An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- When The Wobblies, You Know The Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) Bloomed

An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- When The Wobblies, You Know The Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW) Bloomed

Greg Green, site manager Introduction 

 [In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way, made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68 partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or graphic novels. I stand humbled.

Not only stand humbled though but in a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love in 1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. One called it a travesty.

Backing off after finding Allan, not an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some attention.      

That was the way things went and not too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.

I once again attempted to make the mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series (after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series. Greg Green]                  

Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction

[As my replacement Greg Green, whom I brought in from American Film Gazette originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’ ethos and fate.        

As I said I will describe that transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime” I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival, about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around” something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The Roots Is The Toots  rock and roll coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket. (Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been present at the creation.               

That would have been the end of it but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found another series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.      

This time though the Editorial Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their opportunity to move up.  

That part I had no problem with, told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend” about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that same town whom I also helped stake to  his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.          

If the reader can bear the weight of this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason, although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.

Tapped out in the East for a lot of reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate. So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat. Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.              

The helping Madame La Rue, real name of no interest or need to mention,  running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly, said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her place for a while until I had to move on. Done

The whole drag queen idea tells me that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East. Done.

But enough about me.  This is about two other working- class guys, Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam and Ralph in future segments.]

Allan Jackson Introduction To Sam and Ralph-The Wild Boys of Cambridge When Cambridge Was Jammed Full Of Wild Girls And Boys    

[Some guys from the old days, from the old growing up poor in the working-class Acre section of North Adamsville, I still have contact with over fifty years later. Guys like Seth Garth who is now in a “battle” along with his new protégé Sarah Lemoyne who looks for all the world to be an up and coming contributor to this publication against his, and my, old time friend Sam Lowell who promised me he would retire, especially after he provided the key last and decisive vote when the younger writers rose up against my editorship and forced me to retire. Forced me West seeking another job to keep myself solvent causing all kinds of rumors and fairy tales to enter the world which only muddied up the already murky waters. Other guys like beautiful Si Lannon and generous benefactor to this publication Jack Callahan also come to mind. Of course the elephant in the room has always been, and probably always will be, one Peter Paul Markin, who taught us many things before his sadly untimely demise caused by his own hubris many years ago. I honored his memory for years using his name as my moniker in various publishing efforts and will detail the genesis of that decision in the memoir of my time in the publishing industry which I am working on and expect to complete by next year.     

I am proud to have had the chance to keep so many friendships from the old neighborhoods days as I am a man who puts a great deal into things like loyalty and camaraderie. Of course those relationships do not exhaust the number of long friendships and close working relationships. Josh Breslin met in the Summer of Love, 1967, Zack James, youngest brother of my closest friend in high Alex, and Lance Lawrence come readily to mind. Then there are guys, I am only talking guys today as I will deal with gals in an up-coming introductory segment, like fellow Vietnam veteran Ralph Morris from over in Troy, New York whom I met I believe down in Washington, D.C. in 1971 a few weeks before we, Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW), did our part to try to shut down the government to shut down the war on May Day -and failed. Guys like his friend Sam Eaton from Carver about fifty miles from North Adamsville,  not a veteran since he was exempted from the draft as the sole support of his mother and four sisters after his father passed away suddenly of a heart attack, whom Ralph “met” after both had been arrested in those May Day actions in “jail” at the RFK football stadium. They, Sam and Ralph, and I have stayed in contact over the years and have worked on many political projects mostly against war together.    

That brings me to the idea behind having Sam and Ralph as the central characters in a series I helped plan around the story- and fate- of some working- class radicals who for the most part had kept the faith, had not retreated to self, had not given up the mist of change we were struggling for in those halcyon and heady 1960s upheaval days. At the cost of over-generalization the thing that united the North Adamsville remnant, including me, guys like Josh Breslin and guys like Sam and Ralph was our working-class backgrounds. While the road to new understandings of the ways of the world were different we all arrived at some similar conclusions and since then have seen no reason to dramatically change them if in the aging process we are less able to stir the old energies. Have been ready to “pass the torch” for a while. The stories of the old North Adamsville corner boys had by 2012 or so been done to death as had the stories centered on other working-class guys like Josh Breslin from places like Olde Saco up in Maine and so the natural place to turn was the long-time relationship between Sam and Ralph. Things seemed right in the universe doing the series then-and now with this encore.]          

********

When The Wobblies Bloomed

Sam Eaton comment:

Everybody, or practically everybody, knows the story of how my old friend Ralph Morris from Troy, New York and I met on May Day 1971 so I will just give the highlights since what I want to really talk about is what we discussed and decided to do as a result of what happened that day. See I had gone down to Washington D.C. with several groups (collectives, was what we called them) of red-hot “reds” and radicals from Cambridge in order to “capture” the White House. That is not as weird as it sounds now since what we were trying to do along with thousands of others who opposed the Vietnam War (and shared similar positions on other social questions as well) was to “shut down the government, if it did not shut down the war.” We were angry, we were desperate and some of us, not me then anyway, were acting under the impression that we were opening a second front here in America in aid of the liberation fighters in Vietnam.  

Ralph, an ex-veteran with eighteen months under his belt in Vietnam, had become totally disgusted with what he had done there, what his buddies had done there, and what the American government had made them do to people who were not bothering anybody, at least nobody in America.  He had joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization and had come down to Washington with a group from New York state who were going to shut down their old boss, the Pentagon, as part of that same May Day action. They at least had enough sense, unlike us, to realize that this would be a symbolic action. In either case what we all got for our troubles was tear-gassed, billy-clubbed and as Ralph put it once, sent to the bastinado, the RFK football stadium then being used as a holding pen for all those arrested that day. And there is where Ralph and I met when he saw I had a VVAW supporter button on (in respect for my friend Jeff Mullins from my hometown of Carver, Massachusetts who got blown away in Vietnam and got me out in the streets as a result).     

Like I said what was important was not so much that we met, although that did start a lifetime personal friendship and politically active association, but that we began what would be a several years stretch of activity and study in order to see what had gone wrong that day, and what we really needed to do when the government went to war and we needed to stop it in its tracks. After we left RFK and hitchhiked back up North we continued to talk and to make study plans which due to one thing or another didn’t get a big boost until the summer of 1972. That summer I had been living in a Cambridge commune, a very common living arrangement during those years for comradery and to share the bills among people who had little dough. I invited Ralph over from Troy to stay with me and to join a study group/ action group run by one of the many “red collectives” that were sprouting up around Cambridge in those days. He came and spent the summer, although his father who ran a high precision electrical shop was furious since Ralph had been cheap labor for him.

Not everything that we learned that summer, or later when we studied with other groups or on our own, was etched in gold, had a lot of relevance to what we were trying to do but a lot did. A grounding in the basics of classical Marxism except for the book sealed with seven seals Das Capital, the experiences of the Bolsheviks and the three Russian revolutions, the work of Che Guevara and Leon Trotsky on colonial revolutions, closer to home the American Civil War, and the early labor movement here. And of course a drill through of what were called questions, questions with a big “Q” like the black question, the Russian question, the women question, the gay question, the labor party question and so on.         

We wound up not joining any particular group, including not joining the Socialist Workers Party that we were interested in because of its connection with the heroic figure of Leon Trotsky and his windmill facing tasks to save the Russian revolution and because of James P. Cannon whose work in the political prisoner field, especially when he was with the International Labor Defense and its central involvement in the Sacco and Vanzetti case in the 1920s we admired. While we had political disagreements with most groups we were in contact with (and disagreements between us especially on the Labor Party question since I was red-hot to try and use the Democratic Party as a way to change things and Ralph would have none of that since it was a Democrat, LBJ, who sent his “young ass” [his term] to Vietnam) would join and unjoin various ad hoc groups around particular issues much preferring that avenue to joining a hard political organization. The real reason though was that sometime in the mid-1970s while we were still deep in trying to figure things out the glow of the big 1960s jail break-out was beginning to lose steam. And we were beginning to lose steam as well wanting to get on with careers and starting families.

Ralph, who still lives in Troy as I still live around Boston, since we are both practically retired and the kids are grown have gotten together more recently when he makes periodic trips to Boston. One night not long ago we were sitting in our favorite bar, Jack Higgins’ Grille down by the Financial District downtown, talking about this and that, you know of course political this and that, when Ralph mentioned that he had run into Hugo Gans, the old Industrial Workers of the World organizer (IWW, Wobblies) who was out there trying to organize some small clot of restaurant workers in Saratoga Springs. That got us talking about those old study groups and about the process we went through trying to figure out what group we would join in order to do more effective political work (remember we wound up not joining any on-going group).         

No question we were under the sway of Che and Leon Trotsky and that it would be hard to see ourselves in an organization hostile to the work of either men but we paid very close attention in one study class run by an anarchist who went root and branch through the virtues of the old time Wobblies. We caught some of the fever he put out, if only as an historical moment. We stood in thrall to guys like Big Bill Haywood and his Western miners who went through hell to get what they wanted. We admired Frank Little and the others who were martyred to the cause and the heroic struggle against great odds of the IWWs opposition to World War I which put the organization right in the cross-hairs of the government bent on war and which basically crushed organization as an effective pole of attraction for young labor militants. We admired Jim Cannon as well for making the big move from the Wobblies but shared his old time sentimental feeling that the organization grabbed some very good cadre in the early days.

And of course there was Hugo who could always be counted on to bring whoever he could round-up to add bodies to whatever protest we were planning. So it was something of a treat to pick up a copy of a newspaper from one of the young earnest Marxists hocking their wares at an anti-war Iraq and Syria rally that featured some words by Cannon on the subject of the Wobblies. He had a good sense of their strengths in the early day and their limitations when things had changed and the deal went down the wrong way.

[In the original segment there was a short sentence informing the reader to “read on” referring to a major essay by James P. Cannon on the IWW. I have not placed that essay here but it can ne easily accessed by Googling the James P. Cannon Internet website and scrolling to 1954. AJ]