Do You Remember Pete Liske? Do You Remember Jack Kennedy? They’re Gone, But I’m Still Here

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the early 1960s. Not in any morbid way, you know. But just as the realization hits that I witnessed a lot of people and events that are now consigned to history. If I make a casual reference to some thing–and believe me, we are not talking obscure skirmishes in the US Civil War–I risk losing an entire audience. Or what I have of one. This especially happens with a a species of creature known as an “editor”, and it is, excuse me, a pain in the ass. These guys (guyx, if that makes some of you feel better) are now late 20 or 30 somethings, and they don’t know what they don’t know. Most of us don’t, but some of us were taught to shut up and listen occasionally. It even worked for me.

But, as I reflect, this is merely one of the hazards of surviving past the allotted three score and ten. Oh, yeah, that’s Psalm 90:10, but since America is lousy with Christians, I don’t suppose you need a clue. Sorry. As you were.

This also happens with jazz writing, at which I am a devoted, but admittedly amateur. I have no illusions. There are plenty of people who know so much more than me–but about music in general and this music in particular–that it takes a nerve to venture what is essentially just another opinion. Now that never stopped Eric Hobsbawm, but, son, you are no Eric Hobsbawm (aka Frankie Newton, jazz critic) (Cue Lloyd Bentsen and Danny Quayle–you may have to look it up). Well, wait. That was like, back in da 1900s. So I’ll spot you this one.

I basically stalled for a couple weeks before daring to write anything about Sonny Rollins because, for God’s sake, he’s Sonny Rollins. I don’t think I ever even heard Sonny live, although I have heard a number of legendary sax players. Well, so what do you do? Guess? You spend a lot of time listening to Sonny’s work and going back and reading the jazz press, and then try not to make an ass of yourself. The piece got some nice feedback, so I guess it was ok. I tried to do Sonny in the 1950s justice. It’s not like I can travel in time. You know a better way than being there? Well, I wasn’t there. So I either spend my entire life talking only about what I have immediately experienced, or say nothing. How many stories about West and South Philly could you read? Or about altar boys who were sinning in their hearts while doing a communion gig at a convent school. Enough is enough, right?

My memories extend back to about age 3, but not before. That puts me back far enough to have seen and heard some heavy stuff, things that I will carry to my last moments on planet Earth. And it’s funny some of the stuff that has stuck with me. Well, yeah, the usual you might expect that I can’t or won’t talk about. I suspect others have done it better–in more ways than one. So for now, I’ll stick with some awfully mundane stuff. To make a point.

Take Pete Liske and Penn State.

The first college football game that I can remember listening through on the radio. That would be September 21, 1963, a Saturday evening. It wasn’t the first Penn State game I had watched, for sure. That would have been the 1961 Gator Bowl, which I remember because I had a bad case of gastroenteritis which, for some reason, elicited no real sympathy at home. But hey, listening to a game meant you were a real fan, because it got played out in your mind’s eye. You were there. Because if you didn’t know what a T-formation was (I’m really old) or a power I (yes old), you couldn’t see it, so you had to study the game some.

This particular Saturday night was memorable for a lot of reasons. I listened to the game on the radio of my Dad’s car, which was a Gray Buick LeSabre. I sat in the driveway of my Dad’s old homestead, on North 65th Street, because his sister, my Aunt Mary, was have her annual family get-together. In her back yard, which dead ended into a cinder block building that could double as a wall-ball court when I was there. The Salvuccis were a pretty big group, and they were all still going strong, except for my Dad’s Mom, who had passed in 1960. She was hip. She had a tattoo, was Sicilian, and used to give me a shot of Old Grand Dad or Old Crow on Sunday mornings after Mass at Saint Donato’s (all the boys got one, and I was, well, one of the boys…..shudder if you must at the evident child abuse…….) Anyway, Mary would corral all the brothers and sisters (there were, I think 10 in all) and their kids and assorted cousins from various collateral branches and put out food and coffee and beer and soda and turn on the radio and we looked like a scene from the movie Picnic (one of my older girl cousins was to die for, a bonus at that transitional age of 12). I don’t remember what we talked about. Hell, that night I was down in the driveway, doing cool stuff. But Mary threw this party and for as long as I wasn’t too sophisticated to go, I went. Now that the entire bunch, save a handful are gone, I’d like to go back once more.

We normally started school on September 8, give or take a day, so this was pretty early in the year. I remember the evening as coolish, and it was around 50 degrees at 9 PM according to the record, so I trust my memory. The legendary Rip Engle was still head coach at PSU (Joe Pa came later) and that team featured an also-ran player named Jerry Sandusky. Remember him? Thank God, he was not the star. Their QB, who later played in the NFL (and even late career, for the Iggles, in 1971, when they were ) was a guy named Pete Liske, who is no longer with us. Liske was a middling QB with a good arm, but what did I know? I wanted to be like Pete Liske, just like any Philly kid wanted to be like Sonny Jergensen, who was far from middling, and not very well behaved either. Sonny supposedly get exiled to Washington for one party too many. When we played touch, the dude up the street who was really good got to be Sonny. I was stuck with Pete Liske, so I made the best of it. So did Pete, apparently, since he was well travelled in various leagues. Anyway, that was the start of seventh grade at Prisontation, and while I was never really a problem, I never much cared for it.

Besides, October was usually a good month. We got our steam heat back on October 15 every year, and believe me, you usually needed it. There was nothing quite so invigorating as that early autumn cold snap that could bite; it reminded you, with the turning of the leaves, that Summer was gone. Speaking of leaves, we had a big Norway maple on our front lawn (my Mother hated it because it made a mess), and it marked time by shedding its leaves as they turned yellow. Of course, I got to rake them into large piles for which there was no apparent destination. From time immemorial, until the EPA caught up with us, we got ride of leaves by burning them. I know, air pollution, CO, and all that, but when you lived in a suburban neighborhood where everyone was doing the Saturday afternoon scape, there was nothing quite so delightful as the aroma of burning leaves, tart and eye-watering, but it made for a cocktail of pleasant sensations with a chilly wind. In my mind’s nose, if there is such a thing, I can still smell it, and it was to October what barbecue and hot dogs was to July. Nothing would get me back there faster–music excepted–than that smell, but it isn’t coming back, alas. Especially these days. You’d be liable to burn your neighborhood down with nonexistent climate change.

Since I was at an age where I could be impressed by the derring-do of slightly older alpha males, I also distinctly remember another story from that October, and I remember it because it roughly coincided with my realization that the Iggles might well be on their way to football oblivion (they were, with Pete Liske at the helm), but they could still beat the Dallas Cowboys, an expansion team, with Eddie LeBaron at QB. I actually ended up at a game at Franklin Field down at Penn where they played. How I had a ticket I simply can’t remember, although it must have been one of my uncles, who had a season pass. I guess he had a Communion Breakfast to hit that Sunday, so he must have persuaded his bunch to take me along, which was amazing. I’ve only been to two NFL games in my life, and the Birds, as my memory serves, actually won that one.

But more impressively, there was a story–all over the news that week–that some 15 year old kid had robbed a bank. He was from some nearby suburb, maybe Brookline, and had taken a Red Arrow bus to 69th Street (the big terminal in those days). If memory serves, kid had a toy gun (no red plastic thingy shouting “fake” in those days). Walked into a bank branch (pre-ATM!!!), handed a teller a note that said, more or less like something out of Naked City, “Give me all your money or you’re gonna eat lead.” 15 years old!!!!! I think the teller was so stunned that he or she (probably she) handed over a good bit of cash and the kid made an escape. Man was I impressed. Oh, yeah, his Mother turned him in. I could identify with that. “Now, Richard, I told you not to rob that bank. You need to study for the spelling test.”

At that age, the difference between 12 and 15 or 16 was a lifetime, so you sort of looked up to (or hated) older kids. I didn’t know this one, but I thought, “Heck, if he can, why not me?” I do remember some discussion over our kitchen table about the heist. My Dad, God love him, just looked at me and, as was his wont, said nothing. I don’t exactly remember what Mom said, but I’m certain it was “They’ll put you in reform school.” I probably said I was in Presentation BVM, which was already a reform school. Yes, brilliant. I can’t remember how any of it went over, but I do recall thinking every time I went into the branch bank of Fidelity on City Line Avenue with my Dad, this is how I would do it, although the branch manager, Mr Treston, a neighbor, would probably ID me immediately. So, I refrained. Some years later, a classmate of mine–whose older sister was ironically married to a member of the Philadelphia Eagles, did in fact stick up a bank–several– on City Avenue down in Bala Cynwyd and elsewhere So I guess I wasn’t the only kid who was impressed by the deal. But I had better impulse control. At least when it came to banks.

Whatever happened to him? He went to Vietnam and got wounded. He was a mess before that and the last time I saw him, he was on the back of a landscaping truck at a Burger King in Devon, PA. Grinning like a loon. That was about 1978. He was the scion of a wealthy Republican family, for what it’s worth. Good times.

Does this story have a point? Well, yes, but that’s for next time. Because we’re coming up on 60 years–hard to believe–that President Kennedy got his brains smeared all over Dealey Plaza in Dallas. November 22, 1963. No joke. What they say about remembering exactly where you were and what you were doing. It’s all true. But that’s for next time, maybe in a few weeks. I will tell you that the first time I saw the Texas Book Depository in person, I cried. Spontaneously. There are witnesses, so you’ll have to believe what I tell you. But, in retrospect, that November weekend marked me, marked us, marked America. I had watched JFK get nominated in LA. I watched him get elected via Cook County on the morning following Election Day. I watched him do press conferences, suitably dazzled. I watched with him during the Missile Crisis. And prayed. And I watched him get buried. And prayed some more.

We were just getting rolling. The 1960s were some ride. Even for an ordinary kid from Catholic school and West Philly. If it messed me up, imagine what it did to my peers with somewhat broader horizons. Like the dude who become a bank robber and a landscaper. There, but for the grace of the Piarist Fathers, and Augustin and Aquinas, go I.