In The Time Of The Two-Timing Woman-That
Damn Two-Timing Woman-With Red Cadillac
And A Black Mustache In Mind
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
Jack Sydney had a long good-bye memory,
a memory attached to some instant replays when some event, some name, some
place, hell, something brought him up quickly. Yeah, Jack had been cursed by
that long good-bye memory more than once to his sorrows none more so than when
a song did the dirty deed. It always amazed him how he had since he was a
growing up kid back in the 1950s, back when he was present at the creation,
present when the music of his generation, rock and roll, got blasted over the
airwaves (although he was a bit too young to fully appreciate that fact) that
some song would remind him of stuff he had buried in the back of his mind. Some
song like the one he had heard the other night when he was eating out with his
long-time companion, Emily Ross, at Diamond Jack’s Café over in Cambridge and
heard, of all things, Warren Smith’s version of A Red Cadillac And A Black Moustache which reminded him of long
good-bye memory Josie Davis, his first serious love back in Carver down in
Southeastern Massachusetts, down in the bogs, the cranberry bogs which for a
long time he was ashamed to admit he was from, hating the very name “bogger”
forever attached to the place even now when it is nothing but a bedroom
community for high tech people working up the road on U.S. 495 where he grew
up. But Jack has other business today,
long good-bye memory business.
Now the lyrics to the song are pretty
standard stuff for rock or popular music. A guy goes away for some reason, a gal
gets fretful, or some other wide-eyed guy sees a chance to make his play, or
both and there you have it. There you have it for the first guy who is now irrevocably
single, at least until he gets over the hurt or some soft fluff comes his way.
What gets varied up is how it happened, and why the guy went out of town and
why that gal could not stay true. That’s what was eating at Jack that night,
and Emily who knew the story of Josie cold since she had been with Jack a
number of years before when she had heard it in his company the first time and so
she knew he would be morose about the damn thing, probably have him down for a
few days. But she was that soft fluff way about Jack and that too was that.
Here’s why Emily had that feeling about
her fate for the next few days. Jack had grown up in “bogger” family in his
growing up town of Carver down about thirty miles south of Boston. That
derisive term “bogger” reflecting the part of the town’s population wedded to
the cranberry bogs for which it was then famous, the derisive part being that
the boggers were the working poor of the town mainly living in the town’s
“projects” (public housing) in the rough-hewn neighborhoods adjoining the vast
cranberry plantations. So no question that Jack was “from hunger” and like
Josie whom he had met at a school dance during sophomore year at old Carver High
(now meshed in with a regional school), they had done the twist, the dance,
together and wound up dancing the last chance last dance together, Sam Cooke’s You Send Me and from then on they were
an “item” (and an item of school “lav” gossip since Jack was so-so looking but
Josie was a beauty all dark-eyed, full-breasted, nice figure, and shining blues
eyes so everybody assumed that Jack had some other quality, some “doing the do”
quality from the scuttle-bud that escaped the girls who had turned Jack down
and the guys who had ogled Josie. In the case they were “doing the do” after
the summer of sophomore year but kept very quiet about it and, according to
Josie later when she confided in a girlfriend Jack had no special quality that
love-making way but she loved him anyway)
So they went through high school like a
lot of kids went through high school in the early 1960s before the great
cultural break-out that was forming out in some quarters then, Cambridge, Manhattan,
Grosse Point, Ann Arbor, Madison, Denver (a little) L.A. and always, always Frisco
town, but not Carver, Christ not Carver, and would blossom later in the decade.
The “norm” in Carver, then strictly a working-class town was high school
graduation, usually, get married, have kids, maybe a little house a little
bigger than the one you grew up in and that was that (if you were not a bogger
then you worked the shipyards, skilled labor work mostly, about ten miles away,
that occupation putting you significantly ahead of the lowly boggers). Jack,
although not scholar, could work with his hands and so got a job at the Hingham
shipyard as a welder. With that in hand he and Josie had planned to get married
in a couple of years after high school when they had saved up enough from his
job and hers as a bank clerk.
Then the other shoe dropped. The curse
of Jack’s generation landed on his head, he was drafted, drafted with the damn
war in Vietnam heating up to a froth, so he was sure to go and he was a little
afraid of that. In places like Carver then, and all through the war, probably
now too if they still had a draft if you were called you went (in places like
Nashua, New Hampshire, Daly City, California, the Bronx in New York City,
Detroit, you went, none of the draft-dodging stuff or running away to Canada or
someplace). And so Jack went, went with doubts but went, got his regulation
bald haircut at Army Basic down at Fort Dix, then advanced infantry training at
Fort Benning, and then with a month’s leave order to report to Fort Lewis in
Washington for transport to Vietnam.
Naturally nobody was happy about Jack’s
going, not with the casualty figures growing higher each week despite all the
blah, blah from Saigon headquarters and the White House, especially the White
House which seemed to be in cloud cuckoo land about the prospects of victory, but
nobody thought to challenge anything and naturally as well Josie swore to be
true, would be waiting for him with open arms when he got home and they could
proceed with their lives.
That rather commonplace plan was in
effect for the first six months Jack was in Vietnam, getting weekly letters
from Josie which boosted him up, and then the letters stopped. Worse, his
letters to her would be returned as “not at address.” Jack then wrote to his
mother asking her to find out what had happened to Josie, was she sick or
something. Asked his friends more frantically what had happened. No Josie,
gone.
The way the story from here got pieced
together from his mother’s, his friends’ efforts then and later when he came
back to the “real” world Jack’s own investigation was that Josie had run off to
parts unknown with a guy, a guy from Cohasset, a guy named Jason Warren although
that name meant nothing to Jack and it could have been any name attached to Josie’s
fate, who seemed to have money and a car. It seemed that Josie was getting
bored just sitting at home waiting for Jack, or her own other shoe to fall if
Jack was killed and their lives together were to be cut short and when asked by
her girlfriend, Nancy Jackson, to go to the Surf Ballroom down in Hull to hear
a local rock and roll cover band she agreed. There she met this guy Jason who
was good-looking, dressed well (Jack was careless in his dress) and had one dark
green new Mustang all the rage then and wound up (secretly) meeting him places
all along the South Shore of Boston, including times she was writing to Jack
about all their future plans together.
Then one day Josie just disappeared,
told her parents she was heading west to meet Jack when he came back home to
America. Which should have set alarm bells off although given the times perhaps
not since everybody who had bus fare, train fare, expensive plane fare or even
a thumb was heading west to see what the new dispensation was all about but Josie
had not exhibited much interest in that counter-cultural movement or at least
she said noting remarkable about it. The alarm part being that Jack was not due
to get back to the “real” world for five months when she left. Josie did sent
one postcard from saying she was fine, had met a man and was going off with him
for a “new” life away from damn Carver. After that nothing. Nada. Jack tried
and tried to find her trail to no avail, tried to work the Jason angle but his
parents were as baffled as he was about what happened, didn’t know he had a steady
girl since he had brought no one to the house before he left around the same time
as Josie. Saved some dough and about a year after he got back and still
perplexed and angry he hired a detective in Denver to see if there were any
leads to follow. The only evidence was that she had maybe, maybe, been in a
commune around Boulder for a time but she was travelling alone then, had if it
was her gone the whole hippie road, including some serious drug use given what
one commune member said was her physical condition by then. And she was never
heard from again. (Neither was Jason, according to his anguished family
when Jack would periodically check in.)
Jack was shattered for a long time and
then one day he went into a record shop to buy a Jefferson Airplane album and
saw a 45 RPM Sun Record copy of Warren Smith’s Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache and remembering the lyrics
purchased it. Played it over and over again for a long time. After a while he
got over the loss of Josie, or though he had. Had even recently looked on
Facebook to see if he could any trace of her. Emily was hoping that he would,
hoping hard for some word. And you wonder why Jack Sydney flinches every time
he hears that song. You would too if you were in his shoes.
