1960S-1970S Fable

By Todd Daley

Upon graduating from C.C.N.Y., Tom has begun teaching at Curtis High School, located on Staten Islands North Shore, where he faces the formidable stone gargoyles of the schools faade and his challenging Aquarian age students. Each day, the young science teacher starts his lesson with an attention grabbing practical experiment that occasionally backfires, to the delight of his students. His lessons cover a wide range of topics including Newtons laws of motion, Galileos free fall, the simple pendulum, Mendeleevs table of elements, Darwins evolution, Mendels heredity, household chemicals, the laws of probability, British kings and American presidents, plus ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. In his spare time, Tom gets caught up in a whirlwind of drinking, bar hopping, random dating, schoolyard stickball and basketball games, and an experiment with maze-running white rats. Haunted by the loss of his high school sweetheart and the endless raging Vietnam war, the rookie teacher seeks a place in the sun amidst the social turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496951687

Todd Daley

The author grew up on Staten Island – attending CCNY, Johns Hopkins University, and NYU earning BS, MAT, and PhD degrees respectively. He taught physics and mathematics many years in the high school and junior college levels. As a teacher, he tried to make abstract principles concrete by connecting them to everyday life. Ideally, the student should come away with essential information and the ability to solve problems, think rationally, and act ethically. The author has written the following nonfiction books: Apples and Oranges, Mathematical Concepts , and A Brief Guide to Philosophy. His novels include: 1950s-1960s Fable, 1960s-1970s Fable, The Mariners Harbor Messiah, Blue Collar Folks, The Pulaski Prowler, Love in the Days of Covid-20, The Maiden Maverick, and The Elm Park Time Travelers.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Stone Gargoyles

T om Haley drove slowly in his balky compact Chevy Corvair along the winding Richmond Terrace from Mariners Harbor eastward to St. George. He recalled his father, Thomas Haley, saying that Richmond Terrace had once been a meandering Indian trail blazed by a drunken Indian chief. An inveterate alcoholic, his dad like to project his own bad habits on other people. Then Tom drove the ten-year old Corvair up Hamilton Hill, parking on a side street bordering Curtis High Sc hool.

Curtis was a historic building with an impressive limestone facade decorated with formidable stone gargoyles. Those scary stone creatures gave pause to faculty and students alike – telling them that education was a serious business. Out front, there was a spacious courtyard marked with benches, leafy and evergreen trees, shrubs, and flowers of every variety and color. Nevertheless, the fierce stone gargoyles warned all those who were obliged to enter Curtis High School that frivolity would not be condoned. Even in the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, learning was essential to a brighter future.

As a New York City science teacher during an era of great social change, Tom had mixed feelings about his job. He enjoyed the energy and enthusiasm of his students, but sometimes had trouble controlling them. A witty remark or funny incident could lead to an outburst disproportionate to the initial provocation. Classroom control was an ongoing issue particularly with low achieving students in non-regents courses. The advantages of teaching – the holidays and summer vacation, and the steady employment – barely compensated for the day-in day-out stress of student discipline.

Each of Tom’s classes had aggregate personalities with varying degrees of intelligence, diligence, curiosity, cooperation, and congeniality. In addition, each class was lead by an alpha male attired in a black leather jacket, who had to be handled carefully. Part of the problem was Tom’s youthful appearance. The tall, skinny 22-year old pedagogue was often mistaken for a student in the halls and in the cafeteria. Occasionally before charging the rookie teacher for his lunch, the cashier sometimes asked him, Student or teacher? When he wandered the halls early in the semester during his prep period, Curtis’s principal, Mr. Fenning, applied the same query, Student or teacher? Tom’s teaching schedule of five classes per day was akin to an actor performing a daily five-act play. The script changed from day to day but the audience was fixed, captive, and often unwilling.

Teaching science had advantages over the more mundane subjects like mathematics and English. Tom stressed the wonders of science, explaining common place events through cause and effect laws of science. The varying colors of the sky were attributed to the scattering of sunlight by air molecules. The striking phenomena of a rainbow was due to the refractive effects of rain drops (like tiny prisms) on the wavelengths of sunlight. A sonic boom occurred when a jet plane traveled at 760 miles per hour – breaking the sound barrier. At this speed, the jet’s sound waves cannot escape the plane’s front surface. This builds up a huge shock wave that is heard as a big bang on the earth’s surface. The young science teacher’s careful explanation of these every day phenomena seemed to interest the students.

Tom drew on common sense experiences to explain scientific laws. The fact that light travels faster than sound was proven by recalling one’s experience during a thunder storm. A flash of lightning is always seen before the clap of thunder is heard. Since sound waves travel at 1,100 feet per second, a five-second gap between a lightning flash and a thunder clap implies that the storm is about one mile away. In terms of hot vs. cold, Tom asserted that there is no such thing as coldness. A cold snowball simply lacks heat energy, which exists in abundance in a hot cup of coffee. When you touch a cold ice cube, the heat travels out of your finger into the ice cube. And you feel the sensation of coldness. When you touch a hot stove, the heat travels from the stove into your finger. Consequently, you remove your finger quickly to avoid the pain.

Tom usually began his science lesson with a real life demonstration of a scientific law. In attempting to give concrete examples of abstract principles, Tom routinely performed experiments in front of his classes. Some of his classroom demonstrations backfired with dramatic effects. Once the young science teacher cut off too large a piece of sodium, which he placed in a beaker of water. The chemically active alkalai metal exploded and burst into flame – burning hydrogen gas released from water. The glowing ember of sodium singed a hole through his suit jacket, which required a patch in the well-worn garment.

The students loved such mishaps. Will this one work? was the usual comment prior to Mr. Haley’s classroom experiments. It became a running joke throughout the school. Tom usually began each class with the following statement: This is a practical experiment that you can do at home. Of course some of the student responses were unexpected. There was the occasional leather jacketed wise guy who would suggest an unwholesome practical experiment with a cute coed.

One day, Tom demonstrated centrifugal force by whirling a toy airplane in a circle on a string. To the merriment of his students, the string snapped and plane flew off in a tangent out of the classroom striking Mr. Stout, Curtis’s grumpy vice principal. The latter gave the young science teacher a dirty look and continued on his walk through the hallways. Tom quickly apologized and retrieved the errant airplane from the hall. He explained the plane’s behavior as an example of inertia – Newton’s first law of motion.

In his upper level physical science class Tom sometimes resorted to the lecture method to convey information. Remember, the natural world is measurable and hence predictable. Scientists try to predict future events through cause-and-effect laws of science. We are always trying to reduce the randomness of events. Although on the atomic level, the position and motion of electrons has a certain degree of uncertainty. The fundamental uncertainty of subatomic particles is predicted by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The young science teacher asserted that the bright light of reason eliminates superstition and ignorance. Science is more than facts and principles. Science is a method of obtaining information. The scientific method is based on experiment, observation, and conclusion through deductive and inductive reasoning. And these objective methods of inquiry can be applied to all walks of life.

The turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s impinged on Tom’s everyday activities as a teacher, citizen, and human being trying to make sense of the world. While working – preparing his lessons and teaching his classes – or in his spare time – shooting baskets, playing stickball, or socializing at Kaffman’s bar on Morningstar Road – Tom thought about the Vietnam War. There was widespread opposition to the war.

At Kent State, Ohio National Guard soldiers had opened fire on student protesters – killing four students and wounding nine others. In addition, black people were changing their tactics from protesting Jim Crow laws of the South to marching against discrimination and injustice in the North. Dr. Martin Luther King began to speak about the economic plight of poor people throughout the country, as well opposing the expanded bombing of North and South Vietnam.

At home Tom discussed these issues with his mother, Claire Haley, whose Marxist beliefs made her sympathetic to both the civil rights and the antiwar movements. Yet, she warned her son not to participate in the antiwar protests sweeping the country. You’ll get bopped on the head by one of those club-swinging cops and suffer brain damage. Or you’ll get thrown in the clinker. Either way, it could destroy your teaching career.

Mom, I’m not going to do anything stupid. Give me credit for that much, exclaimed the young teacher.

Never mind. I didn’t go back and forth to work in the city all those years. Or type envelops at five cents a pop until my fingers ached for you to throw away your future over some futile antiwar protest.

So you’re saying I should just go about my business and pretend we live in the best of all possible worlds? Move forward like a horse with blinders? Fiddle while Rome burns to the ground?

That’s enough with your wise guy remarks, McGee! replied his mother, becoming irritated.

Those college kids should tend to their school work instead of throwing rocks at the police, Cara replied indignantly.

Married to an ex-Marine with a civil service job, his sister had become the conventional suburban housewife. She was fixated on the American dream of the split-level house with a picket fence, a garage, and a backyard. No longer the carefree teenager who loved dating, dancing, nice clothes, and painting, Cara echoed her husband’s conservative political views. If that’s what matrimony does to a person, Tom thought, it’s not for me.

Turning to her brother, Cara remarked, Your problem, Mr. Flower Child is that you’re lost in the 60s. The Beatles have broken up, Jimi Hendrix is dead, and Brian Wilson’s brain is fried. And the hippies have all gone away. We’re almost in the 70s now. Get with the program!

Speaking of flower child, did you put those flowers on your car? his mother inquired.

No. I was parked near Wagner College the other night. And when I came back to my car, it was covered with flower stickers. A token of peace and love if there ever was one.

You were at the Buddy Buddy Club. It’s a bar for college kids, said Cara.

You spend too much time in bars in my opinion. You’re becoming a big drinker – just like your father, his mom said grimly.

Those flower children make me want to barf. They should take a bath and get a job, Cara remarked.

Yea. I hear the sanitation department is taking applications.

That’s not funny brother. Picking up garbage is hard work, his sister replied.

And nobody ever died from hard work! all three chimed in together in sing-song voices.

When Tom began his teaching career there was a contract dispute between the teachers’ union, led by Albert Shanker, and the Lindsay administration. At that time, public school teachers earned modest salaries that put them in the lower economic rank when compared to other professionals like accountants, engineers, lawyers, and doctors. With regard to teachers there was the common putdown: If you can – do. If you can’t – teach. On Tom’s very first day of teaching, he refused to cross the picket line – instantly becoming a favorite of his older colleagues. His walkout left the novice science teacher subject to the draft, which gave his mother fits. Notwithstanding, the skinny pedagogue opted to join the union, parading up and down the sidewalk of Curtis High School carrying a big cardboard UFT on Strike sign.

His enthusiasm for picketing caught the attention of Curtis’s UFT chapter chairman, Alan Katz, who sent Tom to picket the elementary schools on Staten Island where union support was weaker. He especially enjoyed harassing the school administrators who arrogantly crossed the picket line – nourishing a lifelong dislike of school administrators.

Claire Haley was never enthralled by her son’s choice of teaching as a profession. She often expressed the hope that once the Vietnam War ended, he would enter a more lucrative profession. Family legend included the saga of his mom’s younger brother, Jack, who started out as a public school teacher during the Great Depression. With the recovery of the American economy after the second world war, Uncle Jack went to work for Macy’s as an accountant, where his career progressed rapidly. One day his mom showed Tom a newspaper photo of that legendary uncle, who had just been promoted to vice president of that giant department store. Meanwhile, Tom was informed by Cara, who maintained close ties with the Smith’s in South Jersey that their foster brother, Harry, was also progressing through the ranks of the Bloomington canning factory.

With the successful conclusion of the three-week teachers’ strike, Tom’s salary increased from a modest $5,400 to a more respectable salary of $5,800 per year. The union also obtained salary increases for graduate work, including master’s and doctoral degrees. The fledgling science teacher immediately began taking graduate courses in science in order to attain these monetary increments. Though hardworking, studious, and conscientious, Tom was not driven by ambition, which he equated with economic greed. He believed that American materialism was at the root of many of the problems that plagued his country.

CHAPTER 2

Free Fall

T om stood nervously in front of his physical science class. Since it was a Friday, his students were particularly restless today – talking, laughing, and nudging each other. Most of his classes were between 30 and 34 students – the limit for New York city public schools. His room was in the science wing of the building in which the teacher’s desk was equipped with electrical outlets, water faucets, a basin, and a gas valve for a Bunsen bu rner.

Today we will discuss the legendary Italian scientist, Galileo Galilei, who did a famous experiment around 1600, the young science teacher stated.

Was that the guy who sat under the apple tree when the apple hit him in the head?

No, Ralph. That was Isaac Newton who discovered the law of gravity, plus the three laws of motion.

Tom showed his students a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What’s the name of this famous building?

Tina, a pony-tailed cheerleader, answered: That’s the Leaning Tower in Italy, which has been leaning for a long time. It’s gonna fall over soon.

Many of the students applauded and called out. Way to go Tina!

Ignoring their boisterous response, Tom continued. That’s correct. It is called the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Galileo climbed up that tower in 1600 with two rocks of unequal weight and dropped them from the roof to the ground below. What do you think happened?

That’s easy. The heavier rock hit the ground first, someone called out from the back of the room.

The young science teacher shook his head no. Both rocks struck the ground simultaneously. Galileo concluded that all objects fall at the same rate of speed due to gravity. It’s called free fall.

Tom took a small piece of paper and a pebble out of his pocket. Holding them above his head, he released them simultaneously. As expected, the pebble hit the floor first. The reason, according to their teacher, was air resistance or drag, manifested by the air itself. Air fills this very room. It has a certain viscosity that opposes motion through it. The viscous force depends on the size, shape, and speed of the moving object itself.

That viscous force sound vicious to me, observed Dellwood, a skinny black kid sitting up front.

It’s like swimming in a big tank of pudding instead of a tank of water. The viscosity of the pudding is greater than that of water. So it would slow you down more than water, said Jerry, a bespectacled boy who watched everything intently.

That’s right Jerry. But you probably wouldn’t drown either, due to the greater buoyant force of pudding – as compared to water, Tom replied.

Yeah, he could eat his way through the pudding from one end of the tank to the other, remarked Ralph, a heavyset football player.

Now that sounds kinky! yelled Dellwood.

Everybody starting laughing and gabbing at once, engulfing the room in raucous discord. Responding to the ensuing disorder, Tom grabbed their attention by holding up a long glass cylinder with a penny and a feather inside. When I invert this cylinder, which will fall faster – the penny or the feather? The obvious answer was the penny.

Then the young science teacher hooked the glass cylinder to a vacuum pump, which drew the air out of the cylinder. When he inverted the evacuated cylinder, both the penny and the feather fell at the same rate of speed. So what can we conclude from this practical experiment?

Which you cannot do at home unless you have one of those cool vacuum pumps, cracked Dellwood, to the amusement of the entire class.

If you get rid of air resistance, all objects fall at the same rate of speed due to gravity. It’s called the acceleration of gravity, replied Jerry, who was intent on the proceedings.

Excellent Jerry! And Galileo drew the same conclusion: In the absence of air resistance, all objects fall at the same rate of speed due to gravity. It’s called free fall.

As he stated this conclusion, Tom wrote them on the blackboard:

#(1) All bodies fall at the same rate of speed in the absence of air resistance (free fall).

#(2) The acceleration of gravity is designated as g:

where: g = 32 ft/sec²

#(3) The speed of a free falling body is given by: v = g t where: t = time, g = 32 ft/sec²

#(4) The distance of a free falling body is given by: s = ½ g t² where: t = time, g = 32 ft/sec²

Tom continued with his talking and writing on the board: Notice that the speed of a free falling body depends on the time its falling. Whereas the distance of a free falling body depends on the square of the time its falling. While the students copied his notes from the blackboard, Tom added one more concept for his students to think about: Galileo made the first measurement of the acceleration of gravity, g. And class, what is the value of g?

Everybody shouted in unison: 32 ft/sec² At that point the bell ending the class sounded, bringing the lesson on free fall to an end.

CHAPTER 3

The Vietnam War

E very year in September, Tom was notified by his local draft board on Bay Street to report to them. Duly arriving at the Selective Service’s dingy little office, the skinny science teacher presented a letter from Curtis High School describing his teaching duty at that North Shore school. A few weeks later, the dreaded letter from the draft board appeared in the mailbox of the white stucco house on Pulaski Avenue. Opening the letter with trembling hands, Tom found his draft card inscribed with the 2A classification – occupational deferment as a science teacher. He had heard of draft protesters burning their draft cards and mailing the ashes to their local draft board. But the young man’s antiwar idealism was mitigated by the impulse for self-preservation. Shakespeare had said it best: Discretion is the better part of v alor.

Nevertheless, Tom was haunted by the death and destruction occurring in Southeast Asia. Every night on the TV news, horrible scenes of burning Vietnamese villages were displayed. Weekly death tolls of American and enemy forces documented the brutality of this war. The weekly body counts of Viet Cong insurgents appeared to be inflated. After all, the entire population of North and South Vietnam was less than forty million people. Like many young people, Tom understood that a western nation cannot fight a prolonged ground war against native guerrilla fighters who knew the local terrain and had the support of the peasants.

But there were many Americans who saw the war as a worthy effort to oppose worldwide Communism. President Johnson (LBJ) had escalated the war, increasing American troop strength from 11,000 advisors under President Kennedy in 1963, to 464,000 American soldiers by 1967. In addition, LBJ launched a massive bombing campaign that extended throughout North and South Vietnam. Like Tom, many of his peers had avoided the military draft through teaching, graduate school, marriage, enlisting in the military reserve, and even emigrating to Canada and Sweden.

One of his classmates, Albert Cloots, had not been so fortunate. Reading the Staten Island Advocate one Saturday afternoon, Tom saw Albert’s name among the list of islanders killed in action in Southeast Asia. Albert Cloots had participated in the x class rebellion against Mr. Gento – refusing to go to assembly after the latter permitted the girls to stay behind in homeroom. A gifted mathematician, Albert had helped Tom in ninth year algebra when Tom was perplexed with word problems. The young science teacher was distressed at the utter waste of such talent: meeting death slogging through the sultry jungles of Vietnam in a doomed imperialist war.

Tom remembered riding on the # 3 Castleton Avenue bus with Albert Cloots – needling each other as teenagers are inclined to do. As Albert got up to leave the bus, he gave Tom the finger with his hand gripping the metal bar by the exit door. Unexpectedly, an elderly woman sitting near them saw the obscene gesture and upbraided the tow-headed youngster. Turning crimson, the mild mannered boy left the bus hurriedly as Tom roared with laughter – until the woman fixed him with withering look of disdain. Awkward and uncoordinated, Albert had an unorthodox style of basketball – which included a deadly accurate, running two-handed set shot. Somewhere in heaven there must be a special place for such young men, so gifted and talented, wrested from this world because of the idiotic policies of middle-aged men.

The advent of 1968 brought a new president to the White House. After nearly a decade of politicking, Richard Nixon assumed the presidency with the promise to end the war. Richard Nixon had been Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president during the 1950s. He had opposed John Kennedy in the famous 1960 Presidential TV debates. Unfortunately, President Nixon continued LBJ’s barbaric policy of bombing – extending the death and destruction to Laos and Cambodia, as well as North and South Vietnam.

Nixon’s B-52 bombing campaign triggered widespread antiwar demonstrations. President Nixon appeared to be out of touch with the antiwar sentiment in the country. Once, Nixon left the White House late at night to talk to some college students encamped near the Capitol. Instead of discussing his Vietnam policies, Nixon began talking about his favorite sport – football. The young protesters thought the President was living in a dream world or had lost his mind.

There had been profound changes on Staten Island during the 1960s. The construction of the Verrazano Bridge linking Staten Island and Brooklyn had dramatic effects on the Island. Once a remote under populated borough of sleepy small towns like Elm Park, Port Richmond, Mariners Harbor, New Dorp, and Tottenville, Staten Island had undergone a massive building boom. New homes condominiums, garden apartments, and high rise apartments had sprung up all over the Island.

An extensive mid-island area of swamplands had become the solid waste disposal site for the entire city. A spanking new six-lane expressway was constructed that connected the Bayonne, the Goethals, and the Outerbridge with the huge double-decked Verrazano Bridge, which spanned the Upper Narrows segment of New York Bay. This mile-long suspension bridge was supported by massive steel cables