***The Long Cold Trail- Nat Cutler, Private Detective -With Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man In Mind  

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Nat Cutler, the old-time private from our town, North Adamsville, who died a few years back, maybe 2007 or 2008 down in his late wife’s family estate on Martha’s Vineyard, had by all accounts never been much of a detective, never made the grade before he met and married Nan Cutler (nee Turner) and her dough (that dough from Turner Textiles, now dissolved into Packard Industries, the ones that used to make all the towels and bedding). By the way nobody, nobody that I recall but I only knew him when he was older so maybe there was something to the story, called Nat Nathaniel since his mother had called him that in the singsong swamp Yankee manner that she had and the kids, the Irish blarney kids, in the old North Adamsville neighborhood used to taunt him mercilessly about that mimicking her voice. So Nat is all he would answer to as he made clear to Nan from the start and who had respected his wishes except when she wanted to taunt him for some reason, taunt him for some mother-bent reason, for a while shortly after they were married but she gave it up after while once he put the freeze on about it. That early marriage time, the time I am talking about, the time of the time of the locally famous Winot case, the time before my time in the old neighborhood was way back in the 1940s when because of her dough, her family’s dough really, Nat, strictly from hunger like those blarney Irish kids in the neighborhood would hold his rage in when she got her taunting habits on.      

So Nat had that hard fact name painted neatly in big black letters, Nat Cutler, Private Detective, on the front door of the first office he opened over on the fifth floor of the old Squires Building in downtown North Adamsville (the downtown strangely called going “up the Downs’ since time immemorial although nobody, nobody alive anyway knew where the expression came from but all we locals used it, still do from what I heard when I talk to somebody from the old neighborhood or they come out to see me). Nat had it painted as some expense to himself just like that after he decided that being a gumshoe, decided that he wanted to take on other people’s troubles for a living was what he was built to do.

Some old-timers who knew him before he was a gentleman detective after he married Nan’s money, knew him before he was nothing but a scruffy guy out of the Army with no trade at hand and no prospects either say he came to that sleuthing decision by default. He had gone into the Army just out of high school during World War II when the military was eating up men and material at a prestigious rate and it was either join or be drafted and that decision had weighted heavily on his head before he headed to the recruiting station. He had not distinguished himself as a grunt, a profession not easily transferable to civilian life in any case. Had tried to get on the regular police force in town after the war but they were selecting from among the plethora of ex-MPs at the time. Tried the granite quarries that originally made the town famous long ago in the founders’ time. Tried factory work, work as a second shift short order cook, dishwasher, and about six other jobs without much success or with no prospects. If there was one thing Nat had going for him was his keen sense of looking out for prospects. So maybe those old-timers were right, maybe not.

That Squires Building where Nat’s first office was located by the way had already long before seen better days in the late 1950s when I first when there with my mother in order for her to hock something so we could eat in one of the pawnshops that helped fill the floors above ground level hash house restaurant so I think that back in the 1940s, after the war, when Nat opened up for business it probably wasn’t much better. But thinking about it now about a half century later guys starting out in Nat’s kind of work, or repo men, pawnbrokers, failed dentists, gypsy fortune-tellers, slick insurance salesmen, quack chiropractors with their stones and broken bones were just the kind of people who needed the Squire Building to ply their trades. Cheap rent, “no front” places where the landlord didn’t do anything to keep the place up beyond the loose building code basics but also didn’t hassle you until you got a few months behind in the rent.  Yeah, that “no front” part was right, Jesus, I remember those pawnshops smelling of anxious sweat from people desperate for a few bucks to try to turn  their family fortunes around like my late mother. I remember all the offices looked the same, glass-fronted doors with the scrolled name of the business in big black letters (Nat’s like I said done in nice italics) so no one would mistake say a private eye place for the gypsy fortune-teller. All had front foyers, waiting rooms I guess you would call them with two or three seen-better-days chairs and an end table with what always seemed like last year’s magazines displayed on it, although probably not too many people when they entered these offices wound up waiting all that long for whatever service was being plied. Remembered a few of the offices with their old beat up desks, bent hat racks, and tinny file cabinets which always had a layer of dust on top that seemed to have settled in for good. Remember too smells, that PineSol smell from quickly and sloppily mopped hallway floors, the smell of some powerful disinfectant in the bathrooms like maybe the local winos and junkies had made a habit of using the facilities and some forlorn janitor had tried to eliminate that stink with whatever he could find, and the smell of cheap cigars, cigars reflecting that the smoker saw himself as a man of substance, a man who could smoke cigars, cheap or not, whether he could pay the office rent or not.

So the Squires Building was built for a guy like Nat Cutler to ply his trade, a guy who never made much of a detective then, had never made the grade. Had never been my idea of a shamus, a guy tilting after windmills, a guy with a finely-honed code of honor that he applied as best he could through thin and thin, a guy like Philip Marlowe who I watched at the movies a couple of times when I got older and they were having black and white film retrospectives over in Harvard Square and Bogie was the king hell king of the Marlowes. Yeah, Marlowe, intrepidly and doggedly trying to take down some punk bad guy, some gangster, a guy who had the hook, was working his angles on a Mayfair swell’s daughters out on the coast, out in Los Angeles before it got too big and crowded and nobody cared anymore about some old-fashioned sacred code of honor. Marlowe taking it on the chin, ready to take a slug if necessary for the good of the cause, just so that swell, that old guy who represented something in Marlowe’s sense of the world   could sleep the sleep of the just before he slipped beyond this world.

Or maybe a private eye like Sam Spade who they showed in that same retrospective, I guess it was a Bogie retrospective now that I think about the matter, who had an office in some San Francisco low-rent district just like Nat (I remember commenting to my date later over drink that Sam’s office, except he had a partner although not for long, looked like the offices over in the Squires Building) but who battled the demons anyway, battled the demons and some femme fatale who had, or thought she had, her hooks into him. Had him looking both ways at once. Here’s the beauty of Sam though he said, in the end, he had to send the dame over, maybe put her pretty little neck in a noose for all the murder and mayhem she caused over some damn bird, some stuff of dreams idea that went awry when her wanting habits got too big for  her eyes. And the best part of his reasoning was that he had to do it for professional reasons, to protect the shamus brotherhood, since that fetching dame had iced his partner. And like the guy or not you had to do something about that. Beautiful. 

Hell, even a jokey gumshoe like that dainty Nick Charles (back in the neighborhood we would call a guy like Nick “light on his feet,” wife or no wife as a front but now that we know better we would say he was gay) who landed into dough, his Nora’s dough (from lumber out West). Nick, who had come from cheap street, come out of the Five Points projects, come from the back alleys had turned himself into a gentleman detective with all the trimmings when he landed Nora and she made him what he was when he cracked that famous Thin Man case and he lived off of that reputation for a long time. Somebody told me once, somebody from the old neighborhood who knew Nat when he was from jump street “up the Downs” that Nat, Nat before he met and married Nan and her dough watched every Nick and Nora Charles (and Asta too) Thin Man film Hollywood put out over at the Strand theater, more than once. And that person thought that those viewings were important to Nat’s development as a detective, or at least how to sniff out a dame with dough in order to get onto easy street. Always keeping the prospects in front of him. I don’t know if watching fictional characters on film can serve as some kind of “self-help” course of study in becoming a detective or a gold digger, but as I will tell you below I think that guy might have been on to a little of what Nat was about, just a little.       

Down on “cheap street” though, just like any detective working the back alleys looking for work in a small town where not much goes on, nothing the real police can’t handle, Nat took what he could get in order to keep that lenient but not forever patient landlord from the door when he got a few months behind in the office rent. Maybe taking a couple of odd cases, missing person cases, usually some woe-begotten missing husband who took off with the dough or some dame for parts unknown, or both, and not a husband looking for some wayward wife, for short money. Short money in those days being about twenty-dollars a day and expenses and usually the bitch came over the expenses. You know why did you spend six dollars to fill up the tank of the car with gas (yeah, it has been a while since Nat roamed the streets looking for some stiff in his old second-hand Hudson), or why did you have to slip the Motor Vehicle girl five for that license number, or some hotel dick, private too, usually an ex-cop though, a ten to get access to some love-nest room on the 12^th floor when they guy was shacked up with some paramour, stuff like that. Strictly coffee and crullers stuff, not the stuff of detective novels or big black and white screen Sir Galahad-type adventures.

One time Nat, sitting in the now long-gone Red Feather where every guy in the old neighborhood drank his few (no ladies allowed in those days except when accompanied by a guy), told my uncle, Fred Jackman, about one of his cases to show what he was up against starting out, starting out with plenty of other guys trying the same hustle when there wasn’t enough work to go around and a guy like Nat was desperate not to go back to washing dishes or something. My uncle, a regular cop used to laugh at Nat in those days for being such a snook (his word) for taking on other people’s troubles for no dough and worse, no pension. A woman, Audrey I think he said her first name was, no last name was looking for her husband. Nat told my uncle he had some ethical duty not to give last names. My uncle laughed at that one too since he knew exactly who the Audrey was once Nat described the situation having been called to her residence a few times for on some abusive husband matters. Go figure. So Audrey was looking for her husband, Stan, who had run off with the family bank account (substantial by the standards of the day, the 1940s day, since he ran a barber shop and every guy needed a haircut and shave if he had two quarters to rub together even during the Depression and World War II) and she wanted him back under any circumstances. The husband, as Nat found out when Audrey told him that Stan hung out at Jimmy’s Grille to do his drinking, had run away with some young ravishing blonde, some tramp he met over at some tavern around the docks in East Adamsville as Nat found out after checking out the Jimmy’s lead.   Audrey still wanted him back, where would she go, what would she do without him, what had happened in the time since they were young and so in love Nat said she told him plaintively. He never found Stan  once the young blonde lead proved to run into dead end in Jersey City (the blonde turned out to be married, very married to a bruiser of a husband, who threatened to kill Stan when they showed up at his door after all the money ran out).  But Audrey never paid him either except a little something in trade which given her talents in the bedroom were more memorable than the money would have been (and also made him wonder why unless that blonde was dynamite or maybe just because she was young he had left home at all). Nat had had a hard time breaking it off once Audrey wanted him to live with her and while she was good under the satin sheets he could see that she was strictly from cheap street. Yeah, that and so much for what would she do without Stan when she saw Nat as a meal ticket. Women.

I don’t remember where I heard this Nat story although I know it was not from my uncle but another time when Nat was out on the coast.  Bill Marlowe, the low profile private investigator brother of the famous detective, who worked for International Operatives, the big detective agency out there, was heading out of town put him onto something, a routine matter according to the in-take file but some quick dough. (Bill heading out of his slumming mean streets of Los Angeles which he knew like the back of his hand as some guy mentioned who later wrote about his brother.). Bill and Nat had known each other in the Army during the war, were demobilized together, spent a crazy week in New York City after that lapping up booze and women, and after settling down a little had both taken a couple of private investigation correspondence courses together (you know those schools that are listed on matchbook covers, or used to be) on the GI Bill and when Bill drifted west they kept in touch. One day an old guy, John Wise, an old-time LA hotshot who made millions when the LaBrea pits came cruising in with we-will-take-all-you-have oil just as formerly hungry, war-weary America fell in heads-over-heels love with the automobile, sent his lawyer into Bill’s  agency to grab their services on a missing husband case. Big money or no the old guy whose daughter’s husband was the missing party wanted the hush put on the case, didn’t want any serious digging around either so that the other Mayfair swells wouldn’t get wind of the possible scandal and snicker when the old man and entourage arrived at the Saturday night country club dance. The agency did not take the case since they did not want their hands tied by the old man’s restrictions. Still the old man wanted something done and the lawyer offered the job to Bill on a free-lance basis. He declined since he had another case, the Whelan kidnap case as it turned out up in Frisco, case that made his career.    

So Bill put Nat on to the missing husband case. The story was that this rough-hewn guy, Buzz Williams (aren’t all those La-La Land he-men named Buzz or something like that), a guy who had been around the block, a guy who was looking for the main chance if there were not too many onerous conditions attached, was “connected,” not mob connected but connected all over Hollywood had married the old man’s high society dame of a daughter, Laura, when she was wearing “Hollywood-connected” guys wanting habits that week. Well, this Laura proved to be too high maintenance for Buzz, wouldn’t let him her play toy out of her sight, forced him to the foolish country club circuit and the Malibu social circuit, worse, would not let him have his girlfriends, booze and horses, and he took a powder. Nat wore out plenty of shoe leather and tanks of gasoline running down going nowhere leads. (In this case it was the butler, who took care of the old man’s household budget where Nat’s pay was coming from, who kicked about the gas, and who wouldn’t pay for the ten buck to pay off the Hollywood lot guard to get into one studio. See Nat didn’t know, was clueless that out on the coast you had to take care of the butler with a weekly ten to avoid those hassles. Well, live and learn.)

Here is where Nat got waylaid. Every time he had a lead of Buzz’s whereabouts he was frozen out. Sure, half of Hollywood knew where he was, shacked up in Venice Beach with, Clara, Laura’s younger sister who had had a very sympathetic ear one night when Buzz was complaining about how Laura hemmed him in. Had been more than glad to spite older sister Laura who had hemmed her in, would not take her to the casinos and cabarets so she could be seen. Had liked that Buzz had given her some dope (some “snow” Nat said) to loosen things up. Had liked that he was trophy good-looking too to add to her collection. But most of all she went down on him because she was nineteen and crazy to be a Hollywood starlet and not the heiress to some funky old oil fortune. But here is where being connected really counted, the Hollywood tribe gathered around one of its own, put their own big hush on the matter. Nat couldn’t even get up the driveways, couldn’t get passed the estate guards, worse, and could not get to the maids and chauffeurs, usually a good source for greased palm information, who were tight-lipped, gave Nat zip, nada.     

Nat never found Buzz either (one of the old-timers around town who knew Nat in his dishwasher days told me once that Nat’s track record for missing persons was about zero for something), never found the dame, that high strung daughter, Clara, who left Buzz after she was done with Hollywood hunk collecting. She had changed her name to Clarissa Wills in order to pursue that starlet career that Buzz had opened for her with his introduction. Laura, didn’t care anyway since she subsequently was running around with Eddie Mars the high roller gangster casino owner who ran most of the rackets on the West Coast, or had his fingers in them, when “connected” gangsters became her obsession of the week.

Here is where Nat did turn up gold though. The old man, old man Wise, who had foot the detective bill without a murmur took a shine to Nat, liked Nat’s sucking up to him, brown-nosing him, talking about the detective business and its endless stories (almost all made up except parts of the Audrey-Stan missing person’s case with not a word about not finding Stan although plenty about those satin sheets) while drinking the old man’s high-shelf scotch and hired him on as a companion.  (Although Nat never did get his full pay for services rendered on the missing person case due to the maneuvering of the butler). But a year or so later the old man died leaving all his dough to that high-roller daughter Laura who eventually got around to divorcing the missing Buzz, or got an annulment when he never showed up again, nor did Clara who went on to a minor career in the film industry, married Eddie and so that old money and new money mixed like oil and water. Made a poor mix at least for poor Eddie who was found face down in some LA arroyo after some screwed up drug deal went wrong in Mexico. Eddie took the “hit” and the black widow spider Laura grabbed everything. Landed on her feet and never looked back.     

When there wasn’t that ill-fated missing persons work to do which he liked most Nat would lower himself (that is how he put it to my uncle one night) and maybe do some bedroom snooping when times were tough although like every private eye, shamus, gumshoe or whatever you call a guy who works for chump change and expenses to take on other people’s troubles and bumps and bruises too Nat shied away from such work thinking like some raw kid reading a pulp detective novel that such work was beneath him. In those days, although it seems silly now, now that there is no-fault divorce in lots of places and the selling of compromising photos for blackmail or a for profit angle showing the doings of the love couple wouldn’t faze anybody who had been on the Internet sex sites, snooping around bedrooms then was to get grounds for a divorce, to set up a proof positive for an open and shut adultery case and maybe a quick settlement out of court, usually between a wife and the philandering husband. At least that is what Nat saw as the motive when he would get the frantic call to do the dirty work. The stealthy sneaking up back stairs courtesy of some house shadow private dick whom he would give ten bucks to in order to clear the path for him to take photos undisturbed. One time, Jesus, at some motel, hotel, no-tell place the house dick wanted some photographs, probably to keep in his office for viewing after- hours Nat thought when he got that request. And of course the ten bucks. Who knows maybe the guy wanted to sell in the smutty back street markets in those days when grainy black and whites were all you could get.   

Nat told me, told me when I came of age, came of age to do work on some stories about the old-timers in town and what they did after the war, and how they made out, when he had pretty much retired from even being a gentlemen detective, that sure there were funny moments, moments when he snapped a few photos of the unlucky pair in the raw. Maybe she was going down on him or he was wearing a mask and doing some whipsaw action on her ass. You never know what turns a guy or gal on, all you know is whatever they want they are not getting at home and hence the call.  Sometimes, and you would think that this not have been in the late 1940s but would have been in the 1960s when I was growing up when all things of India like sitars and Shiva were cool but Nat said he observed odd-ball positions (his term) back then, he would see him or her doing something out of the Kama Sutra but certainly not acknowledged as right conduct in missionary position and nothing else American times. At least that was the spiel for public consumption back in the red scare Cold War night but now know that every form of human body intercourse had been practiced and widely so. 

A couple of times Nat said he got lucky and turned up some dame who did not want to be turned up, usually married to some dough, maybe some prominent family young daughter, one time a hooker, a street hooker who was on probation on a drug-related charge and could not take the time if her name cropped up in some divorce proceedings, gave him her favors for the negatives. Mainly it was following unsuspecting couples, from dinner or a barroom, something like that, a couple just trying to create some love-nest, have a few private minutes together without troubling to safeguard against some snoop, some low-life snoop as he was called more than once. He never told Nan that part of the business and she probably would not have believed him anyway since her image of a detective, and of her trophy detective, was also formed from wind-mill chasing P.I. books and get-the-bad guys-movies.

Here is a funny thing though, according to Nat. Usually everybody thinks that every serious criminal case, you know, murder, armed robbery, kidnappings automatically get solved, or not solved, by the public service coppers, the guys in blue. But more than a couple of times he fell into a couple of cases that his pal, his friend from boyhood days, his old corner boy days. Lieutenant Pete Murphy (who in the old neighborhood before they became fast friends used to taunt him with that Nathaniel business just like all the other heathen Irish kids), would throw his way when the regular police, what Pete when he wanted to badger Nat called the “real cops” were ready to throw the thing into the cold files but some victim or survivor wanted some “justice” and had some dough and time to give to further efforts. That was how Nat had met Nan, Nancy Turner, his wife after she had asked for help from Detective Pete Murphy to find somebody who could work on the case they, the Clintonville Police, in the town just over the line from North Adamsville,  were about to close. A case involving some stolen family jewels, diamonds, emeralds and such that today would be in a vault sealed with seven seals  but back then in small town America just left around, that had been heisted from the high-rise apartment when she was living. The jewels never turned up on the market, no ransom was ever asked and after a while, after some regular police effort to accommodate a daughter of a big wheel father, Charles Turner, in the textile industries that employed many Clintonville and Adamsville fathers, the leads dried up. The police assumed that the merchandise had been cut up and sold as smaller pieces or some private collector purchased the stuff at a discount and that person was keeping the goods in that recommended vault sealed with seven seals.

Enter Nat at twenty-five a day and expenses who figured to work the case for a month or two to get him even with room rent and to keep the landlord of the office space he was occupying in the Squires Building away from his door and then call it quits, tell Nan the thing was dead, very dead. He figured that he could razzle-dazzle her with a few visits to pawnshops (some right down the hall in his building and which I startled him with when I could name a couple of them) as if the thieves were going to go beggar thy hand to some cut-rate place like that (unless, like in the big cities, the pawnbroker was also hustling as a “fence”). Nat figured to make sure he got some expense money time as well by grabbing some slender leads linked to New York City (a natural place to unload jewelry and other items), maybe Miami. In any case no heavy lifting and maybe some fun along the way. What the hell most cold cases once they hit that locale never get solved so he was not going to sweat a little padding the account.   

 

As things worked out Nat and Nan got along pretty well, wound up talking to each other every day, not always about the case, seemed to have a few things in common like that love of old-time black and white films, especially romantic comedies and hard-boil detective films which is what Nan came to think about Nat as, a hard-boiled detective ready to chase windmills like Bogie or Nick and Nora Charles. So one night, after a few drinks, and a few Nat detective stories (all made up except part of that Buzz Williams case, the part about the Hollywood connections to show that he was not some small time rube, that he mixed with high society as well as low) they tumbled a couple of her satin sheets, did that often enough so that they were married after a couple of months. He never found the jewelry, truthfully never did much looking once he saw he had a sway over Nan, but he hit pay- dirt so what the hell. Funny even though Nat never came close to finding the stolen jewels Nan did not bat an eyelash over the fact and, get this,      she though he was the world’s greatest detective, thought he could solve anything.

Of course Nat in his bedtime satin sheets moments would regal her with some steamy tales that he mainly made up, or embellished like the Buzz case where he practically saved Old Man Wise from being taken by some con artists and gangsters whereas all he did was drink the old man’s scotch, with water chaser, and smoke his high-grade Cuban cigars for about a year. To hear him tell the tale he was the one who should have actually got the credit for getting Eddie Mars off the streets of Los Angeles not some contract “hit-man.” And those tales were only the half of it because then he would embellish all the various ways that he helped the detection business by introducing this or that technique, all baloney if any real private eye, or even close reader of detective novels heard him spin his words. But Nan, gullible Nan, or maybe just a rich girl looking for a different kind of guy than she was used to at the country club brightened every time he told his stories.

Although she knew Nat was from hunger Nan also was so enthralled by his talk that after she saw his office at the Squires Building she insisted that he move to better quarters so he moved over to the Acme Bank Building where all the offices looked like they do on the silver screen, plush carpet, big sky view windows, nice mahogany desk, wooden file cabinets, and in the foyer, Nat’s very own secretary to do his typing and other office chores.  Oh yeah and a small side desk for Nan. See she had the bug, had seen too many Nick and Nora Charles films and fancied that she would act as Nat’s assistant on the big cases that were sure to come his way now that he had some “front.”  Nat squirmed a little on that proposition, although since she seldom showed up at the office after the first couple of weeks he considered himself smart to have ridden out his objections to her office presence in silent. And they went along nicely for a while until the Winot case hit their doorstep. But that office arrangement, her high society connections, was why when a close friend of her family’s, of her late father in particular, Old Man  man Winot, Wilfred Thomas Winot in the social register, went missing, Winot of Winot Industries the mad monk inventor who made all the airplanes, or the parts for them, and a guy who should not be missing what with all his responsibilities and all the people depending on him she badgered Nat into trying to find him, with her as his assistant.           

Of course these high society missing persons case are known to be done discretely and you never hear much about them until, and unless, there is murder wrapped around them and then it is kept under wraps as much as possible once the commissioner, or mayor, or, Christ, one time when the Governor pulled the hammer down, put the lid on the Cramer case (see you never heard of it, admit it). Big money is involved, especially for a guy like Winot who had a slew of stockholders who would get very nervous over trifles and who would have gotten very nervous if say the old man had run off with his secretary like he had done about ten years before on his last missing person run. And they most certainly would get nervous if the old man was found in a ditch somewhere, the victim of foul play, with those same nervous stockholders wondering out loud how management could have been so lax as to let a brilliant inventor and good- will company asset go off by himself and get killed by fair means or foul.

So to head off a police “missing person” report and the attendant publicity Amy Winot (Vassar Class of ’44, like Nan),Winot’s oldest daughter, called up her old college roommate when she found out that Nan had married a private detective and wanted to have him work on the case on the quiet before the police “balled it all up” (Amy’s  term).

Here is another funny thing about the ways of high society and how they are pack animals just like the lowly folk, once the local Clintonville high society got wind that Nan had married a common peeper, a shamus (although they probably did not know the meaning of such a term and so probably spouted “private investigator” as is their way) there were gales of laughter at every high tea and cotillion for weeks afterward. Now when the Old Money tribe needed to keep the hush on, keep one of their own from the public glare, poor shabby Nat was to be treated like a high-class hired hand (somewhere below butler but above scullery maid in the social pecking order). Fortunately Nat did not take umbrage at such slights since he knew the goldmine he had landed in and was not going to give that up for a few old horse snickers. He had worked hard to get to brighter prospects and that meant a lot, plenty to a po’ boy.

So Nat, and of course Nan, traipsed up the long driveway to the Winot Estate over in the high hills just outside Clintonville Heights (traipsed in a 1946 Rolls so don’t cry for this pair) to talk with Amy, and her mother and two sisters about the whereabouts or past practices of one Wilfred T. Winot. Once Nat scoped the family scene, the bickering between daughters and mother over every detail until mother pulled the hammer down and they were abjectly quiet, he could see where a guy, any guy and not just an old guy, or an eccentric inventor would be glad to sleep in some dusty arroyo rather than put up with the mob scene that Winot women made. Here are some facts, basic facts that Nat had to go on after going mano y mano with the family. Winot, sixty-five, white (long pedigree white not quite the Mayflower but the second or third boat over from the old country, on the short side, stoop-shouldered (although early photographs of him show a lean athletic body before the ravishes of age and ill-health, and maybe some accompanied riotous living with drink, dope, tobacco, with or without sassy young blondes took their toll), full head of silvery grey hair, blue eyes, a slight beard and no other distinguishing marks had not been seen for the previous five days (really seven by the time Nat grabbed the case since nobody in the household counted the first two days he was gone since he did that kind of thing all the time which tells more than you need to know about this dispute-ridden family). Seen, or not seen, Winot did have at various times an affinity for cigarettes (and later cigars), high-end whiskey, neat, and an occasional hit of cocaine (in the days when it was over- the- counter legal and later when the substance was not he “funded” some expeditions to sunny Mexico where it was). All of this usually in the company of some secretary or other paid Winot Industries employee. Mother Winot, Eleanor to her friends like Nan but Mrs. Winot throughout the whole case to Nat, had a very liberal view of Wilfred’s carryings-on. But see, once Nan told Nat the skinny on her, Mrs. Winot had been brought up in the Five Points section of New York City and so she was desperate not only to keep her Wilffy at any price but had in ancient times herself been the old man’s secretary and did not want her victory over the Winot money and how that was achieved to become public knowledge. Nice crowd Nat was buying into. In any case the old man was not at any of his haunts (haunts a euphemism for night clubs, casinos, his laboratory at the plant, his club, the race track, Jimmy’s tavern, the country club, or one of about five possible young blonde addresses depending on his mood, or theirs). They, Amy and her sisters they, had checked all the spots to no avail. So the search was on.                  

Of course the first place Nat looked and it took no genius, and certainly took no private detective at twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses, was in Winot’s office, his cubbyhole office at Winot Industries where the latest secretary would be holding down the fort. Winot rarely went there and preferred to spend his time at the plant in his lab inventing the next generation of absolutely necessary gizmos for the next big thing in airplanes. (Naturally from about the third day of operations back in the 1920s Winot Industries after it opened for business with that first lucrative government contract to tide them over his management team, led by Jim Saxon, his lawyer, would not let him within fifty miles of the books, or of the decision-making about what to do, or not do, with his latest gizmo.) So Nat introduced himself to Mrs. Ellis, Mrs. Ellis the thirty-something blonde, well-built, well-built for some off-hand fun from the look of her, nice legs and a sunny disposition. She, Ellen to Nat once the introductions were over although always Mrs. Cutler (with the emphasis on “cut”) to Nan, had not seen the old man, Mr. Winot, for a few weeks, had not seen any need to raise an alarm since he was very irregular in his comings and goings in the office. Nat assumed that Ellen was lying but he let that pass. As it turned out after an initial tussle with the old man once he eyed her in the office he left Ellen alone. Although the fact that she had a husband who was about six-four and two hundred and twenty pounds might have entered into the old man’s calculations. So not for the last time in the case Nat would be wrong about what was going on around the old man’s life since he wasted many precious hours and days trailing Ellen after work and tediously watch her house while she and that strong-arm hubby had dinner and listened to the radio. Fortunately Nan did not accompany him on these jaunts and therefore did not see the low-life peeper side of the business, the peeping in windows at night part.

Getting nowhere that first day with Ellen (although he pursued that nighttime trailing for a whole week and lost valuable time) he went the next morning to Jim Saxon, the old man’s lawyer, main runner of the business, and confidante at his downtown office. See Nan had an idea that Saxon had been keeping the old man in the dark about the company finances and the fact that Winot Industries had lost an important government contract to a competitor. Eleanor had told her that information about the lost contract and she had told Nan to get Nat moving in that direction. So Nat went in with guns blazing. Began to ask Saxon all kinds of questions about finances, budgets, the whole works which consumed a good part of a week as well. Nan, who had taken a household accounting course at Vassar to be ready to do home budgets when she married, was drafted by Nat to check the Winot books and what she found, erroneously found, was that the company was near bankruptcy when in reality it showed a seven million dollar profit that quarter. That erroneous information from Nan set Nat on Saxon’s trail. So for a week Nat followed Saxon to the golf course at the country club and waited for him in finish his round of golf and head home to supper, a chat with his wife and then to bed. Mister Regularity.

Then a first break-through came in a few weeks after Nat got on the case, came in unexpectedly, from Amy Winot who told Nat that she had spoken to her father on the telephone, although she said his voice was somewhat muffled. The old man said that he had had a recent cold but that he was alright now and not to worry. He had been out in Arizona trying to see if some landing gear he had just invented would work under high atmospheric heat conditions and that he would be back in a couple of weeks. So Amy and her family gladly called off the search for her now accounted for father.           

A month passed by and the old man did not return to the East and so Nat, and Nan, were called in again. Nat, knowing that Peter Murphy would be livid if he thought Nat was working a case that was really police business, told the family that the police should be called in. They, especially Eleanor were adamant, no coppers. So Nat took the train out to Arizona to the spots where Winot had said the experimental airplane flights were to take place and was confounded by the fact that while the airport employees knew Winot by sight, knew who he was, had worked with him in the past on previous experiments that he had not been out there in a few years. Back to square one.           

Nat, when he returned east followed Ellen again, followed Saxon out to the golf links. Still nothing. At this point he felt that he had to call Pete in. Pete as expected was livid, reamed Nat out in private but was kindness itself to Mrs. Winot and the three daughters. So the public coppers spent a few weeks on what was already a very cold case before they shelved the thing into deep storage. Nothing left but about six dead-ends. Moreover Mrs. Winot did not express any great regrets as she told Peter Murphy that she intended to have Mr. Cutler pursue the case further. As for Winot Industries and those worried stockholders well as the gathering storm of the Cold War was being heralded in Europe and Marshall Plan monies began to kick in Winot Industries could not handle the amount of work heading its way. The memory of the old man although honored for his pioneering work was soon a distant memory under the press of the orders coming in. 

As for Nat, and Nan, well, the fact that he did not solve the case did nothing to tarnish his reputation among the high society set. He was welcomed in like a highly regarded servant every time somebody thought the housemaid was stealing the family silver (not the good stuff, that was in vaults sealed with seven seals, but the everyday silver) or some butler was trimming on the budget Nat got the call. And while he seldom was able to detect much he was the rage of the country club set as everybody had to just have the services of their own private detective.  

As for old man Winot, Wilfred T. Winot. Well they, we, finally discovered what happened to him in 2011 when the new owners were razing a part of the Winot mansion in order to build an extension. One of the workers found his remains after hammering in a dug out section of a concrete re-enforced cellar wall. Through the beauties of modern science, through DNA testing, the police established that the body found were Winot’s remains. They also found a photograph of Ellen Ellis and a letter proclaiming his love for her, his plans that they go away, and most ominously, ominously for him, his plans to divorce Eleanor in his pants pocket. The police speculation at the time was that the family had done him in, at least Amy and Eleanor. See although Nat (and Nan of course) was on the case for several months spinning his wheels he was eventually called off by them. More and more vehemently as time wore on and no results came in. Their dodge was that the fruitless investigation was draining the estate of needed funds. This will get us closer to the truth though, under the terms of the old man’s will Eleanor got everything if they were still married when he passed on. What Eleanor did not tell Nat and Nan when they had earlier inquired about the old man’s love interests was that there was a sixth blonde, Ellen Ellis, whom the old man was crazy about, whom he wanted to marry, and so was ready to move some small mountains to get Eleanor to agree to a divorce. But Eleanor liked her life, liked all the money, liked the idea that her daughters would be well provided for and so she nixed the idea. Nixed it the best way she knew how. She recruited Ellen and her husband (who it was speculated had done the actual deed), promised them a big cut of the fortune when Winot was officially declared deceased, and told them to act naturally when the deed was done. And it worked. Worked until 2011 anyway. Of course by then Eleanor, her brood, and the Ellises (who left no trail, no trail after Winot was declared by court order to be legally dead) were long since in the grave, or long gone somewhere parts unknown. Yeah, that late Nat Cutler had never been much of a detective, never made the grade.          

***As The  50^th Anniversary Year Of The High School Class Of 1964 Rolls Along… “Forever Young” (Magical Realism 101)-Take Two

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

…an old man bundled up against the December weathers begins his eternal run along the Adamsville Beach shoreline, weather he has fought all his New England-born life, fought tooth and nail in some never-ending recreation of the man against nature epic that has stirred his life, weathers gone from ancient Maine shoreline, York Beach maybe, or Ogunquit, zero degree, forty-mile an hour winds blowing him hither and yon almost into the waiting arms of the steely white-capped Atlantic Ocean, the ocean from whence he came in his primordial chronology, to vapid spectral-like sweats in blown wind Death Valley and every weather in between but the seasonal weathers of his native New England worthy of the measure of his struggles.

This day, another windy, raw early winter shoreline run day and hence full gear against the elements, sweat pants (although they are not like in his youth actually called that name when you purchase them at some City Sport’s store, there they are called running togs to add to the glamour of the futile task, futile in the cosmic eternal never-ending fight against one’s own mortality), clad also with the classic running shorts of youth (although of less flimsy material than then which required a jockstrap to keep one’s male private parts private) outside of the togs in order to give him a look like the young studs do like to wear, except he will not let those shorts bag halfway down his ass like them and impede his running stride), a black tee-shirt, black now to comply with the royal command from his sweet bread lady companion ( and another as well from his new mistress but that conquest is a story best left for another time) that he like some Steve Job’s Job figure looked good in black. So black it is, and for him, for his vanity a tee-shirt not the old-time favored vee-neck in order to hide that turkey gobbler neck that not only women complain about and fear(think the late Nora Ephron please). A light-weight rain jacket that had done yeoman service on more rainy and windy days than that poor begotten jacket deserved, the AARP age-appropriate ubiquitous New Balance running shoes (complete with doctor-recommended re-enforced arch supports to cushion the hard blows of the asphalt he usually ran on, those damn supports acting like some metaphor to his life’s blows now in need of cushioning-no such luck in that department), and all of this topped off this day with an old seaman’s naval cap that had seen better days. Had seen days in stormy seas (on real oceans and in love’s unrequited oceans), had been on freighters to South America, had kept him out of harm’s way when those big gales blew hard and fast up in Maine, kept him from him from frostbite in Adirondack hills in zero degree weather and snow drifting hard. Yes, he is bundled up against the weathers this day.  

The old man had to laugh when he would yell out to his companion as he went out the door that he was going for a run (same if he was with that new mistress who we decided we would not speak of here). Run, who was he kidding, no, better, jog/shuffle these days, these days since the knee-replacement which has determined the stride he can reasonably take limited his range (or not take which what the orthopedist had ordered, no running, reason; how do you think you got that knee got in that condition, that bone rubbing against bone condition, in the first place. But the old man was never good at taking orders from anybody from parents to drill sergeants to well-meaning doctors, not when running, ah, jogging just made him feel good when lots of other things failed to do so.)

Who was he kidding again it was not just the knee problem, it was the age problem, or rather the age problem catching up with him, the years of drugs, cigarettes, and high and low- end whiskies, which had shrunken his stride so let’s call it jogging and be done with it. The shuffle part is that infernal beginning where he, tortoise-like, starts with baby steps in order to gauge his stride. A sight not worth seeing and a reason what normally he preferred, unlike this day, to run at dawn and in private. This day however he was running not at his usual pond runaround near his home but across town, across Boston, along his childhood growing up shoreline at Adamsville Beach. See he was on a mission, of sorts, a remembrance mission which these days always started with the old beach since most of the old hometown significant spots were gone, and all of his family ties been cast off.

His purpose this day to think through some thoughts provoked by the hard cold fact that in the upcoming year, in 2014, he would be commemorating his 50^th anniversary since graduation from old North Adamsville High and he was flooded with thoughts of the old days (aided by that new mistress who was an old classmate that he had connected with through a class website established by the reunion committee which was planning the reunion event in the fall of 2014). Despite some incessant badgering by that mistress/classmate to go to the reunion (and equal amounts of badgering by his long-time companion not to go) he was extremely hesitant to do so having had many bad childhood memories of the old town which he would have to work through.

So there he was as he began his run along the Causeway end of Adamsville Beach (by the CVS, formerly the First National, if you have not been in the old town in a while for those classmates who might read this sketch on that class website), huffing and puffing, head down and this day full of thoughts triggered by his up-coming 50^th anniversary class reunion. Thinking just then through those first huffs and puffs, arms pushing him forward, before his breathe got a little steadier as he picked up his stride of the irony of running along a section of his old high school cross-country course. The old course starting from the Squantum Street side of the high school down through Bayview Road and onto Adamsville Shore Boulevard that he was now jogging on up Atlantic Boulevard to Atlantic Street cutting over to Newbury and back where the course started, in the old days back with a sprint, of sorts. The course that he had run completely a few months before in commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of his last run for the old cross-country team (yeah he was that sort of guy, a symbolic guy, old age or young).

As the old man passed Bayview Street into the heart of the beach anchored by the two yacht clubs, the North Adamsville Yacht Club and The Adamsville Boat Club, he thought about how this was where he and his companion, Brad Badger, futilely hung out, knowing that throughout history, summer school vacation history the only kind of history that counted on that beloved beach, that was where the frails, foxes, chicks, babes whatever you called them back in your generation day hung out (knowing too that those names were just familars for young women but what did he know then, or maybe care since all of them, all the boys full of hormonal lusts just wanted them to notice - and as he found out later they-those frails, foxes, chicks, babes, whatever just wanted to be noticed). The old man settling into his slow ponderous but determined pace laughed when he thought about how many ways his and boy, Brad, tried to get to first base and were rejected out of hand for what-being too poor, too raggedly, too-car-less or too plain to make the cut. Jesus, a lot of things he would like to over again, go back in time and redo, or better age to, but not that sixteen and sex hungry madness.

But that shuttered thought passed now, like it did when he got older and found that young women liked him, liked him for his smarts, his off-beat sardonic humor, and his ingrained sense of irony. As he ambled along  the old man began  thinking too of those mist of times Adamsville Beach days when he longingly looked out at the sea, its mucks, its marshes, hell, even it fetid smells and mephitic stinks, as if it could solve some riddle of existence. Found himself as fond of the old beach as the first time that he saw it as a very young child and his parents took him and brothers for a cheap workingman’s visit, complete with one of those too infrequent family barbecues over on Treasure Island (not its real name, not now anyway but what he, and every kid that he knew called the place).

Found that fondness still held him in its thrall although he had travelled many more beautiful beaches (thinking of Big Sur, much on his mind these days what with re-reading recently Jeanbon Keroauc’s Big Sur and remembrances of sweet Midwestern Angelica days when the sound of their love was drown out at Big Sur by the cascading crashing white-flecked wave, thinking too of LaJolla, Malibu, Acapulco and a hundred other delight beaches). And many more fierce beaches as he noted the tepid waves splashing lazily to the waiting shore (thinking of that time up in Nova Scotia when all hell broke loose and the sea almost washed him and his sweetie of the time whose name he could not remember off the rock they had placidly been sitting on or that really dangerous wind-swept night off the rocky beach at Scoodic Point up in Maine.

Thinking too now that he approached the mile mark on his journey of times when he was young and flexible and if not fast then able to run the distance in about half the time it would take him on this day. The days when he would run, run out of the house, run over on some sultry sweaty summer night to the oval at the high school and run until he was exhausted just to get that forty-two pounds of teen angst and alienation out of his system, run beyond exhaustion when he had some off-hand beef with his late mother.  Here was the ironic part, ironic this day when he just couldn’t seem to get a head of steam and the pace was slow-ish in the old days, the days when he ran for the high school red and black, the days when he was either good or horrible (not knowing until later that allergies kicking in accounted for some of the bad days). His fast, state championship fast,  running friend back then, Brad, said he had "the slows," well okay Brad had a point, then. What would his old long missing friend say to the pace this day.  

As he settled into a pace for his second mile (the length from the Causeway to Adams Shore was 2.7 miles one way and of course he was going round trip so a little over five miles altogether he began thinking about hanging out places in the old neighborhood, places like Harry’s Variety over on Sagamore Street trying to cadge pin-ball games from the rough and tumble corner boys (very rough and tumble led by Red Kiley, his cousin who gave no quarter and expected none when he and his corner boys went up against some other corner or did their midnight creep to keep them in clover); hanging  out at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor with his own corner boys led by  his be-bop daddy Frankie Riley known since junior high begging girls to play some latest song on the jukebox (and learning a very useful skill back then when he sweet- talked some girl into playing his song selections on her quarter); and, hanging out on sweaty summer nights on the front steps of North, no money in pocket, with that same Brad Badger, also penniless, speaking of dreams, small dreams of escape and big puffed-ball cloud dreams of success (success in getting out from under the frantic respective houses where the noise level of perdition started at one hundred decibels, success in getting out of the too small for big dreams North Adamsville night, success in working for oneself, for putting together some small independent contractor dream).

Remembering too, an old man’s harmless flash remembering, of standing in high school corridors (hell, junior high corridors if the truth be known) between classes day-dreaming of, well, you know, certain now nameless girls (okay, okay first names Diana, Joyce, Ruth, Cindy, Mary Beth, Joyell did I forget anybody), of giving furtive glances to a few which they totally ignored.  The art of the glance, the perfect glance, being of course a quick flash of the eyes and slight turn of the head as that certain she passed by and then turnaround to see if she turned around. Thinking too of how he had given that mistress/classmate many furtive glances which she totally ignored. And when the glances did not work with her how he surreptitiously checked out to see if she was “going steady” and told in no uncertain terms by guys he respected and to give him good intelligent in the matter that she was “unapproachable” (finding out only now that her home-life was so bad she just put on the ice queen act to keep from having to deal with any outsiders. But that was another story).

And remembrances of sitting in classes, maybe some dank seventh period study hall, wondering about what would happen Friday night when he and his corner boys cruised Adamsville  Beach looking, looking beyond hope it seemed for some girl to give him some small glance. HoJo’s on the strip a must stop on hot summer nights, make his cherry vanilla when he busted out, the Southern Artery (Marley’s, Pisa’s Tower of Pizza, Adventure Car-Hop, not the real names but memory fails), and in a pinch going “up the Downs” to Doc’s Drugstore, looking, looking for adventure, looking for some magic formula to wipe away the teen angst and alienation blues that crept up on him more than was good for him. Those flash thoughts got him through those next miles and back.

But get this, get this sweaty resolve. No, no way in hell, was he going to recreate that youthful bummer  by going to that reunion, somebody come by and smack him if he did (he would have to offer that mistress a trip to California in lieu, or some such arrangement, maybe let her go to the reunion by herself…                   

...an old woman begins to walk along the Adamsville Beach shoreline from the Adams Shore end having parked her car in the parking lot at what is now Creely Park named after some fallen Marine but when she was a child, when she still lived in the town called by every kid she knew Treasure Island the site of her too few family picnics while growing up. (Jesus, better not say that old woman thing, make that a mature woman, better yet to avoid any misunderstanding in a world, her world, where she had taken pains to prove her worth let’s just leave it at “a woman.”) She too bundled up against the December weathers, windswept weathers that she normally would not be out in not caring to challenge nature on its own turf, although she too knew of high gust Rocky Mountain white-outs, fast drifting snow weather, and ice patches too making four-wheel drive the beginning of wisdom; knew sea weather from sunny, sultry to wind-splashed against a too human seawall that she could barely see now across the bay from where she was walking having grown up as nature’s own “girl on the rocks,” the sea the only respite from holy hell father’s wrath and mother’s indifference, and from sullen hurricane swirls when she had lived on the islands with that second husband who promised the moon and she paid  weathers. So she too New England born and bred and from ancient Anglo-Saxon stock was no stranger to the wraths of Mother Nature, and the pleasures too when she relents.

Today she is bundled up in the seemingly obligatory AARP-worthy running suit fit for walkers too (bought at sensible store Kohl’s although she, having defied all the odds and predictions of failure that ran through her head and made a success of herself, made herself her own woman, for a long time could have afforded the upscale clothing fashionable among the yoga set before they enter the yoga state), the sensible walking shoes that she was required to wear ever since that foot operation a few years before required sensible shoes (in truth she always wore sensible shoes, under that same frugal rule of buying what was less expensive, if serviceable, practiced at that down at the heels household that she grew up in where everything was hand-me-downs from older beauty sister until she got too big to wear sister’s stuff and had to frugal buy at discount stores), a sleeveless purple vest (purchased on-line from L. L. Bean up in Maine a number of years before and while not fashionable still in good condition to face today’s weathers), and on her head a ski mask, well not a ski mask but a skullcap with eye slits that could be used for that purpose (or she chuckled when Frank made fun of her- for a bank robbery) if the weather got fierce that an ex-husband (not Frank the first one, Harry) had left behind.

Suitably dressed she walked, haltingly due to those poor feet which required a bit of slow step walking to work out the kinks, haltingly, but with head up (proper posture just like her mother taught her long ago was necessary for proper girls, proper girls seeking worthy husbands just like mother’s  mother had taught her back to it seemed some colonial times their name long-standing in North Adamsville although the family fortunes had been dissipated by a spendthrift father and so she of thrift, she of Kohl’s, she of sensible shoes), along Adamsville Beach from the Adams Shore end thinking thoughts triggered by her up-coming 50^th class reunion. So this day she walked if haltingly with purpose, with a thrill that come next fall she would once again be going to a class reunion to rekindle old North Adamsville memories usually held in the back of her mine between times.

Thinking thoughts this day about now nameless old flames and what had happened to them. Okay, okay names, Dave, Dave of the junior prom and some silly stuff after (and Dave of sad memorial over near the marina his named etched there as a town fallen in that hellish Vietnam War that wreaked her generation, name etched too in black marble down in Washington) , John, who wound up with Penny and married for fifty years now (he of that first attempted kiss but he gave up just when she was ready the next time and so she was called around the school “unapproachable),” Rich who lost interest way before she did (her first serious “crush” and the subject of many Monday morning before school lies in that mandatory girls’ lav talkfest), some guy whose name she could not remember, damn she could not remember, who gave her furtive glances in the hallway between classes and who always turned around after he passed her to see if she looked back, silly boy, didn’t  he know she was “unapproachable” (due not only to John disappointment but to that wickedly bad home-life which she wanted no one, absolutely no one, including her best girlfriend to know about) 

Funny too creeping in thoughts of old time flames about that first kiss sitting in the back seat of her girlfriend's boyfriend's  car with him, some old flame now also un-nameable (she had only dated him a couple of times and he was not from North so she absolved herself from not remembering but that hallway guy she should have remembered since they had gone to the same schools together for six years), at this very beach and about, she blushed as she thought of it, that first French kiss and how she felt awkward about it. Blushing as she thought about how her new flame (she refused to call him her boyfriend, Jesus, at their ages no way that sounded right, no way its sounded anything other than about sixteen year old school stuff and so flame, or in public “companion”), her new flame who she went to school with back in the day but who she did not know then reacted with a funny remark about how he wished it had been him back then when she mentioned the French kiss thing, made her feel nice when he commiserated with her on her plight.

Later in her walk, as she pulled her vest collar up as the wind stiffened, thoughts flashed by, funny thoughts, emerged about all the lies she told about those same steamy nights just to keep up with the other girls at talkfest time -the mandatory Monday morning before school girls '"lav" talkfest, boys had theirs' too she found out from a later flame after high school. Laughing now but then not knowing until much later that the other girls too were lying just to keep up with her. And of all the committees she had been on; dance committee (and she did not even go to her senior prom since, well, since no one asked her thinking she was all dated up, jeez); North Star (when she thought she was going to be a journalist rather than the professor she eventually became), Magnet (for another chance to write), whatever would keep her busy and make her a social butterfly. (And as she confessed to new flame since he was kindred to keep away from home as long as possible without father wraths for being late.)

Then a mishmash of  thoughts flooded her mind as she passed Kent Park near the now vanished bowling alleys of the girls’ bowling team and wondering, now wondering, why they kept the boys’ team separate (remembering too how she liked it, liked the sexy thrill of it when a boyfriend, a corner boy although she did not know that at the time and when she did she dumped him before her punitive father found out, took her to the Downs Bowling Lanes known as a hang-out for corner boys, drop-outs, drifters and midnight creepers, and for some back rooms where hanky-panky went on and drinking too although she timid refused his offer to take her back there); of reading in that cranky old Thomas Crane Public Library up the Square where she first learned to love books and saw them as a way to make a success of herself and had done so (falling in love with Russian novels, long drawn out and romantic novels with plenty of characters and action to fill her lonely got-to-get- out- of- the- house hours when her father was home afternoons-thinking it funny when her new flame started rattling off all the Russian names, rattling off the whole history of the Russian revolutions and of his mad monk hero the much vilified old Leon Trotsky murdered down in Mexico by some crazed Stalinist assassin); and, of hot sweltering  summer afternoons with the girls down at the beach trying to look, what did Harry call it, “beautiful,” for the guys, blushing when guys called her beautiful but refusing them when they asked for dates, innocent dates they called them (and she shy refusing to wear a bikini for fear that she was showing too much, fear too that her father might see her in that skimpy outfit and take a fit, or whatever he felt like doing).                

Somewhere between the Adamsville Boat Club and the North Adamsville Yacht Club the old man and the woman (you know who I mean) crossed paths. He, she, they gave each other a quick nod of generational solidarity and both thought they knew the other from some place but couldn’t quite place where. She had half a thought that they might have gone to high school together from the furtive glance he gave her (all slightly ajar eyes and tilt of the head her way) but he did not turn around when she turned her head to look at him jogging into the distance figure.  He thought he might have known her from over at Harvard when he took courses there for his master’s degree since she looked like one of those proper Yankee woman that populated the place, still do, and that despite his Irish mother’s warnings he was fatally attracted to but he was too unsure to give a second glance back.

Of this though there was no doubt. After they passed each other the old man’s pace quickened for a moment as he heard a phantom starter’s gun sounding the last lap of some race and the woman’s walk became less halting as she thought once again about that first kiss (whether it was the French kiss that stirred her we will leave to the reader’s imagination) as each reflected back to a time when the world was fresh and all those puffed-cloud dreams of youth lay ahead of them.        

Forever Young-lyrics by Bob Dylan 

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

Copyright © 1973 by Ram's Horn Music; renewed 2001 by Ram’s Horn Music

Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel !

Local Events

Hi Kevin, Although we have let you know about some of these opportunities before, we trust a reminder is okay.  As always, we edit for brevity. - JVP Boston As the cease-fire breaks down and the bombings resume, Boston continues to stand in solidarity with Gaza.  See below for upcoming events. Sunday, August 17 Special Report from the Occupied Territories 6 PM - Potluck 7 PM - Presentation Newton, MA Call Joan Ecklein at 617 244 8054 for directions(leave message.) Dear Kevin, Please join Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston at the upcoming events listed below. Note the Mass March for Gaza this coming Monday as well as the August 17th talk in Newton. Please let people you know in Newton and Brookline about this opportunity. --- Mass March for Gaza Monday, August 11 at 5:30pm City Hall Plaza, Boston a growing list of co-sponsors With over 1900 Palestinians killed already in the Israeli assault on Gaza, please join us in a march of solidarity with the Palestinian people to demonstrate against the US government's enabling role in the massacre, including the $3 billion in aid every year as well as its unconditional political support for the land siege and naval blockade that renders Gaza as the world's largest "open air prison." The march will also target Hewlett Packard (HP), one of the companies complicit in the occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, and hence a target for the Palestinian called - and led - Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Besides providing numerous  services to the IDF, HP developed and maintains the automated biometric access management system that controls the movement of Palestinians and specifically Palestinian workers through checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. Read more about HP at http://wedivest.org/c/57/hp#.U-I9UfldXGA. We will be gathering at City Hall Plaza. We will then move to the JFK Federal Building, from where the rally and march begins around 5:30pm. https://www.facebook.com/events/812176275483913/ --- Special Report from the Occupied Territories                                 Sunday, August 17, 6:00 Potluck; presentation at 7:00. Newton. Call Joan Ecklein at 617 244 8054 for directions(leave message.) Cosponsored by: Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Newton Dialogues on Peace and War, UJP Palestine Task Force, Massachusetts Peace Action "The Gaza  Crisis and Growing Palestinian Resistance: a First-hand view from the West Bank," A talk by Nora Murad. Nora has lived in the Occupied Territories for more than ten years and has close contacts with youth  in Gaza.  She was in Ramallah this July during the Israeli attack. She is a co-founder of the Dalia Association on the West Bank; Dalia provides material aid directly to community projects formulated and organized by local people. She has extensive first hand knowledge of the impact of the Occupation and grass roots resistance to it. She is also well connected to Gaza residents struggling to survive under horrific conditions. Nora is a writer and mother living in Palestine. Her blog: "The View From My Window in Palestine" (www.noralestermurad.com) addresses issues of development, international aid, and daily life under military occupation. Before she moved to Palestine in 2004, Nora was assistant professor of cross-cultural understanding at Bentley College. --- Jewish Voice for Peace Boston: Gathering Sunday, August 17th, 6-8 PM Make Shift Boston, 549 Columbus Ave Sad and angry about the news from Gaza?  Looking for ways to respond? In this time of mourning, action, and solidarity, join with JVP Boston to hear updates and plug into our work for Gaza in the short and long term.  Pizza will be provided, and we’ll end in a community mourning ritual. Both new and longtime activists welcome. Please RSVP Here With Sorrow and Resolve, Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston Contact Info: Jewish Voice for Peace 1611 Telegraph Ave, Suite 550 Oakland, CA 94612 510.465.1777 info@jewishvoiceforpeace.org Connect with Us: Become a 2014 JVP Member | Facebook | Twitter | Flickr | Forward Subscribe to our blog Muzzlewatch

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No New U.S. War In Iraq- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries!  Stop The Bombing!

 

 

Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.

Defend The Palestinian People! No U.S. Aid To Israel !

Monday In Boston: March for Gaza! End the Israeli Siege, No more US Tax Dollars, Boycott, March on HP

WE DEMAND:

• End the Israeli Siege of Gaza
• No more US tax dollars for Israel
• Boycott, Divestment  and Sanctions
• Join US to March on HP and let them know Occupation is a Crime

Hewlett Packard makes billions off the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

• HP supplies computers to the Israeli army, and manages  the Israeli Navy’s IT infrastructure, which has been criticized  for war crimes.
• HP manufactures and maintains  a computer system of Israeli biometric  ID cards (with fingerprints, retinal and facial data), which are labeled  with ethnicity and nationality. IDs are used to control  movement of Palestinians  going to and from work in Israel and even between their own villages.

The rally will start at the US Federal building in Boston to call for an end to US aid to Israel; the US a major supplier of weapons and money.  The march will proceed through downtown Boston to the Westin Hotel near the waterfront convention center, where Hewlett Packard is sponsoring a convention for HP employees.  Hewlett Packard is a major supplier of Israel and enabler of the occupation.
Sponsored by Boston BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), Jewish Voice for Peace Boston, United for Justice with Peace, Northeastern University Students for Justice in Palestine, Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine, Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, Boston Alliance for Water Justice, Suffolk Law National Lawyer’s Guild, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, International Socialist Organization - Boston, Communist Party of Boston, Massachusetts Peace Action
Download the flyer as a PDF. 

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Starts ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner -Wilfred Owen's The End  

The End

After the blast of lightning from the east,

The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;

After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,

And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,

Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth

All death will he annul, all tears assuage?-

Or fill these void veins full again with youth,

And wash, with an immortal water, Age?

When I do ask white Age he saith not so:

'My head hangs weighed with snow.'

And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:

'My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.

Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,

Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried.'

On The 40^th Anniversary Of The Resignation Of One Richard M. Nixon-Hunter S. Thompson's Songs Of The Doomed  

Markin comment on one Richard Milhous Noxious (oops-Nixon):

In politics, hard bourgeois politics, one needs a very high degree of amnesia in order to survive the crooked deals, the humiliating compromises, and the desperate need to trim around the edges of political opponents because who knows who you might need for your own deals, compromises and trimmings. History has been kinder to one Richard Milhous Nixon than he ever desired, kinder due to the above characteristics of bourgeois politics and its companion, revisionist history, by those who were old-time opponents and those who are younger who knew not what a truly treacherous and dangerous man he was, to friend and foe alike. That said, anybody who wants to “rehabilitate” that man should consult the series of articles that the late Hunter S. Thompson, “Doctor Gonzo,” wrote for Rolling Stone and which can be found in the compilation entitled The Great Shark Hunt before writing or uttering word one on the subject. Of course for me, and others, at the time the idea of impeachment for Nixon was not enough. What a number of us were calling for in those days, those 1974 days when the man was going under by virtue of his own hubris, was that he be tried by the victims of his massive bombings of Vietnam and other places in Southeast Asia. That would have been real justice and the right verdict of history on the man.  

***********

BOOK REVIEW

Songs Of The Doomed, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Pocket Books, New York, 1990

“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists and other progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self defense, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a known dope fiend, gun freak and all-around lifestyle addict like the late, lamented Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far from any thought of a socialist solution and would reject such a designation we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us- but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.

I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself or wanted to been seen as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968 being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu. His earlier writings show that effect. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson’s career. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the pressure of time lines and for mass circulation media these pieces show an uneven quality. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others will have to push on further.

One should note that ‘gonzo’ journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within himself/herself as an actor in the story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in other disciplines like history and political science is that somehow one must be ‘objective’. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter’s way.

As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that this was a period of particular importance which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States and all- around political chameleon. His articles beginning in 1968 when Nixon was on his never ending “comeback” trail to his demise in the aftermath of the Watergate are required reading (and funny to boot). Thompson went way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick him when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon represented the ‘dark side’ of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.”