Ignorance is the Enemy, the Autobiography of Michael J. Organek

Ignorance is the Enemy, the Autobiography of Michael J. Organek

Michael J. Organek

Copyright © 2023 Michael J. Organek

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

Cover photo by Mark Organek

ISBN 979-8-88960-386-3 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-388-7 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Evolution of a Person with Cerebral Palsy.

Introduction

The Start of My Education—Separate but Not Equal

A Rite of Passage

Moving and Changes

My parents bought a one-hundred-feet-by-one-hundred-feet densely wooded lot at a public auction from the Borough of Sayreville, in 1958, on Scott Avenue, the northernmost section of Sayreville called Melrose, which is adjacent to Mechanicsville and is a section of South Amboy. Every weekend, my father, along with my uncles and cousins, would cross over the Raritan River via the Victory Bridge, which was a drawbridge commemorating World War I, and cut down trees and briar patches on our newly acquired property, a heavily wooded area, surrounded in the back and one side with woods. A big change of scenery compared to Hall Avenue. When the drawbridge would open during rush hour traffic, or when someone was in a hurry to be somewhere, the Victory Bridge was a real nemesis. After my parents paid off the loan for the purchase of the property, they contracted for our house to be built, which was completed and ready for us to move into July Fourth weekend, 1961, coinciding with my mother's birthday.

Transitioning Out of Special Education

Saint Mary's High School and The Times They Are A-Changin'

Priests and Nuns at Our House

Folk Music and Starting to Turn Left

I Never Underestimated My Own Stupidity

Summer of 1970: High School Graduation, Being Arrested, Donna Smoyak, Painting the Town Red, the Drinking Began, and Preparing to Leave Home for College

Off to the Green Pastures of Mount Saint Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland

May Day 1971: Massive Civil Disobedience Against the War in Southeast Asia and Mass Arrests

Home for the Summer, Classes at Seton Hall University, and Drinking Beer at Swallick's Bar

Sophomore Year of College: First Semester, Normal College Experience; Second Semester, Academically Full-Time Student; and Volunteering in Baltimore, Maryland

Living Off Campus My Junior Year with Two Then Three Roommates

Election Day 1972

The Day After Thanksgiving

Unexpected Trip to California

Three Grown Sons Living with Our Parents, Watergate Hearings on TV, and Living in Jersey City

My Senior Year of College, My Own Apartment, and Spending Most of My Time in the Ott House

My Last Semester of College

Graduation Weekend

Part 2: Working for the United States Civil Service as a Department of the Army Civilian

The Beginning of My Federal Civil Service Career at Fort Ritchie, Maryland

Finance and Accounting Office (F&AO)

I arrived at the finance and accounting building around eight o'clock the first day. I found Mr. Esworthy's office on the first floor. Mr. Esworthy welcomed me and took me upstairs to the chief of the accounting branch, Mr. Del Ladwig. Mr. Ladwig took me to the adjoining large room, which had ten people and appeared to be busily working at their desks. Opposite Mr. Ladwig's office was another one-person office, which was occupied by an intern. I would later find out that a government intern would be hired as a GS-5 or 7 and would be promoted every year two GS pay grades up to a GS-11 or 12 GS pay level. But if a person is not hired with any career progression in their job/position, they would have to compete one GS level at a time with the exception of being in a job series considered professional. Then again, they advance two GS levels at a time up to GS-11. The people working in this area were GS-4s–7s, and two section supervisors who were GS-9s. To call the type of work being done by these people accounting was ludicrous and a farce. The work that was being done was nothing more than clerical and simple bookkeeping.

My First Tax Return

Taking Night Classes toward a Master's Degree in Business Administration

Transferred to the Office of the Comptroller and Organization Structure of the Comptroller's Office

The Management and Economic Analysis Division

Adjusting to the Federal Government, Becoming a Local Emmitsburgian, and My First Sexual Relationship with a Woman

The Day after Thanksgiving 1975

Desperate People, Do Desperate Things (Eddie Raven)

Moving Up Main Street

The Night Before Jimmy Carter's Inauguration and the Next Day; Broken Arm and Broken Engagement

Back in New Jersey: Recovering from a Broken Arm, Staying at My Parent's House, and Renewing Friendships

The Bars, They Are A-Changin', and Migrating to Arturo's

Guy Clark and Townes Van Zendt vs. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck

A Change in Civil Service Status for Handicapped Federal Employees

An Old Friend and a Previous Location and Getting Wilder

Hugh Garde's House: Adding a Few Women to Our Circle of Friends

The Almost Fatal Friday Night Before Thanksgiving 1977

My Job

Personal Life

The Christening

Jim Bradsky's Killer (Jerry Lee Lewis) Killer Parties

The Start of My Relationship (I Hate the Term Affair) with Mary Ann

Part 3: Emotionally Wounded and on a Downhill Swing

Drinking, Straining Relationships, and Testing the Limits of My Job

The Move to Hagerstown, a Rapid Downward Spiral

Training, Traveling, and Other Career Opportunities Associated with My Internship

My Thirty-First Birthday

Back to Fort Huachuca for Training, Completing My Internship, and Being Promoted to a GS-9

Thanksgiving Day and Weekend in Tucson

The Completion of My Internship, Promoted to a GS-9 Procurement Analyst, and A Change Gonna Come

My Job Duties as a Procurement Analyst GS-9

Part 4: Like Hank Snow, I'm Movin' On—Next Stop Korea

Next Stop, Korea

Meeting Bong-Hui and Song-Guen, the Buick Fire, Columbus Day Weekend, and the Death of My Father

Bong-Hui and Song-Guen Moving in with Me and Becoming a Family Man with a Domestic Lifestyle

TDY to Japan

Getting Married

The Wedding

Married Life

Extending My Tour in South Korea, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Complaint, and Changing Positions in USAKCA

Live Music

Approaching the Date for Extending My Overseas Tour

One Week Vacation to the East Coast of South Korea

Transferring to Contract Administration and Converting to a Contract's Administrator

Part 5: The Pressure Is On! Supervisory Position, Warranted Contracting Officer, Responsible for Two Immigrants, California, and First-Time Homeowner

The Pressure Is On!

Necessary Preparations and Procedures

The Day of our Departure

Mark's Visit with His Wife Mary

Buying a House and My Dear Mother

Assessing the People in the Contract Administration Division

End of Fiscal Year (FY) 1987

September 30, 1987

Carol Patterson's Work Assignments

Trip Back East

My Big Mistake

My First Trip to Austin, Texas, to Visit Mark and Mary

Negotiating with Representatives from the National Institute for the Severely Handicapped (NISH)

The Meeting with Representatives of NISH—Who Is Representing Who?

The Sports Officials Contract: An Ethical Issue

Standard Army Automated Contracting System (SAACONS)

Management Directed Reassignments and Other Personnel Changes

Office of the Fort Ord Inspector General Finding

Family and Personal Life in California

Meiss's Visit

Visits with Kevin Mulligan

Visits with Bill Lindros and His Wife Julie

November 29, 1990

Part 6: Moving Back East to the Washington, DC, area

The Move Back East: California to Virginia

Part 7: Back East in the Washington, DC, Area Working as the Procurement Analyst, GS-13, at the US Army, Corps of Engineers, Engineering and Housing Support Center

Family Adjustments

Working Environment

Personal Business

My Fears Come True

Meiss's Cancer

A Negative Change at Work

United States Army, Center for Public Works (USACPW) Conference in Las Vegas

I Guess Old Buddy Good Night

Smithsonian Folklife Festival 1997

Daily Work Environment

Transfer to the Facilities Engineering Division

A Short Visit Back to South Korea

Tribute and Benefit for Agnes Sis Cunningham

Song

Memorial Day Weekend 1998

Christmas with My Mother

Part 8: Lateral Transfer to the Office of the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting (OPARC), Headquarters, US Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, DC

Transfer to the Office of the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting (OPARC), Headquarters, US Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, DC

Song Working at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Song's Graduation from the University of Virginia

HQ, USACE Moves Three Blocks to the General Accountability Office Building, 441 G Street NW

The Bullshit Never Stops

Fiftieth Birthday in Ixtapa, Mexico

Jack Gubanc

Temporary Duty (TDY) for Acquisition Management Surveys and Government Purchase Card Conferences

Never Underestimate My Stupidity and Bad Judgment

Government Services Administration Government Purchase Card Conference in San Francisco

Office of the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting Conference in New Orleans and the Acquisition Management Survey for USACE New Orleans District

September 11, 2001

Reluctantly Participating in the Global War on Terror

Protest at the CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

A Reorganization at HQ, US Army Corps of Engineers

General Services Administration (GSA) Government Purchase Card (GPC), San Antonio

House Concert

Things Are Starting to Get Heavy at Work

USACE Gulf Region Division (GRD)

Camp Cropper

Government Purchase Card Conference

A Paradox

Government Purchase Card Conference in Boston

A Coup d'état in the Office of the Principle Assistant Responsible for Contracting

Preparing to Retire

Part 9: Life After the Government

DC Blues Society

Part 10: Homage to the International Brigades in Spain

1938–2008: Despedida Celebration

Prologue

The Trip

Words to Arise, Sing!

Part 11: Song's Wedding

Part 12: Living with a Younger Woman from Ethiopia and Her Three-Year-Old Daughter

My Sixtieth Birthday and Mark's Visit

Part 13: Second Trip to Spain, Homage to the International Brigades

COMMEMORATION OF THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CREATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADES 1936–2011

Part 14: First Indication of a Bad Relationship and Another Betrayal

Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Tribute

Another Horrible Day in My Life and Sequence of Events

Part 15: A Brief Reprieve—Tish Hinojosa

Part 16: Winding Down

What If?

My Thanks

About the Author

Ignorance is the enemy, and it fills your head with lies.

It's the kind of bliss that can make you miss the very truth before your eyes.

It's not who's right or wrong, weak or strong, black or white you see.

Ignorance is the enemy and it's keeping you from me.

—Rodney Crowell

Part 1: The Evolution of a Person with Cerebral Palsy.

Introduction

If you are looking for inspiration, put down this book, get your money back, and buy some good whiskey. My own preference is Jack Daniel's. Hopefully, this gives you some insight into what direction where this thing is going. Disclaimer: This book will not be sold in Christian bookstores.

Having been born with CP (cerebral palsy not Communist Party, that will come later), life begins the very first moment as a struggle, fighting for air, and that continues in various forms, for the rest of your life. I really wanted to say, Life starts off as a motherfucker, but that would probably mean this book would not be sold in Christian bookstores. Alienation is not my goal though I have been accused of doing that.

I was born 1951, into a second father and third mother generation Polish working-class family in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Perth Amboy was settled in 1683, at the mouth of Raritan Bay, across from the southernmost tip of Staten Island, which is a borough of New York City, twenty-seven miles southwest of Manhattan. When I was growing up, Perth Amboy still had much heavy industry and good-paying (which is a relative concept) Union jobs, and surrounded by oil refineries and oil storage tanks. Hess Oil painted their oil storage tanks green. Until I was nineteen years old, I thought they were small mountains. My maternal grandfather George Trygar and his oldest son, Theodore, two nasty sons of bitches, worked in the Copper Works, Anaconda Corporation. Anaconda, International Telephone and Telegraph (IT&T), Richard Nixon, and Henry Kissinger were all involved in the overthrow of the democratically elected President Dr. Salvador Allende of Chile, September 11, 1973. Richard Nixon supposedly said, We can't afford to have another Cuba in the Western Hemisphere.

My father, Stanley John Organek Sr., was born August 12, 1918, in Bayonne, New Jersey, a victim of the influenza epidemic, which resulted in polio. One of his legs was slightly shorter (barely noticeable) than the other. Though my father tried to enlist after Pearl Harbor, his disability kept him out of World War II. My father's mother died when he was seven years old. He was the second youngest child in his family. He said, soon after his mother died, his father remarried a woman who had children, which started havoc in the family. About this time, at this young age, he started selling newspapers. My father worked for Western Electric, which was the manufacturing division of AT&T, the old Ma Bell system, as a machinist, then he got promoted to be a tool and die maker, for almost forty-four years. Because of his family's background, when my father started a family of his own, he was extremely dedicated to it. He always had a second part-time job, i.e., Foeller Brush, Cutco Knives. My father even joined the Perth Amboy Police Reserves for a short time. I remember my father telling, when Elvis Presley's first movie Love Me Tender was released, in 1956, the Perth Amboy Police Reserves were deployed to the movie theater that was showing that movie in order to control the screaming teenage girls.

My mother, Irene Dorothy Trygar, was born July 4, 1923, in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, the youngest of seven children. My grandfather's nastiness was genetically gifted in the DNA to his children, including my mother, which some may say was handed down to me with the exception of the oldest daughter, Regina (Aunt Jean), and youngest son, Frank (Wowo).

My immediate family consisted of my parents and Stanley Jr., born January 3, 1945; Mark, born November 22, 1955; and me. Mark's godmother was Sonya Mizerak, the mother of Steve Mizerak Jr., the world champion pool player, who played himself in the Paul Newman movie, The Color of Money. Steve Mizerak Sr. was a former New Jersey State champion pool player, who owned and ran the Pool Hall in Perth Amboy.

We lived at 169 Hall Avenue, Perth Amboy, on the second floor, of a third-floor tenement. Our neighborhood was predominantly Polish but was transcending into a Puerto Rican neighborhood. Below us, the landlord, Mr. Casey, had an appliance and TV repair store. Frequently, I would be awaken from loud static from a TV, which Mr. Casey was working on below my bedroom. Another neighborhood alarm clock was the loud thunder of boxcars slamming together. Our building was one block below from the Leigh High Valley freight yard. There was another single-track railroad to the right of the next-door tenement building. Like Jack Kerouac's America, my neighborhood consisted of red brick and neon. Jack Kerouac roamed the streets and alleys of red brick and neon. My first ten years, I was living among red brick and neon.

Our building was on the last block of Hall Avenue, between State Street, which the Leigh High Valley freight yard was adjacent to, where my oldest cousin Bob (Aunt Jean and my uncle Steve's son); his wife, Barbra; and their newborn daughter, Cindy, lived upstairs in Uncle Steve's father, Mr. Nagey's, house. Uncle Wowoo, Aunt Rose, and their daughter, Linda, lived two doors down from them. Beyond the Leigh High Valley freight yard is the Arthur Kill Tributary, which is part of the Raritan River, on the opposite shore is Staten Island, New York. So technically, I lived right across the river from New York City though Manhattan was twenty-five miles northeast of Perth Amboy. The street in the opposite direction was Elizabeth Street where my great-grandmother (Babusha) lived. She immigrated at age sixteen with my great-grandfather (Gadush) Ignacius Marciniak. They were Poles living in Prussia where she lived with her youngest daughter, my great-aunt (and I do mean great) Florence (Florrie), next door to the Lyceum Recreation Hall. The name Lyceum was the name of the school where Plato taught in ancient Athens, Greece.

Aunt Florrie had a sweet tooth and would give me chocolates from both candy stores downtown, Lofts and Fannie Farmers—great stuff. One summer afternoon, when I was visiting Aunt Florrie, when I was eight or nine years old, Babusha was sitting in the living room. She was probably ninety-two or ninety-three years old at the time. Aunt Florrie sat me down at the kitchen table and put before me a big dish of strawberry ice cream. When I started to eat the ice cream, Aunt Florrie gave me a cautionary warning and said to me, Now, Michael, don't eat the ice cream too quickly. You know why?

No, I said.

Aunt Florrie's answer was, Because back in Poland, we had a cousin, and he ate his ice cream too fast, and do you know what happened?

I answered, No. What happened?

Aunt Florrie's answer was, He died!

Aunt Florrie bought me clothes at the best boys clothe store in Perth Amboy, Roy's. Aunt Florrie established good credit with Mr. Roy. She would say to Mr. Roy after selecting the clothes for me, I'll pay you when I get paid.

Mr. Roy's response was, No problem, Ms. Marciniak. Babusha lived in the United States for eighty years but never learned to speak English. Like other ethnic immigrants, the man had to learn English because he had to venture out of his immediate neighborhood to earn a living. But a woman immigrant could stay in her ethnic neighborhood (ghetto), and everyone there spoke the language of their origin, the old country. This meant Bob's daughter and Babusha were five generations apart, living one block from each other. Actually, their backyards were on opposite sides of the single railroad track I mentioned.

Two streets up Hall Avenue was Charles Street where my grandfather, George Trygar, and grandmother, Maggie, lived on the lower level of their house. When we lived in our apartment on Hall Avenue, every Saint Patrick's Day, Grand Ma Trygar would come to our apartment and say to my brothers and I, Come on, boys, come with me to city hall to get our duppa (ass) painted green for Saint Patrick's Day. I have no idea how my grandmother came up with that. Uncle Thedore, Aunt Mary, and infamous cousin Teddy lived on the second floor of my grandparents' house. Almost directly across the street lived another great-aunt, Mary. Down the street, three houses from Hurley's Lumber Yard, which caught fire twice, and watching from our back porch, the flames of the fire reached the sky, was another older sister of my mother's Aunt Stella with Uncle Fan (Francis); cousins Francis, Stephen, and Jackie; their youngest sister Carolyn who would come along much later. My brother Stan, and cousins Jackie and Teddy were close in age but drastically different individuals with radically different futures as I will attempt to tell later. Also, for as far as I can remember, my mother's brother Uncle Eddie, Aunt Tessie, and my beautiful second oldest cousin Marilyn lived next door to my grandparents for a short time. I remember Aunt Tessie bragging that Marilyn's date took her to see Guy Lombardo. When Uncle Eddie and Aunt Tessie's marriage ended, Uncle Eddie's drinking got out of control. My mother said Uncle Eddie became part of the bottle gang who would stand by the railroad tracks, passing the bottle. My mother also told me she stopped feeding Uncle Eddie when she saw Eddie passing the bottle with a black guy. Racism has no limits to cruelty, even to your own brother. Uncle Eddie died living at my grandparents. His corpse was the first one I viewed. Several blocks away were Uncle Alfie, Aunt Kay, and cousins Tommy, Lorie, and Danny.

Aunt Jean, my mother's oldest sibling (I did not know her proper name was Regina until her funeral), and Uncle Steve were the first of my mother's family to leave Perth Amboy. To the best of my recollection that was in 1955. They moved a few miles north of Perth Amboy to Sewaren. Their neighborhood was a mixture of older and larger homes and newer modest homes, like theirs. Adjacent slightly to the west of the residential area were fields. I guess they are the southern part of the New Jersey meadowlands. I was about six years old when my mother would drop me off at Aunt Jean's on Saturdays and during summer vacation to spend most of the day, giving me a reprieve from my inner-city environment.

Behind Aunt Jean's property lived the Jensen family, who really could not be nicer or more understanding regarding me. Initially, they had a son, Brad, two years older than me, and a daughter, Karen, a year younger than me. They would later have another girl and a boy. From the age to six to ten, Brad was my best friend and Karen my little girlfriend. Mr. Jensen had his own electrician business and did quite well. Mr. Jensen built a cement swimming pool and was very generous about letting people swimming in it. The Jensens were especially generous to me because moving around in the water was good physical therapy. Living in the inner city of Perth Amboy, without air-conditioning, got very hot in the summertime, which was also seizure time for me. Keeping my body cool prevented the seizures from occurring. I had difficulty pronouncing the word seizure, so I would say, It's acting up on me. My worst seizure happened when I was eight years old, during High Mass one Sunday at Saint Stephen's Church. (God is right and just, my ass.) Mr. and Mrs. Jensen were aware of how the hot weather adversely affected me so that also was a factor into why liberally let me access their swimming pool. When I was eight or nine, I considered Karen Jensen my girlfriend. Late in the afternoon, sometimes she would come over to Aunt Jean's house, and we would lay on the floor innocently and watch TV. About this same time, I remember watching the Eichman war crime trial on TV. That was my first exposure to the Holocaust.

My mother hated to be away from her home, one of her many neurosis. So Aunt Jean would take me on vacation with her and Uncle Steve to Atlantic City when it was still segregated. I saw the Diving Horse perform on the Steele Pier; Niagara Falls, Aunt Rose and Linda came along; and a fiasco of a trip to Jacksonville, Florida, without Uncle Steve, but with Aunt Stella, Francis, and Steven crammed into his Chevy Corvair on his way back to his Navy base.

The drive from Perth Amboy to Sewaren was an ecological nightmare! Going north on State Street just past the Outer Bridge that connects Perth Amboy to Staten Island was a Division of the Anaconda Corporation, locally referred to as The Cooper Works. Just past the Anaconda factory, the beauty of The Garden State starts to be revealed. Exxon (used to be named Esso), Chevron, and Shell all have oil refineries along this road. My first encounter of a workers' strike was passing by the Shell Oil refinery and seeing the workers' picket line. I asked my mother what the men were doing. My mother replied, The men are striking because they want to get paid more money. That was my first lesson in economic class consciousness. Keep in mind, all of these oil company refineries are also along the Raritan River with easy access for shipping their products, along with accompanying railroad tracks. Along this road was a small drawbridge that forded a creek. Even as early as the mid-1950s, the banks of the creek were a deep grimy black! Even a boy of five or six could look down at that black water and realize nothing could be living amongst such muck. That was my first encounter with the ravages caused by wanton capitalism: Pollution, love it or leave it!

My father did have an older brother Phil and his wife, Kay, lived in Perth Amboy, not in our neighborhood, but they were estranged until later when they started to socialize with my father and mother. My father's other older brother Tony lived back in Bayonne with his wife, Josie, and my cousins Tony Jr. and Francis. They were not that close to my family either. I remember my father saying his brother Tony should have looked after him when they were growing up. My father had a sister, Aunt Tessie, in Pennsylvania who I only recall seeing twice, and Aunt Jenny in Florida, who I only saw once, when she tried to visit with her young daughter for a few days. I clearly established that we were not close with my father's side of the family. I have conflicting recollections, emotions, and theories why that was.

As I stated previously, our apartment was on the last block on Hall Avenue, between State Street and Elizabeth Street. Below was the landlord's TV and appliance store. In the apartment above ours lived the Leskos, a husband and wife with a daughter, Janice, who was about three years older than my brother Stan. My mother disliked the Leskos, which I thought was unwarranted, based upon exaggerated reasons. Sometimes, John Lesko would come home drunk, and all hell would break out upstairs. I am quite sure, the situation was no different at Uncle Wowo's and Uncle Theodore's, especially when cousin Teddy got older and entered into the equation. Remember, my grandparents lived downstairs and even had to call the cops on occasion. Oh yeah, my father and mother fought every day, usually about money or the lack of it. Fighting is part of the Trygar essence, it is in our blood or as my brothers and I would reference it as, The bad Trygar blood. I know damn well the bad Trygar blood flows through my veins.

John Lesko worked in the metal scrapyard, down by the Perth Amboy waterfront, which had this huge round magnet, at the end of a crane, picking up piles of scrap metal. The scrapyard was across the street from a baseball field stadium and a miniature golf course. Going to that miniature golf course was a special treat for me. Perth Amboy had a very good Parks and Recreation Department. I think they were a carryover from the Roosevelt era. FDR did a lot of progressive things during his administration. Not because he was altruistic nor because he gave a shit about the working class. FDR had two growing ideologies to confront: Fascism and Communism. Fortunately, FDR made a number of left-leaning policies. Organized labor unions were strong and radical, especially the Congress for Industrial Organization (CIO). Also, the Communist Party of the USA had a large membership before World War II. As the great late historian Howard Zinn once said, the real social changes in America came from the struggles that the Communists, Socialists, and anarchists fought and died for. The Democratic Party had to make progressive changes, not by choice, but in order to maintain the capitalistic system. Basically, give the working class a few crumbs but keep the loaf of bread for the wealthy. Those in power never relinquish power until that power, or part(s) of it, is torn away from them.

Our block on Hall Avenue had three bars: Trackie's, The Midway Tavern, and Maxie Cohen's, which was right next door to our apartment building, and their patrons were on the lowest echelon of drinkers and were also slightly integrated. No matter what bar you would enter in our neighborhood, at least one member of my mother's side of the family would be well represented. Of course, none of these gin mills had air-conditioning, so on hot summer days, the aroma of draft beer would drift out the front door. Maxie Cohen's would allow their patrons to put chairs outside of their bar, kind of like, a skid row sidewalk café.

Kundash's Luncheonette was directly across the street. Luncheonettes were like an inner-city diner. A long counter with stools, with pretty good food, i.e., hamburgers, sandwiches, and breakfast. In my opinion, the quality was as good as homemade. Kundash's had fountain service, sold baseball cards, which also contained a rectangle piece of bubblegum, Spalding pink rubber balls, and a pinball machine. Aunt Florie, who lived around the corner, would give me a quarter for candy, but I would almost always put the money into the pinball machine. Even with my CP, I could still play pinball. Kundash's also had a jukebox. Like the barrooms, on hot days, Kundash's front door would be left open. I still remember standing in our cool alleyway, one hot day, and listening to the song Alley Oop blaring out of Kundash's jukebox. The simple pleasures of a young child, I believe, cannot be experienced by an adult with the same amount of exuberance. The Shaker's anthem now comes to my mind, Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free, tis a gift to come down, where we ought to be. I believe Aaron Copeland based his famous melody from that song. Also on our block we had Jack's Barbershop where I got my first haircut, and two grocery stores across the street, Brown's grocery and Ray and Ed's grocery, which sold big pretzel sticks.

On our side of the street, the opposite side of the single railroad track, was Kaminski's Candy store. Kaminski's also had fountain service with real big ice cream sodas. At Kaminski's is where I bought my $.10 comic books. Keep in mind, a small boy, eight or nine years old, even with CP, could venture around his immediate neighborhood and could experience and enjoy his immediate surroundings. Directly across the street from Kaminski's was an auto body repair shop with large garage doors, which were always kept open, which was fortunate for their workers, who had ventilation from the toxic paint fumes, but the toxic fumes could be smelled and inhaled throughout the block.

Needless to say, just by the members of my family, and the names of the businesses I have cited, and most of the neighbors, our neighborhood was predominantly Polish. As I stated before, Perth Amboy had a lot of employment opportunities in heavy industry. About 1956 or 1957, the neighborhood started to change, which I alluded to previously. The reason or myth why Puerto Ricans immigrated to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, allegedly was that members of the local Democratic Party, went to Puerto Rico, and promoted the good job opportunities that existed, and the Puerto Ricans, who are citizens of the United States, should take advantage of easy immigration to New Jersey with the aid of the Democratic Party and, in exchange for their immigration assistance, should be remembered come Election Day. How much of this is true or used as a racial scapegoat, I cannot say. Demographics are always a factor in the United States. An original ethnic group, in this case the Poles, habitat a specific area of a city. After one or two generations, they gain a little amount of financial stability and move out of their neighborhood, i.e. ghetto. The new immigrants start to replace the old immigrants, and many times, the neighborhood they inherit is already physically on the decline. Then the ignorant old immigrants refuse to acknowledge that their neighborhood was in ill repair and blame the new immigrants, who are different and foreigners to them, for ruining their neighborhood because they lack the same values.

About the age of four years old, I became infatuated with the Army. This would be ten years after the end of World War II because the movie industry at this time, and since the end of WWII, made many movies about the war. My favorite movie was A Walk in the Sun made in 1946. Fifty years later, when I watched the DVD and read the movie credits, I realized the movie has a leftist view of WWII. My initial intuition as a child was right on target. I wanted nothing but Army toys to play with and Army clothes to wear. My father was very dedicated to me. He dubbed me Army Mike. I guess due to me having CP, my father wanted to make me happy. When I was five years old, my father started to write to the nearby Army bases in New Jersey. The Public Affairs Offices were very responsive and gracious. My parents and I would be allowed to visit these military installations. We would usually meet the commander of the post, and I would be given Army paraphernalia. This was thrilling and uplifting for a young disabled boy. There would be articles written about me in the military's newspaper, Stars and Stripes, the Newark Star-Ledger, and the local newspaper. I was also on the Cerebral Palsy Telethon twice on TV, and I met the actor Nick Adams who played The Rebel on a network TV series. Now I see the CP Telethon as exploitive and degrading. I am not making the antidote up. When I was about twelve years old, I was watching the CP Telethon, Dennis James was the MC said, These kids are almost human. I was shocked and appalled. That statement demonstrated that the telethon was just one more job for Dennis James and that he really did not care, or want to understand what cerebral palsy was. Fuck Dennis James.

The Start of My Education—Separate but Not Equal

Saint Stephen's was/is a Roman Catholic parish. My maternal great-grandparents were founding parishioners. I would like to mention that every Roman Catholic ethnic group in Perth Amboy had their own parish with a church, grade school, rectory, and convent—Saint Stephen's (Polish), Holy Trinity (Slovak), Holy Rosary (Italian); Saint Mary's (Irish), and racially integrated with a high school. I will write about Saint Mary's High School later.

I was denied admittance to Saint Stephen's Elementary School when my brother Stan was probably in the fifth or sixth grade at the time. So I had to attend the Middlesex County Cerebral Palsy (CP) Treatment center, which had two classrooms and had physical therapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy. When I was eight years old, the occupational therapist started to teach me how to use an electric typewriter. This proved to be a major asset for the rest of my life, especially in high school and college and, much later on, made the transition to use a PC much easier. The special education classrooms were part of the local Board of Education for special education. Under Federal law, a disabled child is provided with an education until age twenty-one.

Cerebral palsy affects its victims in wide and varied ways, primarily through physical capabilities but also mental ability, which most of the time is the result of physical limitations. Thus, having a learning disability is also common with people who have CP. Many people with CP are confined to a wheelchair or need some kind of assistance in walking; fortunately, that was not my case. The CP school—the term school is used liberally here—consisted of two classrooms with ten students in each and a preschool. Intermittingly, the students were taken out of class for their various therapies. The two classrooms were divided by age, five years old to about ten years old in one classroom and ten-plus to twenty-one years old in the other. The age span for the second group was too great. How can a ten-year-old relate to a fellow student that's eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old? The ten-year-old might ask himself, Is this where I'll still be in ten more years?

We were also given worn-out and outdated textbooks. I am jumping ahead a few years. In 1961, I was given a geography textbook, which began with Franklin Roosevelt's trip across the United States. Another thing I am confused about with my years in special education: If we, or I should say I, did not complete the entire textbook at the end of the school year in June, beginning the new school year in September, we were given the same old textbooks and resumed where we left off in June. This was very demoralizing and stiffed incentive to progress. Somehow, because of this practice, between the age of six and eight, I fell behind one year in grade. I am still bewildered, embarrassed, and infuriated by this. For example, we had workbooks, which supplemented our reading books, which were I believed used to improve our vocabulary. I remember quite distinctly asking my teacher Ms. Glass (Mrs. Zewnewski), for the next third-grade workbook. Her response was, I will give you your new workbook when you get off your high horse. What does an eight-year-old know about being on a high horse? I was being punished for being too ambitious.

When Mrs. Zewnewski was leaving teaching, she said to me, an eight-year-old, I guess you and your mother are happy to see me leave. My next teacher was Mrs. Constence Lake, who was Black. I have alluded to my mother's prejudice previously, so I blame this on the tumultuous relationship with Mrs. Lake.

I think this was the reason that when I was nine years old, I was transferred to the classroom with teenagers, who were being taught by a young guy, Mr. Robert Estock. I really did not get along with Mr. Estock. The first day in Mr. Estock's class, none of the students would speak to me. I am sure the students, and probably at Mr. Estock's urging, decided to do that to me. They were all teenagers, and I was nine years old. By the afternoon, I broke down crying. Marsha Mesh, who was about seventeen years old, showed me some empathy and told me I was getting the silent treatment. I remember two incidents. Either Mr. Estock handed me or tossed me my spelling book, which fell to the ground, and then he told me to pick it up, which I refused to do. The spelling book laid there, and I went home without it. It was a Thursday, and the weekly spelling test was every Friday morning. Somehow, my father went that night to my classroom and retrieved the spelling book.

Another practice of Mr. Estock's was he allowed Billy Kennedy, who was about sixteen years old at the time and was then a grade behind me, to sit directly at the back of me. He would get a signal from Mr. Estock whenever he did not like something I had done. Billy Kennedy would get up and stand behind me and squeeze my shoulders really hard. This was Mr. Estock's way of giving me corporal punishment through a mentally disabled surrogate. It was a miserable fucking school year.

Christ never stopped by at the cerebral palsy school. I guess he figured it would be futile to revisit Calvary.

A Rite of Passage

In August 1959, my father and uncle Steve had their summer vacation, so they planned a trip for the three of us in midtown New York City then a subway ride to the Bronx to see the New York Yankees play the Boston Red Sox. Dad drove us to Aunt Jean and Uncle Steve's in Seawaren then Uncle Steve drove us to Carteret Shopping Center, which is the last bus stop, before the bus to New York City gets on the New Jersey turnpike. (Nine years later, I would be a frequent passenger on this bus when I would take sojourns to Greenwich Village.) The bus destination was the New York Port Authority Terminal, at Eighth Avenue and Forty-Second Street. We walked to Times Square, at the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Forty-Second Street, and Broadway with the Giant Camel Cigarette billboard blowing simulated smoke, the Bond Dry Cleaners multiple lights neon flashing sign, et al, it was quite spectacular. Our first stop was Ripley's Believe It or Not. Among the relics on display were the shoes of the tallest man on earth, a shrunken head, and a necklace Chief Crazy Horse's made of the trigger fingers of Colonel Custer's men, at Little Big Horn. Real eye-openers for an eight-year-old boy! It was now time to eat, my favorite time, so I was treated to Horn & Hardart cafeteria, which had coin-operated glass-and-chrome food vending machines. A person would peer through the little glass window, choose a food item, insert a coin, the glass door would pop open, and the person would take out the food item. Perhaps Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs were seated at a table nearby? These are Pictures from a Gone World.

After lunch, walking to the subway, we past Jack Demsey's restaurant then entered Penn Station to see the New York Yankees play the Boston Red Sox. Keep in mind, this was 1959, and the New York Yankees were comprised of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra. It never had been better than that! Uncle Steve even bought me a plastic New York Yankees batter's helmet.

Of course, the Yankees won the game the way God meant it to be. We got on the subway, rode back to the New York Port Authority Terminal, for the bus back to New Jersey, then the car ride home. That day left my nine-year-old head swirling in wonder.

About the same time, 1960–61, while I was in combat in Mr. Estock's class, the CP center hired a new speech therapist, Mr. Clinton Clint Hillard, who had CP more severe than myself, i.e., he was in a wheelchair. Even I find it difficult to comprehend Clint's achievements for this time period. My parents relayed to me an incident that Clint told to them. When Clint was learning to drive a car, his father was watching. Some guy came up to Clint's father and said, That thing is learning to drive a car! Clint's father response to the asshole was, That thing has a master's degree, how much education do you have? When Clint was leaving his position as the speech therapist, he told my parents, I witnessed Michael, more than once, being yelled at for what other children would not be reprimanded for. I had the honor of knowing Mr. Clinton Hillard to the end of 1965. Many a time throughout my adult life I wished I was able to contact him. He was at that time, and hence forward, an inspiration to me. If his daughter Judy ever reads these words, I would really enjoy conversing about her great father.

Moving and Changes

My parents bought a one-hundred-feet-by-one-hundred-feet densely wooded lot at a public auction from the Borough of Sayreville, in 1958, on Scott Avenue, the northernmost section of Sayreville called Melrose, which is adjacent to Mechanicsville and is a section of South Amboy. Every weekend, my father, along with my uncles and cousins, would cross over the Raritan River via the Victory Bridge, which was a drawbridge commemorating World War I, and cut down trees and briar patches on our newly acquired property, a heavily wooded area, surrounded in the back and one side with woods. A big change of scenery compared to Hall Avenue. When the drawbridge would open during rush hour traffic, or when someone was in a hurry to be somewhere, the Victory Bridge was a real nemesis. After my parents paid off the loan for the purchase of the property, they contracted for our house to be built, which was completed and ready for us to move into July Fourth weekend, 1961, coinciding with my mother's birthday.

The year 1961 brought about substantial changes for my family and myself. The new Middlesex County Cerebral Palsy Treatment Center was also moving from inner-city Perth Amboy to Roosevelt Park in Edison, adjacent to Menlo Park where Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Roosevelt Park was found in 1917 and, supposedly, was New Jersey's version of Central Park in New York City. The location of the Cerebral Palsy Treatment Center was idyllic but also cloistered. About the same time, we moved to Melrose. My father started a second full-time job, driving a Special Education School Bus, for the Board of Education in Perth Amboy, which he did for seventeen years, in addition to working the second shift at Western Electric, which resulted in my father averaging less than five and a half hours of sleep per night. That was how dedicated my father was to giving his family a decent standard of living.

Perhaps I am being cynical concerning the move of the CP center to Roosevelt Park. But how does a disabled person and how do nondisabled people adapt to one another when the disabled are disenfranchised and basically isolated from the rest of society? Yes, the location of the CP center in Perth Amboy needed to be changed, but putting the CP center in a pasture, or putting it out to pasture, may not have been the best solution. Mainstreaming disabled students at this time into a regular classroom environment probably was still being challenged by the educating establishment. Once again, separate but not equal is a factor; that has to be considered here. The CP center in Roosevelt Park was a one-level building, of course, the long main corridor had four classrooms, administrative offices, a room for the preschool kids, and rooms for physical therapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy. The side corridor had the main office for the director of the CP center and a modern kitchen that was never used by the students, except for the refrigerator, where we could put our lunches. Perhaps the reason for locating the Cerebral Palsy Center next to the lake in Roosevelt Park was so the people could feed the ducks and see disabled kids at the same time.

As I previously stated, the new Middlesex County Cerebral Palsy Treatment Center moved to Roosevelt Park and opened in September 1961. Though I was now ten years old, my textbooks were on the third- and fourth-grade level. Mr. Emile Varga was my teacher, and I was still the youngest student in the class. Mr. Varga was a fair and dedicated teacher, even though, as before with previous teachers, I was the designated behavior problem. I argued and physically fought with my classmates, and my cursing was more and more frequent. In warm weather, Mr. Varga would take the class outside in the afternoon for about one hour, the pasture grassy surrounding, was very pleasant and conducive to us with CP. That was the same year 1961 when I was given a geography textbook, which began with Franklin Roosevelt's trip across the United States. I stated previously that the CP center had four classroom, so Mr. Varga was my teacher for three years. Occasionally, Mr. Varga would wheel into our classroom a portable TV. I distinctly remembering watching on the TV Buddhists monks self-emulating on the streets of the former Saigon in the former South Vietnam. The American public was starting to be aware of the events happening in Southeast Asia though the United States' involvement in that part of the world was already going on for about eight years. My preteen, teenage, and early twenties would be dominated with the war in Southeast Asia. I was born during the Korean War and the United States Government has been at war, continuously, ever since.

After moving into our new house, I started to wander and roam through the woods behind our property. Behind our property was a fairly large wooded area and an adjacent field. To me, it was my wilderness though it was only twenty-seven miles from New York City. The soil of this wooded area was a rich, moist black. Probably because there was a high water table, the Raritan River, was technically where our street, Scott Avenue, ended before dissecting through an auto salvage (junk) yard. A Leave It To Beaver neighborhood Scott Avenue was not. Except for my classmates at school, and rejoining my friends back at Aunt Jean's, between the age of ten to twelve years old, I did not make any friends in my new neighborhood. Also about this same time, sometime when our mother would tell Stan to watch Mark and I, Stan would read to us. Stan always did love to hear himself talk and still does, especially after a few drinks. I remember Stan reading Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. The images and rhythm that poem created captivated me. Perhaps that was the genesis for my love of literature, particularly poetry.

On a summer day when I was twelve years old, I got really dirty digging a hole in the woods. My mother was furious over the childish condition I created. As a result, she started to let me go to the park, actually a playground, that was up our street. The playground had two sets of swings, a sliding board, a bench, and a large picnic table, which was all shaded under a couple of large trees. There was also a baseball field and on the opposite side of the park was a basketball court. Alongside the park were tall weeds with a ditch running alongside it and with a stream of water running through, which was the runoff water from the street sewers, which eventually ran into the Raritan River. I fell into this stream two or three times, which really pissed off my mother. Gradually and with difficulty, I semi got accepted by the kids hanging out at the park. The innocence of my childhood would start come to an end. Adolescence would abruptly begin. I guess as it does for most people.

Sex was a prevalent topic of discussion. The age range of the kids hanging out at the Scott Avenue Park was twelve to sixteen years old, mostly boys 2/3 and 1/3 girls. Some of the older boys were already working on old beat-up cars in their backyards, anticipating being able to drive at age seventeen. I mentioned at one end of Scott Avenue there were auto salvage yards. Some of the older boys would get their repair parts by raiding these places at nighttime. One guy stole a car radio, antenna, battery, and a speaker, so we could have music while we hung out at the park. One day, I gave two of the older boys about $15 to buy me a string for Stan's bow and some arrows because they were going shoplifting at the local Two Guys discount department store.

About eight o'clock that evening, the two boys I gave the money came to my house with the bowstring and arrows. The next days, Stan and I went to our backyard, and he showed me how to use a bow and arrow. I spent many an afternoon after that wandering around the woods with my bow and arrow. This is the summer of 1963, and the Civil Rights Movement has reach its full momentum with the March on Washington. I was watching our TV that hot August summer's day in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I said to myself while Dr. King was giving his speech, That man is talking about me too!

The acceptance of me by the other kids who frequented the park varied from acceptance to ridicule