Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Lucinda Williams performing Lake Charles.
Lake Charles Lyrics by Lucinda Williams
He had a reason to get back to Lake Charles
He used to talk about it
He'd just go on and on
He always said Louisiana
Was where he felt at home
He was born in Nacogdoches
That's in East Texas
Not far from the border
But he liked to tell everybody
He was from Lake Charles
Did an angel whisper in your ear
And hold you close and take away your fear
In those long last moments
We used to drive
Thru Lafayette and Baton Rouge
In a yellow Camino
Listening to Howling Wolf
He liked to stop in Lake Charles
Cause that's the place that he loved
Did you run about as far as you could go
Down the Louisiana highway
Across Lake Ponchatrain
Now your soul is in Lake Charles
No matter what they say
Did an angel whisper in your ear
And hold you close and take away your fear
In those long last moments
SOLO
He had a reason to get back to Lake Charles
He used to talk about it
He'd just go on and on
He always said Louisiana
Was where he felt at home
Did an angel whisper in your ear
And hold you close and take away your fear
In those long last moments
Did an angel whisper in your ear
And hold you close and take away your fear
In those long last moments
It really doesn’t take much these days, these old time memory be-fogged days, to have some snippet come swirling out of the air, some caught phrase in a passing conversation, some half-glanced word mentioned on some media outlet, some fragrance smelled from long ago soaps, perfumes, downy billows, to get me into that frame of mind to speak of old time Olde Saco (that is up in Maine for the unknowing heathens). The Olde Saco of the 1960s dying textile mills, of various working- class rites of passage, of teenage this and that, and most of all of the French-Canadian (on my mother Delores’ side, the side that counted, nee LeBlanc) ethos, pathos, and bathos that permeated the town. And of course, of F-C loves, lost and found.
The genesis of this air-borne swirl came via the local folk music radio station (a fast dying breed, as is also true of its demographic base) when some ancient disc jockey played Lucinda Williams’ Lake Charles. That brought to mind one Jeanbon LeClerc, his mad passion for fast cars, fast Mustangs a specialty, and his fate. Stop! What it really brought to mind was a female classmate of mine at Olde Saco High School who one Jeanbon LeClerc “stole” from me with his fast cars, and fast hands (so I heard later) in 1966 (exact date unknown).
I had better start at the beginning otherwise you will accuse me of sour grapes, or something like that. Yes, she had a name, a dizzy blonde (don’t make anything out of that I just had, and have, have a preference for non-dizzy brunettes as a rule) teenage name, Diana, and yes, she looked good in an early 1960s cashmere high school sweater. And yes, she had nice legs and such. But mostly she had six gallons of personality and, well, a smiling interest in me, or rather what I had to say in those ocean edge Olde Saco High days. And what I had to say in those days was almost every arcane fact I could find out about the “beats.” You know on the road Jack Kerouac, om-ing Allen Ginsburg, doped-up drugstore cowboy William S. Burroughs and most of all, mad monk, mad cosmic traveler Neal Cassady (the real life model for Dean Moriarty in that on the road Kerouac search for the great American night).
Yes, I know in 1966 these guys were “old news” in places like Greenwich Village and Harvard Square but in podunk Maine talking about such things was “cool.” Especially if accompanied by the “look,” black chinos, work boots, flannel shirts, and mandatory midnight sunglasses worn 24/7/365. And don’t forget (as if I would let you) the French-Canadian connection, Jeanbon Kerouac was an F-C as were half the residents of old working class mill town Olde Saco (we were just a northern Kerouac hometown Lowell). More importantly so was Diana, Diana Bleu.
And that is exactly where the problem, my problem, began and ended, the midnight crying hour began and ended. See Diana was crazy for beat stuff but she wanted a guy, and an F-C guy, with a little more speed. Literally. She was looking, and looking hard, and I know this because she told me so straight out, for a guy with big wheels, maybe a 1964 Mustang (green, of course) so she could be sitting high and wide on the front seat. And she found him, Jeanbon LeClerc, a little older, out of school, working at the Saco Valley Textile Mill (like about a quarter of the town’s population in those long gone good-paying mill jobs days) and with some dough to spent . But I am getting slightly ahead of my story.
Diana and I went on a few dates, afternoon dates, after school, mainly down to Jimmy Jack’s Diner (the one on Main Street, not the one on Atlantic Avenue that is strictly for tourists and “summer guests”) to listen to some jazz, rock or other be-bop stuff on the big old jukebox that drew every half-hip kid in town. But mainly we talked, talked late on the telephone, about this and that, mainly dreams, and mainly abstract stuff. I was in seventh heaven and I thought she was too. What I didn’t know, and never thought to know (or really wanted to know thinking back) was that Diana was working her way into beau Jean’s front seat. Want to know, or not, one night, one Thursday night, when I rang her up about eleven o’clock (her sole provider mother worked the second shift at the mill) her younger sister answered the phone. Answered that her sister, Diana, was out and about with Jean and that she would not be taking any more midnight calls from me. Period.
And that is where I exited the story. The rest is pieced together from various confidential Olde Saco sources, and the police report. After our unceremonious “break-up” I would see Diana around and school and we would “nod” heads but that was about it. After I (we) graduated in 1967 I headed west to the summer of love San Francisco- style complete with a roller coaster ride for a couple of years on Captain Crunch’s magical mystery tour yellow brick road “on the bus.” (You had to have been there, so don’t worry if that last sentence is rather mystical.) Diana and Jeanbon got married a short time after graduation and set up household in Ellsworth (Maine) where he got a better paying job in a paper mill. Naturally, 1960s F-C naturally, a child came along, and that complicated things, complicated things for Jeanbon.
See Jeanbon was really a “homer,” a Olde Saco guy to the bone and while he was in love with Diana (from all accounts) he knew that with the baby (and presumably more babies in Gallic Roman Catholic F-C speak knowledge ) he wasn’t going to be able to go back to dying mill town Olde Saco any time soon. And that last sentiment was important to understanding what happened later.
It wasn’t, by the way, just Olde Saco lonesomeness that distracted Jeanbon but his lost title as king hell king of the back roads “chicken runs.” A title he had held since he first learned to drive and “soup up” any old automobile (a burned-out ’57 Chevy was his first reclamation project). Nobody around southern Maine challenged , or even thought of challenging him and his 1964 green Mustang named “Diana” (although I heard, and heard from reliable sources, that this same automobile had previous names listed as Lissette, Lorraine, Marie, and Suzanne so I wouldn’t make too much of his naming process). Another distraction was a slight flirtation with Laura Bleu, Diana’s second cousin (Jeanbon was a good looking guy, and like I said had that fast car and fast hands so he would never lack for “flirtations” for the always plentiful girls who wanted to sit in that green Mustang front seat).
But still and all Jeanbon was always thinking about Olde Saco, figuring ways to get to Olde Saco (to see, uh, Laura), or yakking about it to one and all in Ellsworth. And when he was in high dudgeon he would take it out on Diana. Not physically, not from anything I heard, but he would pout, he would spend endless hours working on the “Diana,” and he would be gone for hours. With no explanation (but also with no whiskey breathe or woman’s fragrance on his clothes either). Seems Jeanbon would head over to Cadillac Mountain in the Arcadia National Park the other side of Bar Harbor wind out on the deserted curves and sit, just sit, and stare out at the homeland sea. I know that sea stare-out, I might have invented it, at least for our generation up there so I know that our boy was troubled, no question.
Time passed this way, a few months, a year. Rumors though started to swirl around Olde Saco that Jimmy Jack’s’ son, Pierre, (Jimmy Jack was the owner of two teenage hang-out diners, one complete with an incredible jukebox where I had taken Diana a few times) had a super-souped up Chevy that would “blow” Jeanbon’s Mustang away. Way up in Ellsworth Jeanbon heard those rumors. Then one night, one kind of foggy October night, a night not uncommon in Maine almost any part of the year, Jeanbon LeClerc found himself , and not by accident, in Olde Saco. And not just in any spot in Olde Saco but down at the beach, the Seal Rock end of the beach where every head-to-head car duel started since back before memory, ready, willing and able to take on one Pierre Jacques (Jimmy Jack’s real last name) in the “chicken run to end all chicken runs.”
I won’t bore you with the details of the run; you have probably if you have seen American Graffiti, Rebel Without A Cause, or about twelve other teen alienation /angst films seen the scenes. Fast souped-up cars. Pierre’s “Lonnie Jean” against Jeanbon’s “Laura.” They are off. And the winner is… Pierre. End of story. No. One more little detail needs to be brought up. Later that night (really early morning according to the police report) one Jeanbon LeClerc was D.O.A. at Portland General Hospital after being pried out of a green 1964 Mustang that had been clocked doing one hundred and twenty miles an hour on Route One by the police in pursuit. The car had spun out of control and crashed about one hundred yard over the Olde Saco/ Sealsville town line on the Sealsville side.
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