DRINKING OF ELDER MEN: My Artistic Friends Over The Years: Part 9, Jim T.

Jim lived somewhere on Upland Street in South Philadelphia. I don't remember the exact address. I do recall there were sensed in Basketball courts behind hid place.

I also can't dredge up how I first met Jim, but he became a close friend. We both had day jobs at Atlantic and minds elsewhere. Like me he went to college at night; in his case, LaSalle University. He was also a writer; not just a writer, but he was the editor of a magazine at school called, "Der Spiegel". It means, "The Mirror", but that is about all I know, even though a have a copy of it here somewhere. I ich spreche nicht. Jim did understand German obviously.

He also wrote English. I wrote a piece under his name for him, "On I, James Thurber". It is included under the ghostwriting section of my collected essays, "Making an Essay of Myself".

II GHOSTING

Movie Review: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 39

(as Girard Neville)

On “I, James Thurber”

(as James Tweedy) 42

Death of a Salesman and Our Town: A Comparison

(with Joseph S. Rubio) 44

Executive and The Federalist Papers

(with Joseph S. Rubio) 53

Lois and me in early 1968. Our hair would grow.

Jim became the host of our meetings in the finish basement of his home on Upland Street. Our other
big hang out into the we hours was Rittenhouse Square. As the evening turned to dark, more and more of what I would call the eclectic folk of the street would gather about the fountains. There would be philosophical dicussions in the air to backgrounds of folk music. Sometimes it would seem a giant costume party. Sometimes it would become erotic.

We shopped the Hippie section between South Street and Lombard, buying our non-work outfits from the second and stores. This was an area of music stores, head shops and occult purveyors. We also went to the Coffee Shops hoping up here and there at the time for live entertainment, some poetry, but mostly music, a lot of psychedelic stuff. We spend a lot of nights at The Trauma, Kaleidoscope The Main Point and others.

While I was peddling myself as a writer, Jim was more interested in breaking into the music scene. He was a composer and we decided to form our own group. We called in "Ethereal". We saw our songs as too delicate and beautiful for this world, although we did write some protest songs ala Dylan. In the photo, Jim is playing the bongo drums, but his main instrument was piano. I did my best on the guitar. Lois was our frontman, or more our sexy frontman. Lois could sing well, but she looked good and dressed in fairly diaphanous gown that were somewhat see through.

Our band never caught on, but my writing was beginning to sell.