***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven

 

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, comment and question:

How much did it cost for a gallon of gasoline in 1964? In the interest of "speaking" to the wider North Adamsville Graduate audience that might pick this comment up on Facebook just pick your year of graduation and guess from there.

 Oil at $100 a barrel. Gasoline over three dollars per gallon at the pump (remember this is being written in September, 2013 in case you pick this up later). No, do not worry, this is not intended to be the start of a political screed about the need to bring the “Seven Sisters” oil monopolists to heel or to break up the international oil cartels, although those are very good ideas. At the beginning of this series of commentaries about the old days in North Adamsville I promised that I would not be political, at least not overtly so. So that is political aspect is no help here. All I want to ask today is whether, through the mist of time, you remember how much gasoline cost when you went to "fill 'er up" in high school.

Now this question requires some honesty on your part. Please, no Googling the Quincy Patriot Ledger or The Boston Globe to search their archives of the time. Nor should you use a graphic calculator to factor back the effect of the rate of inflation on oil since 1964 to come up with an answer. Dear readers, this is not some torturous calculus problem. What you basically need to do is to remember some numbers from when you were daydreaming out the window in study hall at old North Adamsville High. Maybe in between thinking away the hours about that certain she (or he) a couple of rows over and how, well, how you would like to get acquainted with her (or him) or what was up for Saturday when your true corner boy “boss man,” Sid Hemmings, came by to pick you up in his “boss” (hence the Boss Man nickname) ’57 Chevy and you went “cruising” into the great teenage Adamsville Beach night. Or maybe you spotted those numbers when you went out the door, assuming you survived opening that fortress-like door while still thinking about that certain she (or he) whom you almost had enough courage to talk to after class today but only got to a meaningful look, onto Hancock Street after school.

What is this guy talking about with all these study hall and looking out the window references? Just this. Unless you were a total grind and always had your nose in a book then the answer merely requires that you had looked out the window. Directly across the street, Hancock Street, from the school were two gas stations (I believe somewhere near the mass transportation depot parking lot and the MacDonald's are now if you have been in the old town recently) that were always in competition with each other. They, and I am not making this up for I do not have such a vivid imagination, actually were having very public price wars to bring in customers by REDUCING the price of their gas. But enough hints. Your answers, please?

No comment on the 1964 North Adamsville gas wars night would be complete without reference to the manner in which we got the dough to pay for said gas. A lot of kids then got it from mom or pop reflecting the more affluence post-World War II times when the old parents has enough dough to spare for a kid to own his or her own car, and have a gas money allowance to boot. Even in working class North Adamsville. Others, like me and most of my corner boys, my Salducci’s Pizza Parlor night corner boys, walked, hitchhiked or borrowed the “old man’s” car (or that of an older brother) for a be-bop Saturday night romp. That is until I met up with the “Boss Man” mentioned above. Sid Hemming’s, who lived just down the end of my dead-end street, had a ’57 Chevy that he was always working on (and when he wasn’t working on it was riding around, usually with a bevy of girls before the night was over, down that now famous Adamsville Beach night).

For a couple of years he took me in tow. The price, well the price was that I was “in charge” of filling up his tank when it was empty. In short, paying for gas to be “cool.” Since I was poorer than a church mouse and never heard of such a thing as an allowance until somebody told me about them that meant taking my hard-earned money from caddying up at the local private golf course to fill the damn thing. And those golfer guys whether they had dough or not, and they usually did, were cheap when it came caddie pay-off time. A primer in capitalist economics, I guess. So you know, roughly, that gas could not have cost too much. Still, you are duty-bound to guess.

Of course, buying the gas got me nothing when it came to the girls the filled the other seats of Sid’s souped-up car. Well usually got me nothing, that is. See they, most of them prime A-one foxes, only had eyes for Sid, or more correctly Sid’s ’57 Chevy. Hell they were one in the same. Now Sid, whatever his mechanical wizard abilities with an automobile motor were, and I will be kind here, had nothing for looks. Even “cute” was a stretch. And even more of a stretch was that “cute” when Sid was seriously into his auto repair work and smelled of oils, cigarettes and whiskey. Still the girls (read: young women) actually came up to him looking for a ride and, well, just leave it as and. The way it worked is that once the car filled up with girls I was out the door. No problem, well no problem on those few occasions when he left me down at the beach (Adamsville Beach, if you didn’t know), with one of his “cast-offs”. A cast-off being something like some older girl’s sister whom she was kind stuck baby-sitting for and wanted to ditch to have a minute’s passion with Sid, or so that is what I heard they were doing. All I know is that I could hear that old Chevy roaring down the end of the street with Sid at the wheel and one last “pick of the evening” sitting tight next to him. Ya, that was Sid’s way, always Sid’s way.

P.S. For later, post-North Adamsville MBTA station graduates, you are left to your own resources about finding the gas prices.

 

***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