The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-On Entering North Adamsville High Redux , Circa 1960 –With Chubby Checker’s The Twist In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-On Entering North Adamsville High Redux , Circa 1960 –With Chubby Checker’s The Twist In Mind

Introduction by Allan Jackson

[Funny as larcenous as I was as a kid under the wanting habits guidance of my old friend Frankie Riley and the larcenous planning expertise of Scribe I was always a pretty good student, always liked to read. Except unlike Scribe who wore his knowledge very heavily on his shirtsleeves for the whole fucking wide world to see the son of a bitch I wish he were here right now so I could lambaste him in person I read on the low, on the quiet sneaking to the Thomas Adderley Library branch across town from the Acre so nobody would suspect what I was doing.

Along with that I never had much trouble, again like Scribe and to a certain degree Frankie as well adjusting as we entered each new school on our way to graduation. Always was kind of ho-hum about it unlike in the story below where Frank Jackman who I am sure did not want to see this sketch come to life since he would deny the whole thing on seven sealed bibles who literally sweated his ass off each time he moved up the ladder and not just in high school entry days either. Maybe it was because I had some other burdens I was carrying that seemed heavier, weighed heavier on the grand scale that I was so non-plussed every time a teacher or a corner boy expressed how hard the next step up the food chain was. We had plenty of corner boys pass through who couldn’t handle school, were not students in any sense you could call them students so they just dropped out like my brother Timmy and got lost in the shuffle. I wonder what happened to Richie, Brain, Buzz-saw (you don’t want to know on that one), and Jack Devlin. Yeah, I would like to know. Allan Jackson}             

The Twist (Yo Twist)

Song by Fat Boys, Chubby Checker

1.     Come on baby
Let's do the twist
Come on baby
Let's do the twist
Take me by my little hand
And go like this

Ee-yah twist
Baby, baby twist
Ooh yeah, just like this
Come on little miss and do the twist

My daddy is sleepin'
And mama ain't around
Yeah, daddy just sleepin'
And mama ain't around
We're gonna twisty twisty twisty
Till we tear the house down

Come on and twist
Yeah, baby twist
Oooh yeah, just like this
Come on miss and do the twist
Ee-yah

Yeah, you should see my little sis
You should see my my litlle Sis
She really knows how to rock
She knows how to twist

Come on and twist
Yeah, baby twist
Oooh yeah, just like this
Come on little miss and do the twist

Yeah, rock on now
Yeah, twist on down
Twist
('Round and 'round and 'round)

A few years ago, maybe four or five now, around the time that Frank Jackman (always Frank and not Francis since that was too much like that St Francis who was good to animals and stuff and no self-respecting corner boy wanted that tagged to his name besides the formal name sounded kind of faggy, hey that’s what we called guys before we knew better who were kind of girlish although I used queer more, when the guys talked about names one night, also not Frankie since that name was taken up in his crowd) and Frankie Riley (always Frankie and not Francis for the same reason as Frank but also Frankie because he had always been called Frankie since time immemorial to distinguish him from his father Frank, Sr.) his Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner boy chieftain all through high school in North Adamsville had been commemorating, maybe better to say comparing notes, on their fiftieth anniversary of entry into that school in the ninth grade. Frank had written a remembrance of the first day of school freshman year. He had written it at the behest of a female fellow classmate, Dora, for a class website where she was the webmaster which she and a few others had established so that those from the Class of 1964 who wished to, those who were able to, could communicate with each other in the new dispensation of cyberspace.

That remembrance, one of a series of sketches that he eventually did, and on recent inquiry from Jimmy Jenkins another classmate and ex-corner boy comrade, Frank has stated that he stood by that “sketch” characterization, centered on the anxieties that he had on that first day about making a brand new impression on the freshman class, about changing his junior high school quasi-“beatnik” style, his two thousand fact barrage that he would lay on anybody who would listen. A style change that lots of guys and gals have gone through when faced with a new situation, although the people he was trying to impress had already been his classmates in that junior high school and were painfully aware of the previous way that he had presented himself, presented himself  under Frankie’s direction, to the world.

When Frankie at the time read what Frank had written, a thing filled with new found sobbing, weeping, and pious innocence he sent him an e-mail which brought Frank up short. Frankie threatened in no uncertain terms to write his own “sketch” refuting all the sobbing, weeping, piously innocent noise that Frank had been trying to bamboozle their fellow classmates with. The key point that Frankie threatened to bring down on a candid world, the candid world in this instance being the very curious Dora for one, and her coterie of friends who had stayed in contact with each other since high school since they all still lived in the area (except in winter, now retired winter, and most headed to Florida, mainly around Naples), to be clear about was the case of Frank Jackman and one Lydia Stevenson. Or rather the case, the love-bug case he had for her. That, and not some mumble-jumble about changing his act which he never really did since you could always depend on Frank going on and on with one of his two thousand arcane facts that he tried to impress every girl he ran across in high school with and to dress like he had just come walking in from post-beat Harvard Square, was the very real point of what was aggravating him on that long ago hot endless first Wednesday after Labor Day morning.

See Frank had gotten absolutely nowhere with Lydia, nowhere beyond the endless talking stage, and thus nowhere, in junior high but he was still carrying the torch come freshman year and fifty years later he still felt that fresh-scented breathe and that subtle perfume, or bath soap, or whatever it was she wore, breezing over him (maybe it was perfume stolen from Ma’s dresser top, he these days liked to think she had made that thief to drive him crazy, crazy with her girlish wiles). Or maybe her curse, a North Adamsville curse that he claimed at one point that Lydia cast on him since he never had then a girlfriend from school, or from North Adamsville for that matter, always from some other town. Not in high school anyway.

The currency of that fresh breeze that occupied his mind may have been pushed forward by his getting back in touch with classmates. And as fate would have it, the thrice-married Frank, never one to say never to love had as a result of getting back in touch with classmates on the website had a short fruitless affair with another classmate, Laura, who had been a close friend of Lydia’s in junior high school and told him a couple of things about what Lydia had thought about Frank. Laura confirmed that Lydia had expected Frank to ask her out in junior high school but also after the affair had run its course unconsciously confirmed by that failed affair that Lydia’s curse was still at work fifty years later. And it is that missed opportunity to fall under the sway of that Lydia scent that will drive this short sketch, hell, forget Frank and his sketch business, this short piece.                  

This is the way Frank described to me what happened after Frankie sent that fatal e-mail that might expose his long hidden thoughts: 

“Frankie, for once listened patiently as I finished my story, the one that he say was filled to the brim with sobbing, weeping, whining bull about starting anew and being anxious about what would happen, and which he threatened to go viral on, immediately after I was finished let out with a “Who are you kidding Jackman that is not the way you told me the story back then.” Then he went on. “I remember very well what you were nervous about. What that cold night sweats, that all-night toss and turn teen angst, boy version, had been about and it wasn’t first day of school jitters. It was nothing but thinking about her. That certain "she" that you had kind of sneaked around mentioning as you had been talking, talking your his head off about filling out forms, getting books, and other weird noises, just to keep the jitters down. The way you told it then, and I think you called me up right after school was out to discuss the matter, was that while on those pre-school steps you had just seen her, seen her with the other North Adamsville junior high girls on the other side of the steps, and got all panicky, got kind of red-faced about it, and so you are going to have to say a little something about that. And if you don’t I will.” 

Frankie continued along this line, stuff which seemed to be true but which made me wonder how a guy who when we met at the Sunnyville Grille over in Boston for a few drinks to discuss this and that, not the Lydia thing but our corner boy exploits, couldn’t remember where he left his car keys and we had to call AAA to come out and find them on his driver’s side seat. Jesus.  Here’s what he was getting at.

“See, I know the previous school year, late in the eighth grade at North Adamsville Junior High, toward the end of the school year you had started talking to that Lydia Stevenson in art class. Yes, that Lydia who on her mother’s side from was from some branch of the Adams family who had run the jagged old ship-building town there in North Adamsville for eons and who had employed my father and a million other fathers, and I think yours’ too if I am not mistaken, for a while anyway, around there and then just headed south, or to Greece or someplace like that, for the cheaper labor I heard later. She was one of the granddaughters or some such relation I never did get it all down. And that part was not all that important anyway because what mattered, what mattered to you, was that faint scent, that just barely perceivable scent, some nectar scent, that came from Lydia when you sat next to her in art class and you two talked, talked your heads off.

“But you never did anything about it, not then anyway although you said when we talked later about it you had this feeling, maybe just a feeling because you wanted things to be that way but a feeling anyway, that she had expected you to ask her out. Asking out for junior high school students then, and for freshmen in high school too because we didn’t have licenses to drive cars, being the obligatory "first date" at Jimmy Jack's Shack (no, not the one off Adamsville Boulevard, that's for the tourists and old people, the one on Hancock up toward the Square is the one I am talking about). You said you were just too shy and uncertain to do it.

“Why? Well you said it was because you came from the “wrong side of the tracks” in the old town, over by the old abandoned Old Colony tracks and she, well like I said came from a branch of the Adams family that lived over on Elm in one of those Victorian houses that the swells are crazy for now, and I guess were back then too. That is when you figured that if you studied up on a bunch of stuff, stuff that you liked to study anyway, then come freshman year you just might be able to get up the nerve to ask her to go over to Jimmy Jack's for something to eat and to listen to the jukebox after school some day like every other Tom, Dick and Harry did then.

“.... So don’t tell me suddenly, a bell rang, a real bell, students, like lemmings to the sea, were on the move, especially those junior high kids that you had nodded to before as you took those steps, two at a time. And don’t tell me it was too late then to worry about style, or anything else. Or make your place in the sun as you went along, on the fly. No, it was about who kind of brushed against you as you rushed up the stairs and who gave you one of her biggest faintly-scented smiles as you both raced up those funky granite steps. Yeah, a place in the sun, sure.”

And so there you had Frank satisfying Frankie enough with his agreement to make public on the class website the gist of his stubborn e-mail. Funny though as much time as they spent talking about it back in the day and then when they resurrected it a few years ago Frank never did get to first base Lydia in high school, although she sent him a few more of those big faintly-scented smiles which Frank didn’t figure out until too late. Within a couple of weeks of the school opening Lydia was seen hand in hand with Paul Jones, a sophomore then, the guy who would lead North Adamsville to two consecutive division football championships and who stayed hand in hand with him until she graduated. Frank had had a few girlfriends in high school, Harvard Square refugees like himself who went crazy for his two thousand facts but they were not from the town. The few times Frank did try to get dates in school or in town, get to first base, he was shot down for all kinds of reasons, a couple of times because he did not have a car and the girls had not the slightest interest in walking around on a date, a couple of times he was just flat stood up when the girls he was to date took the next best thing instead. Yeah, the Lydia hex sure did him in. And after that Laura disaster don’t say he wasn’t jinxed, just don’t say it around him.       

From The Pen O Joshua Lawrence Breslin- When Mr. Chubby Checker Ruled The Night

She, Julie Lawton she, was fearful, preternaturally fearful, of the events ahead that evening. The cause for that concern was the Freshman Mixer to be held that early October 1960 night in the chandelier-bedecked central ballroom of the Park Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston for the incoming freshmen at Boston University, the school that had awarded her a scholarship that had been gratefully accepted in the strapped-for-cash Lawton household. Part of her concern was that she had already lied, or half lied, to her parents about the event. The official title of the event, reflecting some old-time Jazz Age 1920s F. Scott Fitzgerald prejudice, was the Freshman Smoker. Since her parents (and she and her four brothers and sisters) were strict Lord’s Witness Pentecostal Baptists who abhorred, absolutely abhorred, smoking and drinking alcohol if she had tried to “sell” them their permission to go under that signature she would be spending the night in her lonely dorm room.

Another part of her concern was that she had lied, or half lied, to them as well that this “mixer” was simply an event to introduce the far-fling members of the Class of 1964 to each other in an informal way rather than its well-deserved reputation as a dance that would serve as the prelude to the first of many wild parties that would be an iron-clad part of most undergraduates’ experience. See, the parental Lawtons (and her siblings) also abhorred dancing, and of late, particularly dancing to the devil’s music, rock and roll.

Finally, Miss Julie Lawton had lied, or half lied to her parents about the formalities of the event. It had been billed as a semi-formal meaning that she would have to get a dress, a dress that would show more than modesty, family Lawton would dictate. Would show her shoulders, would show her legs a little higher than right for a Lord’s Witness girl of eighteen. Julie Lawton had reasons to be fearful of the events ahead in that evening’s next few hours.

But Julie wanted to go, first casually and off-handedly wanted to go just because back home up in Lincoln, Maine, under the watchful eyes of parents and siblings she had no occasion, or frankly then, no desire, to go to dances or other school social events. As the day came nearer though, she began to desperately want to go, desperately want to go, because her three dorm roommates created such a whirlwind around the event that she was ready, willing and able to lie, well half lie, to go. It was her roommates, Rebecca, Sandy, and Leah, all from New York City or Long Island and about ten thousand years ahead of Julie on the social wisdom calendar who called the shots throughout as she could hear them bubbling up all day over this and that thing that needed, just needed to be done in preparation. She reflected, as she made her own final preparation, how it had been Sandy who had told her to “sell” the thing as an innocent mixer, and to practically declare to her parents that if she didn’t go dire consequences would result around her scholarship. Yes, they, those three charming (and they were) New York girls, put on the full court press. But the biggest part of all was played by Leah who agreed, actually, practically begged Julie to borrow her red, velvety crimson red, semi-formal dress for the occasion. And so she was ready, ready to face the fearful night knowing she had sinned, but thinking that as long as she just attended the dance and didn’t dance things would be all right.

What she didn’t count on, or didn’t expect to count on, was her effect on everybody, male or female, but especially male, as she made her way into first the hotel lobby and then the ballroom dance floor that night. Even guys, older guys, maybe dreaming of past conquests, who were escorting older women, maybe their wives, turned to get a second look as she entered the lobby walking toward the entrance to the central ballroom. And who could blame them. A Botticelli beauty, Botticelli out of the Renaissance is what her classmate in Introduction to English Literature, Frankie Larkin, called her while explaining to her, candidly, why every non-Irish English writer was nothing but a heathen, a style-less heathen and why she should go out with him, as a friend, of course one Friday night back when school had just started. (She refused, dating boys un-chaperoned, dating strange boys, strange heathen Roman Catholic Irish boys her parents would say, was also abhorred among the Lord’s Witness crowd). She, not knowing who Botticelli was, snuck over to the school library one afternoon to see for herself and saw on the cover of a book of art on the subject herself staring back at her from the cover. (She had also blushed, blushed as crimson as the dress she would wear, when she found out from reading the summary under picture that the model was Botticelli’s mistress. A whore who under Lord’s Witness doctrine, and despite Jesus’ view of the possible salvation of fallen women, a woman to be shunned. At least that was her first reaction.)

Yes, long blond hair, kind of curled, and very real, pale white skin reflecting not absence of manual outdoor work like in the 15^th century but many hours in the library striving to get ahead, get ahead in this world for her parents who sacrificed much for her, and, of course, getting ahead for the Lord. Pale blue eyes, pale like the Pacific Ocean blue, on days when it is acting up to its name, small breasts, a little tall for the times, an interesting figure, not full, not Marilyn- full like the times desire, but enough bone to warrant another peek, and no make-up when Frankie Larkin made his pitch back in September . (Yes, frowned upon by the brethren). But tonight a little sinful blush on her cheeks (courtesy of Leah) and some more sinful light touch of lipstick, very red. Oh yes, and that red dress, that red dress which showed almost perfect shoulders, and spoke of some gallant putting his tired weary head against it to shelter him from life’s storms, and just enough showing above the knee to set other dreams in motion. The whole effect, to give a more modern example, like some blonde (real blonde) Lauren Bacall as she put Humphrey Bogart through his paces in To Have Or Have Not.

And all to sit, or rather stand, by some forlorn wall (lucky wall) and looking around as she spent the first half of the night just talking to her roommates (when they were not occupied with being run at by every Bill, Harry, and Sam with eyes, and no hopes, forlorn nor otherwise, to get close to Julie), talking to some boy classmates, or refusing about twenty-six invitations to dance. She seemed happy, if others weren’t, just to take in the sights of the night. Not knowing that she couldn’t dance, or dance well, the guys turned down went away glum but a little suspicious that they had not made the cut and moved on to other things.

This Lord’s Witness thing was a big obstacle when Julie first met her roommates. They could not understand why she kept saying no to everything they suggested that smacked of fun and giving her patented answer of it’s a sin. They knew of sin, but they also had come from the secular city, not the city of god, and so as the weeks passed by they, almost unconsciously, had developed a campaign to bring Julie into the 20^thcentury. Tonight was a glowing result, or almost glowing. One thing that had perked Julie’s interest during their campaign was the records (and record player) each girl had to keep her company on those lonely Thursday nights when they were resting from social engagements. As one would already suspect she had no records and no record player for the now well-worn reason that she abhorred such devil’s work.

One Thursday night though Rebecca had put on Chubby Checker’s The Twist and she and Leah had done their gyrations to this number while Julie watched. Julie was intrigued as the girls well noticed. Leah called for her to try it. Naturally she deferred, deferred in ancient father wisdom, especially after Leah had told her that Chubby Checker was black and she shot back that black music, like rock and roll, was the devil’s music and everybody knew that. Still she was intrigued and succumbed after Leah suggested that dancing in a dorm room was not really dancing. While she wasn’t very good at it technically, although the gyrations are easily self-taught, she did cut a very nice figure against that dorm room wall shadow. But enough of campaign talk and Julie war stories.

At dance intermission she ran across Frankie Larkin with his date and found that she was a little disappointed with herself that she had not gone out on a date with him, now that she thought about it a little. But more disappointed just then that he had not asked her to dance, although she would have declined. All she could think of though was that too bad he was a heathen because he had some nice qualities, and especially nice to talk to, even if he was a little full of himself.

The cover band started playing signaling the beginning of the second half of dance and while Julie had had her share of fun she was a little tired of standing against that forlorn wall and decided to take the Green Line trolley back to her Commonwealth Avenue dorm after a few more songs. A couple of songs later though the band started to do a blast cover of The Twist and the crowded room jumped. Julie became a little flush. She spied Frankie standing by himself for a minute (his date had gone to the ladies’ room), ran over to him, grabbed his arm, and pulled him to the dance floor. And then to everybody’s amazement did the twist, did the twist in public. Guys, and a few girls too, kind of looked over and wondered, and the guys wondered why they had not been picked, had not made the cut. But mainly they looked, the look of some forlorn dream.

Now Julie did not perform a masterful twist, and she didn’t have to. Put those sensual gyrations together with that blonde hair, those red lips, that slim figure, those well-formed legs, and that dazzling red dress and you have, well, you had the stuff of dreams, man-sized dreams. After the song was over Julie thanked the bedazzled and smiling Frankie, went over and grabbed her coat, and headed for the train. Walking to the stop she knew two things, she had been the queen of the dance that night even if some other girl would wear the official crown. And she had, finally, come of age. Why? She was wishing, she was sinfully wishing, that one Frankie Larkin would spend that night feverishly tossing and turning in his sleep.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-When Mister Chubby Checker Saved The Whole Wide World

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mister Chubby Checker performing his immortal The Twist.

CD Review

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: 1960: Still Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989

What did Peter Paul Markin, hard scrabble out of suburban Boston Adamsville, Massachusetts, eighteen and girl crazy, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, nineteen, and girl crazy too out of Olde Saco up in rural Maine and Johnny (Blaze) Bachman, also nineteen out of Avon, Connecticut, ditto on the girl crazy, have in common in great fear 1960 night. No, not fear that they would not live long enough to see the world (crooked metaphor for figuring out what to do about girl crazies) what with the red scare cold war world champing down on them. They figured they would get by. Nix too on trying to get dough together to take a leap into that good hitchhiking on the road night. That would come, come six ways to Sunday. And you are totally off base if you thought they had worries about the “what if”of college (if these restless boys decided to go rather than hit that search for the blue-pink great American West night (or some night) road.

No, what they had in common, girl 101 in common, desperately girl 101 in common, was that, try might or main, they all had two left feet. Hey, they couldn’t dance, okay. And couldn’t dance in the 1960 hot summer wind a-blowing night meant, meant, sitting home alone by the old midnight telephone, the no ring telephone. Or hanging out with compadre also ran guys who couldn’t dance come Friday or Saturday night school or church hop (quaint) in front of respectively North Adamsville, Olde Saco, and Avon Central High or some low rent diner putting quarters in the jukebox wishing their lives away.

A shame too, particularly for Johnny Blaze, an Adonis blonde, blue-eyed figure out of Jack Kerouac’s be-bop Denver All-American boy Neal Cassady, a pin- ball wizard who could put an car engine back together blind-folded (and did one sleepy Avon night just to show his corner boys his stuff) or while reading Marcel Proust (not done since they knew not of the Frenchman, or of remembrances ) with a souped-up Dodge just waiting for some desperate chicken run to prove his metal, a few bucks and, well, stuck with some lonely corner boys in similar condition.

But just that year just that exact 1960 year if you couldn’t dance, couldn’t bop the bop, do lang do lang, sha na na your way around the floor then boss car, dough, or Adonis looks put you on cheap street, way down on cheap street with busted, inconsequential dreams. The edge, no question.1958 or 1959 and Johnny would have been a girl magnet and home free. Every night with whomever he wanted down on that Long Island Sound, bopping the night away (metaphor for, hell, you know, the deed). 1960 though Mister Lonely-heart.

It wasn’t like Peter Paul, Josh or mad monk Johnny hadn’t tried, hadn’t watched about sixty-six, or was it six hundred and sixty-six episodes of American Bandstand, hadn’t given serious thought to going to Miss So-and-So’s Dance School, or anything like that. (Josh even, under a veil of national security cold war treason death penalty secrecy, had his younger sister, his younger sister for god’s sake, try to teach him but two left feet are two left feet.) Nor was the goal to be able to sweet and low slow dance, some fox trot or waltz last dance school Could This Be Magic dance. Or intricate jitterbug moves, but just be in synch dance with a partner, a female partner without looking like a chicken for two minutes and some change. Nada, nothing. There was a little hope when in 1958 the Stroll came breezing through for a minute but after a couple of times the girls would pair off by themselves, by themselves if you can believe that, rather than run the gauntlet with our three young heroes. Sad story, sad ending to the boy meets girl world historic saga.

Then came Chubby Checker, then came the Twist, and you do it like this, and two left (or right) feet didn’t matter because all you had to do was gyrate and be on the same dance floor and our young Adonis boys sure as hell knew how to gyrate. Hail King Chubby, hail.