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The El over my head thundered just as it did in that early New York of the Oliver Optics; there were signs hung above the roofs, gold letters on a black field, advertising jewelry, Klein’s Special Size Suits for Fat Men, pawnshops.

Alfred Kazin, A Walker in the City

As I walked the streets of my childhood again, it struck me that they were just the same as they had always been:  Brownsville, that forthright neighborhood, so unlike the ones in which They, the Others, The Protestants lived.  They were reticent, evasive even, about what went on inside their commercial establishments.  Lord & Taylor, Brooks Brothers, Tiffany & Co.  What did Lord & Taylor make?  What were the Brooks Brothers first names?  Who was this “Co.” that so many of the Eastern Establishment had taken into their partnerships, and why did he get a period at the end of his name?  In their striving for discretion, they left a walker in the city confused, in the dark, constantly questioning.

Not at all like Brownsville, where every store shouted out its wares, and–if you were a likely customer–insulted you in the process.  Klein’s Special Size Suits for Fat Men.  Sarah’s Fine Fashions for Single Women Who Aren’t Getting Any Younger and Could Do Worse Than Marry an Accountant.  Cohen’s Baked Goods That Maybe You Shouldn’t Eat So Many Of You’re Getting a Little Broad in the Beam, You Know.

How did the WASPs live their lives of quiet desperation, constantly reining in their emotions, instead of letting them fly free, like the pigeons from their wire cages on the roofs of our apartments.  Yes, our merchants had chutzpah, and our pigeons would relieve themselves on your head, but isn’t that better than becoming an alcoholic and having your brother-in-law forge your name on a power of attorney and transfer your gilt-edge bonds to a blind trust for the benefit of his sister’s poodle?  What was it with the descendants of Puritans and their testamentary gifts to little yipper-dog house pets?

No, we lived in a different world.  In Brownsville, every day after school we boys would pummel each other with fists and with words.   “Your sister shops at Chubby Girls Clothes by Lola!” we’d yell, then when our antagonist was reduced to tears, throw in the coup de grace:  “Your mother wears army boots from the Canal Street Shoppe for Big-Footed Women–ha!”  Then we’d run home to do our homework, all in the hope of pleasing our forbidding Protestant teachers so we could rise in the world.

Even our door-to-door salesmen and women possessed an edge that you didn’t see or hear in the Presbyterian streets just a subway ride away.  Over there, it was “Ding, dong–Avon calling!”  Among us, it was “BZZZZT” on the door buzzer, then “Ruth’s Oily T-Zone Cosmetics for Women Whose Foreheads Look Like the Ghawar Oil Field in God-Forsaken Saudi Arabia!”  But that’s the way we lived, that was the way we were; a neighborhood without euphemisms.

Should a little goy boy who’d eaten too many Twinkies wander our way with his mother, looking for a bargain at a “Chubby Children’s Clothing Emporium” or a store with a “Portly Boys” department, we’d give them the gimlet eye, cluck our tongues and say “Excuse me, I think the place you are looking for is Farnsworth’s Fat Boy Duds, over on Houston Street.”

The mother would recoil all June Cleaver-like, give us a “Well, I never!”–then spin on her low-heeled pumps and head back to where she belonged.

To those mean streets where everything was full-price, no discounts, no haggling.  All very decorous–and expensive.  We could have said “We don’t want your kind around here!” as they high-tailed it out of Brownsville, but no–we were tolerant.  We understood that God made all clothing customers, and that he made WASPs with a very special purpose in mind:

Somebody’s gotta pay retail.

          John Perry Barlow, who wrote the lyrics to more than two dozen Grateful Dead songs beginning in 1971, described his first LSD trip as the most important experience he ever had.  He was a lifelong Republican.

Review of “Mother American Night,” The Wall Street Journal

We had assembled, as we did every Friday night, in Clem’s basement, because his mom and dad had the most laissez-faire attitude of any of our parents.  They allowed him to decorate it with black lights and posters of Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge, and he had humongous Pioneer speakers his older brother had brought back from Vietnam.  Sure the Democrats escalated the war under JFK, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the fruits of cheap Asian labor.  Like David Ricardo said–trade benefits both parties.  Grand Old Party on, dude!

Pioneer speakers.

 

We had been trying for several weeks to wring some meaning–any meaning–from the lyrics to the songs on Anthem of the Sun, the Grateful Dead’s second album, but we were growing frustrated.  “Last leaf fallen, bare earth where green was born/Above my doorknob, two eagles hang against a cloud.”  What the hell did that mean?  Besides nothing, I mean.

It was me and Randy and Dave and Turley, four out of five of The Unsilent Majority.  We hadn’t invited Larry, our bass player–we never did.  We needed him in the band because his father came up with the money to buy our p.a. system, loaning it to Larry over a five-year term with interest at the Prime Rate +3%.  They were a finance family, and his dad thought it was important to teach his son about the time value of money.

“Don’t try skipping out on me with those humongous Kustom speakers, boys,” Larry’s dad would say in an avuncular tone–even though he wasn’t our uncle.  “I’ll hunt you down like dogs and repossess those crappy guitars of yours so fast your heads will spin–and not from the ‘psychedelic’ drugs I know you’re using!”  We’d laugh as he put his pipe back in his mouth–all our dads smoked pipes back then–but we knew he wasn’t kidding.

Kustom p.a. system–sweet!

 

But Larry was such a dweeb.  He and his girlfriend had already taken themselves out of contention in the race for the survival of the fittest.  “Darla and I have decided that sex isn’t right for us,” he told us one day.

“You don’t even feel her up?” I asked him, my eyes stretched as big as NECCO wafers in incredulity.

“Well sure,” he said, adopting a worldly tone.  “But not under her training bra.  We don’t want her to get pregnant before we finish high school and college and graduate or professional school and I get a good job and we’ve saved enough money for a down payment on a house in a suburb with a good school system.”  It was his idea to name the band “The Deferred Gratifications,” but we voted him down.

Trainee.

He was, however, President of The Young Republicans Club at Wendell Wilkie Junior High School, and we needed his supporters to show up on Friday nights for the $1.50 a person dances after the football games.  The YRC crowd were big spenders–“stags” would often toss down two “bills” and say “Keep the change” to the faculty chaperones who nervously monitored the gate to keep out juvenile delinquents.

“Clem!”  It was our host’s mother, calling from the top of the basement stairs.

“What, mom?”

“Larry’s here.”

We emitted a collective groan–just as we were about to get down and heavy and “with it” and start ferreting out secret meanings from unintelligible lyrics, he had to show up.  Don’t get me wrong–Larry was a nice guy, it’s just that he was a country-club young Republican.  Always compromising on the dress code instead of rebelling and taking a stand in favor of Frye boots and bellbottom blue jeans.  Why did he have to spoil all of our psychedelic fun?

“Yeah, Larry, that’s–really cool.”

 

“Hey guys,” Larry said as he came down the stairs.  He was wearing a striped cardigan sweater, like a Mr. Rogers wannabe.

“Hey Larry,” we all said in disconsolate tones.  Three out of four of us didn’t even know what “disconsolate” meant, we hadn’t gotten to that vocab assignment in English yet.

“Whatcha doin?” Larry asked.

“Nuthin'” Clem said.

“Well, you must be doing something,” Larry said.  Whenever he adopted that skeptical parental tone visions of Barbara Billingsley, Beaver Cleaver’s mother, danced in my head.

“Beaver–I want the truth.  Have you been doing mind-altering drugs with Larry Mondello?”

 

Turley broke the silence.  “We’re trying to figure out Grateful Dead lyrics.”

Larry’s upper lip curled in an attitude that betrayed a certain supercilious contempt.  “If you’re talking the early stuff–forget it.  Those guys were so high they’re lucky they weren’t institutionalized.”

“So?” Randy asked with the scorn we all used when talking to the dorkiest bass player in our area code, which at the time covered the whole state.

“You’ve got to hear some of their new stuff,” he said, his eyes growing wide as he pulled an album from its jacket.  “This is some righteous”–he almost said “shit,” but pulled himself back from the brink at the last second–“poop.  Free minds, free markets–it’ll blow your mind.”

Larry carefully placed the platter on Clem’s turntable and dropped the needle in the groove.  “There’s a new spirit coming out of California.”

“We’ve heard all that already,” Dave said.  “Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, Jimi . . .”

“I’ll bet you haven’t heard of Ronald Reagan,” Larry snapped.

“Death Valley Days?  Twenty Mule Team Borax Natural Laundry Booster?” Turley asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“He just got elected governor again.  He’s going places, he’s gonna be President someday!”

Clem shook his head as a wry little smile formed over his face.  “An ex-actor?  Larry, have you been smoking catnip again?”

“No, Darla won’t let me.”

“Well, then how do you expect to open the Doors of Perception?” Randy asked.

“You guys are so smug.  You think you’re cool, but I’ll bet you can’t handle this,” Larry said as he pulled a book from his backpack and tossed it onto a Steve Miller album cover we were using to practice cutting cocaine–in case we ever found any.

“What’s that?” Turley asked skeptically.  “Alan Watts?  Timothy Leary?  Baba Ram Dass?”

“The most powerful drug known to man,” Larry said as he picked the book up and showed us the cover of The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek.  “Austrian economics.”