1960’s

st. cecilia as a metaphor and warning

“Henry and Peter made their daily trip to Erika’s House of Music at the South Bay Shopping Center.

The owner and her husband, as always, greeted them in their Austrian and German accents.

“The twenty second’s coming up,” Henry intoned.

“It’s interesting that J.F.K.was killed on the feast day of the patroness of music.”

“Yeah,” Peter reminded him. “So much of the nauseating Sexual and Cultural Revolutions of that era was set to such perfect music. A little charisma can be poisonous.”

“There’s good and bad in every era,” Henry noted as they looked around for Jimmy Page’s sheet music.

This week’s photo prompt was supplied by Bjorn Rudberg. Rochelle Wisoff~Fields guides us weekly in Friday Fictioneers, as each of us writes a hundred~word story based upon a photo prompt.

mass murderer

It’s late July,1966, in Chicago.

Muriel and Gloria spot a terrifying sight.

“I know they’ve got Richard Speck already,” cried Gloria, “but I still can’t help losing control!”

“He’s that moron who tortured eight young nursing students to death,” replied Muriel. “He was high as a kite.”

“You have to admit that is one odd sight!” stammered the former. “Do you think it’s some copycat bastard?”

“Do you have to bring that up?” Muriel went on. “That always happens.”

Trembling uncontrollably they go home and try not to dwell on their fear.

“Let’s stick together all day,” Gloria suggests.

Thanks to Janet M Webb for the photo prompt and to Rochelle Wisoff~Fields for her help each week in Friday Fictioneers.

traumatic september 11

On September 11, 1971, I moved from Jackson Heights, Queens, to Lindenhurst, in Suffolk County. It was five days before my twelfth birthday and I had a difficult time adjusting to my new circumstances. Always having gone to Catholic school, at St. Gabriel’s, I was forced, for two weeks, to attend Copiague Junior High School, the local public school,until I got into Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I ended up spending many decades in Lindenhurst but my early days there were quite a quirky trip.

On September 11, 2001, five days before my forty second birthday, the Moslem terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in Manhattan, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,also hijacking United Airlines Flight 93. People on the left still don’t quite seem to understand that Islam is ruled by Satan. I was at 9:00 a.m. Mass that day at Our Lady of Perpetual Help when Father Edward M. Seagriff told us about the attacks.

through the past darkly

I walked into the Lindenhurst Mc Donald’s last

evening, when I noticed Mc Garrity, a neighbor and Viet Nam veteran. He came

over and said hello.

He reminisced a lot.

“Ed,” he said. “The world went to Hell when J.F.K. died.”

“This week in ’69 were the Manson killings, when Satan was defiant,

and Woodstock, when he was subtle. My friends and I were in Southeast Asia

and Fort Hood then.”

“People stood on this very spot back then and got an entire meal for a

dollar. Perfect music and fashion were everywhere. Was it really worth it

though?”

carmelite dialogues

It’s July 17, 1794 in Compiegne. Sister Teresa and her fifteen Discalced Carmelite companions are on their way to the guillotine.

“Come, Sisters,” demands Teresa. “Out of fidelity to Catholic orthodoxy, to Jesus and Mary, and to constituted authority, we go to our deaths.”

Calmly they intone the Miserere, Salve Regina, and Te Deum.

Each is decapitated, after which her body is merely thrown into a common grave.

“Well, Citizen,” an onlooker is overheard to explain joyously, “We can’t have their God and Robespierre’s and David’s goddess of reason, you understand.”

“La Marseillaise” plays in the background.

knights of columbus

A few months ago I started going to the local Knights of Columbus, Monsignor Cass Council 2626, on Beech Street in Long Beach. Before that I was in the Assumpta Council 3987 in Luzerne, Pennsylvania. My first council was Our Lady of Perpetual Help Council 794 in Lindenhurst, New York. I got my first three degrees in 1992 and my fourth degree in 1994. When I started showing up at my new council I made sure I spoke to the right people, including Nick, the Grand Knight, and Hank, the Financial Secretary. I haven’t gotten my membership card yet but Hank says that they’ve been in touch with my other two councils and that all has been arranged so that there will be no further problem. The first few times I was there, I didn’t stay for the meetings. I just introduced myself, watched an episode of “Jeopardy”, and left. After a while, though, I began attending the meetings. So far I have been having quite a good time. Eventually I hope to be as involved with this council as I was with my Lindenhurst council. Their meetings are the first and third Wednesday nights of each month at 7:30 p.m.

all that colorful jazz

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Roy G. Biv.”

I’ve been trying to listen to a lot of jazz lately. Although I have quiet a few jazz CD’s in my collection, I’ve been listening to songs mostly on Youtube. It’s quite enjoyable but I’m not very familiar with it, except the cliches. As everyone knows I’ve always been quite smitten with the 1960’s, both musically and otherwise. Many jazz musicians,including Miles Davis, Ramsey Lewis, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus, were quite prominent during that era. Music of this kind can be quite intense, invoking a feeling of red hot emotional fury. It’s nothing like my favorite style. I’ve always especially been partial to the kind of song that can be found on the Beatles’ 1962-1966 greatest hits album, the one with the orange cover. Often a jazz song can be quite inordinately long by my standards. Patience has never been my specialty. It’s a lot easier for me to listen to something that’s only about as long as “Yellow Submarine”. Of course there are some short jazz songs. Thelonius Monk’s “Blue Monk” is only three minutes and seventeen seconds long. “Green Onions” by Booker T. and the M.G.’s is three mnutes and thirty nine seconds long. Maybe I could listen to Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo”. Up until now jazz has been as frequently a part of my life as appearances by Charlie Brown’s friend Violet in the “Peanuts” comic strip.
https://zezee112.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/the-fight-over-the-event-last-night/
http://longwalksanddarkchocolate.com/2015/04/20/grandmas-cure-for-boredom/
https://thruthe50.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/nice-days-end/

uncle throwback

“Uncle Clem was an avant-garde artist in the ’60’s,” Alvin reminded his wife Hortense. “You know, the kind that hung in Greenwich Village coffee houses with Andy Warhol and Timothy Leary, drinking espresso and reading beat poetry.”

“Do you think he’ll even remember you?” she asked. “After all, it’s been over forty years.”

Following the directions their G.P.S. gave them, they eventually arrived at a most unusual apartment building.

“Oh Honey!” she blurted out. “My relatives may be squares but at least they have stoops that lead up to their houses’ entrances. This guy must be quite a hoot.”