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A History of the Sixties 12/19/2005 2:28:06 PM
A history of the Sixties starting with the 1940's by one who lived there.. A History of the Sixties.
I came of age in the sixties, leaving family and friends on the East Coast in the summer of 1961 and going up North to seek my fortune in Alaska. We ended up in California and at the ripe old of twenty-three got married and began to plan our own family. I received my formal education in the sixties first at Oakland City College, then Cal-State Hayward. But more important was the education from the streets of Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco as I worked my way through school, and the music of the sixties, Dylan, Moody Blues, Simon and Garfunkle, Joan Baez, and of course the literature Kerouac, Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Krishnamurti…
But, I wasn’t born in the sixties. I was born on a cold snowy winter morning in 1938 on Thirteenth Street in North Philadelphia. I don’t remember much about the Second World War. I do remember the spontaneous dancing in the streets, neighbors marching by beating on pots and pans to celebrate V. J. Day. I remember the war movies, and how the “Japs” were the villains. When we played war games it was always the Japs who were our enemies. And I had nightmares about the “Japs” shooting out the windows, coming in with bayonets and torturing us. And I remember the air raid drills and covering up the windows with blankets. Our cousin. Buster was an air raid warden…
I started school in January of 1943 or ’44. Living in North Philly in the nineteen forties was a real trip for school age working class kids. Though my dad had quit school in the sixth grade and left his Mt. Carmel home and the prospect of giving up his soul to the coalmines for a Western Union Boy job in Philadelphia, I was promised a high school education. I don’t remember a lot about school, but the streets were ours when we were out of school.
We started hitting the pavement as soon as we were old enough to walk. I remember, at first, it was only to the grocery store across the street. Man, I loved that place.… Even in the hot summer, it was like cool and shady inside. There was a mixture of spice and sweet bread odor that would knock you out. They had this big barrel with dill pickles, a nickel apiece, potato chips in a big tin bucket ten cents a pound, donuts two bits a dozen, Mrs. Smith pies ten cents each. And they would let you run up a tab until Friday if they knew you.
Soon, we were walking past the shoemaker shop, beyond the watermelon man, all the way to the railroad tracks on Sixth Street. Man, we were some wild little tigers back in those days. We spent a lot of time down by the tracks. There was like a freight station there where they stored empty boxcars; about eight sets of tracks, both passengers and freights ran by.
Saturday, after the movies, we'd always head for the Sixth Street tracks. I remember there use to be these sword fighting movies, The Three Musketeers, and Zorro. Many times, the serial that ran each week was sword fighting too. We made these swords out of wood. We use to fight on top of the empties. We'd jump from car to car. I always wanted to be one of the goodies. When we played cowboys and Indians, though, I always wanted to be an Indian.
Whenever a train went by, we'd stop our play and watch. Sometimes, it was a long slow freight. You could hear the clickity clack of the wheels. And, as my father told me a hundred times, those wheels would cut your legs off just like tree stumps if you fell under them. Maybe that's why we never carried out our plans for hopping one sometime when they slowed down for the curve on the other side of the station. Once, when nobody else was there, I did hop one and rode it to Columbia Avenue. I told all the kids, but no one really believed me. The railroad guy use to chase us off the tracks once in awhile. But other than that it was our private playground.
School was another thing. I always hated school. Even kindergarten. It was too routine, too boring. I wanted to be out in the streets, exploring the neighborhoods. By fifth grade I was starting to cut a class every now and then. I had already learned how to read, and they didn't have much else to offer. At lunchtime, I'd kind of wander down to the gate, check to see if the yard duty was watching, slip out, and take off in a run towards Susquehanna Avenue. It was only a block over to Broad. There, I'd head down the subway, crawl under the turnstile and be off on the first train north to Market Street and center city.
There was so much to see in downtown Philadelphia. I liked the old buildings, especially the churches. There was one just off of Broad and Market that must'a been over a hundred years old. It was made of old stone just like a fort or a castle. Once in a while, I'd duck inside. I'd just sit there and look at the stained glass windows, the statues, the candles burning. There was a smell of dark wood and incense. Usually it was totally empty with not a single sound to be heard. Whenever the old ladies started lighting candles and saying prayers, I'd slip out. I didn't want to get caught inside for a church service. That's no better than school.
On the bad side of Market, I'd spend a lot of time looking into windows. The pawnshops always had hunting knives, rifles and handguns. They had horns, too, shiny brass trumpets and saxophones, watches and diamond rings. I use to love to look at that stuff. There was this one place where they gave tattoos. They had all these pictures of dragons and ships and stuff. Next to that was the novelty shop. You could get fake beards and itching powder and other stuff in there. There was this one store with all comic books in the window. They'd change them about once a week too.
Sometimes, I'd walk into the arcade. They called 'em fun houses back then. They had every kind of pinball you could ever imagine. Joey and I spent all our money in there one day playing pin ball, over a dollar each. Their machines weren't as good as the ones in the candy store down on Diamond. You could always win games there, and some times they'd even pay off. I use to hate the guy who gave change on Market. "If you're not gonna play get out. If you're not gonna play, get out!" Those were the only words that came out of his mouth. On Diamond, they let you stay all day and just watch.
. The best time in the world was summer vacation. Three whole months with nothing to do, but what you want. Some mornings we would get up real early just as the sun was rising. We'd ask Mom if we could go for a walk. We always had to ask, but she never said no.
"Be good boys," she'd tell us and round up some doughnuts and milk.
We'd always try to take a new direction. Some place we'd never been before. We never even thought about looking at a map, and had no idea at all of the cardinal directions. I remember once we saw this giant milk bottle. It must'a been northeast of 13th Street, somewhere in Germantown. We turned a corner and there it was way off in the distance like a mountain peak. We decided that we keep right on 'til we reached it. "Maybe they'll give us some free milk," Joey told me. We kept walking and walking and walking. It took at least two hours to reach it. It must have been a Sunday morning. When we finally got there it was closed. Little did we know then that we were only two blocks away from the Delaware River. Another couple blocks of walking and we would have had a whole new adventure.
Another time when we walked in that direction, at the edge of a vacant lot, we discovered a peach tree laden with green fruit. We ate a couple each and filled our shirts with a dozen or so more. Someone had told us if you lay green fruit out in the sun on newspaper it would ripen up. I don't remember that happening. But, the green peaches didn't taste that bad.
Another time, we were walking with Roger north on Broad. We went on passed the Blue Bird and the Up Town movies, passed Leigh, passed Allegheny, all the way to Hunting Park Avenue. A little off Broad, we discovered a city pool where you could swim for free. Man, were we happy. We spent the rest of that summer hanging out there. I didn't know how to swim yet, but it was still super fun. I'd walk on the bottom and pretend I was swimming, dive under and hold my breath, and all kinds of stuff. One time me and Roger followed this girl home. Roger was kind of into girls, already. We were teasing her at the pool and she decided to go home. We followed her right to her back yard a couple blocks from the pool. We were still in our bare feet and the pavement was so hot that you could hardly stand it. You could tell that she felt like a real big shot that two boys kind of walked her home. We never saw her again after that though.
Most of the time, we'd head south on Broad. Just to be on Broad was exciting. There were four lanes of traffic, always filled with cars. Sometimes we’d just sit on the steps at Temple University and look at the different models. The Studebaker was the only one that me and Joey could pick out. Roger could name every single model, and most years too.
When we got tired of watching the cars, we take little tours of Temple. One time we found out they had and elevator. The building was only two stories, three at the most. It was a small elevator that you operated yourself. We'd wait until someone got in, follow behind, ride up to the top, and take the stairs back down. It was Roger who discovered that we didn't have to wait for grown ups to get on. "Just press the up button and run it yourself," he showed us. Another time we took a stack of Temple newspapers off a table and tried to sell them a penny each. Every once in awhile, a guard would come and chase us out. But, that's all he ever did just yell at us to get off their property. They couldn't chase us off the streets. The streets belong to everyone.
On Broad and Columbia, we discovered the Subway steps that led to an underground playground on both sides of Broad. Man, that place was a blast. You could get in on one side, and go under Broad to the other. When we were little kids, we played down there for days at a time, hide and seek, tag, cops and robbers. It was always a little cooler down there than out on the street. Though some days it was humid and sticky. It had it's own special smell, too, of sweat and warm leather. Never again would we wait for traffic at Broad and Columbia. We had our own secret passage across the street
To be continued
. After a couple weeks, we discovered that for a nickel we could ride south to Market. At Market we would cross over down at one end of the platform and ride north back to Columbia. We would spend whole days just riding back and forth. There was something, too about a third rail. If you stepped on it when a train was coming you could get electrocuted. We never crossed the tracks much. You could get hit by a train. People yelled at you, too, if they saw you down on the tracks.
You can imagine how exciting it was riding the underground. I still remember the sound of starting up, then picking us speed, then cruising under the street with flashes of light from the subway grating every now and then, and then slowing down for next stop. The doors would open and all kinds of people would be rushing in and out. You had to stay on your toes and look for your stop. I always remembered the one before ours and started getting ready.
One day we discovered that if the lady in the booth wasn't watching, you could crawl under the turnstile and get on for free. At other stops, we discovered you could squeeze through the bars. If we had the money, it was a hard choice. Spend it on candy, or pay for the ride. Joey always wanted to pay. But, when we were broke we still had a way to get on.
Joey liked the good side of market. We'd ride the subway to City Hall. You could spend the whole day just playing there under the watchful eye of Willy Penn. When you got off the subway, you could ride the escalator up to a courtyard like. There were tunnels going in all four directions; north, south, east, and, west. At first, we'd just run through the tunnels playing tag or hide and seek. When we got tired of that, we sit down on a bench and watch the people coming up out of the subway and heading off in different directions. We'd try to guess which tunnel filled up first. Sometimes, we'd slow down through the tunnels peeking in the office windows, watching grown ups at work. The east tunnel led to the good side of market.
All the department stores were on the good side, Lit Brothers, Snellenbergs, Gimbles. Man, these buildings were like separate cities. You could ride the escalators up and down all day and nobody bothered you. The elevators had operators. We always got on with grown ups, picked the floor we wanted to get off on and then walked around looking at all the stuff that we could buy if we were rich. One time Lit Brothers had this house that you could walk through. It was furnished with furniture that they sold. The kitchen had all this modern stuff, a brand new refrigerator, a spanking clean gas stove, and a double sink with shiny faucets. This was back when we still had an old brown wooden icebox and a gas stove that leaked and smelled up the whole house sometimes. The kids’ room had a desk, and bunk beds with Roy Rogers’s sheets and pillowcases. Joey couldn't get over how fresh and new everything looked
