PFC John B Revie

PFC John B Revie

My Grandfather

Arlington Cemetery

Arlington, VA

He sat on our fireplace mantel for three years before the paperwork was completed and approved to allow him to be buried in Arlington, the cemetery for war heroes.  At the age of 17, he earned a purple heart and a silver star. I loved this moment.  Jack would have been so proud to know he was buried here.

 

1977

1977

Woodbine Avenue

Overbrook

Philadelphia, PA

My age: 21-22

School- Penn State;  I graduate in August with a BS in Adolescent Counseling.  Now I had to go find a damn job. I had to leave my beloved Penn State and I had to move back home because I didn't have any damn money.  My life went from great to sad in a very short period of time.

Work- I worked as a clerk at this place: Thomas Wolf Resume Company.  The job was deadens after two years,  The FBI shut this company down for mail fraud.

Music- songs were in two camps at this time: rock and roll or disco.

• "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" Andy Gibb
•   "Tonight's the Night" Rod Stewart
• "Best of My Love" The Emotions
• "Evergreen" Barbra Streisand
• "Don't Leave Me This Way" Thelma Houston
• "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher" Rita Coolidge
• "Undercover Angel" Alan O'Day
• "Torn Between Two Lovers" Mary MacGregor
• "I'm Your Boogie Man" KC and the Sunshine Band
• "Dancing Queen" ABBA- I hate this song.
• "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" Leo Sayer
• "Margaritaville" Jimmy Buffett- I never liked anything he sang.
• "Telephone Line" Electric Light Orchestra
• "Sir Duke" Stevie Wonder
• "Hotel California" Eagles
• "Rich Girl" Hall & Oates
• "When I Need You" Leo Sayer
•   "Car Wash" Rose Royce
• "You Don't Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show)"Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.
• "Fly Like an Eagle" Steve Miller Band
• "Don't Give Up on Us" David Soul
• "On and On" Stephen Bishop
• "Feels Like the First Time" Foreigner
• "Couldn't Get It Right" Climax Blues Band
• "Easy" Commodores
• "Right Time of the Night" Jennifer Warnes
• "I've Got Love on My Mind" Natalie Cole
•  "Blinded by the Light" Manfred Mann's Earth Band
• "Looks Like We Made It" Barry Manilow
• "Dreams" Fleetwood Mac
•  "I'm in You" Peter Frampton
•   "Lucille" Kenny Rogers
• "The Things We Do for Love" 10cc
• "Da Doo Ron Ron" Shaun Cassidy
• "Handy Man" James Taylor
• "Just a Song Before I Go" Crosby, Stills & Nash
• "Swayin' to the Music (Slow Dancing)" Johnny Rivers
•  "I Wish" Stevie Wonder
•  "Don't Stop" Fleetwood Mac
•  "Barracuda" Heart
•  "Night Moves" Bob Seger - I loved, loved, loved this song and every time I hear it, I'm happy.
•  "You're My World" Helen Reddy
• "New Kid in Town" Eagles
• "My Heart Belongs to Me" Barbra Streisand
• "Way Down" Elvis Presley- I dont remember this song and this was probably his last song because he died this year.
• "Weekend in New England" Barry Manilow- I hate this song.
• "Cold as Ice" Foreigner
•  "Lost Without Your Love" Bread
• "Lido Shuffle" Boz Scaggs
• "Keep It Comin' Love" KC and the Sunshine Band
• "You Made Me Believe in Magic" Bay City Rollers
• "That's Rock 'n' Roll" Shaun Cassidy
• "Love So Right" Bee Gees
• "Nobody Does It Better" Carly Simon
• "I Wanna Get Next to You" Rose Royce
• "Somebody to Love" Queen- OMG, I couldn't stand Queen.
• "Muskrat Love" Captain &  Tennille- I hated this song.
• "Walk This Way" Aerosmith
• "Year of the Cat" Al Stewart
• "Boogie Nights" Heatwave
• "Go Your Own Way" Fleetwood Mac
• "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word" Elton John
• "Knowing Me, Knowing You" ABBA
• "How Much Love" Leo Sayer

Movies

• Goodbye Girl
• Annie Hall- I loved this movie but now, it isn't interesting to me.
• Oh God
• Airport 77
• Julia- I loved this movie and I cant find it anywhere to watch on demand.
• The Late Show
• Looking for Mr. Goodbar
• MacArthur
• The Turning Point

Movies I didn't see:

• Saturday Night Fever- I don't know why I never saw this movie as I like Travolta.
• Star Wars- I'm not SciFi.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind- ditto

Books- I am reading JD Salinger and authors who published in the 1940s and 50s. Dorothy Parker, James Thurber and F. Scott fitzgerald are my favorites.

Travels

• o         For spring break, we drove to Key West, FL and spent a week drinking too much.  I don't remember much this trip.
• 
  
•         Once I finished college in August, I spent about a month on Long Beach Island at my parents' home.
• 
  
• o       Now that I was working and had a few bucks, I took weekend trips to NYC and Washington, DC and felt very liberated and free.
• 
  

News Events

• Freddie Prince committed suicide.  His death left me depressed for days.
• After campaigning by Anita Bryant and her anti-gay "Save Our Children" crusade, Miami-Dade County, Floridavoters overwhelmingly vote to repeal the county's gay rights ordinance.
• Elvis Presley dies at age 42. This came as no surprise to me because I thought he was an old, overweight, out of shape man.
• Jimmy Carter succeeds Gerald Ford as the 39th President of the United States.
•  U.S. President Jimmy Carter pardons Vietnam War draft evaders. This was very controversial. But I think it was the right move.  We needed to move on from this dreadful war.
• Roots aired on the TV for several weeks and everyone was memorized.

Family and friends

• My mom turned 50, half a century. I thought this was so old. And she had a kid in 1^st grade.
• As a graduation gift, my father bought me my first month of health insurance. “Congratulations and welcome to the adult world,” he mockingly told me. I wanted to throw up with all this new adulthood bullshit.
• I don't have a car so I have to bum rides from friends, hitchhike or take the bus through life.
• My sister, Tricia, started college in the fall.  She also went to Penn State.  So, my father dropped her off and picked me up and took me back home to Philadelphia.  While I appreciated that I had a place to stay until further notice, I hated that day.  It was a big surrender to all my freedoms.  I had to become a family member again.
• I joined the Columbia Record Club.  For $1, I got 12 free albums and committed to buy thousands more in the next three years.  I never bought any more records and I never understood how this record club ever made any money. Maybe some people fulfilled their obligation but I never did.

Miss Taylor

Miss Taylor

My 2^nd Grade Teacher

Our Lady of Lourdes Grade School

Philadelphia, PA

1962-63

The minute I saw her, I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  With her long platinum blonde hair pile high up on her head and her cat’s eye makeup and long red finger nails, her face alone conveyed a presence when she walked in the room.  She wore a perfume that was strong and noticeable.  She had a deep, dark beauty mark just around her mouth.  Her style of dress was beautiful as well.  She wore tight, tight skirts above her knees which was very reveling at that time. She wore high, spiked heels and sometimes she wore fishnet stocking as well. She exuded style. And when she stood next to any of the nuns, her beautiful was undeniable.  She was the beauty queen of the faculty.

Fifteen years later, I am at a concert at my grade school with my mother.  My much younger brother is in a Christmas play.  We are sitting in the cafeteria on the same chairs that I sat on year ago.  An old woman walks by us, her perfume precedes her. It is pungent and offensive.  Her hair is thinned from age and too many years of cheap dye jobs.  Her shirt is too tight and its old, worn thin from years of wear. She looks hangered, worn out and tired.

“Who is that old woman, she looks like an old whore,” I comment to my mother.

“You don’t recognize her?  That’s Miss Taylor”, my mother responded.

And sure enough it was.  The years had not been kind to her.  I didn’t realize how old she was when she was my teacher.  But the years of poor Catholic school, teacher’s salary had forced her to work beyond her prime and now she looked like an old street walker.

I was sorry I ever saw her again.

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