1979 a year of significant change Jan. 8, 1986
I don’t remember precisely where I was on New Year’s Eve
1978 into 1979, only that I was unemployed, and for the first time in years, I
felt content.
I jogged each morning along the river, careless of time,
knowing I had no place I needed to get to except to get home.
A relaxed state so intense I thought only of being free.
Chet and Stella still owned the apartment complex where I
lived. Louis, Jewely, Pauly and Garrick all lived in some of the other apartments,
a kind of extended family or impromptu arts community that would vanish a year
later when the buildings got sold.
The only obligation I had during the first part of 1979 was
to show up at the unemployment office in downtown Passaic to tell them I’d not
found a job, collect my check, then head to New Jersey Bank up the street to cash
it. Sometimes I went to the library after that. Other days, when I didn’t have
to report, I went with Pauly and Garrick to a small diner on Passaic Street,
Garfield, called “Pure Foods,” where we all had breakfast, read The Times or
discussed the possible end of the world (Pauly giving us updates on the latest
environmental disasters).
The beginning of 1979 saw another dramatic change as the band
then called “Sleeper” split up into two bands, Pauly and John forming a duo
called “Winter” (later adding another member Mike for a band called “Stolen
Rolls,” which the other John and the rest of the old band formed a new wave
band called “Shayds.” Although disappointing, the change made sense because “Sleeper”
had tried to be both punk band and conventional band, which while great
musically, also was musical indigestion.
Mike left Stolen Rolls late in 1979, at which time, John and
Pauly hired a drummer named Chip, and changed the name of the band again.
I took up work with “The Shayds” as a roadie, light man
sometimes sound man, and met Chip for the first time when Shayds auditioned him
for their band, later concluding he just didn’t fit the punk image they were
trying to evoke.
For a brief time, in May, my unemployment benefits expired.
Garrick lent me $200 to cover rent, utilities and food, and got me the job with
the Shayds allowing me to pay him back a bit at a time.
Garrick and I worked together most weekends, until the blue
truck broke down and the band had to buy another used van to transport their
equipment.
Garrick decided to work for Winter instead, leaving me to take
his position as Roadie for Shayds full time at night, an under the table job
that would eventually help me get through school.
Perhaps the most significant event that year came when I
decided to go to college, something that evolved out of my time of peace and my
ability to spend long intervals reading. I had dropped out of high school very
early and so I needed to get a GED, taking the test at Montclair State, before
applying for entry to William Paterson College. I applied for grants and
student loans.
The loan came in the mail on August 1, a scary moment since
I was scheduled to help drive my uncle Albert and his family to their new home
in South Carolina and I was scared to leave the check unguarded in my cold-water
flat mailbox. I flew back on a jet, my first flying experience since my brief
stint in the U.S. Army a decade earlier.
Stepping onto the college campus, I felt as if I had stumbled
into a whole different world, so utterly changing the blue-collar pattern of my
life I had adopted for most of the 1970s.
I was determined to learn how to write, finding out almost
from the first day, how little I actually knew about the craft. Although
Professor Mollenkott (one of the prominent English professors and a major
figure in the emerging feminist movement) paid me one of the greatest
complements of my life, telling me I had incredible talent, but said I needed
to learn more and develop it.
I also hoped to meet
someone I could spend the rest of my life with, something intelligent and
ambitious, someone who had a similar vision to mine.
I met a whole new collection of people who would become my
friends, Mary Kay, Roland, Michael and others
By the end of the year, my life had changed so dramatically,
I didn’t recognize myself as the same person I had been.
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