Solars                                                                          

by Milt Montague

oung men, in their teen age years have an innate need to congregate together for mutual support and/or competitive sports for reinforcement of their burgeoning egos.   [Could this be the pack mentality we inherited from our prehistoric cro-magnon ancestors ?  or that they inherited from their more primitive forebears ?]   If there were just a few boys, they could play basketball or stickball, more would lead to baseball and still more led to the ultimate, baseball teams, but that required a park or at least an empty lot.
 
Stickball seems to have been born in Brooklyn, parented by the Great Depression of 1929-33 and the city streets.  All you needed was a handball, [a real Spaulding ball was a big deal] and a bat [the broken stick of a mop or broom].  The city gutters provided the playing field, parked cars were the first and third bases.  Manhole covers, in the middle of the gutters, were second base and home plate.  Traffic frequently interrupted the game, but was tolerated good-naturedly like the weather and school.  When they were not playing ball many hours were spent just hanging out together in groups at the local school yard, after school or the candy store [every corner had its candy store].  The favorite topics of conversation were the Brooklyn Dodgers [baseball team] managed by the vociferous and belligerent  Leo Durocher and the City College basketball team led by Nat Holman ..... and girls.  [These enclaves were strictly male.]
 
The group that Milt hung out with were mostly about sixteen to eighteen years old and attended high school.  Milt was one of the younger and taller boys.  There were about half a dozen or so “regulars” and another six to eight that showed up sporadically.   The boys admired the colorful shiny satin jackets worn by basketball players [aptly called basketball jackets] and discussed joining together and buying team jackets.  They all subscribed to that concept.  After many hours of discussion they chose the name, “Solars sac”.  [“solars” was Milt’s brain child as he was heavily into astronomy].   The sac stood for social athletic club.  [They all agreed the jackets would impress the girls].  The colors were royal blue satin with yellow sleeves.  The club name was in yellow script across the back.  In a few weeks the jackets arrived and the peacocks paraded around their neighborhoods in full regalia [only after school].
 
At about that time the concept of cellar clubs was born.  The cellar club arose as if from out of nowhere as did the famous Tree That Grew In Brooklyn and like Topsy it just grew and grew.  The soil in Brooklyn seemed most propitious for its nourishment and proliferation.  The secondary motivation for the rise of the cellar club was GIRLS.  [This often was the primary consideration.]
 
In those days the minimum wage was 40 cents an hour, as the nation was slowly recovering from the Great Depression.  Gas stations were offering six gallons of gas for $1.00,  cokes were 5 cents and cigarettes went for 15 cents a pack.  The boys would chip in to buy some pretzels or potato chips and some cokes on the weekends and the club was an inexpensive place to bring your date to dance and socialize with your contemporaries.
 
The Background; Brooklyn was composed of many different areas.  Private homes were more or less in the affluent sections.  Families of more modest means rented apartments and lived in multi-family homes ranging in size from two to forty units.  Milt lived with his parents and three sisters in a four room apartment, in a building that had four apartments.  There were many such residences in Brooklyn.  The owner usually lived on the premises and was often miserly about supplying enough heat for the building.  Milt remembered...... one cold winter day, his mother sent him to the landlord’s apartment to request more heat.  The owner opened the door wearing a heavy coat sweater and replied,
 
“More heat ?  Who needs more heat ?  There is plenty of heat.”
 
The Problem; apartments were small and crowded [there were other siblings] and there was no room to hang out with friends.  This was a major problem for adolescent teenagers stumbling into adulthood.
 
The Solution; many buildings had storage space in the basement with an entrance onto the street, often unused.  Groups of young men formed together to rent these spaces for a modest monthly fee, clean them up, furnish them minimally and create
a place where they could hang out together.
 
Milt’s group agreed to join the parade and form their own club.  They scoured the neighborhood seeking the best location.  After a few days they found one that even had a bathroom.  One of the boys knew the owner and convinced him that they [the prospective tenants] were not noisy or rowdy guys.  Their new home badly needed a thorough cleaning.  They all brought brooms and mops and other cleaning paraphernalia from their moms and made the space presentable over a weekend.  Next step was furnishings.  Milt inveigled his brother-in-law Julie, who was an electrician, to wire the basement for lights, while the other boys foraged the streets for discarded furniture that they could salvage.  They all pressed their families for donations of still usable items that they [their families] were going to replace.  There were several bequests, most notable were the record player and the radio. 
 
The Solars sac was now ready for its opening bash.  It was successful, many of the parents showed up [briefly].  The club was the only one in all of Brooklyn, where the girls were able to tell their parents that they were going there.  And the parents approved! 

The Anti-Zuk

by Quentin Poulsen

Knoxville-Summer-1968                                                                                   

by John Richmond

 t was summer, it was hot- it was nighttime- and it was when no Interstate connected Knoxville with anyplace else.  Nineteen sixty-eight was a time when this East Tennessee city was still quiet and laid back.  What this meant was that there was very little to do and even fewer places to go.

            This was the world that the four of them- Danny and Jill, Pat and Jack- found themselves contemplating.

            They had just finished dinner- at Jack’s place- and they had pretty much exhausted subjects and topics like the possible candidates in the upcoming presidential election, the race riots and Vietnam.
            The air was ripe with the need to do something, but aside from going down to the Strip or as a far cheaper alternative- the Smoky Mountain Market for a bunch of twenty-five cent hotdogs- none of them could think of anything.  And, so, they sat there quietly trying to figure out- trying to think of- what they could do for a couple of hours in the heat at night.
            Occasionally, they glanced at one another, hoping that one of them would break the silence and tell the others just exactly what they were going to do, but there was nothing forthcoming.
            Of course, they all knew that the obvious “things to do” should go without mention due to various impracticalities.  Going to the Smokies was the biggest and most obvious- “…it would take way too much time.”  Lesser ones like heading up to Sharp’s Ridge- “…we’ve done that before”- or driving over to Island Home Park- “…to mindlessly watch the Tennessee River flow by”- generated no interest or enthusiasm whatsoever.  Thus, the four of them continued to sit there- with blank yet searching minds- and desperately tried to come up with an idea so as to postpone what was beginning to loom- calling it a night.
            It was Jack who spoke first.  “Hey, I know of a spot out past West Knoxville where there’s a small beach up alongside the Clinch River.”
            Pat was already shaking her head, in the negative just as Jack finished what he was saying.
            “No, no,” she finally said, “I’ve been up there- it’s too dark- too creepy.
            Jill spoke next.  “Why don’t we go down to Lenoir City- to the dam- and see what it’s like at night?”
            Pat thought it was a “safe” idea while Jack just sat there with a concentrated stare engulfing his obvious in-thought face, almost as if he hadn’t heard Jill at all.
            Then, slowly and silently, a reminiscent smile began to spread across Danny’s face.
            “I know what we can do,” he said when he could no longer contain the smile that turned into a grin.
            “What’s that?” the other three asked in their own ways.
            “It’s something,” Danny began, with an almost nostalgic bobbing of his head, “it’s something that we used to do in high school.”
            Jack leaned forward on the table.  “What is it?”
            Danny shook his head.  “No, I can’t tell you- it has to be a surprise.”
Come on,” Pat protested.
            “Danny,” Jill pleaded, pleasingly.
            “So, you know what we’re going to do but you won’t tell us?” Jack asked.
            “You got it.”
            “Ah, well, can you,” Jack continued, “can you tell us where it is?
            “Sure- Oak Ridge.”
            Jack was surprised.
            “Oak Ridge?” he repeated.  “There’s nothing going on in Oak Ridge.”
            Danny smiled.
            “Well, you’re probably right- no one has anything happening, but we can make something happen.”
            Jack, Pat and Jill all sat back and released a collective, mildly frustrated sigh of near-to-resignation.
            After a time, Jack stood up, picked up his empty plate and headed for the kitchen sink.
            “And, I suppose, we’re not going to find out until we get there?”
            Danny stood in kind with his plate.
            “Jack,” he called toward the kitchen, “you know what I’ve always said- you’re almost as brilliant as I am- almost.”
            Everyone laughed and the matter of what they were going to do was put on hold until they had finished cleaning up.
            Then, when the last dish, glass and utensil had been washed and placed in the drying rack, they returned the living room.
            “So,” Danny began, “are we ready to go?”
            The other three all looked from one to the other with positive anticipation.
            “I’m ready,” Jack offered.
            “Me, too,” Jill added while Pat just nodded in the affirmative.
            Danny smiled.
            “Okay, the only thing we have to do is make a quick stop at Kroger for a couple of six-packs of Falstaff.”
            “Are we going to a party or are we going to have a party?” Jill asked.
            “Well, it’s more like something to do while we’re doing what we’re going to do,” Danny explained in a close-to-mysterious tone.
            “In Oak Ridge?” Jack asked suspiciously.
            “You’ll see,” Danny said understandably.

            With that the four of them headed out of the apartment and down to Danny’s car.

            The stop at the supermarket and the ride up to Oak Ridge took them just a little over forty-five minutes.
            Once they arrived in Oak Ridge, proper, Danny negotiated the side streets and then the back roads as if he had lived there his entire life.  A few minutes later, on a dark and unlit stretch of low grade blacktop, he slowed, turned off the lights and pulled the car off of the road and onto the gravel shoulder.
            He put the car in “Park,” turned off the ignition and looked over, first, at Jack, and then at Pat and Jill.
            “Well, here we are,” Danny said and exited the car.
            The remaining three of them looked at each other, shrugged, and did the same.
            “I suppose I should bring the beer?” Jack called rhetorically- emptily- to Danny as he watched him scout out a suitable spot on the embankment.
            It took Danny less than a minute to find what he determined to be “just the right spot” some fifteen feet in front of the car, just off the loose gravel, in the grass.
            “Come on,” Danny called, “let’s have a seat.”
            “Is the grass wet?” Jill asked as she walked cautiously toward Danny.
            “No,” Danny replied, “the dew hasn’t set in yet.”
Soon, they were sitting there, the two guys as the group’s bookends with Pat and Jill between them.
           “Now, Jack,” Danny began in an almost master-of-ceremony-sort-of-way, “if you will open and pass all of us a beer, I will explain.”
            Jack did as he was instructed, after which there was a shared moment of quietude as the four of them focused on the near and the far before them.
            And, what they saw in the distance, was a large and obviously operational- functioning- building- replete with outdoor security lights- and emitting a low hum.
            Just in front of them- maybe not more than twenty feet away and across a drainage ditch- was a chain-link fence- approximately twelve feet high, topped off with barbed wire.
            “What is that place?” Pat asked, pointing at the building.
            “It’s called the Gaseous Diffusion Plant,” Danny offered as an answer.
            “What is that?” Jill asked.  “What do they do there?”
            “I have no idea,” Danny replied.  “The only thing that I do know is that it’s part of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  In some way- years back- they helped build the atomic bomb.”
            Again, the four of them sat there- almost as if in a state of reflective and motionless homage to science and technology- before Jack spoke.
            “So, is that it?  We’re going to sit on the side of the road, drink beer and watch some plant in the dark?  Is this what you did in high school for fun?”
            Danny laughed.
            “Yes and no,” he said and then picked up a piece of gravel from behind him, “watch,” he told them.
            He threw the stone at the fence.  When it hit, the fence sparked.
            “See that?” Danny asked.
            “Yeah, what was that?” Jack asked.
            “Danny reached back, grabbed an handful of rocks and gave one to both Jill and Pat.
            “The fence is electrified,” he told them, “that’s why it sparks.”
            Jill shifted in the spot where she sat as she worked the rock so that it became more comfortable in her hand.
            “This is really cool,” she said and exchanged an agreeing glance with Pat.
            “Go ahead- both of you,” Danny told the girls encouragingly, “throw one.”

            At first, they took turns throwing, but it didn’t take long for them to realize that the more stones that hit the fence the greater was the sparking effect.  This led, first, to the simultaneous throwing of a single rock, and then, next, to throwing handfuls of them.
            And, so, the four of them sat there on a dark summer night, drinking beer, pitching rocks at the electrified fence- occasionally talking- but mostly laughing and making more than the best, of the little they had to work with.

            Finally, when the last of the beer was gone, they got up, climbed into the car and headed back to Knoxville.  It was the middle of summer, the year was 1968- and it was hot.

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