50 Years Gone The Father We
Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack River Nights-Searching For
The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West
Night- New Year’s Eve, 1976
By Seth Garth, known as
Charles River Blackie for no other reason that he can remember at least than he
slept along those banks, the Cambridge side and some raggedy ass wino who tried
to cut him under the Anderson Bridge one night called him that and it stuck.
Those wino-zapped bums, piss leaky tramps and poet-king hoboes all gone to some
graven spot long ago from drink, drug, or their own hubris which they never
understood gone and the moniker too.
New Year’s Eve, 1977
… he
looked out from the ancient smudged sooted
back window (showing frigid glass crack slivers breakable to the touch and
some rotten pane wood ) of his fourth floor single room sad sack, no elevator,
long gone downhill from prosperous Victorian mayfair swells times brownstone
ready for the wrecker’s’ ball, down the street, down Joy Street, down Beacon
Hill Boston Joy Street, ironically named , as the late afternoon crowd of
government workers clinging to their annual New Year’s holiday early release
(at the discretion of their supervisors, if the day’s work was done, although
they, the supervisors. were long gone at noontime) strolled by, ditto
post-Christmas shoppers who had wisely waited until well after day after black death
Christmas day to bring back to Jordan’s
or Filene’s those unwanted ties, toys, and bric-a-brac that inevitable arrived
at that time each year, and watched wistfully as an early returning college
student or two, bulging cloth book bags over their shoulders, trying to catch
up on some recess-delayed study, headed a few streets over to school as the town prepared for its first First Night, an officially
sanctioned chamber of commerce-style city booster event complete with usually
reserved for the Fourth of July
shout-out fireworks to welcome in the new year, 1977.
Closer
at hand he also observed across narrow Joy Street sad-eyed Saco Steve and beat
Billy, Billy of no known moniker, moniker an important identifying mark against
the million Billy and Bob lost soul combinations and something to give you the
hobo, tramp bum good seal of approval on
some lonesome Route 66 road to nowhere, two wine-soaked winos, wine-soaked by
this hour if he was any judge, across from his smudged sooted brownstone
window. He stopped himself, as he began to judge their shabby low-rent existence,
their ceaseless nickel and dime pan-handling, soup kitchen tour veteran, day
labor existence mostly pearl-diving these days, pearl-diving washing dishes and
whatnot over at the Park Plaza where the head
union guy, the crew picker, was a second cousin of Billy’s who got him on when they had big shot dinners in the big
ballrooms and they, Billy and Steve, and the other guys too, mostly fellow
winos or guys down on their luck, would take, as a personal bonus, all those
half- full before diner wine glasses and empty them in waiting wine bottles
before the glasses went into the racks and on to the conveyor belts. Billy,
when he had hit bottom and hit joyless joy street had gotten him some work
there and had showed him that trick of the trade.
Then he
smirk chuckled realizing the immense slough of despond hypocrisy of that
forming thought, the joy street hard luck thought, and of his own fast lane
addictions, drugs, gambling, cigarettes, whores when he was in the clover, held
at bay for the moment, as he continued his view of the lads appearing, as
always, to be arguing over something from the sound of their voices that could
be heard all the way up to his fourth floor digs. That argument would before
long wind up on the floor below his where this pair, when not homeless
street-bound, or Sally (Salvation Army), or Pine Street worthy, when not too
far in rent arrears (like he was at the moment), kept a shabby flop, a flop not
unlike his, single bed, mattress sagging from too many years of faithful
addicted service (addicted, drugs, gambling, liquor, although not seemingly the
new addiction fad, sex, for, as far as he knew and he knew for certain in his
own case, no women crossed the
brownstone front door threshold, not that he had seen anyway, nor given the
single-minded nature of the listed addictions matched to listed tenants was
that likely, a woman, a woman’s wanting habits, were too distracting to trump
such devotions), a left behind rumbled hard hospital pillow, pillow-cased (by
him), probably gathered by some previous tenant from one of the about seventeen
local hospitals that started just the other side of Cambridge Street, Joy
Street downstream river flow into Cambridge Street, sheets, rumpled and he
provided as well, a bureau, a cockroach-friendly cheap bureau until he stamped
out every one of the veiled bastards, for his small personal wardrobe, a couple
of changes of this and that, maybe three, along with the usual stash of
undergarments, a small table for bric-a-brac (which he used for occasional
writing) and toilet articles, no cooking
facilities (thankfully, thinking about the Saco Steve and Billy voices moving
in on him), no frig, nothing personal on the walls, a common bathroom complete
with some Victorian-era tub for the four residents of each floor, and done.
As he
heard the rough-hewn gravel hoarse voices of
Saco Steve and Billy making their way up the stairs he threw on his best
short- sleeved shirt (simple logic, and not picked up from some hobo, tramp,
bum met on the road like a lot of good and useful information he had picked up
over the years, most of those brethren would not have cared, understood, or
comprehended one way or the other about such logic, they lived closer to the
moment than even he did -usable all seasons, heat or cold), dark green plaid,
Bermuda shorts plaid, something like that,
like what was fashionable about 1960 and mother –bought for the first
day of school (bought, always bought, at the Bargie, new, a hometown cheap jack
discount house before those kind of places became world franchised and spread
out to serve the fellahin world), fresh second-hand from the Sally (Salvation
Army, remember) bin over on Berkeley Street, his mauve sweater (also purchased
at Sally’s but earlier in the winter
backing up the logic of that short -sleeved shirt decision), his waist-length
denim jean jacket, not Sally-bought but bought when he was in the clover after
hitting the perfecta at Suffolk a couple of months before and deciding, deciding against all gambler’s reason, that
he should buy it against the coming winter colds, threw his keys in his pants’
pocket and headed down the stairs,
waving and shouting happy new year to Steve and Billy, who embroiled in some
argument about who was to buy the night’s Thunderbird, let his remark pass without
comment, and out the door to investigate the first night officially-sanctioned
activity. And to figure out how, with eight dollars (and a couple of buck in
change which he never counted as money, in the chips or out) in his pocket and
the tracks closed for the season until after the new year, he was going to come
up with a week’s twenty-two dollar rent due in a couple of days, and being a
couple of months in arrest, to keep the super from his door for a while.
As he
walked up Cambridge Street pass monstrous (monstrous in taking good cheap cold-
water flat tenement housing for his brethren and monstrous for its low –bidder
unfriendly design that looked to his now faux- professional architect’s opinion
like a space station platform against the generally Bulfinch décor of the
surrounding area) City Hall where it veered into Tremont toward the Common he
suddenly had an idea. Hell, why hadn’t he thought of it before. Constantly
studying those racing forms up in that fourth floor cold- water flat, hell not
even cold- water, not in the room anyway, he thought must had finally gotten
the better of him. What better night to work the pan-handle, the pan-handle
that a few years back he had worked into an art form of sorts before the chilly
winds of the 70s, his own hubristic addictions, Susie, and , hell, just some plain bad luck, had
forced him into a few years of work, work doing a little of this and a little
of that, before he got tired of that little of this and little of that, and
focused all his energies on his “system,” his absolutely fool-proof system of beating the ponies, the dogs, or whatever
other animal wanted to run like hell for the paying customers, the guys, the
guys like him, who all had their own sure-fire beat-down systems and who could
live, like him, on easy street on the profits. Just now though he had to work
on his approach, his new year’s festive crowd approach since he knew his act
would be rusty starting out.
Funny,
he thought, as he worked up his approach in his head thinking about the finer
points of the art form, most civilians, most people who have never been on the
wrong side of the bum, or been just plain down on their luck and thus clueless
about how to survive without about seventeen beautiful support systems around
them to cushion the landing, think pan-handling is just pan-handling, put
out your hat or hand kind of polite, eyes glued down to the ground, maybe
taking their hand and pretending to shake off
their dust, kind of “sorry to bother you,” and pitch for spare change,
and mainly keep moving along playing the percentages by covering a lot of
ground fast, or just staying put, maybe on the ground looking like some third
world fellaheen refugee, blanket underneath (smart move against cold night and
winter troubles), with all your worldly possessions, rucksack, some desperate
towel to occasionally wipe off sweat or drool, your pitiful donut shop coffee
cup with “donations” spelled wrong on it, about you. Jesus.
Forget
all that. That approach was strictly for winos and losers. It might have worked
in about 1926 or 27 when people walking by, mayfair swells or just ordinary
joes, working stiffs, actually looked at a person, any person, when something
was spoken to them, even by a ragamuffin stranger, or actually took the time
and looked down at the ground and thought poor guy there but the grace of god
go I, or some such thing. Today a guy needed an angle, a reason for a passer-by
to stop. And that is where his old friend’s advice, his hobo road friend Black
River Whitey, told around a jungle campfire one night out in Indio, out in the
California desert near the old Southern Pacific railroad tracks, about the
tricks of the pan-handling trade came in handy.
Black
River Whitey simply said this- shout at or do some fake (maybe not fake when
you get into it) mental flip out when asking for dough. Nothing over the edge,
way over the edge, nothing that they would yell copper over or take a swing at
you for just to take a swing at you and impress their friends that they could
beat up on a stewball bum but firm. See the idea Whitey said was that those
couple of dollars (hey, not quarters or chump change like that, not when you
are running this scam, this is strictly dollar minimum stuff not that quarter
for coffee gag) they practically threw at you to get you out of their faces was
far easier for them to do than to guess at what your next move will be,
especially a guy with his girl and he thinking of later in the night thoughts
and maybe scoring and not wanting to go mano y mano with some half-hobo and,
and, losing. Or some lonely girl, thinking who knows what she would be
thinking, nothing good for her for sure, relieved to come out unscathed and
just a couple of dollars poorer.
Beautiful, Black River Whitey, beautiful. But he thought as he walked
toward the Common and geared up to his night’s work past a couple of
half-frozen stoop winos spread out down on the ground, cup in front, across
from Park Street Station any fool could see where winos and other lamos best
stick with that cup in front of them and be glad of the few quarters that
trickle their way.
Of
course, Whitey also mentioned around that old Indio camp fire, that if you had
time and had some dough to get some half-decent clothes, clothes like he had on
now (only half-decent you don’t want to pitch hard luck stuff in a Brooks
Brothers suit, not on the mean city streets anyway, save that pitch for sunnier
days), you could work “the down on your luck” angle, needing an angel angle
that worked with private social welfare organizations and single women
especially. He knew the score on that one because he had, just young enough,
just gentile shabby enough, just “rehab-able ” enough, and just civilized enough
to pull it off made many dollars in tough times the last time they came his way
a few years back (and a couple of friendly one night stands with some lonely
women too, and not bad looking either, as a bonus). But that was day-time
magic, lunch time, and took precious time and that night with frozen
temperatures in the air and distracted fast-moving people going from place to
place the shout-out was his strategy of choice by default.
And his
night of work, after a few off-hand rusty stumbles caused mainly by his not
speaking loudly enough, not in your face enough, which he chalked up to his
silent room exile over the previous few weeks, his studying the charts far into
the night without speaking to others (a couple of nods to Billy and Steve, off-
hand talk, mumbles really, when working some day labor shape-up) and a bunch of
brush-offs (brush-offs that if he had it to do over again could have been
avoided by simply keeping at it, something he forgot to do the first few times,
including forget the cigarette or some other thing, maybe a piece of something
they were eating, angle, proving to
himself yet again that this pan-handling was as art form and not for amateurs
who just messed things up for those who knew how to work the thing),worked
Worked
to the tune of thirty-two dollars (he, feeling good after a good night’s work,
threw the odd coins, the quarters and dimes mainly, that people tried to feed
him to a couple of guys who were ground bound working the cheap jack coffee cup
racket), about six packs worth of cigarettes of all kinds ( Black River Whitey
always said if they pleaded no dough ask for cigarettes, or something, but keep
asking, real good advice he learned again that night), a least six belts of
high- shelf booze (Haig & Haig, Chivas from the tastes) from no dough
pleaders with a flask at their hip to help keep the chill off, a couple of
joints (to be saved for cooler, maybe a stray woman share with, times) from
lingering 1960s freak-types still popping up occasionally on the Common
rehashing old times , and he thought, an offer to stay at some woman’s house
for the night, although the booze might have been taking his head over by then.
(Besides he was still half-pining for Susie, Susie who had up and left him with
her wanting habits intact, her now little white picket fence, kids, and dog
dreams, when he decided he would rather do a little of this and that than work
the nine to five numbness.) Now if he
could only keep that dough ready for the rent and not bet on some foolish new
year’s college football game or something before then he might be able to work
on that sure-fire betting system of his in the comfort of his room and then
really be on easy street.
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