Punk Rock Blitzkrieg Read online

  On one particularly boring day, a friend had a cool idea to take a bunch of pillows and blankets, tie them together, and make a human dummy. We did a pretty good job considering we weren’t pros. We carried the dummy up to the roof of our building and waited for a passerby.

  Timing was everything. When someone was walking along the sidewalk about fifty feet away from our target, we would toss the dummy over the parapet wall and scream at the top of our lungs like someone jumped. It worked. When you had less than a second to look up and figure out what was happening, it really looked like a falling body. People flipped out.

  One time we nailed a young couple carrying grocery bags. As the dummy plummeted to his “death,” the man and the woman both dropped their bags, and the groceries rolled all over the sidewalk and the street. Up on the roof we laughed so hard our eyes watered and our stomachs hurt. It was one of those laughs where you weren’t sure you were going to be able to breathe ever again. If it wasn’t for the parapet wall, I think we might have rolled off the roof and wound up like the dummy.

  The dummy always lived to see another day, and we kept getting better at throwing him. One time we threw him way out to the middle of Ditmas Avenue in front of an oncoming ’55 Plymouth. The driver hit the brakes hard and skidded just short of running over the dummy’s head. The problem was that the driver and the passenger both hit their own heads on the dashboard. The other problem was the size of the driver. He was huge. And he was pissed off. He stepped out of the car, looked up, and spotted us up on the roof. It didn’t help that we were laughing, but we stopped laughing when he shouted he was coming up there to throw us into the street next.

  We disappeared fast onto the rear fire escape, down the building stairway, anywhere to safety like a bunch of roaches scattering when the light comes on. There were places to hide in the basement. I came out when I figured it was safe. Whenever I thought about the stuff we did, I told myself that if you were a kid living in Brooklyn, getting in trouble was your job. Eventually the dummy got kind of beat-up and the prank got old, so we moved on to other things.

  I had a friend named Joel who lived in the building. He was a chubby kid. We hung out all the time, and Joel would do whatever the rest of us were doing. There was an empty lot close to our building where a bunch of us kids would go to have rock fights. One time I hit Joel with a rock and blood squirted out of his head like a fire hydrant. It was like a scene from a horror movie. One of the kids knew enough to apply pressure to the wound and stop the gusher. Amazingly, Joel didn’t need stitches.

  Another time Joel and I were in a neighbor’s yard trying to squeeze between two one-car garages to get to another yard, but Joel’s big belly got stuck and he started to cry. I wanted to help him, but I was laughing so hard I was pretty useless. As I stopped laughing, I told him maybe we’d have to get a crane and fish him out. Or maybe we’d have to demolish one of the garages. Or maybe he would just have to lose some weight. Finally, I got him to stop crying and relax a little, and we wriggled him out. The next day, he told me his mother wouldn’t let him play with me anymore.

  Not long after that, I was playing in my room with a kid named Robert, who I really didn’t like that much. We were darting and jumping around the room and throwing whatever we could get our hands on. At one point I was on the top bunk and grabbed an old wooden milk crate off a shelf. I tossed it down to Robert, who tried to catch it and missed. One of the metal edges on the box caught him in the head.

  Blood was everywhere. It was like the sequel to the horror movie with Joel—this time indoors with blood shooting all over the blankets and the walls. A few days later, I ran into Robert with a Band-Aid on his forehead, and he told me he wasn’t allowed to play with me anymore. This became a pattern in my neighborhood. Ten years old and I had a reputation. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t deserved. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I was just out to have some fun.

  PS 217 was strict. In the morning we had to line up in the schoolyard and march into the building, grade by grade, like an army. Boys were required to wear a tie, a button-down shirt, and a sport jacket. For girls, the dress code was a skirt with dress shoes. The girls wound up looking like miniature versions of their mothers. Sneakers were forbidden for boys or girls except in gym.

  In the classroom, seating was in size order with the short kids at the front and the tall kids in the back. The desks were made of old dark wood that looked like it had been there from the day the school was built or maybe before. To get into your seat, you had to flip the desktop. There was a groove at the top for pens and pencils, and an inkwell with a brass lid. There were so many names carved into the desk that there were names carved over older names. Maybe if I looked hard enough, I could find Mom’s and Dad’s.

  Every day started with us standing, placing our right hands over our hearts, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Once we sat down and started the lesson, we were expected to remain silent unless called upon. If anyone made a sound or caused any disruption, they’d be punished. That usually meant standing in the corner and facing the wall. I had the corner memorized—the little crack, the missing paint chips. Usually the teacher would also call your parents and let them know you had behaved badly.

  Once every week or two, a loud bell would ring, and we would do an emergency drill in case an atomic bomb was dropped. A few years earlier, the Soviet Union had developed its own atomic weapons, so we were expected to live on high alert. The drill was called “duck and cover.” There was even a goofy civil defense movie by the same name. The teachers marched us all into the auditorium and made us watch Bert the Turtle show us how to survive a nuclear holocaust. There were kids in the movie about our age, dressed neatly like us, who saw a flash of light in the sky. Instead of freaking out, they all calmly crawled under their desks, knelt down, and covered the backs of their heads and necks with their hands and shirt collars.

  It was hard not to laugh. Like squatting under a table was going to do anything in a massive atomic blast. But we did what they did, because what we were afraid of was not getting fried by a radioactive shock wave but getting sent to the corner to look at the wall. If we ever did see a flash of light in the sky and knew what was coming, I doubt we would have been quiet or gotten under the desks. I mean, this was Brooklyn.

  From the late fifties into the early sixties, things were pretty stable from year to year. That included our school, which stayed just about the same. The only thing that was changing was my attitude, which was getting more negative every semester. I was a hyper kid to begin with, so I had a really hard time sitting still. I’d bang on the desk, melt crayons on the radiator, and constantly disrupt the class. I was fidgety. I had a hard time paying attention, and my mind would drift off. The teachers called my parents in so often that it got to be a drill—as stupid as duck and cover.

  My father would sit me down and try to talk to me about my behavior. He’d explain how important education was and that it’s something I’d benefit from later in life. “It may not seem important now, but when you grow up, you’ll understand.” He meant well, but it didn’t have much of an effect once I was back in the classroom, bored and drifting off.

  But there were still some cool teachers, even if most of them ended up yelling to get their point across. And I did like certain subjects. I liked to read, so I always got an A in English. Science was cool, too. Just like with the train set at home, I enjoyed trying to figure out how things worked. I was able to do well if I was really interested in something and was allowed to move at my own pace.

  That was the reason I entered the fifth-grade science fair. I built a three-stage rocket out of wood and galvanized steel. It wasn’t a working model, just my idea of what the inside of a spaceship might have looked like based on all the sci-fi movies and news stories I saw. My ship was split open in the middle, like a cross section, so anyone could look in and see the controls, the seats, and the living quarters. My dad helped, but I was the captain, and the project took first place. F
or the sixth-grade fair, I built a working telegraph system with wires, a tapping machine, and two large Eveready batteries. The telegraph was combined with a model train set to look more impressive. That project took first prize, too.

  All of this made my parents very happy and made up for some of the other problems I was having. They knew I had potential. But it didn’t always carry through the way they would have liked. I didn’t care much for history, because as far as I was concerned, that was for people living in the past. I was more concerned about the present. Math was one of my least favorite subjects. I knew the basics, and that was good enough for me. I could figure out the change when I was buying candy, and I didn’t think there would ever come a day when I would need to use a polynomial.

  Sometimes I didn’t need to worry about how much a Hershey bar cost because I stole it. We lived about ten blocks from PS 217. In the morning, on the walk to school, I’d usually stop at Maudie and Eddy’s candy store, slip something small from a shelf into my pocket, and walk out. Until one day about three steps from the door, right near the newspaper stacks, Maudie grabbed me by the wrist. His hand was like a vise grip, probably from many years of moving boxes and stacking shelves. I knew Maudie wasn’t about to let me go under any circumstance, so I punched him in the stomach and ran out of the store. I decided never to come back to the store, but really only to avoid Maudie. My mistake was getting caught. I saw other kids stealing candy all the time, so I didn’t consider it a big deal.

  One day in class, my friend Sandy Stock and I waited for the teacher to turn his back on the class and we nailed him with a couple of spitballs, which were small rolled-up paper balls soaked in saliva. The teacher wheeled around quickly, but we were even quicker. We did this a few times until he finally faked us out and caught us in the act. I was the head troublemaker, so he started yelling at me in front of the class. I thought the teacher would calm down after a minute or so, but he actually got louder, walked right up to my desk, and got in my face. I felt attacked, so I punched him in the stomach like I did to Maudie.

  There was no running away this time. The teacher grabbed me by my arm and dragged me out of the classroom, down the hall. He opened the door to the science storage room, shoved me inside, and locked the door behind me. The room was a small concrete-and-steel prison cell filled with test tubes, which I started knocking off the shelves and smashing to bits, kind of like Frankenstein. When I got through with the test tubes, I moved on to throwing books, Bunsen burners, and anything that wasn’t nailed down.

  The storage room door opened, and the teacher stood in the doorway. I knew I had crossed a line and thought that might be the end for me at PS 217 or anywhere. Instead, the teacher asked me to step out into the hallway. He calmed me down, reasoned with me, and explained that we didn’t have to go another step down this path. He said there was no reason the principal or my parents had to know anything about this. It would just be history and never happen again. I thought he was the coolest teacher who ever lived.

  Record albums were too expensive for a young kid to buy, but I would scrounge together enough money once in a while to buy a single, which was a small disc that spun forty-five revolutions per minute. The first single I ever bought was Sheb Wooley’s “The Purple People Eater.” The song was about a Martian who came to earth and joined a rock-and-roll band. He was purple with a long horn on his head, which he used to blow out rock music. I thought that was a pretty cool story.

  Since I was a big sci-fi fan, the lyrics and the story they told were as important as the music. I was also into all the monster movies I saw in theaters and on TV. On television, Chiller Theatre and The Twilight Zone were my favorites. On The Twilight Zone, there was always more than just a good sci-fi story. There was usually a real point to it. In one episode, a bookworm bank teller locks himself in the bank vault so he can read without being disturbed. While he’s in there, an atomic bomb is dropped. When the teller steps out of the vault, he’s actually glad that everything and everyone is gone so he has nothing but time and books. Then, as he begins to read, his glasses fall off and break.

  For Christmas 1961, my parents bought me my first transistor radio. It might have been the happiest day of my life. I loved that radio. It was an RCA 3RH10 transistor. It was AM only, as FM was just getting started. It was very basic—small enough to hold in your hand with one big dial in front for tuning. On the side was the volume control dial along with a small port to plug in an earphone.

  A whole new world opened up for me. Murray “the K” Kaufman was the big DJ on 1010 WINS. He was a real character, all over the place cracking jokes, playing sound effects, pulling pranks. In 1966, Murray the K worked at WOR-FM, one of the first progressive rock radio stations ever, and was still occasionally calling himself the fifth Beatle. It wasn’t true in 1964, and it was even less true in 1966. There were dozens of people who might have laid one claim or another to that title—producer George Martin and, later, keyboard player Billy Preston and even John Lennon’s controversial other half, Yoko Ono. Murray the K was not near the top of that list.

  Bruce Morrow (“Cousin Brucie”) and Dan Ingram were to the left on the dial over at 770 WABC, a very powerful station in terms of wattage and musical influence. The guys at WABC were fast-talking and clever, leading you in and out of a song as if they were part of it but without stepping on the lyrics. These DJs were smooth. They were breaking new, exciting groups like the Four Seasons and Jay and the Americans. The airwaves were like one big party.

  In the summer of ’62, the song “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett was released. Pickett sang like Frankenstein’s monster would have sung if he could. It was funny and catchy with a good rocking beat. Not only that, Frankenstein was my favorite monster movie of all time. I loved the way the monster was pieced together from body parts. I listened to my transistor every second I could that summer and into the fall hoping I would catch “Monster Mash.” I also built a little radio holder for the handlebars of my bicycle. I was hooked.

  At night, I’d listen to the radio under the covers in bed. If it was too loud and Fred was trying to sleep, I’d use the small plastic earphone that came with the radio. AM radio waves traveled thousands of miles at night. Sometimes I’d pick up a station from California, Texas, or even Mexico. I had the planet at my fingertips, so it was really hard to switch off the radio. Usually, I would fall asleep with the earphone still in my ear.

  On February 20, 1962, our fourth-grade class along with all the other classes filed into the auditorium to watch astronaut John Glenn lift off from Cape Canaveral and try to circle the earth aboard Friendship 7. All eyes were on a black-and-white Zenith TV set not more than about twenty-five inches across. This was sci-fi come to life. When the countdown was through and the rocket launched, you could see and feel the power even on that little screen. As the ship passed through the thick part of the atmosphere, the normally calm newsman Walter Cronkite actually shouted out, “Go, baby!” That’s how exciting it was.

  No American had ever been in space more than about fifteen minutes, and over the next five hours John Glenn circled the earth three times. Reentering the atmosphere was not a sure thing. There was a real chance that the ship’s heat shield would fail and Friendship 7 would go up in flames. For about a minute or two—which seemed more like an hour—there was a blackout. There was no signal from the capsule, and you knew you might never hear from John Glenn again. When the ship came back into focus and you could hear the astronaut’s voice, we all stood up and cheered. It was more than just a sigh of relief. It was a thrilling moment when we were all on the same team. You don’t forget that feeling.

  The summer of ’63 was special. My dad customized a Volkswagen camper to look like our kitchen at home. We drove that “kitchen” cross-country. The engine was air-cooled and only 40 horsepower, so you couldn’t push a Volkswagen camper over fifty-five miles per hour for too long. Including the stops we made in the Midwest, we took about two weeks to work our way across th
e US. We stayed at campgrounds, hiked, caught little fish in streams, learned the names of trees, and soaked in nature. I had my transistor radio with me, so no matter where I slept, I was still at home listening to all the latest hits.

  When we stopped in town there were sometimes signs in store windows that said “Whites Only.” But for the most part, people were really friendly and happy to talk to us. I got a sense of how big America really was and how much there was to see outside Brooklyn. It was endless. I liked the road.

  The road ended in San Francisco. The camper barely made it to California and needed major work if we hoped to make it back east. We didn’t have the money to pay for an overhaul. But we did have the longshoremen. The union was very strong—a real nationwide community. We were able to stay with union friends for a couple of weeks while my father picked up a temporary job on the docks. In the end, the van was fixed, we took care of the bill, and we headed east again. For me, the change of plans and how we handled it wasn’t a problem. It was an adventure.

  On November 22, 1963, I was in my sixth-grade class when one of the other teachers walked into the room and told us that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Our teacher started crying and when they saw her, a few of the girls in our class burst out in tears, too. I was sure my mom would be doing the same thing. President Kennedy was a star—a young, brilliant man so many people connected with. Kennedy was not a typical president. He was always talking about the need for change. I felt sad, especially watching the girls around me crying. But it was one of those days, like most days, when I just didn’t want to be at school. A thought popped into my head. I hope we’re dismissed early. And we were.

  When my parents got home late that afternoon, it was like the president was assassinated a second time. My mom and dad were big supporters of Kennedy. They believed in equal rights and equal opportunity and in the idea that America’s best days were ahead. My parents were crushed. You could see it in their every step, and it stayed with them for a long time.