On the way Homestand!
Fifty years ago I walked across a platform and shook the hand of the principal at Connetquot High School, who handed me my diploma. By Monday, I was on the 4:40 AM train to New York City and, along with my classmates' fathers, became a commuter. It is not that I didn't have dreams. I sat on the train with my "Arty" friends who were enrolled in the Fashion Institute of New York, with my guitar, pen and paper. I read the trades and Rolling Stone, went to auditions, played at showcases and Manhattan Cablevision shows — because I was still only 17.
I had actually graduated in January of 1976. I started out working on Wall Street as a floorman, delivering mail, cutting the ticker tape and posting it for the bank executives at the iconic Morgan Guaranty and Trust on Broad Street, across the street from where George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States.
By spring, I got a job in the mail room of the corporate headquarters of The Anaconda Company, across from Radio City Music Hall. Anaconda had a tuition reimbursement benefit that paid 80 percent of tuition to a college of our choice. I enrolled as a journalism and music student at The New School for Social Research.
There I took courses in Broadcast Journalism with guest professors Fred Friendly, Walter Cronkite, and Don Hewitt — all cut from the Edward R. Murrow cloth at CBS. Songwriting was a song-share class with the brother of Paul Simon in an annex at New York University. I submitted my courses and receipt to Human Resources, and it came back to my inbox with a stamp that read: REJECTED. Before sticky notes, there was a note attached by the most innovative advancement in tech history — the paper clip. It read: "Classes must be in line with your current job and not your aspirations." I wondered how I could quickly transfer my major to Mail Room Science. I paid for the courses out of pocket, and when I reached the age of 18, started playing in Greenwich Village bars in a pinstriped suit.
On the way home, I would meet up with my friends and the fathers of my classmates, riding from Penn Station to Oakdale. I read, wrote, and discussed art and music, addiction, and the bar car after we changed trains from electric to diesel. My friends' fathers went their specific way together — to the smoke-filled bar car, the fourth car from the end. By the time we got to Islip, I would finish my journal entry, bid my friends a good evening, and then straddle the space between the two cars, feeling the contrast of the city and the island: trees, the Great South Bay, the rhythm of the wheels on the track. And I wondered if I was destined for the bar car of my friends' parents, or something else that I longed for.
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The Homestand Journal is a daily column from the CREATE Daily by Richard Arnold Beattie, a singer-songwriter, journalist, and media host. The Homestand draws from experience and explores the integration of Home, Work, and Community. Beattie is the President of the Colorado Chapter of the Leadon Family Foundation, Valley Park and Recreation in the Wet Mountain Valley, and founder of Sound Century Academy of Recording Arts. He works with all generations of entrepreneurs and is Regional Director of TAG Teams, solving community challenges throughout Colorado and the Rocky Mountain Region through entrepreneurship. For a catalog, application, or to host TAG Team events, email richardbeattie809@gmail.com.
