New Paltz Archives - Page 4 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

Valentine’s Day rambling: NECCO

Johnny McDaniel, worked over the years as a miner and milk truck driver, married and divorced Rodger’s mother three times and he loved music

necco.conversation-hearts This being the middle of the month, I thought I’d do some linkage related to love. The first post,from Mark Evanier’s blog, he posted back in June 2018, but I saved it for this day.

Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin “are a splendid union of two very talented people who seem to know absolutely everyone in their profession, their profession being The Theatre. Here’s nine minutes of Jim and Steve singing about their relationship.”

Alumni couple celebrates 75 years of marriage
Dorothy Dever ’43 and Robert Dever ’43 met at SUNY New Paltz – my alma mater – as education students and were married on August 28, 1943, in East Rockaway, N.Y. They are now celebrating 75 years together.

Season 2 of the Love Letters Podcast: taking on a big, complicated, seemingly unanswerable question: How do you meet someone?

Things I loved about the Super Bowl: Gladys Knight’s performance of the national anthem. The NFL at 100 ad. The Democracy Dies in Darkness ad AND a response. What I didn’t love: the game.

Only one of the reasons I loved Frank Robinson, the first black manager in Major League Baseball, who died February 7: he was the Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1961, playing for the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds traded him away after the 1965 season. He was the Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1966, for the Baltimore Orioles.

Rent-a-sister: Coaxing Japan’s hikikomori men out of their bedrooms
Not only do these Japanese young men not date, sometimes they never leave their bedrooms.

This is about familial love: How A Long-Lost Guitar Was A Lesson In Grace And Forgiveness

“Rodger McDaniel was 21 years old when his father died. His dad, Johnny McDaniel, worked over the years as a miner and milk truck driver, married and divorced Rodger’s mother three times – and he loved music.”

As someone commented: “Those Story Corps folks have killed me almost every Friday morning for years. Don’t know why I even bother to wear mascara on Fridays.”

Finally, Chuck wrote: May as well cancel Valentine’s Day now

“The New England Confectionery Company – better known as Necco – went bankrupt last year, and their products and recipes were purchased by an Ohio-based candy company, Spangler, in the bankruptcy sale.

“And Spangler didn’t have enough time to produce enough candy hearts – with their ubiquitous messages of ‘LOVE YOU’ and ‘I DO’ and “CALL ME” and ‘BE MINE’ – in time for the 2019 Valentine’s Day season.

“Now this doesn’t mean that candy hearts won’t be around for the season – I understand two other companies, Sour Patch and Brach’s, will have candy hearts – but let’s face it. They’re not Necco hearts.”

Here’s a confession I don’t know that should make, especially living New England-adjacent. But here goes: I hate those NECCO candies. I think they taste like chalk. I’m so glad to get that off my chest.

LaMBS is 60

Lynn was one of my best friends in college, then we lost touch for a good long while.

When I was in college, I was co-editor of a thrice-weekly newsletter, inexplicably called the Wind Sun News, sponsored by the Student Government. They instituted this publication in no small measure because the editors of The Oracle, the student newspaper, decided that political issues such as American involvement in overthrowing Chile’s Allende in favor of Pinochet were more important to cover than the prosaic issue of college governance.

I had a very good friend then, who I’ll call Lynn, mostly because it was her name. She had been kvetching about turning 20. It was a Wind Sun News night, when a bunch of us would work from 8 or 9 p.m. until around 2 a.m., and occasionally later. Normally, Lynn would be there, but her friend Pam convinced her to go out to dinner with her because she “needed” to talk to Lynn about her relationship with her boyfriend. It was an effective ruse because Pam apparently DID talk to her about the beau.

Lynn came back to the office just before midnight, glum because the staff was still all around, which she assumed meant the newsletter wasn’t done. Except that it WAS done, since the other co-editor, Kevin, and I had hustled to do so, largely that afternoon. The staffers were all there to put together and celebrate Lynn’s birthday.

At some point, around 2:30-2:45 a.m. on what was by then her actual natal day, everyone had left the office except Lynn (who fell asleep on some furniture), a Vietnam vet I’ll call Paul, who was in love with Lynn and kept staring at her, and me who kept watching him. Finally c. 4 a.m., he left. I locked the door and slept on a chair or sofa.

About 7 a.m., Lynn wakes up and says, “Roger?” (It’s pitch-black in the room – no windows – so one can’t see anything). I must be half-awake & say “Yes?” We take the newsletter to the printer, go out and eat breakfast at the Plaza Dinner – not unusual – then later pick up the newsletter to distribute. Lynn was one of my best friends in college, then we lost touch for a good long while. But we’ve been in e-mail contact the last couple years. I always remember her birthday because it’s an arithmetic sentence: 4X14=56.

So happy birthday, Lynn, 40 years after that night still stuck in my memory.

The graphic is a blend of two different iterations of the WSN.

Traipsing thru the theological wilderness

I mean chair-throwing disdain, and I had to referee at least a couple times.

This is a continuation of my own theological wilderness journey, which I wrote about here.

After I broke up with the Okie, I dropped out of college in December 1974 and lived for a semester in Binghamton, which I’ve mentioned, especially how my mom saved me from afar. I was a handful of blocks from the church I grew up in, yet I know I didn’t go there in the winter, which could have at least been a break from my frozen state.

But I must have gone at least once after I was in Boys in the Band in June 1975, a play about gay life. I recall being in the parsonage next door when the male minister had expressed some possible romantic interest in me. It was not upsetting, but it was surprising; I heard much later that he traveled 90 miles, to Syracuse, to meet up with potential connections.

New Paltz

Returning to college in New Paltz, I lived in a coffee house run by the college chaplain, Paul Walley, who had helped me to drop out without academic penalty. I lived there with two guys, both named Mike. Our rotating job was every Saturday night, to make the mulled cider and host folks who would sing there, and clean up before and after.

I remember only three things about that time. One was an unrequited love. Well, that was probably overstated, since she probably didn’t even know. I do recall a bunch of us singing Take Me To The Limit, and I must have had a drink or two because I could hit the upper harmony.

One of the Mikes, the dark-haired one, performed the 18-minute Alice’s Restaurant Massacree at the coffeehouse. Oh, and Mike and Mike HATED each other, for reasons I didn’t understand, with a great passion. I mean chair-throwing disdain, and I had to referee at least a couple of times, and finally had to get Rev. Walley to intercede.

After finishing college in May of 1976, I was depressed and directionless. I recall opening the passenger-side door of a friend’s car, while it was traveling 20 mph, threatening to exit the vehicle, though I did not.

1977 – the year of my discontent

Eventually, I found my way to my parents’ sofa in Charlotte, NC in early 1977. If they went to church, I did too, to one of the AME Zion churches, the same denomination I used to attend back in Binghamton. It was “nice,” But it was all rather perfunctory. I knew all the words by heart, but they had ceased to MEAN very much.

Though, in fact, there was a time that the parents were doing flea markets a lot and did not go to church much, which was fine by me. I didn’t much enjoy the flea market, because some of the competing vendors seemed to take an instant dislike for me because I used words with more than two syllables.

By the summer, I had made my way north, hitchhiking from Charlotte to Binghamton, where I stayed briefly. Then I crashed on the sofa of my sister Leslie and her then-husband Eric in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Eric had a new agey quasi-theology that was too fuzzy for me.

My part-time job in Manhattan, somewhere in the 50s, was as a telemarketer, selling TV Guides to former subscribers, and the annual version of the Encyclopedia Americana, or was it Brittanica, to those who already owned sets. I worked 6 pm until midnight, four or five nights a week, calling the west coast in the later hours.

I had a LOT of time on my hands during the day, especially since my sister was modeling in Boston quite often. I’d take the subway, well, everywhere it’d go, and I became rather expert at it in the three or four months I lived there.

One day, somewhere near Macy’s, on 34th Street in Manhattan, some waifish blonde young woman started talking to me about something – I didn’t catch on right away, as she was rather cute – and did I want to come up to their house in the Bronx and learn more?

Very soon thereafter, I traipsed up to the Bronx building, which looked more like a residence. It was the local headquarters for the Unification Church, known derisively as the Moonies, after its founder, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who had founded the denomination in Korea in 1954. A handful of non-followers were there with the believers, and we’d always have something to eat, as we engaged in rather interesting philosophical discussions about life’s meaning.

Pretty much from the second visit on, the Moonies including the aforementioned blonde woman, wanted me to come up to their place upstate, though they never specified where it was. I’m now assuming they meant the Unification Theological Seminary, in Barrytown, Dutchess County, NY. I was always “too busy,” but the truth was that I was nervous about the religion’s cult image, and charges of brainwashing. When I moved out of my sister’s place in September, the flirtation with the Moonies ended.

Next time: what SHOULD have been the most significant religious event in my life.

Pooey! Others’ significant others, and my roommates

I ain’t gonna work and I ain’t gonna study, Just gonna toke up with my buddy.

I believe this is the end of the Ask Roger Anything questions for this round:

New York Erratic queries:

What have been your best and worst room mates?

Oh, I’ve had a LOT of bad roommates. In New Paltz, NY, I had two guys, both named Mike, who, for some reason, hated each other. I mean, throwing chairs at each other disdain. I ended having to play interlocutor for them.

Any of my roommates who smoked inside; that was a drag. (Pardon the pun.)

I had one roomie who wasn’t bad, but his estranged wife calling at 4 a.m. was no fun.

I was in loco parentis for a 17-year-old when I was 25. THAT was a mistake. And the third roommate was an artist, so when I’d walk into our apartment, I’d get yelled at by people I didn’t even know because it made some nude model in the living room, who I didn’t even know would be there, cold.

Romantic entanglements muddle the question. There have been people who were great in sharing the space, but emotional stuff got in the way. Or conversely, the Wife, who is otherwise great, but puts away my stuff so that, not only I can’t find it, but SHE cannot.

My best roomie was probably my first one in college, Ron, who was tidy without being oppressive, and we left each other’s stuff alone.

When someone has a pooey spouse or SO, what do you do? Butt in, say nothing, or some other option? Why?.

Pooey? Really? What does that mean?

Well, it depends on what way they are “pooey” AND how my friend feels about it. Are they just loud, or obnoxious, or have crummy politics? I can overlook that.

If my friend has a jerk for a boyfriend, I’m not going to say anything, unless he/she brings it up. That is unless I believe the friend is in danger of being harmed, or kids in their care might be imperiled.

I’ve actually been in the situation a few times, usually women in relationships with men who were not worthy of their time and energy, though the reverse has also been true. The guys were emotionally abusive, but not physically.

There’s always that tricky line between being helpful, and being patronizing. Adults have the right to make bad decisions unless real damage is possible. And what is “real damage”? One tends to decide this on a case-by-case basis.

Now, I have also been involved when someone was actually abusive and was supportive in getting her away from him.

You wanna give me some examples?
***
Arthur inquires:

What ONE thing always pops into you head when you think of your university years?

For some reason, the phrase “your university years” made me wish I had a tweed jacket.

Anyway, it is the college alma mater:

New, New, New Paltz…
New, New, New Paltz…
New Paltz is good enough for me.
I ain’t gonna work and I ain’t gonna study,
Just gonna toke up with my buddy,
New Paltz is good enough for me!!!!!!

OK, it wasn’t the alma mater. In fact, I could not tell you the NAME of the alma mater, if you offered me a million dollars. THIS song, though, was well known on campus in the 1970s, since it was such a druggy school, and, as it turns out, it still is. This news surprised me because the narrative is that the administration was “cleaning up” the school.
***
Thanks to all of you who participated!

40 years ago: the Student Government held hostage

As the only ethnic minority on the Financial Council, I was one of the folks selected to negotiate.

I got elected to the Financial Council at the State University of New York at New Paltz in the spring of 1974 but didn’t take office until the fall. We passed a budget, which was, I’m guessing, only incrementally different from the previous year’s.

This displeased two student groups, the Black Student Union and Hermanos Latinos. So much so, that one night while we were meeting, they sat in our offices, refusing to leave until the groups got in their allocations the percentage of funds equivalent to the percentage of blacks and Hispanics on campus.

Don’t know what that was then; the school is now 5% black, and that was probably about the same then, but it’s 12% Hispanic now, far more than then.

In any case, a committee was formed to negotiate. As the only ethnic minority on the Council, I was one of the folks selected. The FC tried to note that there were lots of things that we paid for that benefited everyone, such as the Oracle newspaper, radio station WNPC, and ombudsman; this was largely an unsuccessful line of discussion.

Ultimately, the FC agreed to the demands, and the groups left. Almost immediately, the FC head froze EVERYONE’S budget, and a day or two later reinstated a budget that was fairly close to our original budget, with perhaps token increases to the two groups. Oddly enough, they didn’t come back to complain, for which I was extremely grateful.

This experience oddly soured me on me running for elective office. Nothing that has happened since has negated that thought, and in fact has only strengthened it.