Once More Around The Good
Book Social Doctrine- With Dorothy Day And Peter Maurin's Catholic Worker
Movement In Mind
By Si Lannon
The late Peter Paul
Markin was a piece of work. So said Frankie Riley, a guy who should know since
he was the acknowledged leader of the North Adamsville corner boy of whom
Markin was something like the leading intellectual light in the early 1960s but
more on that in a minute. So said Frankie one night when a bunch of the old gang
still standing (not all are some have laid down their heads of late, a couple
forever etched on that black granite wall down in Washington, and some too
physically feeble to make the journey, and of course Markin) were at the Black
Swan in downtown Adamsville talking over old times, something like a periodic
reunion. Frankie, a successful lawyer now winding down his practice and passing
the day to day operations to the younger partners while he becomes an odd-ball
term “of counsel,” in such gatherings would usually be the one to start on
about Markin.
Stop.
In order to avoid
confusion let’s use Markin’s old time neighborhood moniker “ Scribe” which
Frankie had anointed him with way back in junior high school when he was
forever writing something or about to write something in the little notebook
complete with pencil that he always carried with him in his off-the-wall out of
fashion shirts that his mother, frugal mother from dirt poor land, would select
for him (shirts as part of the twice yearly-start of school and Easter
time-shopping spree at the Bargain Center for new cheap out of fashion clothing).
So Scribe it is.
At this gathering at the
local watering hole, the first such outing since the summer of 2017 when they
gathered to put a small memoir book together in honor of Scribe, Frankie
mentioned that he had forgotten to say something about Scribe that was
important to help understand what he was all about. And why after all these
years since the mid-1970s when Scribe was murdered down in Sonora, Mexico after
what appeared to be a busted drug, cocaine, deal and he wound up in a dusty
dirt back alley with two slugs in his head the old gang still mourned him and
were still trying to figure out what the hell made the guy tick.
That summer of 2017
gathering had been prompted by Scribe childhood closest friend Alex James’
return from a business trip out to San Francisco where quite by accident he
found out about the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of
Love which was centered in that town and had gone to a stone crazy exhibition
at the de Young Museum in old hang out Golden Gate Park where he freaked out
over the music, photographs, clothing and incredible poster art (which was then
just advertisement material for concerts and other events but really
outstanding works of art in their own right)
As a result of being
immersed in the old days when Alex got back to Boston he corralled the guys
with the idea of doing a small presentation book in honor of their fallen
comrade. They all, all at the Black Swan anyway, had been out to Frisco in
1967. Guess who had been the motivating force for that see-saw trip been out to
see what was happening in the “newer world” he had been talking about since the
early 1960. Once they agreed, and agreed to write short sketches, Alex had his
youngest brother, Zack who writes here on occasion and was a leader of the
revolt of the “Young Turks” which purged the previous site manager, edit and
have the book published. It is from an afterthought once the book had been put
to bed that Frankie remembered a very important component of Scribe’s
persona.
Frankie, after checking
to see if the statute of limitations had run on the various crimes the corner
boys had committed in the old neighborhood to grab dough for, what else, girls,
cars, dates, walking around money that
Scribe was the mastermind behind. (Frankie said that checking business was a
joke but the guys knowing Frankie just rolled their eyes.) He had related how
he had been the leader and the operations guy for the various car-jackings,
burglaries, con jobs, heists, “clips” but evil genius Scribe was the planner.
To this day Frankie can get smiles out of the guys when he mentions one caper
that almost got them caught while in a big house up in Adamsville Center. Guess
who had been the leader of the almost fateful attack. Ever after by unanimous
agreement Frankie was in charge once they project went out the door.
That was the larcenous
side of Scribe, and the rest of them too, the world owned them a living for
having grown up dirt-poor in the working poor Acre neighborhood and so they
struck out to do a little self-interested redistribution of those worldly
goods. So you see there was the fore-seeing new day coming let’s get on board
side to Scribe and the larcenous too which Frankie covered in his memoir piece some
detail remembering or exposing stuff they had all forgotten. (Frankie not a
lawyer for nothing with that skill set). But Scribe was noble man too, a social
justice partisan all mixed in except toward the end when according to Josh
Breslin who was the last to see Scribe alive north of the border he let his
serious cocaine habit get the best of him, Let the dope make him feel better
about his Vietnam horror military service, his busted marriages and his deep depression
as it became apparent that the “newer world” he sought was slipping away, was
getting eaten alive but the night-takers he called them.
What tipped Frankie to
his memory lapse had been triggered by seeing a copy of something called the Catholic Radical when he had gone out to
Worchester on some church legal business and subsequently a conference where
that copy had been on the table. (It should be mentioned Frankie had been a
lapsed Catholic for many years until one day a few years ago he had been a
guest at a wedding in a Catholic church and that stirred long ago memories and
fears for his “soul.) That paper reminded him about Grandma O’Brian, Scribe’s
maternal grandmother who was a serious Catholic
Worker devotee going back to the Great Depression when she had actually met
Dorothy Day in New York. The Scribe would always be speaking of some social
issue from the paper, Catholic Worker,
he found lying around Grandma’s house. Grandma O’Brian by all accounts was a
“saint” loved by all who knew her and knew too how brave she had been to put up
with a lot of crap married to tyrant Daniel O’Brian a real villain whom all the
young neighborhood kids would stay away from in order to avoid one of his
tirades.
To give an idea of how
bad Scribe’s own family household life was like he could be found many days at
Grandma’s house seeking shelter from that whirlwind storm. He would read books,
take notes in that little squirrely notebook, and discuss issues with Grandma.
Like a lot of people, good godly people Grandma had a few blinds spots like her
negative attitude toward black people who were getting “uppity” down south in
Scribe’s youth (it would take several years before he got straight on his own
racial attitudes) but overall she had been on the right side of the angels.
Talked about abolishing the death penalty (Grandma had never gotten over the
execution of Sacco and Vanzetti by the Commonwealth in 1927 even though they
were Italian), war, and nuclear disarmament.
In a lot of ways you can
see all of Scribe’s contradictions through that Catholic Worker background.
While Frankie was remembering the good parts of Scribe he flashed back to one
episode, really two come to think of it, which summed up Scribe’s whole life
struggle. Scribe must have been about fourteen, maybe fifteen, in 1960 when he
had read in the Catholic Worker that there would be a demonstration, something
like that for nuclear disarmament to be held at the Park Street entrance to the
subway, a historic protest site on the Boston Common. This rally was being
called by Doctor Spock’s SANE, some Quakers and other peace-type groups and
individuals. And Catholic Worker.
Scribe was all hopped up to go even though Frankie had tried to talk him out of
it, told him that the “Communists,” Stalin’s heirs’ dreaded supporters, told
him he might get beaten up by guys hanging around the Common who didn’t like
the stinking “commie, red, “peace” word, He couldn’t be deterred. So what did
they do? They made as always when the opportunity presented itself a bet, a
five dollar bet, big money for poor kids, Scribe wouldn’t go into Boston for
the event scheduled on an October afternoon. Scribe won and to this day Frankie
can’t get over the fact that he lost, lost to a holy goof like Scribe.
Here’s the Scribe
contradiction part. All during the lead-up to the demonstration Scribe had been
working on a caper, had been casing a house where the owners had been away for
a while. The weekend after that demo they “hit” the house and got a big haul.
Big enough for dates, gas money, booze, and walking around money for months.
Yeah, Frankie was sure he had it right Scribe was a piece of work.
