An Encore Salute To The Untold
Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- For The
Fallen-In Honor Of The Anti-War Soldier Timothy Kerrigan (1940-2015), Vietnam
1964-1966-RIP
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 Encore Introduction
All of us who were wounded in
Vietnam, in the war, mentally, spiritually, physically, which I include myself in
the mix had various ways to live our service down. As I have mentioned before I
would estimate that the vast majority of the couple of million Americans who
served in that conflict starting from serious America escalation in 1964 to the
bitter end with the famous helicopter scene of people being airlifted off the
U.S. Embassy rooftop in April, 1975 did so without rancor or without the damn
war putting them in a very bad place like happened with Peter Paul Markin’s “brothers
under the bridges” in Southern California and continues to happen with suicides,
drug dependency and all the other pathologies of the post-traumatic stress of
their service. Some like Markin fell down to drugs, hubris, exhaustion with
life in the “real” world. Others, and I am in this cohort as well “got religion”
about the issues of war and peace which they, we would never had experienced
outside having to fight the monsters, the monstrous American war machine. That
is what Ralph and Sam, who wrote this piece, admired about their, our friend Timmy
Kerrigan when he passed away a few years ago of cancer.
In a way Timmy’s death which I did
not hear about until a few weeks after he passed so I was not at his memorial service
revived something in me, something about “revisiting” the why of how the
Vietnam War twisted me in a direction that, given my up-bringing, never would have
happened, would never have prompted me to spent the rest of my life trying to
get “on the good side of the angels.” That at least in part is the genesis on
the “why” of this series when the idea was first broached. The other bigger part
to the why, the why beyond Timmy, which was recently re-enforced by Lynn Novack
and Ken Burns’s PBS Vietnam War series
was the need to “shout out over the rooftops” to the younger generations the
need to oppose the war policies of the American government, to use our “street
cred” as veterans to say no to war.
Unlike say the World War II veterans,
Sam, Ralph, Timmy, my father’s war while they were as silent as we were about
what went on in combat had a certain pride that came with victory over fascism which
is what drove many of them into the ranks, that and patriotism after December
7, 1941, after Japan blew the hell out of the fleet at Pearl Harbor we had
nothing to feel good about. Nothing. I remember while I was deciding on whether
to go ahead with the project running into Fritz Taylor, a Vietnam veteran from
down in Fulton County, Georgia who has occasionally written for this publication,
told me that except for about a week at home he had never returned to his
hometown he was so ashamed of what he had done, and could not tolerate the fake
patriotism that still drove his parents, his fellow townsman at the time. Had
stopped mentioning at all for many years that he was a Vietnam veteran and kept
whatever was inside him inside. This from a guy who won a fistful of medals for
his service (medals which wound up heaved over the fence at the Supreme Court
building in down in Washington, D.C in 1971). Another driving wedge at the time
was my meeting a veteran of two tours, two tough Mekong Delta tours, which
meant really tough tours, up in Maine when I was visiting Josh Breslin’s hometown
of Olde Saco who had been married twice (and divorced twice) and had never mentioned
that he had been in Vietnam to either one of his wives. That sentiment was only
re-enforced by the PBS series where the wives of two ex-Marines had known each other
for a dozen years, the men were friends, and yet neither knew the other had
served in Vietnam. Amazing. That only contributed to my sense of urgency in
doing an encore presentation. As for beautiful Timmy Kerrigan Sam and Ralph can
speak on that matter far better than I could.
**************
For The Fallen-In Honor Of The Anti-War Soldier Timothy
Kerrigan (1940-2015), Vietnam 1964-1966-RIP
From The Pen Of Sam Eaton
Ralph Morris is a man of few words. Don’t get the idea
though that he is not capable or if in the mood or if provoked of coming up
with some pithy word or phrase but he is a not a writer in the senses that I
am, that I like to write. But he is a man of few words nevertheless. Strangely
he has made his living off of words, not writing them but printing them up
being a printer by trade. That is a trade that he has pursued ever since in
about third grade he read that one of his heroes, Benjamin Franklin of American
Revolution fame, had been a printer. So he took that course up in high school,
apprenticed with Joe Pringle who at the time had the only print shop in Carver,
in Massachusetts the town that he grew up in, and eventually set up a shop
there. A successful shop until the past few years when he realized that print
technology had changed so much and that he was behind the times in the copying
business (after having back in the late 1960s early 1970s been in the vanguard
of the silk-screening end of the business when everybody wanted that kind of
work done on posters and tee-shirts) and turned the business last year over to
his oldest son, Jeff, who is more savvy in the new hi-tech world.
But enough of Ralph’s history for today Ralph has other
troubles on his mind, troubles about having to say a few words, really more
than a few words about the late Timothy Kerrigan at his memorial service, a few
words about what Timmy meant to the organization they both (me too) belonged
to, Veterans for Peace, and to Ralph personally. See Timmy was something like
Ralph’s mentor way back when Ralph came back to the “real” world after eighteen
month of service in Vietnam in late 1969 and was something of a basket case
(Ralph’s term). Timmy had eased him along, eased him along about drawing some
conclusions on the hellish war that Ralph had come to hate, hate for the savage
things he had done to people with whom he had no quarrel, hate for the savage
things his Army buddies had done to people they had no quarrel with, and most
of all the unfeeling American government which had without the slightest
hesitation turned him, them into vicious animals, nothing more. Yeah, Ralph had
had plenty of troubles in his doped-up head when he got back, and was not sure
what to do about it when his old friends, neighbors and working-class community
were still gung-ho about stuff in a war they were clueless about, knowingly
clueless.
Timmy, a half dozen years older than Ralph, had served in
that same war earlier, very early on from 1964 to 1966 when ninety-five percent
of the country could not show you on a map where Vietnam was if you gave them
ten chances and had gone through his own adjusting to the “real” world
problems. He got Ralph through the tough parts back in 1970 after he had been
discharged. Moreover Timmy lived in Albany, the next town over and another
working-class town which did not understand the murderous assault on the
sensibilities of American soldiers who served in that theater of combat.
So Timmy and Ralph in a sea of benighted patriotism helped
each other out when things got dicey. See Timmy, he and it seemed then every
such soldier got “religion” on the issues of war and peace and turned against
the war that they had fought honorably if erroneously in decided to do
something more than hang out in ill-lighted barroom sulking or “shooting up” in
some backroom dope den and joined an anti-war organization. Join in his case
with a bunch of other guys, a “band of brothers,” some officers, some enlisted men,
some who had seen combat and some on the edges of the military machine, some
grievously physically wounded, some wounded in the head, who had formed Vietnam
Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the famous organization which did a lot to
turn public sentiment against the war. After all if the guys who fought the war
called it by its right name, murder, had thrown their medals away, had walked
in silent bedraggled cadence in the streets of major cities crying out to the
heavens to stop the slaughter then most everybody had to at least give them a
respectful hearing.
As everybody, or at least everybody from that generation
knows, the generation of ‘68 Timmy called it from the year that the Viet Cong
decided to try and take back the day, take back his and her country and not
just the night which every savvy American private soldier if not every general
knew belonged to him and her during the Tet offensive the American forces were
ultimately forced to “skedaddle” in a hurry in 1975 and effectively ended the
decade plus long American involvement in Vietnam. And that effectively ended
plenty of political opposition to American war policy as the great majority of
people, protestors and patriots alike, went back to “normalcy.” Ended too the
big public face of VVAW.
But see Timmy and Ralph (and I will add myself but under
different circumstances explained later) were hard-headed if big-hearted guys.
They took that “religious conversion” to fight against the seemingly endless
wars the American (and other, believe me, other governments as well) government
was determined to pursue as the greatest military power by far the world has
ever known seriously and determined at some point that they would fight the
“monster” until the end. So you could see them, mostly in Boston, occasionally
in New York and whenever some national call came out in Washington, D.C. all
through the years, some lean years when they were voices in the wilderness,
some years like in the late fall of 2002 and early winter of 2003 when they
were swallowed up in mass movements opposed to the impending war in Iraq. Timmy
would be the rock, would steady Ralph when he got seriously depressed that
their efforts were for not. Would remind Ralph that they, both Catholics so
Ralph would see the point more readily, had plenty of penance to do for
torching up half of Vietnam, gunning down half the poor benighted peasants who
got caught in the cross-fire for no purpose. The both would be early members of
a new organization of anti-war veterans that was formed in the mid-1980s to do
that oppositional work in a more systematic and forceful way, Veteran For Peace
(VFP) once the crowds thinned out. Yeah, Timmy was like that, was the rock as I
too found out.
I might as well explain how I met Ralph and through him
Timmy and then I’ll finish up about the why of the few words Ralph was having
trouble gathering his thoughts about his, our, fallen comrade. (I should point
out my organizational connection. I am an associate member of VFP not having
had to serve in the military due to the fact that I was the sole surviving son
after my father died suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1965 leaving me as
the sole support for my mother and four much younger sisters. That VFP
associate status except for a few organization items which are restricted to
veterans is the same as veteran membership.) It all goes back to the spring of
1971 when I, along with a bunch of radicals and “reds” that I hung with in
Saratoga Springs, New York from Skidmore College and other campuses around
Albany and Troy, the town Ralph grew up in, were totally frustrated with the
endless Vietnam War. Maybe not as frustrated as the Vietnamese who had plenty
of reason to be in that condition, and more so than us but we were still
desperately committed to ending the war. Ending the war by building a “second
front” as some “movement” theoretician called it at the time and most of us
bought into that designation as an act of solidarity with the Vietnamese
(expressed in slogans like “Victory to the NLF (National Liberation Front)”and
waving the tri-color NLF flag on the American streets.
The idea was simple, or so we thought, and the working
slogan we used to organize the efforts kind of puts it in clear enough
language-“If the government will not shut down the war, we will shut down the
government.” Simple, right. Waltz into Washington on May Day (the international
workers holiday although we linked it more to the socialist-tinged point of the
day) like some Calvinist avenging angels and be done with it. Well, to cut to
the chase, all we got was tear gas, police billy-clubs and the bastinado for
our efforts as you could probably have figured out.
Thousands of us were herded (which is exactly the right
word) into the Robert F. Kennedy football stadium which was the main holding
area (until that got too crowded and other locations were used) as the police
and every other military and law enforcement unit in the D.C. area swooped down
on us. Ralph and I met while in detention in RFK when Ralph noticed my VVAW
button and asked if I belonged. I said
no that I had not served in the military but that my closest friend, my corner
boy from high school in front of Mia’s Pizza Parlor in the Ocean Street section of Carver, Jeff Mullins, had
been senselessly killed in action in the Central Highlands and had written me
letters a few months before he was blown away telling me how brutal things were
there, how bad the things he and his buddies had to do there were and that if
he did not make it back to make sure that I spread the word. So I did (and do)
and so I wore the button in honor of him. Since Ralph and I were in detention for
a few days (we eventually walked out of the place when we found out that there
were exits in the place which the over-stretched law enforcement forces had
left unguarded) something about my story, something about my life story and his
kept us talking like two jaybirds (a little passed stashed dope and a ton of
donated coffee helped with what I would find out later was actually “few words”
Ralph).
Ralph explained that he had gone to D.C. on Timmy’s urging
as part of the VVAW contingent that also was committed to the same action I was
involved in but they wanted to have their own veterans’ brigade. See Timmy was
a known activist/agitator for civil disobedience from early on in VVAW (as
opposed to those like John Kerry who wanted to go the legislative or electoral
route) and had been one of the steering committee organizers for the overall
action such as it was. Timmy in later years, in VFP years as well would be a
vocal and sometimes overbearing advocate for civil disobedience when the
occasion called for it (and a couple of times when it seemed foolhardy but we
went along carried by the force of his argument). That was strong Timmy (who
was personally one of the gentlest people on the planet).
But here was the beauty of Timmy. He walked the walk. That
May Day of 1971 VVAW wanted to surround the Pentagon and “shut it down,”
symbolically somewhat like the anti-war forces had done in 1967 trying to
“levitate” the building as described in Norman Mailer’s award-winning novel Armies of the Night. For his part in the
attempt (they never got close just as we never got close when we tried to
“capture” the White House). If all of this seems a little foolhardy now
remember we were desperate to end the war and our governmental opponents and their
hangers-on would have been just as happy to see our bodies floating on in the
Potomac River as have their authority challenged. However Timmy, as a
“ring-leader” had a special single cell provided for his efforts which he
occupied for a week, including a few days on a hunger strike. Yes, Timmy always
walked the walk. You could depend on that.
I would meet Timmy some weeks later when I wound up going to
Ralph’s house in Troy after I had decided to move for the year to Cambridge to
join the radicals and “reds” there. We three talked for many hours then (and
later) and I learned a lot from him, learned how to stay the course when times
were not too good for the messages we were trying to get across. Learned too
that one well-planned public campaign at the right time and with the right
media exposure could push the movement along much further than the endless
vigils of Quakers and pacifists, bless their souls.(My sisters by the way by
then were all grown and were providing the main support for my mother since
they were working and living at home-they also were as apolitical and/or as
hostile as any anonymous pro-war sympathizers, especially my mother who I had
many difficulties with then but that is for another day.)
And that brings us to Ralph’s dilemma. Timothy Francis
Kerrigan passed away after a long bout with cancer on July 10, 2015. Timmy, not
a religious man, although he continued to unlike Ralph profess his Catholic
faith, wanted not such ceremony but rather a simple service in which his VFP
buddies, particularly Ralph, would say a few words (he had in the hospice
before he passed away expressed a desire that they be kind words if possible
but words of some sort nevertheless). See here was Ralph’s real dilemma though
he wanted no “help” from me who usually would put his many times insightful
thoughts into words. Well on July 15, 2015 the service in memory of Timmy took
place. Here is what Ralph had to say:
“Some people are leaders by holding the mere mantle of
official authority. Some people are leaders by the force of their arguments.
Some people are leaders by example. Timothy Francis Kerrigan, my brother
anti-war veteran, led by the latter two. Timmy was the conscience of VFP, Timmy
walked the walk which needs no further explanation to this audience. He will be
missed. Timothy Francis Kerrigan, Presente. Ralph Morris says good voyage-RIP,
brother, RIP.’’
Enough said.
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