This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Monday, February 17, 2014
NCPCF
Vol.
IV-Issue No. 240
NEWS DIGEST
Friday,
February 14, 2014
'Civil
Freedoms for All'
“It is
my conviction that if
we are neutral in situations of injustice, we
have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu
,
President Barack Obama urged Congress to pass "Fast Track" legislation (click here to find out more about "Fast Track") to insure
that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), will become law. The TPP is
an agreement between the U.S. and eleven other countries to give multinational
corporations elevated powers over people and elected governmental bodies in
their relentless pursuit of profit.
In addition to attending the forum,
please call your representative and our U.S. Senators to tell them to vote no on
the "Bipartisan Trade Promotion Act" HR
3830, S 1900.) Click here for phone information.
The TPP has 29 chapters only 5 of which directly concern trade. The other
chapters establish investor rights for the large corporations and are designed
to protect their right to maximize profit from democratically determined
policies, regulations, and laws. Labor rights, jobs, food safety, environmental
protection, affordable healthcare, internet freedom and democratic decision
making are all put at risk by these provisions. The risk of war may also be
increased
The TPP itself has been negotiated entirely in secret from the pu blic,
press, and even members of Congress. At the same time representatives of
more than 600 American Corporations have been intimately involved in the
negotiations to increase corporate power and profit. To learn more about the TPP amd Fast Track
Sunday, February 23, 2:00 pm -
4:00 pm
SEIU Local 32BJ, District
615
26 West Street, Boston
MA
Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership
today! Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or
$10 for student/unemployed/low income. Members vote for leadership and
endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions. Donate now and you will be a member
in good standing through December 2014!Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA
02138 617-354-2169 • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter
Chris Hedges to Keynote March 29 CT Civil Liberties Conference
From :
Marilyn Levin <marilynl@alumni.neu.edu>
Sender :
bostonunac@googlegroups.com
Subject :
[BostonUNAC] Chris Hedges to Keynote March 29 CT Civil
Liberties Conference
act-ma <act-ma@act-ma.org>, Joe Gerson
<jgerson@afsc.org>, Arab Calendar
<ArabCalendarBoston@yahoogroups.com>
Reply To :
bostonunac@googlegroups.com
Sat,
Feb 15, 2014 12:19 PM
Boston sponsors include United
for Justice with Peace (UJP) and United National Antiwar Committee
(UNAC).
For car pooling, contact Marilyn
at marilynl@alumni.neu.edu or call 781-316-2018.
Update on Program
for March 29 Conference
Journalist
Chris Hedges to Keynote Chris Hedges is a former New York Times reporter,
Pulitizer-Prize wining journalist, columnist for Truthdig, author of 12 books,
and was a plaintiff in the historic lawsuit “Hedges vs. Obama,” a court
challenge to the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense
Authorization Act. Hedges left the Times shortly after they issued him a formal
reprimand for publicly denouncing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Hedges is the
author of the best-sellers American Fascists: The Christian Right
and the War on America, Death of the Liberal
Class, and War
Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He co-authored with Laila
Al-Arian, Collateral
Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians. His most recent
book is Days of Destruction,
Days of Revolt, a collaboration with comics artist and journalist
Joe Sacco and a brutally honest account of their travels through America’s
“sacrifice zones” — areas of the country that have suffered and decayed as a
result of exploitation in the name of profit and corporate power. Hedges is
currently a senior fellow at the Nation Institute, and has taught at Columbia
University, New York University, and Princeton University. He received his B.A.
in English Literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree
from Harvard University.
Join
us at One
Nation—Under Surveillance
A One-Day Conference about Building
Networks of Solidarity in Defiance of NSA Spying & the
Erosion of Democratic Rights
Saturday,
March 29, 2014 –10:00 a.m Torp Theater, Davidson Hall, Central
Connecticut State University 1615 Stanley Street, New Britain
CT Registration: Solidarity Price: $25;
Non-CCSU Students & Underemployed: $10. Scholarships will be available. CCSU
Students Admitted for Free.
Join
us on March 29, 2014 at Central Connecticut State University for the second
annual state civil liberties conference initiated by the CT Coalition to Stop Indefinite
Detention, the CT American Civil Liberties Union, the CT Council on American
Islamic Relations, and United Action of CT. We will explore the
links between NSA spying, domestic drones, and official Islamophobia, as well as
the policies of mass incarceration and mass deportation that are currently in
place. Sponsors include the Tree of Life Foundation and the United
National Antiwar Coalition. Endorsers include the National Lawyers Guild of CT,
Know Drones, Middle East Crisis Committee, Promoting Enduring Peace, the Norwich
and New London chapters of the NAACP, and the Norwich Area Greeen
Party.
Additional speakers, panelists, and
workshop leaders include:
Robert King, One of the Angola Three.
Robert King is one of the most famous former political prisoners
in the world. He served 29 years in solitary confinement before his conviction
was overturned and was one of a group of three African-American activists
victimized for their political activism as members of the Black Panther Party.
King has spoken before the parliaments of the Netherlands, France, Portugal, and
Indonesia and met with Desmond Tutu.
Hina Shamsi, Director of the American
Civil Liberties National Security Project. The National
Security Project is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies
and practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human
rights. Shamsi has litigated cases upholding the freedoms of speech and
association, and challenging targeted killing, torture, unlawful detention, and
post-9/11 discrimination against racial and religious minorities. She is also a
lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches a course in
international human rights.
Saru Jayaraman, Author of
Behind
the Kitchen Door. Saru Jayaraman
launched the national restaurant workers' organization Restaurant Opportunities
Centers United and documented the undemocratic labor practices of the food
industry, the discrimination that plagues immigrant workers and people of color,
and the relationship of food sovereignty to the full democracy that we have not
yet achieved.
Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the
Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR-MI). CAIR-MI is a chapter of America’s largest advocacy
and civil liberties organization for Muslims based in the hotspot of Detroit, a
city at the epicenter of the attacks on democratic rule. He has been prominent
in the fight against Islamophobia, racial profiling, and border stops. Walid
has appeared on Democracy
Now and is a political blogger for the Detroit
News.
Salvadore Sarmiento, National Day
Laborer Organizing Network. NDLON has been central to the fight
to stop the punitive deportation of over 350,000 persons last year. In a recent
press release NDLON said, “The five years of criminalization the President has
overseen blankets immigrant communities with suspicion and causes people to live
in fear. Until the historic mistake of entwining local police with immigration
enforcement is corrected, the country will face a crisis of safety in our
communities, confidence in the President, and separation in our
families.”
Professor Khalilah Brown-Dean, Author
of Once
Convicted, Forever Doomed: Race, Crime, and Civil Death
(forthcoming, Yale University Press). Dean is an associate professor of
political science at Quinnipiac University and a powerful critic of the system
of mass incarceration. She was also awarded a 2005 Social Science Research Fund
grant for the project: “Fighting From a Powerless Space: The Impact of Crime
Control Policies on Women.”
Lynne Jackson, Project SALAM and the
National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms. Project SALAM and
the NCPF are in the national leadership in the fight against the Orwellian
practice of preemptively prosecuting Muslim-Americans who have committed no
crime and the frame-up of hundreds of law-abiding Muslim-Americans as part of
the so-called War on Terror. Jackson recently led the Journey for Justice
across New York state in defense of Yassin Aref, an Albany imam entrapped by the
FBI whose case is described in Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and
Muslim Entrapment After 9/11. What You Can Do Right Now to
Help! √ Get your organization to be listed
as a gold sponsor & give $500. √ Get your organization to be listed
as a sponsor & give $100 (table included). √ Get your organization to be listed
as an endorser & give $50(table included). √ Be listed as an individual
providing a scholarship for a student or underemployed attendee for
$25. √ Reserve a literature table for
$25. √ Forward publicity to your lists and
friends. Friend this event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/746161628745630/?ref=2&ref_dashboard_filter=calendar Send checks made out to the CT
Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention, c/o Nancy Bowden, at 7 Scotland Rd.,
Bloomfield CT 06002, 860-212-9596 or register/donate online via credit card
For
more information, contact Isa Mujahid at imujahid@acluct.org 860-471-8473, Daniel Adam at
860-985-4576, or Mo This is a Text Block. Use this to provide
text...
Update on Program
for March 29 Conference
Chris Hedges to Keynote
Chris
Hedges is a former New York Times reporter, Pulitizer-Prize wining journalist,
columnist for Truthdig, author of 12 books, and was a plaintiff in the historic
lawsuit “Hedges vs. Obama,” a court challenge to the indefinite detention
provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act. Hedges left the Times
shortly after they issued him a formal reprimand for publicly denouncing the
2003 invasion of Iraq. Hedges is the author of the best-sellers American Fascists: The Christian Right
and the War on America, Death of the Liberal
Class, and War
Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He co-authored with Laila
Al-Arian, Collateral
Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians. His most recent
book is Days of Destruction,
Days of Revolt, a collaboration with comics artist and journalist
Joe Sacco and a brutally honest account of their travels through America’s
“sacrifice zones” — areas of the country that have suffered and decayed as a
result of exploitation in the name of profit and corporate power. Hedges is
currently a senior fellow at the Nation Institute, and has taught at Columbia
University, New York University, and Princeton University. He received his B.A.
in English Literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree
from Harvard University.
Join us at
One
Nation—Under Surveillance A One-Day Conference about
Building Networks of Solidarityin Defiance of NSA Spying &
the Erosion of Democratic Rights
Saturday, March 29, 2014 –10:00
a.m Torp Theater, Davidson Hall, Central
Connecticut State University 1615 Stanley Street, New Britain
CT
Registration: Solidarity Price: $25;
Non-CCSU Students & Underemployed: $10. Scholarships will be available. CCSU
Students Admitted for Free.
Join us on March 29,
2014 at Central Connecticut State University for the second annual state civil
liberties conference initiated by the CT Coalition to Stop Indefinite
Detention, the CT American Civil Liberties Union, the CT Council on American
Islamic Relations, and United Action of CT. We will explore the
links between NSA spying, domestic drones, and official Islamophobia, as well as
the policies of mass incarceration and mass deportation that are currently in
place. Sponsors include the Tree of Life Foundation and the United
National Antiwar Coalition. Endorsers include the National Lawyers Guild of CT,
Know Drones, Middle East Crisis Committee, Promoting Enduring Peace, the Norwich
and New London chapters of the NAACP, and the Norwich Area Greeen
Party.
Additional speakers, panelists, and
workshop leaders include:
Robert King, One of the Angola Three.
Robert King is one of the most famous former political prisoners
in the world. He served 29 years in solitary confinement before his conviction
was overturned and was one of a group of three African-American activists
victimized for their political activism as members of the Black Panther Party.
King has spoken before the parliaments of the Netherlands, France, Portugal, and
Indonesia and met with Desmond Tutu.
Hina Shamsi, Director of the American
Civil Liberties National Security Project. The National
Security Project is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies
and practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human
rights. Shamsi has litigated cases upholding the freedoms of speech and
association, and challenging targeted killing, torture, unlawful detention, and
post-9/11 discrimination against racial and religious minorities. She is also a
lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches a course in
international human rights.
Saru Jayaraman, Author of
Behind
the Kitchen Door. Saru Jayaraman
launched the national restaurant workers' organization Restaurant Opportunities
Centers United and documented the undemocratic labor practices of the food
industry, the discrimination that plagues immigrant workers and people of color,
and the relationship of food sovereignty to the full democracy that we have not
yet achieved.
Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the
Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR-MI). CAIR-MI is a chapter of America’s largest advocacy
and civil liberties organization for Muslims based in the hotspot of Detroit, a
city at the epicenter of the attacks on democratic rule. He has been prominent
in the fight against Islamophobia, racial profiling, and border stops. Walid
has appeared on Democracy
Now and is a political blogger for the Detroit
News.
Salvadore Sarmiento, National Day
Laborer Organizing Network. NDLON has been central to the fight
to stop the punitive deportation of over 350,000 persons last year. In a recent
press release NDLON said, “The five years of criminalization the President has
overseen blankets immigrant communities with suspicion and causes people to live
in fear. Until the historic mistake of entwining local police with immigration
enforcement is corrected, the country will face a crisis of safety in our
communities, confidence in the President, and separation in our
families.”
Professor Khalilah Brown-Dean, Author
of Once
Convicted, Forever Doomed: Race, Crime, and Civil Death
(forthcoming, Yale University Press). Dean is an associate professor of
political science at Quinnipiac University and a powerful critic of the system
of mass incarceration. She was also awarded a 2005 Social Science Research Fund
grant for the project: “Fighting From a Powerless Space: The Impact of Crime
Control Policies on Women.”
Lynne Jackson, Project SALAM and the
National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms. Project SALAM and
the NCPF are in the national leadership in the fight against the Orwellian
practice of preemptively prosecuting Muslim-Americans who have committed no
crime and the frame-up of hundreds of law-abiding Muslim-Americans as part of
the so-called War on Terror. Jackson recently led the Journey for Justice
across New York state in defense of Yassin Aref, an Albany imam entrapped by the
FBI whose case is described in Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and
Muslim Entrapment After 9/11. What You Can Do Right Now to
Help! √ Get your organization to be listed
as a gold sponsor & give $500. √ Get your organization to be listed
as a sponsor & give $100 (table included). √ Get your organization to be listed
as an endorser & give $50(table included). √ Be listed as an individual
providing a scholarship for a student or underemployed attendee for
$25. √ Reserve a literature table for
$25. √ Forward publicity to your lists and
friends. Friend this event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/746161628745630/?ref=2&ref_dashboard_filter=calendar Send checks made out to the CT
Coalition to Stop Indefinite Detention, c/o Nancy Bowden, at 7 Scotland Rd.,
Bloomfield CT 06002, 860-212-9596 or register/donate online via credit card
For
more information, contact Isa Mujahid at imujahid@acluct.org 860-471-8473, Daniel Adam at
860-985-4576, or
Mo
THE COMMUNITY CHURCH OF BOSTON SUNDAY SPEAKERS FORUM presents...
Sunday, February 16, 2013
11:00am JEFF PERRY "On Hubert Harrison"
Hubert Henry Harrison (April 27, 1883 – December 17, 1927) was a West Indian-American writer, orator, educator, critic, and radical socialist political activist based in Harlem, New York. He was described by activist A. Philip Randolph as “the father of Harlem radicalism” and by the historian Joel Augustus Rogers as “the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time.” John G. Jackson of American Atheists described him as “The Black Socrates“. An immigrant from St. Croix at age 17, Harrison played significant roles in the largest radical class and race movements in the United States. In 1912-14 he was the leading Black organizer in the Socialist Party of America. In 1917 he founded the Liberty League and The Voice, the first organization and the first newspaper of the race-conscious “New Negro” movement.
Jeffrey B. Perry is an independent, working-class scholar formally educated at Princeton, Harvard, Rutgers, and Columbia. His work focuses on the role of white supremacy as a retardant to progressive social change and on the centrality of struggle against white supremacy to progressive social change. For almost forty years Perry has been active in the working class movement as a rank-and-file worker and as a union shop steward, officer, editor, and retiree. He has also been involved in domestic and international social justice issues including affirmative action, union democracy, and anti-apartheid, anti-war, and anti-imperialist work.
Community Church of Boston
565 Boylston St. (Copley Square) www.communitychurchofboston.org
************* LUNCH ON SUNDAYS, 12:30PM
On Sunday after our morning programs, we have lunch with one another prepared by our cook Luis Alonso Guzman. Enjoy a delicious lunch with friends! A small contribution is requested to help cover lunch expenses.
************* DIRECTIONS/PARKING
The Community Church is located at 565 Boylston Street in Copley Square, between Dartmouth and Clarendon Streets.
Parking is available on Sunday mornings at the Back Bay Garage (entrances on Clarendon Street or St. James Ave.). We can provide a discount coupon and you will be charged $5.00 for 3 hours of parking.
By public transportation, take the Green line to Copley or take the Orange line to Back Bay station. Community Church is a 2-minute walk from either station.
************* A PEACE AND JUSTICE CONGREGATION SINCE 1920
The Community Church of Boston is a free community united for the study and practice of universal religion, seeking to apply ethical ideals to individual life and the democratic and cooperative principle to all forms of social and economic life.
************* FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT US
Boston, Mass. - February 14, 2014 -
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) groups will march in South
Boston on March 16 ----- not in the traditional parade ----- but in the
welcoming and inclusive Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade, that follows the first
parade on the same parade route, organized by Veterans For Peace.
For the forth year in a row, LGBT Groups
will march in the Saint Patrick’s Peace Parade in South Boston. “Some day these
walls of exclusion and division will come tumbling down, said Carisa Cunningham,
the Director of Public Affairs for the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders
(GLAD). It will be a proud day for the City of Boston when one’s sexual
orientation is not a litmus test for who can participate in a parade”.
Veterans For Peace is organizing what
parade organizers call the only “Peace Parade” in the country.
Cole Harrison, Executive Director of Mass. Peace Action, one of the organizing
groups stated that the Peace Parade is energizing, with great music, great
messages and just a lot of fun for everyone”.
The Allied War Veterans Council (AWVC),
the group that runs the traditional Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, has again
snubbed the LGBT community and Veterans For Peace. Mayor Marty Walsh has
attempted to negotiate an acceptable compromise with the AWVC with no results as
of today. Mayor Walsh, as his predecessor before him, has announced that he will
not walk in the traditional parade because of the parade’s exclusionary
practices.
For the past four years Veterans For
Peace has organized their own alternative welcoming and inclusive parade after
being denied to walk in the traditional parade in 2011. “We have never been
denied permission to walk in any parade except for this parade”, stated Pat
Scanlon, the Coordinator for Veterans For Peace for the greater Boston area and
principal organizer of the Peace Parade. “I am a decorated Vietnam Veteran, with
seventeen years of Catholic education, born on Saint Patrick’s Day and I can’t
walk in their parade because my fellow veterans and I stand for peace. That is
shameful and the exclusion an embarrassment to this great city”. “Bravo” said
Scanlon, “to the new mayor of Boston Marty Walsh for standing on principal and
announcing that he will not walk in the traditional parade unless LGBT groups
can march under their own banners”. “It is 2014 and time for these
antiquated divisive practices to come to an end,” added Scanlon. “We hope every
politician follows Mayor Walsh’s lead and not participate in the first parade
until every group who wants to celebrate Saint Patrick and the proud Irish
traditions can”.
This year will be quite different.
Street sweepers, that for the past three years have been placed behind the first
parade, dispersing onlookers, will now be behind the Saint Patrick’s Peace
Parade allowing all the revelers in Southie to see and hear both parades.
Scanlon added, “it is our hope that someday there will be one, welcoming,
inclusive parade in South Boston, with everyone invited to celebrate Saint
Patrick and the proud Irish traditions. Sadly, that probably will not happen
this year maybe next”.
St Pats - Open Letter to Residents of Boston.doc 81 KB
St Pat's -Press Release 2-16-14.doc 70 KB
Sunday, February 16, 2014
The Great Strike: The Miners' Strike of 1984-5 and Its Lessons
This is a timely addition to the Marxists' Internet Archive - an excellent book written by Alex Callinicos and Mike Simons just after the great miners' strike in Britain which began thirty years ago next month. Mike Simons was a journalist on Socialist Worker who covered this mass strike at the time, and is also involved with the making of a new film about the strike, (Still) The Enemy Within - a film which will form the backdrop of a conference in London on 8 March - and will be shown in full for the first time at this years' Marxism festival in July.
Edited to add: A recent review of the book by Resolute Readerhere
***Out In The 1950s B-Film Noir Night- William Berke’s Roaring City
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Roaring City, starring Huge Beaumont, directed by William Berke, 1951
Not every Frisco private detective got the high profile, potentially lucrative, cases a shamus like Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade got chasing skirts, fists and bullets, and some damn bird, a bird who turned out to be the stuff of dreams. Or had Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles Philip Marlowe’s luck wrapping himself around some wild twist of a General Sternwood’s daughter while trying to placate an old man’s shattered dreams, and bringing a little rough justice to this wicked old world by bringing one gangster Eddie Mars down to the ground. Some operatives like our gumshoe Dennis O’Brien in the film under review, Roaring City, got the leavings, the stuff Spade (and even the late Miles Archer, his partner) and Marlowe left for the amateurs and part-timers.
Yes, O’Brien was spending most of his waking hours trying to make his coffee and cakes on the side by renting out boats in the Frisco Bay day when he got a couple of calls, a couple of cases, for cheap dough, a couple of skirt chases and plenty of fists in the face for his efforts. Let me tell you about them.
First off our boy grabbed a couple of hundred buck (well only a hundred since the rest was supposed to be paid on completion, a completion that never occurred once the client turned up dead, very dead) for a case he really wanted no part of but the rent was due, he was bored, or some other reason known only to him.The client; a local boxing promoter who just for that cheap dough wanted O’Brien to place some bets with the bookies against his “champ.”
Now nobody over the age of twelve believes that the pugilistic arts are anything but rigged but it was pretty raw for a guy to bet against his own man so openly (it seemed everybody in the Bay Area knew what was going down-except the cops). And naturally the promoter got his just rewards in the end for sullying the name of the game. Of course, as well, a twist was in the way working for a low-down bookie looking to make a big score. No dice. But along the way to “no dice” O’Brien suffered multiple fists, murders done (with him as the fall guy to take the rap), and an off-hand kiss or too from that twist (don’t worry our boy unlike Sam Spade will not go through hoops for a dame, no way, although he can handle that kissing part just fine). No question though this is one key-hole peeper who earned his damn one- hundred dollars.
So did our shop-worn private eye learn anything from that cheapjack experience.No.Next up O’Brien tangled with a scheme hatched up by a couple of femmes, Irma and her step-daughter Sylvia, for cheap dough (a measly one-hundred bucks). Tangled up too with fists, bullets and piled up bodies. But what can a guy, any guy and not just low-rent private detectives, expect when he tangles with femmes. The idea was that O’Brien was paid to be “married” to Sylvia to avoid retribution from an old gangster lover who was now back in the country after being on the lam for a while. Said Sylvia had fallen in love with another guy named Fallon and she doesn’t want him hurt.
Of course that is just the cock and bull cover story. The real deal was if that gangster lover went to his final reward before the femme then she got to cash in thirty-thousand dollars’ worth of bonds that he has stashed away (yeah, I know, tip money today and not really much then either-no enough to get three guys killed over). That is where the second femme, Irma, came in and gummed up the works. She was just a greedy little hustler who killed Fallon, the lover that O’Brien was standing in for. In reaction Sylvia killed her gangster lover and his gunsel thinking they had done her beau Fallon in.
Yes a mess, no question. And the fall guy all set to take the frame. Well, you know who. But you also know Mrs. O’Brien did not raise a fool and so he was not ready for any big step-off just because of some daft scheme by some chiseling femmes and so he walked away clean after delivering the ladies to their just step-off rewards. Leaving O’Brien, well leaving O’Brien wishing like hell that Sam’s Brigit had showed up at his door looking for a jewel-encrusted bird. Or maybe Philip’s leavings, twisted Carmen Sternwood maybe, showed up looking, well, looking for a man.
***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.
2 Comments:
- At 6:05 pm,
Resolute Reader said...
- By coincidence I've just, this very same day, put up a review of this book on my blog. The book should be required reading for 2014/5.
- At 6:18 pm,
Snowball said...
- Excellent timing indeed! Cheers
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