My Artistic Friends Over The Years: Part 10, Jane W..

Atlantic Richfield, where I was working, was at 360 South Broad Street in Philadelphia. The Art University was not far away at 320 South Broad. I befriended a student there named with whom I became close friends with and we would often meet to discuss our artistic dreams.  

I gave her several of my manuscript to read and afterward she had  a bit of advice for me.

"You wanna be a writer, then you should give up your day job and live on your talent"

    She suggested I move to New York.  That would be a big step and I doubted my wife would have taken kindly to the idea. Heck, she might not look kindly on my close friendship with Jane, as it was.

      I wrote about Jane in my story, "Why There Will Never Be Peace".  This instance I included wen Jane and I rode the Broad Street Subway north one day. She lived in North Philly and I was going to Temple University Evening Collage.  That afternoon we walked to the stop together. We got a lot of stares and frowns from people, including the traffic cops. The stares and frowns continued aboard the train, lot of White People didn't seem to approve of us being together like some couple. What I noticed was as the passengers had less Whites after a few stops, we were getting the same disapproving looks from the Black Folks. It bothered me, but Jane ignored it. I was learning prejudice was a two-way street.

       

     Same type of thing happened with Ronald, who is Gay by the way, one time. We went to lunch together and we were warmly welcomed in this Deli. It was such a nice time and the food was good I suggested to Lois we would go there sometime, and we did. Not such a warm greeting this time. The Host ignored us for a long time and then seated us by the kitchen door. No one was friendly at all. I said to Lois I didn't understand and she told me to look around. I then realized this was a Gay hangout and straight couples weren't wanted. Yes, prejudice is a two-way street! I wrote this in my story as well.

   

 Jane was an activist. So was her boyfriend, a photographer, but he had left the USA and went to Cuba. Jane was talking about joining him there. She introduced me to a publisher in the underground press. Her boyfriend had published photo for him. This led to me writing for the underground under the name "Eugene Lawrence".  I used a pseudonym because what was being published underground was pretty raw and very anti-government.

My maiden material appeared In Psychedelphia Period with a fairly graphic anti-war story titled, "To the Boys on the Flat".

Frank Rizzo was the police commissioner at that time and would become Philadelphia's Republican mayor. I was living in University City in West Philadelphia when he ran for that office and an attempt was made to take my vote away, along with many other's who's vote they tried to suppress.

     Jane was a good friend, and eventually I did live my day job to write. I didn't move to New York, though.  Of our group of wannabes, I was probably the only one who actually became a professional writer; which means I not only got into print, I got paid for it.

     I don't know what happened to Jane. Perhaps she did go to cuba. Like so many of my youthful friends she disappeared from my life.