The Lonesome Hobo-In Honor Of Ti Jean Kerouac’s “Lonesome Traveler”

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Million word Jack (nee Jeanbon, nee Ti Jean, nee everyman, every man, and every woman with the fire in the belly to write) bellowed out in the good earth night, bellowed out in the night from the womb, bellowed about loneness, loneness in crowds, and sign of the age loneness. Not loneliness, not on the surface, not with Acre kidding corner boys crowding around (mostly French-Canadian boys who set the tone of the town, adieu this and that, but some Irish and Greek boys too, especially mad monk poet Sammy, hanging around Leclerc’s Variety Store), Jack-crowding, small-breasted F-C loves (oohing ,aah-ing in the dark- haired angel man thought ) swaying to Benny on the be-bop 1930s night and tossing and turning over Ti Jean words and clowning arounds (and secret Irishtown girl love spoken of before and now done), Jack-crowding, Adonis full field, full football field heroics, crowds cheering against bread and roses fed arch –rivals, Jack-crowding, Village cafes, full, chock full of the hip, the want-to-be hip, the faux hip, waiting, waiting on some dark-haired golden boy to rescue them from the little box night, Jacking-crowding, ditto Frisco, ditto New Jack City redux, ditto Jack-crowding.

So not loneliness he but lonesome cosmic wanderer from youth as partner to the crowds, up in small, immensely small twelve- year old bedrooms playing full-fledged leagues of solo jack baseball, sitting solo in fugitive Lowell libraries reading up a storm from Plato to kinsman Voltaire (via Acadian Gaspe dreams), sitting solo in some sigma phi dorm room munching chocolate bars, vanilla puddings, great greasy sugared crullers after hearty beef meals, as companion pouring over tales of greek gods and Homer, sitting solo (hard to do, believe me ) astern ships on big wave oceans ready to devour man, beasts and ship whole, sitting solo in midnight slum New Haven rooms, small hot stove, coffee pot percolating, ditto later in Frisco town, ditto in big sur town, ditto in Tangiers town, ditto down in mere Florida town, ditto solo.

Ditto too solo adventures on west coast work ship piers, solo sweaty dusty south of the border Mexican nights adventures, solo brakeman of the world trackless night adventures, solo sea-sick sailor going to fugitive night adventures, solo weird New Jack City 1950s beat scene adventures, solo big rock candy mountain and the void adventures, solo stumble around Europe on a dollar a day adventures, and solo mad cap late night chronicler of the hobo jungle world vanishing adventures. And hence crowded solo lonesome karmic writings and big word blasts, and smiling, smiling, maybe Buddha-like, at the connected-ness of it, of the one-ness of it, of the god-like symmetry of it. And a Ti Jean kindred tip of the hat.

Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night

These old time lonesome hobo flash scenes from the time before hoboing became my way of life, my Charles River Blackie’s on the bum moniker please to meet you way of life, told around hobo, bum, tramp camp fires along railroad sidings, along ravines, or under bridges when lies were being swapped to keep the chill off (and scratch pad note written down) well after I left the road (although not the life, I just stopped my nomadic roaming and bumming and settler-ed in as stationary flop house denizen), were originally conceived (born in some drift-less night, virginally born, hah, nights really, memory high, blasted on sixteen old time highs, benny, miff, sister, brother, boy, girl, jesus, sweet jesus, weed, and mary jane bless her heated heart was the least of it), as separate entries, as separate dream thoughts, and they can be read as such. They can also be read, collectively in sequence, as part of a greater experience and thus I have gathered them together here in one place.

The genesis of these bump in the night scenes, or sketches if you insist, initially came together, as will be noted further below, as a result of a question, no, not a question really but a sense of bewilderment, a “what the hell are you trying to tell us, why, and what for,” that a young friend of mine, a cosmic traveler in his own right from what I have gleaned from the times that I have had occasion to speak to him, speak in his dream words neo-hobo want-to-be vocabulary and thus comprehend a little, had about my use of the term “in search of the blue-pink great American West night” in many of the sketches that I was camp fire swapping some time back. That point blank query lead to some necessary introspection on my part about the great 1960s hitchhike highway, physical, mental and spiritual of my youth and I belted out a scratch pad short reply. But that was hardly the end of it. The reply triggered further remembrances and, as such things do, triggered some more after that and led to this stream of be-bop road scenes.

Of course that young friend’s spark only tells part of the story. No question that I had already been thinking a lot, sitting up in my room, my spartan bed, bureau, small table, single chair room where I have of late been stationary roaming and bumming, about those 1960s days, and the influence of re-re-reading Jack Kerouac’s “beat” travelogues, especially On The Road during that period is, or should be, obvious as well. I made many trips across the country in those days, mostly through use of the hitchhike thumb, for lack of cash if no other reason, but the choice of the mainly 1969 sweet youth, sweet youth love, sweet Angelica-laced company trip scenes here are calculated to give the best sense of those trips, and the closest I every came to finding out some truth on that damn blue –pink quest. And if all those reasons individually, or collectively, do not tell the story behind the scenes then let’s just leave it as this-the restlessness that drove that youthful quest is still in my bones, still driving my old bones enough to keep me restless forty years later. Hey there is still some of that lonesome hobo wandering left, left unresolved, left thumb-less in the gentle rain good night. Enough said.

***********

There is no question that over the past year or so I have been deep in remembrances of the influences, great and small, of the 1950s“beats” on my own sorry teen-aged alienation and teen-aged angst (sometimes they were separate anguishes, sometimes tied together like inseparable twins, mostly the later) and the struggle to find my place in the sun, to write in bright lights my own beat plainsong. Of course, that "beat" influence was blown over me second-hand as I was just a little too young, or a little too wide-world unconscious, to be there at the creation, on those first roads west, those first fitfully car-driven, gas-fuelled, thumb hanging-out, sore-footed, free exploration west roads, in body and mind that exploded in the immediate post-World War II walking daddy walk world. And of that first great rush of the adrenal in trying to discover, eternally discover as it has turned out, the search for the meaning of the great blue-pink American West night. Ah, pioneer-boys, thanks.

I just got a whiff, a passing whiff of that electric-charged air, the sweet“be-bop”, bop-bop, real gone daddy, cooled-out, pipe-filled with whatever (hash, the O , sweet jesus weed, blessed mary jane), jazz-sexed (Charley, Dizzy, Miles, and Lester blowing that big fat sexy sad-eyed sax at the end) , high white note-blown (blown out the first heard time on some warm, drink sweaty, weather sweaty, sweet jimson in the incense-filled North Beach ‘Frisco sweaty air night, blown out in honor of , come on now, in lure of, that blonde twist sitting alone in the alabaster white skin, ruby red lips, black beret, black eye-liner eyes, black bump out sweater, black form-fitting skirt, black stockings, black shoes, and wonder, I then Be-Bop Benny monikered in the 1967 summer of love night wonder, woman mystery wonder I would bet six-two and even black undergarments too ), howling in the wind plainsong afterglow.

Moreover that whiff was somewhat tarnished, a little sullen and withdrawn, and media-used up by my time. (Christ, every television show, every mainstream media outlet it seemed had it mock-“beat” as counter-point to the sober real world, Ike’s sober real world of bombs and psychic beatings.) More than one faux black chino-wearing, black beret’d, stringy-bearded; nightshade sun-glassed, pseudo-poetic-pounding, television-derived fakir crossed my path in Harvard Square in those high stakes early 1960s high school days. A few real ones as well. (A couple, whom I still pass occasionally, pan-handling occasionally, giving a quick nod to, have never given up the ghost and still haunt the old square looking for the long-gone, storied 1962 Hayes-Bickford, a place where the serious and the fakirs gathered in the late night before dawn hour to pour out their souls, via mouth or on paper. Good luck in your search, men.). More to the point, I came too late to be able to settle comfortably into that anti-political world that the “beats” thrived in. Great political and social events were unfolding and I wanted in, feverishly wanted in, with both hands (and, maybe, feet too).

You know some of the beat leaders, the real ones, don’t you? Remembered, seemingly profusely remembered now, by every passing acquaintance with some rough-hewn writing specimen or faded photograph to present. Hell people who after giving the best summer of their lives to the Village (or North Beach) and to beat life and then after that minute graduating to stockbroker Wall Street are glutting the market with their minute pictures with Jack, Allen, or mad monk Corso, steamy affairs (all sexes), and take on that lost minute. (Just check E-bay or Amazon if you think I am kidding.) Worse. Now merely photo-plastered, book wrote, college english department deconstruction’d , academic journal-debated. Ah, but then in full glory plaid shirt, white shirt, tee shirt, dungarees, chinos, sturdy foot-sore cosmic traveler shoes, visuals of heaven’s own angel bums, if there was a heaven and there were angels and if that locale needed bums.

Jack, million hungry word man-child sanctified, Lowell mills-etched and trapped and mother-fed, Jack Kerouac. Allen, om-om-om, bop, bop, mantra-man, mad Paterson-trapped, modern plainsong-poet-in-chief, Allen Ginsberg. William, sweet opium dream (or, maybe, not so sweet when the supply ran out and the sickness came on), needle-driven, sardonic, ironic, chronic, Tangiers-trapped, Harvard man (finally, a useful one, oops, sorry), Williams S. Burroughs. Neal, wild word, wild gesture, golden boy- dropped out of ashcan all-America dream man, tire-kicking, oil-checking, gas-filling, zen master wheelman gluing the enterprise together, Neal Cassady. And a whirling crowd of others, including mad, street-wise, saint-gunsel, Gregory Corso. I am a little fuzzy these days on the genesis of my relationship to this crowd (although a reading of Ginsberg’s Howlwas probably first in those frantic, high school, Harvard Square-hopping, poetry-pounding, guitar-strummed, existential word space, coffee, no sugar, I’ll have a refill, please, fugitive dream’d, coffeehouse-anchored days). This I know. I qualified, in triplicate, teen angst, teen alienation, teen luddite as a card-carrying member in those days.

More recently that old time angst, that old time alienation and a smidgen of that old time luddite has cast its spell on me. I have been held hostage to, been hypnotized by, been ocean-sized swept away by, been word ping-pong bounced off of and collided into by, head over heels language-loved by, word-curled around and caressed by the ancient black night into the drowsy dawn 1950s child view vision Kerouac/Ginsberg/Burroughs/Corso-led “beats” homage to the great American West night. (Beat: life beat-up, fellaheen and fellaheena beat-down, beat around, be-bop jazz beat, beatified church beat, howl poem beat, beat okay, anyway you can get a handle on it, beat.). The great American West “beat” breakout from the day weary, boxed-in, shoulder-to-the-wheel, eyes forward, hands to the keyboard, work-a-day-world, dream-fleshed-out night. Of leaving behind on the slow-fast, two-lane, no passing, broken-lined old Route 6, or 66, or 666, or whatever route, whatever dream route, whatever dream hitchhike gas station/diner highway beyond the Eastern shores night, of the get away from the machine, the machine-making machines, the “little boxes” machine night, and also of the reckless breakout of mannered, cramped, parlor-fit language night. Whoa!

This Kerouacian wordplay on-the-road’d, dharma-bummed, big sur’d, desolation angel’d night, this Ginsberg-ite trumpet howl, cry-out to the high heavens against the death machine night, this Burroughs-ish languid, sweet opium-dreamed, laid-back night, this Neal Cassady-driven, foot-clutched, brake-pedaled, wagon-master of the to and fro of the post-World War II American West night, was not my night but close enough so that I could touch it, and have it touch me even half a century later. So blame Jack and the gang, okay and I will give you his current Lowell, Massachusetts home address upon request so that you can direct your inquiries there.

Blame Jack, as well, for the busting out beyond the factory lakes, corn-fed plains, get the hell out of Kansas flats, on up into the rockiesmountainhigh (or is it just high) and then straight, no time for dinosaur lament Ogden or tumbleweed Winnemucca, to the coast, come hell or high water. Yah, busting out and free. Kid dream great American West night, car-driven (hell, old pick-up truck-driven, English racer bicycle-driven, hitchhike thumbed, flat-bed train-ridden, sore-footed, shoe-beaten walked, if need be), two dollar tank-filled, oil-checked, tires-kicked, money pocket’d, surf’s up, surf’s crashing up against the high shoulder ancient seawalls, cruising down the coast highway, Pacific Coast Highway One, the endlessly twisting jalopy-driven pin-turned coast highway, down by the shore, sand swirling, bingo, bango, bongo with your baby everything’s alright, go some place after the bango, some great American West drive-in place. Can you blame them or me?

So as for that hobo angel comrade, that well-respected young cosmic traveler, what would he know, really, of the great blue-pink American West night that I, and not I alone, were searching for back in those halcyon days of my youth in the early 1960s. What would he know, for example, except in story book or oral tradition from parents or, oh no, maybe, grandparents, of the old time parched, dusty, shoe-leather-beating, foot-sore, sore-shouldered, backpacked, bed-rolled, going-my-way?, watch out for the cops over there (especially in Connecticut and Arizona), hitchhike white-lined road. The thirsty, blistered, backpacked, bed-rolled, thumb-stuck-out, eternally thumb-stuck-out, waiting for some great savior kindred-laden Volkswagen home/collective/ magical mystery tour bus or the commandeered rainbow-marked, life-marked, soul-marked yellow school bus, yellow brick road school bus. Hell, even of old farmer-going-to-market, fruit and vegetable-laden Ford truck, benny-popping, eyes-wide, metal-to-the-petal, transcontinental teamster-driving goods to some westward market or kid Saturday love nest, buddy-racing cool jalopy road. Yah, what would he know of that.

Of the road out, out anywhere, anywhere west, from the stuffy confines of worn-out, hard-scrabble, uptight, ocean-at-you-back, close-quartered, neighbor on top of neighbor, keep your private business private, used-up New England granite-grey death-chanting night. Of the struggle, really, for color, to change the contour of the natural palette to other colors brighter than the New England leafy greens and browns of the trees and the blues, or better blue-greens, or even better yet of white-flecked, white- foamed, blue-greens of the Eastern oceans. (Yah, I know, I know, before you even start on me about it, all about the million tree flaming yellow-red-orange autumn leaf minute and the thousand icicle-dropped, road strewn dead tree branch, white winter snow drift eternity, on land or ocean but those don’t count, at least here, and not now)

Or of the infinite oil-stained, gas-fumed, rag-wiped, overall’d, gas-jockey, Esso, Texaco, Mobil, Shell stations named, the rest lost too lost in time to name, two dollar fill-up-check-the-oil, please, the-water-as-well, inflate the tires, hit the murky, fetid, lava soap-smelled bathrooms, maybe grab a Coke, hey, no Hires Root Beer on this road. This Route 66, or Route 50 or Route you-name-the route, route west, exit east dream route, rolling red barn-dotted (needing paints to this jaded eye), rocky field-plowed (crooked plowed to boot), occasionally cow-mooed, same for horses, sheep, some scrawny chickens, and children as well, scrawny too. The leavings of the westward trek, when the westward trek meant eternal fields, golden fields, and to hell with damned rocks, and silts, and worn-out soils absent-mindedly left behind for those who would have to, have to I tell you, stay put in the cabin'd hollows and lazily watered-creeks. On the endlessly sulky blues-greens, the sullen smoky grey-black of mist-foamed rolling hills that echo the slight sound of the mountain wind tunnel, of the creakily-fiddled wind-song Appalachian night.

[A dream song of pre-natal longing for the sound of that wild ravine, hills and hollows included , music embedded riding mother womb in some father’s borrowed beat-up Packard as he, the father, showed his bride, his yankee bride if you can believe it in those southern-drenched hills, his place in the sun, his faded no account place, kicking the dirt, the muck, the coal dust, the slag, the cabin fever, unrequited, from his shoeless feet, and at the first sign of deliverance (those war clouds that haunted his generation) bought himself a one-way, one-way did you hear, for the wide world, no looking back. And so from that one-way ticket his son, like ten thousand ten thousand other restless mid-century (20th, okay) sons, forced himself to wander aimlessly searching for some mythic unpainted red barn (desperately in need of paints, black trim might be nice in contrast) hidden in some unnamed wind-swept valley, complete with Saturday night fiddlers, mandolin players, guitar-pickers, maybe a bass, fortified with Billy Jack’s white lightning, to quell that mountain wind-songlonging.]

Or of diner stops, little narrow-aisled, pop-up-stool’d, formica counter-topped, red (mostly) imitation leather booth seats, smoked-filled cabooses of diners. Of now anchored, abandoned train porter-serviced, off-silver, off-green, off-red, off any faded color “greasy spoon” diners. Of daily house special meat loaf, gravy-slurp, steam-soggy carrots, and buttered mashed potato-fill up, Saturday night pot roast special, turkey club sandwich potato chips on the side, breakfast all day, coffee-fill-up, free refill, please, diners. Granddaddies to today’s more spacious back road highway locales, styled family-friendly but that still reek of meat loaf-steamed carrots- creamed mashed tater-fill. Spots then that spoke of rarely employed, hungry men, of shifty-eyed, expense account-weary traveling men, of high-benny, eyes-wide, mortgaged to the hilt, wife ran off with boyfriend, kids hardly know him, teamsters hauling American product to and fro and of other men not at ease in more eloquent, table-mannered, women-touched places. Those landscape old state and county side of the highway diners, complete with authentic surly, know-it-all-been-through-it-all, pencil-eared, steam-sweated uniform, maybe, cigarette-hanging from tired ruby red lips, heavily made-up waitress along the endless slag-heap, rusting railroad bed, sulphur-aired, grey-black smoke-belching , fiery furnace-blasting, headache metal-pounding, steel-eyed, coal dust-breathe, hog-butcher to the world, sinewy-muscled green-grey, moonless, Great Lakes night.

[Some great Sandburg hog butcher to the world, great grain elevator to the paying world, great machine monster devouring the earth, building, building steel, building tractors, building buildings, building automobiles in the fugitive night. “Howdy do, what’s yours, brother,” no from hunger brother, get lost, but step right up, that lost age America, lost about the time the Northwest Territories closed up and divided themselves up. And of that waitress in Muncie, or was she from Muncie, and found in Steubenville down on some American river, on some Ohio River fugitive night (yah, fugitive, fugitive everything then in that great jail-break), and she, the waitress she, no threadbare, seen it all, heard it all waitress, but just a wanderlust angel young woman (not all wanderlust leads to New Jack City, ‘Frisco town, Hollywood dreams, come on) feeling her legs on that first shot away from home trip decided, decided do you hear me , that she needed to try a “hippie” gentleman, and she did, and he was, for as long as they could travel that hitchhike blue-pink American West night-seeking highway before the whole thing ebbed but that was another story.]

Or of two-bit road intersection stops, some rutted, pot-holed country road intersecting some mud-spattered, creviced backwater farm road, practically dirt roads barely removed from old time prairie pioneer day times, west-crazy pioneer times, ghost-crazy-pioneer days. Of fields, vast, slightly rolling, actually very slightly rolling, endless yellow, yellow–glazed, yellow-tinged, yellow until you get sick of the sight of yellow, sick of the word yellow even, acres under cultivation to feed hungry cities, as if corn, or soy, or wheat, or manna itself could fill that empty-bellied feeling that is ablaze in the land. But we will deal with one hunger at a time. And dotted every so often with silos and barns and grain elevators for all to know the crops are in and ready to serve that physical hunger. Of half-sleep, half hungry-eye, city boy hungry eyes, unused to the dark, dangerous, sullen, unknown shadows, bed roll-unrolled, knapsack-pillowed, sleep by the side of the wheat, soy, corn road ravine, and every once in a blue moon midnight car passings, snaggly blanket-covered, knap-sack head rested, cold-frozed, out in the great day corn yellow field beneath the blue black, beyond city sky black, starless Iowa night.

[Of that sweet Neola night, sleeping along some cow-mooed ravine, half dazed from too many days on back roads and too few miles west , and then they waking to some sullen hot, hot as blazes Neola sun, trucks, mainly pick-ups passing by that forlorn road loaded with farm stuff (jesus, don’t ask what, hoes, maybe, maybe rakes). Suddenly a pick-up stops and an ancient (ancient by silly young eyes) angel woman, later identified as Aunt Betty, no Saint Betty, stopped, back-up and asked, asked in that sweet lost Iowa nasal, whether they, the pair of them, him and her, needed anything, needed a corn-fed meal. Later at Aunt Betty’s Diner, fed, fed to high heaven, she sensing a kindred in the she, gave her view, her view that the grand-daughters, hell, great grand-daughters of those first trek pioneers were good for citified eastern boys, in short doses. And she saint aunt angel Betty had it down, down just like that earth perfect apple pie of hers. Bringing infinite sadnesses.]

Or of the hard-hilled climb, and climb and climb, breathe taken away magic climb, crevice-etched, rock-interface, sore-footed magic mountain that no Thomas Mann can capture. Half-walked-half-driven, bouncing back seat, back seat of over-filled truck-driven, still rising up, no passing on the left, facing sheer-cliff’d, famous free-fall spots, still rising, rising colder, rising frozen colder, fearful of the sudden summer squalls, white out summer squalls. Shocking, I confess, beyond shocking to New England-hardened winter boy, then sudden sunshine floral bursts and jacket against the cold comes tumbling off. And I confess again, majestic, did I say majestic and beats visions of old Atlantic Ocean swells at dawn crashing against harmless seawalls. Old pioneer-trekked, old pioneer-feared, old rutted-wheeled, two-hearted remembrances, two-hearted but no returning back (it would be too painful to do again) remembrances as you slide out of Denver into the icy-white black rockymountainhigh night.

[Walking daddy walked down Larimer Street, thousand flavor western cowboy hats strewn on thousand cowboy heads against his eastern Jack Kennedy-flavored bare head, barrooms on every corner not seen since Southie drunks before the high tide swept drunks away and brought forth weed, sister, cousin, what did the poet call it, god peyote, no wines but whiskey straights, maybe a water chaser (or beer chaser if in the chips) also like old times, pool-halls, slender, lanky cowboys, one foot up against the wall yelling“shoot pools.” Betting dollars and drinks, and in walks the ghost of Neal Cassady, all golden- boy good looks, cowboy hatted, twirling a key chain with about sixteen car keys like he was some big time car dealer, or hot rod daddy. And she, some blond out of Lizabeth Scott Hollywood, all husky- voiced and soft contours hanging on his arm. She unhinged herself from golden cowboy, gave him sweet kisses good luck and headed walking daddy’s way. And with no eastern shynesses, no coynesses, she sidled up to walking daddy and said “Walking daddy, do you want to walk with me?” And far out in the Denver night the ghost of Neal Cassady, the ghost voice of Ms. Lizabeth Scott, and walking daddy took off in the frozen western night, friends, friends for wherever the road would take them.]

Of foot-swollen pleasures in some arid back canyon arroyo, etched in time told by reading its face, layer after layer, red, red-mucked, beige, beige-mucked, copper, copper-mucked, like some Georgia O'Keeffe dream painting out in the red, beige, copper black-devouring desert night. Sounds, primal sounds, of old dinosaur laments and one hundred generations of shamanic Native American pounding, crying out for vengeance against the desecrations of the land. Against the cowboy badlands takeover, against the white rampages of the sacred soil. And of canyon-shadowed, flame-shadowed, wind- swept, canteen stews simmering and smoky from the jet blue, orange flickering campfire. Of quiet, desert quiet, high desert quiet, of tumbleweed running dreams out in the pure sandstone-edged, grey-black Nevada night.

[A god peyote vision- a starless night, camp fire flamed against the infinite colors of the canyon night barely seen, Jack and Mattie playing some ethereal music on flute and fiddle, the wind begins to howl, they pass pipes filled with dream dust, and hear ten thousand -year old sounds, sounds like ancient apache warriors, untamed, undefeated, spreading their rage as they moved, moved west, then the mystery sounds of tom-toms, warrior- ready beats, warriors ready to take what the earth has deemed theirs before the beggared white man came and killed time and land and whatever else he could use, Jack , Mattie, and walking daddy, now permanently named walking daddy, get up and begin a warrior dance, out of step, out of synch, out of beat with the wind and tom-toms until they get up to speed, then, warrior proud they are ready to avenge history, then suddenly the winds die down, the tom-toms fade and the trio fall in a heap, exhausted . An omen?]

And then....

the great Western shore, surf’s up, white, white wave-flecked, lapis-lazuli blue-flecked ocean, rust golden-gated, no return, no boat out, land’s end, this is it coast highway, heading down or up now, heading up or down gas stationed, named and unnamed, side road diners, still caboose’d, ravine-edged sleep and beach sleeped, blue-pink American West night.

Yes, but there is more. No child vision but now of full blossom American West night, the San Francisco great American West night, of the be-bop, bop-bop, narrow-stepped, downstairs overflowed music cellar, shared in my time, the time of my time, by “beat”jazz, “hippie’d folk”, and howled poem, but at this minute jazz, high white note-blown, sexed sax-playing godman, unnamed, but like Lester Young’s own child jazz. Smoke-filled, blended meshed smokes of ganja and tobacco (and, maybe, of meshed pipe smokes of hashish and tobacco), ordered whisky-straight up, soon be-sotted, cheap, face-reddened wines, clanking coffee cups that speak of not tonight promise. High sexual intensity under wraps, tightly under wraps, swirls inside its own mad desire, already spoken of black-dressed she (black dress, black sweater, black stockings, black shoes, black bag, black beret, black sunglasses, ah, sweet color scheme against white Madonna, white, secular Madonna alabaster skin. What do you want to bet black undergarments too, ah, but I am the soul of discretion, your imagination will have to do), promising shades of heat-glanced night. And later, later than night just before the darkest hour dawn, of poems poet’d, of freedom songs free-verse’d, of that sax-charged high white note following out the door, out into the street, out into the eternity lights of the great golden-gated night. I say, can you blame them or me?

[And down on Bay Street, heading to some sleek Embarcadero rendezvous, maybe grab a room, a flop, or just head to the aquarium break-water jut, hunkered down against the fierce bay winds, the dead- celled Alcatraz beacon, endlessly shining on the innocent, against Bay mists and fogs, fog- horned tankers gliding unseen beneath rusted golden gates, or the look of rusted gates in daytime, and Japan currents, she, mary mack all dressed in black, or something like that, undergarments included, she and he try to follow that high white note heading out to some final bay funeral, try to follow that place where nirvana lived, where the jailbreak 1960s led them, and for a while they avidly pursued that be-bop night, maybe spending a little too much time at the doors of perception, maybe, hell. not maybe, ingesting just too many drugs to catch that sainted sax player’s note without complications and so they drifted apart, back, apart, back, nobody say that Alcatraz jail-break was going to easy and then after a while the music could not sustain that ragged night.]

Of later roads, the north Oregon hitchhike roads, the Redwood-strewn road not a trace of black-dressed she, she now of blue serge denim pants, of brown plaid flannel long-sleeved shirt, of some golfer’s dream floppy-brimmed hat, and of sturdy, thick-heeled work boots (undergarments again left to your imagination) against the hazards of summer snow squall Crater Lake. And now of slightly sun-burned face against the ravages of the road, against the parched sun-devil road that no ointments can relieve. And beyond later to goose-down bundled, hunter-hatted, thick work glove-clad, snowshoe-shod against the tremors of the great big eternal bump of the Alaska highway. Can she blame me? Guess.

[Everybody took that ‘Frisco road, and took that‘Frisco road out when the weirdness started, when the freak- outs came a mile a minute, when the bad ass cartel hermanos came norte, when the black brothers determined who was cool in the fogged night (and who was not) and poetry and posters and slogans and banners and, and whatever, lost their way and called for westward ho but there was no westward ho so they, he and she, headed out of cramped ‘Frisco, looked to the north, Eureka north, Roseburg north, Portland north, almost to Seattle north and then all bleeding and bruised Mount Rainier in front of them she heard her own high white note, heard some strange mountain wind of her own, some, what did she call it, some Jack London call of the wild, and he went with her, went with her for a while anyway, and then, city boy afraid of no city lights, afraid of the silence (no cars, jesus, no cars), and turned back … alone, and he never saw that black Madonna again.]

Yah, put it that way and what does that young hobo angel, a dreamer of his own dreams, and rightly too, know of an old man’s fiercely-held, fiercely-defended, fiercely-dreamed beyond dreaming blue-pink dreams. Or of ancient blue-pink sorrows, sadnesses, angers, joys, longings and lovings, either.

New Jack City Blues, Circa 1950s

New York City, 1950s New Jack City for the jack-worthy, not big enough for million- worded jacks (or jills), not in the end. In the end he, they, needed the road, the wide open roads west, the transcontinental riff calling, the Route 6, 66, 666 (the latter a pact with the devil, or the devil’s master, some deal to write that second million words of the legend-in-the- making), the great thruways aborning. Passing (if they could ever get that first hitchhike ride out of the city) dusty dutch red barn farms, steel cities achingly filled with lonesome story bus stops and stinking urinals, dirty , and always too big passengers in the next seat who snored, who spread their mass on fallow shoulders, passing auto cities filled with hungry, great depression hungry workers looking to make their first down payments on a dream, a dream car to quell their restless search, and maybe some little white picket fenced house to anoint their red scare cold war night, to be on the right side of the angels for once. Shoving into hog butcher to the world Chi town, all brawny and beef, all a place to move west, and move fast to avoid Joliet blues like a million Muddys coming from old Parchman’s Farm Mississippi Delta south up Highway 61 , down along the silty big muddy and then to the great expanse, the Dakotas with their forlorn look, and their young desperate to head west and become drugstore movie stars, following their okie-arkie brethren further south who made the trek a generation before and were now stranded in some Pomona shopping plaza wondering what the hell it was all about, or roaming those Pacific coast highways in their jalopies, their hot money hot rods looking for the heart of Saturday night, or lucky boys, searching for that perfect wave down in the LaJollas of the world .

Pushing, ever pushing west, on into junction Denver searching for the ghost of the cowboy past in Larimer Street pool halls, barrooms, and clip joints (and maybe an untoward whorehouse), looking for golden all-American Old West cowboy dreams. Onward out of the flame-thrown Rockies and down into dinosaur death Utah and then Nevadas, Winnemucca dry holes a specialty just don’t get caught out there on that hitchhike road. And then land’s end golden gate rust pacific rim of the world Frisco town and flowers and blossoms in the foggy North Beach night. But all this later. For now though life is, life is New Jack City, and the strange neon night rhythms.

Yah, for a while you could hear that old caged bird sing, hear sing some Billie Holiday body and soul lover’s lament, some blues from deep down in the Mother Africa night, some café cabaret ghost of the Cotton Club (filled with hard boys so watch out) swing low, swing misty, swing along nod sway song, maybe a little boy-juiced, but swaying. Something in that phrasing she had, Billie that is, that half pause before she set up the snarling upper lip to speak of endless sorrows, endless sorrows endured in America, unrelieved, unrelieved except through blood-scarred arms. Some Dizzy dizzy salt peanuts tune, maybe a little tea-time dizzy, some high white note stuff every once in a while just to keep things interesting, blowing man blow about two, maybe three, in the morning playing chords, playing progressions most of night to keep the fidgety fickle customers glued to their tables, drinking high-shelf liquor and maybe riffing a little for the regulars at the bar, the hip cats who didn’t even dare show up until one, maybe later, and got ready to blow from his toes you could tell, tell by the hour, tell by how he held the notes on that last song blast. Yah, he was going blow that pure note if it took until dawn and then that note and that sun rising could fight it out. And that note was going to win, if not that night then sometime but in the meantime here he was in his entire be-bop high blown splendor. Or some, well just name your cool as a cucumber jazzman, Lester blowing that big sexy sultry sax at the end, the Prez working that blast for all it was worth, letting the air out and filling up again just like some oxygen mask, blowing pass the audience into his own eden, beautiful, and the hipsters too hip to clap, rude crowd clap, just point their solo index fingers at the max daddy and he just tips his solo index finger back to the brotherhood. On and on in the New York jazz night, on Gerry, on Dave Brubeck, on Charlie angel Gabriel trumpet blowing early in the morning down his own private Birdland , some more experimental guys, Monk, mad monk riff piano riffing monk , on top of the heap. All saints, all angels early morning (when else?) sweaty in a hundred cool as a cucumber midnight cafes, The Swan, The Gaslight, Benny’s, The Hi Hat, and the beloved Red Fez (red to make you sunset dream, red to take away the red scare night straight up in the free-wheeling refuge town, sunset red tea dream to see and long for ancient dreams, fez to make you think Africa calling, Africa finally calling home her children), all drawing, drawing can you believe this, the Mayfair swells like in old Duke Cotton Club high Harlem night Scott Fitzgerald bathtub gin jazz age time.

Time Square, eternal home to every Hoboken hipster forced to flee for non-payment of rent, every Ithaca spinster angel looking for some Boston marriage far from prying eyes, every broken dream okie farm boy useless on the dust bowl farm and itching to get at those women, those easy city women he heard about on the radio or in some forbidden magazine, after a steady diet of dried- out high hell fundamentalist girls aching for the lord and a fistful of kids to take away the empty soul of the black, true black starless prairie nights after a proper marriage, every arkie beauty queen who could not survive the rarified airs of “take it all off sister” or being ass-pinched by hot rod valley boys waiting impatiently for hamburgers and fries in the blossoming Hollywood car hop nights and who couldn’t go home to Helena, every drifter, grafter, grafter and midnight sifter working the flamed never-ending lights of hell. Lit up, neon- lit, gas-lit, 24/7/365-lit, lit to the gills, lit against the jack-rolling crime night (see above for candidates, jack-rollers in waiting, if the occasion arises) back alley big city simplicity itself just some chain, or an off-hand pipe, behind the knees, crumple easy to the ground, grab the dough, up and out to some whore blow, dope blow, whisky blow.

Out in the flamed, never ending lights of hell-lit up, lit against the gang night, Central Park mainly, and some off streets down in Little Italy and up in high Harlem, 125^th Street anyway, lit against the rough trade Genet night sailor boys fresh from the wharves, Hudson wharves, East River wharves, flush with just off the boat pay-off cash, looking for chain-whip kicks, some diva delight, some fresh leather boy too. Lit against the sad sin sexless sex night, some anonymous Lansing, Muncie, Omaha corn-fed young thing, maybe like her older arkie sister a beauty queen who headed east instead of west to get into the theater or some concert hall, shapely, good legs, working hips, tired of light-less farms and farm fields headed to the big city, headed up 42^nd street instead of Broadway or the Village and wound up with big faded dreams calling out “hey mister, want a good time,” or maybe stoned to the gills just nods, stoop nods, symbolically showing a good time just by her uniform, that split pea dress showing plenty of thigh, those long black nylon stockings, and that kewpie doll smile, all yours for the price of a needle, a room, and some pimp’s damn cut or, hell, when the spiral goes down some quickie back alley head and a quick napkin spit wipe, jesus. Watch out for the jack-rollers honey though, especially watch out for those damn jack-rollers you earned your money, earned it hard, and she maybe thinking to herself if old farm boy love Roy could see me now, later to be turned over to some Jersey whorehouse and work by the bell. Go home sister, go home, now. New Jack was just too big for you.

Wall Street, pass, this is not about coupon-clipping, okay. Although on other days some guys might like to kick that can down the road a bit. Madison Avenue, pass, this is not about subliminal desires and tricks, well- meaning Vance Packard to the contrary. Park Avenue, pass, well, maybe half-pass, maybe half pass looking for princesses (WASP, Jewish, does it matter as long as they are looking for down at the end of the road beat brothers, and have the money, not some trust fund tied- up and handed out nickels and dimes stuff but real cash) looking for kicks before they run off to the Hamptons and later the Connecticut shoreline bedroom communities with their soft felt hat train-catching for the city stockbroker lovers. Just kicks though, no stir time stuff, not with daddy warbucks on the warpath, not with his Pinkertons, and not with his pen dripped in ink just that minute re-writing the terms of his will. Or maybe catch some off-hand wild thing, maybe jail bail, pray to god not, looking to break out, like the beat boys and girls, from the bourgeois high society (not beat high, reefer high, benny high, boy high, cousin high) but from same old same old Fifth Avenue parties, some freak-out boarding school and Miss Prissy’s finishing school. Jesus.

Yah, a quick stop to check for those looking for jack night thrills to fill up, fill up like some gas tank, their beat souls, or looking for some golden cowboy, some fast flash wind from the west, fresh from stir, all Paul Newman beautiful, and those blue eyes, those Ladies’ Room tittle blue eyes, and someone will spell it out, bedroom eyes, new to the city, and woman hungry, take no prisoners, or maybe checking for those looking for some poor boy sailor boy just off the ships just got paid Genet boys rough stuff. Down some dark wharf street, down some tavern end of the dock street, and secret dreams, but such rarified tastes are dangerous, dangerous indeed.

Up to Columbia, the university, of course, ivy-covered, respectable for a minute (before the 1960s heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), a minute when some buzz came breezing in, the beat boys and girls came breezing in, came through the portals, hah, the groves of academia. And Jack and Allen and kindred teased the city dry, blew town, went out on the pioneer highways just like the forbears, saw majestic and crude things, did majestic and crude things, smoked some dope, made some love, drank some cheap Tokay wine, and oh yes, unchained, unhinged Eliot and Wolfe language from it throne moorings, and created some flash beat to be listened to elsewhere, elsewhere in the land’s end rusted golden gate sun.

The Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), the clubs and nooks already mentioned, jazz, folk rearing its head, more jazz, some poetry on an off night, the beat poets reading their beat poems to a famished world (or slender slice of it), the streets of dreams not mentioned, Bleecker, McDougall on up to Canal, the safe harbor, hell, sanctuary for those blown away by the cold war red scare night, not just reds, and pinks, and maybe white pinks, but all mother nature’s odd and damaged, the beat poem listen to hangers-on for sure, the morphine kickers looking for sure connections and some walking daddy to be-bop with when the crash came, the rough trade boys, reading Genet in some tavern back room in translation, tired of hell angels beating up on them without style, plainsong fags tired of dating someone’s sister as a favor and ready to face the cops’ bull if only to have a few nights of boy love without being run out of a Podunk town on a rail, same, same for those weary of those boston marriages and tired of wearing men’s clothing in private Beacon Street Boston rooms, art guys by the biz-illion, Jackson this, Larry that, Motherwell this and that, enough art to paint the world, all abstract and symbolic, all death to sweet Madonna slash dabbed in the night.

Movie houses, movie theaters, all sweet black and white stark, all New Jack city eight million stories stark, and, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking of urine or Thunderbird wines, of endless overflow from Times Square (or run out) drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggers and minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car -beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42^nd Street hurts.

Of Howard Johnson’s franks, mustard, relish, onions, go ahead the works, eaten by the half dozen to curb hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, not sex but fame, fresh off the Port Authority bus, of Joe and Nemo’s two o’clock fatty griddle hamburgers, the works again, please, of fags (bothering guys in public toilets, jesus), and fairies, all dressed up and rouged ready for some gentleman caller, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell, and can write too, write one million words on order, and perform, on cue, stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro crosstown, not to speak of Soho or the Bronx . And of junkies of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules, gringos, poor boy Nuevo York gringos trying to get ahead of the curve, and just looking for kicks, face down in some dusty Sonora town dead, nameless, thankless, dead, failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand Federales- forgotten murders too. Jesus suffering humanity. New Jack City.

“The Bay Street Night”- With“October in the Railroad Earth” In Mind

…walking, always walking , never, at least long time never, just running frantically down some stairs, pulling the keys out of his jeans on the fly, wrestling the front door open and jumping into the front seat of some souped-up, some Stewball Stu zen auto mechanic to the world, year old (broken in, see) 1949 Hudson, but always just walking down Larkin Street to the bay, ‘Frisco bay for the interested, to flush out his brain against the japan currents, against the pacific squalls, against the bay fogs, or whatever was against handy. (Stewball Stu from back in Olde Saco, podunk Maine days, king of the chicken runs and max daddy of the streets ever since he took out some Farmer Brown from Arundel overgrown son’s souped-up Dodge back in 1945. Blew him off the Galway Road in nothing flat and later when he took on all comers when things moved to early morning deserted Seal Rock down at the far end of Olde Saco Beach away from prying cop and irate citizen eyes as well. He had been there that night, and later, riding shotgun, scared shotgun, in the passenger seat so he knew Stu was not blowing smoke about his exploits but that ,those Stu stories, were for another time.)

This night his always walking was to figure out how much longer he was going to have to wait around this damn old‘Frisco town for some shipping clerk’s job down at the dock at the other end of the Embarcadero to open up so he could make some dough, pay off Carol, Allen, and Bill and blow some transcontinental dough with Stewball Stu on some lesser version of that dream 1949 Hudson and finally blow this now old tired out‘Frisco town. His ticket was up here after a few mishaps (a couple of small“vag” busts for sleeping over in Golden Gate Park without a permit, some damn tent fee permit , jesus, was that all that they had to do over there. Down on the Embarcadero you could hardly walk late at night without falling over some stumblebum drunk, or guy down on his luck, and no cop ever bothered you. Jesus. More serious, a possession, a weed possession bust, for smoking some righteous mex herb, gold, in public. Thirty days suspended because he had been young, well-spoken, and not regular district court traffic surly before the judge. Jesus. So he needed the dock dough to break his string of bad luck and flee this burg, but he needed that clerk’s job, arranged by Bill through his father’s connections with guys down at the wharves who needed a guy who could do the shipping paper work fast and not steal everything not nailed down on the docks , to come through, needed it bad just then. And so the fret walk.

As he walked toward the womb bay he could just barely see the fogged-bemused dim spot Alcatraz search lights, eternal search lights against some phantom prison breaks like that search light, or that rock, was what held a man, any man, in thrall to his lesser instincts. His couple of minutes in jail had shaken him up enough to never want to test the outer edge of that theory, or come even close. Spending a few hours, maybe half a day, with stinking winos, pissed over, surly and not just before the judge, begging for a Tokay fix, or Thunderbird if you had it, bumming cigarettes or papers to make their own Bull Durham coffin nails, stinking, earth sweat stinking from some Gilroy onion patch or the fields down south mex braceros picked up for fighting or being mex, who knows, an odd con man or hustler, a street hustler, who worked a wrong john, an unprotected pimp daddy on those occasions when the irate citizens were demanding blood for some foul deed, some tough guy yeggs and assorted armed robbers wised him up to that road. And so the fret walk.

He laughed as he minute fret pause looked up and saw a couple of kids, really just kids, maybe sixteen, no more, wobbly, walking across Bay Street as he made his own turn onto the street, one with a bottle ready to be handed to the other, and from the look of it Tokay, the winos’ choice, and the “choice” of those too young to buy their own and hence resorting to some wino-snagged bought and that was what they got. He bet that the wino, in exchange for that courtesy, right now was sitting down in some Embarcadero back street, maybe Third, or in some Mission Street flop, if he was in the chips and not too far behind on his rent, room made up of bed, bureau and chair, not much else, no memory pictures on the walls, memory pictures in fact banished, sipping on his own bottle of nectar Tokay, and maybe that wino was passing it around to his jungle campfire brethren.

He remembered his own virgin voyage down that gofer road. He, and a schoolboy corner boy, Spider, from back up in Olde Saco, had gotten in that corner boy’s souped- up 1939 Plymouth and driven to stardust Boston, down by the Commons, in the early 1940s looking for beat (although he would not have called it that then but that was the only unnamed name for the feeling, that beat down feeling, looking for what they had heard was a new breeze blowing in this wicked old world, hell, mainly looking for beat chicks away from put-off prim and prissy Gallic (French-Canadian forbears from up in Gaspe mostly) Catholic girls that ran amok in that town if the truth was known.

Of course like in Frisco town in those days every hustler, con man (and a few women), and everybody who had sense enough to cash in on the rube explosion was on the Common on any given Friday or Saturday teen break-out night ready to do business, to do wrong gee business. That night he and Spider had been walking through the Common working their way to Charles Street when a young guy, maybe twenty-five, came up to them and asked them if they wanted him to get them some booze to while away the evening (this was the part of the ‘40s before dope, weed, mary jane was the elixir of choice). Sure thing, brother, thanks. A bottle of Southern Comfort, large. This guy, explaining the city rules of the road, said how about a bottle for him. They said whatever was right and anted up the dough. About ten minutes later the guy came back with a brown bag with a bottle sticking out of the top. Thanks brother, as he left. They went over by the Public Gardens under the pond bridge to get a quick swig. Surprise, surprise that bottle was filled with plain old ordinary water. Yah, rubes. Then he remembered his own oath when it came his time to play teen gofer. He would always remember that night and while most times he would do the chore gratis, except when he was down on his luck and needed to pull that scam, he always gave what was asked for. He wished he could say that about some other things but such is life.

He looked back one last time as those boys veered off into their good night as he thought, thought too for just a minute about Sammy, Sid, Andre, and the Spider from back in his own old Southern Comfort days in sitting in front of the river , sitting in front of ocean Olde Saco a few years back, and of some wino pete who got their Friday night booze from LaCroix’s Package Store for them in order to make them “rum brave,” girl-flirting rum brave, for the dance over at the Starlight Ballroom where, god, Benny, Benny Goodman was playing and of that Benny-blessed night, he had finally twisted old Sheila around his finger, if you know what he meant. Sheila (Capet) who broke the death of sex put-off prim and prissy Gallic Catholic girls that ran amok mode (keep this between us okay) and went, one Friday night, down to Seal Rock, the local lovers’ lane, in the back of Spider’s Plymouth with him and made him smile. And it was that same Sheila who, later, gave him the skinny about what was said on those school day Monday mornings before school girls’ “lav” talks of who did what with whom, and who didn’t. And the dids outnumbered the didn’ts. An earful. Women.

As he walked some more down Bay toward the chocolate smell of Beach he began taking that ancient thought out of his head as he passed the Red Fez for the ninety-ninth time (about ninety of them straight into the front door and low-shelf scotches and scored teas and, on occasion, bindles for the soul) since he hit ‘Frisco a couple of months back with some jack, a sweet girl, Lulu, all blonde, Iowa corn-fed and willing, and some idea that he would write the great American novel, a great American novel, or an American novel (depending on his mood), if he could just get his head in the right place, be in the right place, and have his freaking ‘Frisco golden-gate rust colored muse , his now completely fog-bound muse, working his corner.

Nada, nothing, no go, got it. And then like something from out of some mid-1940s film noir movie where an unnamed band, unnamed until you read the credits to find out why you spent the rest of the film with that sound in your brain, fired up the night in the middle of the movie out of nowhere, he heard a sound, a high white note, blown pure by some unseen sex tenor sax(not a Johnny Hodges, Duke’s’ boy Johnny , all fluffy around the edges pure, all satin and silk with a bow on it pure, mulatto pure, maybe black and tan pure , to keep the lid on for the paying customers, the paying white customers, the uptown mayfair swells out for weekly kicks, a little spindle tea to take the edge off, the cabaret café society crowd, a backing Billie swaying lilt crowd, who would freak out, who would call every variety of hell down on the player’s head, at what was played mex opium dream or tea high back to proud earth mother Africa times after hours) now coming steamed, sweaty jungle-steamed, out toward the bay from deep within the Red Fez (blown, he knew from other nights, from other highs, blown deep in the bowels of the club up against the back bar by angel Cody Reed, black, black as a starless night, black who devoured negro and had no regrets, blasting safe, fashionable negro safe, blasting flash, wide-brimmed white fedora, open shirt, white lapel suit, midnight sunglasses, negro pimp walking daddy and pink Cadillac with one hip-hop note, blasting back to primordial black Africa mother homeland, blasting apart first, middle and last passages in a foreign land, blasting, cool as a cucumber, plantation miseries, plantation lashes, blasting too jim crow, get back in your place, brother , old‘Frisco Mister James Crow.

A guy on the other corner, dark, brown, brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes, brown soul too, angel mex fellaheen (wearing a kind of out of fashion zoot suit looking a little frayed on the edges, maybe from L.A., maybe a little too much loco weed down south, maybe too some hard-ass bracero up-bringing, father and mother working sweated lettuce, or you name the produce , fields, and then back to some brown shack, and sixteen kids, jesus), maybe a flip, a Filipino, benny high, tea high more likely (but high, high from an expert eye high) was be-bopping words, night, fright, fight, bite, throwing out one after another trying, trying like hell, to match his palabras (some en espanol, some in English a tough task) with that Cody Reed high white note that he was chasing, finally catching some of it, some vicious moloch fight to blast words and notes, some shake the bracero dust off of himself in the fellahin world that he was in his dreams fighting to break out of , making words slowly to match that floating note and passed . In the end he was not successful, reached for something, something for his head, in his pocket, threw it in his mouth and moved along Bay Street.

Nice try brother but it will probably take some gringo fellaheen warrior, some mill-town boy all river torrent bound, all fretting about his place in the sun, fretting about damn some damn woman-child or woman hell (his own F-C or Irish version of that Olde Saco madness, those prissy girls run amok are universal), fretting about his corner boy muses, some improbable combination of hulky hero all muddied from schoolboy playing fields but also library-bound reading Homer, Plato, Jack London, Thomas Wolfe, and the boys, listening to be-bop, endlessly humming some refrain in the river night, be-bop, be-bop, be-bop before be-bop bopped, endlessly searching for the jail breakout night on forsaken frozen wind-swept ships, in midnight veering route 6, 66, 666 cars driven by golden boy cowboy punk desperados, and driving million word exploits. Or it will probably be some street bandito from New Jack City, some prophet gangster risen all in white, all in holy garb, from among the pimps, the whores working those mean streets for nickels and dimes, the seventy-seven varieties of hustlers, the winos stealing dough and wine from each other or from young rubes, con men (and women, okay) hustling constantly hustling and looking out of forlorn drugstore windows from forlorn red vinyl stools, guys in need of fixes, yeggs, second- story men, drifters, grifters, midnight sifters, all the angels of the dark night. Yah, a street bandito risen in the night, beat beatified. Or some fag kid (sorry queer, with queer shoulderings against the storm , fag slang from corner boy Olde Saco hazy nights) from Hoboken, maybe Paterson, some death mill-town anyway, too small for his one million ideas and his two million curiosities in an age that banished curiosity, a slightly off-kilter kid who sang kaddish, or maybe better plainsong, yah, plainsong against the death-brought night, against all the not straight eyes forward, against all the banishments, yah, some fag kid with time on his hands, to capture the words to the high white note. Meanwhile that note then floated down though the jazz-infiltrated streets pass wino jungles and wharf rough trade taverns to the bay and mixed and matched with the foam-flecked waves, the search light of the eternal rock, and his dreams. He had an idea…

Down Sonora Way- The Ghost Of Bill Higgins

Frankie Riley was shocked, well maybe not shocked but stunned when he heard the news of Bill Higgins’ murder. Jesus, he had had just seen Bill in Los Angeles a couple of months before when Bill was passing through on his way south and he and Maria, his live-in mex girlfriend (immigration status fuzzy so Maria, okay), her of the sparkling laughing eyes and dark brown skin, had let Bill stay in their apartment for a couple of weeks while he worked on some plan that he had hatched, some vague plan connected with making a pile down in Mexico, down Sonora way that would put he and Clara on easy street.

Bill Higgins and Frankie Riley had known each other from the hunger days in the old 1960s Olde Saco (Maine, okay) neighborhood, the old just barely working- class neighborhood where the chronically unemployed, under-employed and just plain ne’er-do-wells, mainly Irish and hence locally known as Irishtown (although more generically to outsiders, combined with the French-Canadian streets, as the Acre), mainly third or fourth generation Irish and thus firmly planted by the prior toil of forbears lived, where they had met, beyond Olde Saco Junior High corridor nod (the junior high, and come to think of it, high school nod too, a subject worthy of its own sketch but not here, not now when dope, guns, and girls, ah, women, are central to what is what) met, while hugging the walls (literally according to both sources at the time) at the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent, of course, and other odd-ball feast days like the Feast of the Immaculate Conception which even as ignorant, sex ignorant, flat- out sex ignorant, as these boyos were drew a guffaw) “sock hop” held by the senior parish priest, Monsignor Lally.

Held to, well, “keep an eye, maybe more than one, on the younger portion of his flock,” as the good father expressed it each Sunday when making the announcement for the next hop in the line-up. The real reason, of course, whispered among the young, including wall-huggers Higgins and Riley, was to keep said young angel sheep, away from too much heathen devil’s music (read: ersatz Protestant music probably a Baptist or Unitarian conspiracy, the good priest spouted both theories); that rock and roll music that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying, butt-flaying, making the girls “wet” (wet in the wrong places) praying false god praying Elvis Presley. And by all means to keep them, that unprotected angel flock to a person, but especially those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Olde Saco Beach listening to fogged-up car radios in the back seat and digging the beat while, well, just while and leave it at that. Or for those without golden automobile access or who were too young, to keep away from the Strand Theater, the exclusive upstairs balcony section of course, for the young set, the car-less healthy young interested in lightless dark night s-x (you know just in case the old bastard is still around).

Frankie still remembered the first song that they had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school time sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop. And the reason he remembered that song so vividly was one sparking blue-eyed, flaming red-haired Clara Murphy, just mentioned Clara, a girl who had given both of them her come hither twelve-year old look that night (and previously at school too) and they had been hooked, hooked as bad as men (okay, boys) could be hooked by a woman (okay, girl). So it was not surprising that they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down. Or maybe not so Solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment, decide whether she liked Bill or Frankie better, or whether she liked either of them, according to Frankie’s intelligence source, his younger sister Amy who was friends with Clara’s sister Bonnie and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles and had turned them both down.

Naturally that denial after those come hither looks inflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks Bill and Frankie made every mad school boy mad attempt to win her favors. Both had recklessly, although determinedly, courted legal danger by “clipping” (five finger discount, oh, you know, petty larceny) onyx rings (Frankie’s had a diamond in the center) for her at Sam’s Jewelry Store in downtown Olde Saco (again intelligence, reliable intelligence, Clara sister Bonnie via Amy, had informed them separately that she liked those kinds of rings). She accepted both as tokens of friendship she called it. Ditto 45 RPM Elvis and Jerry Lee records from Chuck’s Record Shop over on Main Street (an easy “clip” for these adventurers, just place the record under your undershirt and walk out, or better slide into your underpants, no salesperson, no girl salesperson on duty at the time was going there, no way). Accepted, dispassionately accepted. Not ditto though, not ditto “clipped” flowers and candy (especially when Clara heard how the previous goods were “purchased” although she did not go so far as to give them back). They had each worked, really dragged their butts carrying doubles, as caddies as the local golf course to gather the dough necessary for those expenses. And on it went like that for several weeks.

To no avail for Frankie though because, also exhibiting another aspect of her budding wiles, Clara took up with Bill (and had really, according to other reliable intelligence sources, her eye on him all along. Girls, ah, women, go figure). Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and, quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing like Frankie, unquote.

Frankie laughed at the recollection, a bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill right out of high school, right out of the Class of 1964, maybe not the wisest thing to do for either of them in a lifetime sense but with war cries, real war cries on every horizon, out in the killing fields of Asia (and who knows where else in that red scare cold war good night) it had a certain logic, a way to keep Bill out of harm’s way with any luck. Although at the time it had much more to do with Bill being crazy for Clara, head on his shoulders or not, and since he had no plans to go to college he figured it was just as well to start family life early. Yes, he was that kind of guy then, and was not alone in that sentiment, not by any means. Clara, for her part, had schemed and plotted to get out of her shanty Irish-drunk father-cold mother house from about age fourteen. Whatever she thought about Bill, and Frankie was a little hesitant to take her undying love sentiments at face value (and miffed about his own Clara plight for a long time, every time he caddied up at that damn golf course), she had always had Clara and lace curtain Irish front and center even then.

Frankie remembered just then too that he had been part of their wedding party, that June wedding over at the Starlight Ballroom, where the trio had spent many a Saturday night listening as the music changed from silly Danny and the Juniors to serious Beatles and Stones stuff. The wedding the last big event of his youth before he kicked the dust of Olde Saco off his shoes and headed out on the hitchhike highway and his own dreams. Headed out for what became for many years the wandering road turned into the hobo road, and then back, back a little, but this is Bill and Clara’s story, or Bill’s anyway, so let bygones be bygones. But too he remembered that wedding party night when Clara, out of the blue, while they were dancing the obligatory friend dance, dancing very close, very close her leaning into him, whispered in his ear that just in case Bill didn’t work out she still had some hot flash thoughts of him. That helped, if he needed any help, getting him out of that one-horse town just as fast as he could. Not for Bill’s sake, or Clara’s, but just because he might have taken her up on the offer.

Here is the funny part though, Bill and Clara, just like Frankie at the beginning of the wave got caught up with their generation’s new breeze coming through the land, the music, the drugs, the experimenting with everything under the sun, and maybe more, and had after a couple of years of married life drifted west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the strobe light dreams 1960s with Clara as a Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick–like lead singer and Bill on lead guitar. Yes, playing that no account rock and roll. Frankie, on the coast at the time too, trying to avoid the draft (Bill had turned out to be 4-F, unfit for military duty, due to nearsightedness), had run into to them several times, had stayed at their pad on Fillmore for months at a time, when they had operated out of Frisco town, had helped console (among others) Clara when Bill ran off for a while with some surfer girl from LaJolla looking for groupie acid rock kicks and she was at wits end. Yes, he had slept with Clara as part of that consolation but by then Frankie’s road addiction had turned him away from any thoughts of Clara lace curtain Irish dreams. As far as he knew Clara never told Bill about the affair, or if she had he never let it interfere with his relationship with Frankie. When Bill got back from his fling with that surfer girl he and Frankie became closer than at any time since that long ago sock hop night. Then in the late 1960s, he back on the road, out in New Mexico back, they had lost touch. And then in 1973 Bill had been killed, face-down killed, down in some dusty back alley, Sonora, back alley, when that plan, that major drug deal went south on him.

According to the reports, the police reports when he went to check, Mexican police reports, so maybe a little off on the details, but on point on the face-down dead part, Bill and Clara had“muled” many times for one of the budding drug cartels. (Frankie had known this, hell, had taken delivery of some goods himself, and had, once, accompanied Bill and Clara, down there, down there the time he had met Maria, met her down in that Mexicali whorehouse and brought her norte but that was another story). Bill, while he was working on his plan in L. A., the details of which were unknown to Frankie, had decided to go “independent” trying to take-off with one of his cartel deliveries to be used as seed money for his own operation to Panama (the ideas being to try to get to the Canal Zone and some Estados Unidos protection if things went awry, he obviously never made it) and wound up in a back alley with six slugs in the back for his efforts. End of story, just another number in the broken dreams world, the fast stuff of dreams world.

End of blasé Mexican police report story, as usual, but not quite the end of Bill’s story, some of which Frankie knew a little about other stuff he got when he went full bore to find out what happened (including a low-profile trip, hair cut short, beard shaved, only a mustache left, wearing a light-weight suit down and around, to Sonora, alone). After the 1960s died (when, the date, a million people have written about, with about two millions dates and about three million reasons for their particular date, Frankie had May Day, 1971 as his date when they, he included, tried to shut down D. C. over the Vietnam war and got nothing but eight million busts and a ton of bad hubris for their efforts) Bill and Clara, having ridden the crest, were broke, not just broke but in hock broke to about twenty different guys for various musical, life-style and drug stuff, including a busted flat-out last ill-fated concert in 1972. When the times were good Bill and Clara “walked with the king” but the music scene was changing and so acid rock, the thing that made them a thing, could not sustain a bunch of Airplane-look-a-likes. Familiar story ever since music started. That was when they started “muling.” (Frankie knew the details of the connections but was keeping mum about that).

What Frankie didn’t know, although if he had thought about it for ten seconds he should have known, was that Clara, Clara with her lace curtain turned chandelier Irish dreams, was the driving force behind their new careers, and kept prodding Bill on that plan to step up to the “bigs” and build his own operation. Jesus, girls, ah, women, go figure. See here is what is finally strange though. Clara who had accompanied Bill on that fateful trip (and had been holding that delivery, ten kilos of coke just then becoming the drug of choice for the hipsters, and never cartel recovered as far as he knew) was never heard from again. Just that moment, that reflected moment , Frankie raised his finger to his head and nodded that old schoolboy nod to Bill’ s memory and raised his drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of his youth.

…Frankie, few years later, maybe 1976, received a report that someone, second-hand, had heard that Clara was running a whorehouse stocked with anglo girls serving the booming drug cartels down in Tampico but he just let it pass, just let the schoolboy nod and the drink stand.

New Year’s Eve, 1977

… he looked out from the ancient smudged sooted back window (showing frigid glass crack slivers breakable to the touch and some rotten pane wood ) of his fourth floor single room sad sack, no elevator, long gone downhill from prosperous Victorian mayfair swells times brownstone ready for the wrecker’s’ball, down the street, down Joy Street, down Beacon Hill Boston Joy Street, ironically named , as the late afternoon crowd of government workers clinging to their annual New Year’s holiday early release (at the discretion of their supervisors, if the day’s work was done, although they, the supervisors. were long gone at noontime) strolled by, ditto post-Christmas shoppers who had wisely waited until after black death Christmas day to bring back to Jordan’s or Filene’s those unwanted ties, toys, and bric-a-brac that inevitable arrived at that time each year, and watched wistfully as an early returning college student or two, bulging cloth book bags over their shoulders, trying to catch up on some recess-delayed study, headed a few streets over to school as the town prepared for its first First Night, an officially sanctioned chamber of commerce-style city booster event complete with usually reserved for the Fourth of July shout-out fireworks to welcome in the new year, 1977.

Closer at hand he also observed across narrow Joy Street sad-eyed Saco Steve and beat Billy, Billy of no known moniker, two wine-soaked winos, wine-soaked by this hour if he was any judge, across from his smudged sooted brownstone window. He stopped himself, as he began to judge their shabby low-rent existence, their ceaseless nickel and dime pan-handling, soup kitchen, day labor existence mostly pearl-diving these days, pearl-diving washing dishes and whatnot over at the Park Plaza where the head union guy, the crew picker, was a second cousin of Billy’s who got him on when they had big shot dinners in the big ballrooms and they, Billy and Steve, and the other guys too, mostly fellow winos or guys down on their luck, would take, as a personal bonus, all those half- full before diner wine glasses and empty them in waiting wine bottles before the glasses went into the racks and on to the conveyor belts. Billy, when he had hit bottom and hit joy street had gotten him some work there, and had showed him that trick of the trade.

Then he smirk chuckled realizing the immense slough of despond hypocrisy of that forming thought, the joy street hard luck thought, and of his own fast lane addictions, drugs, gambling, cigarettes, whores when he was in the clover, held at bay for the moment, as he continued his view of the lads appearing, as always, to be arguing over something from the sound of their voices that could be heard all the way up to his fourth floor digs. That argument would before long wind up on the floor below his where this pair, when not homeless street-bound, or Sally (Salvation Army), or Pine Street worthy, when not too far in rent arrears (like he was at the moment), kept a shabby flop, a flop not unlike his, single bed, mattress sagging from too many years of faithful addicted service (addicted, drugs, gambling, liquor, although not seemingly the new addiction fad, sex, for, as far as he knew and he knew for certain in his own case, no women crossed the brownstone front door threshold, not that he had seen anyway, nor given the single-minded nature of the listed addictions matched to listed tenants was that likely, a woman, a woman’s wanting habits, were too distracting to trump such devotions), a left behind rumbled hard hospital pillow, pillow-cased (by him), probably gathered by some previous tenant from one of the about seventeen local hospitals that started just the other side of Cambridge Street, Joy Street downstream river flow into Cambridge Street, sheets, rumpled and he provided as well, a bureau, a cockroach-friendly cheap bureau until he stamped out every one of the veiled bastards, for his small personal wardrobe, a couple of changes of this and that, maybe three, along with the usual stash of undergarments, a small table for bric-a-brac (which he used for occasional writing) and toilet articles, no cooking facilities (thankfully, thinking about the Saco Steve and Billy voices moving in on him), no frig, nothing personal on the walls, a common bathroom complete with some Victorian-era tub for the four residents of each floor, and done.

As he heard the rough-hewn gravel hoarse voices of Saco Steve and Billy making their way up the stairs he threw on his best short- sleeved shirt (simple logic, and not picked up from some hobo, tramp, bum met on the road like a lot of good and useful information he had picked up over the years, most of those brethren would not have cared, understood, or comprehended one way or the other about such logic, they lived closer to the moment than even he did-usable all seasons, heat or cold), dark green plaid, Bermuda shorts plaid, something like that, like what was fashionable about 1960 and mother –bought for the first day of school (bought, always bought, at the Bargie, new, a hometown cheap jack discount house before those kind of places became world franchised and spread out to serve the fellahin world), fresh second-hand from the Sally (Salvation Army, remember) bin over on Berkeley Street, his mauve sweater (also purchased at Sally’s but earlier in the winter backing up the logic of that short -sleeved shirt decision), his waist-length denim jean jacket, not Sally-bought but bought when he was in the clover after hitting the perfecta at Suffolk a couple of months before and deciding, deciding against all gambler’s reason, that he should buy it against the coming winter colds, threw his keys in his pants’pocket and headed down the stairs, waving and shouting happy new year to Steve and Billy, who embroiled in some argument about who was to buy the night’s Thunderbird, let his remark pass without comment, and out the door to investigate the first night officially-sanctioned activity. And to figure out how, with eight dollars (and a couple of buck in change which he never counted as money, in the chips or out) in his pocket and the tracks closed for the season until after the new year, he was going to come up with a week’s twenty-two dollar rent due in a couple of days, and being a couple of months in arrest, to keep the super from his door for a while.

As he walked up Cambridge Street pass monstrous (monstrous in taking good cheap cold- water flat tenement housing for his brethren and monstrous for its low –bidder unfriendly design that looked to his now faux- professional architect’s opinion like a space station platform against the generally Bulfinch décor of the surrounding area) City Hall where it veered into Tremont toward the Common he suddenly had an idea. Hell, why hadn’t he thought of it before. Constantly studying those racing forms up in that fourth floor cold- water flat, hell not even cold-water, not in the room anyway, he thought must had finally gotten the better of him. What better night to work the pan-handle, the pan-handle that a few years back he had worked into an art form of sorts before the chilly winds of the 70s, his own hubristic addictions, Susie, and , hell, just some plain bad luck, had forced him into a few years of work, work doing a little of this and a little of that, before he got tired of that little of this and little of that, and focused all his energies on his “system,” his absolutely fool-proof system of beating the ponies, the dogs, or whatever other animal wanted to run like hell for the paying customers, the guys, the guys like him, who all had their own sure-fire beat-down systems and who could live, like him, on easy street on the profits. Just now though he had to work on his approach, his new year’s festive crowd approach since he knew his act would be rusty starting out.

Funny, he thought, as he worked up his approach in his head thinking about the finer points of the art form, most civilians, most people who have never been on the wrong side of the bum, or been just plain down on their luck and thus clueless about how to survive without about seventeen beautiful support systems around them to cushion the landing , think pan-handling is just pan-handling, put out your hat or hand kind of polite, eyes glued down to the ground, maybe taking their hand and pretending to shake off their dust, kind of “sorry to bother you,” and pitch for spare change, and mainly keep moving along playing the percentages by covering a lot of ground fast, or just staying put, maybe on the ground looking like some third world fellaheen refugee, blanket underneath (smart move against cold night and winter troubles), with all your worldly possessions, rucksack, some desperate towel to occasionally wipe off sweat or drool, your pitiful donut shop coffee cup with “donations”spelled wrong on it, about you. Jesus.

Forget all that. That approach was strictly for winos and losers. It might have worked in about 1926 or 27 when people walking by, mayfair swells or just ordinary joes, working stiffs, actually looked at a person, any person, when something was spoken to them, even by a ragamuffin stranger, or actually took the time and looked down at the ground and thought poor guy there but the grace of god go I, or some such thing. Today a guy needed an angle, a reason for a passer-by to stop. And that is where his old friend’s advice, his hobo road friend Black River Whitey, told around a jungle camp fire one night out in Indio, out in the California desert near the old Southern Pacific railroad tracks, about the tricks of the pan-handling trade came in handy.

Black River Whitey simply said this- shout at or do some fake (maybe not fake when you get into it) mental flip out when asking for dough. Nothing over the edge, way over the edge, nothing that they would yell copper over or take a swing at you for just to take a swing at you and impress their friends that they could beat up on a stewball bum ,but firm. See the idea Whitey said was that those couple of dollars (hey, not quarters or chump change like that, not when you are running this scam, this is strictly dollar minimum stuff not that quarter for coffee gag) they practically threw at you to get you out of their faces was far easier for them to do than to guess at what your next move will be, especially a guy with his girl and he thinking of later in the night thoughts and maybe scoring and not wanting to go mano y mano with some half-hobo and, and, losing. Or some lonely girl, thinking who knows what she would be thinking, nothing good for her for sure, relieved to come out unscathed and just a couple of dollars poorer. Beautiful, Black River Whitey, beautiful. But he thought as he walked toward the Common and geared up to his night’s work past a couple of half-frozen stoop winos spread out down on the ground, cup in front, across from Park Street Station any fool could see where winos and other lamos best stick with that cup in front of them and be glad of the few quarters that trickle their way.

Of course, Whitey also mentioned around that old Indio camp fire, that if you had time and had some dough to get some half-decent clothes, clothes like he had on now (only half-decent you don’t want to pitch hard luck stuff in a Brooks Brothers suit, not on the mean city streets anyway, save that pitch for sunnier days), you could work “the down on your luck” angle, needing an angel angle that worked with private social welfare organizations and single women especially. He knew the score on that one because he had, just young enough, just gentile shabby enough, just“rehab-able ” enough, and just civilized enough to pull it off made many dollars in tough times the last time they came his way a few years back (and a couple of friendly one night stands with some lonely women too, and not bad looking either, as a bonus). But that was day time magic, lunch time, and took precious time and that night with frozen temperatures in the air and distracted fast-moving people going from place to place the shout-out was his strategy of choice by default.

And his night of work, after a few off-hand rusty stumbles caused mainly by his not speaking loudly enough, not in your face enough, which he chalked up to his silent room exile over the previous few weeks, his studying the charts far into the night without speaking to others (a couple of nods to Billy and Steve, off- hand talk, mumbles really, when working some day labor shape-up) and a bunch of brush-offs (brush-offs that if he had it to do over again could have been avoided by simply keeping at it, something he forgot to do the first few times, including forget the cigarette or some other thing, maybe a piece of something they were eating, angle, proving to himself yet again that this pan-handling was as art form and not for amateurs who just messed things up for those who knew how to work the thing),worked

Worked to the tune of thirty-two dollars (he, feeling good after a good night’s work, threw the odd coins, the quarters and dimes mainly, that people tried to feed him to a couple of guys who were ground bound working the cheap jack coffee cup racket), about six packs worth of cigarettes of all kinds ( Black River Whitey always said if they pleaded no dough ask for cigarettes, or something, but keep asking, real good advice he learned again that night), a least six belts of high- shelf booze (Haig & Haig, Chivas from the tastes) from no dough pleaders with a flask at their hip to help keep the chill off, a couple of joints (to be saved for cooler, maybe a stray woman share with, times) from lingering 1960s freak-types still popping up occasionally on the Common rehashing old times , and he thought, an offer to stay at some woman’s house for the night, although the booze might have been taking his head over by then. (Besides he was still half-pining for Susie, Susie who had up and left him with her wanting habits intact, her now little white picket fence, kids, and dog dreams, when he decided he would rather do a little of this and that than work the nine to five numbness.) Now if he could only keep that dough ready for the rent and not bet on some foolish new year’s college football game or something before then he might be able to work on that sure-fire betting system of his in the comfort of his room and then really be on easy street.

High Street Hank’s Ode To Railroad Bill, The Hobo King

Here is the way High Street Hank told the story one night, one 1979 November night, as best I remember it, the story of the famous hobo king (real title, no kidding, they have their social gradations just like the rest of us), Railroad Bill, who even I had heard of previously in some mist of time way, told the story one campfire cold sludge coffee stew broth boiling in the kettle night, one miserable hell foggy raw under the bridge Frisco town night, maybe a half dozen guys (Spokane Spike, Portland Phil, Graybeard Gary, and I forgot who else) gathered close around to keep warm against the Pacific squalls, and to share the bottle night (Thunderbird so somebody had dough, had been successful panhandling that afternoon down the Embarcadero, or had cadged it, otherwise Tokay was the cheap jack beverage of choice), yah, Hank told the Railroad Bill story, the story of a prince of the American road, of the long vanishing race of master-less men.

Railroad Bill ,real name Theodore Greene, from one of the branches of the Greene family that used to run, or thought they used to run, Albany, although like Hank kept saying don’t hold him to the truth of that real name of that late knight, first- class, of the road since these guys were clumsy with names, aliases, addresses, mail-drops and stuff like that, nine to five stuff that keep the rest of us going, and connected, when he did some begging around looking for Bill’s roots after he passed on, not to inform any kin of his passing but just so he would know that Bill wouldn’t wind up in some potter’s field nameless, numbered, simple county-paid pine box, unadorned and un-remembered, like a million other hoboes, tramps, bums, winos, con men, grifters, sifters, and midnight drifters he had run into in his time, and with the idea that maybe too when old High Street Hank, (his road moniker, although he used others like every guy on the road but that one stuck more often than not and after a while gained a certain privilege, a certain “sure, come on in and have some stew or a swig , brother,” when uttered after some serious time in the jungles), passed on some roadie would wonder, wonder, curious wonder, big time and think big thoughts about his roots and about what he did, or did not, bullshit about, and maybe beg around a little to find out where he came from, or where he had been, but maybe too Railroad Bill the name Hank knew him by was just good enough and the rest was what Hank called his mind, the nine-to-five mind part of it, working overtime), now the late Railroad Bill, always laughed that he had never worked, and he never will (and now won’t), never had a steady job for more than a few days at a time and not many of them either (mainly washing dishes, pearl-diving he called it, some bracero hot sun work out in the California field when he was high on some hot tamale dark-eyed mex dame, some senorita all dark and with Spanish dancing eyes and ready to take him around the world [ you figure it out] for a dollar and a quarter and couple of shots of tequila, and mex dope), never worked for a check (cash only, no deductions brother, or else, and Bill was big, and tough, tough enough to enforce that against almost any guy, sometimes guys), hell, never cashed a check ( a real check, although for a while he kited a few, and did some time for that little effort, a few months, maybe a year, guys were always a little shaky on their time after they got out and sometimes built it up a little to impress the new guys, up in Shawshank in Maine) and never, never had a master over him, the kiss of death for any self-respecting ‘bo (and he was a ‘bo, hobo in the “class” structure of the railroad jungle, ahead of tramps, bums, con men, grifters, and bottom-feeding midnight sifters).

So Hank said this was to be Railroad’s story, nah, sketch, or something like that, he said, a story would make you think it was just for entertainment, and this one was about times when honest men (sorry there wasn’t much room for women except whorehouses, slave tents, houses, and getting knocked around by “what the hell” angry men, sorry too) hit the road just to hit the road, and not to write talk-talk immense books about it, literature, or get a feel for the great American night before heading back to academia and attend delicious cozy little conferences for the next fifty years about the plight of the master-less men, 20th century variety [or to write down told homey little sketches told by campfires about hobo kings after coming off the minute road either-JLB]. A time when if you didn’t have what it takes, if you weren’t strong enough to shimmy yourself on some box car to ride the rails, if you weren’t fast enough to outrun some bull railroad cop with a billy club with your name on it, if you didn’t have enough sense god gave geese to “clip” the necessities for the day at some Woolworth’s (more recently replaced by Wal-Mart and, frankly, easier to do now since nobody cares whether anybody “stole” some gabacho three for a dollar stuff, not the people who work there anyway unlike the child-like fawns who worked for fifty years and a good gold watch for Ma Woolworth), if your talk wasn’t smooth enough to make a few bucks to tide you over pan-handling (and cadge at least a couple of packs of cigarettes so you didn’t have to constantly roll your own Bull Durham coffin nails), if you couldn’t dream enough about some phantom white dress Phoebe Snow to get you through those hard first women-less days, if you didn’t have enough sense to latch on to some queen of the rails mutt to keep you company (and make “cute dog” hitchhike rides easier on the days when there were no rails in sight), then you would wind up with old Denver Slim (Railroad Bill’s first road brother), or a thousand other guys, buried early under some railroad trestle, down some deserted ravine, or beside some hollows hillside and nameless, nameless forever. And so he talked:

Hank woke with a start that dreary late October 1976 night when he first ran into Bill, early morning really from the look of the lightened sky, last cold night, or so he thought to himself , before drifting south then heading west to warmer climes for “winter camp.” Yes, he had the routine down pretty pat back then after a few years of scuttling around just short of getting it right, getting away from the damn winter colds that shortened more than one frozen stiff’s life. Summering in the Cambridges away from the congestion of the big towns (downtown Boston and fetid Pine Street Inns or sanctimonious Sallies [Salvation Army] flops , ditto Frisco, ditto L.A., ditto Chi town), and then wintering in the Keys (maybe Key Largo for the air but Key West if he needed hurry money, or in some Pancho Villa bandito arroyo near the border in desert California, or maybe higher up near Joshua Tree (where he had earlier, before his vagabond wandering days, holed up with a couple of mex senoritas with those sparkling eyes himself, some herb, and a couple of Phoebe Snows too, and with dough to go with the herb, when he rode the merry prankster yellow brick road bus back in the early 1970s). But just that minute that cold dreary morning minute his summer was interrupted by a loud sound of snoring and short breathe coughing from some fellow resident who had parked himself about twenty feet from his exclusive turf.

Hell, Hank laughed, explaining to everyone around that campfire [like we were school boys and couldn’t figure it out by ourselves that he was trying to be funny about it] he didn’t mean to tease us about his itinerary he said (although the gist of schedule was real enough, damn real), or about his mayfair swell digs. The fact was that back then he had been in kind of a bad streak and so sweet home Eliot Bridge right next to the Charles River, but not too next to Harvard Square had been his “home” of late then while he prepared for those sunnier climes just mentioned. Those last few previous months have been tough for him though after trying to make a go of it off the road [like a lot of road guys always try to do whether to beat up some bogus parole trap, beat some promise some family to do better trap, or just beat some road tired trap, except for the serious winos who would not know where to begin, wouldn’t want to begin, or even give it a thought] first losing that swell paying job “diving for pearls”at Elsie’s, the deli where all the Harvard Johns hung out for some real food after they got tired of the frat house/Lowell house fare, then losing his apartment when the landlord decided, legally decided, that six months arrears was all that he could take, and then losing Janie over some spat, and getting so mad he “took” a couple of hundred dollars from her pocketbook as he went out the not-coming-back door that last time. So there he was at “home” waiting it out. But that was his story not Bill’s and so he moved on.

He had a pretty good set-up under the bridge, he thought. Far enough away from the Square so that the druggies and drunks wouldn’t dream of seeking shelter so far from their base. But close enough for him to try to panhandle a stake to head west with in rich folks Harvard Square (although apparently the rich those days preferred to tithe in other ways than to part with their spare change to, uh, itinerants since he was having a rough time getting the bread together). And, moreover, the bridge provided some protection against the chilly elements, and a stray nosey cop or two ready to run a stray itinerant in order to fill his or her quota on the run-in sheet.

All that precious planning had gone for naught though because some snoring be-draggled newspaper- strewn hobo had enough courage to head a few hundred yards up river and disturb his home. There and then he decided he had better see what the guy looked like, see if he was dangerous, and see if he could get the hobo the hell out of there so he could get back to sleep for a couple more hours before the damn work-a-day world traffic made that spot too noisy to sleep in. Besides, as is the nature of such things on the down and out American road (and in other less exotic locales as well), the hobo might have other companions just ready to put down stakes there before he was ready to head west.

He unfolded his own newspaper covering, folded up his extra shirt pillow and put it in his make-shift ruck-sack, and rolled (rolled for the umpteenth time) his ground covering and placed it next to his ruck-sack. No morning ablutions to brighten breath and face were necessary that early, not in that zip code, he was thus ready for guests. He ambled over to the newspaper pile where the snoring had come from and tapped the papers with a stick that he had picked up along the way (never, never use your hand or you might lose your life if the rustling newspaper causes an unseen knife-hand to cut you six ways to Sunday. Don’t laugh it almost happened to him once, and only once.).

The hobo stirred, stirred again, and then opened his eyes saying “Howdy, my name is Boulder Shorty, what’s yours?” (A rule of the road in strange country was never to give your real moniker straight out but maybe some old time one and for Bill Boulder Shorty was just such a thing from when he first headed out with Denver Slim his first road companion. Bill later told Hank that he had never been to Boulder, nor Denver Slim to Denver, could not have picked it out on a map if he was given ten chances, and was six feet two inches tall so go figure on monikers. The way they got hanged on a guy was always good for a story in some desolate railroad fireside camp before Hank got wise enough to stay away from those sites, far away.) He told Bill his, his road moniker, his real road moniker at the time not having been out on the road long enough to get wise to the protective switch-up then, “Be-Bop Benny.” Bill laughed, muttering about beatniks and faux kid hobos in thrall of some Jack London call of wild down and out story or some on the road Jack Kerouac or something vision between short, violent coughs. Funny Bill’s bringing up that last name because Hank, having had a couple of years of junior college on the G.I Bill after ‘Nam ,1968-70, had gone to the library when he first headed out on the road back in the early 1970s after things first fell apart to read Kerouac’s On The Road and a couple of other books whose names he had forgotten to see if he could pick up any hobo tips, no sale, not for real hoboing, just book hoboing.

Funny too about different tramps, hobos, and bums (and there are differences, recognized differences just like in regular society). Hank and he , Boulder Shorty, turned real moniker Railroad Bill once he knew Hank was no danger to him after sizing up Hank as a raw kid, and after showing that raw kid a little later when they visited a railroad jungle set up near the abandoned Revere railroad tracks what happens when a six-two wiry guy who had been through it all chain-whipped a guy who was trying to steal his bottle of Muscatel, or whom he thought was trying to steal it, same thing, one campfire night, were hobos, the kings of the river, ravine, and railroad trestle. Some start out gruff, tough and mean, street hard mean. Others like Bill, kings, just go with the flow. And that go with the flow for a little while anyway (a little while being very long in hobo company) kept Bill and Hank together for a while, several weeks while before that short violent cough caught up with old Railroad (you didn’t have to know medicine, or much else, to know that was the small echo of the death-rattle coming up).

In those few weeks Railroad Bill taught Hank more about ‘bo-ing, more about natural things, more about how to take life one day at a time than anybody else, his long gone father included. About staying away from bums and tramps, the guys who talked all day about this and that scan they pulled off in about 1958 and hadn’t gotten over it yet. About how they slipped a couple of shirts under their sweaters or something and walked right out of Goodwill and nobody stopped them. Or about how some padre bought their story about being far from home and a little tough on the luck side and gave them a fiver. Or about how they ponzi’d some scheme and netted about sixteen dollars and change one time. All about 1958, like he said, and a river of dreams, sorrows and booze ago. [And as if to show the “class” distinction more clearly Hank went into an aside about how Railroad showed him how to hustle for serious dough from the padres (private social service agencies like the Sallys, U-Us, Universalist-Unitarians joined together under one god, and the Catholic Worker-type outfits), fifty buck dough, just by being not too dressed up but clean, and maybe having showered recently, and having a line of patter. Not too strong, not like you overplay you are scamming them (winos need not apply just keep that empty donation coffee cup out in front of you), and they know it too, but with a plausible plan to present to get you “back on your feet” with their little help. Hank said he would tell us about the details sometime, he never did, but he got fifty easy dollars, cash money, thanks to Railroad’s advice. A couple of times]

Bill told him about guys who took your money, your clothes, hell, and your newspaper covering in the dead of night just to do it, especially to young hobo kings. And about staying alone, staying away from the railroad, river, ravine camps that everybody talked about being the last refuge for the wayward but were just full of disease, drunks and dips. (He let Railroad talk on about that although that was one thing he was already hip to, a river camp was where he almost got his throat handed back to him by some quick- knife tramp that he had mentioned before when he talked about disturbing guys while they were newspaper roll sleeping ).

Yes, Railroad Bill had some street smart wisdom for a guy who couldn’t have been past forty, at least that’s what figured from the times he gave in his stories. (Don’t try to judge a guy on the road’s age because between the drugs or booze, the bad food, the weather-beaten road, and about six other miseries most guys looked, and acted, like they were about twenty years older. Even Hank, before a shower to take a few days dirt off and maybe hadn’t eaten for a while, looked older than his thirty-something years then.) But most of all it was the little tricks of the road that Railroad taught and showed him that held him to the man.

Like right off how Hank’s approach, his poor boy hat in hand approach, was all wrong in working the Harvard Square panhandle. You had to get in their faces, shout stuff at them, and block their passage so that the couple of bucks they practically threw at you were far easier to give than have you in their faces. Christ, Railroad, complete with unfeigned cough, collected about twenty bucks in an hour one day, one day when he was coughing pretty badly. And a ton of cigarettes, good cigarettes too, that he asked for when some guys (and a few gals) pled no dough. It was art, true art that day. Railroad said one girl wanted to take him home, said she wanted to feed him and help him out, implying some big sex wet dream thing out of some mex senorita sparkling eyes past. But Hank just let it go as so much hobo hot air and bravado. Still next time out pan-handling Hank made about twelve bucks, a ton of smokes, a joint and some girl went into Cardillo’s and brought him out a sandwich and coffee. Beautiful.

Or Railroad told him about how a hobo king need never go hungry in any city once he had the Sallies, U/U good and kindly neighbor feeding schedule down. No so much those places, any bum or tramp could figure that out, and wait in line, but to “volunteer” and get to know the people running the thing and get invited to their houses as sturdy yeoman “reclamation” projects. A vacation, see. Best of all let he said before was him showing how to work the social service agencies for ten here, and twenty there, as long as you could hold the line of patter straight and not oversell your misery. Tramps and bums need not apply for this kind of hustle, go back and jiggle your coffee cup in front of some subway station, and good luck.

[Railroad also taught him the ins and outs of jack-rolling, what you would call mugging, if things got really bad. Jack-rolling guys, bigger and smaller than you but Hank said he ‘d rather keep that knowledge to himself especially when the guys around the campfire started looking mean-eyed at him.]

Funny they never talked about women, although he tried once to talk to Railroad about Janie. Railroad cut him short, not out of disrespect he didn’t think, but he said they were all Janie in the end. He said talking about women was too tough for guys on the road with nothing but drifter, grifter, midnight sifter guys to stare at. Or looking too close at women when on the bum was bad for those longings for home things when you couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Although he did let on once that he was partial to truck stop road side diner waitresses serving them off the arm when he was in the clover (had dough) and was washed up enough to present himself at some stop along the road. Especially the ones who piled the potatoes extra high or double scooped the bread pudding as acts of kindred kindness. One night near the end, maybe a week before, time is hard to remember on the meshed together bum, Railroad started muttering about some Phoebe Snow, some gal all dressed in white, and he kind of smiled, and then the coughing started again.

Hank tried to get Railroad moving south with him (and had delayed his own departure to stick with him for as long as he figured he could get south before the snows hit) but Bill knew, knew deep in his bones, that his time was short, that he wanted to finish up in Boston (not for any special reason, he was from Albany, but just because he was tired of moving) and was glad of young hobo company.

It was funny about how he found out about Railroad’s Albany roots. One night, a couple of nights before the end, coughing like crazy, he seemingly had to prove to Hank that he was from Albany. Bill had mentioned that he was mad for William Kennedy’s novels, Ironweedand the like, that had just come out a couple of years before. He went on and on about the Phelans this and that. Jesus he knew the books better than Hank did. He say that is what made hobos the intelligentsia of the road. Some old Wobblie folksinger told him that once when they heading west riding the rails on the Denver & Rio Grande. When holed up in some godforsaken library to get out of the weather hobos read rather than just get curled up on some stuffed chair. Yes, Railroad was a piece of work. He was always saying stuff like that.

Then one morning, one too cold Eliot Bridge morning, he tried to shake his newspaper kingdom and got no response. Old Bill had taken his last ride, his last train smoke and dreams ride he called it. He left him there like Bill wanted him to and like was necessary on the hobo road. He made a forlorn anonymous call to the Cambridge cops on his way out of town. But after that on those few occasion when High Street Hank passed some potter’s field he tipped his fingers to his head in Railroad Bill’s memory, his one less hobo king memory.

A Hobo’s Lament

Only A Hobo by Bob Dylan

Lyrics

As I was out walking on a corner one day

I spied an old hobo, in a doorway he lay

His face was all grounded in the cold sidewalk floor

And I guess he’d been there for the whole night or more

Only a hobo, but one more is gone

Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song

Leavin’ nobody to carry him home

Only a hobo, but one more is gone

A blanket of newspaper covered his head

As the curb was his pillow, the street was his bed

One look at his face showed the hard road he’d come

And a fistful of coins showed the money he bummed

Only a hobo, but one more is gone

Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song

Leavin’ nobody to carry him home

Only a hobo, but one more is gone

Does it take much of a man to see his whole life go down

To look up on the world from a hole in the ground

To wait for your future like a horse that’s gone lame

To lie in the gutter and die with no name?

Only a hobo, but one more is gone

Leavin’ nobody to sing his sad song

Leavin’ nobody to carry him home

Only a hobo, but one more is gone

Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music

“The Old Man’s Old Sea”

It was dawn, or maybe just those few minutes before the dawn, those dark light minutes when the sun’s battle for the day coming over the ocean’s eastern horizon is set. The waves splashed, although that day not so innocently, against the waiting sand, sand beaten down since time immemorial. This beach, this northern clime beach, the far end of Olde Saco, Maine beach, was filled with empty clam shells waiting sandification (if that is the name for it, that long process of grinding down to dust and fine enough for angel bums, angel beachcomber explorations, angel teen bikini beach blanket bingo boy –girl lolls, if not then close enough), abandoned and mislaid lobster traps (better brush up on the law of the seas, and keep a heavy object handy against those uncivilized enough to demand their washed-up crates back) occasional oil slicks spilled from the trawlers (also a law of the seas issues but not chargeable except in immense smears) working trawlers nearby (the crew hoping that the pre-dawn coffee holds out until they get to the killing fields), the flotsam and jetsam streamed here of a thousand ships, cargoes, careless throwaways and conscious, very conscious dumpings (law of the seas be damned) , like the sea was just another land-fill wanting filling.

That day though he was ready, ready for the hundredth hundredth time to walk the walk, the ocean walk that has defined more parts of him than heaven will ever know. Walk the walking daddy walk, he called it now (long ago calling it high, benny high, or maybe weed high, walking arm and arm with some sun browned-skinned honey, some ex-surfer’s girl, slumming against the next new thing, testing the waters around the edge of the 1960s summer of love night, down on Malibu or LaJolla oceans, walking with the king, walking then with some sex-driven purpose, whispering that purpose in her ear, or hopes, heard from some mad monk jazz man trying to hit the high white note out in ‘Frisco town). As he buttoned up his slicker against the April winds that came there more often than not he saw, saw faintly in the distance, a figure, a fellow traveler taking his, her or its’ (don’t laugh he had seen horses, unridden horses, trotting these beaches, although no sea monsters), maybe also hundredth hundredth walk along the ocean sidewalk, and maybe, just maybe, for the same reason.

Today, hundredth, hundredth walk or not, he was in a remembering mood, a high dudgeon remembering mood that always got triggered by proximity, anywhere within fifty mile proximity if the truth be known, to the ocean. He had just finished up a piece of work, a small journal small paid piece of work, a recollection really, borne of fierce schoolboy night remembrances, that reminded him of seas, sea-sides, sea walks, sea rocks, ocean-side carnival amusement parks placed on jutting piers as if to mock the intrinsic interest that one would have in the sea, our homeland the sea, and he needed to sort this out, this sea-memory desecration also for that now familiar ten-thousandth time. He thought then that maybe he had better begin at the beginning in order to sort things out, or try to, so he would be finished in that hour or so that it would take him to walk this walk, this rambling ocean walk, this no walking daddy walk (although now that he thought about it walking daddy might have some sexual purpose behind it as well reminding of old day ex-surfer’s girl, blankets wrapped around and fondlings in wayward deserted beach corners, but that was for another time, that thought ), and about that time he would pass that solitary walker coming the other way and be obliged under some law of the sea to break his train of thought and remark on the nature of the day, the nature of the ocean, and the immense joys of foam-flecked ocean-ness brought forth by old King Neptune to that passing stranger.

Ah, memory, jesus, just the names, Taffrail Road, Yardarm Lane, Captain's Walk, Quarterdeck Road, Sextant Circle, and the Snug Harbor Elementary School tell a story all on their own. Yes, those names, those seemingly misplaced, misbegotten names and places from the old housing project down over in Olde Saco (called Irishtown and Frenchtown by the locals depending on the street but generically known as the Acre to the general public passing by), his old hometown, and where he came of age surely evoked imagines of the sea, of long ago sailing ships, and of desperate, high stakes battles fought off shrouded, mist-covered coasts by those hearty enough to seek fame and fortune. And agile enough to keep it. Almost from his first wobbly, halting baby steps down at “the projects” he had been physically drawn to the sea, a seductive, foam-flecked siren call that had never left him.

Needless to say with that ocean as a backdrop, ever since he was a toddler his imagination, his sense of imagery, his sense of the nature of the world has been driven by the sea as well. Not so much of pirates and prizes, although those drove his early youth a bit but of the power of nature, for good or evil. And on those long ago days, just like now, he was dressed against the impending inclement weather with his mustard yellow rain slicker(French’s mustard color not Guiden’s, okay) complete with Gloucester fisherman’s rain floppy rain hat of the same color and rubber boots, black, knee-length boots that went squish, squish and have since before time immemorial.

Of course, anybody with any sense knows that anyone who had even a passing attachment to a place like Olde Saco, tucked in a bay, an Atlantic bay, had to have an almost instinctual love of the sea; and, a fear of its furies when old Mother Nature turned her back on us. Yes, the endless sea, our homeland the sea, the mother we never knew, the sea... But enough of those imaginings. If being determines consciousness, and if you love the ocean, then it does not hurt to have been brought up in Olde Saco with its ready access to the bay and water on three sides. That said, the focal point for any experience with the ocean in Olde Saco centered, naturally, around its longest stretch of beach, Olde Saco Central Beach. Puny by beach far-as-the-eye-can-see standards, Olde Saco puny by Carlsbad (California Carlsbad) farther-than-the-eye-can-see standards say but a place to learn the ropes of how to deal with the sea, with its pitfalls, its mysteries, it lure, and its lore.

For those of a certain age brought forth by the sea, including this writer, one cannot discuss Olde Saco Central Beach properly without reference to such spots such as Aunt Jenny’s famous landmark ice cream stand (now a woe-begotten clam shack of no repute). For those who are clueless as to what he spoke of, or had only heard about it in mythological terms from older relatives, or worst, had written it off as just another ice cream joint you can only dream of such heavens although someone, not him, not him today as he remembranced with a broad stroke and had no time for pretty descriptions, for literary flourishes, should really do themselves proud and write the history, yah, the child’s view history of that establishment. And make the theme, make the theme if you will, the bond between New England love of ice cream and of the sea (yes, it is true, other parts of the country, other ocean parts of the country as well, are, well, nonplussed by the ice cream idea, and it shows in their product).

Know this for now though: many a hot, muggy, sultry, sweaty summer evening was spent in line impatiently, and perhaps, on occasion, beyond impatience, waiting for one of those 21 (or was it 22?) flavors to cool off with. In those days the prize went to cherry vanilla in a sugar cone (backup: frozen pudding). He would not bore the reader with superlative terms and“they don’t make them like they use to,” especially for those who only know “Aunt Jenny’s ” from the later, pale imitation franchise days out on some forsaken turnpike highway, but at that moment, that child moment ,he was in very heaven.

Nor can one forget those stumbling, fumbling, fierce childish efforts, bare-footed against all motherly caution about the dreaded jellyfish, pail and shovel in hand, to dig for seemingly non-existent clams down toward the Pineville Cove end of the beach at the, in those days, just slightly oil-slicked, sulfuric low tide. Or the smell of charcoal-flavored hot dogs on those occasional family barbecues (when one in a series of old jalopies that his father drove worked well enough to get the family there) at the then just recently constructed old Treasure Island that were some of the too few times when his family acted as a family. Or the memory of roasted, really burnt, sticky marshmallows sticking to the roof of his mouth.

But those thoughts and smells were not the only ones that interested him that day. No trip down memory lane would be complete without at least a passing reference to high school Olde Saco Central Beach. The sea brings out many emotions: humankind's struggle against nature, some Zen notions of oneness with the universe, the calming effect of the thundering waves, thoughts of mortality, and so on. But it also brings out the primordial longings for companionship. And no one longs for companionship more than teenagers. So the draw of the ocean is not just in its cosmic appeal but hormonal, as well. Mind you, however, he was not thinking here of the nighttime Olde Saco Beach scene (really down at the Seal Rock end way from maddening beach ball families, away from French- Canadian homeland tourists, away from nosey Acre parents), the time of "parking" and the "submarine races". His thoughts were now pure as the driven snow. Hence he thought to confine himself to the day time beach.

Virtually from the day he and his friends (his corner boy friends from his high school hang-out over at Mama’s Pizza Parlor, the one with the gigantic jukebox with huge beautiful latest rock and roll selections and five for a quarter over on Spruce Street, not the one on Pleasant Street which was for, for, hell, the families looking to have a mom’s night off pizza, Jesus, no) got out of school for the summer vacation they headed for the beach. And not just any section of that beach but the section directly between the Pineville Yacht Club and the Pine Tree Boat Club. Now were those corner boys situating themselves in that spot done so that they could watch all the fine boats at anchor? Or was this the best swimming location on the beach? Hell no, this is where they heard (and here include his old running pal and classmate, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley) all the "babes" were. Information passed down from generation to generation since, he guessed they invented teenage-ness a hundred years or so back. Those beat teens were, apparently, under the influence of Beach Blanket Bingo or some such teenage beach film. (For those who are again clueless this was a grade B ‘boy meets girl’ saga the plot behind a thousand Hollywood films, except not always on the beach.)

Well, for those who expected a movie-like happy ending to this section of the remembrance piece, you know, where he meets a youthful "Ms. Right" to the strains of the song Sea of Love, forget it. (That is the original Sea of Love, by the way, not the one used in the movie of the same name sung by Tom Waits at the end, and a cover that you should listen to on YouTube.) He will keep the gory details short, though. As fate would have it there may have been "babes" aplenty down there but not for that lad. He was just too socially awkward (read, tongue-tied) to get up the nerve to talk to girls (female readers substitute boys here). And on reflection, if the truth were to be known, he would not have known what to do about such a situation in any case. No job, no money and, most importantly, no car for a date to watch one of those legendary "submarine races." But one can hardly fault the sea for that, right?

But visions of nearly one-half century ago hardly exhaust the lure of the sea. And, speaking of visions, that fellow sea-seeker he mentioned that he saw a while ago, coming from the other end of the beach was starting to take shape, it was a he, our man could tell by the walk, by the sea walk that men put on when they are alone with their thoughts, although beyond that the sea-seeker was too far away for him to determine age, class (this is a very democratic beach, in most spots, with few vulgar and almost universally disregarded no-trespassing-private property-keep out-beware-of-dogs-police-take-notice signs), or physical description, as the suppressed light from the cloudy morning day gets a little brighter

Funny, some people he had known, including those he grew up with, grew up with breathing ocean air and who started with a love of the sea much as he did, moved to Kansas, Omaha, Peoria, Winnemucca or some such place, some such distinctly non-ocean place and never looked back. Christ, as was well known by one and all who knew him he got very nervous even then when, as a city boy, he went to the country and did not have the feel of city lights to comfort him. Not as well- known was the fact, the hard fact that he got nervous, very nervous, when he was not within driving distance of some ocean, say that fifty miles mentioned above. So keep, please keep, your Kansas, your Omaha, your Peoria, and your damn blessed Winnemucca and let him be, be in places like Bar Harbor, Maine, Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, Sanibel Island, Florida, Carlsbad, California (hell no, not the New Mexico one ), Mendocino, ditto California, Seattle, Washington just to name a few places on this continent, and there are many others, and on other continents, or the edges of other continents, as well. And stories, plenty of stories, which he doesn’t have time to tell you now except for one that will stand in as an exemplar for what he meant. By the way that form, that mannish form, coming toward him was looking more like a young man by the speed of his walk, and he too seemed to have on a the favored sea dog yellow rain jacket.

****

Visions of Angelica, Angelica of the homeland sea, January 1970.

I waved good-bye to Angelica, once again, as she drove off from the ocean front campsite that we had been camping out on, the Leo Carrillo State Park near Point Magoo about fifty miles or so north of Los Angeles. She will now drive the road back in her green Ford Hertz unlimited mileage, mid-size rental (paid for, as she explained one night, by her parents whose golden age of the automobile-frenzied minds counted it as a strike against me, a very big strike, that when I had “kidnapped” their daughter on the 1969 blue-pink summer road west down in Steubenville, Ohio I didn’t even have a car). She planned (on my advice) to drive back mostly on the ocean-abutted, white-capped waves smashing against jagged ancient shore rocks, Pacific Coast Highway down through Malibu and Santa Monica to take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as the final point on her first look ocean trip, on the way to LAX to take a flight back to school days Muncie, Indiana.

She will also be driving back to the airport and getting on that miserable plane east knowing as I do since we talked about it incessantly during her stay, that some right things, or at least some maybe right things, like our being together last summer heading free west and for these two January weeks in front of the sea, our homeland the sea, before her classes started again, got caught up in the curious web of the human drama. For no understandable reason. Hey, you already knew this if you have ever had even that one teeny-weeny, tiny, minuscule love affair that just had no place to go, or no time to take root, or just got caught out there in the blue-pink night. Yah, you know that story. But let me take some minutes to tell you this one. If it seems very familiar and you “know” the plot line well then just move on.

To get you up to speed after Angelica and I had been on the heartland hitchhike road (and places like Moline, Neola, and Omaha are nothing but the heartland, good or bad), she, well, she just got tired of it, tired of the lacks, tired of the uncertainties of the road. Hell hell-on-wheels, I was getting tired of it myself except I was a man on a mission. The nature of that mission is contained in the words“search for the blue-pink great American West night” thus the particulars of that mission need not detain us here. So in Neola, Iowa, Neola, Iowa of all places aided by “fairy grandmother” Aunt Betty, who ran the local diner where Angelica worked to help make us some dough to move on, and her own sense of dreams she called it quits back in September. Aunt Betty drove us to Omaha where Angelica took the bus back east, Indiana east from Nebraska, to hometown Muncie and I hit Interstate 80 West headed first to Denver before the snows, or so I hoped.

Honestly, although we exchanged addresses and telephone numbers where messages could be left, or where we could speak to each other (her parents’ house not being one of them), and made big plans to reunite in California in January during her school break, I didn’t really think that once we were off the road together that those plans would pan out.

Now I may not remember all my reasoning at the time this far removed, the now of my telling this story many years later, but I had had enough relationships with women to sense this one was good, very good, while it lasted but it could not survive the parting. Not one of those overused “absence makes the heart grow fonder” things you hear about. And, truth to tell, because I thought that was the way things would play out, I started getting focused back on Boston Joyell more than a little as I walked a lot, stood at the shoulder of the hitchhike road a lot, and fitfully got my rides on the road west.

But see this is where you think you have something figured out just so and then it goes awry. Angelica called, left messages, sent letters, even a telegram, to Denver (to the commune where, Jack and Mattie, my traveling companions on the final leg west whom I had met earlier in the spring on a different trip down to D.C., were staying). She sent more communications in early December saying that she was still coming to Los Angeles as well where we three stayed with a few artistic friends of Jack and Mattie’s. Cinema-crazed artistic friends, including one budding film director who, moreover, had great dope connections right into the heart of Mexico. This is where they would stay while I planned to push the hitchhike road north heading to San Francisco.

I once, in running through one of the scenes in this hitchhike road show, oh yah, it was the Neola scene, mentioned that in Angelica what you saw was what you got, what she said was what she meant, and both those were good things indeed. And so if I had thought about it a minute of course she was coming to California in January and staying with me for her two week break, and maybe longer. So when January came she contacted me though John and Mattie, who like I said were now staying with this very interesting experimental film-maker, David, in the Hollywood hills and canyons. I started back south to L.A. in order to meet her at the airport. From there I had it planned that we would go to Point Magoo and camp out like in the“old days” at an ocean front state park.

Needless to say when I greeted her at LAX we both were all smiles, I was in more than all smiles mode, because I had been “stag” for a while and she was, well, fetching as always, or almost always. Here though is where I noticed that the road really is not for everyone. In Neola, and later getting on the bus back home in Omaha, poor Angelica looked pretty haggard but at the airport, well like I said, she was fetching.

And, guess what, she brought her sleeping bag that we got for her in a Lexington, Kentucky Army-Navy Store when we first seriously started on the road west. And the first thing she said about it was, referring to a little in-joke between us, “it fits two, in a pinch.” Be still my heart. So we gathered up her stuff, did the airport exit stuff (easier in those days) and picked up the outside shuttle to the Hertz car rental terminal. We were jabbering away like crazy, but best of all, we were like, a little, those first days last summer back in that old-time Steubenville truck stop diner and cabin when I first met her.

Of course, part of the trip for her, part of what she went as far as she could with me on the hitchhike road for, was to get to California and see what it was all about, and what the ocean was all about since she was a heartland girl who had never seen the ocean before. When we got to Point Magoo she flipped out, she flipped out mostly at the idea that we would stay, could stay, right on the beach in front of the ocean. And just like a kid, just like I did when I was kid and saw the ocean, when she saw the Pacific, she jumped right in. Hell, she was so excited she almost got caught in a small riptide. I had to go drag her out. I won’t say we had fun every minute of those weeks acting out our ocean nomadic existence, but most minutes, and I could see that she felt the same way.

Naturally, as time drifted away toward her return flight date we talked more and more about what the future, if any, held in store for us. She was adamant about not going back on the road, she was adamant as well that she wanted to finish school and make something of herself. I had no serious defense against that practical wisdom. And, truthfully, I wasn’t, toward the end of her stay, pushing the issue, partially because even I could see that it made sense but also, we had had a “flare-up”over the Boston Joyell question (I am being polite here).

But it was more than that; the flat out, hungry truth was that I really didn’t know how to deal with a Midwestern what you see is what you get woman like Angelica. I was more used to virtuous Irish Catholic girls who drove me crazy as a kid getting me all twisted up about religion, about nice girls, and about duplicity when I found out what the real score was with this type of young girl/ woman later. I was also, and Joyell was the epitome of this type, totally in sync (well, as much as a man can be) with the Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of human relationships 24/7 kind of woman. And fatally attracted to them (and still am). This Angelica look at things only a couple of ways, let’s work things out easy-like, heavens, let’s not analyze everything to the nth degree flipped me out. Angelica was a breath of fresh air and, maybe, maybe, about ten years later, and two divorces later to boot, I would have had that enough sense god gave geese to hold onto her with both hands, tightly, very tightly. But I was in my blue-pink search phase and not to be detoured.

Of course all this hard work of trying to understand where we stood put a little crack in our reason for being together in the first place. The search for, search for something. Maybe, for her, it was just that life minute at the ocean and then on to regular life minutes out in the thickets of the white picket fences. She never said it then in so many words but that seemed to be the aim. And to be truthful, although I was only just barely thinking about it at the time, as the social turmoil of the times got weird, diffuse, and began to evaporate things started to lose steam I had thoughts like that too, minute thoughts. As we were, seemingly, endlessly taking our one-sided beatings as those in charge started a counter-offensive ( a counter-offensive still going on) people, good people, but people made of human clay nevertheless got tired of the this and that existence, even Joyell. Joyell of Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of relationships 24/7 was also weary and wary of what was next and where she fit into “square” society. Christ, enough of that, we know, or knew, that song too well.

A couple of days before Angelica was to leave, and on a day when the sun seemed especially bright, especially bright for then smog-filled Los Angeles January, and warm, not resident warm but Boston and Muncie warm, sat like two seals sunning ourselves in the glow of mother ocean she nudged me and asked me if I had a joint. Now Angelica liked a little vino now and then but I can’t recall her ever doing a joint (grass, marijuana, herb, ganja, whatever you call it in your neck of the woods). So this is new. The problem, although not a big one in ocean-side state park 1970 Southern California, was that I was not “holding.” No problem though, a few spots down the beach was an old well-traveled, kind of beat-up Volkswagen van that I knew, knew just as sure as I was standing on that white sand beach, was“holding.” I went over, asked around, and “bingo” two nice big joints came traveling with me back to our campsite. Oh, daddy, daddy out in the be-bop blue-pink night thank you brother van man. For just a minute, just that 1970 California minute, the righteous did inherit the earth.

Back at our camp site Angelica awaited the outcome of my quest, although she also wanted to wait until later, until the day’s sun started going down a bit more to go into that smoked-filled good night. When that later came Angelica was scared/ thrilled, as she tried to smoke the one I lit up for her and started coughing like crazy, but that was nothing then. Everybody, at least everybody I knew, went through that same baptism. But Jesus, did we get mellow, that stuff, as was most stuff then, was primo, not your ragweed bull stuff that ran the rounds later. And why should it have not been so as we were so close to the then sane Mexican border of those days to get the good stuff.

But all of this build-up over this dope scene is so much filler, filler in those days when if you didn’t at least take a pipe full (inhale or not, like it or not) you were a square “squared.”What the stuff did for Angelica, and through Angelica to me, got her to open up a little. No, not about family, or old boyfriends, or her “this and that”problems. No, but kind of deep, kind of deep somewhere that she maybe didn’t know existed. Deep as I had ever heard her before. She talked about her fate, the fate of the fates, about what was going on in the world, no, not politics; she was organically incapable of that. Mystics stuff, getting in touch with the sea homeland stuff, earth mother stuff too in a way. Dope-edged stuff sure but when she compared the splashing foam-flecked waves to some cosmic force that I forget how she put it (remember I was dope-addled as well) then for just that moment, just that moment when the old red-balled sun started to dip to the horizon on one of those fairly rare days when it met the ocean I swear that Angelica knew, knew in her heart, knew in her soul even, what the blue-pink American West dream stuff I had bombarded her with was all about. That was our moment, and we both knew it.

So when leaving came a couple of days later and we both knew, I think, as we packed up her things, including that well-used sleeping bag, we had come to a parting of the roads. As I put her stuff in the rental car she sweetly blurted out something I was also thinking, “I’ll always remember that night we made the earth under the cabin in Steubenville shake.” And I thought I bet she will, although she forgot the part about the making the roof of the cabin move too. And so there I was, waving as she drove off to her Angelica dreams. And I never saw her again.

*********

But enough of ancient thoughts, of ancient sea thoughts, and ancient sea loves because just now he saw that previously distant figure on the beach was none other than a young boy, a young boy of maybe six or seven, not older he was sure. About fifty yards away he stopped, as boys and girls will when confronted with the endless treasures of the sea, and was intently looking at some sea object although the old geezer could not make it out from his distance. What he could make out, make out very plainly, was that he was wearing a mustard yellow rain slicker (French’s mustard color not Guiden’s) complete with a Gloucester fisherman’s floppy rain hat of the same color and knee-deep rubber boots, black, of course. As they approached each other the old geezer noticed that the lad had that same determined sea walk that he had carried with him since childhood. The old geezer looked at the lad intensely, the young lad looked at the old geezer intensely, and they nodded as they passed each other. No words, no remarks on the nature of the day, the nature of the ocean, and the joys of ocean-ness brought forth by old King Neptune need be spoken between them . The nod, the ocean swell, and the ocean sound as the waves crashed almost to the sand beneath their feet, spoke for them. The torch had been passed.

“Our Homeland The Sea”

Funny, he, call him old man of the sea, although that appellation has been done to literary death in about sixteen different ways not all of them apt, in any case let’s not, definitely not, make it some Hemingway-ish old man, some viejo, some Caribe viejo, fighting some stinking marlin, or some such fish, mano y mano, stinking, man and fish, fighting some life and death literary metaphor struggle, but that name fits as good as any, thought as he watched out over another endlessly enchanted seascape, next stop England or with a wind drift or tide drift homeland, forbear homeland Ireland, how many such scenes he had witnessed in his whitened lifetime. This time the sea-scape, god-brokered, maybe god-forsaken, with furious winds driving white-capped waves thundering to ill-prepared but eagerly waiting to be taken like some overripe maiden beaches (better metaphor that some stinking viejo and fish combine, alright) and already filled with flotsam and jetsam, nature’s jimson, from a million previous rages, nature rages now co-mingled with his own benighted rages, brought another rage (rage against the dying of the light) about how much of his life had revolved around the sea, around trying to get a handles on the sea, trying to see, well, hell at this late date where he fit in, no, where he stood, okay. And after his rant subsided he thought this…

Maybe it was the sheer hard fact, hard to get around fact anyway, of the transcontinental California night calling after too long an absence, the California be-bop, be-bop, be-bop, praise saint be-bop, our lord and king be-bop, late 1960s night, summer of love night and its aftermath when all things were possible and when old Wordsworth had it right, had it poem right, to be young was very heaven.



The afternoon turned back to morning as he headed west, funny, flown, jet-flown these days, no more those old days hitchhike road, waiting alone or with some angel woman by his side on some Route 6, or 66, hailing some lonesome trucker looking for poor boy company, someone to rant to at seventy-five miles an hour to in order to relieve his own desperate life with a road son, waiting too in some forlorn Neola, Winnemucca, Boise, Grand Island, Flagstaff, wherever, waiting a long time. Or on some just hopped flat-bed Denver & Rio Grande, Illinois Central, Southern Pacific train making time with the last of the old time hobos and dreaming his own dreams of some Phoebe Snow left behind in sorrow or anger. Less frequently, strangely, a flat-out car run west riding Route 80, 90 to Frisco town thundering through farmlands, the plains, rockymountain high and down on to the desert before golden-gated blessed land’s end, Frisco .



The eternal California be-bop night after years of Maine solitude, of Maine grey-blue-white washed, white-crested, white-capped, foam-flecked Atlantic ocean-flotsam and jetsam strewn waters. After all not all angel oceans are created the same, just look at the fury-driven pacific ocean in front of him, no friend to man, to beast, or to god, not all oceans speak to one in the same way, speak that siren song whisper, speak hushed tones that no man (and here man means man or woman, okay) dare speak above, nature’s arbitrary law, although they are all old Father (or is it Brother now) Neptune’s thoughtful playgrounds. (Thoughtful for ten thousand thoughtful walks, ten thousand un-thoughtful walks, and eight thousand more or less, indifferent walks, twenty-eight thousand, more or less, chances anyway.



California’s, yes, white-washed, yes, white-crested, yes, white-capped, yes, foam-flecked speak to gentle, warm lapis lazuli blue wealth dreams of the quest, the long buried life long quest for the great blue-pink great American West night, blue-pinked skies of course. Yes maybe it was just that sheer hard fact, hard to get around still, that pushed him, old man of the sea him, out of Eastern white, white to hate the sight of white, snowed-indoors, Eastern gale winds blowing a man against the sand-pebbled seas, and into the endless starless, better, sunless night. Yes, maybe just a change of color, or to color, from the white white whiteness of the sea stretched, white-etched night. Right down to the shoreline white where the waves devoured night and left their mark, their graffiti-etched mark.



Maybe too it was the sheer fact, he would no longer speak of hard to get around facts around since that was enameled into his psyche now, of preparing, against the timetable of that Eastern white night, timetable set and etched by that shoreline outline and that fugitive lover who ravished her shoreline sands and then fled, this and that for the winter California day, and night, the ocean California that set the thoughts of the be-bop night (hell, more than be-bop, be-bop to the nth power) suddenly came brain-storming in waves like that turbulent sea over him not seen or heard from since those first summer of love days, and the quest for the blue-pink skies humming once again in the, admittedly, older-boned voyager, voyeur (some snicker “dirty old man” and save such high society words as voyeur for the professionals) of dreamed once sultry, steamy sex-ridden nights.



And vivid memories of golden Butterfly Swirl (born, Cathy Callahan, corn-fed, no more from hunger okie forbears migration Carlsbad, California, circa 1950) and her sex, her seventeen different little tricks (to match her age in that 1967 summer of love night, if you need a date), learned, learned from who knows where, maybe mother ocean herself or some karma sutra book but certainly not from her former “seeking the perfect wave” surfer boyfriend-where would that fit into his timetable? Such thoughts, such memory thoughts a different proposition, a different proposition altogether, on most days, from preparing to face fierce Maine winter mornings, unaided by the graces, speak freely of the graces please, and forms nature provides its hardier creations. No thoughts today of heavy woolen coats, double-stitched, double-plied, doubled-vested, old nor’ easter worthy, or heavy woolen pants, same chino pants of youth, same black chino pants, no cuffs, except winter weight, not the always summer weight of no knowledge youth (inside sad joke), or heavy boots, heavy clunky rubbery boots mocking against the snow-felt, ocean-edged soft sand streets, or maybe, more in tune with aged-bone recipes heavy-soled, heavy-rubber soled (or was it rubber souled?) running shoes (also known in the wide world of youth as sneakers, better Chuck’s, Chuck Taylor’s). Of scarves, and caps, full-bodied caps, better seaman’s caps, heavy, wool, dark blue, built to stand against the ocean-stormed waves crashing and thrashing against ships hulls, and gloves, gloves to keep one’s hands from frosty immobility he need not speak. Or will not speak. Of this he will speak…



A memory picture too of boyhood friend Jimmy Leclerc, remember that name like you remember the seas, like you remember certain tales, like you remember, well, like you remember as best you can , that which somebody told you about but which you did not experience (although Jimmy experiences filled his soul, filled his sea-watching soul even this day). Blessed, sainted, sanctified, cradled, born under a certain star, lucky maybe if you believe in making your own luck or having it thrust upon you, Jimmy, young, maybe four or five, no, five, definitely five, school ready, school ready come five year old fall, mucking around the summertime shoreline mucks, low tide, shoreline white-etched ravishes well up the beach, fetid smells from seven kinds of tanker-passing oil slicks, rancid chemicals from the cross-bay industrial plant, human mucks mixed in from ten thousand , ten thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge) sources seeping back to shore and mephitic (thanks, Norman Mailer) seeps as well from the close by marshes that guard the approaches to the sea.



Jimmy, a tow-headed, tow-headed kid, five, portending Adonis and ladies, maybe some Butterfly Swirl and her seventeen little tricks when he gets old enough to know of such tricks, know of teaching such tricks just in case he lands a neophyte, knowing from some savior older brother himself sent to sea at fourteen, or some other worthy sea-mate, that day, that picture day, walking toward the ever-present amateur clam diggers(or maybe professional but it was hard to see how they, or anyone, could make a living out of oil- slicked, fetid, human mucked clams),high rubber boots, high almost to the crotch (although Jimmy would not have pointed that hard fact out, no then), buckets, small buckets, portending small payloads, sea-rakes, sea-shovels, sea-backs and working against time before the relentless seas come back to cover their own.

And just that day, that low tide and mucks days, Jimmy learned a valuable lesson from those vagrant gypsy clam-diggers (literally gypsies, Roma now, if you prefer, but just plain ordinary gypsies then, and called so, mostly seen with travelling carnivals and on city sidewalks selling cheap roses for the lady, and maybe their daughters too, selling that is, they used the clams in some special olio broth magic that kept their race alive in hard times) about only believing half (or less, but that was another lesson another time) of what you hear. He had heard a few days before, heard from some older boys who lived up the street (the name of the street not important, not important to the lesson, but maybe, naming will act as an omen, name Taffrail Road evoking long ago wooden ships and sea-farers worthy of the name, sea-ward pirate cousins of that day’s gypsies) and who were interested in girls, as girls, as opposed to childhood boys leave girls for later pickings and moonings, and not like Jimmy, Jimmy even then girls as foils for his child-like schemes, not all evil, not at all, but not in entangling, intertwining ways like they spoke of, that the sea before them contained mythic submarines, enemy submarines out beyond the breakers. He asked one of the gypsy diggers if he had seen any submarines around while he was digging. The digger spoken to by Jimmy called to his gypsy partner repeating Jimmy’s question and they both let out with a low groan laugh, then a heartier one. The first man laughed some more and then said to Jimmy that while there were not many around anymore since the war (World War II for those who are keeping counts on wars, or just trying to keep them straight), since the bloody Germans has been defeated and good riddance (reflecting the decimation of his kindred in Europe who took a serious beating from the bloody bastard Nazis) but he said on certain moonless nights you could see objects that certainly looked like submarines so be watchful, and be careful. So for a couple of months thereafter whenever the moon was low or it was cloudy Jimmy looked out fiercely at the open sea and then after a while went on to other things. Lesson about half of what you hear learned.

Memory fast forward. A moonless June night, circa 1961 Jimmy Leclerc was sitting in his brother borrowed 1957 two-toned (cherry red and white) Chevy (the old man as he mulled the ancient fact knew , he knew said brother should have been shot, or worse , for letting anybody, even a brother, even a brother who spent the whole afternoon turtle-waxing the damn thing in order to borrow his chariot borrow his chariot) down at the far end of Seal Rock (name also not important except that Seal Rock says beach, says mystery and says, far end says, that this is the local lovers’ lane for the free-spirits who don’t mind the crowds of cars that dotted that place on moonless June nights, and other times too, or mind being seen in a spot that means only one thing, that you will be anywhere from point one to point thirty Monday morning in Olde Saco High School (Maine, okay) before school “lav” talk, boys’ or girls’ lav accordingly, about who did, or did not, do what and with whom (or is it who) over the weekend at Seal Rock. And that week, that week just before school let out for the summer and spoiled all those Monday morning discussed points until September’s deluge, Jimmy and Lorraine, Lorraine Dubois, received a number because Jimmy, who had long since learned to believe in making his own luck, had talked his ball and chain sweetie Lorraine into searching for submarines, those mythical gypsy digger submarines. And searching for them very closely, very closely indeed, as it turned out, in the back seat of that brother’s cherry ’57 Chevy.

The Lonesomest Hobo Daddy Of Them All

Jack’s Merrimack River, Jack’s ancient stream, damn steamed river. Rough, white-capped torrents flowing without a break, coming from some unknown springs, creeks, rivulets, brooks and whatnot, storm-tossed in winter, rock-stepping rough, pock-marked with broken trees causing gushes and gaps in the steady stream, boulders pocked too up by the painted sprayed cliffs near the University, cliff names (Jimmy loves Janie, sigma phi forever, Mary sucks , complete with telephone number, the Acre rules), etched in paint (Day-Glo now some odd formula then) going back to Jack time, (then, Jack time, just friendly old Lowell Textile, strictly for the textile trade wonks and wanna-be, not Jack-worthy), undertow dragging against foolhardy feet for the unsteady and first understandings that the world IS a dangerous place but also, without embarrassment, that the river is the river of life. And no fears, no god fears, no mother church catholic fears, no consequence from those pagan sentiments. Bridged, river bridged, bridged at strategic points bridged, brawny steel and trestle bridged to take on all traffics rumbling across the torrent below river, granite foundations stones placed, how placed a mystery, a construction mystery that some bright Lowell Tech guy (old days now U/Mass, ah, Lowell) could figure out in a minute just like how he got that rock-bound Jimmie loves Janie rock sprayed, in such a way as to defend against rising rivers, hurricanes, wars, and other earthen disasters.

Bridged, not metaphor bridged, Jack would no heard of it, would smirk that devil’s smirk and dismiss you and your damn metaphor out of hand, would speak of golden colored bridges spanning , and name the colors, and the shades when they reflected against the day, fierce seas, name the seas, name the ships on the seas, name the parts of ships, name the horrors and beauties of the turbulent seas, would speak of traffic, of commerce of delivering goods, near and far, of bridge sounds, rumbles, honks, gnaws even, so no to some Hemingway mind-wrought big two-hearted Idaho idyllic river but real bridged, Jack London old time bridged, Call Of The Wild nights of the long knives bridged between poor, working poor, working textile poor Lowell on one side and the desperately, or repeatedly poor like clan Kerouac, chronically unemployed, semi-chronically drunk and disorderly, poor, Acre poor.

Blessed Saint Jeanbon, Ti Jean, among the brethren, cross his big god-head heart, un-anointed, hell unadorned Adonis patron saint of the Acre poor, the Acre poor, scrabbly working poor (and throw in some lumpen criminal vagabonds, scavengers, con men, lifeless corner boys , and just plain thugs to boot, they thrive in the easy pickings Acre, and a thousand other Acre places too) known to kindred poor Josh Breslin (mother, nee LeBlanc, the LeBlancs from up Quebec City way, and north Saint Lawrence north toward the Gaspe ) in the French –Canadian Atlantic Avenue Acre over in Olde Saco, Maine and well-known as well to Irish stews Peter Paul Markin down in Acre projects in Adamsville, Massachusetts way. Yes, Saint Jeanbon, patron saint muse of the Acre poor, wherever they are located. The back-biting, bitching, somewhere over the rainbow poor, the Botts Diner after midnight heavy-lidded after manly bouts with fugitive whiskey bottles poor, the pick up the fags (okay, okay here cigarette butts) from the Merrimack Street ground, and cadging (while the bartender is not looking) half- finished manly whiskies (or, hell, by midnight whatever was left on napkin-soaked tables and counters), poor. And one thousand, maybe one million other unspoken, always unspoken, pathologies, tics, and whatnots, never allowed to air in the sometimes fetid (although near no oceans or marshes but from mixed and matched industrial chemicals), damn stinking Lowell industrial summer night. And cold, pale blue cold winter too, except maybe not fetid. Pick a cold word, okay.

Jack rough river, working- class Jack rough all brawny and bustle, flowing to great unseen Atlantic shores (where real fetid smells, nature smells from churned seas and drowned marshes, periodically stink the air) and from there to great American homeland England before the fall and real homeland, France, ageless France bountiful and smart long before the bloody Anglos were made hip to using spoons for porridge, before Arcadian Plains of Abraham falls and hard English burnt offering exiles. And damn cursed native tongues (patois they called it) banned just like with the gaelic Irish, the Breton wild men, and the celtic brogue Scots, what madness in Empire, that seaward sun never sets empire thumbing it beefsteak nose at culture brought from courtly France and well-bred manners. And strangers in a strange land (Longfellow homage poem exiles anyway) when Canad soils gave out, or no work prospects loomed, or the lore of two dollars a day (in real money, Anglo-derived money, damn) sent half of Quebec streaming down to the paper and textile mill towns, river towns, Olde Saco, Manchester, Nashua, and sainted, sunned, stunned, acid- stained canal- strewn river flowed Lowell.

Merrimack (Jack play word Mary Mack, Markin play word Mary Mack all dressed in black), home town river of youth, callous youth, question, going into young manhood. Hanging around corner boy Leclerc’s Variety, mom and pop variety store cadging quarters from working men streaming out of the second-shift mills, occasionally stealing odd lots of penny candy (funny habit, always describingsweet tooth things, immense marbled cakes, chocolate frosted, huge bread puddings heated and served with whipped creams, shimmering jellos of six different flavors, also whipped creamed, hearty apple pies laden with syrupy ice cream melts and on down to mouth-watering movie time milk duds, for chrissakes, making word hungry eyes food hungry, cheap sugar food hungry), you know Baby Ruth, Butterfingers, Snickers (or, snickers), Milky Way, to avoid the heavy tariff at the Bijou Theater come Saturday afternoon double bill, double trouble, matinee specials. And Ma, Mere called so in the old-fashioned back home Montreal way from whence she came trotting for those dame yankee dollars, having to sneak quarters to Mr. Leclerc to cover those sweet tooth penny candied larcenies . And you thought you were so clever, Jack old boy, old dog. But that was the life, the corner boy life, small stealing, small cadging, jack-rolling some drunken kid for his quarters (doled out by his Mere for his penny candy Bijou extravaganzas). Boys, always about boys, and adventures and thinking, and forever writing, writing just in case.

Later of dream stories, at those same corners or maybe further the river toward Pawtucketville across from Father Kerouac’s social club (and drinking bout hang-out) but always eternally corner dream stories now long gone to malls and fast food courts and no loitering, no trespassing, no skate-boarding, no breathing human unkind trances. To speak about jail break-outs, about small town prison escapes, the young always seeing even New York City as too small for their outrageous appetites, and good luck, letting Lowell sun eat the dust of your tracks fill the night air, about big time jobs and celebrity (once the word was discovered). And then the talk turned serious as the wisp of a beard showed (more than five o’clock shadows for Jack, dark, French-etched two times a day shaved Jack) turned to manly shavings and childish voice turned to deep bass, serious talk about girls, about what they were made of, and more importantly what made them tick. A lifetime of wonders and sorrows to spill the river-laden night. A clue though, a clue worth a king’s ransom would have been worth all that lucre if they could just figure out what the hell they wanted. The girls, okay. They, the corner boys, all sized, shaped, smarts, greek, French, ethnic corner boys (who else would inhabit the Acre in those days, the bloody Irish lived in Irishtown, just like they did in Olde Saco up in Maine and Adamsville, down in Irishtown South Lowell way, down Maggie Cassidy way but more on that later) found out soon enough after a few bouts of love dust at the old Starlight Ballroom, now famous, town famous, since Benny Goodman and his band had set its 1939 foot in the front door and blasted everything to be-bop, beepy-be-bop don’t stop, mad man music including soon to be front singing Jack-inflamed red dress Paula. Yah, Benny’s band that was where she got her start (okay, okay start with Jack on moonless nights singing, singing the then known American songbook, Tin Pan Alley songbook but that didn’t count. The moonless singing that is. The afternoon red dress and high heels come hither, yah, that counted, Maggie counted, too but later.)

Jack’s river of sorrow, of Mere hurts and Maggie Cassidy hurts too. (I told you I would have more on her, of lace curtain vanities and father train conductor dreams of some little white cottage, a dog, and three point four kids, nah, not Jack-sized, not Jack-sized at all ). Forgotten now Paula (forgotten even forgotten of red dress seductions which made him toss and turn many a night, many a night before Maggie devoured sleep). Forgotten Mere (and her old-fashioned Montreal French-Canadian, and before that some Gaspe wind-swept farm stories, that he would use later to bulk out his own stories when his brain ran dry, or maybe sad, big sad wet), forgotten although always hovering as a stark and real cut knives presence (and mixed in as with all mothers , mothers since Eve, generous helpings of immense love gifts bought with shoe leather- stained hands from working at that damn old mother-twisting shoe mill) really until the Maggie fever had subsided, subsided several years, later but that is a story for another time, a time after New York City lights, Village mysteries, sea adventures and searches for the blue-pink great American West night, and of Neal Cassady golden-haired cowboy west romps, and next million word adventures.

What mattered now though was that our boy, our Jack O’Kerouac, or Jack McKerouac, or Jack, hell, let’s leave it at Jack Keltic got himself all balled up over an Irish colleen, from over down in Irishtown down by the Concord River, history river not all brawny and dyed like Jack’s Merrimack river, well away from the Acre, and Acre small dreams, and well away from handy corner boys to hold his hand when old Maggie turned up the heat. Yes, Maggie, blessed virgin Maggie, of the pale blue eyes, of the pale blue heart, and of the lace curtain appetites. Of white picket fences, and houses, white too, to go with them, a spotted dog and a few stray whining kids to keep the cold nights warm. No sale, no Jack of the river sale, not our boy in the end but it was a close call and maybe if she had turned down those white silken stockings just once he would have wound up white fence- picketed through his heart in some cozy bungalow close by Dracut Forest, or hell, in up and coming Chelmsford (and then no on the road, no dharma, no big sur, no Mexican nights, tangier nights, just Maggie and pipe, tobacco pipe nights).

Yes, Jack would know manly hurts, huge manly hurts imposed by hard-hearted women, and men, after that one but not before clowning himself before her with feats of modern athletic daring against black ravens , against arch-rival Lawrence gridiron, Lawrence also of the river and of history, of strikes and struggle of a different kind, of bread and roses. Of clowning corner boy clowning, deciding stay or go, stay or go, of drunken dance floor episodes (no, not when Benny Goodman, Hail Be-bop Benny, held forth and made the Starlight Ballroom quake, but other times, other Maggie pouting times, or Maggie tired times, or Maggie “friend”times, the list was endless, and he endlessly patiently impatient as each phase of the Maggie moon turned into ashes. And into Jack death pyre).

Interlude: Jack’s low sun going down behind the river and before that the tree- strewn, living tree strewn river upstream, upstream where it all began and where Jack began. Pawtucketville, the Acre, South Lowell, the trolley tracks end, and the endless winter snow walks, the endless summer river ebb walks, the fret Maggie walks, the no dime for carfare (quaint word) walk, the walk to save for penny candy walk, the million word walk, the first school dance walk, the no money for prom car (or car or license, okay) walk, the night before the big game walk, walked in Dracut Forest to avoid mad crashing fans who wanted to know glory up close , if only Jack- reflected glory, yes, walk, walk too, get out of the house when Mere cursed his dark night.

But really prelude, training, cosmic training, okay to million mile walks from New Jersey shores, looking out from broken down, oil-stained, oil smelled eastern piers and dreaming hookah Tangiers dreams, from Time Square dope blasts with every faux hipster who could afford a string tie, soft shoes, midnight sunglasses and a be-bop line of patter, pitter- patter, really, from rockymountainhills walks sliding down to Denver town in beloved Cassady country poolrooms and juke joints, from ghost dance walks in saline deserts channeling ancient Breton hurts and shamanic wanderlust, from dark bracero Mex walks waiting on broken down senorita love in some stinking Imperial Valley bean field, from Presidio fast by the golden gate bridge, fast by North Beach walks, from Big Sur hunger for oneness with the sea walks, from life walks, from death walks. Walks, shoe leather- eating walks, okay.

******

Jack of Lowell hometown, Jack of some Micmac-traded ancient Canad French-Canadian fur trader beyond time and back to Breton woods and great fields of serf fellahin peasants plowing, cowing, milking, harvesting, corvee-ing some milord’s land seen in some far distance, since with river running. Ownership burned out in the Yankee mill night, the time-owned night, the day too. Mainly now of narrow (narrow life-making) triple and double-deckers squalid flats constantly changing renter-ship, constant babies squabble in six languages, but above all patois, beautiful lilt keltic fringe hard Atlantic seas and torrents of rain Breton coast patois. And so they established an outpost here, among the mix of mill-town hands, making mill things, dreaming non-mill things, and for the men working, working hard and long and then off to some card-playing (as disguise for heavy drinking, cheap cigar- smoking and rude talk of women, the ethnics, hah, and the world gone to hell in a hand basket) Franco-American Club, no women, no children, no kikes, no micks, no English (absolutely no English for there is a swollen Montcalm bone to pick over on that one), no oppressors unnamed and unloved allowed. A man’s life as befits a man whose people came down from places deep in Quebec woods and along the mighty Gaspe Saint Lawrence.

Those are ancient myths of gentile beggar fellaheen birth among the Canad and pedigree not to be touted in non-pedigree Americas, and certainly not in non-pedigree Lowells (except by certain mill owners who spoke only to god, or to Cabots maybe). And so the mix of fellahin patois, of roasted fires, of sweet gentle wines to that good night, of sober work, of somber life explained the fate of that American mix, Lowell style. And explained too the greek, french, irish, break-out of ungrateful sons (and daughters but not as well seen). Sons with words to say, with American songs to sing, not Whitman song, that was another time, another place and another America but songs against mill stream night, songs against the death of personal dreams , of wayward sons, well-meaning wayward sons but wayward.

Ah, Lowell setting sun Lowell and its time of great decline, great decline on Jack’s birth river. The stink of tannic acid, the blue dye, the red dye, hell, the yellow dye river dying for lack of work, for worked-out mills, for moved to cheap jack cheaper labor southern ports of call. And so the Lowell setting sun turned in on itself, turned to be-bop music and Botts midnight diners with guys, guys who used to work the midnight shift, and restless, now lingering over mad cups of joe to ward off the worthless sense of non-self. Fixed in place and the younger ones seeing that said no mas, not me, and spoke of flights of fancy, and of real flights, flights from Merrimack River roads to trash-strewn asphalt highways west.

Lowell, water Lowell, canal Lowell, fresh-faced farm girl Lowell hands weaving the wicked weave of the loam and then to other pursuits none the worse for wear at least that was the call, the advertised call that brought them from Acton, Concord, and Littleton farms or maybe before those places had names, town names, just Farmer Brown’s rosy-cheeked daughter from over there where that dusty road intersected the corner of Brother Brown’s land. Later gentle waters, gentle confluence waters from high hill brooks and bramble, from flow Concord, Lowell sing, not some sing-song Shepard’s sing, not some cattle- lowing sing, not some elysian fields sing but the sing of great bobbed machines whistling late into the night, hell what night, whistling into daybreak and fearful noises for those poor tenement, double and triple tenement, dwellers who form the perimeter of the mill mile, sweet cloth and money-making mill mile.

And Jack born, born and raised, to term an old phrase, a mere stone’s throw away along that same river bend as it curves up the cliffs near Pawtucketville, the old time Mere and Pere French quarter where Jack would get his fill of double and triple-deckers. And rosy tales of those ancient Breton fields and thieving thriving French fur- traders amid the scream of broken whiskey bottles, a few broken by him, murderous wives bent on murder for having too many children, too many children too close together, too many short paychecks and too many long grocer’s bills, too many drunken husband nights without him or with him all sex hungry and stinking of anglo whiskies or greek anise, or just murderous to be murderous in fear of the lost Hollywood dream and no chance to pull a Mildred Pierce or even a lite Lana Turner twist against some old drunken greek short order chef seaside road diner hell fate.

Jail-break midnight teenagers looking for quick quarters for the jukebox to play Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman or some latest be-bop daddy, standing around in front of the Bijou Theater or the Starlight Ballroom to see if there are any dreams being manufactured inside, and looking for a way to make sense of a world that they didn’t create. That Jack, that Jack teen- age boy, teen-age corner boy like all the others didn’t create, that played and that ate at him, ate at him from crawl time to crawling down the gutter time. But if you are going to bust out you had better have something more than halfback hero’s good looks, if you are going to go toe to toe with the gods that is (and we know he was aching, bleeding really, to go toe to toe with them, for a while anyway). So he started, started early, a million word journey used stubbled pencils, and squirrelly inks until, until he got the hang of writing non-stop with a roll of newsprint and a squirrelly old typewriter. Praise Brother Remington

And funny growth too, the sturdy, durable fleet youth, all black hair and ooh-la-la French good looks, verified, verified first by wistful small-breasted French-Canadian girls with long thin legs, also from the old Canad descended and maybe a few rascally fur-traders in the background too. Later wild red-headed Irish girls trying, a little, to break from heathen brown-haired sexless, sex-hate Irish boys murmuring novenas, stations of the cross, and smelling of altar wines and priest pokes would toss and turn dreaming of oo-la-la Frenchmen read about in some schoolgirl school book, or heard on unsavory streets from the older girls, the girls who no longer had the sign of the cross when they passed Saint Joseph’s, or Saint Jean-Baptiste, or Saint Brigitte’s, or Saint Germaine’s or Immaculate Conception, or Sacred Heart, Saint, saint, saint, Saint Mary’s, okay, or any of the three billion (but I exaggerate) other Lowell holy, holy places where a man can turn from saint Jack to shaman Jack in a wink of an eye.

And that is when she came by, she Maggie she, but call her all girl-kind, no, womankind, with her pale white skin, her pale blue eyes, her dark hair and her well-turned ankles, and disturbed his sleep. And he never got over that, that way that she could keep him on a string while every other girl was ready to throw herself to the ground for him (in order that he could have the stamina to beat Lawrence on Thanksgiving Day, in order for him to write some little ditty for her, in order for him to dance with her at the school dance, in order, one girl claimed she had to “do it” in order to improve her voice so she could sing with some faux-Benny Goodman [all the rage then in the late 1930s be-bop night] quintet, in order, hell, at the end it was just in order to, what did they call it in Lowell High School Monday morning girls’ lav before school girl talkfest about what did, or didn’t happen on Friday or Saturday night, oh yah, to say they had been jacked by him).

Later, later when the reasons changed but the girls (no, women then) still thought jacked thoughts he feigned lack of interest, feigned writer’s cramp, feigned zen Buddhist abstinence, feigned, not so feigned maybe, drunk or drugged impotence. But no man, no real man, or fairy (term of art forgiven, please) or even lowly Time Square whores, hookers, drifters and fags (term of art, not forgiven) knew that he had had his insides torn out by old Maggie, Maggie the cat with no downy billows ending long before Tennessee Williams ever put pen to paper. So say a prayer for Jack, Jeanbon Jack, if you are the praying kind and curse hellish dark-haired Irish colleens.

Spinning wheels, million football goals scored, million girls jacked, million drinks drunk with clownish corner boys from age six on, million yards of pure textile loomed enough to satisfy even the haughtiest Lowell Textile School professor, million words written, million smokestack fumes emitted into the cold Lowell air night. Finished, town finished, Maggie finished, corner boy finished, home finished. Break out time, break out to great northern seas to write like some mad monk plastered on cheap jack vineyard wines, homemade, pressed fast and sipped fast (and on the sly). Neon sign break-out, New Jack City beckoned.

Interlude: Four in the morning cold coffee slurps, percolator (quaint word) on the stove brewing up another break- speed batch to endure hours more of non-stop, non-connected, non-punctuated writing. Writing of Trailways bus stop waits, waits for continental visions (if one does not the mind the company, the inevitable, to be kind ,too large company in the next seat), in search of that great blue-pink American West night (and later the international blue-pink night) in dirty washrooms filled with seven hundred manly stinks, and six perfumes to kill the smell, the urinate smell, street-wise rest room for weary travelers, hobos, bums, and tramps, take your pick, maybe some hung over soldier trying to decide on AWOL or frantic rush back to base and evaporated dreams, nightmares really. Of seasick sailors running overboard at the first wave heave, or first explosion in the dread Murmansk run North Atlantic icy waters night one sailor, seasick, no, sick of the sea, writing, writing in disregard of heaves, and lifeboat-worthy explosions.

Of Village flophouse lofts filled with chattering (to vanish fear) expatriate exiles, native born from Iowa, Minnesota, Denver, maybe, in ones and twos, trying to hold out against the impending red scare cold war night, the death night to destroy the promise of golden age utopias. Of Scollay Square whores ready to take your pain away, no questions asked, filled with stories, small dream from small town stories about easy lost virginity and local scandal, with jack-roller ready pimp/boyfriends just in case things got rough, or some easy dough was to be had.

Of some mad notion that writing two million words would take that pain away as easily as that whore promise, and finding some jack-roller instead when the brain ran dry, the pen ink ran dry, the newsprint roll ran out and there were no Mere or Gerald memory blasts to fall back on. Of some ache, some unfound ache to find that Adonis double (Janus, maybe, blond they say, maybe) zen master, gear master, chariot master that everybody in that Village loft, that San Francisco North Beach bungalow, that Malibu henhouse, that Tijuana whorehouse, that Tangiers opium den, hell, even that Trailways stink bathroom was waiting on.

********

New York City, Time Square of course, Columbia of course(before the heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), the Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), of movies and movie theaters, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking of urine or Thunderbird wines, of drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggersand minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42^nd Street hurts, of Howard Johnson’s franks eaten by the half dozen to curve hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, of Joe and Nemo’s two o’clock fatty griddle hamburgers, of fags and fairies, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell and can write too, write one million words on order, and of stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro, and not to speak of Soho or the Village. And of junkies, of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules face down in some dusty Sonora town failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand forgotten murders. Jesus, suffering humanity.

And of men met in New York, really Times Square jungles (post- Maggie girls, women, frills, frails, dames, bitches, etc., etc., of no serious consequence except as pillows, weeps, dreams, and such). Of word magicians, maybe not two million but enough, of great earth-devouring fags (no offense here), chain-smoking New Jersey sodomites, reading Walt Whitman by day and wine drunk and man horny at night (or maybe day too) but mainly reading and infernal writing always writing like that was all that life could be except enough experiences to write about. Of Allen om Ginsberg. Of breaking out of silly Eliot great modern bean- counting words in need of glossaries of comprehension, of jazz-inspired be-bop high white words to take the whole red scare, cold war stalinite night away, and to calm the nuclear blast headed our way, butt up (no sexual reference intended and no spite) and chronicle each and every experience with that broken down typewriter, and that roll of low-grade paper ripped out of the be-bop 1950s night. And of Adonis all-american golden boy, Neal, meets all-american dark-haired boy in some Denver saloon, or pool hall yelling, “shoot pools ,” make some dough and off in some 1946 Studebaker in straight forty-eight hour gears-grinding search of the great blue-pink American West night, or maybe just Maggie, that eluded fugitive fragrance that he could never name of Maggie, who knows. Yes, the father that we knew, the father that we did not know. Jack, Jack of the Merrimack.