February Is Black History Month- Hats Off To Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement

 

 

 

DVD Review

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Free at Last: Civil Rights Heroes, film documentary, Image Entertainment, 2005

 

[This documentary was produced and reviewed well prior to the rightly well-received Martin Luther King biopic, Selma, but still holds up well to acknowledge the man other who made the struggle down South the defining event of those times-Frank Jackman-2015

 

Every major (and most minor) progressive social struggle in America from the struggle for independence from Great Britain through to the struggle for slavery’s abolition up to the struggle for women’s rights and gender equality today has had more than its share of heroes and martyrs. The purpose of the documentary under review, Free At Last: Civil Rights Heroes, rightly, highlights some of those lesser known heroes and martyrs from the struggle for black civil rights that came to national prominence in the1950s and 1960s (although arguably that conscious struggle goes back to the 1930s and before).

Although, in the end the question of black equality had to be addressed (and still has to be addressed) nationally the thrust of the black civil rights movement that is featured in this film is the struggle for something like a democratic revolution by blacks and their supporters in the police state-like American South. That barbaric de jure and de facto Jim Crow system officially, as a matter state and social policy, held blacks in second class citizenship (or lower). The struggle to overcome that ingrained (and profitable, profitable for whites of almost all social strata) was almost, of necessity, going to create more than its share of heroes and martyrs.

The case of fourteen- year old Chicago resident Emmett Till and his horrible murder at the hands of white marauders in Mississippi in 1955, the first of the three separate segments that make up the film graphically highlights the problem. For the mere allegation of “whistling at a white woman while black” (if that allegation had any substance) young Emmett was brutally mangled and thrown into the local river. When his mother, righteously, made a cause out of this bestial murder all hell broke loose, at least on the surface. And the case galvanized blacks and whites nationally, alerting many for the first time to the hard fact that something was desperately wrong down in Mississippi (and not just there). But justice, Mississippi justice, to paraphrase poet Langston Hughes, is justice deferred. As detailed in almost all the cases highlighted in the film those directly responsible for the actions against the civil rights workers were either never brought to justice or only after something like a long drawn out legal civil war. No one should forget that aspect of the struggle either.

The other cases highlighted from the assassinated Medgar Evers to the four Birmingham girls murdered in their church when it was bombed to the three civil rights workers slain in Philadelphia, Mississippi that drew nation-wide attention to slain white civil rights workers Viola Liuzzo and Reverend James Reeb, murdered for “being white while working for black civil rights” exhibit those same kinds of sickening results. Let me put it this way after viewing the film footage here, especially Bull Connor’s attack dogs being let loose on civil rights demonstrators in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama that was one of the first visual images that drove me into the civil rights struggle, I still wanted to throw something at the screen. And you wonder why fifty or so years later I still say Mississippi (or fill in your preferred state) goddam. Kudos here.

***Poet’s Corner- Langston Hughes -–Dream Deferred

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

February is Black History Month


Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes


…he, Ezra Benton, Ezra Benton who had worked, had worked hard, worked his way up from nothing but half-whipped nigra hot sun beating down cotton field hand hands all blistered, stinking like Gog knows what, always water thirsty to the assistant plantation blacksmith, assistant to Mister George Wright the white man from town who had seen him in one of the cabins all big and strong and asked if he could handle a hammer and there he was the man who shoed the damn horses when some fool drove the beasts too hard, heard , heard through the grapevine that now that Atlanta had fallen, had fallen to Sherman and his bummers, that Father Abraham up in the United States, up in Washington, D. C. was going to break up Mister’s plantation and give each nigra family, and maybe others too, maybe some upstart young buck with ambition like  him, forty acres and a mule to get them started now that slavery days were falling down. With that news, Ezra, who normally took news from the grapevine with a grain of salt, no more, got a little wistful. Wistful about how he would collect his now far- flung family scattered here and there throughout the delta, take his forty acres and his mule and plow, plow night and day until the heavens came home, maybe buy some more land, maybe built him a little white picket fence house like he had seen in town, and mainly make sure that his ever hungry kin, and his ever hungry own self had enough to eat, and then some. And so he dreamed…

…he, Brady Benson, son, righteous son of old Ezra Benson, who had help his father, kin father not some Father Abraham who never did get around to giving that forty acres and a mule that old Ezra still kept talking about although more wistfully of late, sharecrop Mister’s plantation land, sharecropped and never got ahead, never go that Ole Abe forty acres, and definitely did not get any mule, had heard, heard through the nigratown grapevine, that some nigra in Louisiana had boarded a “whites only” trolley in New Orleans, had been thrown off because he was “colored” and was actually going to Washington to have his case heard before the entire United States Supreme Court, all of them to decide if he could ride that thing or not. With that news, Brady, who normally took news from the grapevine with a grain of salt, no more, got a little wistful. Wistful about how maybe now Mister would not be able to take most of the harvest, and most of the little money left from old daddy’s work. About how he, Brady, might be able to get his own small farm and provide for his family on his own instead of being bunched up with daddy. But mainly he thought that from here on in when he went to town, or anywhere, Mister, or some Mister, would not be able to tell him he could sit here, but not there, he could walk here, but not there, he could stand here, but not there, he could eat here, but not there. And so he dreamed…

…he, Leroy, son of Benson, son of righteous Benson, grandson of old righteous Ezra, had got himself a little town learning, a little broken down schoolhouse learning but learning, learning how to weld stuff together with a torch and so he kind of escaped from the bottomlands and hot sun that he family had faced for generations. Now that war had come, a fighting war in Europe between he thought England and Germany, he had floated north, north up big muddy Mississippi north, when he heard that Chi town needed, desperately, needed welders, for stuff sent overseas. And once settled in the Chi town flop house cold- water flat tenements, overpriced, under-fueled all Negroes squeezed in like at home he had heard through the grapevine, the Division Street grapevine, that the jobs given out were permanent, to be had for as long as a man, a man can you believe that, wanted to work. With that news, Leroy, who normally took news from the grapevine with a grain of salt, no more, got a little wistful. Got to thinking about bringing up his wife, Louella, and his kids, maybe even daddy and granddaddy, and getting that white picket fence house, maybe with some land for a garden, that old Ezra always kept talking about when he was not muttering some silly stuff about forty acres and a mule. And so he dreamed…

…he, Daniel, Daniel, like something out of the Old Testament Bible, son of Leroy, son of righteous Leroy, grandson of righteous Benson, great-grandson of the late patriarch Erza, righteous Ezra of the ever dreaming forty acres, and a veteran, a twice purple-hearted veterans, European Theater, took advantage of the G.I. bill and learned the carpentry trade, learned it well, and as well now that he had moved back south with his extended family took to preaching a little (although Leroy, Chi town proud, curled his tongue every time Daniel quoted chapter and verse), a little over at 18^th Street Baptist, over on land that had once belonged to Mister, if you can believe that. And once everybody was settled in, wife and her family and his, and his carpentry business was set up and running, he kept hearing rumors, very persistent rumors, through the nigratown grapevine that Mister, or some Mister, was thinking about giving the better sort of Negros the vote, if you could believe that, if you could believe anything Mister said, even if you heard him say it. With that news, Daniel, who normally took news from the grapevine with a grain of salt, no more, got a little wistful. Wistful about how if they, the Negros had the right to vote then, maybe, that nigra stand here, that nigra sit there, that nigra walk over that hill, that nigra eat across that river would finally be damn done. And so he dreamed…

 

In Black History Month-No Justice, No Peace- Black Lives Matter- You Have Got That Right Brothers and Sisters-Speaking Truth To Power-The Struggle Continues  

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938

 

Click below to link to documents of the early 4th International.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/

Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):

Several years ago, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had  also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21^st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) was appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.  

A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy. Support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For 15.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize the truckers and distribution workers the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of retail stores. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012 labor, organized labor, spent over 450 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. The most egregious recent example that I can recall- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).  

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, I argued that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. Not Another War In Iraq! No Intervention In Syria! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing Campaign! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza. And as always since 2001 Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- American (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner on this issue, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets by going to prison. The only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health benefits.  

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!  

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle-class as well. 

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.  

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change! 

Stop housing foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst of the crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.  

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.  

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors. 

Build a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.  

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):  

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

The  Be-Bop The Adventure Car Hop –With Johnny Ace’s Classic Pledging My Love In Mind.

No question if you were alive in the 1950s in America, and maybe in other countries too for all I know but I think that this is truly an American phenomenon, alive meaning of course if you were young, say between twelve and twenty- five no older because then you hovered too close to being parents and hence, well hence, square in the golden age of the automobile met the golden age of al fresco dining, okay, okay low-end pre-Big Mac dining. Sorry, I got carried away. Golden Age eating outdoors, well, not really outdoors but in your Golden Age automobile at the local drive-in restaurant (not drive through like today but that may have been true too).

See the idea was that a young guy, maybe a guy who was a wiz at fixing up cars and who had retro-fitted, dual carb-fitted, low-slung wheels-fitted, amp-fitted, radio jacked-up some broken down wreak that some dealer had taken as a trade-in and was ready to ship to the junkyard and made it a “boss” car, like a ‘57 Chevy or Dodge or some nerdy young guy who had two left hands and had borrowed his father’s blah-blah family car for the night would bring his date to the drive-in restaurant and did not give a damn about the cuisine or the ambience against sitting in that car all private and all to munch on burgers and fries. And be seen in that “boss” car or in the case of the father-borrowed car just to be seen with his date. Be seen by the million and one young guys, maybe guys who were also wizzes at fixing up cars and who had also retro-fitted, dual carb-fitted, low-slung wheels-fitted, amp-fitted radio jacked-up some broken down wreak and made it a “boss” car, like a ‘57 Chevy or ‘56 Dodge or some nerdy young guys who had two left hands and had borrowed their father’s blah-blah family car for the night would bring their dates to the drive-in restaurant and did not give a damn about the cuisine or the ambience against sitting in those cars all private and all to munch on burgers and fries. Also to be seen and to be placed in the high school pecking order accordingly. Or if not in high school (but also not over twenty-five remember) to be paid homage for surviving that chore, and for knowing the ropes, knowing the signposts in the drive-in restaurant night.     

My old friend Jack Lowell had succinctly put the idea of golden age automobile and golden age dining out together one night, really early one morning, when he, we,  were feeling a little melancholy for the old days, and when he had had too much whiskey. All that needed to be added to the golden mix was to say that Eddie, Eddie Connell, would have been out, out once again some night, some weekend night more than likely with his ever-lovin’ Ginny, Virginia Stone, in the Clintondale 1950s be-bop night, having a little something to eat at the Adventure Car Hop, that burgers and fries eternal youth night out dining combo (did I mention a Coke or Pepsi, if I did not then those were the standard drinks to wash those hard-hearted burgers and those fat-saturated fries down) after a hard night of dancing to the local rockers down in Hullsville and afterward a bout down at Adamsville Beach located a couple of towns over and so filled with Clintondale and other young couples seeking some privacy from watchful town eyes, in the “submarine race” watching night.

Jack had good reason to want to talk about his best friend back then Eddie, about his “boss” ’57 two-toned, white and green, Chevy, and especially about his girl, his Ginny, since in the love wars Ginny had thrown him over for Eddie, had chosen Eddie’s souped-up car over Jack’s walking feet when the deal went down. Yeah, Eddie and Jack had back then still remained friends, had still been simpatico despite the girl mess-up. See just before the Ginny swap Jack had taken Ellen Riley, formerly the head cheer-leader at Clintondale High back in 1955 away from Eddie, the year they all, Jack, Eddie, Ginny, and Ellen if you are keeping count, had graduated from high school although neither Eddie or Jack knew Ginny or Ellen there. So all was fair in love and war.  Although Jack had thought it was just slightly unfair that Ellen had subsequently thrown him over, Jack the struggling college student with no dough and no car just like he had been in high school, for a guy from Hullsville because she did not want to wait to get married until after he graduated and she empathically was tired unto death of walking. Or worse, riding that clunky old Eastern Transit bus which was always late and did not run after midnight just in case they had something going down at the beach or after the Hullsville dance got out when her father’s hand-me-down car had gone to the graveyard and they had no car between them.      

But maybe Jack had better fill a candid world in on a couple of things to back up why he wanted to talk about Eddie and Ginny that whiskey-filled night. Was feeling just a little pang after all those years for having let Ginny go so easily. Jack and Eddie had known each other since the old days at Clintondale North Elementary and had been through thick and thin together (that “thin” usually revolved around girls, starting with Rosalind in the fifth grade who had eventually thrown them both over for a kid, Ricky Kelly, Jesus, wimpy Ricky Kelly, in the sixth grade). In high school they had drifted apart for a while when Eddie decided that since he was no student that he would take up automotive mechanics and Jack with two left hands pursued the college course.

Drifted apart until come sixteen Eddie, who proved to be a an ace mechanic, a natural, had fixed up some old Hudson that he found in the junkyard and made it a “boss” (Jack adamantly refused to define that term “boss” for that candid world since some things are, or should be, self-evident). That vehicle had been a “fox” lure (girls, okay) all through high school for both young men, except those times when Eddie wanted to take his girl of the week to Adamsville Beach and wanted to use the back seat alone with said honey.  And then go to the Adventure Car Hop for a little something to eat before taking her home.

That all worked well enough in high school since neither young man had any serious relationships. Then after high school the workaday world hit Eddie and he took a job at Duggan Brothers Garage and Jack went off to the local college, Gloversville State, on a scholarship while continuing to live at home. One night when Jack was a sophomore at Gloversville he and Eddie, Eddie with the new ’57 “boss” Chevy then, went to a rock and roll dance down in Hullsville arranged for those still under twenty-one and who could not legally drink (of course there was more booze than you could shake a stick at out in the parking lot which faced Hullsville Beach but that is a another story) and that is where Jack met Ginny, a former classmate whom he had not known in school because, well, because as she told him that night she did not then have anything to do with “corner boys,” so had met her, had talked to her, had danced with her and afterward they and Eddie and a girl he picked up at the dance, not Ellen, had gone to the Adventure Car Hop for the first time together to grab a bite to eat before going home. Strangely Ginny, although she grew up in Clintondale, had never been there before considering it nothing but a male “hang-out” scene (which at some level Jack admitted to her was true).

And so started the love affair between Jack and Ginny, although according to Jack the thing had many rocky moments from the start on the question of Jack, poor boy Jack, not having his own car, having to either double-date with Eddie, whom she did not like then, or worse, walk when Eddie had his back seat wanting habits on. And her carping at Jack for not wanting to quit college to get married and start a family right away (Ginny had not gone on to school after high school and went to work in Boston for John Hancock Insurance where she was moving up in the organization). And that went on for a while.

Meanwhile Eddie had taken up with Ellen, whom he had not known in high school either, nor had Jack, because as she told Eddie “she was into football players with a future, not grease monkeys.” She saw the error of her ways when she had brought her car in for repairs and Eddie worked on the car, and on her. She was going to Adamsville Junior College right down the road but she saw something in Eddie, for a while. Then, although they all had double-dated together she “hit” on Jack one night, wound up going to bed with him a few weeks later down in Cape Cod, where she shared a cottage with six other college classmates for the summer, when Eddie had to go out of town for a couple of weeks to a GM training school and that was that.                      

Of course once the news got around, and in small city Clintondale that did not take long, especially with those summer roommates of hers, of Jack and Ellen to reach Ginny, and Eddie all bets were off. Ginny brushed Jack off with a solo telephone call to him in which she terminated their affair after about three sentences with a “I don’t want to discuss it further, I want to end this conversation,” yeah, the big brush-off. Ellen told Eddie that they were done and while he feigned being hurt about it the truth was that he had not been all that happy with her of late, thought she was drifting away from him when she decided against his protests to go in on that summer cottage. And so they parted, although Eddie was a little sore at Jack for a while, as usual when they mixed it up with their women.

One afternoon Eddie saw Ginny waiting for the bus, that damn Eastern Transport bus, and took her on the “rebound” (although don’t expect him to use that word about or around Ginny, just don’t). Ginny, for her part, decided that Eddie wasn’t so bad after all, and he did have that “boss” car and when they talked about it one night after they had hit the silk sheets was not adverse to the idea of marriage. And so their thing went in the Clintondale night for a while. Let’s hone in on what Eddie and Ginny were up to that long ago night Jack talked about when he got the blues about the old days, okay.  

“Two hamburgers, all the trimmings, two fries, two Cokes, Sissy,” rasped half-whispering Eddie Connell to Adventure Car Hop number one primo car hop Sissy Jordan. Eddie and Sissy had known each other forever. Sissy had been Eddie’s girlfriend back in junior high days, back in eight-grade at Clintondale North Junior High when he learned a thing or two about girls, about girl charms and girl bewilderments. And Sissy had been his instructor, although like all such early bracings with the opposite sex there was as much misinformation and confusion as intimacy since nobody, no parent, no teacher, and no preacher was cluing any kids in, except some lame talk about the birds and the bees, kids’ stuff. Things, as happens all the time in teen love, had not worked out between them. Had not worked out as well because by ninth grade blossoming Sissy was to be found sitting in the front seat of senior football halfback Jimmy Jordan’s two-toned souped-up Hudson and Sissy had no time for mere boys then. Such is life.   

For those who know not of Adventure Car Hop places or car hops here is a quick primer. These drive-in restaurants in the 1950s were of a piece, all glitter in the night (they lost a lot of allure seen passing by in the day and could have been any diner USA at those hours), all neon lights aglow that could be seen from a mile away as you headed out Route 3 from Clintondale Center, a small shopping area eventually replaced as the place to shop by the Gloversville Mall. The neon lights spelling out Adventure Car Hop super-imposed on an outline of a comely car hop also in neon meant, well, meant adventure, mystery, oh hell, sex. So any given Friday or Saturday night and in summer almost any night you would see the place packed with all kinds of youth cars in each striped slot. In summer the walkers, and almost every kid, girl or boy, had done the walk there before their coming of car age could sit and eat their meals on the wooden picnic tables the management provided. In winter they could go inside and sit at the vinyl-cushioned booths and order their meals while listening to the latest hits on the jukebox. Or if single, and that was rare, there were swiveling red vinyl-topped stools to sit at. Sit at and view Mel, Lenny, or Benny (the owner) pulling short order cook duty behind a metallic counter and view as well, get an eyeful if you thought about it, of the really comely car hops doing their frenetic best to keep up with the orders (and since space was at a premium avoid bumping into each other with big orders of drinks on their trays). Really thought if you went from Bangor to La Jolla you would see the same basic set-up so you would never have to worry about a place to go at night at least anywhere in America where ill-disposed parents would not be found in those precincts. 

The Adventure Car Hop, the only such place in town and therefore a magnet for everybody from about twelve to twenty-something was (now long gone and the site of a small office park)  nothing but an old time drive-in restaurant where the car hop personally took your order from you while you were  sitting in your “boss” car. Hopefully boss car, although the lot the night Jack thought about how Eddie and Ginny graced the place had been filled with dads’ borrowed cars, strictly not boss, not boss at all.  Sitting with your “boss” girl (you had better have called her that or the next week she would be somebody else’s “boss” honey). And the place became a rite of passage for Jack’s youngest brother Sam several years later even though the family had moved to Adamsville by then.  That luscious car hop would return to you after, well, it depended on how busy it was, and just then around midnight this was Adventure Car Hop busy time, with your order on a tray which attached to your door. By the way families, parents alone without children, or anybody else over twenty-something either gave the place a wide berth or only went there during the day when no self-respecting young person, with or without a car or a date, would be seen dead there, certainly not to eat the food. Jesus no. 

Now Sissy, a little older then than most Clintondale car hops at almost twenty-two, had turned into nothing but a career waitress, a foxy one still, but a waitress which was all a car hop really was. Except most car hops at Adventure Car Hop were "slumming” through senior-hood at Clintondale High or were freshman at some local college and were just trying to make some extra money for this and that while being beautiful. Because, and there was no scientific proof for this, but none was needed, at Adventure Car Hop in the year 1959 every car hop had been a fox (that beautiful just mentioned), a double fox on some nights, in their red short shorts, tight white blouses, and funny-shaped red and white box hats. And Sissy topped the list. Here though is where Sissy made a wrong turn, made her a career waitress (and made Eddie feel sorry for her, or at least sorry for losing her instruction back in ninth grade to some damn old football player). She had let Jimmy Jordan  have his way with her too many times, too many unprotected times (again in the ignorance 1950s, in Clintondale at least, the fine points of contraception, or even cautious use of rubbers was a book sealed with seven seals mostly), when she was a senior at Clintondale High back in 1955 (and Jimmy was up at State U playing football and also having off-hand quite ignorant sex with a few adoring college girlfriends on the side).

So that year she had had to drop out of school to have a baby (Jack said they called it “gone to Aunt Ella’s” and once a girl was not seen for a while someone would use that term and that was all that was needed to be said, except the occasional sighing about a good girl gone wrong or scorn from the prissy girls who allegedly were saving “it” for marriage). But see Jimmy, caddish Jimmy, left Sissy in the lurch, would not marry her or provide for the child (what the hell he was a student, he had no dough even if he had been willing to do the honorable thing, which he was not) and so she never went back to finish up after that visit to Aunt Ella. She had latched onto the job at Adventure Car Hop to support her child since Benny could have cared less about her maternal status as long as she showed those long legs, those firm breasts, those ruby-red lips and those dazzling blue eyes to great effect in those shorts and tight blouse that kept the boys coming in, even the boys with dates. Yeah, so he could care less for as long as she could keep eyes turned her way.

The story, an old story in town since there were a couple of “role models,” Jenny and Delores working at Jimmy Jack’s Diner over on East Main who followed this career path after having children out of wedlock. And thus all the signs told that career waitress was to be Sissy’s fate, maybe not at that place but probably she would wind up at Jimmy Jack’s or some truck stop diner on the outside of town with a trying too hard too tight steam-sweated uniform, stubby pencil in her hair, a wad of gum in her mouth, still fending off, mostly fending off except when she got the urge or felt lonely for a man, lonesome trucker advances.          

But back to the 1959 be-bop night, the be-bop Friday or Saturday night when those car hops, those foxes, were magnets for every guy with a car, a boss one or a father’s car it did not matter but without girls filling the seats, especially the front seat, hoping against hope for a moment with one of those car hops. And for car guys with girls in those front seats looking to show off their girls, claiming they were foxier, while sneaking furtive glances toward the bustling car hops, even than the car hops, if that was possible, and it usually wasn’t. Although under no conditions let your date know that if you wanted a date next week and not the freeze-out “not home” treatment. More importantly, to show off their “boss cars.” And playing, playing loudly for all within one hundred yards to hear, their souped-up car radio complexes, turned nightly in rock heaven’s WJDA, the radio station choice of everyone under the age of thirty.

As Jack honed in on that remembrance night on Eddie's super-duplex speaker combo The Dell-Vikings were singing their hit, Black Slacks, and some walkers were crooning along to the tune. Yes, if you can believe this, some guys and girls, some lame guys and girls, not junior high kids who couldn’t drive anyway but over sixteen high school students actually walked to the Adventure Car Hop to grab something to eat after the Clintondale Majestic Theater let out. They, of course, ate at the thoughtfully provided picnic tables although their orders were still taken by Sissy’s leggy brigade. Nicely served by those tip-hungry car hops just like real customers with a glimmer of nighttime social standing, although they were still nothing but lamos in the real night social order.

But, getting back to Eddie and Ginny, see Sissy would have known something that you and I would not have known, could not have known, just by the way Eddie placed his order as The Falcon’s doo wop serenade, Your So Fine, blared away from his radio in the fading night. Sissy knew because, being a fox she had had plenty of experience knowing the drive-in restaurant protocol after the battles had subsided down at Adamsville or Hullsville Beach “submarine watching” night, including with Eddie in the days, the junior high days when she and Eddie were nothing but lamo car-less walkers. And what she knew was that Eddie and Ginny, who had been nothing but a “stick” when Eddie and she were an item, a stick being a girl, a twelve or thirteen year old junior high school girl with no “shape,” unlike Sissy who did have a shape, although no question, no question even to Sissy Ginny had a shape now, not as good as hers but a shape good enough to keep Eddie snagged, had been "doing it” down at Hullsville Beach. Doing “it” after spending the early part of the evening at the Surf, the local rock dance hall for those over twenty-one (and where liquor was served). The tip-off: Eddie’s request for all the trimmings on his hamburgers. All the trimmings in this case being mustard, ketchup, pickles, lettuce, and here is the clincher, onions. Yes, Eddie and Ginny are done with love’s chores for the evening and can now revert to primal culinary needs without rancor, or concern.

Sissy had to laugh at how ritualized, although she would never have used such a word herself, may have not been up on her sociological jargon, to describe what was going on in the youthful night life in Clintondale (including the really just slightly older set like the clients of the Surf rock club, Eddie and Ginny, who had learned the ropes at Adventure Car Hop way back when). If a couple came early, say eight o’clock, they never ordered onions, no way, the night still held too much promise. The walkers, well, the walkers you couldn’t tell, especially the young walkers like she and Eddie in the old days, but usually they didn’t have enough sense to say “no onions.” And then there were the Eddies and Ginnys floating in around two, or three, in the morning, “done” (and the reader knows what “done” is now), starving, maybe a little drunk and ready to devour Benny’s (who was doing short order duty that night since Mel had called in sick, “rum” sick Benny called it) cardboard hamburgers, deep-fried, fat-saturated French fries, and diluted soda (known locally as tonic, go figure) as long as those burgers had onions, many onions on them. And as we turn off this scene to the strains of Johnny Ace crooning Pledging My Love on Eddie’s car radio competing just now with a car further over with The Elegants’ Little Star Sissy had just place the tray on Eddie’s side of the car and had brought his order and placed it on the tray, with all the trimmings.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner-Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov 

Quiet Flows the Don  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school but the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists and  Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements, those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

 

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful English poets (we will speak of American poets when they slip into war footing in 1917)like Wilfred Owens before he got religion, e.e. cummings madly driving his safety ambulance, beautiful Rupert Brookes wondering which way to go but finally joining the mob in some fated oceans, sturdy Robert Graves all blown to hell and back surviving but just surviving, French , German, Russian, Italian poets tooo all aflutter; artists, reeking of blooded fields, the battle of the Somme Muirhead Bone's nothing but a huge killing field that still speaks of small boned men, drawings, etchings that no subtle camera could make beautiful, that famous one by Picasso, another by Singer Sargent about the death trenches, about the gas, and human blindness for all to see; sculptors, chiseling monuments to the national brave even before the blood was dried before the last tear had been shed, huge memorials to the unnamed, maybe un-nameable dead dragged from some muddied trench half blown away; writers, serious and not, wrote beautiful Hemingway stuff about the scariness of war, about valor, about romance on the fly, among those women. camp-followers who have been around  since men have left their homes to slaughter and maim, lots of writers speaking, after the fact about the vein-less leaders and what were they thinking, and, please, please do not forgot those Whiggish writers who once the smoke had cleared had once again put in a word about the endless line of human progress, musicians, sad, mystical, driven by national blood lusts to the high tattoo, went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate  ….    

Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov 

Quiet Flows the Don  
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And Quiet Flows the Don or Quietly Flows the Don (Тихий Дон, lit. "The Quiet Don") is 4-volume epic novel by Russian writer Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. The 1st three volumes were written from 1925 to '32 & published in the Soviet magazine October in 1928–32. The 4th volume was finished in 1940. The English translation of the 1st three volumes appeared under this And Quiet Flows the Don or Quietly Flows the Don (Тихий Дон, lit. "The Quiet Don") is 4-volume epic novel by Russian writer Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. The 1st three volumes were written from 1925 to '32 & published in the Soviet magazine October in 1928–32. The 4th volume was finished in 1940. The English translation of the 1st three volumes appeared under this title in 1934. The novel is considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature in the 20th century. It depicts the lives & struggles of Don Cossacks during WWI, the Russian Revolution & Russian Civil War. In 1965, Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for this novel. The authorship of the novel is contested by some literary critics & historians, who believe it wasn't entirely written by Sholokhov. ...more