***From The Brothers Under The Bridge Series-The Stuff Of Dreams-Down Los Gatos Way

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:

In the first installment of this series of sketches 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 another 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, or some story that had stuck with them. 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, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Pete Allen’s life story fit that latter description, the couldn’t handle part. He just kind of drifted around the West Coast (after spending a little time back home in the East) after he got out of the service, got caught up with some wrong gees, did too much dope and a little time and landed in the “jungle,” the one they set up in Segundo near the arroyo where I met him.

What makes his story different from others, almost uniquely different in some respects, is that he wanted to tell a story that had haunted him for a while that was told to him when he first started frequenting the jungles back east a little in Gallup, New Mexico at the huge jungle camp (which got bigger, much bigger during Native American Inter-Tribals in August) near the old Southern Pacific sidings back in 1973. There he befriended (or was befriended by) an old Mex hobo, Felipe, who had been on the road for almost forty years after the events he related. Felipe had seen good times, bad times, and worse times but no matter what he told his story, the story of his encounter with the legendary Mexican bandit chief , El Lobo back in the 1930s (who even I had heard of when I went south of the border for various, ah, things, okay). Pete felt in respect for his friendship with Felipe that he had to relate the story, to continue Felipe’s work. Why it haunted him (and maybe haunted Felipe too, these things are hard to figure) was whether he too should think twice before pursuing any stuff of dreams that he might have had. Good point. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Pete’s sign was that of the stuff that dreams are made of.

The Stuff Of Dreams-Down Los Gatos Way

It didn’t start out that way, the stuff of dreams, the search for gold that is, but it sure finished up that way, finished up that way with guys lying face down in some broken unnamed desert arroyo, nobody to mourn them, or cover them over except those fierce desert winds that would make short work of the matter, if that counted. Yah, it didn’t start out that way with pipe dream guys just buying into another guy’s dreams, catching their own fire dreams to get out from under whatever it was they were trying to get out from under from. Trying to brush off the dust of their own small dreams, maybe just trying to get back to square one, gringo Norte Americano square one from whence they came, came south for some reason, or no reason, came south to sunny Mexico. Maybe took up the dream, another man’s dream to get back to some long lost Molly, all bright blue eyes and straw blonde, and a fresh start, and, damn, to get away from that stinking brown-eyed world, that brown dust from the brown roads, those brown-skinned, fierce-looking brown-eyed braceros, and those brown senoritas with their sparkling, dancing brown eyes and their karma sutra tricks (although none of them, the senoritas, would have known that term or the book they came from , just the arts from handed- down cantina mother to daughter practice ), whores, really, who spoiled a man, a gringo man, for blond-haired Mollies if you didn’t get away fast enough. Or maybe they came south for the senoritas , for the brown-eyed senoritas, for the cheap and easy brown-eyed senoritas with the sparking dancing eyes looking for sugar daddy gringos with fierce blues eyes and strange hungers, strange hung-up sex hungers, to get out from under the bracero life. So yah it didn’t start out that way, no way.

Maybe I had better start at the beginning, or at the beginning where my just then road amigo Felipe, who saw the whole thing many years before and lived to tell about it, came into the story and told a bunch of us the story over a windy night camp fire in a jungle camp along the Southern Pacific Railroad just outside of Gallup, New Mexico one night, one 1973 night. Told us about how when he was young he had got caught up with a trio of guys, gringos of course, who were bitten by the stuff of dreams.

It started down in Vera Cruz, like I said down in sunny Mexico, and it started with this gringo, Burl, bumming a cigarette off Felipe who was driving a cab at the time down at the docks where this Burl’s ship, some tramp freighter that had seen better days, the S.S. Corcoran, had just landed. This Burl, after Felipe gave him the cigarette (and a pack of matches to light it with too, damn Felipe should have cross the gee off right there), asked him about hotels, and, more importantly about cantinas and senoritas, stuff like that, just like a million guys have done who have been guy ship bound for too long months since they invented ships. It seemed, contrary to his appearance, four or five days growth on his face, in a time when clean-shaven was the rule, ruffed-up clothes, non-descript worn-out shoes, really sneakers, and smelling, well smelling like he could use a bath, or something, that this guy has some dough coming, coming as back pay off his tramp steamer journey as a ship’s mate. Felipe brightened to this news because now he turned on his tourista guide niceness full blast, offering the guy another cigarette (keep the matches, amigo) and his services as someone who could safely get Mister Burl through the maze of Vera Cruz night life in one piece. Burl agreed and the game was on.

Two weeks later after drinking up half the high-shelf scotch in town, keeping company with half the brown-eyed senoritas at the La Paz whorehouse (nicely named although more hell got raised there, more fortunes got lost, more teeth got knocked out that in the rather placid other precincts of the town) and setting his favorite from the La Paz , Maria (hell, they are all named Maria or Lupe something in cantina- ville), up in an adjoining hotel room for serious pleasure, and after smoking just one too many joints of that high-spirited marijuana grown in some wilds outside of town Burl, Burl Jackson, from Baltimore, U.S.A. was flat broke again, flat broke with no ship heading out since the Corcoran had left the week before without him (and good riddance he said of that old tub in an alcoholic haze one night when Felipe informed him of the ship’s departure), no prospects, no money for the room rent, and by now probably no Maria as well.

While Burl pondered his choices he asked Felipe for a cigarette, and a loan. No dice, Felipe wasn’t born yesterday and was keeping his easily earned dough and so he just pleaded that he had already spent his dough trying to feed his family, gracias though. So Burl would have to bracero/gringo/downtrodden pan-handle the ricos Americanos for a while over at the Central Plaza where they hung out to get a stake up and find another ship if not in Vera Cruz then some other port.

And that is where Burl Jackson met Tim Conway, Tim Conway of Laredo, Texas and also with no dough, no prospects and no place to stay just then but with big dreams, big dreams of easy and cheap brown-eyed mex whorehouse girls, and plenty of them, who would take you around the world for a dollar and a little tip. Jesus, Burl said at this news. He wised the kid up about the cheap part, forget that once those laughing Spanish eyes got under your skin and you set up a one for your easy rider, easy rider woman like he had with Maria, although he left the easy part for the kid to figure for himself. In fact Tim, after some conversation, had sized Burl up as a gringo rico and was ready to put the bite on him. Jesus, again. They talked for a while and kind of got along.

While they were standing on that good Mexican soil trying to figure out if two gringos were better than one this old geezer, this old ancient geezer with a beard like Jehovah, the stink of a guy who had been out in the desert or someplace without a bathtub, long straggly hair, and about six missing teeth drawing a couple of pack mules behind him came by and asked if they were American in some low-down English.“Of course they were Americans, jesus, what did he think they were some brown-eyed braceros,” Tim had wailed out. He then asked them if they were looking for work. “Of course they were looking for work, and what of it.” Burl had shouted out. The old geezer (real name Walter Simons but nobody ever called him anything but Old Geezer according to Felipe who had seen him off and on around town when he came in from the hills for the previous four or five years) had a proposition for the boys if they would trouble themselves to show their faces at the Imperial Hotel about six o’clock that evening after he had cleaned up and had supper. Burl looked at Tim and shrugged his shoulders in disbelieve at the Old Geezer’s address but were non-committal on the appointment.

Needless to say they were, after a fruitless afternoon of not finding anything worthwhile, knocking on the door of Room 216 of the Imperial Hotel at six that evening. And here was the now regal Old Geezer’s proposition. He was an old time prospector (believable) and had hit some pay-dirt, some gold dust pay-dirt, out in the arroyos and foothills around Los Gatos about one hundred and fifty miles away from there toward the interior of sunny Mexico. He needed help to dig for and pan the stuff on an equal basis, each a third share. He didn’t trust the Mex, the dirty braceros that would cut his throat for a dollar and change if he turned his back on them but with gringos he could feel that at least they wouldn’t cut his throat and he had size dup Burl and Tim as okay, okay for what he was offering. No soap though, not that night and not for a few nights more until Burl and Tim were forced into some stinking bracero rooming house with about fifty stinking braceros in a space for twenty when a rain squall forced them indoors. Then they were back at Room 216, hats in hands.

A couple of days later they took off, Tim, Burl, the Old Geezer, four pack mules loaded with supplies and tools for a couple of months work, and Felipe who Burl persuaded the Old Geezer to take along for wages to “keep house” for them. (They kept Felipe in the dark about what they were up to until they got close to Los Gatos but he had kind of figured it out when Tim and Burl kept talking about registering their claim in Tampico. He knew the area as well and the history of a million gringos going for the gold but he just let them play out their hand, like he always did with gringos, because they were kind of trigger-happy when it came right down to it.) Needless to say a couple of gringos one more at home in the seas of the world, the seven seas, and whorehouses like Burl and a raw kid like Tim, who dreamed of whorehouses and keeping his hands lily-white in the bargain sweated, cursed, wanted to turn back about six times, got a little sunstroke, maybe a little desert- addled, maybe snake-bit and insect- bit and twelve other kind of bits for the seven days it took to get to Los Gatos after stumbling, tumbling, mumbling over some rocky arroyos, some saline desert and some ragged foothills. But damn they made it, made camp and prepared for el dorado, yah, big time el dorado if the Old Geezer wasn’t cracked.

Do you need to know the work, the twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day work these tres hombres went through for about a month before they even clawed, scratched, culled a small assay of gold for their troubles, work sleep, eat and not too much to preserve the supplies. No, you can figure that part of the story out, and if you can’t Felipe said even he had helped out just to past the time. Finally that small assay traced down into a bigger lode, yah, they had hit pay dirt. Not big, according to the Old Geezer, who over midnight camp fires would tell them about how many times he had hit pay-dirt, jumped on easy street for a while, then busted out and hit the road again looking for that really big mother lode. This one, also according to his estimates, was not the mother lode but a month’s work would let them ride easy street for a while. Burl and Tim bought the ticket and took the ride, especially Tim, a smart young guy who figured that with his share he would just buy a whorehouse and then he would get his loving free. The Old Geezer laughed, hell, even Burl laughed at the kid’s moxie (and naiveté).

So they worked, worked the lode, worked it good, and plied their takings together one for all, at least at the beginning. Burl, Felipe guessed was the first to get the fever, gold fever, checking each night for an hour, maybe more the weight, and calculating his share, and maybe more than his share after a while when Felipe noticed that fevered look he had seen before when a man had been out in the desert, had suffered privations, and, hell, hadn’t been around the gentle influence of a woman, even a brown-eyed Mex whore, for a while. The he started staying in his tent more, avoiding the nightly gabfest camp fire except to eat, eat quickly and return to his tent. Tim caught it too, caught it as bad, so most nights before they headed out back to Tampico and then Vera Cruz it was only the Old Geezer, sometimes muttering to himself like he had the fever too and Felipe although Felipe had caught a certain look from the geezer that made him realize the old man was playing with his younger companions. Not a good sign.

After a couple of small incidents, incidents that if left to fester would have led to gun play between Burl and Tim no question in their then current state, nothing in the real world really something about the food and how it tasted funny ( a reflection of Felipe, and his culinary skill, if nothing else but fuel for their feud) magnified out in the hills the Old Geezer declared they had been out long enough and it would be best to go back to civilization, divvy up the profits and each head their separate ways. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, Burl and Tim bucked the idea at first wanting pan forever, when the geezer mentioned stray banditos out in the hills who if they found out some gringos were afoot might come and do them all in. That got the boys’ attention and so they broke camp, started heading back. A couple of days out they ran into a couple of stray banditos, fought them off, and began to hunker down on security. Three or four days later coming out of a narrow canyon they were confronted by a bandito force of about twenty desperados, some with they look of career bandits about them, others who looked like the remnants of Pancho Villa’s various armies now free-lancing with whoever paid and fed them.

The leader, a serious guy named El Lobo, a legend in the Mexico night just behind Villa and Zapata in the local hill pantheon and a name known even in places like Tampico and Vera Cruz, known and dreaded by Felipe one he spoke his name, who between spits, told the gringo trio (he did not direct anything, in anger or calm, toward Felipe) that he knew, knew so don’t lie to him, that they had gold and that he wanted half of it to let them go. The three parlayed. Tim and Burl, strung out on gold like men strung out on some unattainable woman, were for fighting it out and moving on quickly, the old man wiser and ready to take half of something, gold something, rather than a hail of lead was ready for compromise. He finally talked them into it, although the arguments were heated and the vagrant smell of gun powder was just below the surface. He called over to El Lobo, rendered the collective decision, went to the pack mule saddle bags, got the goods, passed El Lobo his share, and then went back and joined up with Tim and Burl.

Just then a fusillade of gun fire rang out from the bandito side. Tim fell first, then Burl, and finally the Old Geezer cursing El Lobo’s name. As the bandito army took everything not tied down away, gold, mules, supplies, El Lobo shouted to Felipe, now su companero, and asked if he wanted to join the gang. Felipe said no. To that El Lobo, the blood rising in his face and the thought that tonight at least his men would be fed and bedded indoors in some back road cantina , said-“Tell everyone you see what happened here today, and what will happen to them if they come looking for the oro in El Lobo’s backyard.” And he did.

In Honor Of The 142^ndAnniversary Of The Paris Commune-From The American Left History Blog Archives(2007)- On American Political Discourse

Markin comment:

In the period 2006-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

************

FORD UAW AUTOWORKERS CONTRACT- VOTE NO

COMMENTARY

NO TWO- TIER WAGE RATES-EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK

The big labor news this fall has been the fight by the United Auto Workers (UAW) for new contracts with General Motors, Chrysler and now Ford. I have already discussed the GM and Chrysler settlement and now as of Friday, November 3, 2007 Ford and the UAW have reached a tentative agreement. That agreement is along the same lines as those ratified by GM and Chrysler (barely) - a new two-tier wage system for new hires who will get one half the average pay of senior autoworkers and union takeover of the health and pension funds. As I have lamented previously these contracts are a defeat for the autoworkers. Why? The historic position of labor has been to fight for equal pay for equal work. That apparently has gone by the boards here. Moreover the pension and health takeovers are an albatross around the neck of the union. No way is this an example of worker control not at least how any militant should view it. After all the givebacks its time to fight back even if this is a rearguard action in light of the previous votes. Any illusions that the give backs will by labor peace and or/avoid further layoffs, closedowns or outsourcing got a cruel comeuppance in the previous contract negotiations. No sooner had those contracts been ratified, and well before the new contracts were even printed, Chrysler announced layoffs of 8000 to 10, 000 and GM had previously announced about 1500 layoffs. FORD AUTOWORKERS VOTE NO ON THIS CONTRACT.

I HAVE REPOSTED THE NOTES ON THE GM AND CHRYSLER SETTLEMENTS TO GIVE A PERSPECTIVE OF HOW THE HOPES THAT ORGANIZED LABOR COULD FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE TIDE OF GLOBALIZATION HAVE FADED AS THE PROCESS HAS GONE ON THIS FALL.

A Short Note On the Chrysler Autoworkers Contract Settlement

Commentary

The Wal-martization of the Once Proud UAW

Yes, I know that we are in the age of ‘globalization’. That is, however, merely the transformation of the same old characters like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the auto industry that we have come to know and love moving away from mainly nationally defined markets to international markets. In short, these companies allegedly are being forced to fight their way to the bottom of the international labor wage market along with everyone else. As least that was the position of these august companies in the on-going labor contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers (UAW). And the labor tops bought the argument. In the General Motors settlement GM was nicely absolved from having to administer its albatross health and pension funds. Now autoworkers are held responsible for deciding what autoworkers get what benefits. This is not my idea of workers control, not by a long shot. Based on those provisions alone that GM contract should have been soundly defeated. That it was not will come back to haunt the GM autoworkers in the future.

Now comes news that, as of October 27, 2007, the Chrysler workers have narrowly (56%) ratified their contract, although some major plants voted against it and the labor skates pulled out all stops to get an affirmative vote. If anything that contract is worst than the GM contract because it also contains a provision for permitting a two-wage system where ‘new hires’ will be paid approximately one half normal rates. So much for the old labor slogan of 'equal pay for equal work'. If the GM contract will come back to haunt this one already does today. Remember also that Chrysler was bought out by a private equity company that has a history of selling off unprofitable operations, driving productivity up and then selling the profitable parts for huge profits. That, my friends, is what the global race to the bottom looks like in the American auto industry. This contract should have been voted down with both hands. Ford is up next and based on the foregoing that contract should also be voted down.

Look, every militant knows that negotiations over union contracts represent a sort of ‘truce’ in the class struggle. Until there is worker control of production under a workers government the value of any negotiations with the capitalists is determined by the terms. Sometimes, especially in hard times, just holding your own is a‘victory’. Other times, like here, there is only one word for these contracts-defeat. Moreover, this did not need to happen. Although both strike efforts at GM and Chrysler were short-lived (intentionally so on the part of the leadership) the rank and file was ready to do battle. The vote at Chrysler further bolsters that argument. So what is up?

What is up is that the leadership of the autoworkers is not worthy of the membership. These people are so mired in class collaborationist non-aggression pacts and cozy arrangements (for themselves) that they were easy pickings for the vultures leading management. The epitome of this is the ‘apache’ strategy of negotiating with one company at a time. If in the era of Walter Reuther at a time when there were upwards of a million union autoworkers that might have made some sense today with reduced numbers it makes no sense at all. Labor’s power is in solidarity and solidarity means, in this case, ‘one out, all out’. Beyond that it is clear a new class struggle leadership is needed, just to keep even, and it is needed pronto. Those rank and filers and, in some cases, local union leaders who called for a no vote at Chrysler are the starting point for such efforts.

***Out In The Film Noir Night - The Stuff Of Dreams, Part Two-Down Los Gatos Way-Take Two

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

It didn’t start out that way, the stuff of dreams, the search for gold that is, but it sure finished up that way, finished up that way with guys lying face down in some broken unnamed desert arroyo, nobody to mourn them, or cover them over except those fierce desert winds that would make short work of the matter, if that counted. Yah, it didn’t start out that way with pipe dream guys just buying into another guy’s dreams, catching their own fire dreams to get out from under whatever it was they were trying to get out from under from. Trying to brush off the dust of their own small dreams, maybe just trying to get back to square one, gringo Norte Americano square one from whence they came, came south for some reason, or no reason, came south to sunny Mexico. Maybe took up the dream, another man’s dream to get back to some long lost Molly, all bright blue eyes and straw blonde, and a fresh start, and, damn, to get away from that stinking brown-eyed world, that brown dust from the brown roads, those brown-skinned, fierce- looking brown-eyed braceros, and those brown senoritas with their sparkling, dancing brown eyes and their karma sutra tricks (although none of them, the senoritas, would have known that term or the book they came from , just the arts from handed- down cantina mother to daughter practice ), whores, really, who spoiled a man, a gringo man, for blond-haired Mollies if you didn’t get away fast enough. Or maybe they came south for the senoritas , for the brown-eyed senoritas, for the cheap and easy brown-eyed senoritas with the sparking dancing eyes looking for sugar daddy gringos with fierce blues eyes and strange hungers, strange hung-up sex hungers, to get out from under the bracero life. So yah it didn’t start out that way, no way.

Maybe I had better start at the beginning, or at the beginning where my just then road amigo Felipe, who saw the whole thing many years before and lived to tell about it, came into the story and told a bunch of us the story over a windy night camp fire in a jungle camp along the Southern Pacific Railroad just outside of Gallup, New Mexico one night, one 1973 night. Told us about how when he was young he had got caught up with a trio of guys, gringos of course, who were bitten by the stuff of dreams.

It started down in Vera Cruz, like I said down in sunny Mexico, and it started with this gringo, Burl, bumming a cigarette off Felipe who was driving a cab at the time down at the docks where this Burl’s ship, some tramp freighter that had seen better days, the S.S. Corcoran, had just landed. This Burl, after Felipe gave him the cigarette (and a pack of matches to light it with too, damn Felipe should have cross the gee off right there), asked him about hotels, and, more importantly about cantinas and senoritas, stuff like that, just like a million guys have done who have been guy ship bound for too long since they invented ships. It seemed, contrary to his appearance, four or five days growth on his face, in a time when clean-shaven was the rule, ruffed-up clothes, non-descript worn-out shoes, really sneakers, and smelling, well smelling like he could use a bath, or something, that this guy has some dough coming, coming as back pay off his tramp steamer journey as a ship’s mate. Felipe brightened to this news because now he turned on his tourista guide niceness full blast, offering the guy another cigarette (keep the matches, amigo) and his services as someone who could safely get Mister Burl through the maze of Vera Cruz night life in one piece. Burl agreed and the game was on.

Two weeks later after drinking up half the high-shelf scotch in town, keeping company with half the brown-eyed senoritas at the La Paz whorehouse (nicely named although more hell got raised there, more fortunes got lost, more teeth got knocked out that in the rather placid other precincts of the town) and setting his favorite from the La Paz , Maria (hell, they are all named Maria or Lupe something in cantina- ville), up in an adjoining hotel room for serious pleasure, and after smoking just one too many joints of that high-spirited marijuana grown in some wilds outside of town Burl, Burl Jackson, from Baltimore, U.S.A. was flat broke again, flat broke with no ship heading out since the Corcoran had left the week before without him (and good riddance he said of that old tub in an alcoholic haze one night when Felipe informed him of the ship’s departure), no prospects, no money for the room rent, and by now probably no Maria as well.

While Burl pondered his choices he asked Felipe for a cigarette, and a loan. No dice, Felipe wasn’t born yesterday and was keeping his easily earned dough and so he just pleaded that he had already spent his dough trying to feed his family, gracias though. So he would have to bracero/gringo/downtrodden pan-handle the ricos Americanos for a while over at the Central Plaza where they hung out to get a stake up and find another ship if not in Vera Cruz then some other port.

And that is where Burl Jackson met Tim Conway, Tim Conway of Laredo, Texas and also with no dough, no prospects and no place to stay just then but with big dreams, big dreams of easy and cheap brown-eyed mex whorehouse girls, and plenty of them, who would take you around the world for a dollar and a little tip. Jesus, Burl said at this news. He wised the kid up about the cheap part, forget that once those laughing Spanish eyes got under your skin and you set up a one for your easy rider, easy rider woman like he had with Maria, although he left the easy part for the kid to figure for himself. In fact Tim, after some conversation, had sized Burl up as a gringo rico and was ready to put the bite on him. Jesus, again. They talked for a while and kind of got along.

While they were standing on that good Mexican soil trying to figure out if two gringos were better than one this old geezer, this old ancient geezer with a beard like Jehovah, the stink of a guy who had been out in the desert or someplace without a bathtub, long straggly hair, and about six missing teeth drawing a couple of pack mules behind him came by and asked if they were American in some low-down English. “Of course they were Americans, jesus, what did he think they were some brown-eyed braceros,” Tim had wailed out. He then asked them if they were looking for work. “Of course they were looking for work, and what of it.” Burl had shouted out. The old geezer (real name Walter Simons but nobody ever called him anything but Old Geezer according to Felipe who had seen him off and on around town when he came in from the hills for the previous four or five years) had a proposition for the boys if they would trouble themselves to show their faces at the Imperial Hotel about six o’clock that evening after he had cleaned up and had supper. Burl looked at Tim and shrugged his shoulders in disbelieve at the Old Geezer’s address but were non-committal on the appointment.

Needless to say they were, after a fruitless afternoon of not finding anything worthwhile, knocking on the door of Room 216 of the Imperial Hotel at six that evening. And here was the now regal Old Geezer’s proposition. He was an old time prospector (believable) and had hit some pay-dirt, some gold dust pay-dirt, out in the arroyos and foothills around Los Gatos about one hundred and fifty miles away from there toward the interior of sunny Mexico. He needed help to dig for and pan the stuff on an equal basis, each a third share. He didn’t trust the Mex, the dirty braceros that would cut his throat for a dollar and change if he turned his back on them but with gringos he could feel that at least they wouldn’t cut his throat and he had size dup Burl and Tim as okay, okay for what he was offering. No soap though, not that night and not for a few nights more until Burl and Tim were forced into some stinking bracero rooming house with about fifty stinking braceros in space for twenty when a rain squall forced them indoors. Then they were back at Room 216, hats in hands.

A couple of days later they took off, Tim, Burl, the Old Geezer, four pack mules loaded with supplies and tools for a couple of months work, and Felipe who Burl persuaded the Old Geezer to take along for wages to “keep house” for them. (They kept Felipe in the dark about what they were up to until they got close to Los Gatos but he had kind of figured it out when Tim and Burl kept talking about registering their claim in Tampico. He knew the area as well and the history of a million gringos going for the gold but he just let them play out their hand, like he always did with gringos, because they were kind of trigger-happy when it came right down to it.) Needless to say a couple of gringos one more at home in the seas of the world, the seven seas, and whorehouses like Burl and a raw kid like Tim, who dreamed of whorehouses and keeping his hands lily-white in the bargain sweated, cursed, wanted to turn back about six times, got a little sunstrokes, maybe a little desert- addled, maybe snake-bit and insect- bit and twelve other kind of bits for the seven days it took to get to Los Gatos after stumbling, tumbling, mumbling over some rocky arroyos, some saline desert and some ragged foothills. But damn they made it, made camp and prepared for el dorado, yah, big time el dorado if the Old Geezer wasn’t cracked.

Do you need to know the work, the twelve, fourteen, sixteen hour a day work these tres hombres went through for about a month before they even clawed, scratched, culled a small assay of gold for their troubles, work sleep, eat and not too much to preserve the supplies. No, you can figure that part of the story out, and if you can’t Felipe said even he had helped out just to past the time. Finally that small assay traced down into a bigger lode, yah, they had hit pay dirt. Not big, according to the Old Geezer, who over midnight camp fires would tell them about how many times he had hit pay-dirt, jumped on easy street for a while, then busted out and hit the road again looking for that really big mother lode. This one, also according to his estimates, was not the mother lode but a month’s work would let them ride easy street for a while. Burl and Tim bought the ticket and took the ride, especially Tim, a smart young guy who figured that with his share he would just buy a whorehouse and then he would get his loving free. The Old Geezer laughed, hell, even Burl laughed at the kid’s moxie (and naiveté).

So they worked, worked the lode, worked it good, and plied their takings together one for all, at least at the beginning. Burl, Felipe guessed was the first to get the fever, gold fever, checking each night for an hour, maybe more the weight, and calculating his share, and maybe more than his share after a while when Felipe noticed a that fevered look he had seen before when a man had been out in the desert, had suffered privations, and hell hadn’t been around the gentle influence of a woman, even a brown-eyed Mex whore, for a while. The he started staying in his tent more, avoiding the nightly gabfest camp fire except to eat, eat quickly and return to his tent. Tim caught it too, caught it as bad, so most nights before they headed out back to Tampico and then Vera Cruz it was only the Old Geezer, sometimes muttering to himself like he had the fever too and Felipe although Felipe had caught a certain look from the geezer that made him realize the old man was playing with his younger companions. Not a good sign.

After a couple of small incidents, incidents that if left to fester would have led to gun play between Burl and Tim no question in their then current state, nothing in the real world really something about the food and how it tasted funny ( a reflection of Felipe, and his culinary skill, if nothing else but fuel for their feud) magnified out in the hills the Old Geezer declared they had been out long enough and it would be best to go back to civilization, divvy up the profits and each head their separate ways. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, Burl and Tim bucked the idea at first wanting pan forever, when the geezer mentioned stray banditos out in the hills who if they found out some gringos were afoot might come and do them all in. That got the boys’ attention and so they broke camp, started heading back. A couple of days out they ran into a couple of stray banditos, fought them off, and began to hunker down on security. Three or four days later coming out of a narrow canyon they were confronted by a bandito force of about twenty desperados, some with they look of career bandits about them, others who looked like the remnants of Pancho Villa’s various armies now free-lancing with whoever paid and fed them.

The leader, a serious guy named El Lobo, a legend in the Mexico night just behind Villa and Zapata in the local hill pantheon and a name known even in places like Tampico and Vera Cruz, known and dreaded by Felipe one he spoke his name, who between spits, told the gringo trio (he did not direct anything, in anger or calm, toward Felipe) that he knew, knew so don’t lie to him, that they had gold and that he wanted half of it to let them go. The three parlayed. Tim and Burl, strung out on gold like men strung out on some unattainable woman, were for fighting it out and moving on quickly, the old man wiser and ready to take half of something, gold something, rather than a hail of lead was ready for compromise. He finally talked them into it, although the arguments were heated and the vagrant smell of gun powder was just below the surface. He called over to El Lobo, rendered the collective decision, went to the pack mule saddle bags, got the goods, passed El Lobo his share, and then went back and joined up with Tim and Burl.

Just then a fusillade of gun fire rang out from the bandito side. Tim fell first, then Burl, and finally the Old Geezer cursing El Lobo’s name. As the bandito army took everything not tied down away, gold, mules, supplies, El Lobo shouted to Felipe, now su companero, and asked if he wanted to join the gang. Felipe said no. To that El Lobo, the blood rising in his face and the thought that tonight at least his men would be fed and bedded indoors in some back road cantina , said-“Tell everyone you see what happened here today, and what will happen to them if they come looking for the oro in El Lobo’s backyard.” And he did.

***Beat Poet’s Corner – The Gangster Poet Cometh – With Gregory Corso’s Destiny In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

… a man came running down the stairs of some sad sack, no elevator, long gone, brownstone ready for the wrecker’s’ ball, wild-haired, throwing off devil brown hair that wouldn’t stay down, devil brown-eyed, swarthy brown skin fresh from some Adriatic Sea port dream sunning, smirks, half-dressed, shirt open, pants fly open like maybe he had just finished up some hurried sex with his best friend’s wife (she all alabaster white from an all alabaster white world and so fixated on some dark-skinned kicks to while away some lonely afternoons yet afraid to take on anything more exotic than a rarified specimen of the “white negro”), and that best friend was now walking up Canal Street in 1950s New Jack City ready to be greeted by that ever- loving wife (and maybe grab a little piece of her, a little something that night when he told her that he had seen a vision of Buddha on MacDougall Street and that might stir some kama sutra thoughts) once he walks up the six flights to their honeymoon-like cold water flat, cockroach friendly, the flat that is, not the best friend. Or maybe, a different take, the same wild-haired man, maybe open pants fly open having just come from some boyfriend (hey, it is the Village you know, okay), or stray pick-up back alley after being drip-dried. See , he had that wild-eyed look for that hunger too, that boy hunger, hell for all human hungers if you looked closely, he frantic, muttering, yes, muttering a mile a minute words, machine gun gangster muttering those words, ashes in the mouth words like truth, beauty, age, wisdom, the veda, the Buddha truth, the karma sutra, the act of contrition, six hail marys and this, throw them all out and start fresh, start fresh with the new beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday, beatitude truth.

He, that selfsame man with the tricky zipper, muttering death of god truth, beat down old gringo man god truth, muttering against false prophets (a slew of them, check the Old Testament if you dare) truth, muttering quietly just then some new truth, a truth worth pondering. Making words sing a new way, making the starless night turn into some back alley episode complete with libretto (so maybe it was a boy and not some foreboding alabaster virgin queen in that scene), probably sexual but possibly just a sweet child jack-roll like his, his older corner boy, now home boy, now amigo, now long gone daddy, walking daddy showed him by the numbers, mark the mark, see his moves, seek a dark alley, hit just below the back of the knees, take the roll, and then flee, beautiful, a work of art like some old time three penny beggar’s opera. Then swig some wine, wino, beat juice of light, elixir of the gods, the juice that makes those golden-flecked words sing that new way, that new staccato beat, with a shade of discord between each beat to strike the new age tone, to break, jail-break from old time Eliot coffee spoons and Lowell ennui. And new blasphemy rock three chord beats that defy discord. But don’t tell the foundling starting to accumulate on the ground that. That’s the ticket, just tell them to take the ride.

And so he rode the el, rode it as far as he could out to Far Rockaway and some seamless seas, seven was it, flipped back and rode to the bridge, the GW, picked up the pike and began his merry adventure west, west of Seventh Avenue shadows, west of Village cop-outs, cope-out and stray errant alabaster white wives looking for afternoon kicks and best friends seeking nirvana, and west of sad old wines and cigarette stubs, early morning salvation stubs, relit, and greasy spoon half breakfasts (hold the eggs, hold the toast, hold the bacon, coffee strong, black as that starless back alley night, a small piece of English muffin slathered with marmalade, orange that’s all a wine stomach can hold in the search night), and breath in some fresh new scene, although he had made that trip a few times before, before he met up with some amigos, some kindred, also heading west, and all seeking beat, beat without that dissonance and without the high strung new wave guitar busting old time cool Dizzy jazz all to hell. So west, so Greeley west.

West through Jersey get-away portals, New Jack City get away, get away from nigras (although he himself a white negro, so watch out brother), spics, dagos, greeks, jews, all the them of the teeming city, banished to pure Whitesville, down on splash Jersey shores, then veer left to the Ohios, and that damn hammering of steel, of plate against plate, of meshes and mixes to make a toxic society filled with gewgaws, unrequited loves, and sweaty night miseries, and then move on like those intrepid pioneer wagon boy and girls did when the soil gave out, or the law came too close, or the neighbors too, juts pick up and run, run to cleaner soils, or new soils to damage anyway. West brother west to the Kansases and their wheat stacks and simply good manners. Don’t tarry long there though Aunt Betty has her eye on you, and on your wicked ways, and your obvious daughter lusts, but stop, stop please for homemade pie and beef stews that will put some old hobo olio to shame, Aunt Betty shame as she eyes you for herself out in the lonesome prairie wind night.

Westward to the Rockies and pure snow (no not that snow, heaven-sent snow or hell-bent blind snow) and craggy ridge fantasies in the snow-capped night. Westward more to dinosaur lament caverns and arroyos where the ghost, the no kidding ghost of ancient warrior princes cry out against the white bandito night, cry out vengeance for the stolen lands, the ranchero lands, spitting upon ancient ancestral right. West Winnemucca west better left unsaid standing almost sleep-walking in that downtown bus station at four in the morning trying to pick up some whore, or some dear miscreant Flossie to keep the night dry and a pillow under his head. Yah better left unsaid and in any case he was smelling, New York city boy smelling like some Far Rockaway dream, something that smelled of oceans, of seas, of blue-green flapping waves and be done with dry bone arroyos, rios, montes, and the whole Spanish land claim, Jesus. Then the heaven west, the span, the golden span, shimmering in the blue-grey pacific night (and that was how he was feeling too). Sweet Frisco town, a fresh beginning, fresh currents, fresh be-bop streets unexplored, virgin-like to his touch, Bay Street, Post, California , Geary, home from home as the fog drifted out into the bay. He could write one million gunsel sonnets, two million free verses about the place and still have room for more if he could avoid certain distractions, certain character defects some long ago mother, or mother superior had told him about and then…

… a man came running down the stairs of some sad sack, no elevator, long gone, adobe stone building ready for the wrecker’s’ ball, wild-haired, throwing off devil brown hair that wouldn’t stay down, devil brown-eyed, smirks, half-dressed, shirt open, pants fly open like maybe he had just finished up some hurried sex with his next best friend’s wife and that next best friend was now walking up Post Street in Frisco town ready to be greeted by that ever -loving wife once he walks up the four flights to their honeymoon-like cold water flat, cockroach friendly, the flat that is, not the friend. Or maybe, same wild-haired man, different take, maybe open pants fly open having just come from some boyfriend (hey, it’s Frisco town, okay, land’s end anything goes), or stray pick-up back alley after being drip-dried, he had that wild-eyed look for that hunger too, that boy hunger, hell for all human hungers if you looked closely, he frantic, muttering, yes, muttering a mile a minute words, machine gun gangster muttering those words, ashes in the mouth words like truth, beauty, age, wisdom, the veda, the Buddha truth, the karma sutra, the act of contrition, six hail marys and this, throw them all out and start fresh, start fresh with the new beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday, beatitude truth.

…and hence Gregory Corso.

Out In The Film Noir Night - The Stuff Of Dreams, Part Two-Down Los Gatos Way   

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

It didn’t start out that way, the stuff of dreams, the search for gold that is, but it sure finished up that way, finished up that way with guys lying face down in some broken unnamed desert arroyo, nobody to mourn them, or cover them over except those fierce desert winds that would make short work of the matter, if that counted. Yah, it didn’t start out that way with pipe dream guys just buying into another guy’s dreams, catching their own fire dreams to get out from under whatever it was they were trying to get out from under from. Trying to brush off the dust of their own small dreams, maybe just trying to get back to square one, gringo Norte Americano square one from whence they came, came south for some reason, or no reason, came south to sunny Mexico. Maybe took up the dream, another man’s dream to get back to some long lost Molly, all bright blue eyes and straw blonde, and a fresh start, and, damn, to get away from that stinking brown-eyed world, that brown dust from the brown roads, those brown-skinned, fierce- looking brown-eyed braceros, and those brown senoritas with their sparkling, dancing brown eyes and their karma sutra tricks (although none of them, the senoritas, would have known that term or the book they came from , just the arts from handed- down cantina mother to daughter practice ), whores, really, who spoiled a man, a gringo man, for blond-haired Mollies if you didn’t get away fast enough. Or maybe they came south for the senoritas , for the brown-eyed senoritas, for the cheap and easy brown-eyed senoritas with the sparking dancing eyes looking for sugar daddy gringos with fierce blues eyes and strange hungers, strange hung-up sex hungers, to get out from under the bracero life. So yah it didn’t start out that way, no way.          

Maybe I had better start at the beginning, or at the beginning where my just then road amigo Felipe, who saw the whole thing many years before and lived to tell about it, came into the story and told a bunch of us the story over a windy night camp fire in a jungle camp along the Southern Pacific Railroad just outside of Gallup, New Mexico one night, one 1973 night. Told us about how when he was young he had got caught up with a trio of guys, gringos of course, who were bitten by the stuff of dreams. 

It started down in Vera Cruz, like I said down in sunny Mexico, and it started with this gringo, Burl, bumming a cigarette off Felipe who was driving a cab at the time down at the docks where this Burl’s ship, some tramp freighter that had seen better days, the S.S. Corcoran, had just landed. This Burl, after Felipe gave him the cigarette (and a pack of matches to light it with too, damn Felipe should have cross the gee off right there), asked him about hotels, and, more importantly about cantinas and senoritas, stuff like that, just like a million guys have done who have been guy ship bound for too long months since they invented ships. It seemed, contrary to his appearance, four or five days growth on his face, in a time when clean-shaven was the rule, ruffed-up clothes, non-descript worn-out shoes, really sneakers, and smelling, well smelling like he could use a bath, or something, that this guy has some dough coming, coming as back pay off his tramp steamer journey as a ship’s mate. Felipe brightened to this news because now he turned on his tourista guide niceness full blast, offering the guy another cigarette (keep the matches, amigo) and his services as someone who could safely get Mister Burl through the maze of Vera Cruz night life in one piece. Burl agreed and the game was on.                     

Two weeks later after drinking up half the high-shelf scotch in town, keeping company with half the brown-eyed senoritas at the La Paz whorehouse (nicely named although more hell got raised there, more fortunes got lost, more teeth got knocked out that in the rather placid other precincts of the town) and setting his favorite from the La Paz , Maria (hell, they are all named Maria or Lupe something in cantina- ville), up in an adjoining hotel room for serious pleasure, and after smoking just one too many joints of that high-spirited marijuana grown in some wilds outside of town Burl, Burl Jackson, from Baltimore, U.S.A. was flat broke again, flat broke with no ship heading out since the Corcoran had left the week before without him (and good riddance he said of that old tub in an alcoholic haze one night when Felipe informed him of the ship’s departure), no prospects, no money for the room rent, and by now probably no Maria as well.

While Burl pondered his choices he asked Felipe for a cigarette, and a loan. No dice, Felipe wasn’t born yesterday and was keeping his easily earned dough and so he just pleaded that he had already spent his dough trying to feed his family, gracias though. So Burl  would have to bracero/gringo/downtrodden pan-handle the ricos Americanos for a while over at the Central Plaza where they hung out to get a stake up and find another ship if not in Vera Cruz then some other port.              

And that is where Burl Jackson met Tim Conway, Tim Conway of Laredo, Texas and also with no dough, no prospects and no place to stay just then but with big dreams, big dreams of  easy and cheap brown-eyed mex whorehouse girls, and plenty of them, who would take you around the world for a dollar and a little tip. Jesus, Burl said at this news. He wised the kid up about the cheap part, forget that once those laughing Spanish eyes got under your skin and you set up a one for your easy rider, easy rider woman like he had with Maria, although he left the easy part for the kid to figure for himself.  In fact Tim, after some conversation, had sized Burl up as a gringo rico and was ready to put the bite on him. Jesus, again. They talked for a while and kind of got along.

While they were standing on that good Mexican soil trying to figure out if two gringos were better than one this old geezer, this old ancient geezer with a beard like Jehovah, the stink of a guy who had been out in the desert or someplace without a bathtub, long straggly hair, and about six missing teeth drawing a couple of pack mules behind him came by and asked if they were American in some low-down English. “Of course they were Americans, jesus, what did he think they were some brown-eyed braceros,” Tim had wailed out. He then asked them if they were looking for work. “Of course they were looking for work, and what of it.” Burl had shouted out. The old geezer (real name Walter Simons but nobody ever called him anything but Old Geezer according to Felipe who had seen him off and on around town when he came in from the hills for the previous four or five years) had a proposition for the boys if they would trouble themselves to show their faces at the Imperial Hotel about six o’clock that evening after he had cleaned up and had supper. Burl looked at Tim and shrugged his shoulders in disbelieve at the Old Geezer’s address but were non-committal on the appointment.            

Needless to say they were, after a fruitless afternoon of not finding anything worthwhile, knocking on the door of Room 216 of the Imperial Hotel at six that evening. And here was the now regal Old Geezer’s proposition. He was an old time prospector (believable) and had hit some pay-dirt, some gold dust pay-dirt, out in the arroyos and foothills around Los Gatos about one hundred and fifty miles away from there toward the interior of sunny Mexico. He needed help to dig for and pan the stuff on an equal basis, each a third share. He didn’t trust the Mex, the dirty braceros that would cut his throat for a dollar and change if he turned his back on them but with gringos he could feel that at least they wouldn’t cut his throat and he had size dup Burl and Tim as okay, okay for what he was offering. No soap though, not that night and not for a few nights more until Burl and Tim were forced into some stinking bracero rooming house with about fifty stinking braceros in a space for twenty when a rain squall forced them indoors. Then they were back at Room 216, hats in hands.        

A couple of days later they took off, Tim, Burl, the Old Geezer, four pack mules loaded with supplies and tools for a couple of months work, and Felipe who Burl persuaded the Old Geezer to take along for wages to “keep house” for them. (They kept Felipe in the dark about what they were up to until they got close to Los Gatos but he had kind of figured it out when Tim and Burl kept talking about registering their claim in Tampico. He knew the area as well and the history of a million gringos going for the gold but he just let them play out their hand, like he always did with gringos, because they were kind of trigger-happy when it came right down to it.)  Needless to say a couple of gringos one more at home in the seas of the world, the seven seas, and whorehouses like Burl and a raw kid like Tim, who dreamed of whorehouses and keeping his hands lily-white in the bargain sweated, cursed, wanted to turn back about six times, got a little sunstroke, maybe a little desert- addled, maybe snake-bit and insect- bit and twelve other kind of bits for the seven days it took to get to Los Gatos after stumbling, tumbling, mumbling over some rocky arroyos, some saline desert and some  ragged foothills. But damn they made it, made camp and prepared for el dorado, yah, big time el dorado if the Old Geezer wasn’t cracked.               

Do you need to know the work, the twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day work these tres hombres went through for about a month before they even clawed, scratched, culled a small assay of gold for their troubles, work sleep, eat and not too much to preserve the supplies.  No, you can figure that part of the story out, and if you can’t Felipe said even he had helped out just to past the time. Finally that small assay traced down into a bigger lode, yah, they had hit pay dirt. Not big, according to the Old Geezer, who over midnight camp fires would tell them about how many times he had hit pay-dirt, jumped on easy street for a while, then busted out and hit the road again looking for that really big mother lode. This one, also according to his estimates, was not the mother lode but a month’s work would let them ride easy street for a while. Burl and Tim bought the ticket and took the ride, especially Tim, a smart young guy who figured that with his share he would just buy a whorehouse and then he would get his loving free. The Old Geezer laughed, hell, even Burl laughed at the kid’s moxie (and naiveté).        

So they worked, worked the lode, worked it good, and plied their takings together one for all, at least at the beginning. Burl, Felipe guessed was the first to get the fever, gold fever, checking each night for an hour, maybe more the weight, and calculating his share, and maybe more than his share after a while when Felipe noticed that fevered look he had seen before when a man had been out in the desert, had suffered privations, and ,hell,  hadn’t been around the gentle influence of a woman, even a brown-eyed Mex whore, for a while. The he started staying in his tent more, avoiding the nightly gabfest camp fire except to eat, eat quickly and return to his tent. Tim caught it too, caught it as bad, so most nights before they headed out back to Tampico and then Vera Cruz it was only the Old Geezer, sometimes muttering to himself like he had the fever too and Felipe although Felipe had caught a certain look from the geezer that made him realize the old man was playing with his younger companions. Not a good sign.      

After a couple of small incidents, nothing in the real world but magnified out in the  hills, the Old Geezer declared they had been out long enough and it would be best to go back to civilization, divvy up the profits and each head their separate ways. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, Burl and Tim bucked the idea at first but the geezer mentioned stray banditos out in the hills who if they found out some gringos were afoot might come and do them all in. That got the boys’ attention and so they broke camp, heading back. A couple of days out they ran into a couple of stray banditos, fought them off, and began to hunker down on security. Three or four days later coming out of a narrow canyon they were confronted  by a bandito force of about twenty desperados, some with they look of career bandits about them, others who looked like the remnants of Pancho Villa’s various armies now free-lancing with whoever paid and fed them.

The leader, a serious guy named El Lobo, told the trio that he knew, knew so don’t lie, that they had gold and that he wanted half of it to let them go. The three parlayed. Tim and Burl, strung out on gold like a man on some unattainable woman, were for fighting, the old man wiser and ready to take half of something, gold something, rather than lead was ready for compromise. He finally talked them into it. He called over to El Lobo, rendered the collective decision, went to the pack mule saddle bags, got the goods, passed El Lobo his share, and joined up with Tim and Burl. Just then a fusillade of gun fire rang out from the bandito side. Tim fell first, then Burl, and finally the Old Geezer cursing El Lobo’s name.  As they took everything away, gold, mules, supplies, El Lobo shouted to Felipe, su companero, and asked if he wanted to join the gang. Felipe said no. To that El Lobo said-“Tell everyone you see what happened here today, and what will happen to them if they come looking for the oro in El Lobo’s backyard.” And he did.                             

Beat Poet’s Corner- Out in the American Wilderness-With Allen Ginsberg’s America In Mind 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

…he awoke to the sound of far-off steel being hammered and to the sight of mad monk welder’s sparks melting bolts and sprockets into the skin of some wayward ship, a tanker probably, across the channel. A year or so before those sights and sounds would have been creating troop transports for icy Atlantic voyages, voyages that he would dream of years later, and then years after that take when he needed to make serious jail-breaks from nine to five, from parent beehive, from the world he had not created and had no say in creating. Those sights and sounds by the way had disturbed his sleep dream, his childish sleep of big pacific ocean shores, surfer boys waving to waiting shoreline surfer girls stretched, bikini clad -stretched across some woodie sunning themselves waiting for their man to return from the sea and then drink them in after having spent eons waiting for the perfect wave. Of some young good-looking hobo, or just a guy on the loose, unsettled from the war and in no nine to five hurry left off in the middle of nowhere by a friendly farmer while travelling some coast highway, west coast of course,  stopping at some sea-side diner for a cup of joe and to buy a fresh deck of smokes, winding up behind the eight ball, way behind, when she came through the café door, came through and made his knees buckle, him a guy who had hopped the Pacific islands with the best of them in the big one, and led him down the garden path, down east of  Eden, down that final smile path just before they turned on the juice. Yes, then smiling some quizzical smile like he just found out what the world was all about. And of another guy, another good-looking guy, a guy built to take it, all bumps and bruises from taking a fall, and taking the fall, knees buckling too, over some dame, some dame in a come hither form- fitting red dress.  He though he detected that same quizzical smile on that guy's face too.

Welcome to the American wilderness, the America of steel and steel-hammering, of gypsy freighters carrying materials and men to far-flung places, and thoughts of pacific atolls, south sea islands, exotic ports of call. And of puzzling, puzzling over the meaning of that childish sleep dream, puzzling over that "where was he heading," where he was heading in this Masonite world that he had not been asked about had, and, frankly, had no say in. The sounds of hammering, yes, the sounds of hammering diminished in the cold war red scare night as craggy-faced workmen, too afraid, too kiddish scared  to speak above a  whisper for fear, with hungry mouths to feed would line up passively for the dole, line up for some godforsaken food charity or shoe charity or pants charity courtesy of some generous Catholic patron working his way up to heaven on the installment plan, seeking plenary indulgences or whatever they called them, and other hard-bitten men further down the food chain line up for bedding, lining up for soup, lining up for everything waiting their coffee spoon lives away. Good men but not smart men, not smart in the go-go American consumer night of the tail-finned car and the breezeway ranch-style house, when god, god do you hear, ordained that one must have this and that, changeable at the merest whim.

And so he, a son of soiled moloch, some flash dance singer, came of age, came of rugged cross age in that blood red night, in the night of whispers, the slender reed whispers against the stacked decks and learned to hate the sound of whispers and of  generous Catholic patrons working their strident road to heaven and so instead of dreaming of  smart things, although he fancied himself smart, was told so as well, all he dreamed of  was those burning torches, that far-off campfire, that hobo jungle that his grandfather told him about, fast against the Denver &Rio Grande, the Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific railroad sidings, and about no more line-ups, no more hand-outs and no more looking at the ground when Mister, Mister Big, decided he needed those damn indulgences. (In the end, strangely, he would come to curse those jungles not because they were land’s end, man’s end, the end of the line but because, all he heard there was of stacked decks, of blood red nights, and campfire strewn  whispers when the times called for rages, loud, loud rages).                 

He thought too of not fitting in, of not having a niche, shoe-less or almost, in glamour craving times, of having no cache, no place, and being scorned in that upward spiraling night, the night of the golden dream just beyond his Robert Browning poem grasp. Turning inward, turning kind of twisted against some rock- filled shores, shells all this way and that, sand taking a lashing from storm cloud waves, all silvery green-blue flecked with white capped swells, and against some prairie-dreaded vengeance.  Making due, sneak-thief making due with mother pocketbook snatches, petty larceny “clips” of some woe begotten senorita dream factory like some trinket, some bauble, would do the trick, would take away the aloneness, and of outrageous expectations always just beyond that aloneness. So alone, alone like some school boy long distance runner mating with swerving cars and irate pedestrians trying to work his vengeance out, trying to keep his own ill-advised counsel , trying to keep private dreams, hurts and wistful vengeances and sweaty palms too don’t forget that crammed in his head he came of age.   

Came of ages, hunger ages, ages of learning, ages of “clip: memories, ages of “they got theirs and I want mine” mixed in with grandiose plans for that newer world a-borning that was just around the corner. They, he, had almost make it, except for some very consequential stray bullets and the hungry in the end getting tired, tired from the hunger and from having to concede the point in this wicked old world, and from not walking off with some beauty queen, some little rock and roller, some little short-skirted drive-in queen who had seen to it that his knees buckled, he who had mock island hopped with the best of them in the big one, and that white picket fence dream.

Not for him though, him of the next highest mountain, and after that higher still,   and of some himalayas of the mind mixed in with drunken sots (too many sots to identify, categorize, analyze,  metaphorize [sic]), and later opium dreams (in Saigon brothels and Hawaii way stations), no, better, peyote, message glances against stone-flickered Southwest canyon walls multi-colored and sandwiched in layers down in some high desert night retreat replicating earlier sojourns by forbear  mystic-misfits and knowing just then what those ancients on this continent dreamed of , warrior avenged dreamed of, dreamed of when the deal went down when the white blood was up, up like in that red scare night, the night of the sheltered whispers. But all of that was later, later dream-addled, dream crashed later. First he had to get through Jack fresh air dreams, and hubris, and night sweats about girls, about life, about death, and about the next dollar and the dollar after that. And that fit in thing, that thing that had to be gotten through.          

That fit in thing, tramping midnight streets, streets unnamed, named streets, Adams Street, Massachusetts Avenue, Tremont Street, Commonwealth Avenue, big streets, long streets with long thoughts, gathering up the energy to run across town to catch late night train rides, rides to hobo coffee shops, hobo shops filled with the night’s human refuse and human desire, hobo shops squeezed in by vagrant wandering poets, minstrels and wantons, in order to whistle in the dark against the moloch night, against the consumer this and consumer that cache, to howl perhaps, although that clarion call was used up, had been used up a few years before and so coffee cup and fugitive glances had to do, and that steamy bread, always steamy. Later, years later, those fugitive nights, those “be there when the tide turns,” turns to our time turns, he would dream walk into some misnamed coffeehouse and go mano y mano with some sweet senoritas too, then lassitude set in, laziness really when some greek goddess (of the mind, in reality just another waif child searching for the road out of perdition) flamed his wanton besotted heart.

Then an interlude, a forced retreat before going forward again, against the world he had not created, and had no say in creating. So he sought that higher mountain for a while, not pure, not pure white, not pure white like most mountains are not pure white upon closer inspection,  not pure white by any means since he had that childhood hunger that would not stop, that would not let him be. He did good though, did good in that solidarity night, and took his fifteen minutes of fame, and dwelled on that for some future time. And he survived the interlude, survived it just fine.

But the times too changed and those mystic canyon arroyo sweet dreams dissipated into the western night, and the search, the search, the clanging, hammering search,  had to begin again, damn, damn it, the new ocean search, those phantom echoes of those craggy-faced shipbuilders began to haunt his brain, began to impair his judgment about what was right and what was wrong and in the end he could not rise, rise, I say, I tell you even to the minimum human substrate, the minimum sense of human solidarity and so he had to roll the rock up the hill Prometheus- style, and keeping on rolling that rock. Ah.   

In Honor Of The 142^ndAnniversary Of The Paris Commune-From The American Left History Blog Archives(2007)- On American Political Discourse

Markin comment:

In the period 2006-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

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NO TO RELIGIOUS TESTS FOR OFFICE - FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Every once in a while left wing propagandists, like this writer, are forced to comment on odd ball political or social questions that are not directly related to the fight for socialism. Nevertheless such questions must be addressed to in the interest of preserving democratic rights, such as they are. I have often argued that socialists are, or should be, the best defenders of democratic rights, hanging in there long after many bourgeois democrats have thrown in the towel especially on constitutional questions like abortion and searches and seizures.

A good example from the not too distant past, which I am fond of citing because it seems so counter intuitive, was opposition to the impeachment of one William Jefferson Clinton, at one time President of the United States and now potentially the first First Ladies’ man. How, one might ask could professed socialists defend the rights of the Number One Imperialist –in-Chief. Simple, Clinton was not being tried for any real crimes against working people but found himself framed by the right wing cabal for his personal sexual preferences and habits. That he was not very artful in defense of himself is beside the point. We say government out off the bedrooms (or wherever) whether White House or hovel. We do no favor political witch hunts of the highborn or the low. Interestingly, no one at the time proposed that he be tried as a war criminal for his very real crimes in trying to bomb Serbia, under the guidance of one Wesley Clark, back to the Stone Age (and nearly succeeding). Enough said.

Now we are confronted with another strange situation in the case of one ex-Governor of Massachusetts and current Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney on the question of his Mormon religious affiliation and his capacity to be president of a secular state. Romney, on Thursday December 6, 2007 fled down to Houston, apparently forced by his vanishing prospects in Iowa, and made a speech about his Mormon faith, or at least his fitness for office. This speech evoked in some quarters, at least formally, Jack Kennedy’s use in the 1960 presidential campaign of the same tool concerning his Roman Catholicism as a way to cut across anti-Catholic bigotry in a mainly Protestant country and to affirm his commitment to a democratic secular state. I pulled up that speech off the Internet and although Kennedy clearly evoked his religious affiliation many times in that speech he left it at that, a personal choice. He did not go on and on about his friendship with Jesus or enumerate the virtues of an increased role for religion in political life.

From The American Left History Blog Archives(2007) - On American Political Discourse-  YOU DON’T NEED SEYMOUR HERSH TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS.

Markin comment:

In the period 2006-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

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YOU DON’T NEED SEYMOUR HERSH TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS.

In the wake of Seymour Hersh’s revelations in the New Yorker concerning the Bush administration’s potential military plans, including a possible nuclear option, toward Iran there has been a hue and cry in political circles against some of the rasher aspects of such action. From the traditional opponents of such an action plan -the Left? No! From liberal politicians? No! If anything those types have been more belligerent and to the right on the issue of Iran than the Bush administration. The cry has come from conservative think tank magazines and hawkish political commentators like New York Times writer Thomas Friedman. After the disastrous consequences of their support for the adventure in Iraq as least a few of the more rational conservatives have learned something. Whether they continue to hold out once the onslaught of patriotism and so-called national interest comes into play remains to be seen. However, their self-made dilemma is not what interests me.

As I write these lines the paint has not even dried on my poster in opposition to the continuing Iraq occupation for an anti-war rally. Now that the newest plans of the Wild Boys in the basements of the White House, Pentagon and State Department have been “leaked” I have to add another slogan to that banner- Hands Off Iran! Overreacting one might say. No!! If we have learned anything in the last few years from the Bush Administration it is that the distance from “war games” and “zero sum game theory” to front page newspaper and television screen casualty counts is a very, very short elevator ride away.

That, however, begs the question of whether the current Islamic leadership in Iran is a threat. Damn right it is a threat. This writer opposed the Shah of Iran when he was an agent of American imperialist interests in the Persian Gulf. This writer also opposed the rise and takeover by the Islamic fundamentalists in 1979 when many Western leftists were, overtly or covertly, supporting these elements as ‘anti-imperialist’ agents of change. Unfortunately, many Iranian militants also supported these same fundamentalists. That did not stop the mullahs from rounding up and executing or imprisoning every leftist or militant worker they could get their hands on. The fate of the Western leftist supporters of the ‘anti-imperialist’ mullahs was almost as tragic. They, at great personal sacrifice, mainly went on to careers in the academy, media or parliament.

So let us have no illusions about the women- hating, anti-Enlightenment, anti- post 8th century hating regime in Teheran  (Except apparently, nuclear technology. Did anyone else find it surreal when a recent photograph showed several thousand heavily- veiled Iranian women demonstrating in defense of a nuclear facility?). However, do we really want to outsource “regime change” there to the Bush Administration (or any administration in Washington)? No!!! Just as working people cannot outsource “regime change” in Washington to the liberals here this job of ousting the mullahs belongs to the Iranian workers, students, poor slum dwellers and peasants.

Let’s be clear here though. If the United States, or an agent of the United States, moves militarily against Iran all militants, here and worldwide, are duty bound to defend Iran against such imperialist aggression. Even with the current mullah leadership? Yes. We will hold our noses and do our duty. Their ouster is a separate political battle. We will settle accounts with them in due course.

The anarchists and others have it all wrong when they confine their slogan to Class Against Class in a conflict between capitalist states. Yes, in the final analysis it will come down to that. The problem is today we are dealing with the most powerful military power, relatively and absolutely, the world has ever known against a smaller, almost militarily defenseless country. A victory for American imperialism is not in the interest of the international working class and its allies. Thus, we have a side under those circumstances. And we certainly do not take some ‘third camp’ pacifist position of a plague on both your houses. IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ!  U.S.HANDS OFF IRAN!! BETTER YET- HANDS OFF THE WORLD!!!

From The American Left History Blog Archives(2007) - On American Political Discourse-On The Kurds 

Markin comment:

In the period 2006-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.

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Defend the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK)

Commentary

Defend the right to national self-determination for the Turkish Kurds.

The minute one enters into the murky waters of Middle East politics one is immediately confronted with words like, insolvable, daunting, and hopeless. If there is one area of the world that cries out for a multi-nationally derived socialist solution it is this benighted area of the world. Practically speaking, however, that prospect is music for the future. Nevertheless some programmatic points can be put forth today that will cut across the racial, ethnic and religious divides that lead one to use the above-mentioned words of despair. One such point is not even a socialist point per se- the question of a nation’s right to self determination. Yes, that question is off the table for those nations that have already established their right to it by force of arms, or otherwise. However, in the case of the interpenetrated peoples of the Middle East some real nations have been left on the sidelines. In no case is this clearer than with the Kurds, the largest coherent population without a state of their own.

Recent headlines have highlighted this question point blank as Turkey, one of the four nations along with Syria, Iraq and Iran in the region that has significant Kurdish populations, has attempted to solve its Kurdish ‘problem’, as in the past, by militarily annihilating various guerilla operations wherever they crop up- here across the border in neighboring Iraq. I make no pretense to solve all the questions of this area in regard to the Kurdish situation, for example, militants do not today raise the right of national self-determination for Iraqi Kurds who have consciously subordinated themselves to American imperialism but the beginning of wisdom to defend those guerilla forces, mainly the Kurdish Workers Party, in their fight against their national oppressor-Turkey. More, much more on this situation as it unfolds but for now the prospective slogan is –For the right to national self-determination for the Turkish Kurds. For the future- A United Kurdistan.