This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
From NPR-Chronicling
Ernest Hemingway’s Relationship With The Soviets-And Then Some
CIA archivist Nicholas Reynolds discusses his new book,Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest
Hemingway's Secret Adventures. It describes Hemingway's relationship with
Soviet intelligence.
Click on link for a
piece of Papa Hemingway’s link with the Soviets during World War II
As March 17th Approaches- The Children of Easter 1916- A Moment In History… For M.M, Class of 1964
Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:
“A Terrible Beauty Is Born”, a recurring line from the great Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Easter, 1916.
At the corner of Hancock Street and East Main Street, forming a wedge in front of our old beige-bricked high school, ancient North Adamsville High School now of blessed memory although that hard fact was not always the case after passing through its portals but that for another day, stands against all weathers a poled plaque, sometimes, perhaps, garlanded with a flower of flag. From that vantage point, upon a recent walk-by, I have noticed that it gives the old school building a majestic “mighty fortress is our home” look. The plaque atop the pole, as you have probably already figured since such plaques are not uncommon in our casualty-filled, war-weary world, commemorates a fallen soldier, here of World War I, and is officially known as the Frank O’Brien Square. The corners and squares of most cities and towns in most countries of the world have such memorials to their war dead, needless to say far too many.
That plaque furthermore now, as it did not have to back in the 1960s, competes, unsuccessfully, with a huge Raider red billboard telling one and all of the latest doings; a football game here, a soccer game there, or upcoming events; a Ms. Something pageant, a cheer-leading contest, a locally produced play; or honoring somebody who gathered some grand academic achievement, won some accolade for a well-performed act and so forth. In due course that billboard too will be relegated to the “vaults" of the history of our town as well. This comment , however, is not about that possible scenario or about the follies of war, or even about why it is that young men (and now women) wind up doing the dangerous work of war that is decided by old men (and now increasingly old women), although that would be a worthy subject. No, the focus here is the name of the soldier, or rather the last name, O’Brien, and the Irish-ness of it.
A quick run through of the names of the students listed in, our yearbook, the Magnet for the Class of 1964, will illustrate my point. If Irish surnames are not in the majority, then they are predominant, and that does not even take into consideration the half or quarter Irish heritage that is hidden behind other names. My own family history is representative of that social mixing with a set of Irish and English-derived grandparents. And that is exactly the point.
If North Adamsville in the old days was not exactly “Little Dublin”, the heritage of the Irish diaspora certainly was nevertheless apparent for all to see, and to hear. More than one brogue-dripped man or woman, reflecting newness to the country and to the town, could be heard by an attentive listener at Harry’s Variety Store on Sagamore Street seeking that vagrant bottle of milk (or making that bet with Harry’s book on the sure-fire winner in the sixth at Aqueduct but we will keep that hush since, who knows, the statute of limitations may still not have run out yet on that “crime,” although the horse certainly did, run out that is). Or at Doc Andrews’ Drugstore, yah, good old Doc over on the corner of Young Street and Newberry seeking, holy grail-seeking that vagrant bottle of whiskey, strictly for medicinal purposes of course.
And one did not have to be the slightest bit attentive but only within a couple of blocks of the locally famous, or infamous as the case may be, Dublin Grille to know through the mixes of brogue and rough-hewn strange language English that the newcomers had “assimilated.” To be fair, those same mixes could be heard coming piously out of Sunday morning Mass at Sacred Heart or at any hour on those gas-guzzling, smoked-fumed Eastern Mass buses that got one hither and fro in the old town. That North Adamsville was merely a way-station away from the self-contained Irish ghettos of Dorchester and South Boston to the Irish Rivieras, like Marshfield and heathen Cohasset and Duxbury, of the area was, or rather is, also apparent as anyone who has been in the old town of late will note.
And that too is the point. Today Asian-Americans, particularly the Chinese and Vietnamese, and other minorities have followed that well-trodden path to North Adamsville from way-station Boston. They have made, and will make, their mark on the ethos of this hard-working working-class part of town. So while the faint aroma of corn beef and cabbage (and colorful, red-drenched pasta dishes, from the other main ethnic group of old North Adamsville, the Italians) has been replaced by the pungent smells of moo shi and poi and the bucolic brogue by some sweet sing-song Mandarin dialect the life of the town moves on.
Yet, I can still feel, when I haphazardly walk certain streets, the Irish-ness of the diaspora “old sod” deep in my bones. To be sure, as a broken amber liquor bottle spotted on the ground reminded me, there were many, too many, father whiskey-sodden nights (complete with the obligatory beer chaser) that many a man spent his pay on to keep his “demons” from the door. And to be sure, as well, the grandmother passed-down ubiquitous, much dented, one-size-fits all pot on the old iron stove for the potato-laden boiled dinner (that’s the corn beef and cabbage mentioned above for the unknowing heathens) that stretched an already tight food budget just a little longer when the ever present hard times cast their shadow at that same door.
And, of course, there was the great secret cultural relic; the relentless, never-ending struggle to keep the family “dirty linen” from the public eye, from those “shawlie” eyes ready to pounce at the mere hint of some secret scandal. But also this: the passed down heroic tales of our forebears, the sons and daughters of Roisin, in their heart-rending eight hundred year struggle against the crushing of the “harp beneath the crown” (and even heathens know whose crown that was); of the whispered homages to the ghosts of our Fenian dead; of great General Post Office uprisings, large and small; and, of the continuing struggle in the North. Yes, as that soldier’s plaque symbolizes, an Irish presence will never completely leave the old town, nor will the willingness to sacrifice.
Oh, by the way, that Frank O'Brien for whom the square in front of the old school was named, would have been my grand uncle, the brother of my Grandmother Riley (nee O'Brien) from over on Young Street across from the Welcome Young Field.
On Saving The American
Presidency-Robert Downey, Jr.’s Iron Man 3 (2013)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sandy Salmon
Iron Man 3, starring
Robert Downey, Jr., Gweneth Paltrow, 2013
Yeah, Tony Stark is up
to his old tricks again in this Iron Man 3 production tinkering with the far
edges of technology-and off-handedly saving the world, well almost the world,
the generic American president (depending on your point of view a question of
some import these 21st century days). But our Tony, I don’t think I
have to mention that he is played by Robert Downey, Jr. not after two previous
efforts as Iron Man and others as one of the Marvel Comic action hero collective),
has been a little off his game since helping save the world from aliens along
with his Marvel buddies. In the old days that might not have mattered but now
that he living with his paramour, Pepper, who I also probably don’t have to
mention is played by fetching Gweneth Paltrow, his post-traumatic stress is
getting in the way of their wholesome relationship. Every guy knows how that
one feels, and will play out.
Of course with those
personal problems weighing down on him it is an open question whether Iron Man will
be able to save the world yet again. That is not a rhetorical question either
because another in the long line of villains, alien (meaning from off-planet
not some woe begotten refugees from the world’s incessant conflicts) or
earth-bound, is raising hell, creating firestorms and all creation falling
apart. A guy who looks very much like an
Osama bin Laden character who calls himself the Mandarin is talking big talk
about taking the known world, the known Western world, down in flames. Along
the way an old nemesis an off-beat edgy scientist named Killian is simultaneous
trying woo Tony to his side and to supplant him as the king hell king of the
Marvel universe.
You know the end of that
story, you know old Killian will have to take the fall, have to take the big
step-off on general principles that bad guys can’t make the pure as gold Marvin
heroes’ pantheon. That part is clear but kind of a side issue because this
dastardly Mandarin had taken the American President prisoner in order to
execute him on world-wide television (nice if evil touch). By the way the Prez
was not hijacked from the White House but from a flying in the air Air Force
One which should make one wonder about high level air security and what the
heck the Secret Service was up to but we will let that slide for another day.
What we won’t let slide for another day though is that Tony, okay, okay Iron
Man saves the President’s bacon from Mandarin who just so happened to been a
cover for Killian. So, yes, Killian took the big step-off from guess who, yes,
Pepper. Nice work. And to make it a great success Tony had an operation on that
silly pseudo-heart of his and so now he and Pepper can go under the silky
sheets without worrying about him going off on some crazy tangent. Good
action-packed fun-okay
Old Brecht may not have been from the be-bop generation but he, in his way, knew how to speak truth to power through his poetry and plays.
To Those Born After
I
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
II
You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:
Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.
Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.
And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
You Can’t Get There From Here- With The Appalachia Hills And Hollows In Mind
You
Can’t Get There From Here- With The Appalachia Hills And Hollows In Mind
By
Zack James
“Damn,
those shacks we just passed by looked like they could have come out of some
John Steinbeck or Erskine Caldwell novel from the dustbowl, tobacco road 1930s
or something, ” Bradley Fox, shaking his head, mentioned to his companion,
Sarah Simon, as they travelled down Highway 7 toward Prestonsburg, and “home.”
That “home” rightly in quotation marks since Bradley Fox for whom this journey
had been planned had never to his conscious knowledge been to that town in his
life. Had for many years never even though to go there until his brother,
Jamison, told him a story about how when he, Jamison, was young, about a year
old, back in 1946 or so, their parents, Bolton and Delores Fox, had taken a
trip from Riverdale in Massachusetts where Delores had grown up and which had
been their residence after they got married when Bolton was discharged from the
Marines, and gone down to Prestonsburg where Bolton had grown up to see if
prospects there for work and living were any better than in post-World War II
Riverdale. The textile mills which had sustained that town’s economy for most
of the previous century were heading out, were heading south and would
eventually leave for foreign shores as the century progressed and so staying
pat looked like a wasted option.
The
intriguing part was that Delores had been pregnant with Bradley when this
attempted move took place and so although he was only in the womb he had been
“home” to the Appalachian hills and hollows before he breathed his first air
breathe. What made the story all the more dramatic was that Yankee born and
bred Bradley, or he liked to present himself to the world that way, always was
ashamed, or if not ashamed then always hiding that element of his roots, from
where his father came from. Like his father had had any say where he had come
from. This distain would come out on anything from Bolton’s slightly southern
drawl which would made Bradley’s friend laugh whenever they heard that (calling
Bolton damn “reb” and other silly stuff until Bradley no longer brought friends
around until high school when Bolton’s accent was seen as “cool” if not by
Bradley then by his friends who thought-since Bolton was not their father-that
Bolton was cool in the language of the time.
His
feelings of shame came out as well when Bradley was old enough to recognize
that his father, when he was able to find work, got the short end of the stick,
got into that last hired, first fired (or rather laid-off, pink-slipped which
meant the same thing) syndrome which meant that there was never enough of
life’s goods around in good times or bad. Bradley resented that, resented that
because of those shortage his family abode looked like, especially in
over-grown summer, those Dorethea Lange photographs he had seen in a magazine
of some places down south, down in Appalachia, down not too far from where he
and Sarah were heading on State Highway 7.
Yeah
times had been tough for Bradley, when he got “caught,” got caught out when
Jack Kennedy whom he idolized for being everything his family was not decided
to do something not only about improving the lives of black people down south,
which he was okay with, but with the poor benighted “white trash” as well. The
whole thing from what he gathered later had been started when guy named Michael
Harrington wrote a book, The Other
America, about poverty in white bread Appalachia and mentioned
Prestonsburg, Christ, Prestonsburg of all places and him with a birth
certificate which showed his father’s place of birth that very same place. That
was not the worst of it though because nobody really needed to know, or
probably gave a “rat’s ass” an expression that he and his boys used excessively
then about where his father was born and raised and what his condition of life
had been if some damned school do-gooders didn’t decide that the citizens,
students anyway, should put together a clothing drive for the poor misbegotten
residents of Prestonsburg and have that campaign announced day after day for
several weeks over the P. A system at school making him feel like crawling
under the seat in homeroom when that announcement for goods came over the
loudspeaker.
So
Bradley Fox had a serious history of denial about one half of his roots (the
Delores half was pure Riverdale Irish and thus he could “pass” and
unfortunately his father Bolton P. Fox went to an early grave being reconciled
with his son over that silly stuff). It took a long time, too long, and too
much estrangement, too many missed chances to right wrongs before he realized
that simple truth that his father could not help where he had been born anymore
that Bradley could be. By the time he realized that, realized that his father
was good and honest man who never got break number one in his life it was too
late. But that sense that he had committed a grave injustice to the man never
stopped haunting him. And hence the trip south “home”
Maybe
it was that father guilt, maybe it was Sarah continuously telling him over the
previous decade that he needed to physically confront his fears and maybe it
was that mountain music that lately he had been drawn too. The music of the
Saturday night barn dance down in the hills and hollows with the mist coming
down over the mountains to blanket the night, music to take the sting out of
Willie’s White Thunder and to let those young lovers do their courting ritual
in peace. Whatever combination prevailed one day a few months after Bradley had
given up the day to day operation of his roofing company to his younger son he
cell-phoned Sarah and asked her if she would be willing to go south with him.
She made him laugh when she said that was her in the front of his house with
the car motor running so get moving. And so they did. That didn’t stop Bradley
as they headed south of the Mason-Dixon Line from feeling queasy, very queasy
as they approached the Ohio River and entered into coal country with its
beauty, starkness, and decay all mixed up. Then he saw those tar-paper shacks
with their open air window and old papas sitting on the bent porch, kids and
animals running every which way and he thought back to those photographs from
his youth and started to get those old-time feelings of disgust. No this would
not be an easy trip “home,” not easy at all.
In The Time Of The First Troubles-With David Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” In Mind –For Saint Pat’s Day
By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell
[Recently my old friend (and at various times competitor, usually friendly, when I was a film critic for now long defunct The Eye out in the Bay Area and he was doing the same for the American Film Gazette then out of a brick and mortar New York now on-line) mentioned that he was preparing a short review of the David Lean 1970 masterwork, Ryan’s Daughter to be published around Saint Patrick’s Day. Not that Sandy had any Irish blood in him, none mostly German and Jewish, but he thought that film’s subject appropriate for the publication date. He told me that he had been impressed by the film’s beautiful cinematography when he first watched the effort back in 1970 although in those days he was not a film critic but trying to scratch out a living as a newshound, a journalist.
I mentioned to him that I had missed the film entirely, had not come across many later references as against the big masterwork Doctor Zhivago either, because I was in Vietnam trying to keep my ass in one piece just then. When Sandy summarized the film’s plot for me though I knew I had to take a peek, had to see what Sandy could not see not having been brought up shanty Irish in this country. Knew too that I would have a vastly different perspective on the thing. Although I have given up most of the grind of film reviews I have reserved the right on occasion to comment on some films from let’s call it a “social” perspective. This one is for those Irish brethren who take national pleasure in Saint Patrick’s Day. For the boyos of Easter, 1916 too.]
Damn, the “shawlies” in my old Acre working-class neighborhood, my almost totally Irish working-class section of Riverdale out about forty miles west of Boston (where most of the Acre Irish had emigrated from Southie when the linen factories were still up and running in the town a couple or three generations back), would have had a field day with the plotline of the film I am thinking about just now David Lean’s 1970 vast epic Ryan’s Daughter. For those not in the know the “shawlies” in Dublin, the Irish countryside, in Boston, in the Acre where in her time my grandmother was a leading figure were those virtuous women, mostly older women like Grandma Riley, who controlled the day to day mores of the section (the priests, especially Reverend Doctor Lally, took care of the Sunday and holy day chores). They controlled the mores in the time-tested ways from the old country (where in my youth most of them had either immigrated from as children like Grandma or had come over as first generation adults complete with brogue and their funny ways) of shunning, shamming and cackling like geese, if that is what geese do over the word of mouth “grapevine.” That grapevine for its instant intelligence about matters neighborhood matters small and large would be the envy of any CIA or NSA operative (the only grapevine better was the teenage Monday morning before school boys’ or girls’ restroom [okay, oaky lavatory] who did what, meaning who did the do, or said they did, okay who had had that holy grail sex we were all preoccupied with. Nothing was faster than that not even close and those older women, including Grandma, would have been shocked out of their undies if they knew who, or who was not, “doing the do” among the younger set.)
The reason the Riverdale shawlies, and probably shawlies everywhere in Ireland or in the diaspora, would have had a field day is that the central story line of the film is the illicit love affair that young Rosy Ryan, played by Sarah Miles, had had with a British Army officer, played by Christopher Jones, during World War I, during the early part of World War I when not only were the British fighting in France and elsewhere on the continent against the Huns, against the Germans and their allies but were continuing their eight hundred year occupation of Ireland. Ireland then nothing but the number one colony across the Irish Sea. One of the village shawlies where almost all the action takes place out in the boondocks near that Irish Sea just mentioned gave the whole game away once they found out that Rosy was having that illicit affair when she uttered “there are loose women, whores and then there are a British officer’s whore” [lowest of the low] within earshot of the departing Rosy. That loose women category by the way included in the old neighborhood, divorced women, even divorced women with children, who seemed like some weird anomaly in the large family two parent main social situation.
Oh yeah, to add insult to injury Rosy was a married woman, married in the consecrated local Roman Catholic Church by the old worldly priest to the widowed middle-aged school teacher Charles Shaunessey, a “quiet man” as they used to say around the neighborhood, played by Robert Mitchum (an aging Robert Mitchum by then who back in the day, back in the 1940s would not have played it so rational when some frail like Jane Greer in Out of the Past twisted him every which way.)
This cuckolded husband business is nothing new in film, in Irish lore as well if you look at the lyrics to many Irish folk songs, especially those that deal with rural life out in the potato fields. What makes it note-worthy is that Rosy was having that affair in a very public manner at a time when Irish patriots were gearing up to show the British what for (this is the time around the unsuccessful if heroic Easter, 1916 uprising hailed by poets like William Butler Yeats). Needless to say the local villagers were eager to do harm to her-and they did.
Beside the shunning and shaming of a “collaborator” (they would before she left the village with Charles holding her up emotionally stripped her naked and cut of her hair reminiscent of what the Resistance fighters in France did when they rounded up female collaborators, whores, who went around with the Germans during the occupation of France in World War II) they tarred her with the label “informer.” Maybe a worse epithet than a whore, even a British Army officer’s whore. Like I said this time frame was deep in World War I where the Irish who sought independence from Mother England decided to use her preoccupation with the continental war to take a stab at liberty. This included, which has happened in liberation struggles before and since, grabbing whatever weapons, you know, guns, hand grenades, dynamite anything, from the “enemy,” enemy of England in this case the Germans. An Irish Republican Army unit was in the area to grab some of this weaponry which the Germans had delivered by ship along the rocky ocean-splashed coast near the village. The seas were up and the IRA unit decided to brave the storm to see what could be salvaged as it washed ashore. And they with the help of the suddenly aroused local people were able to retrieve a lot of the materials.
Problem was that the British garrison headed by Rosy’s soldier boy lover had been forewarned and were waiting to stop the transport of the weapons. Somebody must have “snitched,” a sin in my old Acre neighborhood worse than lots of things like some married woman going under the linen sheets with somebody not her husband, or not married, more so among us schoolboys who had larceny in our hearts and would rather face seven a rations of hell than get that reputation. So Rosy took the fall, took a beating, got stripped and clipped, even as her ever understanding husband Charles physically tried to defend her. She didn’t do it though, her old man, her father the bastard did the dastardly deed. Boy the shawlies of Riverdale would have sliced and diced that bastard, done it up good. So would we young boyos. Check this film out now that we are in a Saint Patrick’s Day mood.
When The Blues Was Dues- The Classic
Alligator Records Compilation
CD Review
By Zack James
Long before Seth Garth became back in
the day, the 1960s day, the music critic for the now long gone The Eye
published in those day out of Oakland California he had been bitten by the
blues bug. Of course in the 1960s one to be a successful and relevant music
critic one had to concentrate on the emerging and then fading folk music minute
(of which the blues was seen as a sub-set of the genre especially the country
blues wings) and then post-British invasion and the rise of the
counter-cultural movement what was called “acid” rock. So Seth’s blues bug,
except for an occasional sneak-in was cut short by the needs of his career.
Even then though Seth would keep up with the various trends coming out of
places like Chicago and Detroit and of the artists who had formed his first
interests.
Strangely Seth had come to his love of
the blues almost by accident. Back in the 1950s he had been like many teenagers
totally devoted to his transistor radio to shutout the distractions of parents
and siblings around the house. In those days though he was drawn to the fresh
air of rock and roll, guys like Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry. One
Sunday night though almost like a ghost message from the radio airwaves the
station he usually listened to WMEX was drowned by a more powerful station from
Chicago, WABC. The show Be-Bop Benny’s
Blues Hour (actually two hours but that was the title of the show). The
first song Hound Dog Taylor’s The Sky Is
Crying. He was hooked, hooked mainly because in those days the blues coming
out of Chicago sounded like a very primitive version of rock, like maybe it had
something to do with that beat in his head whenever a serious rock song came on
WMEX like Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock
and Roller. He couldn’t always get the station on Sunday night, something
to do with those wind patterns but he was smitten.
Like a lot of things including his
later interest in folk music and acid rock Seth always wanted to delve into the
roots of whatever trend he was writing about. That was how he found out that a
lot of the songs that he heard on the Be-Bop Benny show were the genesis of
rock. Also that rock had eclipsed the blues as the be-bop new thing leaving
many of the most popular blues artists, overwhelming black artists, behind to
pick up the scraps of the musical audience (only to be “discovered” later by
some of the more thoughtful rock stars like the Stones with Muddy Waters and
Howlin’ Wolf just as the old time country blues artists like Mississippi John
Hurt, Skip James, and Bukka White from the South were “discovered” by folk
aficionado in their turn).
Seth also dug into the technical
aspects of the industry, who was producing the music. Those where the days when
there were many small, small by today’s mega-standards, essentially mom and pop
record companies producing blues material. In Chicago, with the huge migration
of blacks from the South during the previous two generations there were a
myriad of labels. But two stuck out, two were the ones who grabs the very best
artists around Maxwell Street and made them stars, from the many one hit
wonders to classic stars like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and B.B. King. Of
course most people have heard of those artists who worked out of the Chess
Record label. But the other big label, the one under review, Alligator, also
produced a shew of stars. So that very first night Seth had heard the legendary
Hound Dog Taylor doing The Sky Is Crying
he was under contract with Alligator. For more artists check out this two CD
compilation of those others who also graced that label. Then you will be up to
date on the genesis of the Chicago blues explosion that changed blues from
acoustic to electric back in the day.
As March 17th Approaches-The Face Of Old Irish Working-Class North Adamsville- In Honor Of Kenny, Class Of 1958
From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin
Another Moment In History- A Guest Post, Of Sorts
Kenny Kelly, Class of 1958? comment:
A word. I, Kenneth Francis Xavier Kelly, at work they just call me Kenny, although my friends call me “FX”, am a map of Ireland, or at least I used to be when I was younger and had a full head of very wavy red hair, a mass of freckles instead of a whiskey and beer chaser-driven mass of very high-proof wrinkles, and my own, rather than store-bought, rattlers, teeth I mean. For work, yah, I’m still rolling the barrels uphill, I, well, let’s just say I do a little of this and a little of that for Jimmy the Mutt and leave it at that. I am also the map, the Irish map part anyway, of North Adamsville, from the Class of 1958 at the old high school, or at least I should have been, except for, well, let’s leave that as at a little of this and that, for now, as well. I’ll tell you that story another time, if you want to hear it. Or talk to that old bastard, Headmaster Kerrigan, Black-Jack Kerrigan, and he’ll give you his lying side of the story if he can still talk the bastard.
Let’s also put it that I grew up, rough and tumble, mostly rough, very rough, on the hard drinking-father-sometimes-working, and the plumbing-or-something-don’t-work- and-you-can’t- get- the-tight-fisted-landlord-to- fix-anything-for-love-nor- money walk up triple decker just barely working class, mean streets around Sagamore and Prospect Streets in one –horse Atlantic. At least my dear grandmother, and maybe yours too, called it that because there was nothing there, nothing you needed anyway. You know where I mean, those streets right over by the Welcome Young Field, by Harry the Bookie’s variety store (you knew Harry’s, with the always almost empty shelves except maybe a few dusty cans of soup, a couple of loaves of bread and a refrigerator empty except maybe a quart of milk or two, an also active pin-ball machine, and his “book” right on the counter for all the world, including his cop-customer world, to see), and the never empty, never empty as long as my father was alive, Red Feather (excuse me I forgot it changed names, Dublin Grille) bar room. Now I have your attention, right?
But first let me explain how I wound up as a “guest” here. Seems like Peter Paul Markin, that’s the half-assed, oops, half-baked,wrote up some story, some weepy cock and bull story, about the Irish-ness of the old town,A Moment In History… As March 17th Approaches to the North Adamsville Graduates Facebook page and my pride and joy daughter, Clara, North Adamsville Class of 1978 (and she actually graduated), saw it and recognized the names Riley, O’Brian and Welcome Young Field and asked me to read it. I did and sent Peter Paul an e-mail, christ, where does he get off using two names like he was a bloody heathen Boston Brahmin and him without a pot to piss in, as my dear grandmother used to say, growing up on streets on the wrong side of the tracks, over near the marshes for chrissakes, wronger even than the Sagamore streets. Or my baby Clara did, did sent the e-mail after I told her what to write. I’m not much of hand at writing or using this hi-tech stuff, if you want to know the truth.
I don’t know what he did with that e-mail, and to be truthful again, I don’t really care, but in that e-mail I told him something that he didn’t know, or rather two things. The first was that I “knew” him, or rather knew his grandmother (on his mother’s side) Anna Riley because her sister, Bernice, and my dear grandmother, Mary, also an O’Brien but with an “e”, who both lived in Southie (South Boston, in those days the Irish Mecca, for the heathens or Protestants, or both, both heathen and Protestant, that might read this) were as thick as thieves. When I was just a teenager myself I used to drive his grandmother over to her sister’s in Southie so that the three of them, and maybe some other ladies joined them for all I know, could go to one of the Broadway bars (don’t ask me to name which one, I don’t remember) that admitted unescorted ladies in those days and have themselves a drunk. And smoke cigarettes, unfiltered ones no less, Camels I think when I used cadge a few, which his stern grandfather, Dan Riley, refused to allow in the house over on Young Street.
I know, I know this is not the way that blue-grey haired Irish grandmothers are supposed to act, in public or private. And somebody, if I know my old North Adamsville gossips, wags and nose-butters, and my North Adamsville Irish branch of that same clan especially, is going say why am I airing that “dirty linen” in public. That’s a good point that Peter Paul talked in his story about Frank O’Brian and not airing the family business in public in that foolish essay, or whatever he wrote. So what am I doing taking potshots as the blessed memories of those sainted ladies? That is where my second thing comes in to set the record straight – Peter Paul, and I told him so in that e-mail (or Clara did) with no beating around the bush, is to me just another one of those misty-eyed, half-breed March 17th Irish that are our curse and who go on and on about the eight hundred years of English tyranny like they lived it, actually lived each day of it. (Yes half-breed, his father, a good guy from what my father told me when they used to drink together, so he must have had something going for him, was nothing but a Protestant hillbilly from down in the mountain mists hills and hollows Kentucky)
Now don’t get me wrong. I am as patriotic as the next Irishman in tipping my hat to our Fenian dead like old Pearse did back in 1913 or so, and the boys of ’16, and the lads on the right side in 1922, and the lads fighting in the North now but Peter Paul has got the North Adamsville Irish weepy, blessed “old sod” thing all wrong. No doubt about it. So, if you can believe this, he challenged me, to tell the real story. And I am here as his “guest” to straighten him out, and maybe you too. Sure, he is helping me write this thing. I already told you I’m a low-tech guy. Jesus, do you think I could write stuff like that half-assed, oops, half- baked son of an expletive with his silly, weepy half-Irish arse goings on? I will tell you this though right now if I read this thing and it doesn’t sound right fists are gonna be swinging, old as I am. But let’s get this thing moving for God’s sake.
Let me tell you about the shabeen, I mean, The Red Feather, I mean the Dublin Grille, bar room on Sagamore Street. That’s the one I know, and I am just using that as an example. There were plenty of others in old North Adamsville, maybe not as many as in Southie, but plenty. If you seriously wanted to talk about the “Irish-ness” of North Adamsville that was the place, the community cultural institution if you will, to start your journey. Many a boy, including this boy, got his first drink, legal or illegal, at that, or another like it, watering hole. Hell, the “real” reason they built that softball field at Welcome Young was so the guys, players and spectators alike, had an excuse to stop in for a few (well, maybe more than a few) after a tough battle on base paths. That’s the light-hearted part of the story, in a way. What went on when the “old man”, anybody’s “old man”, got home at the, sometimes, wee hours is not so light-hearted.
See, that is really where the straightening out job on our boy Peter Paul needs to be done. Sure, a lot of Irish fathers didn’t get drunk all the time. Although the deep dark secret was that in almost every family, every shanty family for certain and I know, and many “lace curtain” families they was at least one reprobate drunk. Hell, the local city councilor’s brother, Healy I think it was, was thrown in the drunk tank by the coppers more times than he was out. They could have given him a pass-key and saved time and money on dragging him to the caboose. But the king hell takes-the-cake was old Black-Jack’s Kerrigan’s brother, Boyo (sorry, I forget his real name). Yah, the North Adamsville High headmaster’s brother, the bastard that I had a run-in with and had to hightail it out of school, although it was not over his brother.
See Black-Jack’s family though they were the Mayfair swells since Black-Jack had gone to college, one of the first in the old neighborhood, and they had that big single-family house over on Beach Street. But more than one night I found Boyo lying face-down on Billings Road drunk as a skunk and had to carry him home to his wife and family. And then head back to the other side of the tracks, that wrong side I already told you about. Next day, or sometime later, Boyo would give me a dollar. Naturally when I went to school after that I went out of my way to flash the dollar bill at Black-Jack, saying “Look what Boyo gave me for helping him out.”
That’s all I had to say. Black-Jack always turned fuming red, maybe flaming red.
A lot of Irish fathers didn’t beat on their wives all the time either. And a lot of Irish fathers didn’t physically beat their kids for no reason. Plenty of kids go the “strap” though when the old man was “feeling his oats.” (I never heard of any sexual abuse, but that was a book sealed with seven seals then.) And more than one wife, more than one son’s mother didn’t show her face to the “shawlie” world due to the simple fact that a black eye, a swollen face, or some other wound disfigured her enough to lay low for a while. I had to stop, or try to stop, my own father one time when I was about twelve and he was on one of his three day Dublin Grille whiskey straight-up, no chaser toots and Ma just got in his way. He swatted me down like a fly and I never tried to go that route again. But he didn’t try to beat my mother again either, at least not when I was a around or I would have heard about it on the shawlie wire.
And a lot of Irish wives didn’t just let their husbands beat on them just because they were the meal ticket, the precious difference between a home and the county farm or, worse, the streets. And a lot of Irish wives didn’t make excuses (or pray) for dear old dad when the paycheck didn’t show up and the creditors were beating down the door. And a lot of Irish wives didn’t let those Irish fathers beat on their kids. And a lot of Irish mothers didn’t tell their kids not to “air the dirty linen in public.” But, don’t let anyone fool you, and maybe I am touching on things too close to home, my home or yours, but that formed part of the scene, the Irish scene.
Maybe, because down at the Atlantic dregs end of North Adamsville the whole place was so desperately lower working-class other ethnic groups, like the Italians, also had those same pathologies. (I am letting Peter Paul use that last word, although I still don’t really know what it means, but it seemed right when he told me what it meant). I don’t know. Figure it out though, plenty of fathers (and it was mainly fathers only in those days who worked, when they could) with not much education and dead-end jobs, plenty of triple deckers, no space, no air, no privacy rented housing and plenty of dead time. Yah, sure, I felt the “Irish-ness” of the place sometimes (mainly with the back of the hand), I won’t say I didn’t but when Peter Paul starts running on and on about the “old sod” just remember what I told you. I’ll tell you all the truth, won’t you take a word from me.
An Irish Love Story
During Troubled Times-David Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” (1970)-A Film Review-For Saint Patrick's Day
DVD Review
By Sandy Salmon
Ryan’s Daughter,
starring Robert Mitchum, Christopher Jones, Sarah Miles, John Miles, Trevor
Howard, directed by David Lean, 1970
As those of us who were
around during the 1960s and paid attention to the movies if, like myself, for
no other reason than cheap dates and darkness, might have expected if they
heard the name David Lean they would fully expect to have big lush vistas and
cinematic epics, long cinematic epics. He had an already established pedigree
with Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. And Lean does not fail
us with this 1970 effort, Ryan’s Daughter,
about the troubled love affair between a wistful Rosy Ryan, played by Sarah
Miles, and an invalided British Army Officer, played by Christopher Jones,
during the heart of World War I and the brewing troubles in the fight for Irish
independence.
In a later time the
wistful, restless, searching, reaching for rainbows Rosy might have been a
classic “flower child”. I know I had dates with just such wistful women back in
the 1960s and delighted in their company, as long as I could hold their
attention. But our Rosy had two very big problems, maybe three, back then and
it is not quite clear to me even after watching the three and one half hour
masterwork (I won’t include extra time spent on the Special Features which were
well worth checking out to get a feel for how an epic gathers itself together).
First and foremost she
was a “flower child,” a free spirit in a rural Irish village isolated by the foaming
sea and by its own staid traditions driven by the Roman church and an oppressed
nation culture and while today a woman having an “illicit” affair would draw at
most a few well-placed snickers back then the future held nothing but shaming,
shunning and maybe worse. So her desire to “seek a newer world” as my old
friend Sam Lowell would call what she was after was checked from minute one.
Secondly, Rosy when she had that illicit affair was a very married women,
married to a “quiet man,” a village intellectual, the widowed middle-aged
village school teacher, Charles, played by Robert Mitchum. No man likes to be,
or should like, to be cuckolded but Charles was the soul of rationality
whatever emotional trauma was churning inside. A young lass and an older man
set in his ways would seem to have been doomed from the start as both
recognized in the end after the heat of her affair was terminated by the
suicide of that troubled invalided army officer. Lastly Rosy was caught in the
throes of the modern Irish struggle for national liberation where the
nationalists were using Mother England’s troubles on the continent to spring
for freedom. That made the British Army of Occupation all the more onerous.
Made her “their” whore in the eyes of the locals. Worse made her subject to
accusations, falsely as it turned out, of informing when the boyos from the IRA
were trying to rescue weapons sent by the Germans which had been battered by
the terrible wrath of Irish Sea and the British garrison was waiting in ambush for
them up the road.
Name your chose of what
would do Rosy in at the end (aided by a treacherous father who actually was a
snitch) as she and Charles walked out of the village where they had stayed
maybe too long but she paid dearly for that love-I hope she thought it was
worth it. What, no question, is worth it is to watch this film unfold against
the grandeur of the Irish countryside and those terrible seas.
SOUTH BOSTON— There are two veterans organizations prohibited from marching in the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade this year. One group because they dare to exhibit a tiny rainbow flag to identify who they are as individuals. The second group is being denied because they work for Peace and Peaceful resolution of conflict. Veterans For Peace have also been denied to walk in the parade on March 19.
Both Governor Baker and Mayor Walsh had wonderful things to say about veterans in yesterday’s news”, stated Pat Scanlon, Special Event Coordinator for the local chapter of Veterans For Peace. “Mayor Walsh stated, “I will not tolerate discrimination in our city” and the Governor had moving words to say about our veterans. To quote the governor as reported; "That word veteran, to me it approaches holy," Baker said. "And the idea that we would restrict the opportunity for men and women who put on that uniform knowing full well they could put themselves in harm's way, and deny them an opportunity to march in a parade that's about celebrating veterans, doesn't make any sense to me."
“What are we, chopped liver”, continued Scanlon. Veterans For Peace is a national veterans organization with over two hundred veterans in their local chapter for the Boston area. These are Veterans have fought in every war since WWII. Many of these Veterans have been in harms way defending this country, have seen the horrors of war first hand, are highly decorated and now work for peace. Yet, once again not allowed to march in this historical parade. Where is the outcry from our leaders about these veterans not being able to walk in this parade? It is as if Peace is a Dirty Word.
The application that was sent to the AWVC is attached – please read it and try to figure out why the members of the AWVC denied Veterans For Peace to participate.
“It is shameful”, stated Scanlon. “The City of Boston should take back this parade and truly make it inclusive for all, regardless if you are gay or work for peace”.
Attachments include:
Application for participation in Saint Patrick's Day Parade
Press Release
Picture of Veterans For Peace on West Broadway in 2016
