As of this month in 2009, it stands at more than 305 million.

The Beatles enter Abbey Road Studios to begin work on their last album.

President Nixon orders the beginning of U.S. bombing of suspected North Vietnamese bases inside of Cambodia, a significant escalation of the war beyond Vietnam.

1,301 Americans die in Vietnam.

Episode 75 - "The Way to Eden" - of Star Trek airs on on February 21 (Star Date 5832.3).


Film actor Boris Karloff (Frankenstein) dies February 2 at the age of 82.

Actress Jennifer Aniston is born on February 11.

Issue 149 of Soviet Life is published, featuring stimulating articles comparing leisure time in the U.S. and USSR, happy students engaged in winter frolics (marxist-style), and retired sea dogs.




In a hotel room in Los Angeles on February 18/19, author Hunter Thompson, in the middle of a mescaline trip, writes:

.

Jesus, 6:45 now and the pill has taken hold real. The metal on the typewriter has turned from dull green to a sort of high-gloss blue, the keys sparkle, glitter with highlights…I sort of levitated to the chair, hovering in front of the typewriter, not sitting. Fantastic brightness on everything, polished and waxed with special lighting…and the physical end of the thing is like the first half-hour on acid, a sort of buzzing all over, a sense of being gripped by something, vibrating internally but with no outward sign or movement. I’m amazed that I can keep typing. I feel like both me and the typewriter have become weightless; it floats in front of me like a bright toy. Weird, I can still spell…but I had to think about that last one…”Weird.” Christ, I wonder how much worse this is going to get. It’s seven now, and I have to check out in an hour or so. If this is the beginning of an acid-style trip I might as well give up the idea of flying anywhere. Taking off in an airplane right now would be an unbearable experience, it would blow the top right off my head. The physical sensations of lifting off the ground would be unbearable I this condition; I feel like I could step off the balcony right now and float gently down to the sidewalk. Yes, and getting worse, a muscle in my thigh is seized by spasms, quivering like something disembodied…I can watch it, feel it, but not be connected. There is not much connection between my head and my body…but I can still type and very fast too, much faster than normal. Yes, the goddamn drug is definitely taking hold, very much like acid, as sense of very pleasant physical paralysis (wow, that spelling) while the brain copes with something never coped with before. The brain is doing all the work right now, adjusting to this new stimulus like an old soldier ambushed and panicked for the moment, getting a grip but not in command, hanging on, waiting for a break but expecting something worse…and yes, it’s coming on.

--Hunter S. Thompson, Screwjack. (Mescalito)


I was 17 years old that month, but about to turn 18 the next.

January, 1969

The Winter of 1968-69 saw the City of Rochester receive 79.8" of snow. So much of my memory of growing up about 25 miles east of Rochester, in the Town of Ontario, consists of visions of snow. I don't recall that Winter being any worse of better in terms of snow and cold, but it was actually below the annual average of 92.8", so I guess we got off lucky that year.

In 1969, the Town of Ontario was still a mostly rural village, with a one-block long main street as its' center. Shopping centers had not yet reached us, but were entrenched in the towns closer to the city and the town center was beginning its slow decline. Agriculture, in the form of fruit (apples, peaches, pears, and cherries), was the economic engine. In the late 1800s, the town had some note as an iron ore mining center, but industry was long gone from Ontario, though a few vestiges of that period remained in the form of ore beds, which were now used mainly for swimming.

The people of the town were almost exclusively white, republican-leaning, with a mix of Catholic and Protestant. I went to school with kids named Fioco, Ficarro, Moak, Lennon, Bell, Doyle, Anderson, Hall, Robusto, Smith, Gardner, Reynolds, Hilegeer, Kelly, Cantin, Dippel. There were just a few intrepid Blacks and no Jewish. The migrant farm system, though slowly coming to an end, still existed, and Black and Hispanic migrants from the South still made the trip up North to Ontario in the Summer to pick fruit and live in squalid and substandard housing that was the private disgrace of our region, though no one wished to talk about it. They were referred to back then as migrant "camps."

My parents were fairly strong Catholics and we attended mass every Sunday, like it or not. We lived at 211 North Slocum Road on a 65 acre farm my parents bought in 1945 for $5,000. We weren't farmers, but my father rented out some of the fields to other local farmers - tomatoes, corn, and hay were usually found in the fields behind our house. Our phone number was LA4-8210. I believe that by then we were no longer on a party line, but for much of my youth we were. I used to enjoy listening in on the phone conversations of my neighbors. The picture at the top of this post is of the creek on our backyard, taken on a typical winter's day - except for the sunshine, which was not typical.

Of our family of six, four of us still lived at home. My older sister Liz was in Washington, DC working for The Washington Post. My older brother Tom was living at a dorm in Rochester. A German exchange student, Bruno Schneider, from "a small town halfway between Hamburg and Hanover", also lived with us that Winter and Spring. The previous November, we were all together again for nearly the last time, except for a few future occasions. From the left, below: Bruno, my Mom Charlotte, Brian, my Dad Thomas, Liz, Tom Jr., and me with my eyes closed.

During the month of January, I was probably starving, due to having to lose 5-6 lbs prior to every wrestling match that season. I was a senior and thus one of the leaders on the team, and I had a pretty good year but was in a weight class that was lower than my natural weight. It's a stupid sport, I thought so then and I still think so...I have no idea why I did it.

But I had my first real girlfriend that year and love was keeping me warm and happy. Though I did not completely realize it, this time was the beginning of my last few months of my childhood and young adulthood; my life would change beyond any recognition in 1969.

Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine was No. 1 on the pop charts for most of January. The White Album by The Beatles was in the middle of an extended stop at No. 1 on the album charts. I was listening to it constantly.

January was also basketball season - home basketball games were wildly popular. This was a small town. But for us the appeal of basketball games was highly magnified by the fact that the Friday night games were often followed by dances featuring one of the myriad of local bands that sounded pretty much like The Rascals. I can with a high degree of certainly predict that In The Midnight Hour was played at least once that month, around 11pm, in our darkened and strobe-lit gym.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was hovering between 900 and around 950. It did not close above the 1,000 mark until 1972. The national median price of homes that sold that year was just below $25,000. The cost of a gallon of gasoline was just above thirty cents. The U.S. minimum wage was $1.15 per hour; in February that year it rose to a whopping $1.30. A Ford or Chevrolet sedan was available for around $2,500. A Cadillac or Lincoln, priced at more than $6,000, would stretch the average consumer more than their ability to pay.

The film Easy Rider was released on January 1. With it's portrayal of the elusive search for freedom, drugs, sex, and violence, it signaled an end to the optimism of the 1960s and the beginning of a darker period that perhaps lingers with us til this day. It also jump-started the career of Jack Nicholson, who was thus free to attend Laker games and behave rather badly.




Members of Northern Ireland's Royal Ulster Constabulary damage property and assault occupants in the Bogside neighborhood in Derry. In response, residents erect barricades and establish Free Derry. The Troubles will continue in Northern Ireland for another 30 years.

Meher Baba died on January 31. The final issue of The Saturday Evening Post, which traced its roots back to Benjamin Franklin, was published. It later returned in a different format, but was never the same.

On January 12 in Super Bowl III, the underdog New York Jets, led by quarterback "Broadway" Joe Namath, defeated the heavily favored Baltimore Colts 16-7 in the Orange Bowl in Miami.

My personal favorite: on January 20, Richard Milhous Nixon is inaugurated as the nation's 37th President. Said Nixon"

"We see the hope of tomorrow in the youth of today. I know America's youth. I believe in them. We can be proud that they are better educated, more committed, more passionately driven by conscience than any generation in our history." Of course, quite a few of those noble youth would die in the next few years showing their commitment, in Vietnam, and at Kent and Jackson States. In 5 1/2 years both Nixon and VP Agnew would be forever gone from Washington, both in disgrace.

On January 12, the British band Led Zeppelin releases its first album, self titled but later known as Led Zeppelin I.

The legendary rooftop performance by The Beatles takes place on the roof of Apple Records on January 30. It is the last time the band plays in public; John Lennon would leave the group later in the year but the actual break-up would not be announced for more than a year.

Born on January 5: Marilyn Manson
Died on Janury 29: Allen Dulles

My father was 57 - the same age as I am now (now that's scary!). My mother was only 53.

984 Americans were killed in Vietnam in January. For the first time that month, all four parties - the U.S., North and South Vietnam, and the NLF (Viet Kong) - sat down for peace negotiations in Paris.

Some 30,000 copies of the John Lennon-Yoko Ono album Two Virgins are seized by police at the Newark Airport. The then scandalous cover featured a full frontal nude picture of Lennon and Ono, while the back let the whole wide world see their somewhat unattractive bums.

I was the proud owner of a 1963 Ford Galaxie, a 3-speed shift on the column. I paid a grand total of $300 for the car the year before. I earned the money working as a sampler for the USDA the previous summer - taking samples from crates of cherries brought in by local farmers for the inspectors so they could grade them for sale. Years later, I wrote a song about that time.

Americans were watching Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, the #1 show on the air at the time. Celebrity shows were very popular - among the 20 highest-rated included variety shows from Jim Nabors, Dean Martin, Glenn Campbell, Carol Burnett, and Johnny Cash.

Though I don't remember the exact time-frame, I certainly had submitted my college applications by January. I applied to Albany State, New Paltz State College, Potsdam State, and I think - Fredonia.

The joint French/English supersonic Concorde jetliner undergoes its first test flight in Bristol, England. In the early 1990s, I had the absolutely thrilling opportunity to fly the Concorde three times. I still have some of those lovely souvenirs Air France and British Air gave to passengers.

Perhaps best of all - the horrible year 1968 - later called The Year of the Triphammer- ended.

Some photos in this blog courtesy of The Wayne Central Alumni page - maintained superbly by my bother Brian!