Growing up in the last Century: WASHINGTON IN THE 1970s; FIRST TASTE OF CAPITOL HILL

        

US Capitol, circa 1970.

1973 had been a big, messy, turbulent year in my life.  That January, I’d gone to Rome, Italy, for a study abroad semester, then promptly dropped out of school.  I spent the next six months floundering.  I landed first in Israel where I lived mostly on a beach in Eilat with hippies and other dropouts, doing day labor, putting my parents through purgatory.  Back home, I managed to graduate college (Brown University) without showing up, relying on old Advance Placement credits and snubbing my own graduation ceremony. 

Growing up in the last Century: DAD'S POLITICAL CAREER

 

 

One day shortly before my father passed away almost 30 years ago, in late 1994 at age 86, he started talking to me about his brief career in politics back in the 1930s.  It was an old story.  My sisters and I knew bits and pieces.  Dad had been a 30-year-old struggling lawyer in Brooklyn back then, had no background in politics, no money, the wrong personality (bookish and introverted like me), and no friends in high places.  Still, he decided to throw his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination for a seat in the New York State Assembly.  

Growing Up in the Last Century-- MY FIRST TASTE OF POLITICS: GETTING KICKED OUT OF THE POLLS BY THE ALBANY MACHINE, June 1972

        

Albany's long-time Mayor Erastus Corning with Democratic Party Chairman Dan O'Connell (with hat), circa 1970.

        This story is complicated, so bear with me.

        I was just a 20 year-old college kid when I got my first real bloody nose – figurative and almost very literal – in the political world.  Welcome to Albany, New York, my hometown (scenic aerial photo above), back in the days of the Democratic machine, party boss Daniel P. O’Connell, and mayor-for-life Erastus Corning.

Growing Up in the Last Century: TEAR-GASSED in WASHINGTON, D.C., May 1970

  

       I was just 18 years old, a college freshman, on May 4, 1970, when National Guardsmen in Ohio opened fire and killed four student protestors at Kent State University.  Fifty years later, I still remember the looks on peoples’ faces as news of the shootings spread like lightning across my own college campus a thousand miles away at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Boss Tweed Audiobook : The Images and a five minute sample