Grandma's Been There

Summer days were long, lazy and dreamy. We were content to spend most of our school vacation outside eating ice cream, drinking sodas and playing with friends on the avenue, going no further than the corner store or the playground on the next block. But on a Saturday or Sunday, or during those two short weeks our fathers were on vacation from their jobs in July or August, we stepped out. All we wanted to know when we got up in the morning was, “Where are we going today?”

In January 1968, my favorite band, The Byrds released an album called The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Life-long fans like me referred to it as “the Notorious album.” One of the tracks on the album was “Draft Morning,” a song about a young man, a draftee who was in no hurry to be shipped off to Viet Nam and commanded to kill people, a command that came from faces unknown to him. 

When we were kids, it was common for us to ask each other, “What are you?” What we were actually asking was, “What nationality are you? Where’s your family from?”

Even as a child, I was in love with the seasons, their unique personalities and the different things they did to get our attention. But if you asked me what my favorite season was, I didn’t even have to think about it. “Summer!” I said, just like every other kid I knew. Why would you even have to ask?

The reason I have so many stories about my father from my own childhood and from the stories he told me about his years as a kid is because of my exceptional memory—the one I’m always bragging about in these episodes, the one I inherited from him.

I’m a June baby, one of Cancer’s moon children born right after the longest day of the year. In other words, I’m lucky enough to be able to celebrate my birthday right as the summer begins.  

Before I even became a teenager, there were plenty of banned rock and roll records out there. Many of them were in my own record cabinet. 

When we were kids, the adults in our lives wanted to be sure we understood that honesty was always the best policy. But how was that concept supposed to sink in when they were constantly lying to us? 

When I was a year old, I still hadn’t grown any hair. My mother Scotch taped a bow to the top of my bald head so I would look less like a little boy in girls’ clothing. As a teenager in high school, I loved my waist-length hair and couldn’t understand why my teachers hated it and wanted me to cut it off.

In March of 1968, Bill Graham opened The Fillmore East. Though it only lasted three years, it would be hailed by both musicians and concert goers  as the most unforgettable and  greatest rock venue of all time. This month marks the 58th anniversary of the first of countless visits I made to The Fillmore East. I was so incredibly lucky to experience that place, so this week I want to tell you a bit about the man who made it all happen and gave me some of the best memories of my young life. 

Brooklyn mothers like mine always found a way to make it all happen for their families. These women that grew up in the Great Depression and came of age during a world war were filled with resilience and ingenuity. The iconic “We can do it!” attitude of Rosie the Riveter endured in our mothers long after the war was over. 

As a thirteen-year-old, I prayed for one Greenwich Village folksinger or one barefoot East Village poet to stray across the Manhattan Bridge and start an artistic community in my neighborhood. Everything worth seeing and hearing was in Manhattan. What was wrong with Brooklyn?