This video is something of a history of Lois and I and Philadelphia. As a child my family; that is my mother and grandmother and I visited Philadelphia a couple times a year, mainly at Christmas to see the displays and take me to see Santa, and on my birthday because my big thing was to visit the various museums. Sometimes my dad took us into Philly to the movies.
After graduating high school, I went to Florence Utz IBM TAB School, where I learned to program and operate most of the data processing machine then put out by IBM. Programming was done by wiring peg boards. I graduated at the head of the class, but I never got a job actually doing what I was trained for. The last IBM Peg Boards I ever saw were in the Smithsonian. I did later go to IBM School in Philadelphia to learn the System 3 Computer. You probably can only find one of those in the Smithsonian, too.
I worked in Philadelphia from 1959 through 1973, first at Atlantic Refining, which became the giant ARCo during the nearly ten years I was there. I worked brief down at Point Breeze in the refinery, but most of the time I worked at 260 South Broad Street at their headquarters. In 1969, I left and jumped about a bit, to Philadelphia Gum Company, which technically was not in Philadelphia, North American Publishing as both a writer and circulation manager, Lincoln Bank, Olson Brothers Egg Breakers and Welded Tube Company of America. Pictures of most of these are scattered through the video.
During this same period I wrote for several publications, "The Communicator", "Media & Methods", "Psychedelphia Period", "Magazine of Horror", "Startling Mystery Stories" and others. I did advertising copy for Knight Newspapers, the then owners of "The Enquirer" and "The Daily News". I was a regular feature writer for "Philadelphia After Dark, also doing movie reviews. During those years I was a ghostwriter for hire, doing essays, term papers and speeches for college students at La Salle and St Joseph College. I wrote for Philadelphia Community College, although I was not supposed to because I wasn't a student. I used a pseudonym, Loop.
I myself went to Temple University as a Sociology Major and Literature Minor.
In the late 'sixties into the 'seventies, Lois and I lived in Philadelphia, having a roach infested studio apartment in University City called The Commodore.
Even after we left the city and I went elsewhere to work, we made frequent visits staying in old hotels.
Anyway, here is a collection of pictures I took over many, many years of one of my favorite cities. I didn't take the opening shot, though. It shows Ira Einhorn speaking to a great crowd at the first Earth Day, something he claimed to have founded. I remember going to peep shows on Rittenhouse Square that he did found. He later murdered his girlfriend and kept her body in a trunk in his Powelton Village home until he fled to France. I included it because I use to work on the edge of Powelton not far from where he lived. Every morning I would walk from 42nd and Chester through Powelton to my office.
During this time, my wife worked as a secretary to the chairmen of the Chemistry Department at University of Pennsylvania. I use to do a lot of walking around Penn and Drexel University. It was the time of the miniskirt and that was when I caught the young woman leaning in her car, exposing the fact she wore no underwear beneath her skirt. Sex was much on my mind in those days when I was an Atheist and an activist. I spend a lot of money in the adult bookstores that had blossomed all over downtown Philly at the time.
Lois and I also spent a lot of time at the Trauma Coffeehouse (which could have been more rightly called the Trauma Teahouse, and I don't mean the kind served in cups and at the Kaleidoscope Theater with its co-ed bathrooms. Otherwise, we gathered with our friends, who were mostly writers, musicians, artists and actors wither in one of them's basement or on Rittenhouse Square into the wee hours. You will see with some of our friends we did a lot of drinking. What else we were doing with some friends I did not include in the pictures.
After graduating high school, I went to Florence Utz IBM TAB School, where I learned to program and operate most of the data processing machine then put out by IBM. Programming was done by wiring peg boards. I graduated at the head of the class, but I never got a job actually doing what I was trained for. The last IBM Peg Boards I ever saw were in the Smithsonian. I did later go to IBM School in Philadelphia to learn the System 3 Computer. You probably can only find one of those in the Smithsonian, too.
I worked in Philadelphia from 1959 through 1973, first at Atlantic Refining, which became the giant ARCo during the nearly ten years I was there. I worked brief down at Point Breeze in the refinery, but most of the time I worked at 260 South Broad Street at their headquarters. In 1969, I left and jumped about a bit, to Philadelphia Gum Company, which technically was not in Philadelphia, North American Publishing as both a writer and circulation manager, Lincoln Bank, Olson Brothers Egg Breakers and Welded Tube Company of America. Pictures of most of these are scattered through the video.
During this same period I wrote for several publications, "The Communicator", "Media & Methods", "Psychedelphia Period", "Magazine of Horror", "Startling Mystery Stories" and others. I did advertising copy for Knight Newspapers, the then owners of "The Enquirer" and "The Daily News". I was a regular feature writer for "Philadelphia After Dark, also doing movie reviews. During those years I was a ghostwriter for hire, doing essays, term papers and speeches for college students at La Salle and St Joseph College. I wrote for Philadelphia Community College, although I was not supposed to because I wasn't a student. I used a pseudonym, Loop.
I myself went to Temple University as a Sociology Major and Literature Minor.
In the late 'sixties into the 'seventies, Lois and I lived in Philadelphia, having a roach infested studio apartment in University City called The Commodore.
Even after we left the city and I went elsewhere to work, we made frequent visits staying in old hotels.
Anyway, here is a collection of pictures I took over many, many years of one of my favorite cities. I didn't take the opening shot, though. It shows Ira Einhorn speaking to a great crowd at the first Earth Day, something he claimed to have founded. I remember going to peep shows on Rittenhouse Square that he did found. He later murdered his girlfriend and kept her body in a trunk in his Powelton Village home until he fled to France. I included it because I use to work on the edge of Powelton not far from where he lived. Every morning I would walk from 42nd and Chester through Powelton to my office.
During this time, my wife worked as a secretary to the chairmen of the Chemistry Department at University of Pennsylvania. I use to do a lot of walking around Penn and Drexel University. It was the time of the miniskirt and that was when I caught the young woman leaning in her car, exposing the fact she wore no underwear beneath her skirt. Sex was much on my mind in those days when I was an Atheist and an activist. I spend a lot of money in the adult bookstores that had blossomed all over downtown Philly at the time.
Lois and I also spent a lot of time at the Trauma Coffeehouse (which could have been more rightly called the Trauma Teahouse, and I don't mean the kind served in cups and at the Kaleidoscope Theater with its co-ed bathrooms. Otherwise, we gathered with our friends, who were mostly writers, musicians, artists and actors wither in one of them's basement or on Rittenhouse Square into the wee hours. You will see with some of our friends we did a lot of drinking. What else we were doing with some friends I did not include in the pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment