The Beatles White album and the new bed

The Beatles "White Album" was long awaited and there were rumour mills about it long before it hit the stores. One story was that it featured "Hey Jude" and songs from an upcoming movie. Another story that a radio DJ repeated was that the second disc was a jam, similar to Grape Jam by Moby Grape. In gym class I learned that the cover featured John Lennon and Yoko Ono sitting on toilet bowls.


Finally the album found its way to FM radio and Murray the K announced that he had, once again, gotten the album first and would be featuring it on his Saturday night program on WOR-FM. Homework done, chores done, I was looking forward to an evening listening to this historic album for the first time.


The radio was on in my room. Murray the K had just started the show and there was a knocking on my door. It was my father.


"Master Mustache, come on, Mr. Mills has the bed he's giving you and we need to bring it over before he changes his mind."


"Bed, what bed, I don't need a bed. I have a bed." Even then, I was resistent to change.


The rest of the night it was up and down Kaplan Avenue. We carried mattresses, box springs, bed boards. It must have taken ten trips. We disassembled the bed at the Mills bedroom and reassembled it in my bedroom. I got to hear snippets of the Beatles behind the grunts and swear words accompanying the bed assembly. My other bed was then removed and planted on the curb.



After the bed was set up, Mr. Mills brought a bottle of champagne which both families drank, sitting on my new bed. Thus the bed was christened.


Finally the Mills family went home and I got to hear the last two Beatles cuts, "the End" and "Good night".

Editor's note: We actually drank the champagne on the back porch.

The new blog

I have started a new blog on growing tomatoes. It will trace my tomatoes from seedlings to hopefully, luscious, fruit bearing tomato plants. Not as exciting as the sixties but that's what happens when you get old.

The seventies

For me, the sixties merged into the seventies and with it I left the bosom of my parent's home and entered the exciting Fallopian canal called college. Dick Cavett said that college teaches a man to drink. On that point he was correct. College was four years filled with booze, co-eds, cutting classes, bull sessions and other diversions. What with one thing or another, the idealism of the sixties descended into the cynicism of the seventies. Graduation came but with it, no job prospects emerged. I graduated into an uncertain and somewhat unpleasant world.

The first foreboding that the economy was turning sour started with the great energy crisis. Then came the great recession of the seventies.

Oh where oh where were we going to get jobs as art therapists, dance therapists, cabinet makers and pottery school directors? Where would I be able to use the many skills I acquired doing a show on college radio?

The sixties were over. College days were over. I was a college graduate selling hot dogs at Two Guys. It was Saturday night and I was sitting in my parent's living room watching Lawrence Welk. The sixties were not supposed to end like this! My father is making popcorn. I'm drinking his Schmidt's. Oh wo is me!

The story of the ending of the sixties is repeated in the life stories of many baby boomers. The grasshoppers were wrong. The world hadn't changed that much. Just that there were no jobs and things were more expensive.

Editor's note: I will be taking a short hiatus to help build a church in Tanganyika. After that, I'm open for suggestions on what to do for the last of my blog trilogy. Possibilities include "the seventies" (an obvious choice) "what the doctor said" an ironic blog about the world of medicine as it applies to aging baby boomers, and "modern times" a blog about life in the 00's. Put your suggestions in the comment box. I'll inform you of my decision right here. I can assure you I will keep Mr Mustache in the title of the blog (it is a trilogy after all).
ps if you are new to the blog, start from the oldest and work your way forward for best results. So long.

the Sixties legacy

The sixties was gasping it's last breath. It was the end of the decade, Guy Lombardo was moving up his baton. The sixties was a crusty old ex hippie. And he gave this speech (with apologies to John Steinbeck and Tom Joad).

I'll always be with you. Wherever you go. Every time a woman feels she has heard a sexist remark, I'll be there. Every time you pass a Whole Earth store, I'll be there. Every time you turn on the FM radio and hear another sixties oldie, I'll be there.

Every time someone says holistic, I'll be there. Every time you pass a folk arts festival on the highway, I'll be there. Every time you read that diet is what causes arthritis, I'll be there. Every time you listen to "Fresh Air" on NPR, I'll be there. Gay rights? They owe it to me. Feminism? It all came from me. Gentrification? It has its roots in my spirit. Brown rice? I'm to blame brother. Whole wheat bread? That is my child. Hear a dulcimer on the radio? I'm guilty.

Your niece is living with a guy? That started with me. Wheat pizza? That comes from me. Organic? You're looking at grampa. Your date is driving the car? That wouldn't have been allowed in the fifties. Women using four letter words? Blame me. Your boss isn't a White guy? Me, sir. And a million other things.

"I'll be aroun' in the dark. I'll be everywhere-wherever you look I'll be there..."

The first time I heard about girlie shows

One day our family had an outing to Freedomland, the ill fated amusement park that was supposed to be New York's answer to Disneyland. Apparently, Mrs. Mills had a sister who sang in a band, namely the Jimmy Dorsey Band, then fronted by Lee Castle. As a bonus, Donald O'Connor was performing on the same stage.

Freedomland was okay, but not great. The best thing there was the tent where the disc jockey from WMCA was doing a radio show in front of a group of bored teenagers.

Outside it started to rain. In the band shell Donald O'Connor appeared and sang "Singing in the Rain". The stage was not sheltered from the weather. Donald O'Connor was a real trouper. No wonder my mother named me after him. The band played. The sister sang. And we all went home, soaking wet but happy.

The other big fair was, of course, the New York World's Fair, amply described in the book The End of the Innocence, by Lawrence R. Samuel. He was on the radio this morning.

The New York World's Fair was a hotly waited for event. I had been looking forward to it ever since hearing about the one in Seattle a few years earlier.

Contrary to it's detractors, for a kid it was great. Futurama was great. The Disney exhibits were great. My mother thought the electronic Abe Lincoln at the Illinois pavilion was real until he stopped talking. I got to go twice, once because my father wanted to go and once because my mother's friends from Ohio wanted to go.

After several hours of touring and tired from the day, my parents sat down at a bench at the fair. Soon a man shyly came up to my father. He almost couldn't speak, then he said, whispering, "do you know where I could find a girlie show around here?"

My father paused. "I don't know, I think the Texas exhibit has some scantily clad ladies." After living with my mother all these years, he had become a Texas booster too. And I heard a new term to increase my vocabulary.

Today there are remnants of the fair in Queens. You can still see the unisphere and the walkable map of New York at the Queens Museum of Art.

Editor's note: We'll get to an explanation of life after the sixties in due time.

How we envisioned the future

And so it was New Year's Eve and I was at my first New Year's Eve party. Not the flannel pajamas with my brother watching Guy Lombardo New Year's Eve party. No, I was at a real party with young people and a few drunken adults. The sixties were coming to an end and we were looking towards the future.

The nice part was that everything had changed. "Straight jobs" would be gone. We would all become free spirits picking and choosing among meaningful, insightful, occupations, bolstered by plentiful government grants provided by a free, enlightened America.

The men would become motorcycle repairmen, carpenters, organic farmers, writers, actors. The women would make quilts and pottery and grow flowers. The slums would disappear as black Americans would join the ranks of the middle class and move into our parents houses as we would all live in communes or new cities in the dessert.

The sixties were ending and a new world was beginning. The seventies would be a time of brotherhood, freedom, happiness, and only the "straight people" would be left behind.

Some of the wiser babyboomers were like ants in contrast to the multitudes of grasshoppers. They knew that accounting degrees and MBA's would still be needed in the seventies and that the expectations of the longhairs was a load of hooey. They knew the world could only use so many guitar players. They reasoned since most people never went to the theatre millions of actors would not be able to find work.

And so the sixties ended on a high note of expectation. Keep tuned for in my next post I will tell you what happened after the new year was rung.

Editor's note: I was just browsing the other blogs and Tacky Christmas cards is swell. http://tackychristmasyards.com/

the Patti Duke Show

This week I had an earworm that I couldn’t get rid of. Hence the topic for today’s blog. I find myself singing the theme song of the Patti Duke Show on the way to work, at work, on the elevator, in the bathroom, walking to the pizza joint on Warren Street. “While Cathy adores the minuet, the Parlez vous and Crepe Suzette, our Patti like to see the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights. What a wild duet…still they’re cousins, identical cousins all the way. They laugh alike they talk alike at times they even talk alike. You can lose your mind" ….

Uncle Bill once said that television is written for ten year olds. (This from someone who thought Pepino the Italian Mouse was the height of couture). And being ten at the time, I agreed with him.

Truthfully, I enjoyed junk like the Patti Duke Show. I could understand the plot. I could relate to the little brother. Although when the question came up in biology class, we were assured that the presence of identical cousins was a scientific impossibility.

Those ABC situation comedies. There was I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster, Guestward Ho, Bewitched, Gidget and most importantly the Patti Duke Show. But television, even shows written about teenagers like Gidget, were sort of boring at the time. At least compared to the excitement of AM radio.

Editor's note: Steve Post, the legendary announcer on WBAI, is doing a weekly radio show this month on WNYC. Click here to access the podcast.