June 28, 1972 (Letter from Tony)

This is my fourth attempt at writing you.  Everytime I start I get carried away with my thoughts.  I try to say too much to you and end up with 1 page, quite different each time.

To start with, 5 of the last 6 weeks have been quite exceptional, really nice.  This last week has been a little unsettled and unsettling.

Since I last saw you, I had an incredible time closing the deal on 106 Winspear for Sunshine House.  The administration problems, tie-ups and fuckups were very taxing.  I was convinced at 2:00pm that Tuesday that we were going to be stalled again, but at 2:15 everything opened up and everything raced ahead.

The getting of that house has been the most informative and intense event in my lief.  It's hardened me a lot but it also taught me a tremendous amount.

On that Saturday (day before graduation) I got the key to the house, went in and went crazy for an hour.  That morning I got my acceptance from Berkeley and a rejection from Harvard.  I began to get seriously excited about Berkeley.  That night Harvey, Marty, Elise, Harvey's parents, Marty's parents, Harvey's brother and I went to John's Flaming Hearth.  It was great.  A really big day.

Sunday my mother came in with my little sister and we went out to eat and then sat up in the bleachers and watched graduation.  We also bopped around campus and had a good time.

I found out the next day that Jerry O'Brien had found a car in Syracuse, where he lives, that he thought we could buy for $125.  (It is now a week later, I don't like the beginning of this letter but it's a start.  I shall now push for a more positive frame of mind.)    It turns out that care had a cracked frame and we wound up buying a 1964 green Rambler American for $260.  It took $90 more to get it past inspection.  The trunnions were bad.  So now we call the car Trunnion.

On May 19, 1972 I tripped along for the first time.  It was good except that there was no one around and the lack of talking bothered me.  Also, it was Gay Lib week at UB and the actions of some of the guys was very disturbing.

I went to Columbus to see my sister after Jerry and I bought our car in Syracuse.  The car would take another 3 weeks before we could drive it.

The day after I got back from Columbus I went to N.Y. and visited Meryl, who I went down with, and stayed at Harvey's and saw Kenny, Herb, Chris (we had a good time the night we got together), wentn to Elise and Marty's engagement party and had a surprisingly good time, tried the tests for Jeopardy and visited Central Park, the art show in Greenwich Village, and walked around Manhattan a lot.

So many things happened and I feel very inadequate in relating events.  My emotions and feelings were very positive at this time and except for a few bad instances things were unbelievably good.  And they continued until the point where I started making things go wrong just to keep myself from being so happy.  This is what bothers me now, this self-restraining tendency.  Onward.

I went to Syracuse with Jerry and to clear up some things about the car and when I got back Friday night Joan Beck came over and we had a really fine time and I began to think I love her and that is also messing me up a bit.

Things are happening so fast I haven't had time to sit down and think about them.  I've spent a lot of time with Joan lately, I've been stoned and drunk a ridiculous amount of time, I've been training high school students in crisis intervention along with Jerry, I've been working with Dr. Holmes an economics professor, I've been spending a lot of time at Sunshine House, and today, I went home and saw my father for the first time since a year ago January.  I was really nervous but it worked out well and what was really shocking was that as I was about to leave, he gave me a check for $1,000.  I still haven't had time to think about that one.

It is now another week later.  I was aiming for uncontrolled chaos and good times and found them.  Now it's time to have a little discipline.  I just wrote to Herbie.  I'm trying to catch up on things like letter writing.

This is my first night on my job at Gowanda and it looks like it will be a nice, slow, slow time here.  Jerry O'Brien and I work Tu-W-Thu from 4 pm to 4 am this week, Th-F-Sat next week, then keep alternating.  36hrs/wk for $75.  It gives us a six day weekend every other week and I'm sure we'll be driving to a lot of places.  We've been averaging over 100 miles a day in our car.  It's such a great toy.  To be able to drive to Niagara Falls, Zoar Valley, Letchworth, Colden, etc is just so nice and it's still new and exciting.  And we get stoned a lot in the car.

I can't believe how good things are going and can only hope that I'll be able to keep them going that way.  with this job I'l have more time to think and go over all the millions of things that have gone on in the last year and prepare myself for leaving to Berkeley.

Joan left yesterday for a 3 or 4 week hitching trip to Banff National Park on the border of British Columbia and Alberta.  I miss her but I also welcome the change and lessened responsibilities.  I've moved out of Le Brun but will still get my mail there.  I'll live part time here and in Springville and part in Buffalo.  As long as I can keep myself full of energy while I'm working and it's only for 8 weeks, I should be able to accomplish a lot in these 12 hour slots.  Getting to know Gowanda should be fun.  We spent a large part of today's working hours wandering around town getting acquainted.  Sun was shining.

A week ago last Friday Jerry and I were here to do some training which was screwed up cuz no one knew what was going on and it wasn't at all organized, so we left after an hour and went to Zoar Valley.  It was so incredibly beautiful.  We climbed on a cliff and sat there a long time on the top.  It was trippy.

11 hawks suddenly appeared and began soaring and soaring around.  They were so beautiful, just gliding along so perfectly.  It was great.

I am facing so many new and changing things.  My relationships to Joan and Jerry are quite different than ones I have had with other people.  I have managed to spend quite a bit of time by myself and I have used it more constructively than I ever did before.

With all this goodness around, I've expecting a crash sometime in the future.

I still am over-critical of myself at times and feel a lack of self-confidence occasionally but as I digest all that's going on around me I feel I shall build myself up.  Jerry and Joan are strong-willed people and inner strength on my part is very important.

Well, I am going to finish this and send it out so you at least get some feedback.  I am very interested in your feelings of an inner voice, please write more on that.

The time is passing quickly.  8 more weeks and I'm off to Berkeley.  Maybe I'll see you in California or here.

Take care and stay strong.

October 5, 1971 (Letter from Tony)

It's about fucking time that I wrote to you.  I am really sorry that I haven't written yet.  I've started a number of letters lately and haven't finished many.

Well, let's see, since I last saw you in the beginning of August I have:  hitched to Boston.  It was good.  Hitching was remarkably quick and fun.  I saw Mike, went up to Maine for a few days (his father owns property there).  The whole thing was nice but a little too relaxing.  I saw Maddy for a day, we toured Cambridge and then went to Boston Common and Boston Garden.  They are both great.  They were shooting a scene from "That Girl" in the Commons when we were there.  Coming back I got a ride from a 50 year old engineer who owned his own company and then from 2 AWOL Navy guys who were going to Detroit to visit one of their girlfriends.  They were really cool, they kept pulling out a bottle of Scotch to celebrate every 100 miles or so.

Back in Buffalo, I spent a lot of time with Christine and a lot of time working at Sunshine House.

I've gone through a lot of changes of feelings toward Christine.  (I met her at Sunshine House.  She is an occupational therapist at the Cantalician Center and might be going to UB in Jan.)  Sometimes I feel really good being with her, sometimes I feel that I'm forcing myself.  I've only known her for a little over 2 months and we've really moved quite quickly.  The speed of the whole thing coupled with its novelty and my own insecurity have led me often to doubt what was going on.  Right now I feel pretty good about the relationship, I just have to take some sort of an activist role to keep expanding and widening it.  It was due in a large part to her that I took your room. The need for some sort of privacy (especially having my own bedroom) is much greater now than before.  Now, if we want to make love I don't have to worry about my roommates coming in.

It was really a tough decision to leave Allenhurst.  I didn't want to miss the closeness of living with 8 or 9 other people.  I really did enjoy that.  There was always someone there to talk to and people to do things with and we were important to each other.  But I figured after last year, here because Harvey and Mike Engel, who I would have been living with, were stuck way on the end, on Oxford, and they have freshman guys living next door.  Way it's a bad place.  I thank you for going and staying in Calif (that sounds stupid) how about I'm glad I got the chance to move in here.  (Better)

I enjoy my freedom a lot.  I don't have classes and as of yet I'm not working.  I have no set times for anything. It was great when school started and everyone came back.  I went around and spent a lot of time with people like Dennis, Donna, Iris, Maddy, Ralph, Elise, etc.  It was fine but they, for the most part, were slowly bummed out.  (I really learned the meaning of that phrase when Mike Kanter and I went out to Huntingdon for a day.  Boredom is the main ingredient.)  Especially Maddy and Iris; living with Dennis and Donna was tough cuz neither of them has a boyfriend and they are on LaSalle and somewhat isolated (as I am here and you were out on Tonawanda Creek.)  They are very very depressed, nothing they do excites them, they feel that they have few friends, etc.  I felt really bad because they were so depressed, and there wasn't a lot I could do.  I mean my sparkling wit and personality and my terribly creative mind can only be stretched so far.

I'm getting a little annoyed with them because neither one has come to visit me here.  It's tough adjusting from last year to now.  Before there always was time and the place to talk things over.  Now, a conscious and definitive action has to be taken to go see them.  I'm no longer an integral part of their lives, like we were all an integral part of each other's lives in Allenhurst.

Harvey is very bored and not very satisfied with his new roommates (he and Mike Engel were put in with 2 transfer students and a freshman).  He and I are still close and all and I don't feel uncomfortable at all with him, whereas with Iris and Maddy I fell very self-conscious.

There are blind steps and groping of our exile, the painting of our hunger as, remembering speechlessly, we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, a door.  Where?  When?

As you might have guessed I'm reading "Look Homeward Angel".  I've been reading it for a long, long time. No concentration and no time.  It's such a beautifully written book.

Last week I went to Colden and camped out from Tues nite to Friday.  It was fine.  I spent a lot of time walking around and just trying to catch up with myself.

The week before I rode my bike to Springville (40 miles) and nearly died of exhaustion.  I'm so out of shape, I've been playing tennis.

Sunshine House has been doing at least one fine thing of late.  We've been going to concerts, setting up a tent and operating during the concerts.  We get in free and we helped a lot of people that way.

There was a concert on Rotary Field, an all day thing and we were there.  It was pretty poor. Cactus (boo, boo, hiss) was the second featured group.  Savoy Brown was pretty good.  There was about 8 groups there, Long John Baldry and Al Kooper.  We shared a tent with the performers and got high with them.  It rained near the end of the concert.  It seemed sort of fitting.

The day before, Saturday was "Celebration" in War Memorial Stadium with the Blues Project, Taj Mahal, Sha-na-na (they were great), J. Geils, Box Scaggs, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

The concert lasted from 2 till past 12.  The weather was great and so was the music.  Paul Butterfield was incredibly good.  I missed Boz Scaggs because I was in the tent.  We were much more organized at this one and did a fine job.  Also the music was much better than the last one.

Sunshine House has been pretty much a dominant force in my life for awhile now.  I try to keep a little distance just because too many people there (at least two) have made the whole thing into an ego trip and it's really messing them up and it's not helping the house.

We just got funded through Community Action Corps by the Student Association.  We got $8,500 and I'm treasurer.

October 15 we're working at the Blood Sweat and Tears concert in Kleinhans???  Who could possibly bum out for $4-$5-$6-$7, unless they would because of those prices.

Ok I shall wind it up now.  Speaking of money, I think I owe you $ for the deposit you made here.  Yes?  If so, please tell me how much and I'll send it to you in a couple of  years.  You're last phone bill was $5 so I paid Herbie cuz he paid the bill so please deduct that from what I owe you.   Okee dokee.

Well, write again if you get the chance and always remember the immortal words of a great California intellectual, they serve as a source of inspiration in times of need, "Let's shine this left over garbage on."

A couple of weekends ago there was a meeting of crisis center people from all over N.Y.  It was at Buff State and it was really good.  Afterward about 40 of us went into a dorm room and smoked and drank Southern Comfort, scotch, and 6 kinds of wine.  We were on the 4th floor and security was on the 5th so we broke up early.  The first 4 floors of hi-rise are closed to dorm students cuz of faulty construction.  Have you ever heard of Dr. Bronner's soap?  It's supposed to be peppermint flavored.