Living here in Florida during the dog days of summer invites memories of some 50 years ago . . . in Brooklyn NY. We, our little group of East 24th Street friends, waltzed through the hot summer days so easily. When you’re fourteen, fifteen and sixteen you are immune to stifling August heat attacks.
We six stalwarts would meet in front of Fat Frank’s house each morning. This writer, along with Harvey AKA The Bear, who happened to live right around the corner from us on Bedford Ave., always chose up sides for our punch ball games. He would take his buddy Fat Frank and I would choose Frank’s younger brother Carmine. The rest of our group really didn’t matter: We four were the best there was on our block. The Bear and Fat Frank could really punch the ball deep, so I negotiated an outfield line chalked at the second manhole cover as the ‘ground rule double ‘line. They countered that if that was to be the case, then no one could go past that line to make a catch. Fair enough.
We played until lunchtime, with everyone off to either their homes or around the corner to Moe Miller’s luncheonette, which was always packed. The Miller family was a strange bunch, each having the ‘MM ‘as initials (Moe Miller, Mary Miller, Marty Miller and Michael Miller). We would usually go for either a Lime Rickey (Cherry syrup and soda water with a piece of lime) or an Egg Cream (two ounces of milk, Fox’s You Bet chocolate syrup and soda water) with our sandwiches.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us punch ball teens, in another Philadelphia, this one in Mississippi (where the hell was that place?), three kids but a few years older than us had been murdered by the Klan and buried in a hidden place. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were civil rights workers from up North that got stopped one night in June 1964 by the local police and then never seen again. While we were busy with punch ball and Lime Rickeys their bodies were finally found on August 4. We heard about it on the evening news, and missed it in the newspaper (we kids only read the sports section and comics). It never dawned much on us . . . we lived in a mostly white neighborhood in Brooklyn. The only blacks we saw were either the ones bused into our school, the cleaning ladies who worked in a few of the homes in our neighborhood, or maybe the guy working for the seltzer man who carried the heavy cases up the stairs. Our parents would remark, when the subject came up at dinner, “Just what in the hell were those white kids doing in that place anyhow? Let Mississippi handle its own racial problems!”
Many afternoons during those hot summer days a few of us, usually Fat Frank and I, would take our bikes and ride down to Manhattan Beach. It was about 10 minutes to Sheepshead Bay by bike, and then we could walk over the wood footbridge to the Manhattan Beach neighborhood where the beach was located. As we walked our bikes across the bridge, we would sometimes see our friend Jimmy Rossi diving for quarters from the railing into the bay.
Manhattan Beach, a few blocks away, had a typical NYC concrete park area at the entrance, replete with basketball courts. Some days we would see many of the top NYC high school and college hoop stars playing there. One day we caught a glimpse of Lou Alcindor (later to be called Karim Abdul Jabbar) playing with other great city players. In front of the courts was always the Good Humor Ice Cream man with his bicycle cart. That was for later, after we left the beach . . . which was delightfully clean with almost pure white sand and calm ocean waves. If you wanted rough waves you went to Coney Island or out to Jones Beach. Here everything was mellow . . . with so many beautiful girls for us teenage boys to gape at. Life was great!
In early August 1964, two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin claimed they were fired upon by the North Vietnamese. A few days later, August 7 (most likely during one of our punch ball games), Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing President Johnson “to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia.” Pretty soon, kids a few years older than us would be drafted and shipped over to what many GIs referred to as “the shit.”
Yet, in those dog days of summer ‘ 64 The Bear, Fat Frank, Carmine, Eddie, Larry and I only focused on whether the Phillies would hold onto their big lead in the National League ( they didn’t . . . they choked big time ) to then meet the Yankees in the World Series. Vietnam, Mississippi, Martin Luther King, Barry Goldwater, LBJ and any sort of politics concerning major issues meant very little to us. The girls on our block and sports were all we cared about. Maybe Rock and Roll should be included in that mix as well—the ‘British invasion ‘a year earlier introduced many of us to popular music. Wars and protests of any kind were as foreign to us as that place called Vietnam . . . at least for a few more years. The Bear would serve there in ‘68 as an Air Force F-111 mechanic . . . the rest of us never got drafted or enlisted. Eddie had a deferment as ‘sole surviving son’ . . . everyone else went to college and received student deferments.
As these dog days of summer slowly pass by, one should realize how things in America in 2014 are much worse than even 50 years ago. Our Military Industrial Empire is more invigorated and powerful than ever before. Our occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq much longer than our time in Vietnam. Military spending is over 50% of federal tax revenue. Our cities are crumbling, both structurally and fiscally, and the divide between the very rich and the rest of us are astounding.Yet, America’s 15- and 16-year olds, behaving as we teens did in 1964, remain oblivious to what is happening around them and around the world. The frightening reality is that the overwhelming majority of the American public has been mesmerized by every conceivable diversion imaginable . . . to keep them from the truth! Sadly, it will take a tsunami of great upheavals, geographically and economically, to finally wake them up.
Batter up!
Philip A Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a free lance columnist (found on Nation of Change Blog, Truthout.org, TheSleuthJournal.com, Worldnewstrust.com, The Intrepid Report , The Peoples Voice, Information Clearing house, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice and many other sites worldwide). Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010 he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at PAF1222@bellsouth.net.
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A baby boomer’s lament: August ’64
Posted on August 26, 2014 by Philip A Farruggio
Living here in Florida during the dog days of summer invites memories of some 50 years ago . . . in Brooklyn NY. We, our little group of East 24th Street friends, waltzed through the hot summer days so easily. When you’re fourteen, fifteen and sixteen you are immune to stifling August heat attacks.
We six stalwarts would meet in front of Fat Frank’s house each morning. This writer, along with Harvey AKA The Bear, who happened to live right around the corner from us on Bedford Ave., always chose up sides for our punch ball games. He would take his buddy Fat Frank and I would choose Frank’s younger brother Carmine. The rest of our group really didn’t matter: We four were the best there was on our block. The Bear and Fat Frank could really punch the ball deep, so I negotiated an outfield line chalked at the second manhole cover as the ‘ground rule double ‘line. They countered that if that was to be the case, then no one could go past that line to make a catch. Fair enough.
We played until lunchtime, with everyone off to either their homes or around the corner to Moe Miller’s luncheonette, which was always packed. The Miller family was a strange bunch, each having the ‘MM ‘as initials (Moe Miller, Mary Miller, Marty Miller and Michael Miller). We would usually go for either a Lime Rickey (Cherry syrup and soda water with a piece of lime) or an Egg Cream (two ounces of milk, Fox’s You Bet chocolate syrup and soda water) with our sandwiches.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us punch ball teens, in another Philadelphia, this one in Mississippi (where the hell was that place?), three kids but a few years older than us had been murdered by the Klan and buried in a hidden place. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were civil rights workers from up North that got stopped one night in June 1964 by the local police and then never seen again. While we were busy with punch ball and Lime Rickeys their bodies were finally found on August 4. We heard about it on the evening news, and missed it in the newspaper (we kids only read the sports section and comics). It never dawned much on us . . . we lived in a mostly white neighborhood in Brooklyn. The only blacks we saw were either the ones bused into our school, the cleaning ladies who worked in a few of the homes in our neighborhood, or maybe the guy working for the seltzer man who carried the heavy cases up the stairs. Our parents would remark, when the subject came up at dinner, “Just what in the hell were those white kids doing in that place anyhow? Let Mississippi handle its own racial problems!”
Many afternoons during those hot summer days a few of us, usually Fat Frank and I, would take our bikes and ride down to Manhattan Beach. It was about 10 minutes to Sheepshead Bay by bike, and then we could walk over the wood footbridge to the Manhattan Beach neighborhood where the beach was located. As we walked our bikes across the bridge, we would sometimes see our friend Jimmy Rossi diving for quarters from the railing into the bay.
Manhattan Beach, a few blocks away, had a typical NYC concrete park area at the entrance, replete with basketball courts. Some days we would see many of the top NYC high school and college hoop stars playing there. One day we caught a glimpse of Lou Alcindor (later to be called Karim Abdul Jabbar) playing with other great city players. In front of the courts was always the Good Humor Ice Cream man with his bicycle cart. That was for later, after we left the beach . . . which was delightfully clean with almost pure white sand and calm ocean waves. If you wanted rough waves you went to Coney Island or out to Jones Beach. Here everything was mellow . . . with so many beautiful girls for us teenage boys to gape at. Life was great!
In early August 1964, two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin claimed they were fired upon by the North Vietnamese. A few days later, August 7 (most likely during one of our punch ball games), Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing President Johnson “to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia.” Pretty soon, kids a few years older than us would be drafted and shipped over to what many GIs referred to as “the shit.”
Yet, in those dog days of summer ‘ 64 The Bear, Fat Frank, Carmine, Eddie, Larry and I only focused on whether the Phillies would hold onto their big lead in the National League ( they didn’t . . . they choked big time ) to then meet the Yankees in the World Series. Vietnam, Mississippi, Martin Luther King, Barry Goldwater, LBJ and any sort of politics concerning major issues meant very little to us. The girls on our block and sports were all we cared about. Maybe Rock and Roll should be included in that mix as well—the ‘British invasion ‘a year earlier introduced many of us to popular music. Wars and protests of any kind were as foreign to us as that place called Vietnam . . . at least for a few more years. The Bear would serve there in ‘68 as an Air Force F-111 mechanic . . . the rest of us never got drafted or enlisted. Eddie had a deferment as ‘sole surviving son’ . . . everyone else went to college and received student deferments.
As these dog days of summer slowly pass by, one should realize how things in America in 2014 are much worse than even 50 years ago. Our Military Industrial Empire is more invigorated and powerful than ever before. Our occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq much longer than our time in Vietnam. Military spending is over 50% of federal tax revenue. Our cities are crumbling, both structurally and fiscally, and the divide between the very rich and the rest of us are astounding. Yet, America’s 15- and 16-year olds, behaving as we teens did in 1964, remain oblivious to what is happening around them and around the world. The frightening reality is that the overwhelming majority of the American public has been mesmerized by every conceivable diversion imaginable . . . to keep them from the truth! Sadly, it will take a tsunami of great upheavals, geographically and economically, to finally wake them up.
Batter up!
Philip A Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a free lance columnist (found on Nation of Change Blog, Truthout.org, TheSleuthJournal.com, Worldnewstrust.com, The Intrepid Report , The Peoples Voice, Information Clearing house, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice and many other sites worldwide). Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010 he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at PAF1222@bellsouth.net.