Being now single, I was one of the lucky X-GIs. So many married guys, or guys who got married after discharge, faced jobs at little more than $20 a week -- so it didn't pay to work as long as "20-20" still lasted). And, with the housing shortage (so little built during the War), even the barest accomodations for two or more cost $40 a month, leaving little for eating, not to mention other needs.

When I saw what was happening to so many X-GIs, my numbness over my own plight began to wear off and I started to become bitter. I'd planned to go to college. But my leather case with my discharge papers was stolen while I was browsing in the Chelsea Libary. I wasn't able to get a copy for two years, even though the New York Veterans Administration building was in the next block and I visited them every week. So I drifted into other activities and began my political education and miseducation.

I helped to reorganize a defunct chapter of The American Veterans Committee, meeting in the Chelsea YMCA, serving as Chairman. And I later became Chairman of the Chelsea Consumers and Tenants League, helping to lay plans for a "rent strike". I organized and Chaired a "mass meeting" at a Chelsea auditorium, and I invited, as speakers, Congressmen Adam Clayton Powell and Vito Marcantonio, City Council members Stanley Isaac and Paul O'Dwyer (brother of then Mayor Frank O'Dwyer, and later Mayor himself), and other notables.

I worked for three months as a Yeoman (clerk) for the Chief Engineer of "The John L. Clem", an Army troopship, then anchored off the end of Manhattan Island. The ship never went anywhere, except shifting to Brooklyn Navy Yard, so I was able to continue my Chelsea political activities.

While on the "John L. Clem", I helped to organize a "Veterans' March on Albany", to present demands about jobs, housing, etc., to the New York State Legislature. I wrote, mimeographed, and distributed, during the "March", parodies of many well known "protest songs. At the end, a group held a "sitdown" for several hours in the Chamber, receiving big headlines and apparently scaring a lot of politicians and "good citizens".