From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -From The“Brothers Under The Bridge” Series-High Street Hank’s Ode To Railroad Bill, The Hobo King

In the first installment of this series of sketches in this space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from 1979 fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.

Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, as is the case here with High Street Hank (real name Jason Preston), who went way out of his way to avoid talking much about ‘Nam, or about how he wound up in the hobo camps in the late 1970s after heading west in the early 1970s, but who wanted to talk about missed chances at love, and about the life on the road, and the life of his late hobo king friend, Railroad Bill. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Jason Preston's sign was that of the hobo king.

[In the interest of full disclosure, although it does not relate directly to Jason’s story, I was probably closer to him than any of the brothers under the bridge that I ran into in those days. Partially because, after ‘Nam in 1971, he followed my own earlier, 1967 summer of love, merry prankster yellow brick road west and got catch up with the remnants of the 1960s scene as it was descending into madness as the tide ebbed. Partially also because he had tried, tried several times after that, to come off the road and move on with his life. To no avail. That “to no avail” part got to me since a quarter turn one way or another in my own experiences and I could have been telling my own Railroad Bill story around that ‘Frisco camp fire mentioned below. I lost contact with Jason about 1985 when he informed me that he was heading south to Mexico to see if he could grapple with his life better there.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -From The“Brothers Under The Bridge” Series-Adam Evan’s Rolling Stone Moment – The Doors Of Perception

 

In the first installment of this series of sketches in this space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from 1979 fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind. Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, as is the case here with Adam Evans, who went way out of his way to avoid talking much about ‘Nam, or about how he wound up in the hobo camps in the late 1970s after heading west in the early 1970s, but who wanted to talk about missed chances at love, some doors of perception stuff, and sunnier psychic days. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Adam Evan’s sign was that of “the rolling stone.”
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Adam Evans was restless, restless in 1971 like he had never been before. Just out of the military service (Army, 1968-70, one ‘Nam hell year, thirteen months with R&R, and some tough “real world” adjustments), just out of a war marriage not made in heaven (made a week before he got orders for ‘Nam in the summer of 1968 in stupid haste because she, Delores, wanted them as one, to have been married, whatever happened , and she, hell, she sent that Dear John letter about her and some old flame rekindled about three months after he was in-country, jesus), just out of an unsettled love with a woman, Abigail, whom he had met in Cambridge (rebound short love all tied up, and all mixed up with, his public anti-war G.I. stance, his veteran for peace stance, and all tied up with her trying on a peace soldier boy for size and then back to some up and coming professor where she came from, him, like he said, just a rebound love and he had smoothed, he thought when they parted, too many things over that didn’t click to make the rebound work), just out of dough since his savings had been depleted to nil (trying, if you can believe this, not to seriously work in the system that “fucked” him over and finding little dough in the off-hand dishwasher, store clerk, bracero-like day labor that had previously kept him afloat), just out of luck, good luck anyway since he got back to the “real world.”

He decided he had to drift, drift west into that good night. Drift west in search of that almost childlike belief in what he called the blue-pink Great American West night. The night when he could rest his mind and his dreams out there maybe in some pacific coast cave around Big Sur playing mad hatter hermit, some Steppenwolf (not the death to American war murder rock group, Herman Hesse’s), filling up his lungs with fresh pacific air, some books, and a little acapulco gold to keep the blues away (and the food hungers down, a little, at least for expensive food), north up the Pacific Coast highway to the heaven-bound cliffs of Mendocino and some friends doing bracero work, good paying work they said, in wine country, or some ghost chance thunder road (maybe down Joshua Tree way that some freaked-out ex- Marine who had been stationed at Twenty Nine Palms had told him about, and about ghost dances coming out of the caverns so that wasn’t some metaphor stuff about the damn thunder road). The vagaries of the road would determine where he fell off first when he hit the coast (hell, no vagaries b.s., just who, mainly lonesome long-haul trucker s looking for white line lonesome road company, and where they were headed with those overloaded sixteen billion-wheeled semi’s).

In 1971, however, the roads west, the main highways and back roads too, were clogged full of lonesome pilgrims seeking their own blue-pink nights. And so he found before he was long out of Boston where he started his trip that he was among kindred angels more often than not on the great hitchhike road dream brought by forbears like old okie hills Woody Guthrie and Lowell mill boy Jack Kerouac. So he walked roads, grabbed rides, got picked up for “vag” a couple times (including a couple of days courtesy of Yuma County out in the Arizona zombie night with bologna sandwiches and bilious water three times a day, Christ), went hobo jungle railroad tracks more than once (and worthy of recounting although not here , here we speak of heroic roads west, grail- seeking roads west)headed south a little to avoid the cold, then west landing just off Indio next stop in sainted ghost-ridden Joshua Tree on some wayward sixteen-wheeled giant green monster explosion.

Carrying his life-line (and life’s full possessions at just that moment) bed-roll knapsack combination Adam headed into the park. Walked some dusty stone-etched miles to one of the camping sites expecting to find some more kindred and stews against some hunger. Sundown was approaching as he fixed up his assigned site when he heard a loud blast of Bob Dylan’s youth nation national anthem, Like A Rolling Stone, coming from, coming from somewhere. Maybe it was the dust of the road, too many roads, maybe it was his time, maybe it was some tumbleweed passing by remembrance, but at first he could not fathom where such music would be coming from in the high desert.

Then he saw it. Saw the biggest yellow brick road school bus now all painted in the six hundred swirled asymmetric colors of psychedelia (metallic purples as if to mock purple, mauves, fruit-tasting oranges, seven sun yellows all aglow, sea blues, sea-green blues, sea- blue greens , none mocking King Neptune for fear of bad karma, no, better, bad vibes, ordinary blues, vanilla whites, and death blacks) with a huge speaker mounted on its top and about sixteen crazed lunatics (although that information was only confirmed later) dancing in various conditions of dress, and undress. He approached, someone passed him a joint, good stuff fresh from a Mexicali run, another some cheap ripple thunderbird boone’s farm wine, and another pointed him to the fireplace stew broth. All without a word. Home, home among the rolling stones.

Later, after he bid good-bye to those fellow-travelers who were heading south to Mexico, down Sonora way and cheap, cheap everything and sun but mainly cheap and righteous herb (ganga, mary jane, sister, marijuana whatever you call it in your neighborhood), after he had moved on from that site, the park, and finished that last leg to the ocean, as he settled into oceanside LaJolla working his way up the coast, as he settled in on this “new groove” (ancient hippie word, quaint, quaint even then), and as the day’s smoke ( stash provided by that strange yellow brick road bus, and still primo Mexicali stuff too) went all up and down his brain and some music came booming out of the magical yellow brick road bus, some Doors cry from the thunderous heavens about shamanic nights, incest, death, and westward ho, get here and we’ll do the rest, and snuggled (quaint again) against some serape-draped dark- haired, dark-skinned, dark-eyed mex girl who made eyes, made sparkling dancing eyes at him (made eyes she said later because she had in her brown world never seen such fierce blue eyes, such anglo blue like the pacific azul eyes even on that damned anglo “bus,” north from Tijuana, and he let her see them up close, real close, and she shuttered a little nodding softly that they could either be devil fierce or gentle good night fierce and she wasn’t sure which she preferred) he proffered (nice, right) the following story to her about the road west as he had travelled it and about what happened one night out in Joshua Tree :

Enough of muddy, rutted, always bum-busting rutted, country back roads, enough of breathless scenic vistas and cows, enough of trees dripping sap, rain, and bugs, strange bugs, not city bugs, that was for sure, but biting frenzy worthy anyway. Enough of all that to last a life-time, thank you. Enough too of Bunsen burners (last seen in some explosive chemical flash-out flame out in high school chemistry class and, maybe, they have rebuilt the damn lab since then, maybe though they have left it “ as is” for an example), Coleman stoves (too small for big pots, stew worthy, simmering pots to feed collective hungry bus campers and hard, country hard, to light) wrapped blankets (getting ever mildewed ), second-hand sweated army sleeping bags (in desperate need of washing after a month) , and minute (small, not speed in throwing up, especially when rains came pouring down and he was caught out without shelter from the storm, a metaphor maybe) pegged pup tents too (ironic army surplus although World War II, not his war, ‘Nam poncho stuff, no way). And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated eastern mountain stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights (okay, not enough), and nature in the raw. Cities, please. Large Pacific-splashed roar of ocean cities with life in sheltered caverns and be quick about it. This was after that Yuma County courtesy “vag” bit of the road, cleared the dust and stink of that dead-ass town heading up to Flagstaff and ways west.

Right then though he had sighted his first connection hitchhike ride heading out of Flagstaff and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses, and lost loves names, truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and would wind up talking a blue streak was heading to some motorcycle jamboree, heading to Joshua Tree in California, Adams’s want to west destination since he was this far south (although the trucker did not call it a jamboree and I had better not either as I write this unless I want to risk offending the entire Hell’s Angels universe at one stroke. Let’s call it a tumble-rumble-stumble and be done with it. They’ll like that.).

All Adam wanted was to have silence, to be silent company on the ride that day and think unfettered thoughts of that Cambridge woman, that Abigail, who he had smoothed over some rough spots with and was thinking about more frequently, especially about how he could have played it differently, or better, but he knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such companionship. See, some guys, some trucker guys like Denver Slim, who had left him off at some long ago (or it seemed like long ago, really only a couple of months) Steubenville truck stop on his way American south one time wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as Adam reminded him of his errant (read: hippie –swaying) son. Other guys were happy for the company so they could, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with the “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and their take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Yah, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” would stand you in good stead and you could nod out into your own thoughts. Forlorn sunshine and downy billow Cambridge woman thoughts, Abigail thoughts.

And that was exactly where he wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. Just then Adam though was thinking about what Aunt Betty, sweet Neola (Iowa)cornfields grandmotherly Aunt Betty (everybody called her Aunt Betty, even guys who were older than she was, after the name of her sweet Neola diner), said a month or so back when he had pitched his tent for a few days in her backyard, he did some chores in kind, and she fed him, royal Midwest fed him, still rung in his ears when he told her his story (or the latest part of it, the after ‘Nam part ). He was good for Abigail. Hell, he knew he was. Hell, if he had had any sense he would have admitted what he knew inside. She, Delores, ’Nam rebound or not, was good for him too.

But see the times were funny in a way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say [those are the specific numbers he gave according to my notes although the importance of those dates in now unknown], that Adam would have run into a Cambridge upscale kind of straight-laced woman. In those earlier days he had been strung out, strung out hard, on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, he said half-laughing , bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. He said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereal, butterfly breeze “hippie” girls so you’d know what he meant. As a kid he was cranked up on pale, hell, wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and he meant hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and chaste lust in their hearts like his ex-wife Delores. So when Cambridge woman Abigail’s yankee goodheart number turned up, he was clueless about how to take a just plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, Adam said he couldn’t explain it, and he doubted that he ever would. Just say, like he told it to me, he was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and be done with it.

Here is where things got kind of screwy though. He had put many a mile between him and Flagstaff and was well clear of that prairie fire hellhole bologna sandwich Yuma madness and well into sweet winter high desert night California (still hot during the day, jesus, one hundred at Needles, although not humid, thank Christ) had encamped at his site, and met up with the yellow brick road school bus which both were not far from some old run down, crumbling Native American dwellings on Joshua Tree reservation that keep drawing his attention (and the mad lunatics on the bus as well).

Sitting by Joshua tree night camp fires casting weird ghost night-like shadows just made his new Abigail hunger worst. And old “on the bus” well-traveled fellow ex-soldiers turned “hippies,” Jack (something out of a Pancho Villa recruitment poster and, in another age, the look of a good man to have beside you in a street fight) and Mattie (some Captain America easy rider poster boy brimming with all that old long gone Buck found ugly in his America although Mattie did two hard tours in ‘Nam), playing their new-found (at least to him) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone. Jesus, and here they were only a few hundred miles from the ocean. He could almost feel back to eastern seas, atlantic swirls-clutching, could almost smell, smell that algae sea churned smell, and almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys , golden boys a decade or so ago, as if from another time, eden time, looking for that perfect wave. Yah, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Abigail (or name her, or him) plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only made the Abigail hurt worst as he remembered that she had never seen the Pacific Ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that Adam went on and on about and he was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world.

And so here he was making that last push to the coast but not before he investigated those near-by Native American lands that, as it turned out, he, Jack and Mattie had all been interested in ever since their kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know the Lone Ranger, Hop-A-Long Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.

Earlier on this day Adams was referring to they had been over to Black Rock (still in the high desert but only reachable by some forsaken road although every Native American seemed to know how to get there, and get out of there too, no mean trick when whiskey or peyote high, for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely across the west not all that long ago but who were now mere“cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as the collective warrior nations pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of their own (Jack, Mattie, Adam) warrior shaman trances were still in their heads on that now blazing camp fire night. Adam was still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as the modern warriors drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding “white devil” who had broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but the trio had scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and the buttons had started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old jerry-bilt bong hash pipe (strictly for medicinal purposes as well).

Just then in this dark, abyss dark, darker than Adam had ever seen the night sky in the citified East even though it is star-filled too, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Abigail he was embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if his ears didn’t deceive him, and they didn’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle he heard, and heard plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.

And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, Adam swore,, swore on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls he saw the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that he had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, the trio, the three television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so they were actually out of synch with the wall action, to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya...until they sped up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity they were ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white injustices.

But then just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame went out, or went to ember, the shadow ghost dance warriors were gone and they crumbled in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance and revenge. They, after regaining some strength, all decided that they had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, would do them in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment they, or at least Adam knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -From The “Brothers Under The Bridge” Series- Francis Allen Edwards’ War- “To My Mother, Doris Margaret Edwards, nee Ridley, In Lieu Of A Letter”

 

In the first installment of this series of sketches in this space provided courtesy of my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod that I came across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world”and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the“jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from that time fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind. Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, as is the case here with the Francis Allen Edwards, who wanted to talk about home and family, the home and family he never fit in with, and the anguish that drove him to enlist in the Army to get as he said “his head screwed on right.” Unfortunately that decision solved nothing and he never did fit in. So all he wanted to do was have me print a piece from him, as he said, in lieu of a letter, after he heard that his mother had passed away to try to even things out. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Francis Allen Edwards’ sign was that of “in lieu of a letter.”
**************
To My Mother, Doris Margaret Edwards, nee Ridley, In Lieu Of A Letter

I have been estranged from my family for over fifteen years and therefore any memories, good or bad, are colored by that fact. I did not attend my father Paul Edwards’ funeral as I was out in a no address, no forwarding address ravine in Southern California. I also missed my younger brother Kenneth’s funeral [he had died young of cancer and had a history of mental problems] for the same reason and, along the way, those of others in the family as well. Now I have missed my mother’s funeral. This says more about me than anything I might offer as an excuse for past circumstances. The time for that is now well past.

Last May [1979] when I finally did get off my high horse and try to connect with the family again, or at least find out what had happened to it and attempt to make my peace Ann-Charlotte (Uncle Harold’s daughter) suggested that I write letters to my family members (not to be delivered, of course) as the way to make my peace. I took her up on that idea and wrote the letters.

My father I believe, as all who knew him knew was his way, forgave me. After all I was one of his boys. Good or bad that was all he cared about. All my life I did a great wrong to that poor, hardworking man that I will always have to carry with me. Although it is far too late let me say something here publicly that I never told him but should have shouted from the rooftops. Dad, I am proud that you were my father. My poor brother Kenneth, I fear, was much less forgiving. He said he could have used my help during his life long struggle against his demons within. I have to live with that knowledge as well. So be it.

I did not write a letter then to my mother because I believed that I still had a possibility of making things right. To my regret I never got the chance. Once again, as has happened more than a few times in my life, my timing was off and I was too late. I have now written her a private letter that, along with those to my father and brother, is consigned to oblivion. Like in my father’s case I have done my mother a great wrong all my life. This too I will have to live with. My old memories however, such as they are, can now be looked at with a greater fondness and understanding of what they did for me.

If in my life I have reacted to situations too absurdly or dishonestly rather than in an emotionally balanced way don’t blame my mother. In her understated, and probably partially unconscious, way she taught me to simply be truthful and to fight for what I believed in. I have honored that wisdom more in the breech than in the observance. However, I have gotten better at it. From the mist of memories I remember two things that she always remarked on about me in a positive way- I was always looking for that next mythical mountain to climb and that I was a survivor. Well, she was right on both counts. And I am still at it. Thanks, Ma.

If all of this does not reflect adequately the way I feel today- know this. Doris Margaret Edwards, nee Ridley was my mother. I was her son. In the end, not without some terrible struggle, I recognized that she was my mother. That too should have long ago been shouted from the rooftops. I hope that in the end she recognized that I was her son.

Now she has gone to be reunited with her beloved husband Paul, after years without his comfort, and also with her son Kenneth. May they all rest in peace.

Francis Allen Edwards

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -From The “Brothers Under The Bridge” Series-“ A Buddy’s War”

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

As I mentioned in the first installment of this series, provided courtesy of my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, who seemed to think I still had a few things to say about this wicked old world, recently, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod I came across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (California, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

These sketches have been done on an ad hoc basis, although the format of this story here follows those of the “Brothers Under The Bridge” series previously posted .The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to heard, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this series, have reconstructed this story here as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger.

Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this 1978 sketch had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind. Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched), others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, and as here some, many actually, wanted to mourn some comrade lost in the fog of memory.

This is Rick Atwood’s story, or actually, Gerald (Jerry) Jenkins’ story. We know that it ends in some black marble tear-filled inscription down in Washington, D.C. but it didn’t start that way. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Jerry Jenkins’ sign was that of the “buddy’s war”:

Jerry and I had grown up in Steubenville, that’s in Ohio right along the Ohio River, okay. We lived over in the Five Points neighborhood near the river, not a bad place to grow up with plenty of stuff to do on the river where we went whenever we had a chance. We built rafts and stuff in summer and dreamed of going to the ocean one time except we got caught on a river bend snag and never did get all that far. Yes, Jerry and I were thick as thieves (including an occasional clip of stuff from Ben Franklin’s, the big store in town that had plenty of stuff we needed). From about third grade on at Anderson Elementary all the way through to high school at Baron Von Steuben High we were together. Guys we hung out with in front Of Molly’s Variety, our local corner hang out, used to kind of fag-bait us, nothing serious like with real fags but still it bothered us. People were surprised when we showed up at our high school prom with two the hottest honeys in our class, the class of 1966.

Neither Jerry nor I were really students so we figured we would go to work right out of high school over at London’s Tool and Die, the biggest employer around, make some money and head out west, or somewhere not Steubenville. We weren’t political or anything like that, hippies, but just wanted to get the dust of Steubenville off us. We really didn’t pay too much attention to what was going on in the world. Yah, we knew there was a war on in Vietnam, Christ who didn’t with it blasting the airwaves every night but it was like not something we thought about that much. Until Jerry got his draft notice in early1967. Then panic set in. Not about going or not going into the service but about what that would do to our plans for going west.

So here is how crazy we were. I figured being just slightly younger than Jerry that my draft notice would come pretty soon so we called up the lady at the draft board and asked if we could go in the Army together. She solemnly told us that this situation was the luck of the draw and that if we wanted to insure that we could join together we would have to enlist and take part in the “buddy system” being offered by the Army as an inducement for enlistments. Of course, as you know, the draft meant two years but enlisting meant three. We talked it over for days and finally after figuring out that we could learn a skill, go to school later maybe on the G.I. Bill, and that anyway that war was likely to be over soon we decided to enlist. And so in early March 1967 we went the recruiting station and signed up.

Now I am not saying that the Army misled us, although they did, but we had signed up for mechanic’s school and that is what we thought we were going to be doing after we finished basic training at Fort Gordon (that’s in Georgia near Augusta where they have the Masters’ golf tournament every year). But see 1967 instead of the war being over was just heating up to a new level and the war was churning up guys and materials at a fast rate so we wound up as 11 Bravos, infantrymen, cannon fodder, training down in Fort McClellan in sweaty Alabama (near Anniston). So it will come as no surprise to anyone that once we finished that training and with a little time at home before we left we were heading for ‘Nam in October 1967.

Let me tell you, Jerry and I, I don’t know if it was liked being soldiers, but we were good at it. Jerry especially. We aced all the training stuff. We marched like crazy in all weathers laughing (although I hated the heat in Alabama and ‘Nam too) and were made training company platoon guides. They wanted Jerry to go to Office Candidate School (OCS) but he nixed that because I hadn’t passed the exam as well. What we also knew after seeing some of the lamos, misfits, court-enforced enlistees, and the like that we were very glad that we had joined up together. We knew we had each other’s back if anything happened.

And it did. We were assigned to a unit of the 25th Division in the Mekong Delta after we arrived in country in mid-October. This was just before, and maybe if my history is right, could have been part of the build-up to Tet, the famous offensive that the North Vietnamese and their South Vietnamese supporters put together in early 1968. Hell, all I know is that we had our hands full just trying to keep that supply line from the north, the Ho Chi Minh trail, bottled up.

One day, after a few weeks in the field, we were crossing a river, hell they called it a river on the map but compared to real rivers it was maybe a brook or creek, when we took some heavy fire. We started crossing like crazy to get out of the line of fire. Just as we reached the embankment Jerry took one, more than one I later found out, near the heart. He slumped down as I rushed over to him crying out like a mad man for a medic to help him. I could see thought that he was fading, fading fast. Before he passed though he whispered to me that somehow being near a river like when we were kids made things easier. Then he started to mention the raft…

[Rick, according to my notes, could not continue on with his story as he welled up with tears. A little later he mentioned to me that he was sorry that he could not complete the story, that it was still several years later too hard to fathom. He did say that was the last time he saw Jerry as the company had to move out in pursuit and the job of taking care of the dead and wounded fell to the medics left behind. He also told me that he only went home to Steubenville after his time was up once to throw a flower in the Ohio River for his old comrade and then left. Like he said it was just too hard. Sometime in late 1985 I was passing through Steubenville on my way to some conference down south and stopped at the city hall. Not far away was the inevitable memorial to those from Steubenville who had served in Vietnam all polished and pretty. There I saw the name Gerald F. Jenkins-1948-1967 and thought of Rick and that flower he tossed into the nearby Ohio River to his buddy.-JLB]

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin With Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube entry for Bob Dylan performing Like A Rolling Stone.

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

As I mentioned in the first installment of this series in this space, provided courtesy of my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, who seemed to think I still had a few things to say about this wicked old world, recently, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod I came across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (California, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

These sketches have been done on an ad hoc basis, although the format of this story here follows those of the “Brothers Under The Bridge” series previously posted .The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to heard, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this series, have reconstructed this story here as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this 1979 sketch had an off-beat story, hell in this case very off-beat, that brought him down to the ravines. But see he, Allan “Red” Bradley (hereafter called Red, the only name he would answer to from friend or foe alike after about age ten he informed me) out of the low red clay back water tobacco road North Carolina night, like Jean LeBlanc whose story I have already related and a lot of other guys I ran into did not want to talk about ‘Nam, about his war- weary troubles in the “real world” or about how he got himself hoboed up a continent away. He, they, seemed to “enjoy” some amnesia net over that ‘Nam period and who was to blame them for what they saw, and did. No Red wanted to talk about the time just after Vietnam, early 1970s time, the time when he was the be-bop daddy (his term) of the Fayetteville (NC) Fort Meade(MD) and Fort Devens (MA) night with the girls (women, my term), a time when if he had made few right moves inside his head or left before all hell broke loose over his head, or something like that things might have been different. I like to finish up these introductions placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Red Bradley’s sign was that of the rolling stone:

That night, that night a few months after it had all turned utterly bad back in 1975 maybe a little into 1976, I had dreamed of two brunettes, two blondes and a red-head, jesus, cut the dream cord, cut it quick because I am about to be sick, sick from some jumped up snow, snow the current dream cutter. Yah, it all started with that dream, that five girl, three-colored dream but that was just the candy-coated cover, the real story you don’t want to hear, maybe but it, that dream got me to thinking about back in the day rolling stone stuff (and, no, not the band, and, no, not some mad Dylan troubadour riff thing connecting me with my, his, their generation). But the dream reoccurred, reoccurred with that same quintet, and an absurd mystery about a guy in a hungry night, and nowhere to go, and nowhere to deal with five snow dream figures, what was it, yes, two brown, two yellow, one red, hair color not skin. That was the start, that was the reoccurring start, but that was not the story, not by a long shot. Lets’ call it a snow dream, a dope dream it could have been any addiction- affliction but let’s just call it by its right name, a snow dream, and be done with it.

[Kenny Jackson, whose story I have already related previously and who travelled with Red for a few months around the mean streets of L.A. and was close to him at the time of this story because Red was in Kenny’s words a “colorful guy,” clued me in on Red’s way of talking, of making a grand gesture before he got to serious stuff. When I reviewed my notes to try to bring life to Red’s story I at first forgot about that comment and could make neither heads nor tails out of the following lines until I remembered Kenny’s remark. Of course Red, kind of a smart guy in a street way, maybe half- smart, and we will leave it as that had to preface his whole spiel by making the following remarks which, according to my notes, he insisted be included. The remarks moreover were made after Kenny had gotten Red sobered up for a couple of months so he thought he was king of the world. Sober here, by the way, when referenced by the veterans in these sketches is all inclusive-alcohol, drugs, love, hate, cons, etc. –JLB]

If you, as I do even now while I am out here on the wild streets of L.A. trying to make my comeback, even now when my soul is fresh, every once in a while as least from a comfortable distance need to hear about boozers, losers, dopesters, snow dreams, hipsters, fallen sisters, midnight sifters, grifters, drifters, the driftless, small-time grafters, hoboes, bums, tramps, the fallen, those who want to fall, Spanish Johnnies, stale cigarette butts, whiskey-soaked barroom floors, loners, the lonely, sad sacks, the sad and others at the margins of society then this is your stop. Red Bradley is going to give it to you straight, straight as a crooked man knows how. I was one of them, one of the snow birds, and I fell, fell big time.

My words, maybe, are an acquired taste, but one well worth acquiring when I gather myself up to storm heaven looking for busted black-hearted angels, for blonde girls with Monroe lips or maybe Joni Mitchell falling hair, for brunettes who had sense to quit while they were ahead with or without falling hair, for demon red-heads with old time neighborhood Irish hearts and poet’s souls, for the desperate out in forsaken woods who need to hold on to something, and for all the misbegotten. Christ almighty for all the misbegotten.

Endless tramp, no, bum and note the difference, walked streets, waiting for the next fix. Waiting really for some god miracle, some murmured pray sacrilege and redemption seeking miracle. Waiting for all the accumulated messes of this world, this made world to seep into the gutter. Waiting for all past history, all past memoir better, all past sorrows, given and received, all pass two roads taken, wrong road chosen, all personal hurts, given and taken, all past vanities to break down in the means streets, and closure. No, not closure, relief. Waiting, yah, waiting but to no avail. And so all roads, chosen and unchosen closed, all forward turned back, all value devalued, all this ….

[After that Red got serious-okay]

Jesus, for a few years after ‘Nam I had it made, had it made in the shade with women. Let me tell you before ‘Nam I had a fistful of girls, total, since the time I started noticing them, noticing their shapes turning along with my own desires. Nice big-hearted red-headed neighborhood Irish girls not afraid to smite god late on Saturday night before showing up chaste, virgin mary chaste, I promise, for early Sunday mass, sometimes with me in tow just to prove their conquests and their sullen virtue. Irish girls too, not big-hearted, brunettes usually maybe with some heathen English blood in them ,with a handful of rosary beads in one hand and blushed unfulfilled lust in their hearts, and minus me in tow. Later a few off-hand blondes with loose morals and big time Monroe dreams and nice Jewish girls off on their first goy adventures looking, looking hard, for some fierce blue-eyed devil, and finding him.


I wasn’t complaining about how few I had then and I am not now but after ‘Nam was the best women time. See after ‘Nam, oh around late 1971 and 1972, I got involved with some anti-war stuff, with Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) stuff because some of the stuff I saw in ‘Nam just freaked me out, and some of the stuff me and my buddies did too. But I don’t want to get into war stories. I want to get into anti-war stories because that is the only way you’ll make sense of what I am saying.

See I would go to G.I. coffeehouses that had been springing up all over the place near military bases around that time and talk to guys still in and all that. I went on speaking tours sometimes and with my southern accent and my anti-war war “cred” guys would listen up to me for a minute. But the real deal was the chicks [read: women] who started hanging around the coffeehouses after getting tired of just marching in the streets every spring and fall and wanted to be around guys who had seen it all and lived to tell about it. Why I still don’t know and I didn’t care as long as they gave me a tumble. I did that speaking and organizing stuff for a couple of years around Fort Bragg down in North Carolina and Fort Meade in Maryland. Then I headed further north to Fort Devens in Massachusetts. [He had been there about two years after I helped start that one. It was weird to meet him in L.A. several years later along an abandoned ravine, right.] That was where things started to fall apart.

See Boston and Cambridge (the nearest big city action to Fort Devens) was filled with women who, like I said before, wanted to be around guys who had seen it all. So it was like taking candy from a baby, sort of. Those were the days when you could be seeing several chicks at one time, unlike back before ‘Nam when unless you were very careful one guy, one girl was strictly the norm out in open anyway. So I loaded up with my standard two blondes, two brunettes, and my always needed one red-head.


The thing though as the American government started to pull everybody out of Indochina the anti-war movement and the dough for anti-war coffeehouses started to dry up. But I wasn’t quick enough on the draw to put two and two together. Hell, I didn’t want to. And here is why. After a couple of soft years and with all the chicks I wanted I began to get a feeling that the world owed me a living, a soft touch living and so I lived off some of those five women in the dream. Sometimes at the same time, sometimes separately.

Then the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or whatever they wanted to call it at the V.A. hospital kicked in. Anyway between the anti-war action dying down and not having much to do otherwise and having my hands full with the chicks I started doing some serious cocaine. Yah, the snow bird, “my girl,” my real girl. I had had a few tastes in ‘Nam but in those days I was strictly a boozer, a whiskey and water chaser guy. I didn’t really like or understand the potheads, opium-eaters and junkies. Not then.

Coke was cheap mainly except you needed about a ton of it to feel alright all the time. And I needed a ton of it because I needed to feel alright all the time after a while. And that is where things really got busted up. I was “borrowing” money like crazy from one chick or another. I had a regular “Ponzi” scheme going at one point. I would borrow a hundred from one, buy my goods, and then borrow another hundred from another chick to pay the first chick back and so on.

I was also running some dope myself through a connection down Sonora way in Mexico “pimping” a couple of so-so girlfriends (not the five) to make ends meet after a while. Christ I was “muling” them and myself a few times just to score some dope. One time I almost wound up face down in a dusty Sonora back alley, like I guy I knew in Cambridge, when I tried to go “independent.” Jesus, that was close and every once in a while I think about that poor bastard who they found face down in that damn alley and think that could have been me. That pimping thing by the way was not some professional thing but just telling the chicks to sleep with some dope-dealers in return for dope. They were serious hopheads too as that was what gravitated toward you, or clung to you, on the way down. Still it was pimping and I am sorry about that part.

At some point the thing got weird, real weird, maybe after a few months as I started losing girlfriends, the real ones, one after the other until one day I finally realized through a snow storm that I had gone from five to zero and the cheap streets of Boston, friendless.

Here is how I remember that descent, or part of it- Five AM, dark turning to a shade lighter, after a hard ground under the Eliot Bridge bed night, cold October cold with all newspapers, Herald, Globe, upscale New York Times used for a pillow and for ground cover yelling about some guy named Jimmy Carter and about how he is saved. [Must have been 1975-76 or there about.] Running for president too. The guy will need more saving that I need I thought. Ironic though, just that minute when I needed to be saved. Lord saved, mercy saved, some humble Marcia (my main squeeze and the one who stuck it out longest, a brunette) saved (although I did not know it, know it for a very long time, too long and too late).

Long walk along the Charles River, supermarket double brown bag (laughed at Mexican luggage we used to call it) for all worldly possessions. A tee shirt, maybe two, underwear, socks, a half rank pair of pants , another shirt to match the one I was wearing, a comb, and a bar of soap, Dial, and done. All worldly possessions reduced almost to grave size.

Long walk to safe downtown Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, and five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. My street bathroom, a splash (unlike those ocean wave splashes on ancient dream North Carolina cape wind nights now faded) of water on the face, some precious soap, paper towel for a wash cloth, haphazard combing (hell, I was not entering a beauty contest, jesus, no), some soap under the tee shirt for underarms and done. Worldly beauty done.

Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out under some other Eliot Street Bridge bungalow (switched nightly to avoid cop riffs and fellow tramp rip-offs). Walk, stopping for an occasional library break , for a quick nod out, really, and quick read, not some political book though, those days, Genet, Celine, Burroughs, Kerouac (not On The Road magic but Big Sur traumas), and such self-help books. (Ironic.)

And minute plan, plan, plan, plain mex paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Waiting for the next fix. Desolation row, no way home.

And then, half sneaking out of town, half desperate to get away and start fresh I walked to the entrance of the Massachusetts Turnpike near the Coca-Cola warehouse in Cambridge put my thumb out and started heading west, west anywhere west. With genetic memories of two brunettes, two blondes and a red head permanently etched in my brain to disturb my sleep.

[When I last heard from Kenny Jackson in late 1979 he had not heard from Red in several months. The only conclusion he, or I, could draw was that Red had gone back to his snow dreams. That was the way things were out in the ravine world. After than I lost contact with Kenny (who was putting his life in order) as well so there is no ending one way or the other to this story.]