CHAPTER 128 MOVE, EARTH DAY AND POLLUTION TRAIL 1970
On May 4, 1970, I found full time employment again. I began working in the Operations Center of a new Philadelphia corporation called Lincoln Bank. The location was at 33rd & Cherry Streets underneath a parking lot. The photos to the left is how that location looks today, but the parking lot is still there; although, everything around it has changed.
At one time that parking lot looked like this before Drexel and University City began expanding beyond their original boundaries. It was not so pretty an area then, but it had the advantage that I could walk to work. I lived then on Chester Avenue between 42nd and 41st Streets. I would walk over to 41st and go North to Chestnut Street, walk down Chestnut to 33rd Street and then go North to Cherry. On the left was the entrance on Cherry Street into the Lincoln Bank Operations Center when I started working there. Not exactly looking high finance, is it?
It was approximately a two-mile hike and took me along a corner of Powelton Village.
Powelton Village was founded in the late 1800 as a popular living area for the cities wealthy industrial tycoons, but by the 1960s that had long changed and it was inhabited by lower economic classes. In fact, it was a center for many in the counterculture and was a hot bed of political activity and anarchist. It had a large multiethnic population.
Powelton would become infamous a few years later when a radical Black Liberation group, called MOVE, became embroiled in a long standoff with the Philadelphia Police under the direction of then-Mayor Frank Rizzo. The MOVE headquarters (pictured left in 1970) was at the home of its founder, Vincent Leaphart, now known as John Africa at 311 North 33rd, about two blocks or so from where I had begun working in 1970. MOVE would make bigger news in 1985when another mayor (named Good) dropped a bomb on the group and burned down a whole neighborhood.
house where Ira Einhorn, who would become known as the Unicorn Killer, lived with the mummified body of his girlfriend Holly Maddux, who disappeared in September 1977, until her body was discovered in the Spring of 1979 after neighbors complained of a stench coming from Einhorn’s house.
You may remember Einhorn”s name appeared earlier in my story because it was rumored he owned the first peep show that had appeared on Walnut Street. In April of 1970, not very long before I landed the job along the Powelton Village border, Einhorn had been hosting the first Earth Day event and claiming he was the founder of Earth Day.
Bill Clinton later awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom to environmentalist and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson for leading the charge in founding Earth Day.
Even so, some confusion remains over who founded Earth Day — and whether, as one headline put it, an Earth Day co-founder killed his girlfriend and “composted” her body. That confusion is thanks in part to the photo above, which shows a man standing at the podium for Philadelphia’s 1970 Earth Day observations.
The man in the photo is Ira Einhorn, who in the 1960s and early ’70s was known as an academic expert on the counterculture movement. While teaching at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, he “once reportedly broke out the joints, stripped naked and danced in the classroom,” TIME reported — and at Harvard University he once said “a little more hugging could do Harvard a lot of good.” Despite his unconventional methods, he did have a way with conventional types, and was well known as a smooth-talker who could hook up fellow crusaders with funding for their various initiatives. — Time USA, LLC, 2020: “Behind the Photo That Made People Think Earth Day was Founded by a Convicted Killer.”
Anyway, you can see I walked to a rather eclectic and colorful neighborhood. Here is what I wrote Joe Rubio on May 7, 1970.
I’m working steady again. I am in the accounting department of the Lincoln National Bank (SIC – National was never part of its name, it was just Lincoln Bank). I take care of the General ledger and issue the statement of accounts daily. I started Monday (May 4). The hours are 8 to 4, 37 3/4 hours a week. I think I get twelve holidays. Let’s see…they give free life insurance, hospitalization and a low cost pay continuance insurance, and a share plan, which is something like Atlantic’s thrift plan. You buy shares in the bank and the bank matches every dollar you put n. For every ninety days without being sick I can have either a day’s pay or a day off. We get a Christmas bonus; 2 ½ of our yearly salary the first year, 5% the second year and up 1% each year afterward until it reaches 8%. We also get free banking services. Not too bad, eh?
I will be up for a raise after six months. I am sort of a management trainee. They gave me seven hours of tests to get the job, a special management testing consultant firm gave the tests. They said I did very well in all aspects, as happened at Atlantic. I am being asked to help get another guy’s desk caught up. I have been working four days and have in 39 hours and I am working Saturday.
more information on this journey. A week prior, however, I rented a truck in order to get our refrigerator, which we had put in storage. The one in our apartment had had it. You know something, it is not east moving a refrigerator about the countryside alone. I had a hand truck supplied by U-Haul, but a full sized refrigerator is a heavy and awkward thing. I had no problem rolling it out of the storage bin and
up the ramp into the truck, where I secured it in the middle of the bed with ropes.
About this time my mother had to go into the Phoenixville Hospital for tests. She had found a lump on her breast. She seems to have received treatment for breast cancer, but I never knew this at the time. I only found out from going through papers after she died in 2012. I really don’t know how extensive her cancer was. The treatments were obviously successful and she never had anything as radical as a mastectomy.
At work I was being trained on my Supervisor’s job so I could take over if she went on vacation or was out for any reason.
Joe Rubio came home on leave July 6. We had a few days together, playing Chip ‘n’ Putt near West Chester and hitting Jimmie John’s for hot dogs and fries before he had to return to Army duty. He was done with Vietnam, but still had several months remaining of his hitch. He flew out to Fort Lewis, Washington for the remainder. As far as I knew he had come through the war unscathed and without seeing much action, for this was the impression his letters gave. I didn’t fully learn of his wounding and close calls until he was fully discharged.
On August 20 we got a ride to my parent’s home and stayed with my grandmother. My folks were away on a vacation trip and she was alone in the house and she was scared to death. The night before somebody had been throwing stones at the windows. Whoever did this did not return Saturday night nor anytime again, so we never found out who was responsible.
We were back on the 22nd in a U-Haul Truck. We went to Lois’ father’s house and got our bedroom suite. We were preparing to a move form out studio apartment to a two-bedroom. Our current lease was up on August 31.
Mid-way through August one evening there was a knock on our door. I opened the door and two young men were standing there.
“Ah, you must be Mr. Meredith,” one said, both of them smiling broadly.
Then Lois stepped out of the kitchen behind me. The smiles left their faces and the speaker’s voice fell to a minor key as he said, “And you must be Mrs. Meredith?”
They quickly introduced themselves. They were two Gay guys (although they really didn’t introduce themselves as such) that had purchased The Commodore from the elderly lady we had rented from. They had big plans to completely renovate the place, put in all modern kitchens and bathrooms, etc. They were calling on us to tell us who they were, but also to offer us a two-bedroom apartment at the end of the hall. It was currently being upgraded and would be ready by September 1 for occupancy, if we were interested. I think the rent was $110 a month, twenty dollars more than our $90 studio.
We said yes.
In early September I had my three-month review at Lincoln Bank. It was my best so far and I was getting a raise early. I wasn’t told how much, but my boss said it would be at least $5.00 an hour; although he was going to try to get me more.
I went back up to Temple and registered for the Fall Semester
. What a mess that was! The line was two blocks long and five abreast. It took me all of three hours to get through. I went up to the campus at 3:00 and got back home at some time after 7:30 that evening. I guess it really took four hours. What an unholy menagerie! There were students from pillar to post and absolutely nobody knew what they were doing. You had to argue and fight for every class, but I got through it. My only problem had been waiting until the last night of the process and too many courses were filled. I was hoping next time I would receive pre-registration forms so I didn’t have to battle the crowds again.
I had to go back on Thursday night to pay my first tuition installment. That visit was a snap, in and out, hardly anyone milling about. There was no big line outside at all and only short ones inside. It took me three minutes. It was easier giving them money than making registrations for their product.
My classes began the next Wednesday, less than a week after registration. I started with English 9e that night, which was Intermediate Composition. Thursdays I had History 51e or American History from the Colonial Days to 1877 as my early class and then Sociology 11e, which was American Society, as my late class. Beginning the following Monday was my last choice that semester from 4:30 to 6:30, Music Appreciation 61e. This was supposed to be an easy course to ace.
On the first weekend of the semester the Black Panthers held a convention at Temple. We had some trouble in Philly all week, it even made the network news. Being trapped between Rizzo’s cops and the Panthers is scary and I could have done without either; although the Black Panthers had helped me with that refrigerator. Rizzo never did anything for me.
Joe wrote that he was busy as well:
You see we have to get 75% of all our vehicles ready for storage since we can’t use them. It seems the 3rd Cav has run out of money and this is causing a fuel shortage because there is no money to buy fuel. So now we have to get all our tracks into overall condition before they can be put in storage.
No wonder we lost that war. How do you fight an enemy if you can’t afford to fuel up your fighting vehicles?
Once there were trees and a river
Once there was grass where you stand…
There we stood, a motley band of people singing this song by Travis Edmonson, a country singer/songwriter from Arizona (Died 2009).
Why?
To answer that we have to back up a few months from where we
last left off.
We wrote about a character well-known around the underground scene in 1970, one Ira Einhorn and we mentioned his claim of being the founder of Earth Day, a bit of an exaggeration. If you had watched the video, which contained the CBS Walter
Cronkite coverage of Earth Week in Philadelphia, you won’t hear Einhorn’s name mentioned once, even though he did host the big rally in Fairmont Park on the first Earth Day.
He obviously had to have some influence with the committee because this was an important event,; anything going on that included a speech of Senator Edmund Muskee and such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg and Ralph Nader, was a big deal.
This was Earth Week, April 16-22, 1970, in Philadelphia and culminated on April 22 with the very first Earth Day.
If you can find and watch the video, and I think you should, you
will find the student committee that was responsible for Earth Week, needing funds, struck a Devil’s bargain with their enemy, the industries they had named as the 10 top polluters in Philly. The industrialist, which actually included the city, ponied up funding and the committee agreed their would be no embarrassing demonstrations or protests at the target industries, especially since the events in Philly that week were going to receive network TV coverage.
The committee did not fully live up to that agreement. There was a protest and demonstration at various pollution sites across the city and Lois and I were along for the ride; quite literally. This was the Philadelphia Pollution Trail Bus Tour, which brings us back to where we started, standing with an eclectic group singing at hard working men.
Once there were trees and a river
Once there was grass where you stand…
We, my wife and I, and several dozen others, stood atop a flatten mound of crushed cinder. It was black. Six feet away was a brown puddle of water twice that distance wide. Beyond the cinder and puddle was a wire fence eight feet high holding the public out. Men were busy working inside the fence. They were black men mostly, working in rusty dust and the soggy discharge of a society they did not know. They were working on a beautiful Saturday morning at a job you or I would never want or ever seek. And we stood on the gravel lane singing at them, as if they were responsible for the waste in our land. We sang:
So copulate to populate,
God bless every birth,
Don’t lose your soul
Through birth control,
And you’ll soon lose the earth.
This was a new version of “America the Beautiful” concocted by the Philadelphia Earth Week Committee. Two carloads of teenage boys drove through the puddle and splashed we singers. The cameras and the mikes of the CBS News crew following our bus caught it all.
A little later, several Pollution Trail buses and trucks pulled to a
stop behind each other outside the boundary of Philadelphia Coke. Rose Owens, resident of Bridesburg, gave a brief speech. Housewives milled about hanging signs on the wire fence.
“Does your baby smoke?” asked a sign. “It might as well.”
The housewives cheered for Rose. Rose welcomed everyone and asked for support in the battle to clean-up Philadelphia Coke. She was a brave woman out fighting the filth in the air. She had been threatened, and threatened, and threatened.
But some stayed on the buses. “I feel exploited,” said one such man. “This thing is like a personal campaign for Bridesburg. It’s too narrow.”
I cannot agree with all of that. It is good the people of Bridesburg were willing to fight for pure air in their community. If communities everywhere would stand and fight all our problems would be licked, or so we believed then. And if it was housewives from Bridesburg no one could yell about outside agitators. (Bridesburg is a section of Philly to the north near the Delaware River, down from Frankford.)
But thinking of the singing and the paper masks across our mouths, the trip took on the aspects of a game. The game rolled around the block, three spaces forward, while the breeze behind kicked black dust into the hair of the Bridesburg children playing on the playground.
tour. It was to show the people the dustbins and sludge pots of our city and tell how the courts had stalled, and how the city fathers have stalled, and how the industry leaders have stalled. It was to show the people the hypocrisy of the top ten polluters in Philadelphia, who had cleaned their lots and worked double shifts the day before the tour so they would not be pumping poison in our air when we came to see it.”
But the people on the buses were already aware. Some had a cause, like the ladies from Bridesburg. Some were camp followers, like the boys who kept pushing through the crowd toward the TV cameras. Yet some were concerned and felt silly, rather than informed, after the tour. The long-informed did not come to sing ineffective song parodies to men who have suffered more than they. Those long concerned wondered where everyone had been before Earth Week. Where were the politicians now touting clean air and water and the preservation of our flora and fauna a few years ago when conservations were called softhearted liberals? Where were the Pollution Trail leaders and Bridesburg ladies and aroused students in 1958 when Mayra Mannes wrote More in Anger? Where were they in 1960 when Vance Packard wrote The Waste Makers? Where were they in 1962 when Rachel Carson was being smeared as un-American for writing Silent Spring?
We were all there that week, gathering in masses in the parks to hear the politicians, and riding buses to blame our problems on the industries. True, the industries are to blame. But so are we. We support the industries. In fact, we demand the industries. And attacking the industries will not solve our problems, for in truth, we need the industries.
In the beginning I quoted a song called “The Time of Man”. It
was popularized by the Limesliters in 1961 and became something of a theme during Earth Week. Our problems are not new. Nor is the prophecy of the song new.
No way to hide my little baby’s eyes
From the damage the dead have done.
They didn’t know in the old time
The earth and the sea were to share.
They didn’t know in the old time.
Once there was grass where you stand.
I wonder where all these concerned people were in 1975? Will they be singing? Or choking? Will our question be left unasked? Will the question be: Where is man? And somewhere on that tour I began to break away from the whole underground and protest scene.
Once there were songs about rights
Instead of wrongs.
Once was the time of man.
Several months later a second event sealed my growing skepticism and made me grow restless with the city. I had noted this particular instance early, mistakenly thinking it occurred in the heat of summer not long after I went to work at North American Publishing, which would have placed the whole affair back in 1969; however, I have since found documentation that corrected that view and in a way made more sense, giving that next year the Mayoral race would be in full swing. It was actually in October 1970 that they accused me of falsely registering to vote and tried to disenfranchise me. I was still living at The Commodore, and then working at Lincoln Bank. Here is the contemporary account of that I wrote to Joe Rubio on October 11
Dear Joe,
This is proving an interesting week. My former party, the Republicans, is attempting to take away my right to vote. I’ll give you the background.
I came home Friday and got the mail. There was a “Petition for Cancellation of Registration”. It was sworn out by Joseph H. Keenan of 4260 Chestnut Street (died 1977). I went over to that address, but there doesn’t seem to be any Keenan there. The witnesses were Helen Ida and Richard McNamee. They claim I am not a permanent resident at this address. I am supposed to go to the hearing on Thursday, October 15.
In my opinion this is an irresponsible act, and in today’s mood, a dangerous one, and I hope there can be criminal charges brought against these people. According to the sworn statement, they investigated my registration and I am not a permanent resident. Since I have lived here since April 1969 and my lease runs to September 1971, and that the residency requirement for the state is 90 days and for the district is only 60 days, that I voted in the primary in May 1970, which is over 60 days ago, that I have worked in Philadelphia since 1959, that I go to night school in the city, that I need five years to get my degree, that I have a promising job I wouldn’t want to leave, I can’t see how they could even claim they investigated, for how more permanent must one be?
Actually the story is this. Keenan is a Republican committeeman, who in cahoots with something called the Old World Organization, has filed 200-odd petitions on registered Democrats in my area. They have aimed mainly at students. I would not doubt that they also picked unemployed people. They did not petition Lois, which they should have if I am not eligible. We registered together. I believe this happened; they, these traitors, for what else could you call them, probably just scanned the voter lists and picked out students and other strange occupations. You see, when I registered I had just left North American Publishing and not went to Lincoln. I was doing freelance writing so gave my occupation as writer, which is an honorable business, I think. Besides, you have a right to vote no matter what you do for a living.
People wonder why students and young people revolt. They say we should not protest because there are open channels to make our feelings known. Yet they try to prevent gathering to petition our government, they ignore our spokesmen, and then these people try to take away our vote.
The Democrats have lawyers working on it. I hope we can really get these people. I have offered my services. It makes me mad. I must take off work. As you know, I think, I get an extra work day’s pay if I’m not absent for ninety days. I would be collecting my second such reward in the first week of November, but now I must take off to go to court to keep something I am entitled to in the first place. These bastards are costing me money! They are a disgrace to our nation, much more than any war protester, and yet they are firmly within the establishment, probably respected and will probably escape with less vindictiveness than the mildest protester against the war or for civil rights.
Keenan does not reside at the address he gave by the way, and the Democrats have filed against him in counter. McNamee lives in a shabby apartment where stated. Ida, whose statement address turned out to be a vacant lot, is the wife of a Raymond Ida, a real estate dealer, who probably won’t sell to Negros or those he considers Hippies; perhaps seeing my address and profession they think I’m just a Hippy. Anyway, you can see I am incensed about this. How dare they! I am eligible to vote and yet if I shouldn’t go to the hearing, I lose my vote, and perhaps will have trouble registering in the future. If I do go, I lose money and the first day I’ll miss since working at Lincoln. These people should be jailed! Who the hell do they think they are? I’ll let you know how it turns out.
I got my transcript from Temple for the last two semesters. I have a 3.73 average over these. What a year this is for work. Well, write soon.
One more thing about this voting business. It is no good to be among the silent. You might as well fight from go, because I have not been involved publicly in anything political and look at what happens. You must fight for what you believe in, no matter what, otherwise everyone loses.
Peace.
Don’t think I was silent at my typewriter. I wrote every day and I still did some essays for the underground press using the pen name “Eugene Meredith”.
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