Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (54)

Although I had read about Joan Baez in the late Fall of 1964 in reference to the Berkeley Free Speech Student Revolt, it wasn't until the Summer of 1965 that I actually first heard how Baez sounded when she sang a folk song, a peace song, a protest song or a topical song.  Time magazine had apparently put her face on its cover very early in the 1960's. But prior to 1965, Baez was rarely seen on any of the television shows that I had watched; and although Vanguard Records "for the Connoisseur" had sold a lot of Joan Baez vinyl albums between 1960 and 1965, the AM radio stations in New York City like WMCA/"Good Guy Radio" and WABC (or the AM radio stations in Indiana) that played 45 rpm "hit" singles, apparently did not play either single cuts from Baez's early best-selling vinyl albums or any 45 rpm single records that Baez may have recorded (even after Baez's 45 rpm record of Phil Ochs' "There But For Fortune" began rising on Billboard magazine's hit record charts) between 1960 and 1965.

And even though I had watched portions of the August 1963 March for Jobs and Racial Equality in Washington, D.C. on television and had watched and heard Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech being broadcast live on the network television stations that day, I had not seen or heard on television the singing portion of the August 1963 March on Washington rally in which folk singers like Peter, Paul & Mary, Dylan and Baez had apparently sung civil rights movement-related songs from the rally stage. 

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Not being either a red diaper baby who was part of the late 1950's and early 1960's red diaper youth subculture or heavily into listening to folk music until 1965, I only first became aware of Joan Baez's existence in the late Fall of 1964; when I read in some mainstream magazine that a "Mexican-American" folk singer named Joan Baez-- who also refused to pay all of her income taxes to the U.S. government because she was a "pacifist"--had been involved in the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Student Revolt in some way at the University of California.

I was still just a liberal anti-communist and non-pacifist at that time. But I was intrigued by the fact that in the early 1960's this Joan Baez seemed to be the only celebrity entertainer/celebrity singer mentioned by the mass media who was so openly a pacifist; and, although I was not then a pacifist, myself, or an advocate of a pacifist U.S. foreign policy of unilateral disarmament, I was impressed by the fact that Baez was so committed to her pacifist principles that she was willing to back up her pacifist views by refusing to pay that portion of her federal income taxes which went for U.S. government Pentagon war preparations and the U.S. military budget.

I was also impressed when I heard that Baez was, in the 1960's, refusing to charge more than $2 per ticket at her concerts, in order to allow folk music fans, who might not be able to afford a concert ticket if tickets were priced higher, an equal chance to hear her perform and attend her concerts; and because she seemed to feel that making money and being commercially successful were not her main philosophical priorities in the 1960's. 

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In 1969, I had first read Richard Farina's magazine article/essay from the early 1960's, which had been titled something like "Dylan and Baez: A Generation Singing Out," that was contained in an early 1960's paperback anthology about the early 1960's Folk Boom. But it was in the 1970's that I actually read both Richard Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me novel and a second book of his collected writings that had been published after he was killed in a motorcycle accident in California in 1966. And the reading of those books in the 1970's inspired me to write, in the basement apartment in Jamaica, the "Richard Farina Is Gone" eulogistic folk song during that decade, which began with a chorus and first verse that continued to be included in the second version of that folk song that I put together in the 21st century:

(chorus)"Richard Farina is gone
There's not too much to say
Learn from what he saw
And fear not your own grave.

(verse 1) 

"A sudden bulletin
On the radio
Told of his accident
On a motorcycle." (chorus)

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (51)

After Barry moved from Queens to Israel/Palestine again, I inherited his prime tenancy possition in the basement apartment in Jamaica. And I decided to not immediately seek a roommate to pay the half of the apartment rent that Barry had been paying, although this meant that my monthly rent for the basement apartment would now be about $150 per month; or about double what I had been paying when I shared the apartment with Barry.

But the monthly wage that I was getting from my Council on International Educational Exchange [C.I.E.E.] travel season job provided enough money per month to pay the monthly rent alone, given how little I tended to spend on food, consumer goods or entertainment in the 1970's; and given the fact that I saved a lot of money by not owning a car (and, in the 1970's, not even having a driver's license).

It was in the Jamaica basement apartment that, after Barry had moved out, I wrote the first version in the 1970's of the "Richard Farina Is Gone" eulogistic folk song and folk songs inspired by Joan Baez's life up to that time, like "Joan Baez's Song," "Woman Inspired" and "Wise Woman" (a folk love song whose lyrics and melody I now no longer remember).

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (50)

While working at the Council on International Education Exchange [C.I.E.E.], I also wrote a folk love song for a white woman in her 20's with long dark hair whom I considered beautiful and felt drawn to, named Paula, after meeting her for lunch in Midtown one 1970's weekday in the Spring. She was from suburban New Jersey and had some kind of well-paying job that involved helping to keep track of the additional money that the Midtown Manhattan book publishing firm she worked for made from selling subsidiary rights for things like movie adaptations and tv adaptations of the books they published, etc.

But after meeting me for lunch, Paula apparently felt no reciprocal physical or romantic attraction for me; and by the third time I telephoned her to see if she wanted to get together again for a date, she made it clear that the reason she was unavailable for a date the first and second times I called her after our lunch hour together wasn't really just because she was busy that evening. The deeper reason was that she had decided after talking with me during our lunch hour together that she didn't want to have anything to do with me; and, after I telephoned her a second time, she had begun to consider me as some kind of pest.

So after feeling the hostile vibes of her voice's tone, following my third telephone call to her, I wrote off Paula as being too culturally straight to interest me, despite her physical beauty--although I did still sing the folk love song I had written for her after our first lunch hour together for a few years, because I liked that particular folk song's melody (which is a melody I now know longer remember).

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (49)

The two other white women who were hired a few months after me to work for the busiest summer months in the came Council on International Educational Exchange [C.I.E.E.] office with me, at adjacent desks, were both recent, but non-intellectual, college graduates in their 20's from Boston; and both of these women were friendly and excited about spending the summer in New York City.

After working, conversing and laughing together in the C.I.E.E. office for about a month with one of the women from Boston named Connie, who was Irish-American in her family background,, I realized I was attracted to her emotionally, as well as sexually; and I actually wrote a folk love song for her, which I no longer remember. Besides having an easygoing, humorous and warm personality, Connie also had long. light-brown hair and most men in the 1970's likely considered her to be physically beautiful.

After Connie's last day of work at C.I.E.E. in late August, I ended up taking a cab with Connie from the building in which the C.I.E.E. office was located, in UN Plaza near the United Nations buildings, across town to a West Side apartment building across the street from the Museum of Natural History, in which Connie was now going to move into and share with a friend of hers; and I helped carry some of the heavy suitcases that Connie had brought to work on her last day at C.I.E.E. both to the cab from the C.I.E.E. office and from the cab to the West Side apartment building she was moving into.

Then, realizing and feeling sad that I was no longer going to see Connie at work again each day, after Connie thanked me for helping her move her suitcases, I suddenly asked her: "Do you want to keep in touch with each other in the Fall? I liked working with you."

Looking surprised, Connie then seemed to think for a moment, before replying in a kindly tone, with a serious expression on her face:  "Well, thanks for asking. I liked working with you, too. But I've only really thought of you as just a fun guy to work with and not someone I'd ever be seeing outside of work."

I was disappointed for a second with Connie's answer. But I quickly replied with a smile. "That's O.K. I understand." Then, waving to her, as I slowly turned around before walking towards the subway station on Central Park West, I laughed and said:  "Well, I hope you have fun being in New York City in the Fall."

"Hope the same for you, Bob," I heard Connie call from behind me as I continued my walk to the subway station. And soon afterward I stopped singing (and eventually forgot the lyrics and tune of) the folk love song I had written for Connie but never got a chance to sing to her; and I never bumped into beautiful Connie again. 

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In the Council on International Educational Exchange [C.I.E.E.] office, the ratio of male to female office employees was about equal in the 1970's. But the white women in their late 20's or early 30's who had obtained some of the middle-class professional jobs the C.I.E.E. needed to fill seemed more interested in their careers than in becoming romantically involved with any of the men who worked at C.I.E.E.--especially, given the classist way they generally viewed men who did not have middle-class professional jobs like they now had.

Yet a few of the white women in their 20's, who were hired a few months after me for the summer clerical work that was needed during the busiest July and August months of the student travel season, were friendlier and seemed more open to becoming romantically involved with their male clerical working-cass office colleagues than were the women who held the "professional" jobs at C.I.E.E..

For a few weeks, one of these female co-workers who sat at the desk right across from me seemed eager to flirt with me at work, when the telephone wasn't ringing. But after she got the hint from hearing the political conversations that Marvin and I were having in the office and the humorous freak left counter-cultural critique I was articulating of how the unhip executives at C.I.E.E. and all U.S. social institutions were involved in exploiting working-class people and needed to be replaced by a 1970's freak/hip youth revolution that created a more leisure-oriented economic system and society (which used technology and computers to free people from having to work 9-to-5, rather than to eventually create a new type of "techie billionaires" or to eventually eliminate millions of clerical and secretarial office jobs that, at least, provided many working-class people with the money they needed to pay rent to their landlords or repay their mortgage loans to their banks), she became less interested in flirting with me.

Perhaps she felt that her family's class interest/privileges would be threatened by the kind of societal changes Marvin and I were discussing, since the reason she had been hired for her C.I.E.E. summer job was because, coincidentally, her father was then one of the top executives at the C.I.E.E. office? Also, she may have felt embarrassed, after she heard Marvin and me joke about how nepotism was prevalent in the U.S. capitalist economic system when it came to which people were hired for the softest and most high-paying jobs (and even for summer jobs), by the fact that she, herself, seemed to provide an example of the nepotism that Marvin and I were joking about.