New Boy: Life and Death at the World Headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses by Casarona Keith

Author:Casarona, Keith [Casarona, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28 My Dollar Car

On Saturdays, many Bethelites would take the subway to Times Square and Seventh Avenue and walk around looking for a good movie to see. Of course, some guys were looking for hookers, like Pat who was the elevator operator in the 129 building.

Some guys would walk all the way down to Flatbush Boulevard in Brooklyn. It wasn’t unusual to walk down there to find there wasn’t a movie worth seeing and walk all the way back home. With little money, there wasn’t much to do in the city.

Bethel didn’t give you a vacation during your first year. In your second year, you received eleven vacation days. Besides vacations, the only time I got out of the city was to go to the district conventions. In 1970, I went to Virginia Beach, Virginia. In 1971, Jim Pipkorn, Dave Borga and I went to Montreal, Canada. In 1972, Jim and I went to Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Owning a car at Bethel meant you had the freedom to leave the city. Without a car, your whole life was either Bethel or your Kingdom Hall. Unless you knew someone with a car, you were stuck in the city for months on end.

A car could change all that. Some guys had nice cars, too. Jim Pipkorn first had a 65 Ford Mustang Rag Top. Then he got a 1967 GTO. Mr. G-job King, Dave Borga, had a 1969 Mach 1. A guy on the waiter crew had a 1968 396 Rag Top SS Camaro. All those cars spelled one thing: freedom!

These car owners did have their problems. One of the biggest problems was parking. There were none for the average Bethelites back then. The Bethel heavies had parking spaces, of course. There was plenty of parking after the Society bought the old Squibb property, but it would be many years later that they finally decided to give the Bethelites some free parking. They really didn’t like the average Bethelite having a car. That extra freedom can be dangerous stuff.

Sometimes the only option there was to park illegally. You just didn’t have a choice sometimes. Many guys parked illegally, and sometimes they got lucky and weren’t issued a ticket. If not, the fine was ten dollars. The fine was twentyfive dollars if they parked too close to a fire hydrant.

The Kennedy boys, Jim and Gary, found a way to beat the system. They brought their Thunderbird up from Georgia. Instead of driving their car around for hours, looking for a parking place at night like the rest of the guys had to do, they just parked their car wherever they wanted. They figured since it had out-of-state plates, they were home free. It worked for about six months. One day, they went to where they had parked their car the night before. It had been next to a fire hydrant, but now it was gone. They figured it had been stolen. So, they called the police. The police informed them the car had been impounded because of $600 worth of parking tickets.

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