Drums of More War

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Drums of More War

Drums of More War

by Stephen Lendman

Cast Lead and Pillar of Cloud represent skirmishes. Syria's one on a higher boil. Expect full-scale war ahead. It could happen any time or perhaps next year.

These conflicts portend more to come. Washington, Israel, and NATO plan them. Regional collaborators go along. One or more of them ahead may become targets.

They'll know, or should, when they're excluded from future plans. As a well-known poker saying goes: If you've been in the game a while and don't know who the sucker is, it's you.

Israel wants to be a regional hegemon. Washington seeks global dominance. Achieving imperial aims requires eliminating rivals and potential ones.

Syria tops America's target list. Hezbollah's on it as well. At issue is isolating Iran, then replacing its government with a pro-Western puppet one.

Next year could be more violent than recent previous ones. Obama's a lame duck. He's got nothing to lose. After all the harm he caused, half the country still supports him.

He conned them into thinking he's doing the right thing. He was picked to stay in office for that reason. Expect four more violent years at home and abroad. The last four were grim. What's ahead looks worse.

Henry Kissinger will be 90 years old next May. Last November, he said:

"If you can't hear the drums of war you must be deaf." He explained further. More on that below.

On November 23, Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) said Obama's pledge to deploy US troops to Sinai convinced Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal.

Doing so sounds more like preventing peace than assuring it. Memorandum of understanding terms included:

"Opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods and refraining from restricting residents' free movements and targeting residents in border areas and procedures of implementation shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the ceasefire."

"Procedures of implementation," of course, lets Israel manipulate them any way it wishes. Nonetheless, Hamas and 1.7 million Gazans think border and movement restrictions will be eased.

Don't bet on it. Israeli pledges aren't worth the paper they're written on. Neither are America's. Together they assure Palestinian betrayal.

US troops on Gaza's border adds an exclamation point. They're expected to start arriving next week. Siege will continue. Borders will stay closed.

Preventing Hamas from rearming is planned. Also maintaining isolated suffocating conditions. Netanyahu wants maximum pain inflicted.

Despite one-sided scoundrel media support and Israel's military might, he lost the battle of public opinion. David Hamas withstood Goliath Israel.

Fatah looked pathetic. Abbas is a spent force. Hamas leaders Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh look heroic. Palestinians may have more support now than ever.

Terror bombing innocent civilians aroused enormous worldwide anti-Israeli sentiment. Netanyahu wants revenge.

If bombing and shelling can't defeat Hamas, perhaps he'll enforce harsher than ever conditions by keeping borders closed and destroying Gaza's tunnel economy entirely.

DF said Obama plans "to accelerate the construction of an elaborate US system of electronic security fences along the Suez Canal and northern Sinai." At issue is preventing Hamas from rearming.

If Gaza's tunnel economy is destroyed, vital essentials won't get in. They include Israeli-prohibited construction materials for rebuilding.

Egypt's Morsi apparently agreed to US and Israeli demands. Clearly it shows what side he's on. Permitting Gaza's siege to continue and preventing effective Hamas deterrence strength portends ill for isolated Gazans.

Expect Netanyahu to take full advantage. Expect Washington to partner in his crimes. Expect continued suffering for 1.7 million trapped Gazans.

US/NATO/Israeli planned wars inflict enormous harm on others in the region. Kissinger weighed in on what he sees coming. The fullness of time will tell if he's right or wrong. His comments in part said:

"The United States is baiting China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel."

"We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them."

"The coming war will will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that's us folks."

"This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state."

"Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment."

Kissinger repeated what he said before about "control(ling) oil and you control nations. Control food and you control the people."

He omitted controlling money that controls everything. Perhaps he knows but didn't say.

"We told the military that we would have to take over seven Middle Eastern countries for their resources, and they have nearly completed their job."

The "last stepping stone (is) Iran which will really tip the balance. How long can China and Russia stand by and watch America clean up?"

"The great Russian bear and Chinese sickle will be roused from their slumber and this is when Israel will have to fight with all its might and weapons to kill as many Arabs as it can."

"Hopefully if all goes well, half the Middle East will be Israeli."

"Out of the ashes we shall build a new society, a new world order; there will only be one superpower left, and that one will be the global government that wins."

"Don't forget, the United States, has the best weapons, we have stuff that no other nation has, and we will introduce those weapons to the world when the time is right."

Kissinger's worldview was always Dr. Strangelovian. His resume includes global wars, genocidal slaughter, mass destruction, replacing democrats with despots, and advocating involuntary eugenics as well as other ways of eliminating useless eaters.

How he's "dreamed" of a final solution "showdown." What he has in mind almost makes Hitler look saintly.

He was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Bavaria in 1923.

It was months before Hitler's failed Munich beer hall putch. Weimer Germany then existed. Hitler's January 1933 rise to power ended it.

Kissinger's family was Jewish. In 1938, they fled Nazi persecution. They got out just in time. They lived briefly in London before arriving in New York. As they say, the rest is history.

Hopefully Kissinger's vision proves false. His world isn't fit to live in. If conflict plays out as he believes, it may be destroyed in the process.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled "How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War"

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

BOOKS / Jonah Raskin : Daniel Coshnear's 'Occupy' Stories Are as Contemporary as the Latest Tweet

Daniel Coshnear's
'Occupy and Other Love Stories'

As contemporary as the latest tweet, Coshnear’s men, women, and children cry out for the lost soul of America itself.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / November 23, 2012

[Occupy and Other Love Stories by Daniel Coshnear; art by Squeak Carnwath (October 2012: Kelly’s Cove Press); Paperback; 135 pp; $20.]

The characters in Daniel Coshnear’s political short stories read Stephen King and Raymond Carver. They smoke Camels and marijuana, drive Sentras, work at Safeways, and as school janitors. Preoccupied and in denial, they’ve survived trauma and now they’re suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and a host of social and psychological ills.

As contemporary as the latest tweet, Coshnear’s men, women, and children cry out for the lost soul of America itself.

The 12 stories in Occupy and Other Love Stories take place in Santa Rosa, California, and along the Russian River in Sonoma County, though one is set in New York, and the very last conjures up Berkeley during the Occupy Wall Street Movement last spring. It’s an overtly polemical tale and might well be called revolutionary romanticism.

Coshnear’s heart is with the rebels and the in-your-face citizens who refuse to be silenced or sit still. For the most part, however, his characters don’t give speeches or march in the streets. They’re part of the 99% and too busy dealing with death, divorce, depression, and suicide to be distracted by leaflets, posters, and slogans.

Years from now a Ph.D. student writing about the culture of the Occupy Movement will surely point to Occupy and Other Love Stories as an example of the fiction that emerged from the protests against Wall Street immorality and criminality. It’s also fiction that stands on its own merits without ties to Occupy or any social movement.

Coshnear’s stories are compact with vivid descriptions of people and places and crisp dialogue that’s practically audible. Reading them is like watching a series of video clips that depict domestic life with images of Iraq on TV, and real cops lurking on the sidewalk outside the front door.

Parents and children inhabit “Early Onset” and “Custodian” in which a father and his son disconnect and then reconnect. Love, sex, and relationships animate “Avulsion,” “Borscht on the Ceiling,” which takes place in New York, and “Occupy” -- the title story -- in which a professor finds romance with a student.

The characters play their own roles, and speak their minds independently of the author, though sometimes he analyzes them and even describes the medications they take, as in “You Can Put Your Name on It, If You Want to.”

Pills help the characters, though they long for more than legal and illegal drugs. They want to know the answers to all the big questions, such as “if bad things happen to bad people,” and if their own children might one day inhabit “a better world.”

[Jonah Raskin, professor emeritus at Sonoma State University, is an author and a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

In The Time Of The 1950s Be-Bop Baby Boom Jail Break-Out- On The Beach

A while back I was on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in an extensive 1950s Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll retrospective series. A lot of those reviews had been driven by the artwork which graced the covers of each CD, both as catalyst to stir ancient memories and as a reflection on that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may have been, to the themes of those artwork scenes. One such 1959 cover showed a case of the latter, not fitting into such a scene by me. On this particular cover, a summer scene (always a nice touch since that was the time, school’s out for the summer, when we had at least the feel of our generational jail breakout before autumn prisons), two sun-bleached, muscular, blondish perfect wave surfer guys, brightly colored surf boards in tow, perfect wave-waiting checking out the scene. The scene, the checking out part, at the beach naturally, and the only scene that mattered whether like them you fit in, or like me, not, involved seeing who was who among the hot bikini-clad girls (also on jail-break time) who to name my beach scene, eternally, sat on their collective blankets between the Olde Saco Yacht Club and the Seal Rock Boat Club waiting, well, waiting to be checked out by those guys, ah, those guy who fit in (all others, all beatniks, nerds, geeks, dweebs, shys, acne-encrusted, call your not fit in shot name, go up to lame Olde Saco Pier or over to Perkins Cove and fish, play skee ball at the amusement park, watch the waves go in and out, or, hey, just disappear).

That scene, that hot bikini-clad girls scene collectively blanketed, although not pictured (except a little background fluff to inform you that you are at the beach, the summer youth beach and no other, certainly not the tortuous family beach scene with its lotions, luggage, lawn chairs, lunches, and longings, longings to be elsewhere in early teen brains at those Olde Saco Pier and Perkins Cove locales of my youth), could, frankly, only mean checking out the babes, girls, chicks, or whatever you called them in that primitive time before we called them sister, and woman. No question too that this whole scene was nothing but a California come hinter scene, as against my hardened eastern seaboard hale winds and hearty fellows scene except about six week in July-August . No way that it had the look of Eastern pale-face beaches, family or youth-driven. This scene was nothing but early days California dreamin’ cool hot days and cooler hot nights with those dreamed bikini girls.

Wait up. These perfect wave –waiting guys, all cool and collected, and maybe already dated up for the next week and just, well, just being perfect-wave-waiting guys staying in practice ,were, however, no question just flat-out “beach bums.” No way that they were serious surfer guys, certainly not Tom Wolfe’s LaJolla Pump House gang where those corn-fed sons and grandsons of Okie/Arkie migrations then with disposable teen incomes and time on their hands surfers lived for the perfect wave, and nothing else better get in the way. For such all day (and all night too if the tides flows dictated) activity one needed rubberized surf suits complete with all necessary gear. And the girls? Well, yah, girls fit in, sitting on that same beach waiting for their surfer guys to find that perfect wave and scream out all oohs, and ahhhs. But also “civilians” don’t even think off talking (although looking was okay, even surfer-sworn girls needed to practice their teaser arts) down at Lookout Point section reserved, strictly reserved, So, in short, these cover guys are “faux” surfers. Whether that was enough, whether the times were desperate enough for the “faux” to have their day, to draw the attention of those bikini-shes not pictured that they are unquestionable checking out I will leave to the reader’s imagination.

As for the music, the 1959 music, that backed up this summer scene we were clearly in a trough, the golden age of rock, with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis kissing his cousin, with Elvis in the tank, and with Chuck Berry messing with the Mister’s women too much was fading, fading fast into what I can only describe as the age of “bubble gum” music (and the age of “faux” surfers as well, so maybe those guys were onto something). Sure I listened to it, listened to it hard against my ear on my old transistor radio, mainly because that was all that was presented to us. It was to be a while until the folk (folk minute, anyway), folk rock (later and longer), British invasion (read: Beatles and Stones as leaders), and free expression rock (read: drug-induced acid rock, flaming night strobe beam dreams and crashes too) engulfed us. This was the time of our marking time , as the music attested to (and those golden boys made their mickey mouse moves while beautiful black chino pant-flannel shirt-work boot-beret 24/7/365 midnight sunglass clad “beats” were shunted off to not fit in Olde Saco Pier skee ball shoot-out hells).

There were, however, some stick-outs that have withstood the test of time. They included: La Bamba, Ritchie Valens; Dance With Me, The Drifters; You’re So Fine (great harmony),The Falcons; Tallahassee Lassie (a favorite then at the local school dances by an eastern seaboard beach boy who made good), Freddy Cannon; Mr. Blue (another great harmony song and the one, or one of the ones, anyway that you hoped, hoped to distraction, that they would play for the school dance last dance), The Fleetwoods; and, Lonely Teardrops, Jackie Wilson (a much underrated singer, then and now, including by this writer after not hearing that voice for a while).

Note: After a recent trip to the Southern California coast I can inform you that those two cover boy surfer guys are still out there and are still checking out the scene, or the ghost of that scene with those same bikini blankets. Although, reality check, that scene for them now is solely the eternal search for the perfect wave complete with full rubberized suit and gear. No artist would now, or at least I hope no artist would, care to rush up and draw them. For now these brothers have lost a step, or seven, lost a fair amount of that beautiful bongo hair, and have added, added believe me, very definite paunches to bulge those rubberized surfer suits all out of shape. Ah, such are the travails of the baby-boomer generation. Good luck though, brothers.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay,Circa 1958

CD Review

The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Follow-Up Hits, Ace Records, 2008

Peter Paul Markin and Frankie Riley had known each other from the days in the old North Adamsville neighborhood where they had met while hugging the walls at the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent of course) “sock hop” held by the parish priest, Monsignor Lally to, well, “keep an eye on the younger portion of his flock,” as he expressed it each Sunday when making the announcement. The real reason, of course, was to keep said young sheep, away from too much heathen (read: Protestant) devils’ music; that rock and roll music that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying Elvis Presley. And by all means to keep them, those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Adamsville Beach listening to fogged-up car radios and digging the beat while, well, just while or at the Strand Theater, the exclusive upstairs balcony section for the really young, the car-less young interested in s-x just in case the old bastard is still around.

Although they had known each other for some fifty years now, and were duly standing against the wall at Lucy’s at their fiftieth anniversary high school class reunion not far from the old high school they still remembered the first song that had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop. And the reason they remembered that song so vividly was one Clara Murphy. See they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down. Or maybe not so solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment decide whether she liked Peter Paul or Frankie better and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles and turned them both down.

Naturally that denial enflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks they
made every mad attempt attempt to win her favors. To no avail because, also exhibiting another aspect of her wiles, she took up with Bill Larkin, their friend and fellow classmate Kenny’s older brother (one year older). Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and, quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing, unquote. Both men laughed at the recollection, the bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill, they had drifted west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the strobe light dreams 1960s, and a few years after that Bill had been killed, face-down killed, down in some dusty town in Mexico, Sonora, they thought, when a major drug deal went south on him. Clara was never heard from again.

Just then some oldies but goodies aficionado, or someone who had seriously misspent his or her youth, putRoll and Rock Is Here To Stay on, and for the life of the two boyos they couldn’t remember until later that Danny and the Juniors had recorded that song as well. They then raised a drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of their youth.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Watching The Submarine Races, Circa 1960

Chains-Carol King

Chains, my baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah

Chains, well I can't break away from these chains
Can't run around 'cause I'm not free
Woh these chains of love won't let me be

Now believe me when I tell you
I think you're fine, I'd like to hold you
But I can't break away from all of these chains

My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah

I wanna tell you pretty baby
Your lips look sweet, I'd like to kiss them
But I can't break away from all these chains

My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah

My baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah

Chains
Chains of love
Chains of love
Oh these chains of love gotta hold on me

“No Jimmy, no I can’t go out with you tonight, I have to study for tomorrow’s biology exam ,“ protested Lorraine, Lorraine Dubois, Jimmy LaCroix’s , one and only, his ball and chain, his, well, sweetie, the one that he gave his ever-loving’ class ring to. His gave that valued, girl-valued if not pawnbroker- valued, class ring the night that Lorraine and he had first gone down to watch the “submarine races” off of Olde Saco Beach (Maine), or rather down at the Seal Rock lovers’ lane end. Seal Rock where rumor, long-time rumor had it going back a couple of generations, that that locale was where many knots were tied (sex, for the clueless, the 1960 clueless, the 1960 non-Olde Saco clueless) and sealed their love, or at least did the deed, get it, by placing the assignation parties’ initials on that rock on their, ah, first assignation. Of course , only after having watched those mythical nighttime submarine races deep in the back seat of some father-borrowed (meaning some tail-fin Plymouth, strictly for universal square parents, and, and serviceable for the “races,”) or better, some father- bought, reflecting good times, souped-up two-toned ’57 Chevy and thus chisel-worthy. (Jimmy had borrowed his older brother Jeanbon’s, called Jack except at mother/grandmother home, Dodge in exchange for a full wax job on the car. Cheap at any price after the fact Jimmy thought, Jimmy Lorraine fulfilled thought.

Jimmy this night though protested to her that he had not seen his sweet Lorraine for five whole days since he had been ill and therefore indisposed. Jimmy tried every trick in the book, including the old dodge of studying together at her house (more specifically in the basement family room) but nothing worked, nothing that night. Or for that matter the next several nights. Jimmy was beside himself. And one did not have to be a high-priced psychiatrist or a sociology professor at some elite university to know that Jimmy had the “itch,” the submarine races itch. But beyond that his, if you could believe Jimmy’s corner boy talk, or more importantly, his Olde Saco High Monday morning before school boys’ “lav” weekend lie-fest confession of love for one Lorraine Dubois (to clearly stake out his“territory” for anyone within earshot who might have Lorraine, fetching Lorraine Dubois thoughts, on their mind).

See before Lorraine Jimmy was strictly what his corner boys called a “love ‘em and leave 'em kind of guy.” (Said corner boys holding forth over at Mama’s Pizza Parlor, the one on Main Street with the jukebox and kind of reserved after school and on weekends for Olde Saco teen-agers. Others could go there at their peril during those hours and were kindly advised to go to Mama’s on Atlantic Avenue that was kind of set aside for families and others in no particular need of jukeboxes, lively girl and boy watching, or stuff that might other cause too much excitement contrary to doctor’s orders.)

Such guys, such callow youth, existed even in the very attached by sixteen (and therefore theoretically for life), married by eighteen, two bratty kids by twenty world of the old French–Canadian quarters in Olde Saco (the local F-Cs called it the Acre, as in God’s Little Acre, the actual residents, at least some, called it Hell’s Acre). Jimmy, having seen that unchanging cycle in his downhill parents, his older brother Jean, his older sister Lara, and about twelve hundred other Acre families wanted none of that. No way. Not for him.

Until Lorraine. Until not so sweet Lorraine that is. She threw Jimmy for a loop and had him running through hoops from the first time he eyed her in tenth grade homeroom over at Olde Saco High. And after almost two years he finally got her to the races. (Little did Jimmy know, know then anyway, that he could have successfully made his move much earlier if he hadn’t been so single-minded in trying to get her to the Seal Rock traditional mating ground. At least according to his corner boy, Ray Bleu, or rather Ray’s sister who heard that pronouncement from Lorraine at one Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” weekend doings lie-fest.)

So Jimmy surrendered, surrendered that night without a fight, because after all what is a guy going to do when a frill (local Acre guy talk for a girl, woman in those days) has a guy all balled- up and calling her every night just to hear the sound of her voice. So every one of those nights after Lorraine gave Jimmy her nightly excuse for the day Jimmy went to his room, threw his younger brother, Raymond out, closed and locked the door and played Chainsby The Cookies a few times and fell asleep. Raymond knew enough not to knock and so he spent more than one night sleeping on the downstairs sofa.

P.S. Jimmy and Lorraine were married, married over at Saint Brigitte’s (just like their parents and grandparents) at eighteen (just graduated and she three months pregnant for the curious, from Seal Rock submarine race initialed-love adventures or elsewhere was not entirely clear. Entirely clear is that Jimmy got his “itch” problem with Lorraine worked out ), had two so-so bratty kids by twenty and the last I heard were still “chained” together forty years later. Go figure.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Rock And Roll Is …, Take Three

Rock and roll was (is) big, sweaty cities, hot time summertime and the living is easy cities, New York-sized outlandish skyscrapers to the stars (if you could see them out on those lonesome canyon walls) cities, Chicago big windy, sloppy hog butcher to the world (reeking of stinks, animal stinks, vegetable stinks, two in the morning whiskey stinks) cities, seven hills rolling to the golden pacific wash and Japan seas great American west night San Francisco (visions of endless North Beach- City Lights Bookstore-Hungry Eye –black bereted, black stockings, black chinos, black, hell, black everything down to those midnight sunglasses worn 24/7/365 beat, beat down, beat around, beat six- ways-to- Sunday beat, but beatitude beat too, Kerouac on the road beatitude beat although undiscovered, Howl, beat)cities, sprawling sun-sweated, be-fogged, brown hills and all swish and swirl coreless arroyo Los Angeles ( searching for perfect Malibu waves, for Venice Beach muscle boys, for bikini-ed tanned golden girls, and, and Hollywood angst , Rebel Without A Cause angst, Blackboard Jungle angst, max daddy Asphalt Jungle angst, hell again, just cruising Saturday night Hollywood Boulevard (and Vine, okay) looking for a walking daddy cities.

Be-bop cities okay, kids be-bopping, doo-wopping, do-langing, sha-sha –sha-ing (if such a sound is possible) acting like king hell king long gone walking daddies and mamas (okay, okay chicks, twists, frails) sitting around Washington Square , Central Park, Union Square, Lincoln Park, Grant Park, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Golden Gate Park, Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier, Malibu surf run, name your square, park, hill, beach, run, what the hell is a surf run (perfect wave, huh), or be square, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting impatiently, waiting out of their shoes, blue suede Carl Perkins stolen like a thief by Elvis shoes or not, maybe fearful Pat Boone, Pat Boone!!! white bucks, whatever, waiting impatiently for the big freeze red scare (hell, no far away, big freeze red scare right down in big city New York Foley Square and dead commie Rosenburgs, stalinite jews for god’s sakes, why did they do it, Hollywood Ten cinematic villains writing up some Malibu nightmare scenes to scare young children, future golden boy perfect wave surfers, to death, Chi town Wobblies turned red never getting over Haymarket 1886 and doing hard time in Joliet, Longshoremen Harry Bridges and golden gate breach) cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath, to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter, head down, ass up breathe.

Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sexed-up sax (not some old time, teen old time, tenor or alto Johnny Hodges/ Lester Young/ Charlie Parker/Dizzy be-bopping thing but chained, chained hard and fast to that riffing guitar), parent wary too sexed-up sax that made junior toss in his bed at night and sis, well, made her, cool and collected, toss a few sweaty wet nights too, make of that what you will, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six- ways-to- Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, maybe some Ike Turner Rocket 88 turbo-blast, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell that silly Asphalt Jungle j. d. (juvenile delinquent for the clueless squares, jack-rollers, corner boys, whip chain-slashers for those in the know also looking for that freeze to thaw in their own coping way) movie seen down at the Majestic on that cool off Saturday popcorn afternoon.

Stag (stag, meaning no girl, not solo, but with full corner boy regiment, white shirted, maybe white tee-shirted, black chinos, some Thom McAn mother- bought shoes, ugh, slick-backed hair, and wisp of Elvis king sideburns, (wisp, just like wisp beards, later, damn, and corner boy laughs and fag-baits) in tow, the crowd from 42^nd Street hangs, Division Street hangs, Post Street hangs, and yah, again Hollywood Boulevard hangs), later, intermission later, seeing she, Public School 63 (or name your school la, la, la, do I have to do all the work?) sweet Madonna and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Zooey (maybe jewish and no madonna, no frozen irish Catherine Madonna, Muffy wasp Madonna , Rita italian Madonna , Greta german Madonna thing, thank god but not caring not caring a fig just following that Zooey ivory bath soap, could it be perfume smell, that has hooked guys, smart guys too, guys who know up from down, since, well Adam), and off to private upstairs balcony screenings.

Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, no not the dance, jesus not the dance, the walking in such a way that it takes half an hour to get Zooey homeward rather than the ten real minutes it takes, if you want to hang on to Zooey, boy) off to Schrafft’s corner lunchroom ( Harry’s Variety, Doc’s Drugstore, Hayes-Bickford, Friendly’s, Brigham’s, Howard Johnson, okay) and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges; play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Zooey (he heard, heard from the corner boy grapevine, really the corner boy Be-Bop Kid’s sister who overheard that blessed news at one Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talkfest when they were discussing, ah, discussing what made them “wet”) sweat (and Zooey, cool fragrance bath soap smell Zooey does not sweat even in sweaty New York/Chi Town/Frisco/LA LA land cities) and do things up in cloistered rooms (so he heard, a separate corner boy sister’s wisdom as source) while they (boys “they” in case you didn’t figure that out) ran the clerks at Mr. Sam’s clothing store ragged looking for just the right look, and old Mr. Mack at Doc’s Drugstore too benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.

Rock was (is) small Podunk towns, every boy knows every girl (and maybe desires each and every one and the reverse too although that would cause a scandal in monogamous protestant-driven podunk), small , sweaty towns and villages, hell, one street main street crossroads down in dusty Texas, pass throughs for Greyhound buses and oil tankers, summertime and the living is easy crossroads, Podunk outlandishly named towns, Boise (big, two-hearted rivers and endless forests between jukebox locales, jesus, and those bad ass city corner boy thought they had it tough), Helena (and old time whiskey dreams filled with unfulfilled gold dust dreams), Ponticello (big-hearted in its own way), Big Sur (sleepy town before the invasion), Olde Saco filled with raven-haired, smooth-cheeked French-Canadian boys calling out the songs in patois French (no Arcadia here), be-bop (okay, half be-bop towns, dusty old towns soon, how soon, to be de-populated by every boy and girl and off to the big sweaty rock and roll cities). Kids sitting around the village green, the fourth of july bandstand, the monument to the civil war, maybe on ocean edge towns down some salty beach fighting off King Neptune for some sea wall space or some hidden Seal Rock lovers’ lane fighting off some enterprising corner boy (senior set) in his father’s passed- on car, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting just like big sweaty city waiting ,for the big freeze red scare (hell, no far away, they ran those pink, red NAACP guys, white guys, students making strange noises about black was right if white was right, right out of town, right onto those Trailways buses, one way, pronto) cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter (or under old time mahogany inkwell desks for real Podunk towns), head down, ass up breathe.

Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sexed-up sax (not some old time, teen old time, tenor or alto Johnny Hodges/ Lester Young/ Charlie Parker/Dizzy be-bopping thing but chained, chained hard and fast to that riffing guitar), parent wary too sexed-up sax that made junior toss in his bed at night and sis, well, made her, cool and collected, toss a few sweaty wet nights too, make of that what you will, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six- ways-to- Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, maybe some Ike Turner Rocket 88 turbo-blast, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell that silly Asphalt Jungle j. d. (juvenile delinquent for the clueless squares, jack-rollers, corner boys, whip chain-slashers for those in the know also looking for that freeze to thaw in their own coping way) movie seen down at the Bijou (imitation big city Majestic, really doubling for Sunday morning pancake all you can eat, bring the family socials too, doors open at eight, eight in the morning, jesus), on that cool off Saturday popcorn (popcorn addicted same as in sweaty cities) afternoon. Stag (ditto, cities, maybe corner boys, maybe from some innocent when you dream Mama’s Pizza Parlor corner, closing when main street closes at 9:00 PM , maybe no), but later, intermission later, seeing she, Olde Saco South Junior High School, for example, she (no blank big city Public School X number here) sweet Madonna (same as big city on that) and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Betty (or Jane, Mary, nothing as exotic as big city, maybe jew, big city Zooey) and off to private upstairs balcony screenings.

Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to Betty/Jane/ Mary, boy) off to Doc’s corner drugstore and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges, play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Betty (he heard) sweat (and Betty, Zooey-like, cool Betty does not sweat even in sweaty summer midday corn-picking fields) and do things, universal do things, private girl things, up in cloistered rooms (so he heard, though that same universal Monday morning before school “lav” talkfest- and lie-fest) while they (boys “they” in case you didn’t figure that out) ran the Sears catalogue (and Ma) ragged looking for just the right look, and old Doc (Doc Andrews and no doctor but just a guy who crushed pills and sold liquor as medicine for what ailed people to get by) and his fuddy-duddy drugstore with odd medicines for sick people what-a- drag- to-be-old-and- it- ain’t- never- going- to- come- to- that- for- me benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.

Rock was (is)…

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -From The “Brothers Under The Bridge” Series- The Late Caleb Marcus Jackson’s Hills and Hollows Of Appalachia, Take Three

 

In the first installment of this series of sketches in this space provided courtesy of my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, who seems to think I still had a few things to say about this wicked old world, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod that I came 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 (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 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 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 1981 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. 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, as is the case here with the late Caleb Marcus Jackson, who wanted to talk about home, the hills and hollows of Appalachia. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Caleb Marcus Jackson’s sign was that of the “hills and hollows of home.

The late Caleb Marcus Jackson, Jr. (always called Calvin Marcus to distinguish him from his father, Caleb Marcus Jackson, Sr. by Mother Jackson and anyone else who was unsure of themselves when calling out for a Jackson, father or son) knew how to tell a story, knew the rhythm, knew how to get emotionally involved with whatever subject he was going on about, and best of all he knew how to wrap it up with a snappy punch line or some ponderous moral. Yah, Caleb Marcus, could tell a story, tell them in that southeast Kentucky mountain hills and hollows drawl that was not as harsh as deep south planation two hundred years at the bourbon barrel, handkerchief in hand mopping off the midday (hell midnight too) sweat in high season summer, rousting n----rs out of their pre-dawn cabins to go to the fields and cut that damn white ball boll cotton in order to keep that bourbon barrel well-filled.  Nor was that Caleb Marcus drawl so pale, so say Maryland tidewaters pale, that those from further south thought the speaker was trying to pass, pass for a yankee. So put the drawl, the two hundred years secluded drawl perfected by those who did not go further west than Kentuck when the soil finally ran out back east or decided to go west but wound up in the hills and hollows and for lack of anything better to do settled in, poor boy settled in, put in a thousand years of grit, put in some detail and you had a classic storyteller, a plebeian master at work.

I had first run into Caleb when, as I mentioned above , I was doing a series of articles entitled Brothers Under The Bridge for the now long defunct East Bay Eye (California) on the fate (and/or plight) of some Vietnam veterans I had run into out under the bridges, in the ravines, along the railroads tracks and other “jungle’ spots dotting the Southern California landscape who told me about Caleb, and his homey Kentuck hills and hollows stories that kept many a camp fire refugee enthralled about a place that took on almost mythic proportions over time. I sat in one night, one 1979 cold, California cold, fall night after I caught up with him down in Westminster south of Los Angeles where he had been working the fields trying to earn some dough to get back home. He had, after a couple of years under urban bridges, realized that if he was to survive he had to get back to his hills and hollows roots. That night he told a thoughtful humorous story about a Yankee interloper and his flat-lands girlfriend who attended a ritualistic Saturday night barn dance down in his hometown Prestonsburg, Kentucky  and who morphed (my word) into the second coming of Daniel Boone, or something. On the basis of that story which held me in its thrall and a couple of others that he mentioned as we became more acquainted I decided that this guy had enough talent to warrant trying to get him published if only in some off-beat folkloric journal.  He left me an address back home to get in touch with him and we left it at that.   

Caleb Marcus had one problem though, or maybe two problems but they kind of went together. A problem for me anyway when I decided a couple of years later (don’t ask me to explain the delay because that was part of my story at the time, not Caleb’s) that I would try to get some of his stuff printed after I had tracked him down in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. First, he couldn’t read, read so well anyway (although U.S. Army good enough apparently), and what he could read was done in such a painfully halting fashion that it was better not to put him, or me, in that quandary. Second, Calvin Mark could not write, write much more than his name. When I asked him why he never learned those two skills he said, “there weren’t no call for learning them,” and so he didn’t.    

Me, well, I just kept up with his stories as best I could, writing down little notes, or keeping them in my head for sunnier times when they could be expanded into something bigger, but now, now that he is gone, a sketch will have to do-a sketch from Caleb Marcus about what it was like on Saturday night down in the hills and hollows, or at least one late 1960s Saturday night, that one night I had heard about when I sat in at the campfire down in Westminster. A story that he had heard a few years after it occurred, heard after he had gotten back to the “real” world (from Vietnam) down in the hills and hollows, down where the mountain winds blow through and create a song of their own. A story of a night when fearing some Sunday morning preacher man retribution, but willing to risk it, the god-fearing brethren let loose, let the liquor (corn of course where would one get city Johnny Walker some color liquor down in the rutted ravens, or have cash money for such city goods) flow, got out the fiddles, banjos, guitars, mandolins, bells, washboards and whatever else would make noise and headed for Farmer Johnson’s old unused broke down red barn (unused except for Saturday night dances and drinking bouts, liquor courtesy of Moonshine Prescott whose moniker speaks for itself and who also acted as dance sponsor, as long as anybody around the hollows could remember, and they are a long-memoried people).

This one night, the night Caleb Marcus spoke of, the Prestonsburg Sheiks (some of  whom would later go on to form the mountain  music-famous Kentucky Sheiks and receive a record contract from Decal Records, after they had been heard over in Hazard by one of their agents who had been sent out to scour the countryside, sour those damn hills and hollows, looking for talent for their mountain music division in the wake of the success of the Carter Family revival) were brought in to play since the banjo player was engaged to Miss Catherine Prescott, one of Moonshine Prescott’s daughters.    

In any case bringing in this locally famous talent in the music-starved hills and hollows assured a great turn-out. And plenty of business for Moonshine Prescott (plenty of corn liquor business if you are clueless), plenty of loose talk, plenty of flirting (and more) and plenty of heaven- sent music.

Listen to the details of Caleb’s reaction, of Caleb’s pride in his “country”  (as we discussed it in 1981 Prestonsburg from my notes, spruced up a little by me in the language department but pure Caleb Marcus in the telling) as he campfire told  that story about a guy, a yankee guy, a guy named Frank (I think that was the name Caleb mentioned although my notes have a couple of names, but the important thing was this guy was strictly a yankee), who found himself at that dance that night with a gal, a flat-lands Indiana gal named Angelica, who had kin in area and who had come through Prestonsburg just in time to learn about the magic of the mountains down Caleb Marcus’s way. Caleb had picked this Frank up hitchhiking outside of  Lexington (Kentucky, okay) while he was transporting whatever he transported on his job for Giant Trucking and was heading back to home  base Prestonsburg. This was maybe four or five years after the incidents described in the barn dance story and a couple of years before the break-down that caused Caleb Marcus to flee west (only to flee back at the beck and call of the mountain siren). They got to talking, Frank mainly, talking about why he wanted to get back to southeastern Kentucky and so to while away the time this Frank told Caleb Marcus why he was heading that way.

It seems that Frank and Angelica had started out in Steubenville up the Ohio River in the summer of 1969 where Angelica had been serving them off the arm at some backwater truck-stop diner when Frank drifted in after being let off by a truck driver who had picked him up on the hitchhike road in Boston. This was just supposed to be a way-station stop for Frank who was heading west to California, in search of whatever guys were searching for in the late 1960s. They hit it off right away, and in 1960s fashion, Angelica ditched her job and joined Frank on the road west. This story is really about a detour as will be explained because they headed south first before moving west. Calvin Mark said some other stuff I forgot before this part but I have lost the notes so let’s pick it up where Caleb has this Frank explaining how they wound up at that red barn:     

“In the few weeks that Angelica had been working long hours at the diner trying to help make a stake to head west (I was washing dishes in the diner and doing odd jobs as a gas jockey as well) she served many of the truckers whose rigs were idling in the truck stop rest area we were cruising for rides [on the first day they finally decided to start heading west]. So, naturally, she tried to find out where some of those truckers that she knew were heading. This day, they were heading mainly east, or anyway not west. Finally, she ran into one burly teamster, Eddie, who was heading down Route 7 along the Ohio River to catch Interstate 64 further down river and then across through to Lexington, Kentucky. Angelica was thrilled because, as it turned out, she had kin [her term, okay], a cousin or something, down in Prestonsburg, Kentucky whom she hadn’t seen in a while and where we could stay for a few days and take in the mountain air (her idea of rest, mine was strictly ocean breezes, thank you)."

[Caleb Marcus: Frank did not know that I was from Prestonsburg although he knew from my drawl that I was from somewhere around there and after he kept pestering through the ride about where I was from I just told him down the road in Harlan. See, I wasn’t sure on this Frank, wasn’t sure at all even though I had heard his whole story during the several hours we spent together driving from Lexington.  I had picked up plenty of hitch-hikers for company so it wasn’t that, nor was it his long hair, long beard and army jacket get-up that put me off. Hell the guy was about half my size so I would have broken him in two if he had tried anything like I did one time when a half- drunk cowboy (a real cowboy too from Laredo, or someplace like that) tried some funny business and I busted his nose as a courtesy). It was just some of the story didn’t add up. Like this gal’s kin, the names didn’t sound right since I knew all the folks in the area from my own times at those Saturday night dances. Funny I didn’t find out until later, just before I headed to Los Angeles, that the couple they were visiting whom I didn’t know, Annadeene and Fred, had moved into the area (and are still there) while I was in ‘Nam and when I got back I didn’t care to go to Saturday night dances, or any place that I would have run into them once I started hauling goods for Mister Prescott at Giant Trucking.     

Funny too how I reacted when Frank spoke of Angelica’s waitressing at that diner brought back a flood of memories from when my high school sweetheart, Sally Fox, used to work at Millie’s Café right in downtown Prestonsburg, what did Frank call it, oh yah, serving them off the arm, and I would pick her up about eight or nine on Saturday night as the café closed up so we could go over to Farmer Johnson’s red barn and do some two-stepping. (And imbibe some of Moonshine Prescott’s golden liquor by the jar.) Sally said she’d wait for me until I got back from ‘Nam, and she did, except when I got back, got back kind of broke up in my head more than anything , I told her to move on, and she finally did, she did with one of Moonshine’s boys. No regrets, well, maybe just small ones.]        

"I tried, tried desperately, without being obnoxious about it, to tell her that heading south was not going to get us to the west very easily. She would have none of it, and she rightly said, that we were in no rush and what was wrong with a little side trip to Kentucky anyway. Well, I suppose in the college human nature course, Spat-ology 101, if there was such a course, and they taught it, I should have had enough sense to throw in the towel. After all this was Angelica’s first, now seriously, whimsical venture out on the road. And I did, in the end, throw in the towel, except not for the reason that you think."

[Caleb Marcus: Damn I never knew when to throw in the towel with a woman from Sally Fox on, except when it didn’t count or mean much.] 

"What Angelica didn’t know until later was that I was deathly afraid of going to Kentucky. See, I had set myself up to the world as, and was in fact in my head, a Yankee, an Oceanside Yankee, if you like. I was born in Massachusetts and have the papers to prove it, but on those papers there is an important fact included. My father’s place of birth was Hazard, Kentucky probably not more than fifty to one hundred miles away from Prestonsburg. He was born down in the hills and hollows of mining country, coal mining country, made famous in song and legend. And also made infamous (to me) by Michael Harrington’s Other America which described in detail the plight of Appalachian whites, my father’s people. And also, as a result of the publicity about the situation down there, the subject in my early 1960s high school of a clothing drive to help them out. My father had left the mines when World War II started, enlisted in the Marines, saw his fair share of battles in the Pacific, got stationed before discharge at a Naval Depot in Massachusetts and never looked back. And see I never wanted him to look back. Like I said I threw in the towel, but I was not happy about it. Not happy at all."

[Caleb Marcus: Jesus I remember that early 1960s time when every yankee and his brother, sisters too, came down to see if we needed anything. My pa and ma said, yes, we needed something, to be left alone. Mountain people know how to talk sense sometimes. Later in L.A. I always appreciated it when the Sallies (Salvation Army) put me up or gave me a meal but I sure felt strange doing it. Ma and Pa would have had a fit if they had been alive and knew I was taking charity. Pa would have whipped me down to size for sure as big as I am.] 

"Actually the ride down Route 7 was pretty uneventful and, for somebody who did not feel comfortable looking at trees and mountains, some of the scenery was pretty breath-taking. That is until we started getting maybe twenty miles from Prestonsburg and the air changed, the scenery changed, and the feel of the social milieu changed. See we were getting in the edges of coal country, not the serious “Bloody Harlan” stuff of legend but the older, scrap heap part that had been worked over, and “worked out” long along. The coal bosses had taken the earth’s assets and left the remnants behind to foul the air and foul the place."

[Caleb Marcus: See what Frank didn’t see was the what we saw which was just trying to make ends meet and failing, failing nine times out of ten to get that rock up the mountain. It was that rock, that rock falling back on me, really back on my spirit that made me go out to Los Angeles once I heard from Lonesome Bob, my old platoon sergeant, that some guys, some guys that were having a hard time with the VA, with the wife, with the family, with, just call it the “real” world like we did in ’Nam, and were setting up camps all along southern California to get a breath of fresh air, and maybe a new start. After I let Sally go, what with my parents dead and gone, there was nothing holding me to these damn hills and hollas. So I thought. ]

"But, mostly, and here is where I finally understood why my father took his chances in World War II and also why he never looked back, shacks. Nothing but haphazardly placed unpainted shacks, hard-scrabble patched roofs just barely covering them. With out-houses, out-houses can you believe that in America. And plenty of kids hanging out in the decidedly non-manicured front yards waiting… well, just waiting. All that I can say about my feelings at the time was that I would be more than willing to crawl on all fours to get back to my crummy old growing up homestead rather than fight the dread of this place."

[Caleb Marcus: I ain’t saying that there were mansions around these parts then, except maybe some of Mister Peabody’s people a couple of valleys over, but not all the houses looked like something from some Okie place like the Joads had when I saw that Grapes Of Wrath  movie one time, the one with Henry Fonda in it as Tom Joad. With Sally Fox, naturally, since the movies at the Capitol movie house were one of the few places in this town that young people, young and sex hungry young people, could let off a little steam without Ma or Pa, or worse, the preacher man, the hell-fired Baptist preacher man in this town then, if he wasn’t on circuit, getting all riled up about sin, and brimstone and damnation). We just thought we had kin elsewhere is all, poor kin unlike  us that had the land free and clear with no bank to come in and say we had to leave. Maybe too down here in the hollows we didn’t have that much to compare with so unlike Frank we weren’t never bothered by it, it was our homes, and that was that.]           

"Fortunately Angelica’s kin (second cousin), Annadeene, husband, both about twenty, and two kids , lived further down the road, out of town, in a trailer camp which the husband, Fred, had expanded so that it had the feel of a small country house. Most importantly it had indoor plumbing and a spare room where Angelica and I could sleep and put our stuff. Fred, as I recall, was something of a skilled mechanic (coal equipment mechanic) who worked for a firm that was indirectly connected to the Eastern Kentucky coal mines."

[Caleb Marcus: I tried, before I got into the army in 1966, to get a job as a mechanic’s apprentice  at Eastern Mining but because, and I ain’t ashamed to say it as you know, I couldn’t read so good they only wanted me for heavy mine work and I said no way, not with farm work still available and not, as it turned out, with me ready, willing and able to go and fight the gooks, Charlie, you know what I mean, those Vietnamese peasants that didn’t seem to give a damn about life, just as long as they could farm their little rice paddles. Hell, it took a long time, two rounds in the VA hospital over in Wheeling all broken up mentally and physically after I came back , a few years on the bum in L.A., and some hard times here in paradise before I realized they were just defending theirs like I would defend ours over here. No regrets though, or maybe just a couple.]        

"This Prestonsburg was nothing but one of a thousand such towns that I have passed through. A main street with a few essential stores, some boarded up retail space and then you are out of town. Moreover, Route 7 as it turned into Route 23 heading into Prestonsburg and then further down turned into nothing but an old country, pass at your own risk, country road about where Angelica’s cousin lived. What I am trying to get at though is that although these people were in the 20th century they were somewhat behind the curve. This is, as it probably was in my father’s time, patriotic country, country where you did your military service came home, worked, if you could find it, got married and raised a family. Just in tougher circumstances than elsewhere."

[Caleb Marcus chuckled over that one, especially since this Frank was clueless that he had been born and raised right in the middle of this coal slag heap. He laughed too when he related that when he went north for basic military training in 1966 and the bus stopped at a highway rest stop that stop was bigger than the whole of downtown Prestonsburg then, and the bigger “town” he had seen in his life. Biggest until, on a weekend pass, he and a couple of Kentuck companions went to New York City and flipped out, flipped out at the lights and everything else on 42^nd Street. Later, when he had passed through New York again, Chicago, Denver, and L.A. that stardust had been very much removed from his eyes.]

"I understood that part. What I did not understand then, and am still somewhat confused about, is the insularity of the place. The wariness, serious wariness, of strangers even of strangers brought to the hills and hollows by kin. I was not well received at least first, and I still am not quite sure if I ever was, by Angelica’s kin and I suppose if I thought about it while they had heard of “hippies” (every male with beard, long hair, and jeans was suspected of belonging to that category) Prestonsburg was more like something from Merle Haggard’s Okie From Muskogee lyrics than Haight-Ashbury. Angelica kept saying that I would grow on them (like I did on her) but I knew, knew down deep that we had best get out of there. I kept pressing the issue but she refused to listen to any thoughts of our leaving until after Saturday night’s barn dance. After all Fred and Annadeene had “‘specially invited us to go with them,” she said. We could leave Sunday morning but not before. Christ, a hillbilly hoe-down."

[Another Caleb chuckle, and a -"this yankee kid really had his say and some stuff to get off his chest that day he rode with me."]

"I would have felt no compulsion to go into anything but superficial detail about this barn dance but something happened requiring more detail. Otherwise this scene lacks completeness. I will say that I have a very clear picture of Angelica being fetching for this dance. All her feminine wiles got a workout that night. What I can’t remember is what she wore or how she wore her hair (up, I think) but the effect on me (and the other guys) was calculated to make me glad, glad as hell, that we stayed for this thing. What I can remember vividly though is that this barn dance actually took place in a barn, just a plain old ordinary barn that had been used in this area for years (according to the oldsters since back in the 1920s) [Caleb-1905] for the periodic dances that filled up the year and broke the monotony of the mountain existence. The old faded red-painted barn, sturdily build to withstand the mountain winds and containing a stage for such occasions was something out of a movie, some movie that you have seen, so you have some idea of what it was like even if you have never been within a hundred miles of a barn."

[Caleb Marcus; Folks around here still go to that old barn, old Farmer Johnson’s red barn every few Saturday nights a year and probably will do so for eternity. Like I said before Sally and I used to go, her all dolled up like Frank said his Angelica was, in some mother home-made dress when she was younger and then when she started working at Millie’s Café store-bought and all the guys, including me, Sally hungry, Sally smelling of fresh soap, and hair done up, and ribbons, and…, let’s not keep talking about it let’s just say I was proud, hillbilly hills proud, to be with her. Like I said too after I got back to the “real” world and had my spells I didn’t want to go, especially after I let her go, what with her and Moonshine’s boy, Jack Prescott, going to be there. Let’s kind of stay off that subject, okay.]      

"Moreover the locals had gone to some effort to decorate the place, provide plenty of refreshments and use some lighting to good effect. What was missing was any booze. This was a “dry” county then (and maybe still is) but not to worry wink, wink there was plenty of “white lightning” around out in the makeshift dirt parking lot where clusters of good old boys hovered around certain cars whose owners had all you needed (and who all worked for Moonshine Prescott, the guy who was sponsoring the dance and the king pin of the local corn liquor industry). Just bring your own fixings. After we had checked out the arrangements in the barn and Annadeene had introduced us to her neighbors Fred tapped me on the shoulder and “hipped” me to the liquor scene. We went outside. Fred talked quietly to one of the busy car owners and then produced a small jar for my inspection. “Hey, wait,” he said “you have to cut that stuff a little with some water if you are not used to it.” I took my jar, added some water, and took a swig. Jesus Christ, I almost fell down the stuff was so powerful."

[Caleb: Damn right. As my Pa used to say, and his father before him, Moonshine’s golden liquor would put hair on your chest. Of course once I first left here and had store-bought liquor up in New York I never got that same punch from whisky and I drank a Ohio River of the stuff before I started to sober up a little. By the way if you want to try a sample Moonshine Prescott’s boy, not Jack, Jimmy, yah, the one who was the big-time stock- car driver up in North Carolina before he took a big crash and burn and had to quit, runs the family business now. The revenue boys don’t even bother going after him since that soup-ed up Chevy of his out in the real hollows and ravines with him at the wheel can outrun them before they even get out of town. Just let me know and I will make the connections.]

"Look, I was used to drinking whiskey straight up, or I thought I drank whiskey straight up but after one swig, one swig, my friend, I confess I was a mere teetotaler. Several minutes later we went back inside and I nursed, literally nursed, that jar for the rest of the night. But you know I got “high” off it and was in good spirits. So good that I started dancing with Angelica once the coterie of banjo players, fiddlers, guitarists and mandolin players got finished warming up, a group calling itself the Prestonsburg Sheiks. I am not much of a dancer under the best of circumstances but, according to her, I did okay that night."

[Caleb Marcus: I had plenty of sympathy for Frank when he said that. I was never much of dancer either without a jar of something to fortify me. Sally  was always after me to let her show me and practice some but I said I didn’t want to be like some fag schoolboy having to have her show me. Sometimes, I would just “show her off” and let a guy like Jack Prescott who I was friendly with then dance with her. Of course when I got back to the ‘real” world with that gimpy leg I wasn’t interested in dancing with Sally or anybody else no matter how many jars of Moonshine’s golden liquor I had to fortify me.]       

"Hey, you’d expect that the music was something out of the Grand Ole Opry, some Hee-Haw hoe-down stuff, some Arkansas Jamboree hokum, right? Forget that. See back in the mountains they did not have access to much television or sheet music or other such refinements. What they played they learned from mama and papa, or some uncle who got it from god knows where. It’s all passed down from something like time immemorial and then traced back to the old county, the British Isles mainly. Oh sure there was a “square” hoe-down thing or two but what I heard that night was something out of the mountain night high-powered eerie winds as they rolled down the hills and hollows (hollas, if you are from there). Something that spoke of hard traveling first from the old country when your luck ran out there, then from the east coast of America when that got too crowded and you just sat down when you hit those grey-blue mountains, or maybe, although I never asked (and under the circumstances would not have dared to ask) formed their version of the great American West night, and this was as far as they got, or cared to go."

[Caleb Marcus: Yah, that music was good, and with a little jar, and Sally, well, I guess it’s alright now to say it, after one of those dances Sally and I went out back and did our thing for the first time. Out back when the moon was out and the trees were rustling to hide our love noises, and our giggles. But let’s move on, okay.]   

"Some of this music I knew from my folk experiences in Boston and Cambridge when everybody, including me, was looking for the roots of folk music. Certainly I knew Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies when the band played it instrumentally. That was one of the first songs, done by gravelly-voiced Dave Van Ronk, I heard on the folk radio station that I listened to. But, see, back in those early days that stuff, for the most part, was too, well you know, too my father’s music for me to take seriously. Bob Dylan was easier to listen to for a message that “spoke” to me. But this night I thrilled to hear real pros going one-on-one to out-fiddle, out-banjo, out-mandolin, out, out-any instrument each other in some mad dash to appease the mountain nymphs, or whatever or whoever was being evoked to keep civilization away from the purity of the music. That night was as close as I got to my roots, and feeling good about those roots, and also as close as I got to Angelica."

[Caleb Marcus: Funny, and I thought it was funny later too, Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies, was my mother’s favorite song that she sung some version of from the Carter Family heard on the radio, Frank said there were many variations that he knew from some Child’s Ballad book, and was my favorite too.] 

"About 12:30 or one o’clock the dance broke up, although as we headed down the rutted, jagged street we could still hear banjos and fiddles flailing away to see who really was “king of the hill.” Angelica said she was glad that we stayed, and I agreed. She also said that, yes, I was right; it was time to head west. She said it in such a way that I felt that she could have been some old time pioneer woman who once she recognized that the land was exhausted knew that the family had to pull up stakes and push on. It was just a matter of putting the bundles together and saying goodbye to the neighbors left behind. Needless to say old resourceful road companion Angelica, sweet, fetching Angelica put that fetchiness to good use and had us lined up for a ride from another Eddie truck driver who, if he was sober enough, was heading out with a load at 6:00 AM to Winchester just outside Lexington from where we could make better connections west. 6:00 AM, are you kidding? I was still wearing about eight pound of that white lightning, or whatever it was. Angelica merely pointed out in her winsome, fetching way that nobody forced me to drink that rotgut (her word) liquor when softer refreshments had been available inside. Touché, 6:00 AM it is."

[Caleb Marcus; I remember Eddie, a good guy if it was the same one, they used to call him Colonel Eddie because like a lot of Kentuck guys for about two bucks you could get a genuine certificate that you were a Kentucky Colonel even if you hadn’t been within, like Eddie, a thousand miles of any war, except maybe the battle of the bottle, whisky bottle most probably.]

"Dog tired, smelling of a distillery, or some old-time hardware store (where the white lightning ingredients probably came from) Angelica and I laid our heads down to get a few hours sleep. Gently she nuzzled up to my side (how she did it through the alcoholic haze I do not know) and gave every indication that she wanted to make love. Now we were right next door to the two unnamed [lost note] sleeping children, sleeping the sleep of the just, and as she got more aggressive we have to be, or we think we have to be, more quiet. No making the earth under the Steubenville truck stop motel cabin shake [a reference to the first night they made love] shake that night. And, as we talked about it on the road later, that was not what was in her mind. She just wanted to show, in a very simple way, that she appreciated that I had stayed, that I had been wise enough to figure out how long we should stay, and that, drunk or sober, I would take her feelings into account. Not a bad night’s work. And so amid some low giggles we did our exploration. Oh, here is the part that will tell you more than a little about Angelica. She also wanted to please me this night because she did not know, given the vagaries of the road, when we would be able to do it again. Practical girl."

[Caleb Marcus: Let’s move on, okay. I said my piece about Sally, oh did I tell you she visited me over in Wheeling a couple of times, a couple of Angelica-like time, a week when my spells got so bad I had to go to that damn VA hospital. Both times I went, before I gave her her walking papers. Impractical girl I’d say. ]    

"In the groggy, misty, dark before dawn, half awake, no quarter awake night Angelica tapped me to get up. We quickly packed, she ate a little food (I could barely stand never mind do something as complicated as eat food), and we made our goodbyes, genuine this morning by all parties. As we went out the front trailer door and headed up the road to the place where Eddie had said to meet him I swear, I swear on all the dreams of whatever color that I have ever had, that the background mountains that were starting to take form out of the dark started to play, and to play like that music I heard last night from those demon fiddlers and banjo players. I asked, when we met Eddie, who was only a few minutes late, and who looked and felt (as he told me) worse than I did (except that he proudly stated that he was used to it, okay Eddie) if those musicians were still at it over at that old devil of a red barn. “No,” he said. “Where is that music coming from then?” I said. Old Eddie (backed by Angelica) said “What music?” That angel music I said. Eddie just looked bemused as he revved that old truck engine up and we hit the road west."

[Caleb Marcus: That’s when I started getting suspicious of Frank, that romantic stuff, not about his girl, hell, I could understand that, understand that a million ways, but that wind stuff like maybe he had some weed that night and between the weed and the golden liquor he got all disoriented. I know that happened to me a few times between spells when I needed something to drown out those gunshots and screams I kept hearing in my head and would not let me be.]   

"Sometime later I was half-listening to some music, some background eerily haunting mountain music coming from a folk radio station when I had the strangest feeling that I had heard the tune before. I puzzled over it sporadically for a few days and then went to the local library to see if they had some mountain music available. They did and I began on that date a feverish re-acquaintance with this form of music, especially the various Carter Family combinations. I, however, never did find out the name of that song."

"And in a sense it has not name. It was the music from that old mountain wind as it trailed down the hills and hollows that I heard that last night in Prestonsburg. See here is what you didn’t know as you listened to all this stuff, and I only half knew it back then. I had been in Kentucky before that trip down from Steubenville, Ohio with sweet Angelica. No, not the way you think. My parents, shortly after they were married and after my father got out of the service, took a trip back to his home in Hazard so his family could meet his bride, or maybe just so he could show her off. They stayed for some period of time, I am not sure exactly how long, but the long and short of it was, that I was conceived and was fussing around in my mother’s womb while they were there. So see, it was that old mountain wind calling me home, calling me to my father’s roots, calling me to my roots as I was aimlessly searching for that great American West night. And here I am again, looking again. Double thanks, Angelica."

[CalebMarcus: “You had a hell of a story to tell Frank and welcome home, brother,” I said as I left Frank off at Millie’s Café in downtown Prestonsburg late in that same afternoon. Amen, brother, amen.]

[For those wondering about the late part before his name in the title to this sketch Caleb Marcus Jackson died in 1983 in a truck accident going around a tight bend up on Route 7 heading to the Ohio River. The police report said his body had alcohol and drugs in it, and perhaps, it is true but, perhaps too, in the end, those hills and hollows of home could no longer hold him in their thrall after he got back to the “real” world. That wouldn’t be the first, or last, such case. RIP Brother Caleb Marcus.-JLB]