Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company performing the bluesy classic, Piece Of My Heart.
Scene: Brought to mind by the cover art on some fogged memory accompanying CD booklet of a wispy, blue-jeaned, blouse hanging off one shoulder, bare-foot, swirling mass of red hair, down home Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night. In the time of our time. Belting out songs, band backed-up and boozed-up, probably Southern Comfort if it was late and if the package store was short of some good cutting whiskey, but singing from somewhere beyond a no good man, no job, no roof over a head, no pocket dough, no prospects and a ton of busted dreams in some now forgotten barrelhouse, chittlin’ circuit bowling alley complete with barbecued ribs smoking out back or down town “colored” theater. Or the echo of that scene, okay.
*******
Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some merry prankster yellow brick road bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or some place like that) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, weary even of hanging out with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish up some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Ya, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then.
Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, 1967 version to be exact, autumns of drugs, strange brews of hyper-colored experience drugs and high shamanic medicine man aztec druid flame throws, winters of Paseo Robles brown hills discontent, brown rolling hills until he sickened of rolling, the color brown, hills, slopes, plains, everything, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of Martin Luther King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim former high school runner’s frame could not afford.
Now the chickens had come home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed, after graduating from high school, that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, the Prince is nothing but a Mainiac, Olde Saco section, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though before she went back to her golden-haired surfer boy back down in Carlsbad (his temperature rose even now every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” he decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.
What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.
Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Miss Ruby, as he called her as a little bait, a little come on bait, playing on her somewhere south drawl, although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message).
Josh, all throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, even a gal like Wanda Jackson, when they were hungry, and that hunger not only carried them to the stars but slaked some weird post-World War II, red scare, cold war hunger in guys like Josh Breslin although he never, never in a million years would have articulated it that way back then. That was infernal Captain Crunch’s work (Captain is the “owner” of the “bus” and a story all his own but that is for another time) always trying to put things in historical perspective or the exact ranking in some mythical pantheon that he kept creating (and recreating especially after a “dip” of Kool-Aid, LSD for the squares, okay).
But back to Ruby love. He got a surprise one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and he felt was meant to be a little coquettish and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.
What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace that someone, Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur, had found in old age out in some boondock church social or something, mad Bessie Smith squeezed dry, freeze-dried by some no account Saint Louis man and left wailing, empty bed, gin house wailing ever after, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie, the queen of the double entendre, sex version, with her butcher, baker, candlestick-maker men, doing, well doing the do, okay, and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog made just for her that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all a full-blast Piece Of My Heart.
Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey just up the road from the Big Sur merry prankster yellow bus camp, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting some work at the Monterrey Pop Festival held each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl (or maybe some cheap gin or rotgut Southern Comfort, cheap and all the in between rage for those saving their dough for serious drugs).
Ya just a wisp of a girl, wearing spattered blue-jeans, some damn moth-eaten tee-shirt, haphazardly tie-dyed by someone on a terminal acid trip, barefoot, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, (although he had seen a fair share of the breed in Fryeburg Fair Maine) who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster.
Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. And maybe some sweet sidle promise, who knows in that alcohol blaze around three in the morning. All Josh knew was this woman, almost girlish except for her sharp tongue and that eternal hardship voice, that no good man, no luck except bad luck voice, that spoke of a woman’s sorrow back to primordial times, had that certain something, that something hunger that he recognized in young Elvis and the guys. And that something Josh guessed would take them over the hump into that new day they were trying to create on the bus, and a thousand other buses like it. What a night, what a blues singer.
The next day Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that just slightly off-hand look in her eye that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him, and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either, whoever that dull-wit was) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August, sign up for State U., and still be okay but that he had better grab Ruby now while he could.
Showing posts with label generation of '68. Show all posts
Showing posts with label generation of '68. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The 42nd Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company performing the bluesy classic, Piece Of My Heart.
Scene: Brought to mind by the cover art on some fogged memory accompanying CD booklet of a wispy, blue-jeaned, blouse hanging off one shoulder, bare-foot, swirling mass of red hair, down home Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night. In the time of our time. Belting out songs, band backed-up and boozed-up, probably Southern Comfort if it was late and if the package store was short of some good cutting whiskey, but singing from somewhere beyond a no good man, no job, no roof over a head, no pocket dough, no prospects and a ton of busted dreams in some now forgotten barrelhouse, chittlin’ circuit bowling alley complete with barbecued ribs smoking out back or down town “colored” theater. Or the echo of that scene, okay.
*******
Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some merry prankster yellow brick road bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or some place like that) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, weary even of hanging out with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish up some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Ya, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then.
Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, 1967 version to be exact, autumns of drugs, strange brews of hyper-colored experience drugs and high shamanic medicine man aztec druid flame throws, winters of Paseo Robles brown hills discontent, brown rolling hills until he sickened of rolling, the color brown, hills, slopes, plains, everything, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of Martin Luther King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim former high school runner’s frame could not afford.
Now the chickens had come home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed, after graduating from high school, that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, the Prince is nothing but a Mainiac, Olde Saco section, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though before she went back to her golden-haired surfer boy back down in Carlsbad (his temperature rose even now every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” he decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.
What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.
Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Miss Ruby, as he called her as a little bait, a little come on bait, playing on her somewhere south drawl, although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message).
Josh, all throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, even a gal like Wanda Jackson, when they were hungry, and that hunger not only carried them to the stars but slaked some weird post-World War II, red scare, cold war hunger in guys like Josh Breslin although he never, never in a million years would have articulated it that way back then. That was infernal Captain Crunch’s work (Captain is the “owner” of the “bus” and a story all his own but that is for another time) always trying to put things in historical perspective or the exact ranking in some mythical pantheon that he kept creating (and recreating especially after a “dip” of Kool-Aid, LSD for the squares, okay).
But back to Ruby love. He got a surprise one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and he felt was meant to be a little coquettish and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.
What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace that someone, Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur, had found in old age out in some boondock church social or something, mad Bessie Smith squeezed dry, freeze-dried by some no account Saint Louis man and left wailing, empty bed, gin house wailing ever after, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie, the queen of the double entendre, sex version, with her butcher, baker, candlestick-maker men, doing, well doing the do, okay, and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog made just for her that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all a full-blast Piece Of My Heart.
Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey just up the road from the Big Sur merry prankster yellow bus camp, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting some work at the Monterrey Pop Festival held each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl (or maybe some cheap gin or rotgut Southern Comfort, cheap and all the in between rage for those saving their dough for serious drugs).
Ya just a wisp of a girl, wearing spattered blue-jeans, some damn moth-eaten tee-shirt, haphazardly tie-dyed by someone on a terminal acid trip, barefoot, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, (although he had seen a fair share of the breed in Fryeburg Fair Maine) who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster.
Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. And maybe some sweet sidle promise, who knows in that alcohol blaze around three in the morning. All Josh knew was this woman, almost girlish except for her sharp tongue and that eternal hardship voice, that no good man, no luck except bad luck voice, that spoke of a woman’s sorrow back to primordial times, had that certain something, that something hunger that he recognized in young Elvis and the guys. And that something Josh guessed would take them over the hump into that new day they were trying to create on the bus, and a thousand other buses like it. What a night, what a blues singer.
The next day Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that just slightly off-hand look in her eye that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him, and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either, whoever that dull-wit was) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August, sign up for State U., and still be okay but that he had better grab Ruby now while he could.
Scene: Brought to mind by the cover art on some fogged memory accompanying CD booklet of a wispy, blue-jeaned, blouse hanging off one shoulder, bare-foot, swirling mass of red hair, down home Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night. In the time of our time. Belting out songs, band backed-up and boozed-up, probably Southern Comfort if it was late and if the package store was short of some good cutting whiskey, but singing from somewhere beyond a no good man, no job, no roof over a head, no pocket dough, no prospects and a ton of busted dreams in some now forgotten barrelhouse, chittlin’ circuit bowling alley complete with barbecued ribs smoking out back or down town “colored” theater. Or the echo of that scene, okay.
*******
Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some merry prankster yellow brick road bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or some place like that) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, weary even of hanging out with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish up some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Ya, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then.
Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, 1967 version to be exact, autumns of drugs, strange brews of hyper-colored experience drugs and high shamanic medicine man aztec druid flame throws, winters of Paseo Robles brown hills discontent, brown rolling hills until he sickened of rolling, the color brown, hills, slopes, plains, everything, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of Martin Luther King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim former high school runner’s frame could not afford.
Now the chickens had come home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed, after graduating from high school, that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, the Prince is nothing but a Mainiac, Olde Saco section, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though before she went back to her golden-haired surfer boy back down in Carlsbad (his temperature rose even now every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” he decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.
What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.
Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Miss Ruby, as he called her as a little bait, a little come on bait, playing on her somewhere south drawl, although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message).
Josh, all throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, even a gal like Wanda Jackson, when they were hungry, and that hunger not only carried them to the stars but slaked some weird post-World War II, red scare, cold war hunger in guys like Josh Breslin although he never, never in a million years would have articulated it that way back then. That was infernal Captain Crunch’s work (Captain is the “owner” of the “bus” and a story all his own but that is for another time) always trying to put things in historical perspective or the exact ranking in some mythical pantheon that he kept creating (and recreating especially after a “dip” of Kool-Aid, LSD for the squares, okay).
But back to Ruby love. He got a surprise one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and he felt was meant to be a little coquettish and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.
What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace that someone, Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur, had found in old age out in some boondock church social or something, mad Bessie Smith squeezed dry, freeze-dried by some no account Saint Louis man and left wailing, empty bed, gin house wailing ever after, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie, the queen of the double entendre, sex version, with her butcher, baker, candlestick-maker men, doing, well doing the do, okay, and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog made just for her that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all a full-blast Piece Of My Heart.
Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey just up the road from the Big Sur merry prankster yellow bus camp, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting some work at the Monterrey Pop Festival held each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl (or maybe some cheap gin or rotgut Southern Comfort, cheap and all the in between rage for those saving their dough for serious drugs).
Ya just a wisp of a girl, wearing spattered blue-jeans, some damn moth-eaten tee-shirt, haphazardly tie-dyed by someone on a terminal acid trip, barefoot, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, (although he had seen a fair share of the breed in Fryeburg Fair Maine) who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster.
Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. And maybe some sweet sidle promise, who knows in that alcohol blaze around three in the morning. All Josh knew was this woman, almost girlish except for her sharp tongue and that eternal hardship voice, that no good man, no luck except bad luck voice, that spoke of a woman’s sorrow back to primordial times, had that certain something, that something hunger that he recognized in young Elvis and the guys. And that something Josh guessed would take them over the hump into that new day they were trying to create on the bus, and a thousand other buses like it. What a night, what a blues singer.
The next day Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that just slightly off-hand look in her eye that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him, and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either, whoever that dull-wit was) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August, sign up for State U., and still be okay but that he had better grab Ruby now while he could.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Not Ready For Prime Time AARP Songs- The Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four from the animated movie Yellow Submarine.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:
Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.
When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles
When I get olded, loosing my hair,
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me the Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine
If I stay out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
You'll be older too,
And if you say the word I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday morning go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight,
if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine for evermore,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
*******
Ancient dreams, dreamed:
To be born under a portentous sign. Ya, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair kind of smiling, okay, maybe just half-smiling. He had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and then de rigueur bandana, white as well, holding back her hair. She may have been just another blonde, another very blonde frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. Trouble, big trouble. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled at the movie screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.
Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window apartment dwell, small, warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching as he, that brother, goes off to foreign places and one is left to ponder his own place in those places.
A cloudless day, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, starting to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means, that and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes but changes.
Endless walks, endless sea street walks, rocks strewn every which way, making way for the uptown drug store valentine night bushel, if only she, about five candidates she just then, would give a look his way his endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash would be quiet.
Nighttime fears, red Stalin-named fears, red bomb shelter blast fears against the dark school yard night and avoidance, clean, clear avoidance of old times sailors, tars, AND deaths in lonely seaside graveyards.
Walks, bus stop non stop walks, up crooked cheap, low rent, fifty-year rutted pavement streets pass trees are green, endless trees are green waiting, waiting against infinite time for one look, one look that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots.
City square standing, waiting, standing going in, coming out, coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat for his efforts such is the way of young crime, no value, no look just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dreams make no more sense.
A bridge too far. Bicycle boy churning through endless heated streets, names all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea. Twelve-year old miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old grifter, midnight shifters friends hard against the named seas, against those slo-fast changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once.
Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, I don’t think, just some junior league dream fuss, some sweated night pastry crust and I too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic windows.
Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic nights but something else for something inside for some sense of worth in the this moldy shirt, mildewed shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval ,watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then.
Main street walked, main street telephone booth walked, searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets. Or rather courage, nickel and dime courage as it turns out, nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights, No way, no way, Jack, not my name, and then red-face, red-face even forty years later. Wow.
Multi-colored jacket worn, cigarette hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of fame, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson, very tough.
Drunk, whisky drunk in some bayside bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish although who could have known that then.
Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no, one hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, and no earthly good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession.
The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black madonna of night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little.
Bloodless bloodied streets, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.
Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monkton, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarkederos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. Enough, okay.
He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle.
Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.
A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right.
White flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more dastardly fight against time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.
Desperately clutching his new white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.
One more battle, one more, please one more. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief . Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known then.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:
Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.
When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles
When I get olded, loosing my hair,
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me the Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine
If I stay out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
You'll be older too,
And if you say the word I could stay with you.
I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday morning go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight,
if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form,
Mine for evermore,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four.
*******
Ancient dreams, dreamed:
To be born under a portentous sign. Ya, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair kind of smiling, okay, maybe just half-smiling. He had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and then de rigueur bandana, white as well, holding back her hair. She may have been just another blonde, another very blonde frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. Trouble, big trouble. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled at the movie screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.
Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window apartment dwell, small, warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching as he, that brother, goes off to foreign places and one is left to ponder his own place in those places.
A cloudless day, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, starting to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means, that and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes but changes.
Endless walks, endless sea street walks, rocks strewn every which way, making way for the uptown drug store valentine night bushel, if only she, about five candidates she just then, would give a look his way his endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash would be quiet.
Nighttime fears, red Stalin-named fears, red bomb shelter blast fears against the dark school yard night and avoidance, clean, clear avoidance of old times sailors, tars, AND deaths in lonely seaside graveyards.
Walks, bus stop non stop walks, up crooked cheap, low rent, fifty-year rutted pavement streets pass trees are green, endless trees are green waiting, waiting against infinite time for one look, one look that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots.
City square standing, waiting, standing going in, coming out, coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat for his efforts such is the way of young crime, no value, no look just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dreams make no more sense.
A bridge too far. Bicycle boy churning through endless heated streets, names all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea. Twelve-year old miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old grifter, midnight shifters friends hard against the named seas, against those slo-fast changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once.
Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, I don’t think, just some junior league dream fuss, some sweated night pastry crust and I too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic windows.
Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic nights but something else for something inside for some sense of worth in the this moldy shirt, mildewed shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval ,watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then.
Main street walked, main street telephone booth walked, searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets. Or rather courage, nickel and dime courage as it turns out, nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights, No way, no way, Jack, not my name, and then red-face, red-face even forty years later. Wow.
Multi-colored jacket worn, cigarette hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of fame, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson, very tough.
Drunk, whisky drunk in some bayside bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish although who could have known that then.
Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no, one hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, and no earthly good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession.
The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black madonna of night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little.
Bloodless bloodied streets, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.
Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monkton, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarkederos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. Enough, okay.
He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle.
Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.
A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right.
White flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more dastardly fight against time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.
Desperately clutching his new white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.
One more battle, one more, please one more. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief . Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known then.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Out In The 1970s Be-Bop Rock ‘N’ Rock Night-When The Music’s Over- “The Last Waltz- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for The Band’s last stand, The Last Waltz.
DVD Review
The Last Waltz, The Band, various rock, folk rock and blues artists, directed by Martin Scorsese, United Artists, 1978
It’s funny sometimes how when you are hooked into certain musical vibes like going back in the day to classic rock ‘n’ roll things, things like remembrances of long lost bands, turn up in odd places. That is the case here with the Martin Scorsese documentary film, The Last Waltz, the filming of The Band’s last concert in 1976.
And here is the sequence of how I got there. I had heard, several years ago, that Bob Dylan was putting out as part of his now seemingly never-ending official boot-leg series, some work that he did with The Band back in the mid-1960s when he was “hiding” out with them after his motorcycle accident out in the Woodstock (ya, that Woodstock) area of upstate New York making all kinds of interesting music from a number of genres. I made a mental note to check it out but did not pursue the thought until recently. Then I headed to a local library to see if they had a CD of the work since they had other in the series (and in fact has a separate Dylan drawer for all of their CD collection of him). They didn’t have it, or rather it was out. So I went to the Dylan drawer to check on some other possibilities and there I found a set of five CD’s entitled the “Real Woodstock Sessions Boot-leg” series (or something like that). And that find contained (along with plenty of odd-ball outtakes and other miscellanea) some incredible versions of famous folk, folk rock, and country songs like Joshua Gone Barbados, Spanish Is The Loving Tongue, I Forgot To Remember To Forget Her, and stuff like that. All done in just kind of off-handedly way, Dylan and The Band off-handedly.
That is a rather circuitous way to explain the why of this review of The Last Waltz that I had seen when it originally came out in 1978 and have now re-viewed. What popped out at me in this second sighting was that these guys displayed in this two hour documentary that same kind of off-handed serious musicianship that I sensed in the boot-leg CD series mentioned above. No only did they rock, when rock was called for, but they could turn around musically (and instrumentally too) and do, well, a waltz. Hell, some of the instruments they were playing, and playing with professional abandon, I am not even sure I know the names of. And that explains Scorsese interest in doing this piece. He sensed a good story behind the rock and roll, a story of a band coming together when it counts-on stage. But also when, as band leader Robbie Robertson put it, it is time to move on after over a decade on the road. The road is a monster only the crazed, and Bob Dylan, can keep rolling along on. The Band got “off the bus” while they still had plenty of music left in them, just not together.
That said, all that is left is to pick out some highlights from some of the performers who showed up to bid adieu. Aside from a couple of numbers of their own The Band’s strength here was as “back-up” for a number of performers, most notably Neil Young on Helpless, Van Morrison on Radio, Joni Mitchell on Coyote, Bob Dylan on I Shall Be Released (along with the entire ensemble), Muddy Waters On Mannish-Child, and going back to their roots, Ronnie Hawkins on Who Do You Love. Nice stuff, nice stuff indeed if you are interested in knowing what it was like when men (and women) played rock and roll for keeps.
DVD Review
The Last Waltz, The Band, various rock, folk rock and blues artists, directed by Martin Scorsese, United Artists, 1978
It’s funny sometimes how when you are hooked into certain musical vibes like going back in the day to classic rock ‘n’ roll things, things like remembrances of long lost bands, turn up in odd places. That is the case here with the Martin Scorsese documentary film, The Last Waltz, the filming of The Band’s last concert in 1976.
And here is the sequence of how I got there. I had heard, several years ago, that Bob Dylan was putting out as part of his now seemingly never-ending official boot-leg series, some work that he did with The Band back in the mid-1960s when he was “hiding” out with them after his motorcycle accident out in the Woodstock (ya, that Woodstock) area of upstate New York making all kinds of interesting music from a number of genres. I made a mental note to check it out but did not pursue the thought until recently. Then I headed to a local library to see if they had a CD of the work since they had other in the series (and in fact has a separate Dylan drawer for all of their CD collection of him). They didn’t have it, or rather it was out. So I went to the Dylan drawer to check on some other possibilities and there I found a set of five CD’s entitled the “Real Woodstock Sessions Boot-leg” series (or something like that). And that find contained (along with plenty of odd-ball outtakes and other miscellanea) some incredible versions of famous folk, folk rock, and country songs like Joshua Gone Barbados, Spanish Is The Loving Tongue, I Forgot To Remember To Forget Her, and stuff like that. All done in just kind of off-handedly way, Dylan and The Band off-handedly.
That is a rather circuitous way to explain the why of this review of The Last Waltz that I had seen when it originally came out in 1978 and have now re-viewed. What popped out at me in this second sighting was that these guys displayed in this two hour documentary that same kind of off-handed serious musicianship that I sensed in the boot-leg CD series mentioned above. No only did they rock, when rock was called for, but they could turn around musically (and instrumentally too) and do, well, a waltz. Hell, some of the instruments they were playing, and playing with professional abandon, I am not even sure I know the names of. And that explains Scorsese interest in doing this piece. He sensed a good story behind the rock and roll, a story of a band coming together when it counts-on stage. But also when, as band leader Robbie Robertson put it, it is time to move on after over a decade on the road. The road is a monster only the crazed, and Bob Dylan, can keep rolling along on. The Band got “off the bus” while they still had plenty of music left in them, just not together.
That said, all that is left is to pick out some highlights from some of the performers who showed up to bid adieu. Aside from a couple of numbers of their own The Band’s strength here was as “back-up” for a number of performers, most notably Neil Young on Helpless, Van Morrison on Radio, Joni Mitchell on Coyote, Bob Dylan on I Shall Be Released (along with the entire ensemble), Muddy Waters On Mannish-Child, and going back to their roots, Ronnie Hawkins on Who Do You Love. Nice stuff, nice stuff indeed if you are interested in knowing what it was like when men (and women) played rock and roll for keeps.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Rock: 1960-61- Take Three- When Sammy Russo Ran The Skee Ball Lanes- With Bo Diddley In Mind
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Shirelles performing their classic Tonight’s The Night
CD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1960-61, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1996
Scene: Brought to mind by one of the snapshot photos that grace each CD in this series. The then newly built Gloversville Amusement Park created out of farmland just west of the old home town, Clintondale. Of course it had all the latest rides, including two Ferris wheels, two different-sized roller coasters (one for the faint-hearted, the other for the brave, or fool-hearty) refreshment stands seemingly without end, and other refinements, including for our particular purposes not one by two game pavilions anchored by rows of skee lanes. Skee lanes that Sammy Russo ruled (that‘s the guy eating the proffered popcorn in the photo) claimed kingship over and over which Patty Smith (the popcorn profferee in said photo) sought to be his queen. If she could handle the gaffe.
***********
“Christ, Patty how many of these damn, god awful kewpie dolls do you need anyway?,” yelled Sammy Russo, the King Of The Skee Ball night at Gloversville Amusement Park and also a 1960s king hell king of a corner boy at Doc Sweeney’s Drugstore (complete with soda fountain, natch, and a juke box too else why be a corner boy there, or anything else) out in the Clintondale be-bop night to his wanna-be sweetie, Patty Smith. And it was a question that he expected an answer to, a prompt, no sass answer, newness wearing off or not, newness of their “steady” hood-ness, that is.
See, Patty got big eyes for Sammy right here at the FUNland game pavilion (no that is not a typo that is the way the name in front of the game pavilion read) at the beginning of summer, right after school let out. School, of course, being North Adamsville High in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sixty if anybody asks you, and they might. And, for that matter, how else would I know of the Sammy-Patty love story, I ask you, if that wasn’t so. I am one of Sammy’s Doc’s corner boy, uh, associates. Gloversville proper, by the way, is too new and rural raw to have its own high school so kids from Gloversville come over to North Clintondale where there is some extra room just now. But Gloversville kids, farm boys and girls mainly, are strictly squaresville. No dispute. The only reason that anybody from North Clintonville High, any corner boy (or his girl) would even set foot in Gloversville for one minute, no one second, was to pass ever-loving Main Street (really Route 16) through to the edge of town seeking the newly built Gloversville Amusement Park. And that is the reason why Sammy and Patty are standing here in front of the FUNland skee ball lanes having their first “argument.” Well, kind of an argument.
Patty was either in some high funk, or did not hear Sammy the first time over the din of the Gene Daniel’s A Hundred Pounds Of Clay followed immediately by The Chieftains Heart And Soul, blaring over the loudspeaker. A loudspeaker that we finally figured out was used by the management to juice up the pinball/skee ball/games atmosphere so no one could think so he repeated himself. And Patty faux-demurely answered (as was her way when Sammy got this, well, this Sammy Doc’s corner boy way)-“Until I get the whole set of twelve, and not before.” [Markin: For those who are breathlessly on the edge of their seats waiting to know why there are twelve it is simple. There are twelve kewpies representing twelve different nations/major ethnic groups, natch, they had that part of the soft sell down easy] “Christ,” said Sammy under his breathe, “We will be here all night.”
All night skee-ing when Sammy, king of the skees or not, had other things, other wrestling in some secluded spot out back by the artificial lake that formed one of the edges of the park things, on his mind. With one Patty Smith, of course. And that would not be the first time, the first wrestling time. Funny, just then the newest Shirelles' hit came over the speaker, Tonight’s The Night. But just now he knew deep in his bones, knew as if he had been married to Miss Smith for fifty years, that tonight was not going to be the night if she did not go home with not ten, not eleven, but exactly twelve f—king kewpie dolls.
Now this skee thing, on an average night is nothing but a sure thing when Sammy has his motor running. When his mind is on skees, okay. But playing enough games to “win” twelve dolls, or for that matter twelve rabbits’ feet or twelve leis (lesser prizes in the skee universe) requires a certain perseverance and good aim. [Markin: For those who do not know skee it is like bowling, candle-pin bowling (small balls for those not from New England) in that you roll the bowl up a short lane and like darts or rifle target shooting in that you have a target. The idea is to get as many points (and hence coupons) with nine balls as possible. The points convert to coupons which are dispensed near where you place your money to start a game . Get enough coupons and you win prizes from those lame leis to kewpie dolls. Simple.] But, like I said, Sammy’s mind had been elsewhere, especially when Patty, yes, Patty brought up the subject of wrestling down by that lake if things worked out at skee. And as if to punctuate her sentence Brenda Lee’s You Can Depend On Me came on while these “negotiations” were in progress.
But this night Sammy, king hell corner boy is whipped, just plain whipped by the task before him. It is almost closing time (11:00 PM) and Sammy has won exactly five dolls. And Sammy, while he can be as smooth as any Doc’s Drugstore corner boy, except maybe Fritz Gentry, or as cold as any hard-boiled Hell’s Angel motorcycle corner boy from the Blarney Bar&Grille in the hard-night part of Clintondale is ready to explode at Patty. Not for her foolish girl desire for the damn dolls. That is how girls are and what makes them tick. No, Sammy is fed up that his prowess at skee had to be put in play by Patty’s silly notions. So come eleven o'clock and defeat Sammy, cold as ice, says to Patty, “Okay, we are finished, I’ll take you home now but I have had it.” So they walked, walked pretty far apart for two people on the same planet, back to Sammy’s father’s car and he did not even open Patty’s door for her. Bad news, no question. She got in and as the car radio heated up wouldn’t you know in a night filled with omens and portents that just then the local all-night rock ‘n’ roll station would be playing Connie Francis’ Breakin’ In A Brand New Broken Heart. And both Sammy and Patty were absolutely quiet while that song was being played.
CD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1960-61, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1996
Scene: Brought to mind by one of the snapshot photos that grace each CD in this series. The then newly built Gloversville Amusement Park created out of farmland just west of the old home town, Clintondale. Of course it had all the latest rides, including two Ferris wheels, two different-sized roller coasters (one for the faint-hearted, the other for the brave, or fool-hearty) refreshment stands seemingly without end, and other refinements, including for our particular purposes not one by two game pavilions anchored by rows of skee lanes. Skee lanes that Sammy Russo ruled (that‘s the guy eating the proffered popcorn in the photo) claimed kingship over and over which Patty Smith (the popcorn profferee in said photo) sought to be his queen. If she could handle the gaffe.
***********
“Christ, Patty how many of these damn, god awful kewpie dolls do you need anyway?,” yelled Sammy Russo, the King Of The Skee Ball night at Gloversville Amusement Park and also a 1960s king hell king of a corner boy at Doc Sweeney’s Drugstore (complete with soda fountain, natch, and a juke box too else why be a corner boy there, or anything else) out in the Clintondale be-bop night to his wanna-be sweetie, Patty Smith. And it was a question that he expected an answer to, a prompt, no sass answer, newness wearing off or not, newness of their “steady” hood-ness, that is.
See, Patty got big eyes for Sammy right here at the FUNland game pavilion (no that is not a typo that is the way the name in front of the game pavilion read) at the beginning of summer, right after school let out. School, of course, being North Adamsville High in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sixty if anybody asks you, and they might. And, for that matter, how else would I know of the Sammy-Patty love story, I ask you, if that wasn’t so. I am one of Sammy’s Doc’s corner boy, uh, associates. Gloversville proper, by the way, is too new and rural raw to have its own high school so kids from Gloversville come over to North Clintondale where there is some extra room just now. But Gloversville kids, farm boys and girls mainly, are strictly squaresville. No dispute. The only reason that anybody from North Clintonville High, any corner boy (or his girl) would even set foot in Gloversville for one minute, no one second, was to pass ever-loving Main Street (really Route 16) through to the edge of town seeking the newly built Gloversville Amusement Park. And that is the reason why Sammy and Patty are standing here in front of the FUNland skee ball lanes having their first “argument.” Well, kind of an argument.
Patty was either in some high funk, or did not hear Sammy the first time over the din of the Gene Daniel’s A Hundred Pounds Of Clay followed immediately by The Chieftains Heart And Soul, blaring over the loudspeaker. A loudspeaker that we finally figured out was used by the management to juice up the pinball/skee ball/games atmosphere so no one could think so he repeated himself. And Patty faux-demurely answered (as was her way when Sammy got this, well, this Sammy Doc’s corner boy way)-“Until I get the whole set of twelve, and not before.” [Markin: For those who are breathlessly on the edge of their seats waiting to know why there are twelve it is simple. There are twelve kewpies representing twelve different nations/major ethnic groups, natch, they had that part of the soft sell down easy] “Christ,” said Sammy under his breathe, “We will be here all night.”
All night skee-ing when Sammy, king of the skees or not, had other things, other wrestling in some secluded spot out back by the artificial lake that formed one of the edges of the park things, on his mind. With one Patty Smith, of course. And that would not be the first time, the first wrestling time. Funny, just then the newest Shirelles' hit came over the speaker, Tonight’s The Night. But just now he knew deep in his bones, knew as if he had been married to Miss Smith for fifty years, that tonight was not going to be the night if she did not go home with not ten, not eleven, but exactly twelve f—king kewpie dolls.
Now this skee thing, on an average night is nothing but a sure thing when Sammy has his motor running. When his mind is on skees, okay. But playing enough games to “win” twelve dolls, or for that matter twelve rabbits’ feet or twelve leis (lesser prizes in the skee universe) requires a certain perseverance and good aim. [Markin: For those who do not know skee it is like bowling, candle-pin bowling (small balls for those not from New England) in that you roll the bowl up a short lane and like darts or rifle target shooting in that you have a target. The idea is to get as many points (and hence coupons) with nine balls as possible. The points convert to coupons which are dispensed near where you place your money to start a game . Get enough coupons and you win prizes from those lame leis to kewpie dolls. Simple.] But, like I said, Sammy’s mind had been elsewhere, especially when Patty, yes, Patty brought up the subject of wrestling down by that lake if things worked out at skee. And as if to punctuate her sentence Brenda Lee’s You Can Depend On Me came on while these “negotiations” were in progress.
But this night Sammy, king hell corner boy is whipped, just plain whipped by the task before him. It is almost closing time (11:00 PM) and Sammy has won exactly five dolls. And Sammy, while he can be as smooth as any Doc’s Drugstore corner boy, except maybe Fritz Gentry, or as cold as any hard-boiled Hell’s Angel motorcycle corner boy from the Blarney Bar&Grille in the hard-night part of Clintondale is ready to explode at Patty. Not for her foolish girl desire for the damn dolls. That is how girls are and what makes them tick. No, Sammy is fed up that his prowess at skee had to be put in play by Patty’s silly notions. So come eleven o'clock and defeat Sammy, cold as ice, says to Patty, “Okay, we are finished, I’ll take you home now but I have had it.” So they walked, walked pretty far apart for two people on the same planet, back to Sammy’s father’s car and he did not even open Patty’s door for her. Bad news, no question. She got in and as the car radio heated up wouldn’t you know in a night filled with omens and portents that just then the local all-night rock ‘n’ roll station would be playing Connie Francis’ Breakin’ In A Brand New Broken Heart. And both Sammy and Patty were absolutely quiet while that song was being played.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Gas Wars, Circa 1964-When The Souped-Up Car Ruled The North Adamsville Night-With The “Boss Man’s” ’57 Chevy In Mind
Click on the headline, but only after you have read this entry and after you have made your guess, to link to a 1960s Flashback Website for the answer. For those who graduated in other decades and wish to know the price of gas at the pump in your misbegotten youth you can link from there. Thanks, Internet.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, comment and question:
How much did it cost for a gallon of gasoline in 1964? In the interest of "speaking" to the wider North Adamsville Graduate audience that might pick this comment up on Facebook just pick your year of graduation and guess from there. Then click on headline to seek the answer
Oil at $100 a barrel. Gasoline over three dollars per gallon at the pump (remember this is being written in September, 2011 in case you pick this up later). No, do not worry, this is not intended to be the start of a political screed about the need to bring the “Seven Sisters” oil monopolists to heel or to break up the international oil cartels, although those are very good ideas. At the beginning of this series of commentaries about the old days in North Adamsville I promised that I would not be political, at least not overtly so. So that is political aspect is no help here. All I want to ask today is whether, through the mist of time, you remember how much gasoline cost when you went to "fill 'er up" in high school.
Now this question requires some honesty on your part. Please, no Googling the Quincy Patriot Ledger or The Boston Globe to search their archives of the time. Nor should you use a graphic calculator to factor back the effect of the rate of inflation on oil since 1964 to come up with an answer. Dear readers, this is not some torturous calculus problem. What you basically need to do is to remember some numbers from when you were daydreaming out the window in study hall at old North Adamsville High. Maybe in between thinking away the hours about that certain she (or he) a couple of rows over and how, well, how you would like to get acquainted with her (or him) or what was up for Saturday when your true corner boy “boss man,” Sid Hemmings, came by to pick you up in his “boss” (hence the Boss Man nickname) ’57 Chevy and you went “cruising” into the great teenage Adamsville Beach night. Or maybe you spotted those numbers when you went out the door, assuming you survived opening that fortress-like door while still thinking about that certain she (or he) whom you almost had enough courage to talk to after class today but only got to a meaningful look, onto Hancock Street after school.
What is this guy talking about with all these study hall and looking out the window references? Just this. Unless you were a total grind and always had your nose in a book then the answer merely requires that you had looked out the window. Directly across the street, Hancock Street, from the school were two gas stations (I believe somewhere near the mass transportation depot parking lot and the MacDonald's are now if you have been in the old town recently) that were always in competition with each other. They, and I am not making this up for I do not have such a vivid imagination, actually were having very public price wars to bring in customers by REDUCING the price of their gas. But enough hints. Your answers, please?
No comment on the 1964 North Adamsville gas wars night would be complete without reference to the manner in which we got the dough to pay for said gas. A lot of kids then got it from mom or pop reflecting the more affluence post-World War II times when the old parents has enough dough to spare for a kid to own his or her own car, and have a gas money allowance to boot. Even in working class North Adamsville. Others, like me and most of my corner boys, my Salducci’s Pizza Parlor night corner boys, walked, hitchhiked or borrowed the “old man’s” car (or that of an older brother) for a be-bop Saturday night romp. That is until I met up with the “Boss Man” mentioned above. Sid Hemming’s, who lived just down the end of my dead-end street, had a ’57 Chevy that he was always working on (and when he wasn’t working on it was riding around, usually with a bevy of girls before the night was over, down that now famous Adamsville Beach night).
For a couple of years he took me in tow. The price, well the price was that I was “in charge” of filling up his tank when it was empty. In short, paying for gas to be “cool.” Since I was poorer than a church mouse and never heard of such a thing as an allowance until somebody told me about them that meant taking my hard-earned money from caddying up at the local private golf course to fill the damn thing. And those golfer guys whether they had dough or not, and they usually did, were cheap when it came caddie pay-off time. A primer in capitalist economics, I guess. So you know, roughly, that gas could not have cost too much. Still, you are duty-bound to guess.
Of course, buying the gas got me nothing when it came to the girls the filled the other seats of Sid’s souped-up car. Well usually got me nothing, that is. See they, most of them prime A-one foxes, only had eyes for Sid, or more correctly Sid’s ’57 Chevy. Hell they were one in the same. Now Sid, whatever his mechanical wizard abilities with an automobile motor were, and I will be kind here, had nothing for looks. Even “cute” was a stretch. And even more of a stretch was that “cute” when Sid was seriously into his auto repair work and smelled of oils, cigarettes and whiskey. Still the girls (read: young women) actually came up to him looking for a ride and, well, just leave it as and. The way it worked is that once the car filled up with girls I was out the door. No problem, well no problem on those few occasions when he left me down at the beach (Adamsville Beach, if you didn’t know), with one of his “cast-offs”. A cast-off being something like some older girl’s sister whom she was kind stuck baby-sitting for and wanted to ditch to have a minute’s passion with Sid, or so that is what I heard they were doing. All I know is that I could hear that old Chevy roaring down the end of the street with Sid at the wheel and one last “pick of the evening” sitting tight next to him. Ya, that was Sid’s way, always Sid’s way.
P.S. For later, post-North Adamsville MBTA station graduates, you are left to your own resources about finding the gas prices.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, comment and question:
How much did it cost for a gallon of gasoline in 1964? In the interest of "speaking" to the wider North Adamsville Graduate audience that might pick this comment up on Facebook just pick your year of graduation and guess from there. Then click on headline to seek the answer
Oil at $100 a barrel. Gasoline over three dollars per gallon at the pump (remember this is being written in September, 2011 in case you pick this up later). No, do not worry, this is not intended to be the start of a political screed about the need to bring the “Seven Sisters” oil monopolists to heel or to break up the international oil cartels, although those are very good ideas. At the beginning of this series of commentaries about the old days in North Adamsville I promised that I would not be political, at least not overtly so. So that is political aspect is no help here. All I want to ask today is whether, through the mist of time, you remember how much gasoline cost when you went to "fill 'er up" in high school.
Now this question requires some honesty on your part. Please, no Googling the Quincy Patriot Ledger or The Boston Globe to search their archives of the time. Nor should you use a graphic calculator to factor back the effect of the rate of inflation on oil since 1964 to come up with an answer. Dear readers, this is not some torturous calculus problem. What you basically need to do is to remember some numbers from when you were daydreaming out the window in study hall at old North Adamsville High. Maybe in between thinking away the hours about that certain she (or he) a couple of rows over and how, well, how you would like to get acquainted with her (or him) or what was up for Saturday when your true corner boy “boss man,” Sid Hemmings, came by to pick you up in his “boss” (hence the Boss Man nickname) ’57 Chevy and you went “cruising” into the great teenage Adamsville Beach night. Or maybe you spotted those numbers when you went out the door, assuming you survived opening that fortress-like door while still thinking about that certain she (or he) whom you almost had enough courage to talk to after class today but only got to a meaningful look, onto Hancock Street after school.
What is this guy talking about with all these study hall and looking out the window references? Just this. Unless you were a total grind and always had your nose in a book then the answer merely requires that you had looked out the window. Directly across the street, Hancock Street, from the school were two gas stations (I believe somewhere near the mass transportation depot parking lot and the MacDonald's are now if you have been in the old town recently) that were always in competition with each other. They, and I am not making this up for I do not have such a vivid imagination, actually were having very public price wars to bring in customers by REDUCING the price of their gas. But enough hints. Your answers, please?
No comment on the 1964 North Adamsville gas wars night would be complete without reference to the manner in which we got the dough to pay for said gas. A lot of kids then got it from mom or pop reflecting the more affluence post-World War II times when the old parents has enough dough to spare for a kid to own his or her own car, and have a gas money allowance to boot. Even in working class North Adamsville. Others, like me and most of my corner boys, my Salducci’s Pizza Parlor night corner boys, walked, hitchhiked or borrowed the “old man’s” car (or that of an older brother) for a be-bop Saturday night romp. That is until I met up with the “Boss Man” mentioned above. Sid Hemming’s, who lived just down the end of my dead-end street, had a ’57 Chevy that he was always working on (and when he wasn’t working on it was riding around, usually with a bevy of girls before the night was over, down that now famous Adamsville Beach night).
For a couple of years he took me in tow. The price, well the price was that I was “in charge” of filling up his tank when it was empty. In short, paying for gas to be “cool.” Since I was poorer than a church mouse and never heard of such a thing as an allowance until somebody told me about them that meant taking my hard-earned money from caddying up at the local private golf course to fill the damn thing. And those golfer guys whether they had dough or not, and they usually did, were cheap when it came caddie pay-off time. A primer in capitalist economics, I guess. So you know, roughly, that gas could not have cost too much. Still, you are duty-bound to guess.
Of course, buying the gas got me nothing when it came to the girls the filled the other seats of Sid’s souped-up car. Well usually got me nothing, that is. See they, most of them prime A-one foxes, only had eyes for Sid, or more correctly Sid’s ’57 Chevy. Hell they were one in the same. Now Sid, whatever his mechanical wizard abilities with an automobile motor were, and I will be kind here, had nothing for looks. Even “cute” was a stretch. And even more of a stretch was that “cute” when Sid was seriously into his auto repair work and smelled of oils, cigarettes and whiskey. Still the girls (read: young women) actually came up to him looking for a ride and, well, just leave it as and. The way it worked is that once the car filled up with girls I was out the door. No problem, well no problem on those few occasions when he left me down at the beach (Adamsville Beach, if you didn’t know), with one of his “cast-offs”. A cast-off being something like some older girl’s sister whom she was kind stuck baby-sitting for and wanted to ditch to have a minute’s passion with Sid, or so that is what I heard they were doing. All I know is that I could hear that old Chevy roaring down the end of the street with Sid at the wheel and one last “pick of the evening” sitting tight next to him. Ya, that was Sid’s way, always Sid’s way.
P.S. For later, post-North Adamsville MBTA station graduates, you are left to your own resources about finding the gas prices.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
On “Now” Photos For The AARP Generation- For Robert Flatley, North Adamsville Class Of 1964
Click on the title to link to a YouTube film clip of Iris Dement performing Our Town. Sorry no After You're Gone by her that I could find on that site.
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:
“’Cause I’ve memorized each line in your face, and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me”-a line from the folksinger/songwriter Iris DeMent’s hauntingly beautiful song, After You’re Gone. (You can Google for the rest of the lyrics. Some of her music is on YouTube but I could not find this one.)
Well, of course, those hard-wire lyrics only apply to our male classmates. After all Iris is singing about her gone man. He long gone but not forgotten man. I do not, this age of sexual equality notwithstanding, want to extend their application to our sister classmates because I do not need to have every cyber-stone in the universe thrown at me. But those same lyrics do bring me to the purpose for today’s comment. As part of getting a 'feel' for writing about our days at old North Adamsville High I have perused some of the class profiles this infernal 1964 class committee that keeps badgering me for ever more information has provided me. Apparently once you answer a couple of off-hand questions about your doings (or not-doings) over the past half century you are fair game for every possible form of interrogation. Interrogations that would shame even the most hardened CIA or NSA bureaucrat. I don’t know about you but I am thinking of hiring a lawyer and putting a stop to this maddening harassment, and possible constitutional violation. But that is a subject for another day. For now, forward.
A number of you have placed your current photos on the profile pages thoughtfully provided by said committee, although a number of people, including myself, are apparently camera-shy. I admit to not being particularly camera-shy but rather to being something of a technological luddite (look that word up on Wikipedia if you do not know it) in that I do not own the digital camera required to upload a snappy photo, have no immediate intention of owning one, and would, moreover be helpless to do such a tortuous task as uploading a photo. Truth. Some, however, like the Chase brothers are not. Not camera shy or apparently luddites that is. (By the way, Jim and John, and others as well, what is up with wearing hats these days? We are Kennedy-era boys and hats most definitely were not part of our uniform.) Or like born again "muscle man" (read: huge) Bill Bailey, the star cross country runner and track man our class, whom I have has previously written about in this space as slender-strided and gracefully-gaited. That photo-readiness on the part of some classmates forms the basis for my comment. Those who are photo-less can breathe a sigh of relief-for now.
I have to admit that I have been startled by some of the photos. Many of them seem to have been taken by your grandchildren just before their naps. Or maybe by you just before your naps, or some combinations of the two especially for those who are performing grandparental (is their such a word?) duty as “babysitters” in a world where both parents are forced by hard-time circumstances to work to make ends meet these days. Isn’t the digital age supposed to have made the camera instantly user-friendly? Why all the out-of-focus, soft-focus, looking through a fish tank or a looking- glass kind of shots. And why does everyone seem to be have been photographed down the far end of some dark corridor or by someone about six miles away? Nobody expects Bachrach-quality photos but something is amiss here [ Bachrach’s was the photograph studio that took our individual class pictures for those who don’t remember or didn’t otherwise know-Markin]
In contrast, a new arrival on this class committee profile page interrogation wall (sorry), Robert Flatley, has found just the right approach. Initially, Robert placed a recent shot of himself on his profile page. Frankly, the old codger looked like he was wanted in about six states for “kiting” checks, or maybe had done a little “time” in some far-off county farm or state prison for armed robbery. More recently, however, his page has been graced with a stock photo provided by the site, a tastefully-shot, resplendent wide old oak tree. Automatically I now associate Robert with the tree of life, with oneness with the universe, with solidity, with the root of matter in him, and with bending but not breaking. Wise choice, Brother Flatley. Now, moreover, I do not have to suppress a need to dial 911, but rather can think of Robert as one who walks with kings, as a sage for the ages. And nothing can ever erase the story that tells to me.
Artist: Dement Iris
Song: After You're Gone
Album: Infamous Angel Iris Dement Sheet Music
There'll be laughter even after you're gone.
I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn.
'Cause I've memorised each line in your face,
And not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me.
I'll miss you.
Oh, how I'll miss you.
I'll dream of you,
And I'll cry a million tears.
But the sorrow will pass.
And the one thing that will last,
Is the love that you've given to me.
There'll be laughter even after you're gone.
I'll find reasons and I'll face that empty dawn.
'Cause I've memorized each line in your face,
And not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me.
************
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:
“’Cause I’ve memorized each line in your face, and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me”-a line from the folksinger/songwriter Iris DeMent’s hauntingly beautiful song, After You’re Gone. (You can Google for the rest of the lyrics. Some of her music is on YouTube but I could not find this one.)
Well, of course, those hard-wire lyrics only apply to our male classmates. After all Iris is singing about her gone man. He long gone but not forgotten man. I do not, this age of sexual equality notwithstanding, want to extend their application to our sister classmates because I do not need to have every cyber-stone in the universe thrown at me. But those same lyrics do bring me to the purpose for today’s comment. As part of getting a 'feel' for writing about our days at old North Adamsville High I have perused some of the class profiles this infernal 1964 class committee that keeps badgering me for ever more information has provided me. Apparently once you answer a couple of off-hand questions about your doings (or not-doings) over the past half century you are fair game for every possible form of interrogation. Interrogations that would shame even the most hardened CIA or NSA bureaucrat. I don’t know about you but I am thinking of hiring a lawyer and putting a stop to this maddening harassment, and possible constitutional violation. But that is a subject for another day. For now, forward.
A number of you have placed your current photos on the profile pages thoughtfully provided by said committee, although a number of people, including myself, are apparently camera-shy. I admit to not being particularly camera-shy but rather to being something of a technological luddite (look that word up on Wikipedia if you do not know it) in that I do not own the digital camera required to upload a snappy photo, have no immediate intention of owning one, and would, moreover be helpless to do such a tortuous task as uploading a photo. Truth. Some, however, like the Chase brothers are not. Not camera shy or apparently luddites that is. (By the way, Jim and John, and others as well, what is up with wearing hats these days? We are Kennedy-era boys and hats most definitely were not part of our uniform.) Or like born again "muscle man" (read: huge) Bill Bailey, the star cross country runner and track man our class, whom I have has previously written about in this space as slender-strided and gracefully-gaited. That photo-readiness on the part of some classmates forms the basis for my comment. Those who are photo-less can breathe a sigh of relief-for now.
I have to admit that I have been startled by some of the photos. Many of them seem to have been taken by your grandchildren just before their naps. Or maybe by you just before your naps, or some combinations of the two especially for those who are performing grandparental (is their such a word?) duty as “babysitters” in a world where both parents are forced by hard-time circumstances to work to make ends meet these days. Isn’t the digital age supposed to have made the camera instantly user-friendly? Why all the out-of-focus, soft-focus, looking through a fish tank or a looking- glass kind of shots. And why does everyone seem to be have been photographed down the far end of some dark corridor or by someone about six miles away? Nobody expects Bachrach-quality photos but something is amiss here [ Bachrach’s was the photograph studio that took our individual class pictures for those who don’t remember or didn’t otherwise know-Markin]
In contrast, a new arrival on this class committee profile page interrogation wall (sorry), Robert Flatley, has found just the right approach. Initially, Robert placed a recent shot of himself on his profile page. Frankly, the old codger looked like he was wanted in about six states for “kiting” checks, or maybe had done a little “time” in some far-off county farm or state prison for armed robbery. More recently, however, his page has been graced with a stock photo provided by the site, a tastefully-shot, resplendent wide old oak tree. Automatically I now associate Robert with the tree of life, with oneness with the universe, with solidity, with the root of matter in him, and with bending but not breaking. Wise choice, Brother Flatley. Now, moreover, I do not have to suppress a need to dial 911, but rather can think of Robert as one who walks with kings, as a sage for the ages. And nothing can ever erase the story that tells to me.
Artist: Dement Iris
Song: After You're Gone
Album: Infamous Angel Iris Dement Sheet Music
There'll be laughter even after you're gone.
I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn.
'Cause I've memorised each line in your face,
And not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me.
I'll miss you.
Oh, how I'll miss you.
I'll dream of you,
And I'll cry a million tears.
But the sorrow will pass.
And the one thing that will last,
Is the love that you've given to me.
There'll be laughter even after you're gone.
I'll find reasons and I'll face that empty dawn.
'Cause I've memorized each line in your face,
And not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me.
************
Sunday, August 14, 2011
*Put Your Mother’s Dancing Slippers On- Once Again On The Songs That Got Us Through World War II
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Vaughn Monroe performing There I've Said It Again. Yes, I know with an introduction by Ronald Reagan. Yadda Yadda.
CD Review
Songs That Got Us Through World War II, Volume 2, various artists, Rhino Records, 1994
There I’ve Said It Again, came wafting through the halls from another ballroom as Sally Madigan began to sit down at her table after having danced to her favorite dance, and almost naturally so, Mustang Sally. Strange juxtaposition, strange times she thought to herself. Just a bunch of years ago, a bunch of childhood 1950s years ago, she would do her own swoon, almost swelling to tears, just like her mother, sweet mother, Delores, when that deep bass voice of Vaughn Monroe came over WJDA, the local radio station in Clintondale that feature songs of the 1940s, the war-torn and separated 1940s, her mother’s time, and surely her father’s too. And now it just sounded, well, old-fashioned, old hat, and old fogy. Hell, now the be-bop rock 1950s that she craved sounded that way too. But that is a story for another time, a time of boy-finding and finding out about being a girl.
Strange that just that song, and now what sounded like the strains of Sentimental Journey starting up, heard more clearly now that the Lazy Crazy and the Rocking Ramrods were taking a break after finishing that last set with as sweat-poring, handkerchief wet rendition of Sally, are in the air. Strange since only a couple of weeks ago as Sally packed up her belongings from her room so that her younger sister, Meg, could move up in the Madigan girls' room pecking order and move in she had been flashed back to that same 1940s time. She was packing her belongings, sorting out what she was taking to State University and what she was storing, her other valuables and mementos like Timmy the Bear that just could not be parted with, down in the cellar.
In the cellar she had come across her mother’s wrapped in seven layers of plastic dancing slippers, or what was labeled as such by her label-happy mother. And a few Brownie-camera taken photographs, faded brown now, of her younger days mother, escorted by various beaus, some in uniform others not. But none of her mother with her father. And every picture had a note written in fountain pen, or what looked like fountain pen ink, thicker and more squiggly than Bics, that read something like this one- “to Delores Taylor, the rose of the Class of 1943 and the best slow dancer around. Love and kisses, Zack.”
Those finds had gotten Sally thinking about what those things meant, as they did now, as Caldonia came be-bopping through those halls and that distinctive Woody Herman flute reached for the high white note. Funny, she found herself toe-tapping to that sound, as were others around her, even though everybody agreed, agreed totally, that that was nothing but mothers and fathers music when she mentioned the name of the song. And Sally was thinking hard about the fact that her mother never danced, never mentioned dancing, and never mentioned any of the facts behind all that WJDA music that had practically mesmerized her in the 1950s. And if that was true of her mother then it was ten times more true about her father, Jim, who for the past several years had been a blur in her life, both because he did not understand how in the world he produced five girls and no boys. Although he repeated emphasized that he loved them all dearly when pushed on the subject and he had taken to spending more time with his old-time war buddy cronies and some younger guys as Timmy’s Irish Pub over near the softball field in North Clintondale. All she knew about those times was that Jim had a fist full of medals on a uniform that was also laid out in seven layers of plastic down in the cellar, and that was it.
Sally mentioned that fact to her escort, yes, escort, not boyfriend, okay, Johnny Rizzo, a fellow freshmen she had met her first day at State at orientation and whom she immediately liked. He invited her to this first Freshman Mixer and she accepted. He noted that his own parents never talked about those war days, although they did not play the old-timey music so maybe they just wanted to forget. That opinion was shared, mostly, by the other three couples at the table, at least between the cooings being made by those couples. And as When My Man Comes Home started to get competition from Lazy Crazy warming up to the Kingmen’s Louey, Louey Sally was determined to fill in the lost years. Just then Johnny asked her to dance, and as her feet were feeling too hot she slipped off her own dancing slippers before heading to the dance floor.
Note: Sally did find out, or partially find out, what happened back in those days and to make a long story short, There I’ve Said It Again was the “their” song for Delores and Zack, Zack Smith. Zack was killed, like too many boys, at Anzio (Italy) and Delores had married Jim Madigan, war hero and alive, on the “rebound.” Jim never said anything about it, that was Jim’s way, but he never danced with Delores either.
CD Review
Songs That Got Us Through World War II, Volume 2, various artists, Rhino Records, 1994
There I’ve Said It Again, came wafting through the halls from another ballroom as Sally Madigan began to sit down at her table after having danced to her favorite dance, and almost naturally so, Mustang Sally. Strange juxtaposition, strange times she thought to herself. Just a bunch of years ago, a bunch of childhood 1950s years ago, she would do her own swoon, almost swelling to tears, just like her mother, sweet mother, Delores, when that deep bass voice of Vaughn Monroe came over WJDA, the local radio station in Clintondale that feature songs of the 1940s, the war-torn and separated 1940s, her mother’s time, and surely her father’s too. And now it just sounded, well, old-fashioned, old hat, and old fogy. Hell, now the be-bop rock 1950s that she craved sounded that way too. But that is a story for another time, a time of boy-finding and finding out about being a girl.
Strange that just that song, and now what sounded like the strains of Sentimental Journey starting up, heard more clearly now that the Lazy Crazy and the Rocking Ramrods were taking a break after finishing that last set with as sweat-poring, handkerchief wet rendition of Sally, are in the air. Strange since only a couple of weeks ago as Sally packed up her belongings from her room so that her younger sister, Meg, could move up in the Madigan girls' room pecking order and move in she had been flashed back to that same 1940s time. She was packing her belongings, sorting out what she was taking to State University and what she was storing, her other valuables and mementos like Timmy the Bear that just could not be parted with, down in the cellar.
In the cellar she had come across her mother’s wrapped in seven layers of plastic dancing slippers, or what was labeled as such by her label-happy mother. And a few Brownie-camera taken photographs, faded brown now, of her younger days mother, escorted by various beaus, some in uniform others not. But none of her mother with her father. And every picture had a note written in fountain pen, or what looked like fountain pen ink, thicker and more squiggly than Bics, that read something like this one- “to Delores Taylor, the rose of the Class of 1943 and the best slow dancer around. Love and kisses, Zack.”
Those finds had gotten Sally thinking about what those things meant, as they did now, as Caldonia came be-bopping through those halls and that distinctive Woody Herman flute reached for the high white note. Funny, she found herself toe-tapping to that sound, as were others around her, even though everybody agreed, agreed totally, that that was nothing but mothers and fathers music when she mentioned the name of the song. And Sally was thinking hard about the fact that her mother never danced, never mentioned dancing, and never mentioned any of the facts behind all that WJDA music that had practically mesmerized her in the 1950s. And if that was true of her mother then it was ten times more true about her father, Jim, who for the past several years had been a blur in her life, both because he did not understand how in the world he produced five girls and no boys. Although he repeated emphasized that he loved them all dearly when pushed on the subject and he had taken to spending more time with his old-time war buddy cronies and some younger guys as Timmy’s Irish Pub over near the softball field in North Clintondale. All she knew about those times was that Jim had a fist full of medals on a uniform that was also laid out in seven layers of plastic down in the cellar, and that was it.
Sally mentioned that fact to her escort, yes, escort, not boyfriend, okay, Johnny Rizzo, a fellow freshmen she had met her first day at State at orientation and whom she immediately liked. He invited her to this first Freshman Mixer and she accepted. He noted that his own parents never talked about those war days, although they did not play the old-timey music so maybe they just wanted to forget. That opinion was shared, mostly, by the other three couples at the table, at least between the cooings being made by those couples. And as When My Man Comes Home started to get competition from Lazy Crazy warming up to the Kingmen’s Louey, Louey Sally was determined to fill in the lost years. Just then Johnny asked her to dance, and as her feet were feeling too hot she slipped off her own dancing slippers before heading to the dance floor.
Note: Sally did find out, or partially find out, what happened back in those days and to make a long story short, There I’ve Said It Again was the “their” song for Delores and Zack, Zack Smith. Zack was killed, like too many boys, at Anzio (Italy) and Delores had married Jim Madigan, war hero and alive, on the “rebound.” Jim never said anything about it, that was Jim’s way, but he never danced with Delores either.
Friday, August 12, 2011
*November 22, 1963-Frankie’s Cry Of The Banshee-For The Class Of 1964 Everywhere
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry covering the background to the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 for those too young to remember that event.
Frankie Riley comment:
Well you, the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964, knew this was coming at some point. That date, November 22, 1963, is etched, one way or another, is the minds of the generation of ’68 forever. Some events form the signposts for every generation. For our parents, the Class of 1964 parents, it was starving or semi-starving, hitting the western roads or just marking time through the Great Depression and slogging, gun in hand, through World War II, or waiting anxiously at home, waiting for the other shoe to drop. For today's kids it is the dastardly heinous criminal acts around 9/11 and the permanent "war against terrorism" that seems to color every political move made these days. For us it was the Cold War “red menace” Soviet Union space race throw-up satellite Sputnik and, in the end, the political horrors emanating from the Irish tragic Kennedy assassination. The cry of the banshee out in the wilds, on the wild oceans, and careening the wild winds.
Usually, when discussing these milestone events the question asked centers on where you were or what you were doing on that fateful day. I do not need to ask that question here. I know where you were, at least most of you. Unless you were sick, legitimately or otherwise, playing hooky, legitimately or otherwise, or on a field trip, legitimately or otherwise, you were sitting in some dank classroom as the old craggy-faced, rum-besotten (as least we all suspected that and which was later confirmed when he was arrested for drunk driving about seven times), headmaster, one Mr. Donald O’Toole, came over the P.A. system to announce the news of the shooting of President Kennedy. What I would find interesting is not what your current take is on that event, whether you were a Kennedy partisan or not, but how you reacted at the time. Here is the story of my reaction:
In the fall of 1960, for most of us our first year at North, a new wind was blowing over the political landscape in America with the Kennedy nomination and later his election victory over Richard Nixon. If you want the feel of that same wind pay attention to the breezes that I sense coming from today's youth, a little anyway if they can stop that eternal, infernal texting and look up for a minute. Maybe that wind grabbed you in 1960. It did me. Although some people that I have met and worked with over the years swear that I was born a “political junkie” the truth is that 1960 marked my political coming of age.
One of my forms of 'fun' as a kid was to write little 'essays' on political questions. You know, like-Should Red China (remember that term) be admitted into the United Nations? Or, are computers going to replace workers and create high unemployment? (I swear that I wrote stuff like that. I do not have that good an imagination to make this up. It also might explain one part of a very troubled childhood.)
In any case, I kept these little 'pearls of wisdom' in a little notebook. Within a couple of days after the Kennedy assassination I threw them all away, swearing off politics forever. Well, I did not hold to that promise. I have also moved away from that youthful admiration for JFK (although I will always hold a little spot open for brother Robert-oh, what might have been.) but I can still hear the clang as I threw those papers in the trash barrel.
*******
So naturally if Frank Riley has anything to say on any subject, from dung beetles to one-worldism, just like in the old North Adamsville Salducci’s Pizza Parlor nights, one Peter Paul Markin has to put his face into the conversation. Here, as usual, is his lame take on the Kennedy days from an entry he wrote in 2010. In other words he refuses to give us any new stuff but, christ, just the same old, same old. Here it is if you can stand it:
“Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1964:
A while back [October, 2010] I mentioned, in an entry that amounted to a nostalgic 1960s Boston kid time trip down political memory lane, the following that links in with this entry posted under the sign of the 50th anniversary of Jack Kennedy’s presidential election victory election over one Richard Milhous Nixon, the arch-political villain of the age:
“During the course of the afternoon that event [the Massachusetts governor’s race where President Obama was to speak at a rally in behalf of Deval Patrick’s reelection at the Hines Center in Boston], and the particular locale where it was staged, brought back a flood of memories of my first serious organized political actions in 1960 when, as a lad of fourteen, I set out to “save the world.” And my soul, or so I thought at the time, as well. That was the campaign of one of our own, Jack Kennedy, as he ran for president against the nefarious sitting Vice President, one Richard Milhous Nixon. In the course of that long ago campaign he gave one of his most stirring speeches not far from where I stood on this Saturday.
Although gathering troops (read: high school and college students) for that long ago speech was not my first public political action of that year, a small SANE-sponsored demonstration against nuclear proliferation further up the same street was but I did not help to organize that one, the Kennedy campaign was the first one that hinted that I might, against all good sense, become a serious political junkie. Ya, I know, every mother warns their sons (then and now) and daughters (now) against such foolhardiness but what can you do. And, mercifully, I am still at it. And have wound up on the right side of the angels, to boot.
The funny thing about those triggered remembrances is that as far removed from bourgeois politics as I have been for about the last forty years I noticed many young politicos doing their youthful thing just as I did back then; passing out leaflets, holding banners, rousing the crowd, making extemporaneous little soapbox speeches, arguing with an occasional right wing Tea Party advocate, and making themselves hoarse in the process. In short, exhibiting all the skills (except the techno-savvy computer indoor stuff you do these days before such rallies) of a street organizer from any age, including communist street organizers. Now if those young organizers only had the extra-parliamentary left-wing politics to merge with those organizational skills. In short, come over to the side of the angels.
But that is where we come back to old Jack Kennedy and that 1960 campaign. Who would have thought that a kid, me, who started out walking door to door stuffing Jack Kennedy literature in every available door in 1960 but who turned off that road long ago would be saying thanks, Jack. Thanks for teaching me those political skills.”
And not just that thanks for heralding the break-out, or at least the attempted break-out of my 1960s generation from the Eisenhower-Nixon cold war death trap. See, at the time of the great attempted break-out from the confines of bourgeois society and the tracked career path all kinds of people seemed like they could be allies, and Jack Kennedy seemed a kindred spirit. I will not even mention Bobby, that one still brings a little tear to my eye. But enough of nostalgia we still have to fight to seek that newer world, to hear that high white note before everything comes crashing down on us.”
*******
And here is more from Mr. Markin under cover of a book review from 2007. This guy is too much, way too much-Frank Riley.
On Coming Of Political Age-Norman Mailer's "The Presidential Papers"
Commentary/Book Review
The Presidential Papers, Norman Mailer, Viking, 1963
At one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that Norman Mailer wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Hemingway as the preeminent male American prose writer of the 20th century. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels, like The Deer Park, in his time I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon. With that in mind I recently re-read his work on the 1960 political campaign-the one that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard M. Nixon- that is the center of the book under review. There are other essays in this work, some of merely passing topical value, but what remains of interest today is a very perceptive analysis of the forces at work in that pivotal election. Theodore White won his spurs breaking down the mechanics of the campaign and made a niche for himself with The Making of a President, 1960. Mailer in a few pithy articles gave the overview of the personalities and the stakes involved for the America of that time.
Needless to say the Kennedy victory of that year has interest today mainly for the forces that it unleashed in the base of society, especially, but not exclusively, among the youth. His rather conventional bourgeois Cold War foreign policy and haphazard domestic politics never transcended those of the New and Fair Deals of Roosevelt and Truman but his style, his youth and his élan seemingly gave the go ahead to all sorts of projects in order to ‘‘seek a newer world.” And we took him up on this. This writer counted himself among those youth who saw the potential to change the world. We also knew that if the main villain of the age , one Richard Milhous Nixon, had been successful in 1960 as he graphically demonstrated when he later became president we would not be seeing any new world but the same old, same old.
I have been, by hook or by crook, interested in politics from an early age. Names like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Joseph McCarthy, Khrushchev and organizations like Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the like were familiar to me if not fully understood then. I came of political age with the 1960 presidential campaign. Mailer addresses the malaise of American political life during the stodgy Eisenhower years that created the opening for change-and Kennedy and his superb organization happily rushed in. These chances, as a cursory perusal of the last 40 odd years of bourgeois presidential politics makes painfully clear, do not come often. The funny thing is that during most of 1960 I was actually ‘Madly for Adlai’, that is I preferred Adlai Stevenson the twice- defeated previous Democratic candidate, but when the deal went down at the advanced age of 14 I walked door to door talking up Kennedy. Of course, in Massachusetts that was not a big deal but I still recall today that I had a very strong sense I did not want to be left out of the new age ‘aborning.’ That, my friends, in a small way is the start of that slippery road to the ‘lesser evil’ practice that dominates American politics and a habit that took me a fairly long time to break.
Mailer has some very cutting, but true, remarks about the kind of people who populate the political milieu down at the base of bourgeois politics, those who make it to the political conventions. Except that today they are better dressed and more media savvy nothing has changed. Why? Bourgeois politics, not being based on any fidelity to program except as a throwaway, is all about winning (and fighting to keep on winning). This does not bring out the "better angels of our nature." For those old enough to remember that little spark of youth that urged us on to seek that "newer world" and for those too young to have acquired knowledge of anything but the myth Mailer’s little book makes for interesting and well-written reading.
Frankie Riley comment:
Well you, the North Adamsville High School Class of 1964, knew this was coming at some point. That date, November 22, 1963, is etched, one way or another, is the minds of the generation of ’68 forever. Some events form the signposts for every generation. For our parents, the Class of 1964 parents, it was starving or semi-starving, hitting the western roads or just marking time through the Great Depression and slogging, gun in hand, through World War II, or waiting anxiously at home, waiting for the other shoe to drop. For today's kids it is the dastardly heinous criminal acts around 9/11 and the permanent "war against terrorism" that seems to color every political move made these days. For us it was the Cold War “red menace” Soviet Union space race throw-up satellite Sputnik and, in the end, the political horrors emanating from the Irish tragic Kennedy assassination. The cry of the banshee out in the wilds, on the wild oceans, and careening the wild winds.
Usually, when discussing these milestone events the question asked centers on where you were or what you were doing on that fateful day. I do not need to ask that question here. I know where you were, at least most of you. Unless you were sick, legitimately or otherwise, playing hooky, legitimately or otherwise, or on a field trip, legitimately or otherwise, you were sitting in some dank classroom as the old craggy-faced, rum-besotten (as least we all suspected that and which was later confirmed when he was arrested for drunk driving about seven times), headmaster, one Mr. Donald O’Toole, came over the P.A. system to announce the news of the shooting of President Kennedy. What I would find interesting is not what your current take is on that event, whether you were a Kennedy partisan or not, but how you reacted at the time. Here is the story of my reaction:
In the fall of 1960, for most of us our first year at North, a new wind was blowing over the political landscape in America with the Kennedy nomination and later his election victory over Richard Nixon. If you want the feel of that same wind pay attention to the breezes that I sense coming from today's youth, a little anyway if they can stop that eternal, infernal texting and look up for a minute. Maybe that wind grabbed you in 1960. It did me. Although some people that I have met and worked with over the years swear that I was born a “political junkie” the truth is that 1960 marked my political coming of age.
One of my forms of 'fun' as a kid was to write little 'essays' on political questions. You know, like-Should Red China (remember that term) be admitted into the United Nations? Or, are computers going to replace workers and create high unemployment? (I swear that I wrote stuff like that. I do not have that good an imagination to make this up. It also might explain one part of a very troubled childhood.)
In any case, I kept these little 'pearls of wisdom' in a little notebook. Within a couple of days after the Kennedy assassination I threw them all away, swearing off politics forever. Well, I did not hold to that promise. I have also moved away from that youthful admiration for JFK (although I will always hold a little spot open for brother Robert-oh, what might have been.) but I can still hear the clang as I threw those papers in the trash barrel.
*******
So naturally if Frank Riley has anything to say on any subject, from dung beetles to one-worldism, just like in the old North Adamsville Salducci’s Pizza Parlor nights, one Peter Paul Markin has to put his face into the conversation. Here, as usual, is his lame take on the Kennedy days from an entry he wrote in 2010. In other words he refuses to give us any new stuff but, christ, just the same old, same old. Here it is if you can stand it:
“Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1964:
A while back [October, 2010] I mentioned, in an entry that amounted to a nostalgic 1960s Boston kid time trip down political memory lane, the following that links in with this entry posted under the sign of the 50th anniversary of Jack Kennedy’s presidential election victory election over one Richard Milhous Nixon, the arch-political villain of the age:
“During the course of the afternoon that event [the Massachusetts governor’s race where President Obama was to speak at a rally in behalf of Deval Patrick’s reelection at the Hines Center in Boston], and the particular locale where it was staged, brought back a flood of memories of my first serious organized political actions in 1960 when, as a lad of fourteen, I set out to “save the world.” And my soul, or so I thought at the time, as well. That was the campaign of one of our own, Jack Kennedy, as he ran for president against the nefarious sitting Vice President, one Richard Milhous Nixon. In the course of that long ago campaign he gave one of his most stirring speeches not far from where I stood on this Saturday.
Although gathering troops (read: high school and college students) for that long ago speech was not my first public political action of that year, a small SANE-sponsored demonstration against nuclear proliferation further up the same street was but I did not help to organize that one, the Kennedy campaign was the first one that hinted that I might, against all good sense, become a serious political junkie. Ya, I know, every mother warns their sons (then and now) and daughters (now) against such foolhardiness but what can you do. And, mercifully, I am still at it. And have wound up on the right side of the angels, to boot.
The funny thing about those triggered remembrances is that as far removed from bourgeois politics as I have been for about the last forty years I noticed many young politicos doing their youthful thing just as I did back then; passing out leaflets, holding banners, rousing the crowd, making extemporaneous little soapbox speeches, arguing with an occasional right wing Tea Party advocate, and making themselves hoarse in the process. In short, exhibiting all the skills (except the techno-savvy computer indoor stuff you do these days before such rallies) of a street organizer from any age, including communist street organizers. Now if those young organizers only had the extra-parliamentary left-wing politics to merge with those organizational skills. In short, come over to the side of the angels.
But that is where we come back to old Jack Kennedy and that 1960 campaign. Who would have thought that a kid, me, who started out walking door to door stuffing Jack Kennedy literature in every available door in 1960 but who turned off that road long ago would be saying thanks, Jack. Thanks for teaching me those political skills.”
And not just that thanks for heralding the break-out, or at least the attempted break-out of my 1960s generation from the Eisenhower-Nixon cold war death trap. See, at the time of the great attempted break-out from the confines of bourgeois society and the tracked career path all kinds of people seemed like they could be allies, and Jack Kennedy seemed a kindred spirit. I will not even mention Bobby, that one still brings a little tear to my eye. But enough of nostalgia we still have to fight to seek that newer world, to hear that high white note before everything comes crashing down on us.”
*******
And here is more from Mr. Markin under cover of a book review from 2007. This guy is too much, way too much-Frank Riley.
On Coming Of Political Age-Norman Mailer's "The Presidential Papers"
Commentary/Book Review
The Presidential Papers, Norman Mailer, Viking, 1963
At one time, as with Ernest Hemingway, I tried to get my hands on everything that Norman Mailer wrote. In his prime he held out promise to match Hemingway as the preeminent male American prose writer of the 20th century. Mailer certainly has the ambition, ego and skill to do so. Although he wrote several good novels, like The Deer Park, in his time I believe that his journalistic work, as he himself might partially admit, especially his political, social and philosophical musings are what will insure his place in the literary pantheon. With that in mind I recently re-read his work on the 1960 political campaign-the one that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard M. Nixon- that is the center of the book under review. There are other essays in this work, some of merely passing topical value, but what remains of interest today is a very perceptive analysis of the forces at work in that pivotal election. Theodore White won his spurs breaking down the mechanics of the campaign and made a niche for himself with The Making of a President, 1960. Mailer in a few pithy articles gave the overview of the personalities and the stakes involved for the America of that time.
Needless to say the Kennedy victory of that year has interest today mainly for the forces that it unleashed in the base of society, especially, but not exclusively, among the youth. His rather conventional bourgeois Cold War foreign policy and haphazard domestic politics never transcended those of the New and Fair Deals of Roosevelt and Truman but his style, his youth and his élan seemingly gave the go ahead to all sorts of projects in order to ‘‘seek a newer world.” And we took him up on this. This writer counted himself among those youth who saw the potential to change the world. We also knew that if the main villain of the age , one Richard Milhous Nixon, had been successful in 1960 as he graphically demonstrated when he later became president we would not be seeing any new world but the same old, same old.
I have been, by hook or by crook, interested in politics from an early age. Names like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Joseph McCarthy, Khrushchev and organizations like Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the like were familiar to me if not fully understood then. I came of political age with the 1960 presidential campaign. Mailer addresses the malaise of American political life during the stodgy Eisenhower years that created the opening for change-and Kennedy and his superb organization happily rushed in. These chances, as a cursory perusal of the last 40 odd years of bourgeois presidential politics makes painfully clear, do not come often. The funny thing is that during most of 1960 I was actually ‘Madly for Adlai’, that is I preferred Adlai Stevenson the twice- defeated previous Democratic candidate, but when the deal went down at the advanced age of 14 I walked door to door talking up Kennedy. Of course, in Massachusetts that was not a big deal but I still recall today that I had a very strong sense I did not want to be left out of the new age ‘aborning.’ That, my friends, in a small way is the start of that slippery road to the ‘lesser evil’ practice that dominates American politics and a habit that took me a fairly long time to break.
Mailer has some very cutting, but true, remarks about the kind of people who populate the political milieu down at the base of bourgeois politics, those who make it to the political conventions. Except that today they are better dressed and more media savvy nothing has changed. Why? Bourgeois politics, not being based on any fidelity to program except as a throwaway, is all about winning (and fighting to keep on winning). This does not bring out the "better angels of our nature." For those old enough to remember that little spark of youth that urged us on to seek that "newer world" and for those too young to have acquired knowledge of anything but the myth Mailer’s little book makes for interesting and well-written reading.
Friday, July 22, 2011
In The Time Of Your Parents'(Ouch, Maybe Grandparents') Folk Moment, Circa 1955-“Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Harry Belafonte performing his version of the Banana Boat Song (ho, hum).
CD Review
Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three, various artists, Eric Records, 1999
beYes, Freddy had heard it wafting through the house, through the Jackson household as background music back in the early 1950s. He knew he had heard folk music before when June ("June Bug" when they were younger back in Clintondale Elementary days but that term no longer held sway now that they were high school juniors, and she had not been his June Bug for a while, now being Rick Roberts’ june bug) asked him whether he had heard much folk music before Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind had hit town and had bowled all the hip kids, or those who wanted to be hip (or beat, depending on your crowd) over.
Yes, now that thought of it, he remembered having more than one fight, well not really a fight, but an argument with either Frank Jackson, dad, or Maria Jackson (nee Riley), ma, whenever they turned over the local (and only local) radio station, WJDA, to listen to their latest, greatest hits of World War II, World War II, squareville cubed, even then when he was nothing but a music-hungry kid. You know that old time Frank Sinatra Stormy Weather, Harry James orchestra I’ll Be Home, Andrews Sisters doing some cutesy bugle boy thing, or the Ink Spots harmonizing on I’ll Get By (which was at least passable). Yes, squaresville, cubed, no doubt. And all Freddie, and every other kid, even non-hip, non-beat kids, in Clintondale was crazy for was a jail-break once in a while-Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee anybody under the age of a million who knew how to rock the house, how to be-bop, and if not that at least to bop-bop. He lost that fight, well, lost part of it. In the end, after hassling Frank and Maria endlessly for dough to go buy 45s, they finally, finally bought him a transistor radio with a year’s (they thought) supply of batteries down at the local (and only) Radio Shack.
But he had lost in the big event because if they weren’t listening to that old time pirate music they were swinging and swaying to stuff like Lonnie Donegan trebling on Rock Island Line making a fool of what Lead Belly was trying to do with that song, Vince Martin and friends, harmonizing on Cindy, Oh Cindy in the martini cocktail hour breezes, The Tarriers try to be-bop the Banana Boat Song at the ball, Terry Gilkyson and friends making a pitch, a no-hit pitch, to Marianne, and Russ Hamilton blasting the girlfriend world to the first floor rafters with Rainbow. Squaresville, cubed. And you wonder why when rusty-throated Bob Dylan came like a hurricane onto the scene with Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin’, angel-voiced Joan Baez covering his With God On Our Side, or even gravelly-throated Dave Van Ronk covering House Of The Rising Sun or Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies we finally go that pardon we were fighting for all along. Enough of folk musak.
CD Review
Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three, various artists, Eric Records, 1999
beYes, Freddy had heard it wafting through the house, through the Jackson household as background music back in the early 1950s. He knew he had heard folk music before when June ("June Bug" when they were younger back in Clintondale Elementary days but that term no longer held sway now that they were high school juniors, and she had not been his June Bug for a while, now being Rick Roberts’ june bug) asked him whether he had heard much folk music before Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind had hit town and had bowled all the hip kids, or those who wanted to be hip (or beat, depending on your crowd) over.
Yes, now that thought of it, he remembered having more than one fight, well not really a fight, but an argument with either Frank Jackson, dad, or Maria Jackson (nee Riley), ma, whenever they turned over the local (and only local) radio station, WJDA, to listen to their latest, greatest hits of World War II, World War II, squareville cubed, even then when he was nothing but a music-hungry kid. You know that old time Frank Sinatra Stormy Weather, Harry James orchestra I’ll Be Home, Andrews Sisters doing some cutesy bugle boy thing, or the Ink Spots harmonizing on I’ll Get By (which was at least passable). Yes, squaresville, cubed, no doubt. And all Freddie, and every other kid, even non-hip, non-beat kids, in Clintondale was crazy for was a jail-break once in a while-Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee anybody under the age of a million who knew how to rock the house, how to be-bop, and if not that at least to bop-bop. He lost that fight, well, lost part of it. In the end, after hassling Frank and Maria endlessly for dough to go buy 45s, they finally, finally bought him a transistor radio with a year’s (they thought) supply of batteries down at the local (and only) Radio Shack.
But he had lost in the big event because if they weren’t listening to that old time pirate music they were swinging and swaying to stuff like Lonnie Donegan trebling on Rock Island Line making a fool of what Lead Belly was trying to do with that song, Vince Martin and friends, harmonizing on Cindy, Oh Cindy in the martini cocktail hour breezes, The Tarriers try to be-bop the Banana Boat Song at the ball, Terry Gilkyson and friends making a pitch, a no-hit pitch, to Marianne, and Russ Hamilton blasting the girlfriend world to the first floor rafters with Rainbow. Squaresville, cubed. And you wonder why when rusty-throated Bob Dylan came like a hurricane onto the scene with Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin’, angel-voiced Joan Baez covering his With God On Our Side, or even gravelly-throated Dave Van Ronk covering House Of The Rising Sun or Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies we finally go that pardon we were fighting for all along. Enough of folk musak.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Fellow Baby-Boomer Politicos We Have Some Unfinished Business From The 1960s To Tend To- A Struggle To The End- For A Workers and Baby-Boomers Government! -Then And Now
Markin comment:
The following is in the nature of a stream of consciousness reflection on recent political struggles and the slight breeze that I am feeling starting to push back against defeats of some forty plus years since we last had a shot at “seeking a newer world” and that old- time breeze that pushed me first into the political fray.
As fate would have it sometimes a certain conjecture just falls into place for no particular reason other than happenstance, or so it would appear. As noted below I have been on a tear of late trying to get, young and old, but mainly my baby-boomer contemporaries, to get back into the political fray, and if there already to ratchet up their activity, and their political drifts leftward away from the all too familiar liberal complacencies. But that happenstance business is just a front because while one strand of the memory jog occurred just recently with the struggle over the events in Wisconsin and those whispered conversations about olden day struggles another strand had been spent on a now extensive review of much of the music from our youth, the youth that came of musically age just at that moment when we began to call rock ‘n’ roll music our own.
And that jail breakout music got reflected, at some level, in the way we looked at the world we felt that although the world was not of our making, and not what we wanted it to be, it was up for grabs to go in our direction, at least for a cultural moment.
The core of that review of the music of our generation, strangely enough given its imprimatur, is a rather extensive compilation of CDs put out by Time-Life Music (you see what I mean) as its Rock ‘n’ Roll Era series. While the compilations give a wide selection of the most recognizable music for a number of years from about the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s (basically pre-British invasion time) the real draw for this reviewer was the cover art that accompanied each CD. Those covers, more than the bulk of the music (after all there was a musical counter-revolution of sorts in the late 1950s in reaction to the Elvis, Jerry Lee way to sexy implications of their music) , evoked in me (and I am sure they would in you as well if you are a baby-boomer), a flood of memories. Such subjects as “hot” 1950s cars, drive-in movies, drive-in restaurants complete with to-die-for cute car hops serving them off the arm, the high school dance scene. And so on. I have reposted one such effort below:
"This 1964 art cover piece with its drawing of a high school girl (school used as backdrop here to let you know, just in case you were clueless, that the rock scene was directed, point blank, at high school students, high school students with discretionary money to buy hot records, or drop coins in the local juke box), or rather her high heel sneakers (Chuck Taylor high tops, for sure, no question, although there is no trademark present no way that they can be some knock-offs in 1964, no way, I say). The important thing, in any case, is the sneakers, and that slightly shorter than school regulation dress, a dress that presages the mini-skirt craze that was then just on its way from Europe. Naturally said dress and sneakers, sneakers, high- heeled or not, against the mandatory white tennis sneakers on gym days and low-heel pumps on other days, is the herald of some new age. And, as if to confirm that new breeze, in the background scouring out her high school classroom window, a sullen, prudish schoolmarm. She, the advance guard, obviously, of that parentally-driven reaction to all that the later 1960s stood for to us baby-boomers, as the generations fought out their epic battles about the nature of the world, our world or theirs.
But see that is so much “wave of future” just then because sullen schoolmarm or not what Ms. Hi-Heel sneakers (and dress, ya, don’t forget that knee-showing dress) is preening for is those guys who are standing (barely) in front of said school and showing their approval, their approval in the endless boy and girl meet game. And these guys are not just of one kind, they are cool faux beat daddy guys, tee-shirted corner boy guys, and well, just average 1964- style average guys. Now the reality of Ms. Hi-Heel sneakers (and a wiglet on her head) proved to be a minute thing and was practically forgotten in the musical breeze that was starting to come in from Europe (British invasion led by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones) but it was that harbinger of change that the old schoolmarm dreaded and we, teenagers, especially we teenagers of the Class of 1964, were puzzled by. All we knew for sure, at least some of us knew , was that our class, at least for a moment, was going to chase a few windmills, and gladly.
That is the front story, the story of the new breeze coming, but the back story is that the kind of songs that are on this CD with that British invasion coming full blast were going to be passé very soon. Moreover, among my crowd, my hang-out crowd, my hang-out guy and girl crowd of guys who looked very much like those guys pictured on the artwork here, if not my school crowd (slightly different) the folk scene, the Harvard Square at weekend night, New York City Village every once in a while folk scene, the Dylan, Baez, Van Ronk, Paxton, Ochs, etc. scene was still in bloom and competitive (although that scene, that folk scene minute, ironically, would soon also be passé).
Thus 1964 was a watershed year for a lot of the genres, really sub-genres, featured here. Like the harmony-rich girl groups (The Supremes, Mary Wells, The Shangri-Las, Martha and the Vandellas, Betty Everett) and the surfer boy, hot-rod guys of blessed neighborhood memory (Ronnie and the Daytonas, The Rivieras, and The Beach Boys, a little). But it was also a watershed year for the guys pictured in the artwork (and out in the neighborhoods). Some would soon be fighting in Vietnam, some moving to a commune to get away from it all, and others would be raising holy hell about that war, the need for social justice and the way things were being run in this country. And Ms. Hi-Heel sneakers? Maybe, just maybe, she drifted into that San Francisco for the Summer of Love night, going barefoot into that good night. I like to think so anyway.
Watershed year or not, there are some serious non-invasion stick-outs here. Under The Boardwalk (great harmony), The Drifters; Last Kiss, Frank Wilson and The Cavaliers; Dancing In The Streets (lordy, lordy, yes), Martha and the Vandellas; Leader Of The Pack (what a great novelty song and one that could be the subject of a real story in my growing up neighborhood), The Shangri-Las; Hi-Heel Sneakers, Tommy Tucker (thanks for the lead-in, Tommy), and, the boss song of the teen dance club night, no question, no challenge, no competition, Louie, Louie by the Kingsmen
Note: Those familiar with leftist, Marxist-oriented politics are familiar with the slogan- fight for a workers government. If you will observe in the headline to this entry I have posited a workers and baby-boomers government. No, not to be silly or flip, although I know how to do both, but to make a point. A point that always bears a certain repetition when dealing with variants of this workers’ government slogan. In places like Egypt today, or better, in the old Czarist days, in Russia, the slogan would have been expanded to something like a workers and peasants government. And that gets to the real point. Although we Marxists argue, and argue strenuously, that when the deal goes down there are only two decisive classes in the modern era- the capitalists who own the means of production and the workers who produce the profits and emphatically do not own the means of production. But that begs the point, a little. In the age of capitalism other classes, and parts of classes, have been spun off. Thus, the question, even in the United States, of allies for the working class requires a broadly slogan (at times) than just the generic workers government slogan that graces these pages on most related entries. Today’s entry reflects the very real possibility that our best allies might be those who are coming of retirement age, the post- World War II baby-boomer generation.
Now back in the 1930s when there were many more small and family farmers than there are today the proposition of a workers and farmers government was posed as cutting-edge slogan by our political forbears. And, of course, somebody, some smart- aleck young Marxist who was trying to be silly or flip (probably a college student from New York City where young Marxists were thick as fleas) noted that there were more dentists in the United States than farmers at that time. Now, from painful personal (and expensive) experience, I actually could get behind the idea of a workers and dentists government. But that specific variant is just adding to the main point above, the algebraic nature of a workers and XYZ government as a fighting slogan. So for now my workers and baby-boomers government has a certain flare, especially until the grey beards are in the minority of most of the rallies that I have seen lately. Please though don’t expect me to take a job in the Commissariat of Elder Affairs when we win. No way.
The following is in the nature of a stream of consciousness reflection on recent political struggles and the slight breeze that I am feeling starting to push back against defeats of some forty plus years since we last had a shot at “seeking a newer world” and that old- time breeze that pushed me first into the political fray.
As fate would have it sometimes a certain conjecture just falls into place for no particular reason other than happenstance, or so it would appear. As noted below I have been on a tear of late trying to get, young and old, but mainly my baby-boomer contemporaries, to get back into the political fray, and if there already to ratchet up their activity, and their political drifts leftward away from the all too familiar liberal complacencies. But that happenstance business is just a front because while one strand of the memory jog occurred just recently with the struggle over the events in Wisconsin and those whispered conversations about olden day struggles another strand had been spent on a now extensive review of much of the music from our youth, the youth that came of musically age just at that moment when we began to call rock ‘n’ roll music our own.
And that jail breakout music got reflected, at some level, in the way we looked at the world we felt that although the world was not of our making, and not what we wanted it to be, it was up for grabs to go in our direction, at least for a cultural moment.
The core of that review of the music of our generation, strangely enough given its imprimatur, is a rather extensive compilation of CDs put out by Time-Life Music (you see what I mean) as its Rock ‘n’ Roll Era series. While the compilations give a wide selection of the most recognizable music for a number of years from about the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s (basically pre-British invasion time) the real draw for this reviewer was the cover art that accompanied each CD. Those covers, more than the bulk of the music (after all there was a musical counter-revolution of sorts in the late 1950s in reaction to the Elvis, Jerry Lee way to sexy implications of their music) , evoked in me (and I am sure they would in you as well if you are a baby-boomer), a flood of memories. Such subjects as “hot” 1950s cars, drive-in movies, drive-in restaurants complete with to-die-for cute car hops serving them off the arm, the high school dance scene. And so on. I have reposted one such effort below:
"This 1964 art cover piece with its drawing of a high school girl (school used as backdrop here to let you know, just in case you were clueless, that the rock scene was directed, point blank, at high school students, high school students with discretionary money to buy hot records, or drop coins in the local juke box), or rather her high heel sneakers (Chuck Taylor high tops, for sure, no question, although there is no trademark present no way that they can be some knock-offs in 1964, no way, I say). The important thing, in any case, is the sneakers, and that slightly shorter than school regulation dress, a dress that presages the mini-skirt craze that was then just on its way from Europe. Naturally said dress and sneakers, sneakers, high- heeled or not, against the mandatory white tennis sneakers on gym days and low-heel pumps on other days, is the herald of some new age. And, as if to confirm that new breeze, in the background scouring out her high school classroom window, a sullen, prudish schoolmarm. She, the advance guard, obviously, of that parentally-driven reaction to all that the later 1960s stood for to us baby-boomers, as the generations fought out their epic battles about the nature of the world, our world or theirs.
But see that is so much “wave of future” just then because sullen schoolmarm or not what Ms. Hi-Heel sneakers (and dress, ya, don’t forget that knee-showing dress) is preening for is those guys who are standing (barely) in front of said school and showing their approval, their approval in the endless boy and girl meet game. And these guys are not just of one kind, they are cool faux beat daddy guys, tee-shirted corner boy guys, and well, just average 1964- style average guys. Now the reality of Ms. Hi-Heel sneakers (and a wiglet on her head) proved to be a minute thing and was practically forgotten in the musical breeze that was starting to come in from Europe (British invasion led by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones) but it was that harbinger of change that the old schoolmarm dreaded and we, teenagers, especially we teenagers of the Class of 1964, were puzzled by. All we knew for sure, at least some of us knew , was that our class, at least for a moment, was going to chase a few windmills, and gladly.
That is the front story, the story of the new breeze coming, but the back story is that the kind of songs that are on this CD with that British invasion coming full blast were going to be passé very soon. Moreover, among my crowd, my hang-out crowd, my hang-out guy and girl crowd of guys who looked very much like those guys pictured on the artwork here, if not my school crowd (slightly different) the folk scene, the Harvard Square at weekend night, New York City Village every once in a while folk scene, the Dylan, Baez, Van Ronk, Paxton, Ochs, etc. scene was still in bloom and competitive (although that scene, that folk scene minute, ironically, would soon also be passé).
Thus 1964 was a watershed year for a lot of the genres, really sub-genres, featured here. Like the harmony-rich girl groups (The Supremes, Mary Wells, The Shangri-Las, Martha and the Vandellas, Betty Everett) and the surfer boy, hot-rod guys of blessed neighborhood memory (Ronnie and the Daytonas, The Rivieras, and The Beach Boys, a little). But it was also a watershed year for the guys pictured in the artwork (and out in the neighborhoods). Some would soon be fighting in Vietnam, some moving to a commune to get away from it all, and others would be raising holy hell about that war, the need for social justice and the way things were being run in this country. And Ms. Hi-Heel sneakers? Maybe, just maybe, she drifted into that San Francisco for the Summer of Love night, going barefoot into that good night. I like to think so anyway.
Watershed year or not, there are some serious non-invasion stick-outs here. Under The Boardwalk (great harmony), The Drifters; Last Kiss, Frank Wilson and The Cavaliers; Dancing In The Streets (lordy, lordy, yes), Martha and the Vandellas; Leader Of The Pack (what a great novelty song and one that could be the subject of a real story in my growing up neighborhood), The Shangri-Las; Hi-Heel Sneakers, Tommy Tucker (thanks for the lead-in, Tommy), and, the boss song of the teen dance club night, no question, no challenge, no competition, Louie, Louie by the Kingsmen
Note: Those familiar with leftist, Marxist-oriented politics are familiar with the slogan- fight for a workers government. If you will observe in the headline to this entry I have posited a workers and baby-boomers government. No, not to be silly or flip, although I know how to do both, but to make a point. A point that always bears a certain repetition when dealing with variants of this workers’ government slogan. In places like Egypt today, or better, in the old Czarist days, in Russia, the slogan would have been expanded to something like a workers and peasants government. And that gets to the real point. Although we Marxists argue, and argue strenuously, that when the deal goes down there are only two decisive classes in the modern era- the capitalists who own the means of production and the workers who produce the profits and emphatically do not own the means of production. But that begs the point, a little. In the age of capitalism other classes, and parts of classes, have been spun off. Thus, the question, even in the United States, of allies for the working class requires a broadly slogan (at times) than just the generic workers government slogan that graces these pages on most related entries. Today’s entry reflects the very real possibility that our best allies might be those who are coming of retirement age, the post- World War II baby-boomer generation.
Now back in the 1930s when there were many more small and family farmers than there are today the proposition of a workers and farmers government was posed as cutting-edge slogan by our political forbears. And, of course, somebody, some smart- aleck young Marxist who was trying to be silly or flip (probably a college student from New York City where young Marxists were thick as fleas) noted that there were more dentists in the United States than farmers at that time. Now, from painful personal (and expensive) experience, I actually could get behind the idea of a workers and dentists government. But that specific variant is just adding to the main point above, the algebraic nature of a workers and XYZ government as a fighting slogan. So for now my workers and baby-boomers government has a certain flare, especially until the grey beards are in the minority of most of the rallies that I have seen lately. Please though don’t expect me to take a job in the Commissariat of Elder Affairs when we win. No way.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
On War-For Those Who Come After-Fritz Taylor's View-With Kudos To Bob Dylan's "John Brown"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube cover of Bob Dylan's John Brown.
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor RA048433691 to be exact, was still in a reflective mood a few days after he had made his way from home town Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the jut of land Christopher Columbus Park for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance). And while he was glad, glad as hell, and felt about ten feet tall for a while, that he had done so these observance, memory trips triggered many old days Vietnam thoughts, too many sometimes. Although, mercifully, mercifully for his “sweet pea,” his better other, Lillian, not this time(he had named her that for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too).
This time his thoughts dwelt on an old comrade-in-arms from ‘Nam, Johnny Jakes, a buddy who had just recently passed away after a long struggle with about seven known medical complications, and about twelve unknown ones, including the mysterious war-frenzy disease (not carried by him, not quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes, but caught from others, family others, Richard Nixon and his crowd others, VFW and American Legion others, back in the day, and now too for that matter, although the names of the frenzied have changed, if not the frenzy).
Yes, John Lee Jakes, Johnny Jakes out of nowhere Georgia (actually Dalton Junction but we will call it nowhere, okay), or a nowhere that Fritz, northern boy Fritz, had ever heard of, and from Johnny’s night stories, sometimes night barroom stories along the way, no where he needed to go. And as long as the two had known each other, and as many adventures, dead-ends, wrong roads, and, occasionally, a right road they had traveled together in a forty year friendship, through hot and cold friendship phases, he had never been there. And Johnny never pressed the issue, never pressed it after he told Fritz the rough outline details, the blood-stained, sweat-fermented, star-spangled details. And the story, the thoughtless rush to war, the hoopla three-ring circus, brass band blaring, waving off soldier boys at the station story, was not that unfamiliar then. Fritz had been caught up in a little quieter cousin of that same story. Fritz hoped against hope to high heaven that the story was uncommon now but he felt, felt deep in his war- scarred gut, that that was not true. But right now it is Johnny’s turn in the limelight. Speak, good god, quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes speak, and maybe it will become an uncommon story:
“Jakes, and for that matter McKays (my mother’s side), have fought out of little nowhere Georgia in all of the American military adventures since back in Civil War times. Naturally that Civil War military adventure was under the auspices of the Confederate version of American military adventures but don’t tell me, my kin, my brethren, or any complete Southern stranger that it was a failed, flawed or any of that other yankee stuff about cloud-puff dreams for bad, or ugly, reasons. Let’s just say, so we stay even now, that we fought, that there was an honored tradition of fighting, and any odd-ball relative, male of course, our women don’t fight but stay at home and worry, who didn’t, well, I never heard about anyone like that so I don’t know what would have happened. We fought, some of us bled, and most of us grabbed a fist-full of medals along the way. And our womenfolk cheered us on, as we left for the world’s fronts at that still working little nowhere Georgia railroad station that took us to some god-forsaken military camp. We mostly came back that same way, mostly okay but not all, and not my father, Jefferson Davis Jakes.
See Jefferson Davis Jakes, before the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, was the king hell-raiser of Forsythe County, was known far and wide as such and was not known to back down from anything, anything any male, or female for that matter, put in his way. But little did anyone know, anyone in the public know, that old Jeff (that’s the name he liked to be called by in latter life, by friend and foe alike, so I will use it here), was smitten by my mother, Doris McKay Jakes, so smitten that he had turned to putty in her hands. Not things that anyone, anyone in public anyway, would notice. All they would see is a king-hell-raiser and maybe a cut or other wound for their efforts, or the wise ones would cut a wide path away from his fury. But Doris had a spell over him, and he craved being with her, craved it more than anything, even being king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. Soft, and he knew it. So when those Jap bombs landed at Pearl and all Georgia thought it was William Tecumseh Sherman returned to burn the land and every red-blooded, hell, every any- blooded male, even black guys, were running to the railroad station to get signed up Jefferson Davis Jakes hesitated, hesitated just that minute, just that Doris McKay back home minute. Until Doris McKay, no squeamish damsel, and maybe with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed dad out the door- “Go now, and go fast.” And I will quote here, quote because I heard it about six times a year, at least, the first few years of growing up, “Kill every Jap you can get your hands on, and more if you can. And when you come back I will be a Jakes, and proudly.” So naturally she and half the town show up at that nowhere train station to see the boys, including in the lead my father, off.
And as such scenes go that is the nice, upbeat part. The not so up-beat part was that after almost four years of South Pacific war, relentless, heat-scrabbled, hell-underbrush and hard rock-scrabbled war on more nowhere islands than one would think possible as big as the Pacific is Jefferson Davis Jakes, Jakes fist-full of medals collected, some odd souvenirs of as many Japs as he could collect, and only a few small purple heart wounds he returned home, home to his ever-loving Doris McKay. They married, as Doris had promised, and they had four children, all boys, including number two, me, John Lee Jakes. Just a normal American post World War II scenario.
Hold on; hold on just a minute, please. Jefferson Davis Jakes came home, and to the public eye, he seemed just like the pre-war king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. But on some nights, sometimes late at night, after a few hours of hard, hard drinking he would go up into the attic of the old-time Jakes home where we lived and begin to howl, howl like a wolf at the moon. And everyone around thought that was what it was. We knew better, or got to know better, especially Ma. This went on for a few years, every once in a while, but as time went on more frequently as such things do. And dad got quieter, more home quiet, although out in public he was still Jefferson Davis Jakes whose family had fought in this country’s battles since back in Civil War days. Then one night when I was eight he went up to the attic and we didn’t hear him howl like we expected. A few minutes later we heard a shot, one shot. They buried Jefferson Davis Jakes with full military honors down at our nowhere Georgia cemetery, believing the story we had concocted about his having interrupted an intruder and had accidentally discharged his old M-1. And that was the end of it.”
Fritz thought; well, not quite the end of it. Once nowhere Georgia heard about the commies in Vietnam in the 1960s every red-blooded male, hell, every any-blooded male, even black guys, headed down to the fading railroad station to sign up. Including quiet, unassuming John Lee Jakes, the late Johnny Jakes. But see Johnny had also hesitated, hesitated just that non-Jakes moment, just that Doris McKay Jakes moment. Until Doris McKay, still no squeamish damsel, and maybe still with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed Johnny out the door- “Go now, and go fast. Kill every gook you can get your hands on, and more if you can.”
*******
John Brown
John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin
“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine
You make me proud to know you hold a gun
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”
As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout
Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:
“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”
She made well sure her neighbors understood
She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war
Oh! Good old-fashioned war!
Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come
They ceased to come for about ten months or more
Then a letter finally came saying, “Go down and meet the train
Your son’s a-coming home from the war”
She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes
Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!
Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face
“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done
How is it you come to be this way?”
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away
“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”
“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine”
Oh! Lord! Just like mine!
“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink
That I was just a puppet in a play
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke
And a cannonball blew my eyes away”
As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand
Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music
Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor RA048433691 to be exact, was still in a reflective mood a few days after he had made his way from home town Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the jut of land Christopher Columbus Park for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance). And while he was glad, glad as hell, and felt about ten feet tall for a while, that he had done so these observance, memory trips triggered many old days Vietnam thoughts, too many sometimes. Although, mercifully, mercifully for his “sweet pea,” his better other, Lillian, not this time(he had named her that for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too).
This time his thoughts dwelt on an old comrade-in-arms from ‘Nam, Johnny Jakes, a buddy who had just recently passed away after a long struggle with about seven known medical complications, and about twelve unknown ones, including the mysterious war-frenzy disease (not carried by him, not quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes, but caught from others, family others, Richard Nixon and his crowd others, VFW and American Legion others, back in the day, and now too for that matter, although the names of the frenzied have changed, if not the frenzy).
Yes, John Lee Jakes, Johnny Jakes out of nowhere Georgia (actually Dalton Junction but we will call it nowhere, okay), or a nowhere that Fritz, northern boy Fritz, had ever heard of, and from Johnny’s night stories, sometimes night barroom stories along the way, no where he needed to go. And as long as the two had known each other, and as many adventures, dead-ends, wrong roads, and, occasionally, a right road they had traveled together in a forty year friendship, through hot and cold friendship phases, he had never been there. And Johnny never pressed the issue, never pressed it after he told Fritz the rough outline details, the blood-stained, sweat-fermented, star-spangled details. And the story, the thoughtless rush to war, the hoopla three-ring circus, brass band blaring, waving off soldier boys at the station story, was not that unfamiliar then. Fritz had been caught up in a little quieter cousin of that same story. Fritz hoped against hope to high heaven that the story was uncommon now but he felt, felt deep in his war- scarred gut, that that was not true. But right now it is Johnny’s turn in the limelight. Speak, good god, quiet, unassuming Johnny Jakes speak, and maybe it will become an uncommon story:
“Jakes, and for that matter McKays (my mother’s side), have fought out of little nowhere Georgia in all of the American military adventures since back in Civil War times. Naturally that Civil War military adventure was under the auspices of the Confederate version of American military adventures but don’t tell me, my kin, my brethren, or any complete Southern stranger that it was a failed, flawed or any of that other yankee stuff about cloud-puff dreams for bad, or ugly, reasons. Let’s just say, so we stay even now, that we fought, that there was an honored tradition of fighting, and any odd-ball relative, male of course, our women don’t fight but stay at home and worry, who didn’t, well, I never heard about anyone like that so I don’t know what would have happened. We fought, some of us bled, and most of us grabbed a fist-full of medals along the way. And our womenfolk cheered us on, as we left for the world’s fronts at that still working little nowhere Georgia railroad station that took us to some god-forsaken military camp. We mostly came back that same way, mostly okay but not all, and not my father, Jefferson Davis Jakes.
See Jefferson Davis Jakes, before the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, was the king hell-raiser of Forsythe County, was known far and wide as such and was not known to back down from anything, anything any male, or female for that matter, put in his way. But little did anyone know, anyone in the public know, that old Jeff (that’s the name he liked to be called by in latter life, by friend and foe alike, so I will use it here), was smitten by my mother, Doris McKay Jakes, so smitten that he had turned to putty in her hands. Not things that anyone, anyone in public anyway, would notice. All they would see is a king-hell-raiser and maybe a cut or other wound for their efforts, or the wise ones would cut a wide path away from his fury. But Doris had a spell over him, and he craved being with her, craved it more than anything, even being king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. Soft, and he knew it. So when those Jap bombs landed at Pearl and all Georgia thought it was William Tecumseh Sherman returned to burn the land and every red-blooded, hell, every any- blooded male, even black guys, were running to the railroad station to get signed up Jefferson Davis Jakes hesitated, hesitated just that minute, just that Doris McKay back home minute. Until Doris McKay, no squeamish damsel, and maybe with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed dad out the door- “Go now, and go fast.” And I will quote here, quote because I heard it about six times a year, at least, the first few years of growing up, “Kill every Jap you can get your hands on, and more if you can. And when you come back I will be a Jakes, and proudly.” So naturally she and half the town show up at that nowhere train station to see the boys, including in the lead my father, off.
And as such scenes go that is the nice, upbeat part. The not so up-beat part was that after almost four years of South Pacific war, relentless, heat-scrabbled, hell-underbrush and hard rock-scrabbled war on more nowhere islands than one would think possible as big as the Pacific is Jefferson Davis Jakes, Jakes fist-full of medals collected, some odd souvenirs of as many Japs as he could collect, and only a few small purple heart wounds he returned home, home to his ever-loving Doris McKay. They married, as Doris had promised, and they had four children, all boys, including number two, me, John Lee Jakes. Just a normal American post World War II scenario.
Hold on; hold on just a minute, please. Jefferson Davis Jakes came home, and to the public eye, he seemed just like the pre-war king hell-raiser of Forsythe County. But on some nights, sometimes late at night, after a few hours of hard, hard drinking he would go up into the attic of the old-time Jakes home where we lived and begin to howl, howl like a wolf at the moon. And everyone around thought that was what it was. We knew better, or got to know better, especially Ma. This went on for a few years, every once in a while, but as time went on more frequently as such things do. And dad got quieter, more home quiet, although out in public he was still Jefferson Davis Jakes whose family had fought in this country’s battles since back in Civil War days. Then one night when I was eight he went up to the attic and we didn’t hear him howl like we expected. A few minutes later we heard a shot, one shot. They buried Jefferson Davis Jakes with full military honors down at our nowhere Georgia cemetery, believing the story we had concocted about his having interrupted an intruder and had accidentally discharged his old M-1. And that was the end of it.”
Fritz thought; well, not quite the end of it. Once nowhere Georgia heard about the commies in Vietnam in the 1960s every red-blooded male, hell, every any-blooded male, even black guys, headed down to the fading railroad station to sign up. Including quiet, unassuming John Lee Jakes, the late Johnny Jakes. But see Johnny had also hesitated, hesitated just that non-Jakes moment, just that Doris McKay Jakes moment. Until Doris McKay, still no squeamish damsel, and maybe still with some vision of Scarlett O’Hara, pushed Johnny out the door- “Go now, and go fast. Kill every gook you can get your hands on, and more if you can.”
*******
John Brown
John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore
His mama sure was proud of him!
He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all
His mama’s face broke out all in a grin
“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine
You make me proud to know you hold a gun
Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get
And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”
As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout
Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:
“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”
She made well sure her neighbors understood
She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile
As she showed them to the people from next door
And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun
And these things you called a good old-fashioned war
Oh! Good old-fashioned war!
Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come
They ceased to come for about ten months or more
Then a letter finally came saying, “Go down and meet the train
Your son’s a-coming home from the war”
She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around
But she could not see her soldier son in sight
But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last
When she did she could hardly believe her eyes
Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off
And he wore a metal brace around his waist
He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know
While she couldn’t even recognize his face!
Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face
“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done
How is it you come to be this way?”
He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move
And the mother had to turn her face away
“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war
You thought it was the best thing I could do?
I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud
You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”
“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?
I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’
But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close
And I saw that his face looked just like mine”
Oh! Lord! Just like mine!
“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink
That I was just a puppet in a play
And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke
And a cannonball blew my eyes away”
As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock
At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand
But as he turned to go, he called his mother close
And he dropped his medals down into her hand
Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music
Thursday, June 23, 2011
A Day In The Life Of A Member Of The Generation Of '68-For Mary, Class Of 1964 Somewhere
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia entry for the "Summer Of Love", 1967.
"In that time, 'twas bliss to be alive, to be young was very heaven"- a line from a poem by William Wordsworth in praise of the early stages of the French Revolution.
He was scared, Billy was scared, Billy Bradley well known member of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 was scared, as he entered the foyer of the North Adamsville Holiday Inn for what was to be his class’ 5th reunion on this 1969 November weekend, this Thanksgiving Saturday night. Yes, he reflected, those had been his glory days, those days from 1961 to 1964 when he had been the captain of the billiards team three years running. A time then when he could have had every good-looking, every interesting girl that he wanted, and, well, whatever else he wanted from the girls who hung around Joe’s Billiard Parlor after school during the season, and some of them after the season as well.
Of course in those glory days when everyone in town, and other places too, bled raider red the football players, even the dinks, had first dibs on the girls. But after that, well after that, it was open season and the girls, the interesting girls, found their way to Joe’s Billiard Parlor. Billy had to chuckle even now as he thought about it, about those basketball bozos, those hockey hoboes, those tennis touts, those golf goofs, and those soccer scum who were clueless about why the girls didn’t flock, all a-flutter, to them and their dink sports. And in their flailing, their anger, and their clueless-ness these pseudo-jocks, en masse, in those days started spreading vicious slanders around about how Joe’s was nothing but a rat-infested, hoodlum hang-out of a pool hall. Run by a “connected” bookie, Joe, on top of all that. Like those girls, those interesting girls, knew or cared a fig, hell half a fig, about the finer distinctions, as important as they are to aficionados, between pool and billiards as they draped themselves languidly around the empty billiard tables and filled the place almost to the rafters at Joe’s. Or that Joe made book right in front of them. Ya, those geek guys were, no question, clueless.
But that was then and tonight was a whole different ballgame. See Billy, after deciding to come back and tweak a few noses at this reunion thing, started to get cold feet. Of course he blew off the tradition Thanksgiving Thursday football game between North and cross-town arch-rival Adamsville High in order not to send his classmates a telegram about his new world. Although he had not been back in those five years since graduation, he knew, knew in his heart, that the blue-collar working class ethos that had practically buried him alive back in those so-called days would still be in play, still be in play in the "us" against "them" world, and the them was the “monster” government that was intent on wreaking havoc with its giant footprint every place it could, including right this minute in Vietnam, to the cheers of the North Adamsville thems.
And they, the thems, certainly the father and mother thems would definitely not understand that Billy Bradley, a son of the blue-collar working class, a kid who started out like them, and their kids, who thankfully never went to college but straight to work, saving, mercifully saving, the old man’s wallet from extinction, went over to the other side, the “us”, and helped caused eruptions in places like New York City ( jesus, even New York City, is nothing sacred, he could hear them say snickering in the background chatter of this ill-starred reunion dinner), in Washington, D.C. and points west, Yes, he knew that story, knew it first-hand, chapter and verse, from those occasional calls back home to mother. Hell, she had led the chorus, at least the chorus about what was he going to do with his life and how was he going to use his hard fought for, and ever harped on desperately paid for, education. He would not even mention her tirades about marriage, family, and producing kids, grand kids. And, as he thought of it occasionally, maybe she led the snickers too. Yes indeed, he knew the story chapter and verse, and as well from the odd-hour telephone calls sent homeward to mother’s house threatening the usual “if-I ever-see-that-s.o.b.,” and that was just the mildly curious expression of bad vibes ready to pounce on him this night, or so he feared.
See, if you didn’t realize it before, Billy was now a vision of heaven’s own angel choir. As he looked at himself in the hotel lobby mirror he sensed that he was out of place here, and not just in the family-friendly, take a vacation to historic North Adamsville, land of late presidents, and earlier revolutionary brethren long gone and best forgotten, forgotten for what they were trying to do with that fragile democratic experiment idea they had on their minds as they civilized this green-grassed new continent, Holiday Inn scene gathered around him. Yes, unquestionably he was out of synch here with his symbol of “youth nation” faded blue jeans, his battle-scarred (Chicago 1968) World War II Army olive drab jacket, Army-Navy surplus store-purchased, his soft, velvety well-worn (and slightly smelly, sorry) moccasins that had many hitchhike miles on them, and his longish pony-tailed hair with matching unkempt beard. No his act would not play in Peoria, Adamsville’s kindred.
This is a mistake, my mistake, he said to himself and he was ready to turn around just then. But just as had made the pivot he heard a voice, “Hey, Captain Billy you old pool hall hoodlum.” And then, “Come on now don’t turn the other way on me.” Finally he recognized the voice if not the person yelling it out. “Wait a minute that’s “Thundering” Tommy Riley, ace football player, captain of the vaunted 1964 team, class president, and, in earlier times, his bosom buddy,” Billy blurred out to no one in particular. Now envision Buffalo Bill Cody although Billy was not sure if Cody was as big as Tommy, with fringed-deerskin jacket, the obligatory “youth nations” faded blue denims, some exotic roman sandals, and long straight hair, longer than Billy’s, with matched beard tooped off by a well-worn (and stained) Stenson hat. Another vision of heaven’s own, well, own something, not angels, not angels, no way. And standing right next to him, right next to him and very like heaven’s own angelic, or maybe Botticelli's versions of the angelic, or Joni Mitchell if you don’t know Botticelli’s work, was Chrissie, Chrissie McNamara, a secret long ago Billy flame, very secret, although maybe not so long ago at that.
Now Tommy and Chrissie were an “item” back in ’64, a big item. Chrissie was, among other things, other things like being an actress, a school newspaper writer, and a high-scoring ten pin bowler, head cheerleader (mainly to be around Tommy more, from what Billy had heard). But Tommy’s girl or not , head cheerleader or not, Chrissie was a fox. A fox though who had no time for billiard parlor romances, or even to step into the rat-infested, hoodlum hang-out joint where the guy who ran it “made book.” No, not pristine Chrissie. Tonight though Billy understood why he had that crush on her for she had on a shapely sarong thing and wore her hair, more blondish hair long now, very long as was now the fashion amount hipper women. The only word he could think of, newer world or not, brothers and sisters in struggle now or not, was fetching.
Tommy motioned Billy to come over and the trio greeted each other heartily. Tommy, never at a lost for words, started telling his epic saga from his football career-ending injury freshman year at State U. to his getting “religion” about the nature of the American state, the need to transform that state to a more socially useful one, and the need have people be better, much better toward each other. Yes, here was a kindred, no weekend hippie tourista. Chrissie was another matter; she seemed less sure of her place in the sun, questioned whether any change, especially disruptive change, mattered and whether maybe it was better just to try to do the best you could within the system. "Yes, Chrissie I see your point, for you anyway," Billy found himself thinking. Hell, he had “crushed” such arguments, from male or female, like so much tissue many times before but not tonight, not this Chrissie in front of him night. Ya, Billy thought it was still like that with Chrissie. Tommy and Chrissie also made it very clear as well, reflecting the new “religious” sensibilities of youth nation that they were just friends. And Billy did notice Chrissie giving him several side-glance peeks while they were talking, and he was insistently peeking right back.
After than confab ended the trio prepared themselves, or rather fortified themselves, to make the rounds together of the other classmates milling around the now somewhat crowded lobby waiting for dinner to start. This tour, this death-march tour, caught Billy feeling like he had a pit in his stomach, especially after a couple of guys started to bait them with the “hippie-dippie” taunt that was standard fare among the squares, and that he would normally shrug his shoulders at except it was here at North. Then a couple of guys from the billiards team came rushing up to him, a couple of alternates, at best, who began a play by play of the North Adamsville-Adamsville contest. No, not the recent Thanksgiving football game, as one might expect, but the 1964 senior year billiards match against the old arch-rival. Billy thought they will probably go to their graves reciting the excruciating details of that one. Move on with your lives, boys, please.
Moreover, with one exception, Janie Thompson, well two, if you count Chrissie, none of the good-looking billiard hall hanging-off-the-rafters girls, or any others that had caught his eye back then, gave him a tumble. They were there but they either didn’t recognize him, or didn’t want to. Many of them had the look, the married look that dictated eyes straight ahead, or the pregnant look (now or in the recent past) that spoke of greater concerns than giving some bearded hippie boy a tumble. Most, whether they had caught his youthful eye in the past or not, had that secure job hubby, little white picket fenced house in the real suburbs, preparing for parenthood look. Chrissie though, mercifully just then, was still giving her peeks, and Billy was right back at her.
Right then though he began talking to Janie, Janie Thompson. Now Janie had certainly blossomed out some because back in the day she was just a wallflower hanging around with a couple of beauties whom Billy had taught how to play billiards, and a couple of other things. Janie told him that she had just graduated from Radcliffe (which he had vaguely remembered she was heading to) but more importantly she had followed, followed closely, his various anti-war activities while in and around Cambridge. Well, things are looking up, or so he thought. But a closer look around, and a conference with Tommy, convinced him that this was neither his place, nor his time and that they (Billy and Janie, Tommy and Chrissie in no particular combination) better go out back and have a joint, and then blow this place. Janie, although she had never smoked before, was game, Billy was certainly game. And off they went, blowing the dust of the place off them in the process. Who was it, oh yes, Thomas Wolfe, who wrote the book You Can’t Go Home Again. Billy thought he should have read that novel long before he actually did and then he would have known, known for sure, that the generation of ’68, his generation of ’68, was fated to be a remnant.
"In that time, 'twas bliss to be alive, to be young was very heaven"- a line from a poem by William Wordsworth in praise of the early stages of the French Revolution.
He was scared, Billy was scared, Billy Bradley well known member of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 was scared, as he entered the foyer of the North Adamsville Holiday Inn for what was to be his class’ 5th reunion on this 1969 November weekend, this Thanksgiving Saturday night. Yes, he reflected, those had been his glory days, those days from 1961 to 1964 when he had been the captain of the billiards team three years running. A time then when he could have had every good-looking, every interesting girl that he wanted, and, well, whatever else he wanted from the girls who hung around Joe’s Billiard Parlor after school during the season, and some of them after the season as well.
Of course in those glory days when everyone in town, and other places too, bled raider red the football players, even the dinks, had first dibs on the girls. But after that, well after that, it was open season and the girls, the interesting girls, found their way to Joe’s Billiard Parlor. Billy had to chuckle even now as he thought about it, about those basketball bozos, those hockey hoboes, those tennis touts, those golf goofs, and those soccer scum who were clueless about why the girls didn’t flock, all a-flutter, to them and their dink sports. And in their flailing, their anger, and their clueless-ness these pseudo-jocks, en masse, in those days started spreading vicious slanders around about how Joe’s was nothing but a rat-infested, hoodlum hang-out of a pool hall. Run by a “connected” bookie, Joe, on top of all that. Like those girls, those interesting girls, knew or cared a fig, hell half a fig, about the finer distinctions, as important as they are to aficionados, between pool and billiards as they draped themselves languidly around the empty billiard tables and filled the place almost to the rafters at Joe’s. Or that Joe made book right in front of them. Ya, those geek guys were, no question, clueless.
But that was then and tonight was a whole different ballgame. See Billy, after deciding to come back and tweak a few noses at this reunion thing, started to get cold feet. Of course he blew off the tradition Thanksgiving Thursday football game between North and cross-town arch-rival Adamsville High in order not to send his classmates a telegram about his new world. Although he had not been back in those five years since graduation, he knew, knew in his heart, that the blue-collar working class ethos that had practically buried him alive back in those so-called days would still be in play, still be in play in the "us" against "them" world, and the them was the “monster” government that was intent on wreaking havoc with its giant footprint every place it could, including right this minute in Vietnam, to the cheers of the North Adamsville thems.
And they, the thems, certainly the father and mother thems would definitely not understand that Billy Bradley, a son of the blue-collar working class, a kid who started out like them, and their kids, who thankfully never went to college but straight to work, saving, mercifully saving, the old man’s wallet from extinction, went over to the other side, the “us”, and helped caused eruptions in places like New York City ( jesus, even New York City, is nothing sacred, he could hear them say snickering in the background chatter of this ill-starred reunion dinner), in Washington, D.C. and points west, Yes, he knew that story, knew it first-hand, chapter and verse, from those occasional calls back home to mother. Hell, she had led the chorus, at least the chorus about what was he going to do with his life and how was he going to use his hard fought for, and ever harped on desperately paid for, education. He would not even mention her tirades about marriage, family, and producing kids, grand kids. And, as he thought of it occasionally, maybe she led the snickers too. Yes indeed, he knew the story chapter and verse, and as well from the odd-hour telephone calls sent homeward to mother’s house threatening the usual “if-I ever-see-that-s.o.b.,” and that was just the mildly curious expression of bad vibes ready to pounce on him this night, or so he feared.
See, if you didn’t realize it before, Billy was now a vision of heaven’s own angel choir. As he looked at himself in the hotel lobby mirror he sensed that he was out of place here, and not just in the family-friendly, take a vacation to historic North Adamsville, land of late presidents, and earlier revolutionary brethren long gone and best forgotten, forgotten for what they were trying to do with that fragile democratic experiment idea they had on their minds as they civilized this green-grassed new continent, Holiday Inn scene gathered around him. Yes, unquestionably he was out of synch here with his symbol of “youth nation” faded blue jeans, his battle-scarred (Chicago 1968) World War II Army olive drab jacket, Army-Navy surplus store-purchased, his soft, velvety well-worn (and slightly smelly, sorry) moccasins that had many hitchhike miles on them, and his longish pony-tailed hair with matching unkempt beard. No his act would not play in Peoria, Adamsville’s kindred.
This is a mistake, my mistake, he said to himself and he was ready to turn around just then. But just as had made the pivot he heard a voice, “Hey, Captain Billy you old pool hall hoodlum.” And then, “Come on now don’t turn the other way on me.” Finally he recognized the voice if not the person yelling it out. “Wait a minute that’s “Thundering” Tommy Riley, ace football player, captain of the vaunted 1964 team, class president, and, in earlier times, his bosom buddy,” Billy blurred out to no one in particular. Now envision Buffalo Bill Cody although Billy was not sure if Cody was as big as Tommy, with fringed-deerskin jacket, the obligatory “youth nations” faded blue denims, some exotic roman sandals, and long straight hair, longer than Billy’s, with matched beard tooped off by a well-worn (and stained) Stenson hat. Another vision of heaven’s own, well, own something, not angels, not angels, no way. And standing right next to him, right next to him and very like heaven’s own angelic, or maybe Botticelli's versions of the angelic, or Joni Mitchell if you don’t know Botticelli’s work, was Chrissie, Chrissie McNamara, a secret long ago Billy flame, very secret, although maybe not so long ago at that.
Now Tommy and Chrissie were an “item” back in ’64, a big item. Chrissie was, among other things, other things like being an actress, a school newspaper writer, and a high-scoring ten pin bowler, head cheerleader (mainly to be around Tommy more, from what Billy had heard). But Tommy’s girl or not , head cheerleader or not, Chrissie was a fox. A fox though who had no time for billiard parlor romances, or even to step into the rat-infested, hoodlum hang-out joint where the guy who ran it “made book.” No, not pristine Chrissie. Tonight though Billy understood why he had that crush on her for she had on a shapely sarong thing and wore her hair, more blondish hair long now, very long as was now the fashion amount hipper women. The only word he could think of, newer world or not, brothers and sisters in struggle now or not, was fetching.
Tommy motioned Billy to come over and the trio greeted each other heartily. Tommy, never at a lost for words, started telling his epic saga from his football career-ending injury freshman year at State U. to his getting “religion” about the nature of the American state, the need to transform that state to a more socially useful one, and the need have people be better, much better toward each other. Yes, here was a kindred, no weekend hippie tourista. Chrissie was another matter; she seemed less sure of her place in the sun, questioned whether any change, especially disruptive change, mattered and whether maybe it was better just to try to do the best you could within the system. "Yes, Chrissie I see your point, for you anyway," Billy found himself thinking. Hell, he had “crushed” such arguments, from male or female, like so much tissue many times before but not tonight, not this Chrissie in front of him night. Ya, Billy thought it was still like that with Chrissie. Tommy and Chrissie also made it very clear as well, reflecting the new “religious” sensibilities of youth nation that they were just friends. And Billy did notice Chrissie giving him several side-glance peeks while they were talking, and he was insistently peeking right back.
After than confab ended the trio prepared themselves, or rather fortified themselves, to make the rounds together of the other classmates milling around the now somewhat crowded lobby waiting for dinner to start. This tour, this death-march tour, caught Billy feeling like he had a pit in his stomach, especially after a couple of guys started to bait them with the “hippie-dippie” taunt that was standard fare among the squares, and that he would normally shrug his shoulders at except it was here at North. Then a couple of guys from the billiards team came rushing up to him, a couple of alternates, at best, who began a play by play of the North Adamsville-Adamsville contest. No, not the recent Thanksgiving football game, as one might expect, but the 1964 senior year billiards match against the old arch-rival. Billy thought they will probably go to their graves reciting the excruciating details of that one. Move on with your lives, boys, please.
Moreover, with one exception, Janie Thompson, well two, if you count Chrissie, none of the good-looking billiard hall hanging-off-the-rafters girls, or any others that had caught his eye back then, gave him a tumble. They were there but they either didn’t recognize him, or didn’t want to. Many of them had the look, the married look that dictated eyes straight ahead, or the pregnant look (now or in the recent past) that spoke of greater concerns than giving some bearded hippie boy a tumble. Most, whether they had caught his youthful eye in the past or not, had that secure job hubby, little white picket fenced house in the real suburbs, preparing for parenthood look. Chrissie though, mercifully just then, was still giving her peeks, and Billy was right back at her.
Right then though he began talking to Janie, Janie Thompson. Now Janie had certainly blossomed out some because back in the day she was just a wallflower hanging around with a couple of beauties whom Billy had taught how to play billiards, and a couple of other things. Janie told him that she had just graduated from Radcliffe (which he had vaguely remembered she was heading to) but more importantly she had followed, followed closely, his various anti-war activities while in and around Cambridge. Well, things are looking up, or so he thought. But a closer look around, and a conference with Tommy, convinced him that this was neither his place, nor his time and that they (Billy and Janie, Tommy and Chrissie in no particular combination) better go out back and have a joint, and then blow this place. Janie, although she had never smoked before, was game, Billy was certainly game. And off they went, blowing the dust of the place off them in the process. Who was it, oh yes, Thomas Wolfe, who wrote the book You Can’t Go Home Again. Billy thought he should have read that novel long before he actually did and then he would have known, known for sure, that the generation of ’68, his generation of ’68, was fated to be a remnant.
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