Charlie

Like so many of the jobs described here, it was a summer job between high school graduation and leaving for college. My father pulled some strings to get me a job in a paper box factory, cleaning the huge printing machines. It wasn't that hard, but was incredibly dirty, and I had to take long showers when I got home. It also happened to be the first summer that I was sexually active, so I was super attentive to my grooming, and getting the ink off me wasn't always easy. The following summer my father got me the same kind of job in a different factory. The third summer I got my own job, and I made sure it was a clerical job in an office, but ironically it was in....a printing ink factory. However, the dirtiest job I ever experienced was not as a worker. When I was working in Czechoslovakia many years later, I was asked for advice about marketing coal by the manager of a coal mine. For some reason, he felt that we should see the full operation, so I spent one whole day underground, dressed like a miner and dragging around heavy equipment through the water and sludge and coal dust. I wasn't doing any mining myself, but I have never been more exhausted at the end of the day. It greatly increased my respect for what a coal miner endures to make a living.

All the relations that I felt close to--parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins--are deceased. The few surviving cousins that I care about at all live far from me, and our only contacts are through occasional emails.

Paramus is a town in Bergen County. I should ask one of my high school classmates, who is now head of the city council there, if they still have blue laws, but I doubt it.

Gimbel's was in Philadelphia as well. That's where we bought the living room sofa that we are still using here in Palm Springs.

I remember discussing the 9/11 events on this site as they were happening.

My best friend's mother worked for S&H stamps, and the house was full of things she got at work, like TV tray tables for eating dinner while watching Jack Benny and Ed Sullivan.

Hell, I saw John Glenn's landing after he became first American to orbit the Earth in 1962; I watched live on TV in a gay bar while I was cruising. I missed the moon walk, because I was cruising in the Meat Rack on Fire Island that night. (Do I detect a pattern here?)

For years we bought sensible cheap Toyotas every three years. Then in 1985 we made a windfall profit on the sale of a property, and I wanted to put the money in our retirement account. My spouse said, "For once in my life, I want to own a really nice car. I want a Mercedes." He was 50 years old. So I made a deal; I said, "I will agree to buy a Mercedes, if you agree to keep it for several years instead of buying another new car in only a few years." So we did buy a Mercedes. And nine years later we bought another one. And then another one.....

The invention of calculators reminds me of the invention of the ball point pen. When they first appeared, teachers in my school wouldn't allow us to use them; we still had to dip our steel-tip pens in the liquid ink in the ink bottles on our desks.

Not only gas--very few stores of any kind were open on Sundays. In Philadelphia, bars were closed on Sundays when I first started going to them there in the mid-1960s. The only alcohol that could be served on Sunday was in private clubs or restaurants with a liquor license.

I remember my father teaching a friend's wife how to drive on their new brown 1949 Nash.

I ate many lunches at the Woolworth's on Market St in Philadelphia when I worked downtown.

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I seem to refer to it more often when I am on this site.

Sending CARE packages to Europe. Truman beating Dewey. Our first post-War car (1947 Pontiac). Our first car with turn signals (1952 Pontiac). Black and white TV with only three channels. Watching the Miss America pageant on TV every year in the 1950s. Going to Dodgers games at Ebbets Field and Giants games at the Polo Grounds. Phones with party lines and live operators. Lying in bed worrying about whether World War III would start if the Chinese bombed Kemoy and Matsu. Girls wearing plastic pop-beads. Kids with polio in "iron lungs." No zip codes or area codes. The US Senate had only 96 members. Water fountains in Virginia that were marked "White Only." World maps that showed most of Africa as European colonies. My parents finally paying off the 30 year $3500 mortgage on our home.

Our eyes met one night as we were walking in opposite directions on a deserted boardwalk, and--bingo! We were rutting like a pair of wild animals for about ten minutes. Then we pulled ourselves together, exchanged a few pleasantries, kissed good-bye, and continued to our destinations.

It's a shame that they didn't use historically accurate condoms made of animal intestines.

I would enjoy that. It would be like watching The Rocky Horror Show, with the audience screaming out the familiar lines. Did I ever mention that I had sex with Casey Donovan once on Fire Island? (Oh, I did? Too often? Never mind.)

Perhaps sex workers should be prioritized for vaccinations. But then, lots of attractive young men might immediately start claiming that that they are "versatile escorts" when they are actually totally unavailable. I remember the predictions that AIDS would bring an end to gay promiscuity. How did that work out?

Omg! He had it bronzed!

I can tell you where I have been every night for the past half century, but sometimes I do have to look things up in my records to find the exact details. For instance, on the night of July 4th that year, as the bi-centennial was being celebrated in the US, I was at a performance of Madama Butterfly at La Fenice in Venice; I thought it was interesting that they chose to schedule the most anti-American opera ever written.

If "Husbear" is overused I must really be out of the loop, because this is the first time I have ever heard it.

Duh! Yes, there is a ceremony to make her his official mistress.

I just checked my records; the night of the incident I described at Le Bronx was June 26, 1976.

The incident I mentioned happened in 1976, and I don't think I was ever in Le Bronx after that. I must have been there in earlier years, however, or I wouldn't have known to take him there.