Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (75)

Given the fact that I felt it was morally wrong and politically unprincipled for me to work in a New York County/Manhattan Criminal Court system that I believed was continuing to act as an instrument of political repression and human rights denial, on behalf of the white corporate power structure of New York City, in the 1970's, I quickly decided to quit the dictaphone-typist job as soon I was handed my first paycheck.

But during the first week of working in the dictaphone-typist pool, I was surprised to learn that, while the other dictaphone-typists were now each receiving their paychecks every two weeks or every month, a newly hired employee of Manhattan's Criminal Court like myself had to wait 6 weeks before he or she was handed a paycheck. So I, thus, couldn't afford to leave this job until 6 weeks were up.

Luckily for me, the unemployment benefit checks that were long overdue for me arrived during the middle of the 6-week period when I was waiting for my first paycheck from the Manhattan Criminal Court/New York County Supreme Court job. And the money from the late unemployment benefit checks enabled me to come up with my half of the monthly rent for the Jamaica basement apartment that I shared with Barry again, only about a week after the rent was due.

Barry had, however, seemed to get a bit anxious when I didn't have my half of the $150 rent at the beginning of the month. So I telephoned a former camp co-counselor whom I had befriended during the Summer of 1970, with whom I had resumed my friendship a number of years later, after bumping into him while transferring from the 74th Street IRT elevated station to the Roosevelt Avenue IND stop in Queens one evening, as we were both coming home form work.

When we got together in the evening following this telephone call, I hinted to him that I was expecting an unemployment benefit check or a paycheck soon, but that I needed a small loan in order to pay my half of of that month's rent to get the anxious Barry, my roommate, off my back.  But when my friend--whom I had never asked for any kind of a money loan or favor before--seemed unwilling to help me out with the rent this one time, I realized that he really was just a "fair weather" friend; although I hid my changed feeling about our friendship from him when we said goodbye to each other outside my basement apartment in Jamaica. Queens.