This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings Of Leon Trotsky, 1932
Google the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for a copy of an article, "German Bonapartism", from the pen of Leon Trotsky for 1932, the period of the book reviewed below. BOOK REVIEWS If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader. After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can easily count, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds. The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s. Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, in large part militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky. I WILL ADD TO THIS SERIES AS I REREAD OR ACQUIRE THE OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES. HERE GOES FOR NOW. THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1932, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973 As to the 1932 volume this reviewer recommends a careful reading of the following articles: The Left Opposition and the Right Opposition (a polemic against the tendency of his comrades to try to form a bloc with the defeated remnants of the Bukharinite Right Opposition in the Russian Party and internationally); International and National Questions (an important analysis of the question of the national to self-determination in the age of imperialism); Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg! (a spirited defense of that great revolutionary whom the Stalinists were trying eliminate from the revolutionary pantheon for her various political differences from the Bolsheviks); Peasant War in China and the Proletariat (a analysis of the Chinese Revolution after the defeat in the cities in 1927 and the subsequent drive to awaken the peasant masses to revolution as Japan began its imperialist siege); and, the Declaration to the Antiwar Congress in Amsterdam (a rather nice polemic against the muddle-headedness of depending on pacifists to stop the impending war everyone knew was coming).
The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Anniversary Of His Death- On the National Question (1938)
Google the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline. Markin comment: The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right? Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist (I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding.); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s. I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.
For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-In Honor Of Lena Spencer- Caffé Lena And Saratoga’s Folk Scene
If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83 (June 2017)
By Music Critic Bart Webber
Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute (that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze. (I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/RockportSunday, and aboutaffairs with certain up and coming female folkies at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important)
Those urban locales were the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and character in her own right, where some of those names played but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality. And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.
Yeah, out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is different, where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. Tough going for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Tough too when you landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes.
The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. She was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night-yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels
Caffé Lena, Kate McGarrigle and various artists, directed by Stephen Trombley, Miramar Production, 1991 I know of the work of, and have reviewed in this space, the late Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels, obviously Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, The McGarrigle family, David Bromberg and many of the other “singing” heads that populate this tribute documentary or found their way to Café Lena’s. Lena Spencer, owner, operator (and, from all accounts off-hand fairy godmother), through thick and thin, as thoroughly documented here , of Saratoga’s Café Lena was the impresario of the upstate New York’s booming 1960s folk scene. So there is a certain sense of déjà vu in viewing this film. This documentary film was probably as much about our youthful dreams and ambitions (and that hard musical road, although voluntarily chosen) as it was a tribute to Lena. I know Saratoga and its environs well and if New York City’s Greenwich Village and Cambridge’s Harvard Square are better known in the 1960s folk revival geography that locale can serve as the folk crowd’s summer watering hole (and refuge from life’s storms all year round). From the descriptions of the café ‘s lifestyle and of the off-beat personality of Lena it also was a veritable experiment in ad hoc communal living). The folkies that did find found refuge there have been interesting behind- the- scenes stories to tell about Len that make this a very nice slice of history of the folk revival of the 1960s. A special note to kind of bring us full circle. My first CD review of folksinger Rosalie Sorrels and the late Utah Phillips combined works together, who are highlighted in this documentary along with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, mentioned a spark of renewed recognition kindled on my part by the famous folk coffee house “The Café Lena” in Saratoga Springs, New York. Thus, it is rather fitting that Rosalie performs Utah’s “If I Could Be The Rain” and Utah his “Starlight On The Rails” here. Even more fitting are the McGarrigles performing their “Talk To Me Of Mendocino”, song composed in honor of Lena. "Talk to Me of Mendocino"
The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings Of Leon Trotsky, 1939-40
Google Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for a copy of an article, "Marxism In Our Times", from the pen of Leon Trotsky for 1939, the period of the book reviewed below. BOOK REVIEW If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader. After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can easily count, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds. The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s. Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, in large part militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky. I WILL ADD TO THIS SERIES AS I REREAD OR ACQUIRE THE OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES. HERE GOES FOR NOW. THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1939-40, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973 As to the 1939-40 volume this reviewer recommends a careful reading of the following articles: On the Eve of World War II (an analysis of the impending war and what revolutionaries had to do when it came ): The German-Soviet Alliance (an interesting take on an policy that sent faint-hearted defenders of the Soviet Union overboard); The World Situation and Prospects (an optimistic, and as it turned out too optimistic assessment of the revolutionary prospects); Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian World Revolution (the program of the Fourth International for the war period and its aftermath); and, Another Thought on Conscription (on the American conscription question and a first look at the ill-advised Proletarian Military Policy).
The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings Of Leon Trotsky, 1930-31
Google the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for a copy of an article from the pen of Leon Trotsky, "Thaelmann And The "People's" Revolution" for 1931, the period of the book reviewed below. BOOK REVIEWS If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader. After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can easily count, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds. The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s. Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, in large part militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky. I WILL ADD TO THIS SERIES AS I REREAD OR ACQUIRE THE OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES. HERE GOES FOR NOW. THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1930-31, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973 As to the 1930-31 volume this reviewer recommends a careful reading of the following articles: On the Question of Thermidor and Bonapartism, (taken from analogies with the French Revolution which nicely draws the distinctions between the overturn of the revolutionary leadership and the balancing act implied in a military dictatorship); Thermidor and Bonapartism (same); Problems of the German Section (on the ever reoccurring problem of German Left Oppositionists taking serious political action toward the rank and file of the German Communist Party before it is too late);New Zigzags and New Dangers (on the notorious ‘third period’ strategy of the Communist International); and, At the Fresh Grave of Kote Tsintsadze, (probably one of the best and most insightful political obituaries of a fellow revolutionary ever written).
Statement From Veterans For Peace-Afghanistan: More of the Same But Wrapped in Secrecy
Afghanistan: More of the Same But Wrapped in Secrecy
This past Monday, Trump addressed the nation about Afghanistan. The president’s speech at its core is more of the same disastrous policies that we have seen for sixteen years, except this administration wants to completely abandon pursuit of a political solution and shroud the war in a cloak of secrecy. Veterans For Peace, once again, calls for a different direction other than war. We call for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan and a robust pursuit of a political solution to end the war.
It is not surprising that Trump began this speech by attempting to rectify his inability to speak out directly against White supremacy. Instead of speaking unequivocally as president against ideologies of hate and White supremacy, he attempted to wrap himself in patriotism and the blood and sacrifice of fallen soldiers. In doing so, Trump attempted to sidestep his own culpability in the rise of hate and intolerance in the United States. In fact, we see that Trump only knows how to divide and fear-monger. His urging everyone in this country to come together against a common foe is no different than his campaign rhetoric using fear to call for unity against Muslims, immigrants and people of color. Now he is using fear of people in another country to wage endless war. We, at Veterans For Peace, have seen this tactic repeatedly. There is nothing positive to gain by building unity through hatred and fear of another. Displacing this nation’s collective anger at White supremacy in our midst towards people of other nations fuels dangerous nationalism that has enabled endless war. Further, we see by Trump’s speech the next day in Phoenix that his words of unity here at home are hollow.
Endless war is the plan that Trump laid out Monday. In this regard, there are few differences in the approach of the prior two administrations. The policy differences that do exist will not change the reality of what is happening in Afghanistan and will continue to ensure more death for U.S. troops and the people of Afghanistan.
Veterans For Peace is alarmed by the policy changes outlined. Trump indicated that a political settlement with the Taliban will not be sought and that the focus will be on military options. He also blatantly stated that the U.S. public will not be given a basic outline of plans in Afghanistan. Both policies are dangerous. Cloaking the war in Afghanistan in more secrecy, in a time when increased privatization of our armed forces is being considered, diminishes accountability and gives the U.S. public no idea of what we are being asked to commit to war. Moving away from a pursuit of a political solution and giving commanders on the ground more leeway to use force will more than likely lead to more civilian deaths with little chance of significantly increasing the possibility of the U.S. militarily defeating the Taliban. The two previous administrations put little real effort in a political solution, but complete abandonment can only mean prolonging war and more bloodshed.
Veterans For Peace also condemns the aggressive and needlessly antagonizing language towards Pakistan, especially given our long history of drone warfare in the country that has killed innocent civilians and violated their borders. Previous administrations have sought a balanced approach to Pakistan and India, two nuclear powers with a fragile relationship. Trump’s highlighting of India’s benefit to the U.S. economically and invitation to be more involved in Afghanistan appears to be favoring India and to punish Pakistan. It is hard to see a positive outcome of framing the U.S. relationship with Pakistan or India in the context of moving closer to one and distancing the U.S. from the other.
Trump’s speech admitted no culpability in the role of the U.S. in destabilizing the entire region, alternating between blaming Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. military has destroyed countless villages and continues to create an atmosphere of fear and hatred with covert drone operations that kill thousands of innocent people. It should be clear after sixteen years and the death of tens of thousands of people that no one is a winner in Afghanistan. There is no clear concept of what it means to win there. In fact, it is no longer clear why the U.S. continues to keep troops in Afghanistan after sixteen years of failure.
Veterans For Peace calls for a different direction than more war. We call on Congress to stop funding war and demand a plan for a peaceful solution. We call on the president to immediately begin withdrawal of U.S. troops and take a new direction towards diplomacy and peace. And we call on the people of the U.S. to resist war and demand policies that foster peace and prosperity at home and in Afghanistan.
The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Anniversary Of His Death- Ninety Years of the Communist Manifesto (1937)
Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline. Markin comment: The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right? Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist (I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding.); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s. I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.
Riverdale Blues-For Allen Ginsburg On The 60th Anniversary Of “Howl” (1956)
By Lance Lawrence
A sad-eyed dope hung around the back of the old-fashioned framed schoolhouse lazily drawing the summer breeze (he lied since the school had only recently been constructed in the big post World II baby boom and he had gone to school here since the place opened-he lied for the sake of lying, lying to himself mostly especially about his sexual longing just then as he hoped to get some chick who was hanging out by the bushes to give him a hand job, give him one like Lucinda had given him that time at the movies when sitting up in the balcony she had unzipped his pants and let her hand move so fast he jerked off after about a minute he was so excited and she only twelve imagine what she will be like when she gives it all up but fat chance he would have to grab that piece since his quick spurt, his sperm, his cum, had gotten all over her dress and she was pissed off at him when it dried and got all crusty on the way home so some other guy would grab her cherry-that was only a matter of time), wished he could get “washed clean,” washed clean real clean which is what the guys around school called it when their Lucindas moved their hands fast, get his sperm count down, his hot flash temperature, whatever that was.
Cock sore, cock was what the guys called their hanging things, their pulsating penises, so he followed although he got flushed when some guy maybe Billy, Billy Bradley the guy who always seemed to be the first guy with the sex knowledge, first said the word and he had asked what that was-damn. Cock and cocksuckers, waiting on his corner boy, waiting on Billy, waiting on his secret comrade in arms the hazy night as he looked around over heaven’s nightshade (and the guy who would probably be the first to get into Lucinda’s panties since she had already given him her fast hand action and according to Billy something more although Billy wouldn’t specify but at least that action which is why he had, on Billy’s solemn advise taken Lucinda to the movies in the first place, had asked if she wanted to go to the balcony and when she said yes he knew he was going to get his clock cleaned-he just wished he hadn’t gotten off so fast with Lucinda since Billy’s older brother, Max, had given them a vivid description of what was what when you got a girl all wet and then stuck your stick in her and listened to her moan, moan like humankind had been doing for a million years, and he sure could have put his stick wherever she wanted it-probably laugh at him if he got off too fast-again).
Billy at first nowhere to be found, nowhere to be found that is if he did not want to be found and then the next thing you knew Billy, secret comrade in arms, came sauntering, his style just then before puberty would turn his feet around and he would thereafter walk like some Western movie cowboy would now sing his life-song, what did the poet, the old Solomonic poet call to the high heaven’s, oh yes, plainsong for a candid world, a world before massive bombings, massive unacknowledged deaths for shady ladies and other figment s of his imagination. Come sauntering in the bejesus night looking both ways to see some straggling ungainly girls, some young Lucinda who knew the score, knew if they had hung around that back of the school just then that they had heard about Lucinda, had maybe asked their older sisters or brothers what a hand job was and how to do that. They were eager if they were hanging in the shadows and the dope was hoping that some innocent would get moved by the Billy plainsong (he would learn later that plainsong was more religious that any old rock song even big bop doo wop song but by then rock and roll was his religion anyway) hovering around the fence waiting for something, anything to happen and then a word, a sullen word came off his tongue and the night’s work had begun, maybe a generation was on its way to immortality, was ready to break out of the quiet of the 1950s night without shame and without confession.
Tripping over “she’s so fine, so fine, wish she were mine doo lang doo lang” or the corner boys, the male version of He’s So Fine by the Chiffons, the big bopping song of 1956, the guys, including the dope, backing Billy up in the doo wop frenzy that had swept tween and teen just then and the scent of the jasmine coming from the girl-shadows by the harbor, the marsh’s fetid mephitic smell giving way to the night’s splendor, maybe stolen perfumes from mother’s dresser or some girlish bath-soap all fresh and dewy. Doo lang, doo lang along with Eddie, Jason, Frank and beloved Peter Paul slapping time and those wanderlust girls along the fences came drifting to the scent of Old Spice that the boys had splashed on father’s bureau, father’s time, father’s sweat but not to be thought of in the hazy summer night. And as the moon hovered against the sun the girls got closer and closer, one Lucinda’s younger sister, Laura, all the sisters in that family playing off mother Lottie having “L” –encrusted first letter names, aimed his way and he waved her over to head toward old dead sailors’ graveyard down the far corner of the school lot (oh what those sailors could have told those young bucks from their rotted graves and pock-marked burial stones about hand jobs and blow jobs too when the ante was up about what a girl had to come across with-and if out to sea some young sailor boy plaything but that latter knowledge would not click until later). A few minutes later the dope came back out of the sailor shadows looking like the king of the hill and Laura wiping her hand with a handkerchief with a faint smile (they had already agreed to meet that next night down at that sailors’ last rest, down among the mortal stone forsaking the last ship out and by-past the foreplay plainsong-the young learn fast so maybe those sailors would have been stating the obvious when the poured forth in their dank, damp waterfront taverns about blow jobs and hand jobs).
But hell all that was coming of age, coming of age in a time when things were moving too fast even for quick learners and the corner boys got further and further along in their primitive sex lessons and no more stupid thoughts of red scares, Uncle Joe’s scourge in Moscow town, and Cold War down in the basement hide your ass under some oaken desk and somebody said that was real, that was okay but that scent lingered against the jimson in the jeans from Satan’s tower, look homeward, look homeward angels. Ecstasy-pure ecstasy in the hazy night of some youthful dream.
Billy would declare (and the dope would secretly agree and write every word down to be passed around later like some latter day glad tiding-like some Mount Sinai-filched grainy stone tablet) that they were in a spin, the world was changing and although he had no empirical evidence, when did the king of the hill need hard-boiled evidence going back to Adam’s time, facts, he had heard from his oldest brother who already had graduated from high school that not only was the music changing, not only were people, and not just kids, starting to laugh at the idea that going down some rat hole of a basement and hiding under some rotten oaken desk when the big one came [the bomb] would do anybody any good. Started to challenge everything from the whole idea of the red scare night, the whole idea that everybody needed to live their ticky-tacky lives in dread of the reds, having a big ass finned gas-eating car and not “keeping up with the Jones.” Especially day to day the latter.
Billy didn’t get most of what that oldest brother said (and neither did the dope who dutifully wrote it all down anyway which he had “contracted” with his secret comrade Billy to do, to act as scribe which became his nickname at first resented as part of the price of Billy letting a dope hang around with him and his boys and through that circumstance to get to the girls already mentioned above) but he did get that the way things were couldn’t be the future, couldn’t be the way they would have to operate in the world. Couldn’t be the down at the heel existence that he, his family and all the poor bedraggled families that resided in the Five Points “wrong side of the tracks” neighborhood. His oldest brother, Jack to give him a name, the guy telling him all this stuff with the idea of making him wise to the world he was about to face in the not too distant future, had been something of the family rebel.
Jack was always heading to Harvard Square even in high school which was no mean task by bus and later by car when he came of age for a driver’s license, since that place was about forty miles from Riverdale to soak up whatever rebellion was going down (that family rebel designation would fall on Billy later in a very different way when it came his turn to figure out the freaking world and after a short attempt at a break-out rock and roll musical career turned to armed robberies and such eventually getting killed in a shoot- out with cops down in North Carolina trying to all doped up rob a White Hen convenience store). Jack was always talking about “beat” this, “beat” that, some kind of fraternity of rebels who wanted to turn the world upside down (and it was mostly a fraternity the women were mainly around for decoration and whatever sex they wanted to provide). Or maybe better resign from the “square” world and find a little breathing space to do their thing-to write, drink, travel, do dope, have sex but mostly to write for a candid world, a world where the rules didn’t make sense-no way.
One night when Jack was home for minute during summer semester break from college-he went on a scholarship, how else would the family get the money to send the first in the family to go to college, to Boston University, Class of 1959- he decided to tell Billy and his boys in an excited manner his latest tale “what was what,” the expression all the guys used then to signify, well, they had an idea of what was what. Tell them what it was to be a “beat daddy” (not literally a daddy okay but Jack had had to make the distinction because you never knew when somebody in the neighborhood might be a daddy having knocked up some older Lucinda and had to head out of town or get hitched under the sign of the paternal shotgun). Said it was all summed up, everything that was pushing the world forward in a poem, a “beat” poem not like those rhyming simon poems Mister Riley, the old-time Jazz Age English teacher at Riverdale High a would spout forth from some old Englishman’s pen, Alfred Lord Tennyson or Byron or Browning, guys like that, a guy named Ginsburg, Allen Ginsburg, a smart Jewish guy who was the chief propagandist for the beat-ness thing in a poem, Howl, that was making the rounds in Harvard Square and would have its fair share of legal problems but that was later. (Jack was not exactly right about who had been the “real” max daddy of the beats-influence wise it was probably Jack Kerouac when he boiled the 1950s youth nation with his wild men travelogue On The Road, the immediate post-war whirlwind adventures of him and his buddy, Adonis personified Neal Cassady with Ginsburg playing a bit role in that one. But Ginsburg was right in the mix with that fucking long mad monk poem-Brother Jack’s exact words remembered by the Scribe-written down).
Jack said that Ginsburg had had it right-had seen in the great American blue-pink western night stuff that would drive a guy crazy with what was happening to the world as the machine was getting the upper-hand. Ginsburg had had some kind of vision, one of the guys who hung around the Hayes-Bickford in Harvard claiming that it was dope, marijuana favored by the down-trodden cold fields braceros from old Mexico, or peyote buttons, the stuff favored by the Hopis and the “ghost dancers” out where the states are square that fueled the visions. Visions of an unkempt, unruly world where the philosopher-king was a guy named Carlo Solomon who had the whole thing down cold. Knew the West had been saturated, that there was nowhere else to go but the China seas and so he hammered home the idea that out in the Coast was where humankind had to make a last stand against the Molochs, against the fucking night-takers who have been with us forever. Only the righteous warrior-poets would enter the garden. That Hayes-Bickford clarion calling claimed Ginsburg was talking about the Garden of Eden before the Fall.
The madness, the sheer madness making everybody from the hunger days of the 1930s and the rat rationing days of World War II hustle to the sound of steel and iron and not the freaking sound of waves slashing timidly to shore. Started ripping up words a minute not all complete phrases and without some kind of formal pacing sense, although if you heard the thing out loud it would have its own jazz-like cadence somebody who was at the recital in Frisco town had been quoted in a newspaper as saying, jazz cadence and stoned on dope or liquor was all you needed that same source ventured. Ginsburg was not hung up on form, like those old fart Englishman who were totally hung up on form almost as bad as those sonnet bastards Riley made the class memorize but talking about post-war modern minds beaten down by the sound of industry humming away talking about a meltdown, talking crazy stuff about angel hipsters (portraying a sentence of 1940s pre-beat daddies hanging around Times Square hustling and conning an unsuspecting world), talking about Negro streets which they all knew as “n----r streets” over in the Acre section of Boston, a place to stay away from, talking about taking on the monster in the mist Moloch mano y mano, talking about the new heroes of the American night all-American swordsman Jack and secret love that dare not speak its name crush on Adonis of the New Western night courtesy of Laramie Street in mile-high Denver Neal Cassady to be exact the new model of the last cowboy standing. Neal some amazing cocksman to be envied and emulated screwing every honey who was not tied down to a chastity belt on farms, in the restrooms of diners and out in the back alley if the restroom was occupied. Damn.
Ginsburg had actually been in the nut house in New York someplace, had dedicated the poem to some fellow inmate who was crazier that he was or dedicated to all the crazies, the looney bin Jack had called the place like the place all the guys in Riverdale did when they talked about where screwballs and goofs, even Kerouac’s holy goofs learned about later, should have landed, so he knew what deal was going down, knew that America had turned into a cesspool even if nobody else saw the drain coming. Jack had made Billy and the dope laugh when he told them the reason Ginsburg was in the looney bin was he had been sent there by some judge after he got into legal trouble, committed or was present at some unknown crime, an event which made the pair respect this Ginsburg more since cons in the old Riverdale neighborhood were looked up to with respect and admiration, to try to get rid of his faggot-ness, his homosexuality, his liking boys and not girls. (They laughed not because they knew that Jack hated fags and queers which he did and had put paid to that idea having gone down to Provincetown where all the fags and queers hung out all dressed up and all leering at anybody who came off the Provincetown boat from Boston with his own boys and raised hell with them-more than once. Beat a couple up who were eyeing him too closely and one in drag whom he thought was a girl until he got close enough to see some slight stubble on “her” face. Seems that Jack was giving Ginsburg a pass on his sexual preference just because he was a beat guy-Billy and the dope wouldn’t have given the fucker the time of day even if the guy was a prophet if he hadn’t been a con when they talked about it later since they shared Jack’s hatred of fags-and dykes like every red-blooded guy did then.)
Jack knew what the unholy kid goofs were laughing about, about his seeing literary merit even if the guy was a faggot. The minute he said “faggot” he knew they would goof but he thought they should know what else the guy had to say. He told them a lot of good writers and poets were “light on their feet” and that was something you had to deal with if you wanted to read anything worth reading and let the faggot stuff slide, you don’t have to meet them in person anyway. So he told Billy and the dope to forget the stuff he said about Ginsburg’s queer as a three dollar bill situation and “dig” (that was the word Jack used) what he had to say to the world, to the young really. The stuff about machines devouring humankind and making the world crazier than it already was. That maybe the guys in mental hospitals like the ones who were his comrades at the time were the sane ones-that what they knew was too powerful to let them stay out on the mean streets for long. That the Molochs were in charge (“what the fuck is a Moloch,” Billy asked, interrupting, not comprehending what Jack was talking about as he droned on about stuff that seemed weird). Tried to tell the kids that this thing was Ginsburg plainsong, his way of putting in raw language his spiritual trip, his karma on the world. (the dope would run into Ginsburg later at an anti-war rally in New York City in his later incantation as a Buddhist so karma was the right word even though they were clueless about what it really meant in Buddhist traditions).
After about fifteen minutes Jack could see his audience’s eyes glazing over and so he stopped, stopped and told them that when they got his age they would be thinking about all the stuff Ginsburg laid out in that not-fit-for-public-school-classrooms poem. They laughed, snickered really and wondered what Lucinda and Laura were up to just then. The hell with Jack and his fucking homo poem.
From The Gals And Guys Who Know The Face Of War Up Close And Personal-The Iraq And Afghan War Veterans
Frank Jackman comment:
In America there is an overweening respect for the military, for military officers mainly, the guys and gals who lead the bloody endless wars of this century. They look good on camera, all austere and all business as they lead the general population by the nose into the next ambush. But starting back in Vietnam, starting back in the war of my generation soldiers, sailors, air personnel, regular rank and file guys (almost all guys then) started balking at their fate. Started to talk back, to say stop the madness. And if they could not do it, or would not, since the choice or the stockade and/or opprobrium back home was a hard fact of life for most working class guys, when they were service-bound they certainly did after they got out. Formed an organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) that did a hell of a lot to bring the anti-war message home. See they had “street cred”,’ they had been in the hellholes and beyond, had come back to the “real world” a lot wiser than the kids who went in with dreams of glory and fistfuls of medals. The guys and gals who fought, and continue to fight don’t forget, the damn Iraq and Afghan wars have that same “street cred.” Listen up, please.
Out In The Be-Bop Drive-In Theater Night-Circa 2015-With Laura Perkins In Mind
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Josh Breslin was a man, is a man of institutionalized memories. Part of that came, comes from his long ago minute career as a budding journalist in the alternative media world of the late 1960s and early 1970s when anyone with access to pen and press could, and did, print plenty of interesting material before the hammer fell down and that whole universe fell under the ebb tide of the big bad movement, the counter-revolution as one political wag called it, when the other side, symbolized by the master criminal Richard Milhous Nixon who also happened to be President of the United States, let the whirlwinds of reaction have a field day on our heads. (A couple of the journals that had weathered the storm that he had written for like Rolling Stone which is today just a glossy reprint of Vogue or Vanity Fair for the quasi-hip audience it appeals to in its articles and the consumer-driven advertisements it displays which pay the bill, hence the tiller’s placid reward, and the local Boston Phoenix which went belly up a few years ago after subsisting as a “hook-up” venue do not undermine that ebb tide understanding on the media front.)
Part of Josh’s respect for memory also came from his association with the long gone, long moaned over Pete Markin whom he had met out in San Francisco in the high tide summer of love, 1967 and who came to a bad end in the mid-1970s down in Sonora, Mexico after a high-end drug deal went down the wrong way and he wound up face down in a dusty back alley with a couple of slugs in the back of his head who always, always lived to have about two thousand juicy memory references handy on the off chance that, for example, somebody might quickly need to know Millard Fillmore’s standing among American Presidents (just above Richard Nixon at last check) and the practice had rubbed off on him.
On a recent night that memory business got a full workout as Josh went back deep into his youth (and the youth of his lady friend, Laura Perkins, who is key to this particular memory flash) returning to the scene of many a youthful misadventure-the still functioning Olde Saco Drive-In up in Maine.
Drive-In? Well, yes, for those who have only heard about this institution of the high golden age 1950s and 1960s automobile and have no personal knowledge that they really still exist in spots except in “generation of ’68’’ nostalgia movies like American Graffiti the drive-in. Here’s the skinny (or if you are still in disbelief then go to Wikipedia and check the information out). Back when everybody was dying to have a car from old grand-pappies to barely sixteen year old boys (and it was mainly boys, girls were usually okay grabbing the family car for a night out with the girls, a night “cruising’ the boulevards looking for the heart of Saturday, looking for boys just as Josh and his crowd were “cruising” looking for girls or sitting, sitting in the front close to some hunk with a “boss” car and glad to be the subject of some salacious Monday morning girls’ lav gossip) the whole axis of night-life changed once everybody realized that you were no longer tied to the house (or at most the neighborhood), were not tied to constantly eating at home, sleeping at home or watching the new-fangled television or go to the local box movie house. In a car-fixated time you could travel and stay in a motel overnight, you could eat, if you dared, at a drive-in restaurant or while away the evening in the snugness of your automobile at the drive-in theater. Hail god car.
Of course while anybody, child or adult, could do all those things the drive-in movies became along with the drive-in restaurant one of the moments of the teen ritual, although we were all back then brought up on parents taking their children to the drive-in as an easy way to get out of the house what with a double-feature, a snack bar and a playground to entertain the kiddies. That kids’ stuff is just that. The teen drive-in movie scene is the stuff of nostalgia. Josh wasn’t sure when he stopped going to the drive-in except sometime in the 1970s, wasn’t sure when drive-ins kind of folded up and died away of hubris or indifference at some point that he did not remember (after in some cases serving up some soft-core porn to keep an audience) and wasn’t sure if they even existed anymore. Wasn’t sure that is until he was heading to Portland, Maine for a conference and decided to take Route One instead of U.S. 95 up from his home in Boston.
Now that was no random decision since Josh had grown up in Olde Saco a few miles south of Portland and had been for a lot of reasons of late in an Olde Saco frame of mind after the passing of Rene Dubois his old high school classmate and runaround corner boy back then. As he worked his way up Route One when he got to Olde Saco he happened to look to the right and there kind of hidden from view was an ancient dilapidated crude handmade sign for the Olde Saco Drive-In and moreover that the place was still open for business. He did not have time to stop but that sign, that memory kind of festered in his mind for a few weeks until he decided to go spent a few days (along with Laura) up at an old friend’s house in Wells (an old friend of Markin’s really from North Adamsville down in Massachusetts where they had grown up which is how he had met Jimmy Jenkins the owner of the place back after the summer of love, 1967). One day Josh fervently asked Laura to “take the ticket, take the ride,” an expression that he used when he wanted them to do something out of the ordinary. And going to a drive-in, the Olde Saco Drive-In was not something that he had done in about forty years so he was really doing a memory stretch. Laura at first didn’t want to go, said she had no history and hence no memory for drive-ins since between her shoulder-to-the-wheel no-nonsense parents not being the drive-in movie types and living out in Podunk in upstate New York where she could not remember if there were drive-ins in the area Josh’s big deal was a deflated balloon to her. But she eventually relented after he promised her to do about fourteen different things from taking her to dinner, cleaning up a laundry list (her laundry list) of stuff, to cooking in return which he took as a fair bargain under the circumstances, so they were off.
Now this drive-in thing back in the day had a certain ritual to it, a Josh and his gang ritual anyway. He had already thought after seeing the old place about the travails of childhood when after a long shift at the MacAdams Textile Mill where his father, Prescott, worked as a machinist before the mills that sustained the town headed south (first to American South then the world South to places like Indonesia and Singapore in search of that greedy increased profit wrought by cheaper wage packets), and Delores (nee LeBlanc and hence her hometown of Olde Saco one of the work stopping points heading south from native Quebec a generation or two before her own), his mother, both work weary would bundle up he and his four sisters and head to the “Olde Saco” for the night’s double feature, some illicit snacks (you were not supposed to bring your own foods in but what was to stop you and it would not be, despite five Breslin children howls, until he went there with his gang that he would learn of the delights at the snack bar-the buttered drenched slightly stale, maybe popped from the night before, popcorn, the fizz-less sodas sickenly sweetly syrup and caffeine clogged, the desiccated cardboard-like pizza light on cheese, sauce and flavor, the greasy grimy hamburgers only saved by slathered ketchups and mustard, no onions, no, onions if you wanted to go in to that good night with a certain she but more of that later, and the food-free, calorie free hot dogs in their grave-like mushy white flour enriched buns that would become his staple on drive-in nights, his sisters too from what they said, from what they said on their date nights if the guy wanted to get anywhere, anywhere at all with them, no cheapskates need apply their motto), and the playground conveniently located at the end just below the movie screen where he and his sisters would climb the jungle jim, slide the slide, mangle the see-saw and seek heaven on the swings. Kindly childhood thoughts as almost all children would think (and later measured, nicely measured in his parents favor since they really did not have the surplus dough to spent on such “frills” when the rent was always behind and his mother made something of a secular rosary out of her weekly white envelopes on the kitchen table bill-paying chores always short, always damn short although that remembrance too late to do him, or them, any good since they had been estranged so long).
No, what drove Josh these days were the teenage drive-in movies where he had come of age in the Olde Saco night. Of course it started with larcenous intent (nice legal term courtesy of Sam Lowell, the lawyer friend of Markin also met after they headed back East together in the summer of love year 1967) when the late Rene Dubois, a year older than the rest of the guys since he had just come down from Quebec and was in a special language immersion class (although they didn’t call it that then but something like special needs, or for dumb kids or something) for a year before joining the regular class who got his driver’s license first and more importantly since he worked at La Croix’s Garage over on Main Street after school and on weekends his first car an old beat up ‘53 Chevy that he worked on to bring back to life (as he would do with a succession of cars up to a “boss” ’57 two-toned white and cherry red naturally Chevy that was nothing but a “babe” magnet and not just for teeny-bopper girls either). But before the girls started cluttering up Rene’s life (as they would through four freaking marriages, a bushel of kids, and a bevy of grandkids) he was the “max daddy” of the road taking his corner boys like Josh to the Olde Saco Drive-In.
Here is where the larceny comes in though. In those days admission was something like three dollars a head for the nightly double-feature (Josh urged that he not be quoted on that price for like lots of things these days that number seems to have come out of the mist of time and may be totally wrong but the price cheap anyway although not cheap enough for “from hunger” working class projects kids like him) so what they would do is pig-pile three or four guys in the big ass trunk (occasional sightings of 1950s automobile models still on the road and a recent visit to an automobile museum out in San Diego only confirmed to Josh what he remembered about how big the trunks were then, and how big bad ass the engines were too, and although today’s are quite a bit more efficient there was some psychological lift then in being seen in those big ass cars, certainly the girls would turn their heads something he had not seen anybody with today’s zip cars and minis), maybe depending on size a couple of guys in the rear seat wells so for about six bucks (remember the guess-aspect please), the admission Rene and whoever was riding shot-gun paid (later correctly split up among the total number admitted since that was the whole point) half the freaking neighborhood got into the show for less than a dollar.
Now one might ask, aside from the silly question of the morality if not the legality of such moves whether the admission booth attendant would not get wise to the whole scene. What are you kidding this poor cluck probably got about a dollar an hour for his or her work and was not worried about playing “copper,” not when that person probably was running the same scam when he or she was going to the drive-in. The important thing is that later, later when it wasn’t about “from hunger” guys but meeting carloads of girls from the neighborhoods who were using the same “technique” sometimes Josh and the boys would con some poor girls into the trunk and since it was tight quarters “cop” a quick feel wherever that stray hand landed (the only really acceptable kind of “copping” when you thought about it) a quick feel and maybe get them “in the mood” for the fogged up window scene every guy dream of. (Later Josh would tell one and all out in California he blushed more than the girls when he pulled that maneuver although he caught more than his fair share of “in the mood” girls, he was not known by the moniker the “Prince of Love” in the great summer of love night, circa 1967, for nothing).
Josh laughed when he thought about that silly larceny and that “copping” kids’ stuff but later, come junior and senior years of high school the ritual became much more serious when three was a crowd time, when it was important to be able to separate out a bit and go to what was named the “sweat box” by the local guys, the place where the single guy with a single girl placed their automobile away from the prying carload of younger teen guys or girls and better still from prying eyes of young parents, grown suddenly old and responsible once the kids started coming, shielding their kids from the fogged bound cars at the back of the lot. The “sweat box” was the section where if one asked a quick question about the plot of the film one would get some strange answers while the parties were straightening out their clothes. Josh said if you really thought about it no parent would go within fifty yards of that “passion pit.”
Not all of Josh’s memories of the Olde Saco Drive-In were great big cream puff dreams. Later after the big “cultural revolution” that was the 1960s lost steam guys like Josh (and more dramatically the moaned for late Pete Markin) were left stranded for a while, lost their moorings. Like the time Josh was down on his own luck and forced to sneak back to Olde Saco and stay low for reasons that best not detain us here. Here’s how he told the story:
“Mimi Murphy knew two things, she needed to keep moving, and she was tired, tired as hell of moving, of the need, of the self-imposed need, to keep moving ever since that incident five years ago with her seems like an eternity ago sweet long gone motorcycle boy, Pretty James Preston. Poor Pretty James and his needs, no, his obsessions with that silly motorcycle, that English devil’s machine, that Vincent Black Lightning that caused him more anguish than she did. And she gave him plenty to think about as well before the end. How she tried to get him to settle down a little, just a little, but what was a sixteen old girl, pretty new to the love game, totally new, but not complaining to the sex game, and his little tricks to get her in the mood for that, and forget the settle down thing. Until the next time.
Maybe, if you were from around North Adamsville way, or maybe just Boston, you had heard about Pretty James, Pretty James Preston and his daring exploits back in about 1967 and 1968. Those got a lot of play in the newspapers for months before the end. Before that bank job, the one where as Pretty James used to say all the time, he cashed his check. Yes, the big Granite City National Bank branch in Braintree heist that he tried to pull all by himself, with Mimi as stooge look-out. She had set him up for that heist, or so she thought. No, she didn’t ask him to do it but she got him thinking, thinking about settling down just a little and he needed a big score, not the penny ante gas station and mom and pop variety store robberies that kept them in, as he also said, coffee and cakes but a big payday and then off to Mexico, maybe Sonora, and a buy into the respectable and growing drug trade.
And he almost, almost, got away clean that fatal day, that day when she stood across the street, a forty-five in her purse just in case he needed it for a final getaway. But he never made it out the door. Some rum brave security guard tried to uphold the honor of his profession and started shooting nicking Pretty James in the shoulder. Pretty James responded with a few quick blasts and felled the copper. That action though slowed down the escape enough for the real coppers to respond and blow Pretty James away. Dead, DOA, done. Her sweet boy Pretty James.
According to the newspapers a tall, slender red-headed girl about sixteen had been seen across the street from the bank just waiting, waiting according to the witness, nervously. The witness had turned her head when she heard the shots from the bank and when she looked back the red-headed girl was gone. And Mimi was gone, and long gone before the day was out. She grabbed the first bus out of Braintree headed to Boston where eventually she wound up holed up in a high-end whorehouse doing tricks to make some moving dough. And she had been moving ever since, moving and eternally hate moving. Now, for the past few months, she had been working nights as a cashier in the refreshment stand at the Olde Saco Drive-In Theater to get another stake to keep moving. She had been tempted, a couple of times, to do a little moon-lighting in a Portland whorehouse that a woman she had worked with at her last job, Fenner’s Department Store where she modeled clothes for the rich ladies, had told her about to get a quick stake but she was almost as eternally tired at that prospect as in moving once again.
Then one night Josh came in. Came in for popcorn and a Sprite she remembered, although she did not remember on that busy summer night what the charge was. He kind of looked her over quickly, very quickly but she was aware that he looked her over and, moreover, he was aware that she knew that he had looked her over. The look though was not the usual baby, baby come on look, but a thoughtful look like he could see that she had seen some woes and, well, what of it. Like maybe he specialized in fixing busted-up red-heads, or wanted to. She knew she wasn’t beautiful but she had a certain way about her that certain guys, guys from motorcycle wild boy Pretty James Boy to kind of bookish college guys like this one, wanted to get next to. If she let them. And she hadn’t, hadn’t not since Pretty James. But she confessed to herself, not without a girlish blush, that she had in the universe of looks and peeks that make up human experience looked him over too. And then passed to the next customer and his family of four burgeoning tray-full order of hot dogs, candy, popcorn and about six zillion drinks.
A couple of nights later, a slow night for it was misting out keeping away the summer vacation families that kept the drive-in hopping before each show and at intermission, a Thursday night usually slow anyway before the Friday change of the double-feature, Josh came in again at intermission. This time out of nowhere, without a second’s hesitation, she gave him a big smile when he came to the register with his now familiar popcorn and Sprite. He didn’t respond, or rather he did not respond right away because right behind him there were a couple of high school couples who could hardly wait to get their provisions and get back to their fogged-up car and keep it fogged up. They passed by him and hurried out the door.
Just then over the refreshment stand loudspeaker that played records as background music to keep the unruly crowds a little quiet while they waited for their hamburgers and hot dogs came the voice of Doris Troy singing her greatest hit, Just One Look. Then he broke into a smile, a big smile like he was thinking just that thought that very minute, looked up at the clock, looked again, and looked a third time without saying a word, She gave him a slight flirty smile and said eleven o’clock and at exactly eleven o’clock he was there to meet her. Maybe she thought as they went out the refreshment stand door she would not have to keep moving, eternally moving after all.
A couple of fretful months later one nigh Mimi slipped out the back door of her rooming house over on Atlantic Avenue and Josh never heard from her again. Josh figured that after telling him about Pretty James one lonesome whiskey-drinking night she had to move, keep moving tired or not.”
So not all the old time Olde Saco Drive-In dreams worked out. And in the big scheme of things in Josh’s life, some ups, some downs stirred memories, good or bad, of drive-in movie times would usually rate pretty far down on the list. But these semi-retired days Josh has had time to think about old time things. Like a lot of guys, gals too but he wouldn’t speak for them since he had only talked to his guys about those old days he wished to have a re-run on such things knowing full well that you “can’t go home again,” the past is dead and gone. Hell, didn’t he know that when he tried to rekindle some old high school friendships and wound up giving it up after he realized that time had swept whatever they all had in common away. Know too when he tried that last reconciliation with his family that it was too late. Hell even a simple thing like planning to go to class reunion got all balled up when some old flame, or kind of old flame, wanted to start something up again now that she was “single” (after three divorces) and Josh too (ditto on the divorces, the number as well). So he had had to nix that plan.
And that is where Laura came in, Laura who had “saved” him from some tiresome lonely old age when they finally got together, finally figured they were “soulmates” as she called it (and he agreed). See Josh figured some things maybe can’t be worked out from the past but something simple like a trip down memory lane at the Olde Saco Drive-In might be a kick. Like was mentioned before Laura was very cool to the idea but since they were staying nearby, the weather was warm and the double-bill (yeah, they kept the double-bill tradition alive) while not her usual arty films were probably passable flicks she finally agreed. So on a Wednesday night they drove the twenty miles or so up to Olde Saco from Wells with a certain amount of excitement now that they had decided to do the thing (Laura with her drive-in-less youth was now curious about the whole ritual).
When Josh drove up to the admissions booth he noticed that the old standard per carload idea was also still in effect, verifying what he had already told Laura about the old time larcenies. (By the way he can confirm that times had changed, that inflation had worked its ways in the forty or fifty years that have passed since now a carload was twenty dollars and that is a number that he had no trouble remembering since it was his treat.) As he passed his money along he kiddingly mentioned to the attendant that he had twelve people in the trunk but instead of some incomprehension on his part the kid told Josh that he had a few nights before had to check a couple of trunks and found them filled with teenagers. The tradition lives! (Although Josh felt some chagrin later over the kid playing “copper” on the deal).
As Josh and Laura found a spot, a little out of the way since they had passed a number of carloads of families with kids not sitting in the cars like the old days but spread out in front of their spots with lawn chairs so they could have a little quiet. Josh remarked that except for some overgrown grass the place looked pretty much the same as in the old days with a few exceptions. First off there were no speakers, you know, the ones on the posts that you clipped to your slightly opened front door window (and half the time in your rush to get out of the place in less than an hour as the traffic jam began at the exit you forgot the damn thing and not a few would be down on the ground after a night’s work). Nowadays, as Laura noticed on the screen, you tuned into a numbered station on your car radio. Okay, progress can’t be stopped and those silly speakers were really a nuisance. Another thing was that the old time playground that he and his sisters played in as kids were gone, replaced by a couple more rows of car spots. The most striking thing though was, probably as a matter of saving dough, the refreshment stand area looked almost exactly as it had, except maybe a new coat of paint about ten years ago, when he spied Mimi behind the counter back in the 1970s with the same “menu.” (Don’t tell Laura, please don’t tell Laura that Josh had some pangs about Mimi on seeing that stand, okay).
Actually the most striking thing about the evening though was not the same old stand but that there was not a speck of an indication that the old “sweat box” section was still around. And it made sense when he and Laura were talking about the subject during intermission. Kids have about twenty other ways of entertaining themselves, are more committed to mall-rat-dom and other locales these days so things do move on. Josh had not expected any such replication although it would have heartened him if it had. It was okay and they had a nice evening.
Hey, what about the double-feature, what about the movies. Well, Josh said he was not sure but he thought one was a spy movie, something out of the Cold War, and the other was a flipped out romance. And he said Laura agreed. When he named the two titles though when I checked they had nothing to do with spies or romances, one was a star-wars type movie, the other a gangster movie. Yeah, some things never change at the drive-in, well almost never except Josh complained about how hard it was to maneuver these days with these damn bucket car seats and the console in the middle, and about how they forgot to bring paper towels to wipe off the fog from the windshields.
