Press photo of Allen Ginsberg, 1971. Unknown Photographer. From my personal archive.
From The Then & Now Journal
...Of course it all starts with The Beats (Jack Kerouac, William S.Burroughs & Allen Ginsberg...) who I'd been reading since I was 15 years old...
And there was the time I met Allen Ginsberg at William Paterson University in May of 1978, skipping school with friends to attend a reading he was giving there in to honor his home town and Paterson's Great Falls. We were the first and only people in the auditorium when he arrived. He generously came over to us to say hello, politely making small talk. He gave us each catalogs for the upcoming Summer Program at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado at Naropa (then) Institute. I secretly hoped I'd be able to attend Naropa upon HS graduation in 1979. It seemed almost tailor made for me. But in my heart I knew it was impossible. It was totally unrealistic for me to even harbor such a thought. Financially, and in every other way, this was a impossibility. My parents would never be able to afford to send me to college - especially one in Boulder, Colorado offering such an exotic, to say the least, curriculum. My parents were not the kind of people who could do that, let alone guide me through that decision. It just wasn't who they were. My parents were working class people, hard working at that. They had both seen more than their share of struggle. The most they could do was guide me toward gainful employment, instill in me a sense of financial responsibility & a strong work ethic. They were plain, realistic, elemental people. There was much in their combined character to be proud of, such as their innate sense of perseverance.
My parents' generation wasn't one where a college education was a given expectation. Far from it, Post War America was about work. The sentiment of college as a given would come later with the baby boom and the sixties. At my high school it was assumed every graduating student would go on to college. It was a combined school district of three towns that leaned most heavily toward the wealthier (Woodcliff Lake, Upper Montvale) student body. It was as if the standards were created for and by them alone, thus you were treated accordingly. To be honest, at age 18 in 1979 I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself.
Upon graduating high school my parents gave me two choices. Either continue being a Maintenance Man at Mercedes Benz's National Corporate Headquarters (where I had worked nights after school since October 1978 & was offered a full time job by my boss Larry, an alcoholic Elvis Presley look alike) or go to work at The Burroughs Corporation where my mother was a Credit & Billing Clerk and where they manufactured typewriter ribbons & accessories. The choice was a no brainer. Burroughs was closer to home, paid better and I could join the union. Case closed. If I couldn't go to Colorado to study with the Beats, I'd at least work for one of their namesakes.
John Lennon's Working Class Hero
*The Then and Now Journal is a collection of memories, stories, & vignettes about my life prior to moving to NH (and retiring from monetary based work) in June 2023 (Then). Now consists of drawings and sketches of my present day location, and is totally wordless.
