This song recalls for me another springtime and the bittersweet memory of my first love, more than half a century ago. I've written about Pat before, if you care to read the story - that chaste and secret love we shared came to a sad ending, but I've never forgotten the sunshine days of fun and friendship - that special cameraderie of boys becoming men together.
Other loves and other disappointments followed; but at this late age, living contentedly with M.P., I realize how blessed I was to have those friendships and passing joys. How true the saying is - better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Yesterday, I happened to come across this recording by the Mike Faraci Band, a local NYC group, which is an amzingly good cover of the 1972 Badfinger original. Huh. How do those young'uns even know about such antique music, I wonder.
By the way, Mike is a man of parts: lead singer, guitarist, composer, artist, interior designer, and is highly skilled at carpentry and other DIY projects. Rather studly, too. Check out this tour of his New York City apartment - his aesthetic is not mine, but I can appreciate what he's done with colors, textures, and light:
We watched this last night while eating supper at the kitchen bar. I'm sure many of my truckbuddies will recall thumbing though those catalogs as M.P. and I did in the 70's. It wasn't nearly as good as Playgirl, but sometimes it was all you had to dream on.
Bonus: In this a local news report on West Hollywood in 1980, you will get a glimpse of the International Male store there. I never knew they had an actual store building.
I've been meaning to write something about 1975 for months now, but the year is nearly over. So I'll just post a few thoughts today, and may post some personal reflections another time.
Bernie asks a question that can only be answered by those who are old enough to remember the time: Was life better fifty years ago?
Regardless of Bernie's remarks, the truth is that the question has no factual answer. Whether life was better then depends entirely on one's point of view. And indeed, no matter what year you want to talk about, in human life it is always the best of times or the worst of times - for somebody. Your answer hinges on whether you feel loved or unloved, content or unsatisfied, hopeful or despairing.
I am annoyed by some people's comments on YouTube and in other places, people who were children or young teens then -- Oh, what a glorious time it was to be alive, a golden age! The music, the clothes, the cars - and everybody was so kind and courteous and loving. Well, no, that's not the way it was -- it was far from a golden age, as this CBS news summary makes clear, for anyone who cares to look back at the reality of 1975:
After long, dreary years of conflict and protests, defeat and deceit, Vietnam and Watergate were finally behind us. Tricky Dick Nixon was gone, and steady Jerry Ford was in the White House; he survived two assassination attempts by wild-eyed leftist radicals (seriously) in this year. Other wild-eyed leftist radicals blew up the State Department, and the Patty Hearst kidnapping ended horrifically. The Middle East was still in turmoil, as it always is, and the Cold War was still on, with the spectre of nuclear war always in the background. The crime rate was rising, and there was a growing sense of decline in American power, politics, money, and manners, from the bold optimism of the Kennedy years to the stagnant malaise of the post-Nixon era. Many felt the country was going to pot.
The change was felt most acutely in the pocketbook. Inflation was out of control: the Oil Crisis of '73 had made the prices of everything go up sharply. I remember that the price of sugar zoomed from, say, a dollar a bag to five bucks. (That equals $30 today.) The same with coffee. And for the first time in my life, there were empty shelves in the supermarket. The recession of 1974 was still going strong, and jobs were hard to find. Your Head Trucker was finding out the hard way that it was just not possible to live well on minimum wage - $1.60 an hour, so take-home pay was about $240 a month. Rent on my first little cottage was $80 a month, plus phone and utilities. For comparison, an apartment in a nice complex with swimming pool cost about $120 a month, or more.
My first home after high school was very similar to this one - but the front door was on the side, under a porch roof, and there were no basement stairs, so the kitchen was wide enough for a table and chairs. It wasn't new, but it was decent, and it was MY place, where I could do as I pleased. I felt very grown-up,
The placid "happy days" of the 1950s and early 1960s were long gone by this time, as I remember discussing with my friends. However, I will say that compared to the state of the world today and the polarized society we now live in, it was easier to live without constant fear and dread back then. The world was already quite complex in those days, but it all seemed more understandable somehow - and it was easier to hope that tomorrow would be better.
In the Deep South, far from the tumults and convulsions in the big cities up north and out west, everyday life was mostly calm and pleasant as long as you could pay your rent and feed yourself: books, magazines, records, radio, television, movies, church doings, and simple outings with friends were enough to keep a young man occupied. Nobody had a home computer; cable TV was non-existent, as were VCR's and DVD's. Phones still had dials, and they were hard-wired into the wall. You didn't buy one, you rented it from the phone company for a nominal fee, with a choice of four styles and half a dozen colors.
All that would soon begin to change, but as yet, no one felt a need to be "linked in" every single waking moment, and broadcast to the world pictures of their cat, or their butt, or what they were eating at the burger joint. People would have fallen down on the floor laughing at the very thought of such nonsense.
But now we live in a world seemingly controlled in nearly every detail by nosy machines and callous trillionaires. Since this old man's exit will be coming up sooner rather than later, I don't obsess about these things, though I deplore them heartily. But God help the younger generations.
Speaking of whom, someone has come up with a way to assimilate them even faster into the Hive Mind: watch this report on a new school with no human teachers -- and shudder.
Once in a great while, I go searching through the internet for old friends and lovers. More often than not, the search leads nowhere; too much time and distance have covered all tracks. But a couple of days ago, just on a sudden whim, I tried one more time. And I found Pat, my best friend in high school and church, more than half a century ago. Or rather, I found his obituary.
Pat was my first love, though we were not lovers in the physical sense, I'm sad to say. It would have been a glad and joyful thing - but damnation and denial got in the way.
He died in 2020, leaving four children and eleven grandchildren. I had wondered over the years if he was still alive, where he was, and how he was doing. The last I heard of him, in the late 70s, he was working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico - a high-paying but highly dangerous job.
The picture below, from his obituary site, was probably taken 20 or 30 years ago; he looks hearty, healthy, and prosperous there. The obit says he was much loved by his family and friends, and I suppose he had a pretty happy life. I'm very glad to know that.
Dapper, dashing Pat in the prime of life, long after I knew him. I've never had a picture of him until now, only memories.
We became friends in church when I was 16 and he was 17. It so happened that we both had parents in the same distant city, so it was only logical that on school holidays and other times, we would drive up together. I had a brand-new Chevy Malibu 350 V8, cherry red with a black vinyl top. Pat had no car; didn't want the responsibility, he said. So we had many long rides together and got to know each other very well.
We were an odd couple. Pat dropped out of school to work in construction; I finished high school and started junior college. We were about the same height, six foot in boots, but Pat had a sculpted, muscular body with washboard abs and a permanent tan from working outdoors year-round. I was a bookworm. He was blond, I was brunet. He was the life of the party, I was the quiet type. But opposites attract, don't they?
Early on, he asked me, "How did you get to be so smart?" I answered, "I don't know, it just happened. How did you get to be so strong?" He replied, "I don't know, it just happened." Despite the differences, we somehow gravitated together, and enjoyed each other's company greatly. Pat was the big brother I never had: a role model, someone to be a guy with. He filled a great need.
Kevin at Cavalcade of Food shows off his newly redecorated show windows for auntumn. I'm posting this especially for M.P., since it's his favorite season, and he's already started the vibe with an orange tablecloth and orange candles for our Sunday dinner this past weekend. He'll add more decorations as the weeks go by, culminating with Thanksgiving dinner, his favorite meal of all.
Karen and Richard Carpenter perform live on the Ed Sullivan Show from Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, where they were giving a concert for wounded Vietnam veterans, November 8, 1970. The Carpenters' first big single, "Close to You," had been a smash hit nationwide in the summer of that year.
I vaguely recollect that this medley of Burt Bacharach tunes was included on one of their albums that I used to have.
This BBC documentary from 1979 shows what progress had been made in the ten years since Stonewall, and what yet remained to do. It provides an interesting perspective, slightly different in details but essentially similar to the American gay rights movement at that time.
A PBS show from about the same year called Word Is Out was a must-see event for me, still closeted at the time, but the full program is strangely missing from YouTube. I wonder if any of my truckbuddies remember watching it. Here is a trailer:
I just wanted to say that to somebody. Hard to believe. It was a great turning point in my life for several reasons not now of interest to anyone but me - and even I'm tired of hearing that old story, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing much.
I was going to write more here - went through several attempts at an essay, but they all kept turning into deadly dull autobiography, and none of them seemed quite right.
So I'll just say how quickly time goes by: from the summit of 60-something, the view is much larger and wider than at 20-something, and you wonder how you got to be this old so soon. But this commonplace observation is hardly worth your time, so I'll just stop here and wish all my truckbuddies a happy, peaceful July.
God knows we can all use a rest after the past month of upsets and uproars in all directions.
Released in September 1970, this was the "official song" of my graduating class in high school - still a pretty tune after all these years.
The Queen of Cuisine shows us how to make the perfect chocolate mousse, an excellent dessert for the holidays, in this episode from 1971:
And no, I really, truly don't give a fuck if anyone thinks it's "healthy" or not. So don't even go there. Julia herself lived to be 92 and enjoyed every minute of her time on this earth, which is more than the snotty, snobby health fanatics of this self-righteous age can say.
This is the lost documentary "Coming Out" which screened on ITV as part of Southern Television's "Southern Report" in February 1976. The programme prompted nationwide gay rights protests after one of the participants was fired from his job at British Home Stores.
It would be interesting now to interview these guys in the program and hear their reflections on all the amazing changes of the last forty years.
A fascinating compilation of news clips from the 1970's about those strange and scary social deviants who were popping up everywhere it seemed - the dreaded homosexuals. Really brings home to my mind how far we have come just in my lifetime.
Oh my, what changes have happened in your Head Trucker's lifetime. A few weeks ago, I posted a clip of an interview with Jack Baker and Michael McConnell of Minneapolis, who after being married in that state - under false pretenses, it must be said - took their case all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, and lost.
Now a clip has surfaced of their actual wedding, and the kiss they sealed it with - totally shocking to straight America by the standards of the time. WCCO in Minneapolis reports:
The narrator says the couple doesn't plan to get married after Minnesota joins the ranks of same-sex marriage states on August 1, because "they already are" married. But I hope they think twice about that complacent attitude: the courts already ruled their marriage invalid - and when only one is left, he will have a hard time collecting social security and other benefits on his husband if their marriage isn't all sewed up, nice and proper.
But now compare the tiny, rather closeted affair that was with the wedding of Dwayne Beebe and Jonathan Franqui in Pensacola, Florida, on March 30 of this year: presided over by a U. S. Navy chaplain, no less, and held in the community center complex of the historic district there, complete with a jazz band march down the street from the church to the reception.
Your Head Trucker marvels at how they found so many chunky chicks to play bridesmaids in bedsheets strapless minidresses, but he does like the rainbow color theme. All in a all, a very joyous and very public celebration of two men's commitment, unthinkable in 1971 - but what a wonderful development, we need many more like this, all over the country.
The couple were legally married in Maryland on January 1, but waited to have the big ceremony and celebration with friends and family in Pensacola, where Dwayne, a naval petty officer, was stationed. The marriage is not recognized in Florida, or in Dwayne's new posting in Tennessee, but it does give them access to all federal and military benefits.
While we await this morning's Supreme Court hearing on the DOMA case, United States v. Windsor, here's some incidentally related things to refresh your mind with.
Your Head Trucker remembers seeing many signs like this one in the legally segregated South of his childhood. Little did he suspect that as a gay man, he would spend most of his adult life shoved aside in just such a waiting room.
Everyone has heard of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board, 1954. But have you ever studied it? Do you know what pro and con arguments were used at that time about racial segregation, or what reasoning the Court used in ruling it unconstitutional? Just as we saw in yesterday's hearing on the Prop 8 case, the justices were not of one mind, and had to work their way through a swamp of legal and constitutional entanglements, and considerations of original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment about equal protection and due process, in order to reach a decision - so in that sense, Brown is highly relevant reading for us today. If you like, here's the Wikipedia article, with lots of links to primary sources, as well as the actual ruling of the court. And also revealing of the mixed mood of the times, read Governor Leroy Collins's courageous refusal to sign and remarks at the end of the Florida Legislature's Resolution of Interposition, 1957, which declared (unsuccessfully) the Supreme Court's desegration order "null, void and of no force or effect in Florida."
The more I think about Justice Alito's lame-brained demand for "scientific evidence" that gay marriage is not harmful to society, and Justice Scalia's assoholic demand to be told "when the Constitution changed" - the more my blood boils. But do read this sweet, cooling essay by a proud daughter: "What Makes a Family." Excerpt:
Two gay, Catholic Jesuit psychologists raising a multiracial daughter in San Francisco: it sounds like Hollywood’s next sitcom, but in many ways my life is just like yours. When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments next week on marriage equality, I want the country to know the love that exists in families like mine, and how my upbringing is in many ways an American success story. . . .
Check out the amusing video of a 1971 takeover of the New York City Marriage Bureau by the Gay Activist Alliance in "The Prehistory of Gay Marriage." Even the cops seem rather jolly when they arrive on the scene - by contrast, imagine the SWAT team that would respond today.
It was about this point in time, back in 1971 that I bought my first car - I used to have a good head for significant dates, and August 4th comes to mind, though I can't swear to it now. But whatever the date may have been, it was a happy, happy day for me. I tell you what.
I had looked forward for what seemed like ages - time passes more slowly for the young, of course - to having my own wheels, and I remember it seemed like the day would never come when I could get a driver's license and a car. As a boy my trusty bicycle had carried me lots of places, but when I became a teenager, the places I often wanted to go were too far away on busy roads not safely travelled by bike.
But slowly, much too slowly, the day of liberation approached. For a year or so previously, while driving my mom's old Buick, I had been developing an eye for all the different brands of new cars, and discovered an unsuspected talent for zeroing in on the precise make, model, and year of scores of cars by paying attention to fine details.
And in the process of observing, I had narrowed my preference down to a sporty Chevrolet - unlike my straight peers, line and color were everything in my judgment, can you relate? It came down to a choice between a zippy little Nova or a very sporty mid-sized Chevelle Malibu. Since my mom was generously donating her old car as a trade-in, it actually would have been possible to go for a Corvette - oh my God, sex on wheels - or a new marque I had never seen until I walked into the dealer's showroom, the brand new Monte Carlo, which looked as sleek and chic as a 1930's limousine, though designed more for sport.
But at the time, I just thought I wasn't quite ready for the last two, which were more grown-up toys than I wanted or needed at the time. And my mom nixed the Nova, fearing as she always did for my safety in a small car - for one brief moment in time, I had my eye on a used Volkswagen bug that I could have bought from a friend for only a couple hundred bucks, but Mom absolutely forbade me to even think about it.
So I ended up wandering all over the dealer's lot to pick out my very own Malibu 350 V8, a bright cranberry red with a black vinyl top - the height of coolness at that moment. Oh God, it was a beautiful car, fellas, with a new-car smell that was intoxicating. Sticker price: $4,025.
And buddy, it would run like a scalded dog. I tell you what.
For months, I peeled rubber taking off from every stop light - what fun. I never notice anyone doing that nowadays, but it was fairly common among my generation. Of course, I had no way of knowing that I had just managed to catch the last of an era that would soon disappear forever, as has been so often the case in my life. Muscle cars were all the rage at the time, when gas was only 28 to 30 cents a gallon. And damn, they were sexy - and so, it seemed, were the guys who drove them.
But the oil crisis of 1973 ended all that. I'm glad I got my dream car, though - one ought to have things like that when one is young enough to truly savor the experience. And I kept that sweetheart for nearly 12 years, though that was due mainly to the poverty of my college days. I've often wished I had that car back again, that somehow I could have kept it safely stored away.
But at this late age, even if I still had it, it wouldn't be nearly as much of a thrill to drive as it was then. Once you have awakened from a dream, you can't get back inside it, you know?
But it was great while it lasted.
Curiously, I never thought to take a decent photo of my Malibu; there are only a couple of pics that show a corner of it, but nothing with the whole car. So I had to search around the 'net for the pics you see above and below. The top picture is actually a 1970 Malibu, nearly identical to the 1971 except for a few fine details like the turning lights and tail lights. The bottom picture is a 1971 model like mine was, but a convertible - mine was a hardtop, though I did sometimes wish it had been a ragtop: what fun that would have been, cruising up and down the beach roads in summertime.
But I loved my car, and it was a good friend to me for years and years and years. Peace to its ashes.
1971 Malibu convertible with factory-equipped sport wheels
Though I can't believe it's been 40 years ago already. Where the hell does the time go?
Bonus: That was the summer a number of memorable songs topped the charts, like "You've Got a Friend" by James Taylor, "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" by the Bee Gees, "Brown Sugar" by the Stones, and this rocker by CCR that sums up the feeling of speed, youth, and dreams of sex:
I was riding along side the highway, rolling up the countryside . . .
In my younger days the Hollies were a fun group, featuring a very young - and studly - Graham Nash.
This song always makes me smile: the steel drums remind me of flying into the Bahamas, where they used to have a steel drum band meet all the planes - a DC-6, let's say, or a Lockheed Electra - to serenade debarking passengers as we emerged into the sea-scented air and brilliant tropical sunshine, and descended the steps to the tarmac.
But the young'uns among us won't even be able to decipher that last sentence, so just enjoy the song:
Later, of course, after a string of hits with the Hollies, Nash teamed up with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and sometimes Neil Young, and got his second wind with another truckload of rock classics, including the delightful "Marrakesh Express," which I very fondly recall from the summer of 1969. Here's a hairier, more worldly and wizened Nash doing an interesting live version (1974) with Crosby - consummate musicians:
In 1977, I was lucky enough to see them in concert performing so many great songs, including this one - sung a capella except for Stills's acoustic guitar - all of them perfectly on pitch just as you hear it in this recording, and not a hundred feet away from me. Man, what a thrill that was. I tell you what.
And here's Nash in 2009, explaining why you never hear protest songs on the radio anymore:
Bonus: The guys team up with blues queen Bonnie Raitt on this awesome rendition of "Love Has No Pride":
A show of hands, please: is there anyone else here who remembers hot pants?
Hmm.
And is there anyone besides your graybearded Head Trucker who will admit to having owned a pair?
Uh-huh.
And actually wearing them in broad daylight, out in public?
Oh. I see.
Goddamn, I had to have been born this way; didn't know another gay soul, it was just sheer instinct. Years and years before I even thought about coming out, there I was bopping down the sidewalk one summer day in 1971, wearing my new tank top and hot pants (all color-coordinated, of course, in maroon and white), thinking I was just being mildly fashionable.
Until later my (straight) best friend carefully mentioned he'd seen me. And asked what I was wearing out there. "Oh, hot pants . . . is that what that was?" he asked, with a pained expression on his face.
Chagrined, I got the point and promptly consigned them to the lower depths of my closet. As far as I know, they're still in there.
Meanwhile, I was only very, very vaguely aware that my gay brothers up north and out west (those awful, sinful homos I yearned for and feared at the same time) were hanging out of in hot pants and dancing their butts off, happy and fearless and free.
My God - 40 years ago. Already. Where does the time go? WTF?!
Take a little spin in the time machine with this Life article from 1971 on the militant homos who were finding their voices and gaining ground, inch by inch compared to today. But it was a start.
Excerpt:
It was the most shocking, and to many Americans, the most surprising liberation movement yet. Under the slogan, "Out of the closets and into the streets," thousands of homosexuals, male and female, were proudly confessing what they had long hidden. They were, moreover, moving into direct confrontation with conventional society. Their battle was far from won. But in 1971, militant homosexuals showed that they were prepared to fight it . . . .
Gay pride march, Christopher Street, 1971
BTW, the following, unrelated article, "Looking for Ourselves in the News of '71," gives a very accurate feel for the deflated, uncertain, lackluster mood of the time when the brilliant parade of the Sixties had passed and the stale twilight of the Nixon years had set in. Another good read by a thoughtful writer.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
