The Real Scoop Behind Brother,
Can You Spare A Dime?-With Martha and the Vandellas- Dancing In The Streets In Mind
This sketch takes place in the 1970s at the outer edge of
the time of the Generation of ’68 musical jail
break-out started in the
mid-1950s with the roll out of classic rock but is driven, and driven hard, by
the music of the early 1960s when the grifter described here first came of age
and hence its inclusion.
“Hey, brother, can you spare a dime?,”
(or sister now something unheard of back in the day, back in the early 1960s,
when some cop might pinch you at her request for disturbing the fair sex for
being unseemly in public asking a proper lady for anything. Now here in
the go-go 70s any human form is qualified for the hustle where every low-rent
guy takes a shot figuring maybe to get something so the other party,
particularly women, can get you out of their faces and move on) followed by
“Got an extra cigarette, pal (or gal, ditto the sister thing except unlike back
in the day, pal or gal, in the new age, as likely as not, probably has no
butts, has no “cigs,” doesn’t touch the stuff ever since the Surgeon-General’s
report put the fear of God into lots of people)?”
Yah, Billy Bailey, William James
Bailey, used-to-be brash corner boy, a contender for the title of king hell
king of the corner boy night around Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, “up the downs”
back in North Adamsville in the old days, the old days these days being the
early 1960s before smart and brash corner boy Frankie Riley put an end to that
dream by trumping all upstarts since he
was “in” with the shop owner, certainly had the panhandler lingo down, down
pat, after only a few days on the bum. Funny during these few days on the bum
this time he would almost blush when he thought back to the days when he used
to laugh in the faces of swollen-faced raggedy-assed guys trying to pan-handle
him for dough, trying to bum a smoke, and here he was with the brethren.
Hustling maybe a little cleaner in attire that the brethren since he had not
gotten down to second-hand Sally goods yet (that Sally for the clueless is not
somebody’s aunt but the Salvation Army which took in many a stew bum without
question when they were on the skids and nobody else would take them in so
throw some change in the bucket the next time you see them around Christmas
time in some shopping mall ringing their ubiquitous bells)although a few more
weeks with constant use of the few clothes that he did have might have him
howling. Hustling too with cleaner breathe since he did not drink (that jones
long over and done with substituted by several subsequent joneses including his
current burden. He still felt that contempt for the buggers since he “knew”
that a few days of this street work and he would be off the skids, on his feet
again and then able to go back to laughing at the brethren, a good laugh too,
while they pipe-dreamed their lives away.
Yeah, this was strictly temporary
because his ship would come in before he wound up on cheap street like the
boyos hanging around the Common swilling rotgut wine (or maybe low-rent whiskey
if the day’s take was good) smoking tobacco “roaches,” butt end really off the
ground and pissing all over themselves. However every once in a while he would
get a funny feeling, kind of turn up his collar a little more, push his
baseball cap lower on his head, put on sunglasses ( a real no-no in the
pan-handler racket since you want the “marks” to see your desperate eyes, your
pleading desperate eyes, to close the deal. Besides sunglasses might make them
feel you just blew in from the coast) when he realized that he was on the bum
in his own home town, his ever-lovin’ roots, Boston. (His growing up hometown
of North Adamsville close enough so that he did not have to tell people who
asked the name of the town and could get by with Boston unlike if he was from
Lowell or Lawrence or places like that.) Sure he had been on the bum a few
times, nothing big, once on the Mission in Frisco (where in the same day he
walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and that night slept, slept newspaper for
a pillow sleep, under that edifice), a couple of times on Larimer Street in
Denver before they gentrified the damn place and along the arroyos down in Los
Angeles with a bunch of Vietnam veterans like himself who unlike him couldn’t
adjust to the “real” world.
Yeah, those were a few days’ bums,
maybe a week, couple of weeks, no more than a month and then back to the world.
Short falls, maybe drunk too much and jobless, later maybe too much gambling on
run-out horses and dogs (and no money coming in to feed the habits once he got
behind), maybe some twist threw him over for a steady guy after he wore out his
welcome (and her pocketbook). On the bum this time, this time though a real
fall, in hock and up to his ass in debt, mostly big score no-go dope on credit
deal debts, when he had tired of drunk
risks, gambling risks, frail risks, guys
looking for him, not Boston guys thankfully, well, looking for him to pay up.
During the long days of pan-handling this time though he would think back to
the old days, the days before the “falls” when hustling dough was just for some
short money, pick up some spare change, to wander into free campsite,
Volkswagen bus pick-up sharing stews, brews and dope hitchhike roads looking
for the great blue-pink American West night with some honey, some Angelica
honey, bum like a few years back.
Angelica, the proto-type of his sexual
desire in those days, all Midwest blonde, slender, frisky, proud and sensible,
traipsing after him across half the continent before going home to Indiana and
then later joining him in southern California before she decided on white
picket fences and kids. Sweet kiss, baby, you were probably right when that
last night you said your gallant knight was made of sawdust. Yeah, that was a
while back, late 1960s back when even he sensed the world might be turned
upside down. Hoped maybe he and his would get a fair shake in the world even
though more pressing personal issues drove his days and nights.
Those days, those days after the
hellish army routine, the ‘Nam bummer, the ‘Nam bummer before he hightailed it
with the arroyos brothers who couldn’t face the “real” world down in L.A. he
practically made a religion, yah a religion out of living “free,” living out of
the knapsack(oddly an old World War II surplus job found at Snyder’s Army and
Navy the kind which he father had told him he carried all thorough Europe when
it was time to kick ass with the Nazi), living under bridges (not “arroyo
brother” bridges but nice, meaning girl company nice, sleeping bag also Army
surplus and light campfires and fine stews), no sweat, if need be. But those
“golden days” dried up a few years back and now here in 1976 he was facing a
real skid row choice. How it happened he will get to along the way but first
let’s set the parameters of what 1976 panhandling, to put an eloquent name on
it for “bumming”, shiftless bumming , looked like and how to survive in the new
age of everybody me-ing themselves, even with people who were not on the bum.
Christ, lord the times were hard, hard times in old Babylon, no question.
See, a guy, a guy who called himself
“Shorty” McGee for obviously physical reasons but who knows what his real name
was, maybe he didn’t remember either after all the rum-dum sterno heat years
and the endless backsides of skid row haunts, that he had hitched up with for a
minute, an overnight minute at the Salvation Army Harbor Lights Center over in
the South End kind of hipped him to the obvious tricks of the new down-at
the-heels road. Like putting the two requests, got any change and “got a cig,”
together when you were panhandling. See, Shorty said it was all a matter of
psychology, of working the crowd, the downtown crowd, the bustling workaday
Park Street Station crowd hurrying to and fro looking for quick lunches, maybe
a minute shopping spree in Jordan Marsh’s or Filene’s, and the Copley Square
sunning themselves crowd on the benches across from the library maybe reading a
book or feeding the pigeons, right to get you out of their sights and back to
whatever sweet thing they were doing. So you endlessly put the two requests
together, time after time after time, and always. And what happened was that
when they turned you down for the dough ( as happened a lot), or maybe took you
literally and pieced you off with just a dime, Christ a dime that wouldn’t even
buy a cup of joe, or could feel good about themselves, if they smoked, smoked
cigarettes anyway, by passing you a butt. Billy thought, nice, this Shorty
really does have it worked out just about right. Of course dimes and drags were
not going to get him out from under, not this time.
Well, rather than leaving the reader
out in the dark, Billy Bailey this fair 1976 spring was not just on the bum,
but on the lam as well, keeping his head very far down just in case there were
some guys who were looking for him, or worst, the cops, in case some irate
victim of one of his scams took a notion to “fry his ass.” Of course he was
counting on them, those victims, being mainly friends and acquaintances, of not
putting “the heat” on him since he had already promised through the grapevine
that he would make restitution. But we are getting a little ahead of the story,
let’s step back.
The early 1970s were not kind to “free
spirits” the previous name for what on this day were “free-loaders” and Billy,
well, got behind in his expenses, and his bills, his ever expanding bills. But
see the transition from free “s” to free “l” caught him off-guard, moreover he
was just then in the throes of a fit of “the world owes me a living,” a serious
fit. Why? Well see, he as a pauper son of the desperate working poor, “felt”
that since he missed out on the golden age benefits of his youth that he was to
make up the difference by putting the “touch” on the richer friends that he had
acquired through his doing this and that, mainly high-end drug connections (not
really rich but richer since the really rich were hunkered down behind about
fifteen layers of fortresses, physical and legal, and as some writer who knew
what he was talking about really were different that you and me, no question).
The long and short it was that he work
the deal this way, this way once he got his hard wanting habits on first he
would “borrow” money off Friend A under some scam pretext of putting it to good
use, usually using some exotic drug story as the front (yes, his own good use,
including several long airplane fight trips to California and other points
west-no more hitchhike roads for this moving up the food chain lad) and then
borrow dough off Friend B to cover some of his debt to Friend A. Something like
an unconscious classic Ponzi scheme, as it turned out. And then when he got to
Friend X or somewhere around there things got way too complicated and he
started “kiting” checks, and on and on as far deep into his white- collar crime
mind as he could think. That could only go on a for a short while and he
calculated that "short while" almost to the day when he would have to
go “underground” and that day had sprung up a couple of weeks before.
So it took no accountant or smart-ass
attorney to know that dimes and drags were not going to get him back on his
feet. Nor were many of the schemes that Shorty had outlined over at Harbor
Lights as ways to grab quick cash. Hitting the poor boy charity circuit, good
mainly one time, grabbing stuff on credit using somebody’s credit card gained
through guys who sold fake credit cards and then selling the stuff quick and
deeply discounted. Some check finagling. All things that really took sunnier
times to work and squeak maximum benefit from. These were chicken feed for his
needs, even his immediate needs, although some of the scams would fill the bill
for a rum-dum or life-long skid row bum. But here is the secret, the deep
secret that Billy Bailey held in his heart, after a few nights on bus station
benches, cold spring night park benches, a night bout under the Andersen Bridge
over by old haunt Harvard Square (girl-less and with no cozy sleeping and stew
campfires), and a few nights that he would rather not discuss just in case, he
finally figured out, figured out kicking and screaming, that the world did not
owe him a living and that if he wanted to survive past thirty he had better get
the stardust and grit out of his eyes. But just this minute, just this
undercover spring 1976 minute, he needed to work the Commons. “Hey, brother,
hey sister, can you spare a dime?” “Pal, have you got an extra cigarette?”
Postscript: Not all wisdom ends happily, and not all good intentions
grow to fruition. Yes, Billy paid off his debts to his friends, mostly.
However, Billy Bailey was killed while “muling” in a drug war shoot-out in
Juarez, Mexico in late 1979 trying to do an independent score when the bad boy
Mexican and South American cartels were bundling things up. Found face down
with two in the back of the head. Yeah, Billy Bailey had moved down the chain a
lot since the days when he was a contender for the king hell king of the corner
boy night.
