Documented Life     An Autodocumentary     Miles Hochstein

In 1960, I seem to have been a cute bay and toddler, and already interested in communication technology.

The picture on the right is labeled "Sag Harbor." My parents vacationed there with us on several occasions. If this was a summer vacation, I would be about one year old.

The newspaper photo below from the summer of 1960 shows me demonstrating in the streets of New York. I march above the inspiring slogan of "YOU COME TOO!" Over four decades later I still support that important principle.

Robert Frost's book of poetry "You Come Too" was published by Henry Holt & Company, Inc. in June 1959, roughly one year prior to the above photo. The poems in that book seem like old chestnuts today. But as John F. Kennedy was rising to the Presidency that summer Frost perhaps had a particular political and cultural salience. In the summer of 1960, Kennedy would have been on the campaign trail, and perhaps his enthusiasm for Robert Frost would have been public knowledge, leading to my mother's use of the book title as a marching slogan.

One could say a great deal about about class and culture here. Did my mother choose this slogan, or simply carry it? Was it well aimed at a literature and poetry conscious public who would understand the reference and be attracted to the community center, or was it symbolic of a profound mismatch between my college educated mother and the likely constituents of the community center? Is its use representative of an "authentic" positive "bringing of culture to the masses", or an act of condescension, or perhaps a mix of all of these things and more? What in cultural terms was going on here as I sat in my carriage announcing "you come too!"?

The coat my mother is wearing was still floating around in my closet until the late 1990s. It lasted so long because we left New York for North Carolina and California, and had little need for winter coats like that after 1964.

You Come Too - Robert Frost
June 1959

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say thay for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the tother, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.

 

In the photo above the date is not certain, but it would be 1959 or early 1960.

All I can say is that baby food rocked.

 

 

At home with my life

 

YOU COME TOO! - Displaying sandwich boards, Mrs. Georgianna Hochstein, at left and Mrs. Beatrice Schutz, invite neigbors young and old to take advantage of the expanded recreation program and increased police protection in Riverside Park. The two women are volunteers for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood Conservation Project which encouraged the Parks and Police Departments to provide the additional services.