SUMMER OF LOVE + 40

It's time you walked away
set me free I must move away leave you be...
time's been good to us, my friend
wait and see how it will end
we come and go as we please...we come and go as we please...
that's how it must be
Here in crystal chandelier, I'm home
too many days, I've left unstoned
if you don't mind happiness
purple-pleasure fields in the Sun
ah, don't you know I'm runnin' home...don't you know I'm runnin' home...
to a place to you unknown?
I take great peace in your sitting there
searching for myself, I find a place there
I see the people of the world where they are and what they could be...
I can but dance behind your smile...
I can but dance behind your smile...
you were the world to me for a while
-- "D.C.B.A. " by Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane



Wow, besides "The Sopranos" finale (which my son is already tired of hearing my digressions and speculations on) suddenly the Summer of Love, 1967, is popping up in the media, as a culutral icon of the Summer 2007. 40 years ago this summer, I was a 12 year old, the age that my younger daughters are now, and I was an elementary school kid at Holy Name on (as we referred to it) 9th avenue. Music of the era made its way to my consciousness thanks to the radio and the lps that my older sister, then in high school at St Brendans, brought into the house.Although the music and the culture were exploding around me, it would still be a few years until I started writing and pursuing publication in earnest as a student at Bishop Ford HS and before I began to select and buy music much less dare to make critical assessments of it.. But then, back in 1967, I was still an elementary school brat at HNS (or, as our Windsor Terrace crowd later referred to it in our rebellious teen years, at "The Mission"). Music was everywhere, New York City, at least the mainstream and parts of the city locked into the media maelstrom, was undergoing waves of change, but Brooklyn, my Brooklyn, was still dormant.I grew up on 17th Street between 9th and 10th avenues. I remember a young couple moving into the basement apartment of home across the street from us. He had the hip look, long hair and beard, dressed for business during the week if I recall correctly, but most noticeably, on the weekend wore jeans and high leather boots, the first time such cool and radical fashion probably trod these Brooklyn streets.. We referred to him simply as "Cow Man" and I sincerely hope that we were not teasing or mean to him, although, children being who they are, we probably were and came off as dumb Brooklyn urchins..He lived next door to the "Stretzelmeyer" (pronounced by us as "Stretchemeyer") home, which was a remnant of old Brooklyn, a large Victorian house, like we live in now in Flatbush, but it was on a large piece of land, fenced in from 17th street to Prospect Avenue, behind a fairly high grey fence..two elderly ladies lived there, largely out of touch with the rest of us Irish, German and Italians working folks who had moved into the neighborhood in succeeding waves. We would see them occasionally when a ball went over the fence and they were patient enough to allow us into the yard to retrieve it..I imagined the house and the sisters were from "Arsenic and Old Lace" and I assume the house had been there from the 19th century when Windsor Terrace was more open land, farms, etc., and the brownstones and row houses of 17th street and beyond had simply grown up around them. That reminds me of another childrens' book, about a little cabin in the woods, that becomes a small home, and is eventually dwarfed by the City structures and skyscrapers built around it. Years later, when the homes was taken down and new construction was built on the site. The home and fenced in land were easily replaced by four or five attached homes on 17th street and an equal number around the block on Prospect Avenue...But the Summer of Love to me at twelve years of age in Brooklyn was a brand, a distant concept, almost a vision, something perhaps aspire to, as I got older, as though perhaps with time, and movement out of my parents' home and sphere of influence, I too could dare to step into this new world of music, excitement and Love...As always,

Speak memory...