***Entering North Adamsville High, 1960-For The Atlantic Junior High School (yah, yah I know Middle School) Class Of 1960

A YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing his teen tear-jerker, Teen Angel to set an "appropriate" mood for this post.

This is another Frankie Riley story, my old junior high school buddy, a companion sketch to last week’s Frankie’s Atlantic Summer’s Day story. This is the way Frankie told me the story one sunny afternoon so once again it is really a Frankie story that I want to tell you about but around the edges it could be my story, or your story for that matter:

Funny, there Frankie was, finally, finally after what seemed like an endless heat-waved, eternal August dog day’d, book-devoured summer. Standing, nervously standing, waiting with one foot on the sturdy granite-chiseled steps, ready at a moment’s notice from any teacher’s beck and call, to climb up to the second floor main entrance of old North Adamsville High (that’s in Massachusetts for those non-Red Raiders who may stumble across this sketch). An entrance flanked by huge concrete spheres on each side, which were  made to order for him to think that he too had the weight of the world on his shoulders that sunny day. And those doors, by the way, as if the spheres were not portentous enough, were also flanked by two scroll-worked concrete columns, or maybe they were gargoyle-faced, his eyes were a little bleary just then, that gave the place a more fearsome look than was really necessary but that day, that day of all days, every little omen had its evil meaning, evil for Frankie that is.

Here Frankie was anyway, pensive (giving himself the best of it, okay, nice wrap-around-your soul word too, okay), head hanging down, deep in thought, deep in scared, get the nurse fast, if necessary, nausea-provoking thought, standing around, a little impatiently surly as was his “style” (that “style” he had  picked up a few years previously in elementary school over at the old Quincy School  over on Newbury Street, after seeing James Dean or someone like that strike the pose, and it stuck). Anyway it was now about 7:00 AM, maybe a little after, and like I said his eyes had been playing tricks on him all morning and he couldn’t seem to focus, as he waited for the first school bell to sound on that first Wednesday after Labor Day in the year of our lord, 1960.

Should have been no big deal, right? We had all done it many times before by then so it should have been easy. Year after year, old August dog days turned into shorter, cooler September come hither young wanna-be learner days. Nothing to get nervous about, nothing to it. (Did I say that already?) Especially the first day, a half day, a “gimme” day, really, one of the few out of one hundred and eighty, count ‘em, and mainly used for filling out the one thousand and one pieces of paper about who you were, where you lived, and who you lived with. Yeah, and who to call in case you took some nasty fall in gym trying to do a double twist-something on the gym mat, and trying to impress in the process some girl over on the other side of the gym with your prowess, hoping she is not looking just then if you falter.Or a wrestled double-hammer lock grip on some poor, equally benighted fellow student that went awry like actually had happened to Frankie the previous year in eighth grade. Hey, they were still talking about that one in the Atlantic Junior High locker rooms at the end of the year, I heard.

More ominously, they wanted that information so that if you crossed-up one, or more, of your mean-spirited, ill-disposed, never-could-have-been-young-and-troubled, ancient, Plato or Socrates ancient from the look of some of them, teachers and your parents (meaning embarrassed, steaming, vengeful Ma really, not hard-working-could-not-take-the-time-off Pa, in our neighborhoods) needed to be called in to confer about “your problem,” your problem that you would grow out of with a few days of after school “help.” Please.

That “gimme” day (let’s just call it that okay) would furthermore be spent reading off, battered, monotone homeroom teacher-reading off, the one thousand and one rules; no lateness to school under penalty of being placed in the stocks, Pilgrim-style; no illness absences short of the plague, if you had it, not a family member, and then only if you had a (presumably sanitized) doctor’s note; no cutting classes to explore the great American day streets at some nearby corner variety store, or mercy, the Downs, one-horse Norfolk Downs also under severe penalty; no (unauthorized) talking in class (but you could bet your last dollar they would mark it down if you did not  “authorize talk,” Jesus); no giving guff (yeah no guff, right) to your teachers, fellow students, staff, the resident mouse or your kid brother, if you had a kid brother; and, no writing on walls, in books, and only on occasion on an (authorized) writing pad. Continuing rule-ward; get this one, neither Frankie nor I could believe this one over at Atlantic, no cutting in line for the school lunch. The school lunch, Christ, as poor as Frankie’s and my families were we at least had the dignity not to pine for, much less cut in line for, those beauties: the American chop suey done several different ways to cover the week, including a stint as baloney and cheese sandwiches, I swear. Moving along; no off-hand rough-necking (or just plain, ordinary necking, either); no excessive use of the “lav” (you know what that is, enough said), and certainly no smoking, drinking or using any other illegal (for kids) substances.

Oh, yeah, and don’t forget to follow, unquestioningly, those mean-spirited, ill-disposed teachers that I spoke of before, if there is a fire emergency. And here’s a better one, in case of an off-hand atomic bomb attack go, quickly and quietly, to the nearest fall-out shelter down in the bowels of the old school. That’s what we practiced over at Atlantic. Frankie hoped that they did not try that old gag at North and have all of us practice getting under our desks in such an emergency like in elementary school. Christ, Frankie thought (and me too when we talked about it later) he would rather take his chances, above desk, thank you. And… need I go on, you can listen to the rest when you get to homeroom I am just giving you the highlights, the year after year, memory highlights.

And if that isn’t enough, the reading of the rules and the gathering of more intelligence about you than the FBI or the CIA would need we then proceeded to the ritualistic passing out of the books, large and small (placing book covers on each, naturally, name, year, subject and book number safety placed in insert). All of them covered against the elements, your own sloth, and the battlefield school lunch room. That humongous science book that has every known idea from the ancient four furies of the air to nuclear fission, that math book that has some Pythagorean properties of its own, the social studies books to chart out human progress (and back-sliding) from stone age-cave times on up, and the precious, precious English book (Frankie  hoped that he would get to do Shakespeare that year, he had  heard that we did, we both agreed that guy knew how to write a good story, same with that Salinger book that Frankie had said he read during the summer). Still easy stuff though, for the first day.

Yeah, but this will put a different spin on it for you, well, a little different spin anyway. That day Frankie felt he was starting in the “bigs”, at least the bigs of the handful-countable big events of his short, sweet life. That day he was starting his freshman year at hallowed old North Quincy High and he was as nervous as a kitten. He laughed at me when I said I was not afraid of that event yelling at me “Don’t tell me you weren’t just a little, little, tiny bit scared of the idea of going from the cocoon-like warmth of junior high over to the high school.” He then taunted me- “Come on now, I’m going to call you out on it. Particularly since I am one of those Atlantic kids who, after all, had been here before, unlike you who came out of the Germantown "projects" on the other side of town, and moved back to North Quincy after the "long march" move to the new Atlantic Junior High in the hard winter of 1959 so I didn’t know the ropes here at all.” I did not take his bait, thought he was goofing.

So there they were, especially those sweet girl Atlantics, including a certain she that Frankie was severely "crushed up" on, in their cashmere sweaters and jumpers or whatever you call them, were  nevertheless standing on those same steps, as Frankie and they exchanged nods of recognition, since they were on those steps  just as early as Frankie was, fretting their own frets, fighting their own inner demons, and just hoping and praying or whatever kids do when they are “on the ropes” to survive the day, or just to not get rolled over on day one.

And see, here is what you also don’t know that was causing Frankie the frets, know yet anyway. Frankie had caught what he called Frankie’s disease. You have never heard of it, probably, and don’t bother to go look it up in some medical dictionary at the Thomas Crane Public Library, or some other library, it is not there. What it amounts to is the old time high school, any high school, version of the anxiety-driven cold sweats. Now I know some of you knew Frankie, and some of you didn’t, but he was the guy who I told you a story about before, the story about his big, hot, “dog day” August mission to get picnic fixings, including special stuff, like Kennedy’s potato salad, for his grandmother. That’s the Frankie I am talking about, my best junior high friend, Frankie.

Part of that previous story, for those who do not know it, mentioned what Frankie was thinking when he got near battle-worn North Quincy High on his journey to the Downs back in August. I’m repeating; repeating at least the important parts here, for those who are clueless:

“Frankie (and I) had, just a couple of months before, graduated from Atlantic Junior High School and so along with the sweat on his brow from the heat a little bit of anxiety was starting to form in Frankie’s head about being a “little fish in a big pond” freshman come September as he passed by. Especially, a proto-beatnik “little fish.” See, he had cultivated a certain, well, let’s call it “style” over there at Atlantic. That "style" involved a total disdain for everything, everything except trying to impress girls with his long chino-panted, plaid flannel-shirted, thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to humankind. Like that really was the way to impress teenage girls. In any case he was worried, worried sick at times, that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading…”

And that is why, when the deal went down and Frankie knew he was going to the “bigs” he spent that summer reading, big time booked-devoured reading. Hey, I'll say he did, The Communist Manifesto, that one just because old Willie Westhaver over at Atlantic called him a Bolshevik when he answered one of his foolish math questions in a surly manner. Frankie said he read it just because he wanted to see what old Willie was talking about. In any case, Frankie said he was not no commie, although he did not know what the big deal was about, he was not turning anybody in about it in any case, and the stuff was hard reading anyway. Frankie had also read Democracy in America (by a French guy), The Age of Jackson (by a Harvard professor who knew Jack Kennedy and who was crazy for old-time guys like Jackson), and Catcher InThe Rye by that Salinger guy I mentioned before (Holden Caulfield was Frankie, Frankie to a tee).

Okay, okay I won’t keep going on but that was just the reading on the hot days when Frankie did not want to go out, he said after the summer- “test me on what I read, I am ready.” Here's why. He intended, and he swore he intended to even on that first nothing day (what did I call it before-"gimme", yeah) of that new school year in that new school in that new decade to beat the “old Frankie,” old book-toting, girl-chasing Frankie, who knew every arcane fact that mankind had produced and had told it to every girl who would listen for two minutes (maybe less) in that eternal struggle, the boy meets girl struggle, at his own game. Frankie, my buddy of buddies, mad monk, prince among men (well, boys, anyhow) who navigated me through the tough, murderous parts of junior high, mercifully concluded, finished and done with, praise be, and didn’t think twice about it was going to outdo himself. He, you see, despite, everything I said a minute ago had been  “in,” at Atlantic; that arcane knowledge stuff worked with the “ins” who counted, worked, at least a little, and I should know since I got dragged in his wake. That day he was eager to try out his new “style.”

See, that was why on that Wednesday after Labor Day in the year of our lord, 1960, that 7:00 AM, or a little after, Wednesday after Labor Day, Frankie had had Frankie’s disease. He had harped on it so much before the opening of school that he had woken up about 5:00 AM that morning, maybe earlier, but he said it was still dark, with the cold sweats. He had tossed and turned for a while about what his “style”, what his place in the sun was going to be, and he just had to get up. He said he would  tell you about the opening day getting up ritual stuff later, some other time, but right then he was worried, worried as hell, about his “style”, or should he said was upon reflection, teenage angst reflection, his lack of style over at Atlantic. That will tell you a lot about why he woke up that morning before the birds.

Who was he kidding. You know what that cold night sweats, that all-night toss and turn teen angst, boy version, was nothing but thinking about her. That certain "she" that Frankie had kind of sneaked around mentioning as he had been talking, talking his head off just to keep the jitters down. While on those pre-school steps he had just seen her, seen her with the other Atlantic girls on the other side of the steps, and so I am going to have to say a little something about it. See, the previous school year, late, toward the end Frankie had started talking to this Lydia Adams, yes, that Lydia from the Adams family who had run this jagged old granite quarries town here in North Quincy for eons and who employed my father and a million other fathers around here and then just headed south, or someplace for the cheaper labor I heard. This was one of the granddaughters or some such relation I never did get it all down. And that part was not all that important anyway because what mattered, what mattered to Frankie, was that faint scent, that just barely perceivable scent, some nectar scent, that came from Lydia when he sat next to her in art class and they  talked, talked their heads off.

But Frankie never did anything about it, not then anyway although he said he had this feeling, maybe just a feeling because he wanted things to be that way but a feeling anyway, that she had expected me to ask her out. Asking out for junior high school students then, and for freshmen in high school too because we didn’t have licenses to drive cars, being the obligatory "first date" at Jimmy Jack's Shack (no, not the one of Wollaston Boulevard, that's for the tourists and old people, the one on Hancock up toward the Square is the one  I am talking about). Frankie said he was just too shy and uncertain to do it.

Why? Well you might as well know right now Frankie came from the “wrong side of the tracks” in this old town, over by the old abandoned Old Colony tracks and she, well like I said came from a branch of the Adams family that lived over on Elm in one of those Victorian houses that the swells are crazy for now, and I guess were back then too. That is when Frankie figured that if he studied up on a bunch of stuff, stuff that he liked to study anyway, then come freshman year he just might be able to get up the nerve to ask her to go over to Jimmy Jack's for something to eat and to listen to the jukebox after school some day like every other Tom, Dick and Harry in this burg did.

....Suddenly, a bell rang, a real bell, students, like lemmings to the sea, were on the move, especially those Atlantics that Frankie had nodded to before as he took those steps, two at a time. Too late then to worry about style, or anything else. They (we) were off to the wars; Frankie will make his place in the sun as he goes along, on the fly. But guess who kind of brushed against Frankie as he rushed up the stairs and gave him one of her biggest faintly-scented smiles as they raced up those funky granite steps. A place in the sun indeed.

********

....and a trip down memory lane.

MARK DINNING lyrics - Teen Angel

(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)

Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh

That fateful night the car was stalled

upon the railroad track

I pulled you out and we were safe

but you went running back

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

What was it you were looking for

that took your life that night

They said they found my high school ring

clutched in your fingers tight

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone

They've taken you away.

I'll never kiss your lips again

They buried you today

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please

 

***Frankie's Atlantic Summer's Day, Circa 1960-For All Those  Who Came Of Age In The Atlantic Section Of North Adamsville

A little something to set the mood for this sketch…

A YouTube film clip of the Capris performing their doo-wop classic, There's A Moon Out Tonight. This is sent out by request to Elaine from the old neighborhood from Frankie…

Theres A Moon Out Tonight -The Capris Lyrics

There's a (moon out tonight) whoa-oh-oh ooh

Let's go strollin'

There's a (girl in my heart) whoa-oh-oh ooh

Whose heart I've stolen

There's a moon out tonight (whoa-oh-oh ooh)

Let's go strollin' through the park (ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh)

There's a (glow in my heart) whoa-oh-oh ooh

I never felt before

There's a (girl at my side) whoa-oh-oh ooh

That I adore

There's a glow in my heart I never felt before (ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh)

Oh darlin'

Where have you been?

I've been longin' for you all my life

Whoa-uh-oh baby I never felt this way before

I guess it's because there's a moon out tonight

There's a (glow in my heart) whoa-oh-oh ooh

I never felt before

There's a (girl at my side) whoa-oh-oh ooh

That I adore

There's glow in my heart

I guess it's because

There's a moon out tonight

Moon out tonight

Moon out tonight

Moon out tonight

There's a moon out tonight

 

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

This is the way my old junior high school friend, Frankie, Frankie Riley, told me the story  one night, so it really is a Frankie story that I want to tell you about but around the edges it could have been my story, or could have been your story for that matter:

Frankie walked, walked along the pavement that morning, that Atlantic early summer morning he insisted that I tell you about, in long, winter-weight black-pants, long- sleeve brown plaid flannel-shirt, and thick-soled work boots. 1960s faux beatnik posing attire for him, summer or winter. A not so subtle fashion statement that Frankie thought made him “cool,” cool at least for the be-bop, look-at-me-I'm-a-real-gone daddy, bear-baiting of the public that he relished as he anguished over the job to be done that day, that late August day. Anguished over his grandmother-ordered mission while he melted in the late August sun like some Woolworth’s grilled cheese sandwich, as he stood for a moment almost immobile looking toward the vacant Welcome Young Field in front of him on the Sagamore Street after he had already traversed Atlantic Street, Walker Street, and Newbury Street after being dispatched from Grandma’s house situated on a street off of the far end of East Squantum Street. As he looked the field over Frankie slowly and methodically pulled out, for about the eighteenth time, or maybe about the eighteen thousandth time , a now sweat-soaked, salt-stained, red railroad man’s handkerchief to wipe off the new wave swear-to-the-high-heavens-inducing sweat that had formed on his brow.

Frankie, after leaving his own house on Maple Street earlier, had already previously crossed the long-abandoned, rusty-steeled, wooden-tie worn Old Colony railroad tracks. Those tracks separated his almost sociologically proverbial well-worn, well-trodden “wrong side of the tracks” from the rest of Atlantic. (That track, now used as part of the Red Line subway extension system, still stands guardian to that dividing line.) He faced, and he knew he faced even that early in the morning, another day in hell, Frank-ish hell, or so it seemed to him like that was where the day was heading, no question. Another one of those endless, furnace-blasting, dirt-kicking, hard-breathing, nerve-fraying, gates of hell, “dogs days,” August days. Worse, worse for old weather-beaten, world-beaten Frankie, a fiendish, fierce, frantic, frenzied 1960 teenage August day.

Yeah, it was not just the weather that bothered him, although that was bad enough for anybody whose metabolism cried out, and cried out loud and clear, for temperate climates, for low humidities, or just the cool, sweet hum of an ocean breeze now and again. But also, plain truth, it was also  being a befuddled, beleaguered, bewildered, benighted, be-jesused kid that gummed up the works as well. Frankie had that condition bad. Nowadays there are not, mercifully, double “dog days” like that heat-driven, sweltering, suffocating, got-to-break-out-or-bust teenage days, not August days anyway.

But, no, now that I think about it, that’s just not right, not at least if you believe, and you should, all the information about climate change and the rip-roaring way we, meaning you and me, and Frankie too, have torn up old Mother Earth without thinking twice about it. Or even once, if you really look around. Not right either once you see all the 21st century angst-filled Frankies on those heat-swept streets now, except now the Frankies are buried beneath some techno-gadgetry or other, and are not worrying about being be-bop, or real gone daddies, or being “beat”, or worrying about bear-baiting the public or anything like that. But that’s a screed for another day; at least I want to put it off until then. So Frankie was a pioneer. But even writing about this day, this Frank-ish day, right now makes me reach for my own sweaty, dampish handkerchief. Let’s just call that day a hot, dusty, uncomfortable, and dirty day and leave it at that.

Frankie, by then a finely-tuned, professional quality sullen and also an award-worthy, very finely-tuned sulky teenage boy, usually, waited that kind of day out, impatiently, in his book-strewn, airless, sunless room, or what passed for his room if you didn’t count his shared room brother’s stuff. The way Frankie told it to me he might have been beyond waiting impatiently for he was ready, more than ready, for school to go back into session if for no other reason than, almost automatically come the “dog days,” to get cooled-out from that blazing, never-ending inferno of a heat wave that never failed to drain him of any human juices, creative or not.

Nothing, nothing, in this good, green world, seemingly, could get this black chino-panted, plaid flannel-shirted, salty sweat-dabbled, humidity-destroyed teenage boy out of his funk. Or it would, and I think you would have to agree, have to be something real good, almost a miracle, to break such a devilishly-imposed spell. In any case, as we catch up to him putting his red handkerchief in his back pocket moving out on to Sagamore Street, he had left his stuffy old bookcase of a room behind and he was walking, in defiance of all good, cool, common sense, long-panted, long-shirted, and long-faced, as was his defiant statement to this wicked old world in those days, and had begun to cross Welcome Young Field to cut across to Hancock Street. That is as good a place, the field that is, as any to start describing this “on a mission” scenic journey.

Come late August this quirky, almost primitively home-made-like softball field was a ghost-town during the day. The city provided and funded kids’ recreation programs were over, the balls and bats, paddles and playground things were now put away for another season, probably also, like Frankie, just waiting for that first ring of the school bell come merciful September. The dust that day was thick and unsettled, forming atomic bomb-like powder puffs in the air at the slightest disturbance, like when an odd kid or two made a short-cut across the field leaving a trail of baby atomic bomb blasts behind them.

At that early hour the usually softball game-time firm white lines of the base paths were broken, hither and yon, to hell from the previous night's combat, the battle for bragging rights at the old Red Feather gin mill where many fathers, uncles, and older brothers tossed down a few to take the heat and the sting of a hard life away. The paths then awaited some precious manicure from the Parks Department employees, if those public servants could fight their own lassitude in that heat. And Frankie thought to himself while they were at it they should put some time, some serious patchwork time, fixing the ever-sagging, splintered, rotted out wooden bleachers that served to corral a crowd on a hot summer’s night. He had to laugh when he thought about the condition of the playing field and about how if the base-path work was not done, not to worry, the guys who played their damned, loud-noised, argue, argue loudly, over every play with the ever blind umpire, softball game under the artificial night lights, if he knew  them and he did since his father was a player, knew the grooves and ridges of the surfaces of the base paths like the backs of their hands, so nobody needed to fret about them.

This field, this Welcome Young Field, by the way, was not just any field, but a field overflowing, torrentially overflowing, with all kinds of August memories, and June and July memories too. Maybe other months as well but those months come readily to mind, hot, sticky, sultry summer mind. Need I remind anyone, at least any Atlantic denizen of a certain age, of the annual Fourth of July celebrations that took place center stage there as far back as misty memory recalls. The mad, frenetic, survival-of-the-fittest dashes for ice cream, the crushed-up lines (boys and girls, separately ) for tonic (a.k.a. soda, with names like Nehi, grape and orange, and Hires Root Beer for good measure, for those too young to remember that New England-ism and those brand names), the foot races won by the swift and sure-footed (Frankie said he almost won one once but “ran out of gas” just before the finish), the baby-carriage parade, and the much anticipated, ride on a real, if tired, old pony, and other foolery and frolic as we paid homage to those who fought, and bled, for the Republic. Maybe, maybe paid homage that is. A lot of the reason for celebrating part gets mixed up with the ice cream and tonic. (Remember: that’s soda).

Hell, even that little-used, usually glass-strewn but for the occasion Parks Department cleaned-up asphalt-floored tennis court on the corner got a workout as a dance/talent show venue, jerrybuilt stage platform and all. Every 1960s local American Idol wanna-be, misty Rosemary Clooney/McGuire Sisters-like 1940s Come On To My House, Paper Dolls torch singer jumped, literally, on stage to grab the mike and "fifteen minutes (or less) of fame." Needless to say every smoky-voiced male crooner who could make that jump got up there as well, fighting, fighting like a demon for that five dollar first prize, or whatever the payoff was. Later as it got dark, tunes, misty tunes of course, some of them already heard from those "rising stars" like some ill-fated encore, wafted in the night time air from some local band when the Fourth of July turned to adult desires come sundown after we kids had gorged, completely gorged, and feverishly exhausted, ourselves. That story, the dark night, stars-are- out, moony-faced, he looking for she, she looking for he, and the rest of it, (I don’t have to draw you a diagram, do I?), awaits its own chronicler. I’m just here to tell Frankie’s story and at shy fourteen that ain’t part of it.

This next thing is part of the story, though. In this field, this bedlam field, as Frankie recently reminded me, later, after Fourth Of July celebrations became just kid’s stuff for us, and kind of lame kid’s stuff at that, we had our first, not so serious crushes on those glamorous-seeming, fresh-faced, shapely-figured, sweetly-smiling and icily-remote college girls, or at least older girls, who were employed by the Parks Department to teach us kids crafts and stuff in the summer programs.  And more to the point had our first serious crushes on the so serious, so very serious, girls, our school classmates no less, determined to show Frankie, Frankie of all people, up in the craft-creating (spiffy gimp wrist band-making, pot-holder-for-Ma-making, copper-etching, etc.) department when everyone knew, or should have known, Frankie was just letting those girls “win” for his own “evil” designs. And maybe me, maybe I let them "win" too, although I will plead amnesia on this one. Now that I think of it I might have tried that ruse on the girls myself, there was nothing to it then.

But enough of old, old time flights of fancies. I have to get moving, and moving a little more quickly, if I am ever going to accomplish “my mission,” or ever get Frankie out of that blessed, memory-blessed, sanctified, dusty old ball field, sweaty flaming red railroad man’s handkerchief and all. I‘ll let you know the details of the mission, Frankie's mission that is, as I go along like I told you I would before but it meant, in the first place, that Frankie had to go on this “dog day” August day to Norfolk Downs, or the “Downs” as I heard someone call it once. We always called it just plain, ordinary, vanilla-tinged, one-horse Norfolk Downs. And Frankie had to walk the distance.

He, hot as he was and as hot as it was, was certainly not going to wait for an eternity, or more, for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus from Fields Corner to meander up Hancock Street. Not that Frankie was any stranger to that mode of transportation, to that walking. Frankie, as I know for certain and have no need to plead amnesia on this, has worn down many a pair of heel-broken, sole-thinned shoes (and maybe sneakers too)on the pavements and pathways of this old planet walking out of some forlorn place (or, for that matter, walking into such places). Just take my word for that, okay.

You can take my word for this too. Frankie was now officially (my officially) out of the softball field and walking, walking slowly as befitted the day, past the now also long gone little bus shelter hut as you got up on to Hancock Street near the corner of Kendall Street. You know that old grey, shingled, always needed painting, smelly from some old wino's bottle or something, beat-up, beat-down thing that was supposed to protect you against the weathers while you waited for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus into Boston. Frankie insisted that his observation of that hut be put in here despite the fact that he had had no intention of taking the bus that day as I already told you. He was not even going to step into its shade for a minute to cool off. But get this. We have to go through this hut business because, if you can believe this, that lean-to had "symbolic" meaning. Apparently every time this know-it-all pseudo-“beatnik,” long pants, heavy shirt and all, had a beef with his mother (and, you know, let’s not kid each other, when the deal went down, the beef was ALWAYS with Ma in those pre-“parenting-sharing” days) he sought shelter against life’s storms there, before caving into whatever non-negotiable demands Ma insisted on.  But enough, already.

Well, if you get, or rather, if back then if you got on to Hancock Street, down at the far end of the Welcome Young Field and were heading for Norfolk Downs you had to pass the old high school just a few blocks up on your journey. Just past the old Merit gas station. That gas station (now Hess at that location) had been the scene of memories, Frankie memories and mine too. But those are later high school gas-fumed, oil-drenched, tire-changed, under-the hood-fixated, car-crazy dreams; looking out at the (hopefully) starless be-bop ocean night; looking out for the highway of no return to the same old, same old mean streets of beat town; looking for some "high white note" heart of Saturday night or, better, the dreams accumulated from such a night; and, looking, and looking hard, desperately hard for the cloudless, sun-dried, sun-moaning under the weight of the day, low-slung blue pink Western-driven be-bop, bop-bop, sun-devouring sky.  

Do not be scared (okay, okay, afraid) of the thought of having to read about approaching the old high school though, we all did it and most of us survived, I guess. Frankie included. What made that particular journey on that particular day past the old beige-bricked building “special” was that Frankie (and I) had, just a couple of months before, graduated from Atlantic Junior High School (now Atlantic Middle School, as everyone who wants to show how smart and up-to-date they are keeps telling me) and so along with the sweat on his brow from the heat a little bit of anxiety was starting to form in Frankie’s head about being a “little fish in a big pond” freshman come September as he passed by. Especially, a pseudo-beatnik “little fish.”

See, Frankie had cultivated a certain, well, let’s call it "style" over there at Atlantic. That “style” involved a total disdain for everything, everything except trying to impress girls with his long-panted, flannel-shirted, work boot-shod, thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to humankind. Like that really was the way to impress teenage girls, then or now. In any case he was worried, worried sick at times, that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading. Let’s not even get into that story now, or maybe, ever. Like I said we survived.

Frankie  nevertheless pulled himself together enough to push on until he came to the old medieval times -inspired Sacred Heart Catholic Church further up Hancock Street, the church he went to, his church (and mine) in sunnier times. Frankie need not have feared that day as he passed the church quickly, looking furtively to the other side of the street. Whatever demons were to be pushed away that day, or in his life, were looking the other way as well. The boy was on a mission after all, a trusted mission from his grandmother. Fearing some god, fearing some forgotten confession non-confessed venial sin like disobeying your parents, was child’s play compared to facing Grandma’s wrath when things weren’t done, and done right, on the very infrequent special occasions in his clan’s existence. I knew Frank's grandmother and I knew, and everyone else did too, that she was a “saint” but on these matters even god obeyed, or else. This special occasion, by the way, the reason Frank felt compelled to tell me this story, and to have me write it, was the family Labor Day picnic to take place down at Treasure Island across from Wollaston Beach. (That’s what we called it in those days; today it is named after a fallen Marine, Cady Park, or something like that.) This occasion required a food order; a special food order, from Kennedy’s.

And there it was as Frank made the turn from Hancock Street on to Billings Road. You knew Kennedy’s, right? The one right next to the big A&P grocery store back in those days. As Frankie turned on Billings, went down a couple of storefronts and entered that store he had to, literally, walk in through the piled sawdust and occasional peanut shell husks on the gnarled hardwood floor. At once his senses were attacked by the smells of freshly- ground coffee, a faint whiff of peanut butter being ground up, and of strong cheeses aging. He noticed a couple of other customers ahead of him and that he would have to wait, impatiently.

He had also noticed that the single employee, a friendly clerk, was weighing a tub of butter for a matronly housewife, while a young mother, a couple of kids in tow, was trying, desperately, to keep them away from the cracker barrel and the massive dill pickle jar. The butter weighed and packaged the matronly women spoke out the rest of her order; half pound of cheese, thinly sliced, a pound of bologna, not too thin; a third of a pound of precious ham, very thinly sliced; and, the thing that made our boy pay attention, a pound of the famous house homemade potato salad, Kennedy's potato salad.

Frankie winced, hoping that there would be enough of that manna left so that he could fill his order. That, above all else, was why he was a man on a mission on that day. Something about the almost paper thin-sliced, crunchy potatoes, the added vinegar or whatever elixir was put in the mix that made any picnic for him, whatever other treats might surface. Hey, I was crazy over it too. Who do you think got Frank "hip" to the stuff  anyway? Not to worry though, there was plenty left and our boy carried his bundled order triumphantly out of the door, noticing the bigger crowds going in and out of the A&P with their plastic sheathed, pre-packaged deli meats, their tinny-tasting canned goods, their sullen potato salad, probably yesterday’s, and their expressionless fast exit faces. Obviously they had not been on any mission, not any special mission anyway, just another shopping trip. No, thank you, not today to all of that. Today Frankie’s got the real stuff.

“Wait a minute,” I can hear patient readers, impatiently moaning. This madman of a Frankie story-teller has taken us, hither and yon, on some seemingly cryptic mission on behalf of an old friend, under threat or otherwise, through the sweat-drenched heat of summer, through the really best forgotten miseries of teenage-hood, and through the timeless dust and grime of vacant ball fields. He has regaled us with talk of ancient misty Fourth of July celebrations, the sexual longings of male teenagers, the anxieties of fitting in at a new school, and some off-hand remarks about religion. And for what, just to give us some twisted Proustian culinary odyssey about getting a pound of potato salad, famous or not, for grandmother. Well, yes. But hear me out. You don’t know the end. I swear Frank said this to me, shaking off the heat of the day on which he told me the story with a clean white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his light-weight suit jacket. After that purposeful journey Frankie said the horrible heat of that day didn’t seem so bad after all. That comment, my friends, made it all worth the telling.

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

And this one is sent out by request from Peter Paul to Frankie and speaks to his raging need to get out of the old neighborhood… 

 

 

*** Once Again -Legendary Folk- Singer And Archivist Pete Seeger Passes at 94…

 

 

 

There were more profound influences on my folk music appreciation in the early 1960s than Pete Seeger like say the early Bob Dylan. In short the ability to recite from memory the lines from Dylan’s Positively Fourth Street or Like A Rolling Stone to the straight long-haired folkie girls in Harvard Square that I was fatally attracted to rather than say Pete’s Where Have All The Flowers Gone?  gave me more traction. There were more memorable songs than Pete’s that I heard when I first came to folk music after listening to Dave Von Ronk’s Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies. Ditto on the traction. But the transmission belt for all of that folk tradition, all of that after Woody Guthrie’s health failed him, was one Pete Seeger. That is a worthy epitaph for a man who gave the genre his all. RIP-Pete

***Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- The Teen Queens’ Eddy My Love (1956) - For Those Who Waited By The Midnight Phone

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

My old friend Peter Paul Markin has kept incessantly reminding me that he has “allowed” me to be a guest commentator on his various blog sites in order for me to share my political perspectives with the cyberspace universe, such as it is. And normally I would agree with that orientation since his sites (and his lifelong interests in “seeking a newer world” as he calls it) are noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world. I though, occasionally, like to investigate the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II 1950s be-bop cultural expression meet, and that interplay has increasingly drawn some of my interest over the past several years.

The most enduring example of that interest of mine is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, “good woman on your mind”, city or country, hard Delta cotton fields working, hard drinking, hard Saturday night shack up Sunday morning repentant, church repentant blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly early 1960s protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set me, us, the generation of ’68, off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing “oldies but goodies” demographically-attuned CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived, and what we listened to back in the day. Okay Peter Paul?

**********

Come closer, will you, because I have got a story to tell. Come on over here and get away from that midnight phone waiting and maybe put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story, Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, or 2000s teens except for the newer techno-gadgets ways to wait, to wait that midnight call that are different, well, well there you have it.

And let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public prints 1950s story (although maybe in some North Beach, Greenwich Village small print, exotic, erotic small press back door scenario).

And let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to.

And let’s make it a winter night, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…

And let’s make it, oh the hell with that, let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along:

I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. Her Eddie’s flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.

Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. Yes, I know the story because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after leaving school with her head down, arriving home with her head moping down even more after the mailman came.

Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a mantrap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up if I tell it my way. Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge:

“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.

Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes car but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Eddie John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,

Eddie gave Sue the “once over,” like guys will do automatically, even though I secretly thrill to know that that once over was just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me, We talked, idle talk, sex in the air talk, but don’t talk it straight out about it talk, still talk a lot for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean charm too.

Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. I left Sue at her house. Truce still, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Eddie John Cooper and that cherry ’55 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was supposed to have a “date”, some donk poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I closed that cherry red door.

And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me everything.

Late August came as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.

I started crying; crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day.”

Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie had done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that.

But Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Eddie John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, no Eddie, well, enough of that, let's just say Eddie’s moved on.

Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. Betty then why don’t you call up your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone.

EDDIE MY LOVE

(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956

The Fontane Sisters - 1956

The Chordettes - 1956

Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

Also recorded by:

Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

Eddie, my love, I love you so

How I wanted for you, you'll never know

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Eddie, please write me one line

Tell me your love is still only mine

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

(Transcribed from the Teen Queens

recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)

 

***All Politics Is Local-Russell Crowe’s Broken City- A Film Review

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Broken City, starring Russell Crowe, Mark Wahlberg, Catherine Zeta-Jones, 20^th Century Fox, 2013

The late Massachusetts Democratic Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O’Neil, was always fond of saying that all politics was local, meaning, perhaps, that the great struggling issues of the day did not mean a thing if some constituent’s potholed street was not paved. The truth of that proposition, if it ever was true, has certainly been eclipsed on the national and international levels by the huge increase in media technology’s ability to create messages and sway opinions. The one place that Tip statement may still retain some validity is, well, at the local level, at the level of city politics. And that premise was on display in the film under review, Broken City, although one could argue that the city involved, New York City, as an international city would conform to that latter statement.

So be it, though the story line of this film pits an old-time machine up from the ward- heeler ranks to the mayor’s office politician played by Russell Crowe against a wet behind the ears reformer. His honor is up for a tough reelection campaign against that same inevitable clay-footed liberal reformer. So every trick in the urban politician’s handbook comes into play. That and a little murder, mayhem, and dirty tricks. Just like the doctor ordered. Except this film is billed as a suspense film and so the plotline has to be developed a little.

His Honor finds that he needs to purchase the services of an ex-cop, a rogue cop, (played by Mark Wahlberg) who after being pushed off the force for using excessive force became a private operative with a specialty in keyhole peeping. Seems that, on the surface anyway, the Mayor was trying to find out about who his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) was having an affair with behind his back and thus placing him in an awkward political position with Election Day right around the corner. And so our key-hole peeper does his work, does it well, except a guy, the supposed lover who also is the campaign manager for that reform candidate eating into the Mayor’s gravy train is murdered right in front of his house, an obvious political “hit” job.

Of course that event turned things on their heads since our key-hole peeper was set-up by the Mayor to be the fall guy, and/or patsy to the real grift, a huge pot of gold for the Mayor and his cronies with the turning of a low-rent neighborhood into a high- rise city skyline playground for the Mayfair swells. Despite the reform candidate, despite the ordered murder, despite the graft and corruption come Election Day the Mayor wins. Except in the background our hero private operative gets the goods on the Mayor’s deal, fills in the dots, and His Honor is finally led off to his just desserts. Yeah, you know Tip might have been right even, maybe especially about New Jack City, follow the money, all politics is local on that score.                 

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The 1960s Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-The Complete Stories

February Is Black History Month 

Two-A Job Of One’s Own

Leon Coleman was worried, worried sick, when he heard rumors that due to the world oil situation, whatever that was, although as a practical matter he knew that meant higher gas prices at the pump and more shell out for ways to get around, get around in cars, the main way, including him, people got around in America. The reason that Leon Coleman was worried, and rightly so, was that the world oil situation would determine whether he had a job or not, at least a good-paying union wage job or not. Whether people would still buy new cars every few years. See Leon worked the line, the assembly line, over at Dodge Main in Detroit (really Hamtramck, over in Polack town) yes, that famous Dodge Main from a few years back, around 1971, when some brothers, some righteous black brothers mainly, closed the place down over some cracker foreman’s racist slurs and stuff like hiring brothers in the skilled trades jobs to get them the hell off of the damn assembly line. And he had reason to worry as well because he had just come off of a short lay-off about eight months back and since he was as they say “last hired” (having only worked at the plant a couple of years altogether) he would again be among the “first fired.” An old story, an old black story as far as he knew but he didn’t have anything in particular to back that view up since most of his people had come north from Mississippi a while back and they had always had plenty, too plenty, of back-breaking hot sun work to do on some Mister’s plantation. At least he never had to suffer that fate, tough as the line was, tough as it was when they kept speeding the damn thing up.

All Leon Coleman knew was it was tough to be a black man, a young black man, trying to make something of himself. Maybe just being a man was tough, especially a man with family and a woman with wanting habits, he wouldn’t argue that, but the way the deal went down when things went wrong, anything from the world oil situation to get kicked off the job first a black man had a burden. Yah, the damn thing was stacked against a black man. Hell, he could understand why those brothers said enough a few years back (although as a “new hire” right after that time he was told to, and did, stay clear of any revolutionary brother stuff, including that handshake thing he had never quite got the hang of) and argued that the way workers were hired and fired (okay, laid-off but it felt like being fired) had to be changed, that black men (and women too since they were starting to hire more woman for some quota thing) should not have to be the “fall guy.” And just that minute he could see where they were right back then, although little good it would do him.

Little good too it would do him with wifey, Alberta, sweet Alberta with her child-wanting ways, harping on him about starting a family. Jesus, lord. As he thought about what loomed ahead he thought back to the days before he got his first serious job at the auto plant (before then for real jobs as a teenager he had worked in a low-rent car wash and flipped a few burgers at different places but mainly he didn’t work) when he was “running the streets” with his corner boys, stealing stuff, midnight stealing stuff, a couple of armed robberies (never picked up for though)the end, dealing dope (and sniffing to, bad stuff, dealing and sniffing too, because you take too many chances when you are dope-addled), dealing dope to high heaven (and picking up a couple of arrests in the pursuit). It was the last arrest, the last arrest when they were going to step him off for a few years at state prison that his mother (father, Leon too, long gone, a Mississippi rocking stone, whereabouts unknown) stepped in, made some connection with a union rep relative to get the auto job, made a deal with the judge, and he walked, as long as he kept clean. And he had, and Alberta, whatever her wanting ways, had made sure of that, after they had met at some whiskey joint out on Six Mile Road. So he harnessed himself to the work, kept straight during that lay-off time and grabbed all the overtime he could when he got back. He just wished he it wasn’t so tough being a black man, a young black man, and that he had a job that he could call his own …

 

Ten Point Program[edit]

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[43][44]
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.