Mutually Assured Destruction: Remember the unannounced air raid drill in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Did you ever wonder why our schools and neighborhood were relatively free of the ubiquitous reminders of MAD, the Civil Defense Fallout Shelter signs? After forty years of being top secret, the truth can now be told. David Poleshuck and I took them. Everyone we could find. I had to stand on David's shoulders to get the one from Weequahic. They were getting to be so many of them that I was worried they would be found in my basement. Bob Dylan was coming to the Mosque Theater. My next door neighbor was Moe Septee who was producing the concert and I was able to get the second and third row center seats for my self and some friends. David was working as an usher at the Mosque so we hatched a plan. We wrapped up ten of the signs with a note that I wrote, " Dear Bob, here are some fal lout shelter signs. Why don"t you hang one in your bathroom so they can't catch you with your pants down?" I guess he liked the thought. If you look at the cover photo on his fourth (?) album, "Bringing It All Back Home", in the bottom left corner is one of Weequahic's own fallout shelter signs. Some more revelations may follow.

Another Reflection
After we got wheels, we would occasionally go west to the burbs where some of our friends had moved before the great Exodus from Newark and where we had friends from political and social connections. Maplewood, South Orange, etc. We started to notice garden ornaments not usually seen in the Weequahic area. The ones that caught our eyes were the stable boys holding the lanterns at the ends of driveways or walks. They were invariably black faced. Having gone to Clinton Pl. Jr High and Weequahic, I was offended to see Black People (I am a bit nostalgic for the Black Power Period) always portrayed as servants in what was then all white communities that not too much earlier had no Jews either. David and I and some other of our friends would go on mid-night rides and paint those overworked servants' faces white. One night we found a grand prize, a driveway with a pair of stable boys, one on each side. White, white, and away! Now, we used to go back and check our handy work. Our double had been repainted brown, brown. That will not stand! WHITE, WHITE! Brown, Brown. We were starting to think about kidnapping the little guys. White, White. We came back to check and there was one white stable boy and one brown stable boy. We had integrated the neighborhood. David said there must have been some coverage in the local press as the practice started occurring elsewhere.