An End of Something

Perhaps not many people remember the TV show, “I Led 3 Lives”.  It was a popular drama from 1951 through 1953 based on the life of Herbert Philbrick, played by actor Richard Carlson. Philbrick was an advertising man, who joined the Communist Party to become a FBI informant.

I was also leading three lives, so to speak: bank bookkeeper, struggling writer and college student. I was also married. It was a full life – a really, really very full life. I was in the fall semester of 1970 taking as many credits as the law allowed to an evening student at Temple. This included General Appreciation Music, American Society, United States History to the Civil War and English Composition 9e.

I finished the semester with a 3.50 average. It was History that pulled me down; I only received a C. This probably appears ironic, since I am something of a history lover, but during those turbulent times many professors were admitted Marxists. They had heavily infiltrated the History Department and I kept getting them. They had an agenda and it certainly wasn’t to make Capitalism look good. Several professors had become instructors as a means of escaping the draft and Vietnam. Since they had their degree anyway; it was cheaper than moving to Canada.

Escaping the draft was certainly not the aim of my United States History teacher, for she was a young woman and there was no drafting of females. She was; however, someone who did not look favorably on the country she was teaching about. She spent the half-year doing all she could to disparage the Founding Fathers, especially Benjamin Franklin. I tended to refute her views in the essay questions, which did not make me teacher’s pet.

These were the years when feminism was growing,  the glory years of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, and a growing list of Feminist writers. The campus were rife with feminist rallies and you never knew if opening a door for a female would bring you a "Thank you" or a slap to the jowls. I was raised a gentleman; I don't believe opening a door to anyone is a tester of assumed superiority. I believe it is just polite.

 We had one such outspoken young Feminist in our American Society classes. American Society was part of my major curriculum of Sociology and was exactly what its name implied, a study of American Society. She was an interrupter, a constant disputer of the teacher and always asking questions all ready answered. At every opportunity she would climb upon her soapbox and I was surprised she didn't literary climb upon her desk, one foot on the seat and the other on the desktop like Joan of Ark leading her army into battle.
As the weeks passed she became more insistent that women really should run everything, except a home.  Her reasoning was simple. Women outlived men because men got strokes and heart attacks.
She thus posted the question, “What do you think would happen if women took over?”

I answered, “Then they would be the ones getting the strokes and heart attacks and dying early.”

I had a tendency in those days (me on the right, 1970) of getting myself in trouble by

speaking the truth, and the truth would be as women moved up in areas once reserved only for men the gender gap in death began to narrow.  In 1970 women lived about 4 years longer than men on average; by 2010 this was closer to 2 years.  Women in that time frame have made many inroads into the so called “man’s world”.  Historically women have always outlived men and it is still true, which one can see if they visit any co-ed nursing home, but the gap is narrowing and as women continue to not only move into traditional pressure jobs held by men as well as jobs that present a lot of physical danger we will most likely see the gap shrink even further.
This has nothing to do with superiority; it has to do with commonsense. I have two daughters and I raised them to pursue whatever job they wished and never doubted they could do it.

I did two long papers for the course. One was completely up to the pupil and I wrote “Fallacy of Higher Education”, which argued that not everybody did needed a college education and pushing every one into college simply diluted the quality of the education and would result in a lot of frustrated graduates. It is so much fun to attack the necessity of the institution you are striving to have approve your work. I stand by my positions in that paper, and in others I wrote considered anti-higher education, even more so today. We need a complete overhaul of the education system.
My other paper was assigned and was on the Military-Industrial Complex.

I really did appreciate Music Appreciation. It was supposed

to be another one of those easy to ace courses, and it proved to be, not like Economic History of the United States that I had taken earlier. I enjoyed the course and over the length I built my record collection with a progression of Classical Albums from Haydn and Bach to that of a new and then unknown composer named Anthony Lloyd Webber. (Right is Anthony Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice in 1970.) One of the last pieces of the last class was “Jesus Chris Superstar” and our Professor only introduced it because in his opinion this composer had a future. It was unknown at the time.

My favorite subject was English Composition 9e. We had to read three novels and analyze them, Joseph Conrand’s Lord Jim; Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest and Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King, but the most important aspect of the class was the writing of a Term Paper on some American literary light.  Well, you know me, where others chose William Faulkner, Tom Wolfe, Ernest Hemmingway and so forth; I presented as my proposal, H. P. Lovecraft (Left).

I don’t think the Professor was enamored by my choice, in fact he didn't think I could pull it off, but he okayed it. Now as the end of 1970 fast approached in was near time for a final draft and presentation. Someone in the class asked how many pages it should be. The Professor said he expected at last 12 pages. The person who asked the question groaned at that length. My own initial draft was already a bit longer. Here is how I described it to Joe Rubio in a November 3 letter:

Speaking of school, there is only a couple more

weeks this semester. The twenty-first is my last class, but that one is Music. We turned in our term papers for English last Wednesday evening. I hope I get a good mark. Man, I put in a lot of work. My original was 87 pages long including everything.

When I got the graded paper back the professor had written a sarcastic, “Thanks!!” across the title page. He gave me an A. After the class ended he asked me to stay. He wanted me to consider publishing the essay. I eventually expanded it into a book called, Lurker on the Bookshelf: A Biographical Study of H. P. Lovecraft.

I received about this time notification that the latest story I had submitted to Robert A. W. Lowndes for “Magazine of Horror” had been accepted. But then I heard nothing further, did not receive a check and my future submissions were also not acknowledged. I did not know the fate of my story, “Conjured” until many decades later, thanks to the internet.

I was searching my own name when I discovered my story. It had been published in the March 1971 issue of Startling Mystery Magazine. I eventually learned that Health-Knowledge, Inc., the publisher of these magazines had collapsed in 1971 and disappeared from the literary world. My story may have been in the last of their issues. Robert Lowndes went on to work for another publisher on a long-running magazine called “Sexology”. I never had or read any copies of that pulp, but given what was to come, I could have probably written for such a thing.

     I never did receive any recompense for “Conjured”. It was mentioned in Mike Howlett’s book, The Weird World of Eerie Publications (Feral House, 2010) and was included in Startling Mystery Stories: The Stephen King Collection offered up for $1,800 in 2009. Stephen King’s earliest tales had been published in the same magazine. Big deal with this so-called collection. King had two stories included, exactly twice as many as I and any other author within the hoard.

The year ended rather domestically. We had Thanksgiving dinner with Lois’ dad at Ingleneuk Tea House in Swarthmore. It was a quiet, cozy, sedate dining establishment. It didn’t serve alcohol and nothing particular fancy about the food, just kind of establishment American. Some people have described it as “almost like eating in a retirement home.”

It burned down in 2000. (A Inglenook is a corner or recess on the sides of a large, open fireplace, a very cozy place.)

In those years we had Thanksgiving with Lois’ father and Christmas with my folks. (Left, Lois and I  at my parents on Christmas, 1970.)

Joe Rubio got a leave for Christmas and came home on December 16. (Right, Joe at our Philadelphia apartment around Christmas 1970.) He had to be back at Fort Lewis by December 28. His December 10 letter indicated his anticipation of being

home for the holiday, but he seemed a more subdued Joe when he arrived home. They threw a large party at his home for him, but he kind of hung back from the frivolity much of the evening. He seemed somewhat morose. In his letter of December 10 he talked of the short time he had left in the service and of coming home soon for good.

About now I sometimes look back at all the things I’ve done while in the service. Some are good memories, some not so good, but one thing for sure, I’ve learned a lot in my two years.  So when I do get out, I won’t miss the Army, but at the same time I won’t feel bitter about having to spend two years of valuable time in the Army.

Actually, there would be some bitterness and it wouldn’t be until sometime later I learned of the things “not so good”; the things he never put in his letters. Meanwhile, as December waned and the New Year approached, we lost our apartment heat.

Murder, Mayhem & Bombing on the Homefront; Out of Gas in the War Zone

CHAPTER 118

On May 4, 1970, I found full time employment again.  I began working in the Operations Center of a new Philadelphia Financial Institution called Lincoln Bank.  It was located at 33^rd & Cherry Streets underneath a parking lot. The photo to the left is how that location looks today and only the parking lot is still there; everything around it has changed, for the better I might add. 

At one time that parking lot looked like the photo on the right before University City began expanding beyond its original boundaries and today 33rd & Cherry is just another part of the Drexel Institute's campus.  It was not such a pretty an area in 1970,  but it had the advantage that I could walk to work. I lived then on Chester Avenue between 42nd and 41^st Street. I would walk over to 41^st and go north to Chestnut Street, walk down Chestnut to 33^rd Street and then go North again to Cherry.

On the left was the entrance on Cherry Street into the Lincoln Bank Operations Center when I started working there. Not exactly high finance appearing, is it? I'm glad I survived because exhaust from the cars on the lot above would seep down into our offices. Fortunately, it was a rather small lot.

It was approximately a two-mile hike from our apartment and it took me along a corner of the Village as I neared work. The area was named for early Welsh colonists, who owned a number of estates in the area.  The Village was founded in the late 1800 after trolly lines were extended and it quickly became a popular residential area for Philadelphia's wealthy industrial tycoons, but by the 1960s that had long changed and it was inhabited by lower economic classes, with a number of the Victoria twin houses subdivided into apartments. It had a large multiethnic population. In fact, it had become a center for many in the counterculture and was a hot bed of political activity and anarchy.   

During the '70s Powelton would become infamous as a radical Black Liberation group called MOVE established its headquarters at 311 North 33rd Street, about two blocks from where I worked (Pictured left). This was the home of their founder, Vincent Leaphart, who changed his name to John Africa. All the MOVE member adopted the last name of Africa.
By the end of the decade the group became embroiled in a long standoff with the Philadelphia  Police under the direction on then-commissioner, Frank Rizzo. This culminated in a shootout in which one cop was killed, followed by an all out assault on the home with battering rams and water cannons. 
Nine members of Move were sentenced to 100 years in prison for the murder of the police officer; the rest of the group set up a new headquarters and commune at 6221 Osage Avenue. This was to lead to the infamous bombing of that house ordered by Mayor Wilson Goode in 1985, which resulted in the destruction of the whole neighborhood. 

MOVE continues to exist behind their spokesperson, Ramona Africa and they maintain a website.

Only a couple blocks east of where I then worked another home would become infamous.3411 Race Street was the house where Ira Einhorn, who would become known as the Unicorn Killer, lived with the mummified body of his girlfriend Holly Maddux (right), who had disappeared in September 1977.

Her partially mummified body was discovered in the spring of 1979 when neighbors complained of a stench coming from Einhorn's  home. Police found her remains in a closet, stuffed into a trunk. (The pictures below are rather graphic, be warned.) Ira had killed her in 1977, stuffed her naked body in a truck and kept the remains in a closet of his home

You may remember Einhorn”s name appeared earlier in my story because it was rumored he owned the first peep show that had appeared on Walnut Street. In April of 1970, not very much before I landed the job along the Powelton Village border, Einhorn had been hosting the first Earth Day event and claiming he was the founder of Earth Day. (Right)

Anyway, you can see I walked through and to a rather eclectic and colorful neighborhood.

Here is what I wrote Joe Rubio on May 7, 1970:

I’m working steady again. I am in the accounting department of the Lincoln National Bank (SIC – National was never part of its name, it was just Lincoln Bank). I take care of the General ledger and issue the statement of accounts daily. I started Monday (May 4). The hours are 8 to 4, 37 3/4 hours a week. I think I get twelve holidays. Let’s see…they give free life insurance, hospitalization and a low cost pay continuance insurance, and a share plan, which is something like Atlantic’s thrift plan. You buy shares in the bank and the bank matches every dollar you put in. For every ninety days without being sick I can have either a day’s pay or a day off. We get a Christmas bonus; 2 ½% of our yearly salary the first year, 5% the second year and up 1% each year afterward until it reaches 8%. We also get free banking services.  Not too bad, eh?

I will be up for a raise after six months. I am sort of a management trainee. They gave me seven hours of tests to get the job, a special management testing consultant firm gave the tests. They said I did very well in all aspects, as happened at Atlantic. I am being asked to help get another guy’s desk caught up. I have been working four days and have in 39 hours and I am working Saturday.

My VW still was not working. On June 10 I apparently rented a car and Lois and I took a little trip. I do not remember where we went or for how long. I searched through my files and could not find any more information on this journey. A week prior, however, I rented a truck in order to get our refrigerator, which we had put in storage. The one in our apartment had had it.
You know something, it is not east moving a refrigerator about the countryside alone. I had a hand truck supplied by U-Haul, but a full sized refrigerator is a heavy and awkward thing. I had no problem rolling it out of the storage bin and up the ramp into the truck, where I secured it in the middle of the bed with ropes. I had no problem rolling it off the truck and up the street to the apartment building, but I was stymied trying to lug it up the steps in front. Fortunately, that group of Black Panthers that met in our lobby was there. They saw me struggling and some of them came down and helped pull my refrigerator up into the lobby. From there to the apartment was no problem for me.

About this time my mother had to go into the Phoenixville Hospital for tests. She had found a lump on her breast. She seems to have received treatment for breast cancer, but I never knew this at the time. I only found out from going through papers after she died in 2012. I really don’t know how extensive her cancer was. The treatments were obviously successful and she never had anything as radical as a mastectomy. (Left, my mom and dad, 1970)

At work I was being trained on my Supervisor’s job so I could take over if she went on vacation or was out for any reason.

Joe Rubio came home on leave July 6. We had a few days together, playing Chip ‘n’ Putt near West Chester and hitting Jimmie John’s for hot dogs and fries before he had to return to Army duty. He was done with Vietnam, but still had several months remaining of his hitch. He flew out to Fort Lewis, Washington for the remainder. As far as I knew he had come through the war unscathed and without seeing much action, for this was the impression his letters gave. I didn’t fully learn of his wounding and close calls until he was fully discharged.

On August 20 we got a ride to my parent’s home and stayed with my grandmother. My folks were away on a vacation trip and she was alone in the house and she was scared to death. The night before somebody had been throwing stones at the windows. Whoever did this did not return Saturday night nor anytime again, so we never found out who was responsible.

We were back on the 22nd in a U-Haul Truck. We went to Lois’ father’s house and got our bedroom suite. We were preparing to a move form out studio apartment to a two-bedroom. Our current lease was up on August 31.

Mid-way through August one evening there was a knock on our door. I opened the door and two young men were standing there.

“Ah, you must be Mr. Meredith,” one said, both of them smiling broadly.

At that time Lois stepped out of the kitchen behind me. The smiles left their faces and the speaker’s voice fell to a minor key as he said, “And you must be Mrs. Meredith?”

(Mrs. Meredith in 1970.)

They quickly introduced themselves. They were two Gay guys (although they really didn’t introduce themselves as such) that had purchased The Commodore from the elderly lady we had rented from. They had big plans to completely renovate the place, put in all modern kitchens and bathrooms, etc. They were calling on us to tell us who they were, but also to offer us a two-bedroom apartment at the end of the hall. It was currently being upgraded and would be ready by September 1 for occupancy, if we were interested. I think the rent was $110 a month, twenty dollars more than our $90 studio.

We said yes.

In early September I had my three-month review at Lincoln Bank. It was my best so far and I was getting a raise early. I wasn’t told how much, but my boss said it would be at least $5.00; although he was going to try to get me more.

I went back up to Temple and registered for the Fall Semester. What a mess that was! The line was two blocks long and five abreast. It took me all of three hours to get through. I went up to the campus at 3:00 and got back home at some time after 7:30 that evening. I guess it really took four hours. What an unholy menagerie! There were students from pillar to post and absolutely nobody knew what they were doing. You had to argue and fight for every class, but I got through it. The only problem with waiting until the last night of the process is too many courses were filled. I am hoping next time I can receive pre-registration forms so I don’t have to battle the crowds again.

I had to go back on Thursday night to pay my first tuition installment. That visit was a snap, in and out, hardly anyone milling about. There was no big line outside at all and only short ones inside. It took me three minutes.

My classes began the next Wednesday, less than a week after registration. I started with English 9e that night, which was Intermediate Composition. Thursdays I had History 51e or American History from the Colonial Days to 1877 as my early class and then Sociology 11e, whih is American Society, as my late class. Beginning the following Monday was my last choice from 4:30 to 6:30, Music Appreciation 61e. This is supposed to be an easy course to ace.

On the first weekend of the semester the Black Panthers held a convention at Temple. We had some trouble in Philly all week, it even made the network news. Being trapped between Rizzo’s cops and the Panthers is scary and I could have done without either; although the Black Panthers had helped me with that refrigerator. Rizzo never did that for me.

Joe wrote that he was busy as well:

You see we have to get 75% of all our vehicles ready for storage since we can’t use them. It seems the 3^rd Cav has run out of money and this is causing a fuel shortage because there is no money to buy fuel. So now we have to get all our tracks into overall condition before they can be put in storage.

No wonder we lost that war. How do you fight an enemy if you can’t afford to fuel up your fighting vehicles? You see we have to get 75% of all our vehicles ready for storage since we can’t use them. It seems the 3^rd Cav has rub out of money and this is causing a fuel shortage because there is no money to buy fuel. So now we have to get all our tracks into overall condition before they can be put in storage.