Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (9)

Occasionally, on weekends in the 1970s I would hop on a bus to check out a U.S. campus scene that I had never visited before. I can recall visiting SUNY-New Paltz on one Friday night, where I walked onto the campus and snuck into a rock concert that was being held in one of the campus buildings, before hanging out for awhile at a local bar on New Paltz's main street and then catching the last bus going back down to New York City that night.

On another weekend, I hopped on a bus down to Philadelphia one Saturday to walk around and check out the University of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia. And on a third weekend, I took a long bus ride down to College Park, Maryland to walk around the University of Maryland campus for about an hour before catching a bus back up to New York City later in the afternoon on that same day. And another time, I hopped on a bus going from New York City to Boston, walked around the South End for an hour and then took the next bus that was leaving Boston for New York City that evening.

In the 1970s, the Greyhound bus fares were still cheaper than they would become in the 1980s and 1990s--before competing bus firms like Mega-bus and the Chinatown companies eventually pushed the cost of bus fares on certain routes that college students rode on frequently back down in the 21st century.

Also, I can recall hopping on the Long Island Railroad one Friday night after work in the 1970s, getting off at the SUNY-Stony Brook stop, walking around the SUNY-Stony Brook campus for about an hour and then catching the last LIRR train that was returning to Queens that same night.

All these early 1970s campus visits pretty much reconfirmed my feeling that "we were back in the 1950s again" in the 1970s, as far as campus unrest and political activism was concerned--despite all that had happened during the 1960s on U.S. campuses in the way of student revolt. And I even wrote a folk song whose lyrics I've now forgotten, titled "Back In The Fifties Again," which had a melody that resembled somewhat the tune for the "Back In The Saddle Again" cowboy song that Gene Autry used to sing.

Neither the 9-to-5 work world nor the campus world in the 1970s now reflected any large mass-based support for a 1970s New Left revolution in the United States. The "dream" was indeed "over" by the mid-1970s, to paraphrase John Lennon's words. And by the middle 1970s, all I had to look forward to was many more decades of 9-to-5 wage enslavement as a low-wage temp office worker.

Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (8)

During the 1970s, a white guy named Manny was the only other person who had attended Flushing High School in the 1960s that I ever bumped into and recognized while commuting to work. I can't recall where we actually bumped into each other again in Queens. But Manny had attended a few meetings of the Flushing High School Human Relations Club that I was a member of during the 1964-65 academic year, when Manny was a junior and I was a senior; and he was also, I think, in my chemistry class during the same academic year. So we both looked vaguely familiar enough to each other to each recognize the other as a former fellow Flushing High School student, despite the fact that we were now in our 20s.

And when Manny invited me to go with him during one weekday evening after dinner to visit the apartment in a high-rise building near Hillside Avenue, south of Jamaica Estates, where his civil service job/government agency work supervisor and his supervisor's wife lived--who were each maybe just four or five years older than Manny and I--I thought to myself: "Why not?"

But by the end of the evening of chattering mostly about Manny and his work supervisor's workplace situation--which I now can't even recall anything about--I realized that neither Manny, Manny's supervisor, nor the wife of Manny's supervisor had shared the same late 1960s historical experiences or experienced the same consciousness shift that I had experienced. And I realized that Manny and I shared little in common other than the fact that we were each former Flushing High School students who, in our 20s, were each not then involved in any romantic relationships with anyone and each had to report to work each day to pick up a weekly paycheck.

To me, Manny seemed too culturally straight, apolitical, non-artistic, and conventional; and not dissatisfied enough with the life options the System then offered working-class white guys like ourselves after college for me to be interested in hanging out with him in Queens for more than that one evening when we visited his supervisor's apartment.

Being alienated and alone in Queens in the 1970s seemed to be preferable to being alienated and hanging out with another alienated guy in Queens whose concerns and aspirations and conversation struck me as too conventional to match my own concerns, aspirations and conversational interests. And I never bumped into Manny again in Queens or heard which direction he went during the rest of his life--although I assume he kept working as a civil servant/government agency worker for the next 40 years of his life and probably eventually married, had a few kids and settled into some suburban home or high-rise apartment building by his 30s, similar to the the high-rise apartment building his work supervisor lived in, without ever feeling the desire to revolt against the System.

Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (7)

After working in the Playtex skyscraper office in the day, I would often spend a few evenings during the week walking around the deserted streets and neighborhoods of Queens--where I had walked around previously, while growing up in Queens in the 1950s and early 1960s.

By the 1970s, most of the baby-boomers who used to play in these Queens streets and had grown up in these neighborhoods were now in their  20's and early 30's and apparently primarily car-driving residents, if they hadn't yet moved away from Queens; and their car-driving parents were now in their 50's and 60's.

So fewer non-driving teenagers and children were now walking around on the streets of these Queens neighborhoods during the evening hours or now living in these neighborhoods compared to how many walked around on these same streets in these same neighborhoods in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Also, in the 1970s the Asian-American immigrant families who were living in Queens in the early 1980s had not yet arrived in Queens in large numbers.  

Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (6)

I remember very little about what happened during my workdays as a temp-typist in the skyscraper corporate office of Playtex during the 1970s, although the temp assignment there must have lasted about three or four weeks. What I mainly recall is that the supervisor of the department for which I was assigned to do some typing was an easy-going, white guy who had a goatee and was in his late 20s or early 30s.

This particular Playtex supervisor didn't seem to expect much from his job in the corporate office or his work life other than being able to pick up a regular paycheck which enabled him to live an economically secure, apolitical, consumer-oriented life and raise a family in the white suburbs during the 1970s; while, at the same time, being able to also supervise younger permanent white women in their mid-twenties who were considered physically attractive by most men--like the blonde woman who was his assistant that he had delegated to explain to me what the work was that Playtex needed me to type.

His blonde female assistant was also easy-going and non-authoritarian; and she also seemed as satisfied with her job at Playtex as did the department supervisor. But--like her immediate boss--she didn't seem to possess much radical feminist consciousness or interest in current events or current history or politics in the 1970s, although she definitely liked the fact that it was becoming more socially acceptable by the 1970s for working-class women like herself to work outside the home and bring home paychecks, regardless of whether or not they were married.

I can't recall speaking to any of the other perms who worked on the skyscraper office floor near or far from the desk behind which I sat typing for 7 hours each day while at Playtex. But what I do recall is that I would generally spend  my 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. lunch hour quickly eating a bag lunch that I brought in my pack each day--usually a cream cheese and jelly sandwich--on some outdoor bench or ledge near some skyscraper or while walking on the Manhattan street; before going into the Donnell Library on W. 53rd Street, between 5th Avenue and 6th Avenue, to either browse around the book shelves or check out and return some library books prior to then heading back to the Playtex office for my 2 to 5 p.m. period of daily wage enslavement. 

Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (5)

After leaving the West Village real estate office job, however, I started to apply for temp-typing jobs at various Manhattan temp agencies. By the 1970s--like Jack Kerouac--I had typed up so much of my writing on various manual typewriters that my typing speed now exceeded the 50 wpm that the various temp agencies required its temp-typing applicants to have, before they placed them in various corporate office industry temp-typing slots. In addition to my 50-plus wpm typing speed, by the 1970s I now found that I rarely made any typing mistakes on the 5-minute speed and accuracy typing tests that the various temp office worker private placement firms gave their job applicants.

So after I was tested at a midtown Manhattan temp agency called Landmark one morning and telephoned the Landmark office in the afternoon, the white woman with brown hair in her late 20s who had tested and interviewed me--and who seemed culturally straight, used lipstick and makeup, wore a dress and was probably considered attractive by most men--assigned me to work as a typist on a long-term assignment at the Playtex corporate office in Midtown Manhattan around 57th Street.

Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (4)

Realizing, after one day of having to spend the whole day sitting next to this ex-colonel in his real estate office, that the job represented an even more intense form of 9-to-5 wage slavery than spending 9-to-5 either doing clerical work or typing up letters--which at least made the time of enslavement go by more rapidly each day when you were busy and at least enabled you to sit at a desk alone, where you weren't compelled to listen to the boss talking next to you for 7 hours a day--I did not return for "work" at this real estate office on the following day. Or ever again, although I still could have used the money.

The Midtown Manhattan employment/fleshpeddling/placement agency soon sent me a note in which it billed me for a placement fee, because I had not remained at the job for at least 3 months, which I ignored. But the employment agency then apparently subsequently arranged for the ex-colonel's accountant to mail it a check that equaled what was due me for a day's work as a "clerk-typist" at the real estate office; and it apparently then pocketed the check for itself in lieu of the 'fee" they had billed me for, since no paycheck for the day's work and no further placement fee billing note was ever mailed to me.

Queens County Revisited: The 1970s (3)

Since the elderly bachelor colonel also appeared to be both misogynist and not eager to find apartments for or to rent to men who were married to women, most of the tenants he seemed to have found West Village apartments for or rented to were apparently bachelor gay white males under 40. In addition, all his office and maintenance employees--including the accountant/bookkeeper who alone kept track of the financial/profit-loss side of his real estate business--were white males.

The catch of the "clerk-typist" job I had been referred to in the bachelor colonel real estate office by the Midtown Manhattan employment/fleshpeddler/placement agent was that there wasn't any office work for the "clerk-typist" to do.  Apparently the bachelor ex-colonel--who seemed somewhat untogether emotionally--had a financial arrangement with the Midtown Manhattan employment/fleshpleddling/placement agency in which they would provide him with white males in their 20s to work as "clerk-typist" in his office whose only work functions would be to sit next to him each day from 9-to-5, and to keep saying "Yes, sir," whenever he would say "Isn't that right?" (following each monologue that he would spend the day uttering in his office unless he was talking to one of his maintenance employees or somebody who had walked into the office in search of a West Village apartment), and occasionally do errands for him during the day (like going outside to bring him back his lunch or cups of coffee from the small grocery shop a few doors down from his storefront real estate office).