posted by Evi on Oct 18
One of my most memorable days when I was about 16 years old back in 1963 was the August day I spent in NYC with a girlfriend. We took the Long Island Rail Road in to Penn Station and from there wandered all over the place ending up in Greenwich Village. We may have taken a subway to get there, but I really don’t remember.
I remember wearing a street length blue flowered muumuu and thinking how comfortable I felt because nobody really cared what you wore there. This was still during the days of the ’Beat Generation’ and folk singers and the idea of being in Greenwich Village was just so-o-o romantic. I could picture myself living in a coldwater flat on MacDougal Street, spending the bleak winter days writing poetry and short stories and maybe a novel or two. I would even stretch my own canvases (we learned that in art class) and set up an easel by the window and paint. Actually, placing the canvas on the floor and splattering paint all over it like Jackson Pollack was more my speed. But anyway, those were my dreams.
So, my friend Robin and I explored the village and the mews. We found a small bookstore in Washington Square where I bought of book of poetry – Baba Yar – by a poet named Yevtushenko. I remember sitting on a park bench in Washington Square Park on that beautiful, sunny August day reading my book.
Later that day, we caught a subway to the tennis stadium in Forest Hills, Queens. We were the proud possessors of tickets to the 1963 Forest Hills Music Festival concert featuring Joan Baez. I just loved Joan; she was one of the greatest folk singers of that time. We were there along with about 14,700 (according to the NY Times) other cheering people. That evening Joan introduced Bob Dylan and they sang both separately and in duets. I remember thinking how Dylan couldn’t sing and I do remember some people booing him. Little did we know he would become a major player in the music industry.
While at the concert, others were smoking cigarettes (at least I think they were cigarettes) around us and Robin and I discussed the pros and cons of taking up smoking. It just seemed so sophisticated and, yes, ‘beat’. (I don’t know if she ever started, but the following year I took up that nasty habit and it took me 23 years before I finally kicked it.)
Later that night her father, an airline pilot, picked us up at the stadium on his way home from work and took us home. To this day, I still treasure these memories.
Just don’t ask me to move into a cold water flat anytime soon.
Leave a Reply