Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (21)

 Because Brooklyn College was still a CUNY 4-year undergraduate college in which most students still lived with their parents or in off-campus apartments and were commuter students, the Brooklyn College Library was usually empty of students whenever I went there on weekday evenings, after a day's work as a New American Library [NAL] publicity clerk, to spend a few hours reading there. And I can't recall ever speaking to any other person inside the Brooklyn College Library during any of the evenings I spent reading and browsing around the open book and magazine stacks while there.

It wasn't until the late 1980s or early 1990s that I realized that if you were then a non-student, like I was in the 1970s, you could now then purchase a guest borrower card for $50 from the Brooklyn College Library check-out desk, which then gave you the privilege of taking the circulating books on the Brooklyn College Library's open stacks home to read.

But during the 1970s I just assumed that any Brooklyn College Library book I ever wished to read could then only be read by me inside the library. So no Brooklyn College Library books were ever brought home by me to read during the time I worked at New American Library in the 1970s.

Of course, even if I had had borrowing privileges at the Brooklyn College Library as a non-student during the 1970s, it's unlikely I would have checked out many books to read in my slum apartment in Red Hook then during my evenings there or on my weekends.

For whenever I was stuck working 9-to-5 during the 1970s, I usually preferred to spend my weekday and evenings, when still awake and alone at home, mostly playing guitar and singing songs to myself, writing new songs and sometimes recording them and old songs on my cheap, portable cassette tape recorder, skimming through some 1970s leftist newspapers or pamphlets or listening to vinyl records on my cheap portable phonograph, rather than using my then limited free time to read many library books at home. And when stuck working 9-to-5, I also preferred to spend my weekend days outside the apartment, rather than sitting at home inside reading books on the weekend.

Because I had pretty much lost any desire to watch the U.S. power elite's corporate media's television programs by the early 1970s, I owned no television set during the time I was spending some weekday evenings after work reading the Old Left journals and magazines from the 1950s in the Brooklyn College Library.

And, in a way, going to the Brooklyn College Library in the evening after work for a few hours was seen by me as a hipper thing for a U.S. worker to do in the 1970s than for a U.S. worker to go directly home after work and sit in front of a television set; to then be manipulated and programmed by the U.S. corporate media's liberal or right-wing anti-communist gatekeepers, newscasters or entertainment show producers, directors, writers and  wealthy celebrity performers.