From A Dimmed Elegy For The Late Peter Paul Markin Series-Josh Breslin Comes Of Age- Kind Of
From The Pen Of Sam Lowell
A while
back, a few months ago although the project had been percolating in his brain
for the previous several years after some incident reminded him how much he
missed his old corner boy from the 1960s North Adamsville night, the late Peter
Paul Markin, Bart Webber wrote up what he called, and rightly so I think, an
elegy for him, A Dimmed Elegy For The Late Peter Paul Markin.
(Frankly any other kind of elegy but dimmed would fail to honor that bastard
saint madman who kept us going in that big night called the early 1960s.)I need
not go into all of the particulars of that piece except to say that the
consensus among the still surviving corner boys was that it was spot on, caught
all of Markin’s terrible contradictions pretty well. Contradiction that led him
from the bright star of the Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner boy back then to
a bad end, a mucho mal end murdered down in Sonora, Mexico in 1976, 1977 when
some drug deal (cocaine) he was brokering went sour for reasons despite some
investigation were never made clear and he was found on some dusty back road of
that town face down and is buried in the town’s forlorn potter’s field is some
unmarked grave. That is about all we know for sure about his fate and that is
all that is needed to be mentioned here.
That foul
end might have been the end of it, might have been the end of the small legend
of Markin. Except the moaning to high heaven still every time his name comes up.
Except this too. Part of Bart’s elegy referenced the fact that in his sunnier
days before the nose candy got the best of him, brought out those formerly
under control outrageous “wanting habits,” in the early 1970s when he was still
holding onto that “newer world” dream that he (and many others, including me
and Bart for a varying periods) did a series of articles about the old days and
his old corner boys in North Adamsville. Markin before we lost contact, or rather
I lost contact with him since Josh Breslin his friend from Maine (and
eventually our friend as well whom we consider an honorary Jack Slack’s corner
boy) met out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 knew his whereabouts
outside of San Francisco in Daly City until about 1974 wrote some pretty good
stuff, stuff up for awards, and short-listed for the Globe.
A couple of
years ago pushed on by Bart’s desire to tell Markin’s story as best he could he
(a job that he did pretty well at since Bart was not really a writer but rather
a printer by trade who must have been driven by some fierce ghost of Markin
over his shoulder to do such yeoman’s work), Frankie (our corner boy leader
back then who had Markin as his scribe and now is a big time lawyer in Boston),
Josh, and I agreed that a few of the
articles were worth publishing if only for ourselves and the small circle of
people whom Markin wrote for and about. (Markin’s oldest friend from back in
third grade Allan Johnson who would have had plenty to say about the early days
had passed away after a long-term losing
fight with cancer before this plan was hatched, RIP, brother.) So that is
exactly what we did. We had a commemorative small book of articles and any old
time photographs we could gather put together and had it printed up in the
print shop that Bart’s oldest son, Jeff, is now running for him since his
retirement from the day to day operations last year.
Since not
all of us had everything that Markin wrote, as Bart said, what the hell they
were newspaper or magazine articles to be used to wrap up the fish in or
something after we were done reading them, we decided to print what was
available. Bart was able to find copies of a bunch of sketches up in the attic
of his parents’ home which he was cleaning up for them when they were putting
their house up for sale since they were in the process of downsizing. Josh,
apparently not using his copies for wrapping fish purposes, had plenty of the
later magazine pieces. I had few things, later things from when we went on the
quest for the blue-pink Great American West hitchhike road night as Markin
called it. Unfortunately, we could not find any copies of the long defunct East Bay Eye and so could not include
anything from the important Going To The Jungle
series about some of his fellow Vietnam veterans who could not adjust to the
“real” world coming back from ‘Nam and wound up in the arroyos, canyons,
railroad sidings and under the bridges of Southern California. He was their
voice on that one, if silent now. So
Markin can speak to us still. Yeah, like Bart said, that’s about right for that
sorry ass blessed bastard saint with his eight billion words.
Below is the
introduction that I wrote for that book which we all agreed should be put in
here trying to put what Markin was about in content from a guy who knew him
about as well as anybody from the old neighborhood, knew his dark side when
that came out later too:
“The late Peter
Paul Markin, also known as “the Scribe, ” so anointed by Frankie Riley the
unchallenged self-designated king hell king of the schoolboy night among the
corner boys who hung around the pizza parlors, pool halls, and bowling alleys
of the town, in telling somebody else’s story in his own voice about life in the
old days in the working class neighborhoods of North Adamsville where he grew
up, or when others, threating murder and mayhem, wanted him to tell their stories usually gave
each and every one of that crew enough rope to hang themselves without additional
comment. He would take down, just like he would do later with the hard-pressed Vietnam
veterans trying to do the best they could out in the arroyos, crevices,
railroad sidings and under the bridges when they couldn’t deal with the “real”
world after Vietnam in the Going To The
Jungle series that won a couple of awards and was short-listed for the
Globe award, what they wanted the world to hear, spilled their guts out as he
one time uncharitably termed their actions (not the veterans, not his fellows
who had their troubles down in L.A. and needed to righteously get it out and he
was the conduit, their voice, but the zanies from our old town), and then
lightly, very lightly if the guy was bigger, stronger than him, or in the case
of girls if they were foxy, and mainly just clean up the language for a candid
world to read.
Yeah Makin would
bring out what they, we, couldn’t say, maybe didn’t want to say. That talent was
what had made the stories he wrote about the now very old days in growing up in
North Adamsville in the 1960s when “the rose was on the bloom” as my fellow
lawyer Frankie Riley used to say when Markin was ready to spout his stuff.
Ready to make us laugh, cringe, get red in the face or head toward him to slap
him down if he got too righteous. Here is the funny part though. In all the
stories he mainly gave his “boys” the best of it. Yes, Bart is still
belly-aching about a few slights about his lack of social graces that old
Markin threw his way, and maybe he was a little off on the reasons why I gave
up the hitchhike highway (what he called sneeringly my getting “off the bus”
which even he admitted was not for everyone) but mainly that crazy maniac with
the heart of gold, the heart of lead, the heart that should have had a stake
placed in its center long ago, ah, that’s enough I have said enough except I
like Bart still miss and mourn the bastard.
Here is something
Josh Breslin, who also took a hand at writing articles for a lot of small
circulation “idea” journals and off-beat magazines meaning no dough
publications and likes to write in the third person so don’t think he is weird
when he refers to himself as Josh Breslin, wrote about one of his experiences coming
of age in Olde Saco which was very much like Markin and the rest of us had experienced
when our world was fresh:
One night, not late, not late since his time clock had switched over the long years from going to bed at five in the morning to getting up at that hour, Bart Webber, an old friend of Josh Breslin’s out of the blue began thinking about a story that Josh had told him (and others) one night around a campfire out in the California high desert near Joshua Tree the first time they had travelled together along with the late Peter Paul Markin on the long cross-country hitchhike road. Markin, which is what everybody called him, had met Josh out in Frisco town on Russian Hill when he, Josh, had hitchhiked west in the Summer of Love, 1967.
That hitchhike road they all got caught up on had been influenced by getting caught up in the tail end of the “king of the beats” Jack Kerouac’s on the road sagas, mostly On The Road and Big Sur (physically, spiritually and emotionally influenced by those books but don’t use those words around Bart, or Josh for that matter, since you will get nothing but side glance sneers for your efforts) and the first stirring of the yellow brick road “on the bus” mantra put forth by new age guy Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters (also physically, spiritually and emotionally influenced as was the writer Tom Wolfe who put Kesey and his crowd on the “alternative life-style” map with his Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but again don’t use those words around Bart, or Josh for that matter, since you will get nothing but additional side glance sneers for your efforts).
Bart had been, as befits an elder of this world, thinking more lately about those youthful days when everything good physically, spiritually and emotionally had seemed in front of them (remember don’t you use those words if you don’t want the North Adamsville or Olde Saco, Josh’s Podunk growing up Maine town, corner boy version of the big chill), and everything seemed possible. Added to this memory lane trip a story that Bart’s granddaughter, Amanda, had told him about her much more recent coming of age first date with some young guy in middle school [known to him in his day as junior high but they are both the same hormonally-charged, mind-boggling, heart-breaking institutions not one whit more forgiving today than in his day] that got the floodgates of past time remembrances flowing.
Of course, Bart and all the guys who had survived to tell tales had the name Peter Paul Markin, hell, just Markin like we all called him except maybe his mother and his short marriage leafy suburbs first wife, uppermost in their minds these days as the fortieth anniversary of his disappearance came on the horizon when they would meet to toss down a few at Jimmy Higgin’s Tavern in North Cambridge where Josh lives these days, about thirty some miles north of North Adamsville. All had grown up in that latter town except Josh, a guy whom Markin had met on his first trip out to the West, met out in San Francisco when Markin was “on the bus,” on Captain Crunch’s converted yellow brick road school bus roaming up and down the coast looking, well, looking for the way out of whatever ailed them (and society for they were very idealistic and naïve as well).
According to corner boy urban legend Josh had Josh had been looking for dope and Markin said “here brother, and don’t bogart it either,” meaning keep whatever was not smoked to “seed” the next joint and don’t just discard the remnants in the dope lingo of the day and they became fast friends from that odd-ball start even though Josh was a few years younger and from a Podunk town in Maine. The “skinny” is this though Josh had stopped at the psychedelically-inscribed bus and had asked the first “dude” he ran into [dude a term of usage well before it was made “cool” popular by actor Jeff Bridges] ran into, Markin as it turned out, and asked for some weed [marijuana], the high times symbol of the early part of the 1960s jail break. Josh’s words had actually been “anybody got any spare dope, a spare joint for a weary traveler, for a seeker of truth.” Yeah, the times were like that, at least in some minds. The fast friends’ part goes though whichever version you believe. Until Markin fell off the face of the earth in the mid-1970s.
Fell off the earth and has still been high holy moaned about to this day. Markin when he had come back to North Adamsville from the West Coast on one of his periodic returns then brought Josh back and that is where they had all met and bonded (the old time working-class ethos of North Adamsville and Olde Saco which they all grew up imbibing being very much the same in both locations). A few months later they all went west together on that same hitchhike road and that trip is where Josh told Bart (and others, including Markin ) around that campfire his coming of age story. They spent half the night laughing (from the good effects of the dope and nodding their heads up and down in agreement).
In those days Josh had kept body and soul alive by some free-lance writing for the proliferating alternative journals, newspapers and broadsheets of the time. [It seemed like every week a new paper would rear its head, make some waves, and then either fold or get fused with another paper until in the end they all, except iconic vehicles like Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, went to ground as the writers moved back to the bourgeois press [Josh’s term] or the dwindling readership for such materials told the tale to abandon ship. Josh was particularly in demand for a time for his reviews of music, in those day records, small and large, singles and long-playing, and concerts, mostly rock concerts. Of course the only music that the corner boys were interested in was rock and subsequently when that music made its minute splash, acid-etched rock but Josh as it turned out was very keen on the whole American songbook and later would make a certain reputation on that score. So when, and maybe particularly when he was “on the bus” and high as a kite on bennies or something Josh would be writing a mile a minute.
The night that he told Bart his story he had been working on reviewing an album, a retro 1950s rock album compilation which had had in contrast to the more recent flaming artwork that had increasingly inspired acid-etched rock albums a black and white family album-style photograph that graced the cover. That now golden age (ouch!) of rock and roll album glanced by Josh at some cheapo retro record store in the Fillmore district where there was probably a record store of some type on every corner to meet the demand of the young crowds flowing into that place [its most famous, or infamous street names, Haight-Ashbury evoking even now fond memories of high times among the brethren and rage and rapine among the death-dealers who wanted to have every hippie executed or worse]. For the young or the forgetful records were, oh hell, it would be really too hard to explain why we bothered with such an odd-ball way to listen to our music, Jesus, on 45 RPMs only one song at a time on each side of the platter [slang for record, okay]. Look it up on Wikipedia like everything else from olden times, ah, that is everything before last week.
On this album Josh was talking about the viewer was treated to a photograph of a well-groomed boy and girl, teenagers of course, who else would listen to rock and roll in the be-bop 1950s night. (The “beats,” you know high priest Kerouac, shamanic Ginsberg, demon Burroughs and their crowd who slightly touched the “hippies” were serious Monk/Parker/Gillespie “cool” jazz freaks so those emulating the beats with their berets, black outfits and midnight sunglasses were not who were being pictured in that album but rather perhaps their older brothers and sisters.) They are indeed well-groomed he with a sports jacket, white shirt, tie and black chino pants(probably bought at Robert Hall’s a well-known national clothing chain store that catered to providing cheaper formal goods to the sons of poor and working-class families. The mere mention of that old time name brought laughter from the males who all were very familiar with the ritual of the first sports coat mothers forced on them which were either ill-filling, made of bizarre fabric, or looked like an item only a mother would think was “cool.” Maybe all three.) She with her first party dress, a frilly girly thing and nylons with matching shoes (probably bought at Filene’s or Macy’s but not ill-fitting or anything like that since no self-respecting girl would allow her mother to foist such an item off on her). The young women around the campfire did laugh when Josh brought up the issue of “falsies,” the attempt, the futile and potentially embarrassing attempt if things sagged or fell out to “enhance” their breasts with toilet paper or napkins or some such in their training bras). They, boy and girl, each in their own happiness, awkwardness, sweaty-handed-ness, worried about “b. o.” [body odor], mouth breathe worlds, from the look of the photograph were trying to “connect” by carefully perusing the pile of records that were stacked in front of that vintage RCA record-player (same advice for the clueless on this item as on records-go to Wikipedia asap).
But see just then every parent, every square parent, and they were legion, almost universal, who had just gotten used to the idea that the “beat” manner and style of the older brothers and sisters would not sent the world, their world to hell in a handbasket were fitting themselves up to be tied if they had any sense at all were banning, confiscating, burning, or otherwise destroying every record, 45 RPM or long-playing, that came through the front door with junior and missy. Reason? Said rock ‘n’ roll led to communistic thoughts (turning Junior and Missy into brain-washed zombies of Moscow or Peking [sic] body –snatchers it was never clear which in the days before the big split between the Communist behemoths but probably the nuclear-savvy Soviets ready to do serious harm to the American way of life without a murmur, without mercy too to hear it told in that red scare Cold War executive the traitor Jewish Rosenbergs and all the heathens too night), youth tribal hanging together (to the exclusion, no, to the denials of the existence of, parents with their transfixed transistor radios glued to their ears, clueless again look at Wikipedia), bad teeth(soon among the middle class and other upwardly mobile types to make some dentists very rich creating Ipana- smiled children), acne(never really conquered and always the cutting point in the boy-girl universe), brain-death (from too much television, radio, or just bewildered staring into space), or most dreaded the “s” word, s-x, maybe the most dreaded of all the nightmare scenarios in that pre-“Pill” time with every parent sworn to secrecy by church no matter he denomination and politician no matter the party like the mere mention of the word would wreak havoc on gentile society. Jesus, no, double Jesus.
Of course Josh Breslin an aspiring writer then saw his “hook,” saw that Rosetta Stone photograph could provide a snapshot of what Josh’s own first date was like. So Josh told those who were around the campfire in the high desert night to think back to their own introductions to rock and roll, leave the world of parents behind and concentrate on the couple in the photo. Call them, the couple, Josh Breslin, and his date, his first date, his first date ever, Julie Dubois, who were just then looking spiffy if uncomfortable for all the reasons mentioned above and were emphatically not shuffling the records for show at the practiced eye whim of some besotted record producer trying to create his or her own “hook” to the nostalgic 1960s crowd looking back those few years to their innocent coming of age times but looking to see if Earth Angel by the Penguins was in the stack to chase away the awkwardness both were feeling on this first date. It turned out that both of them were crazy about that platter so they were reaching way back in their respective young minds' recesses to come up with every arcane fact they knew about the song, the group, how it was produced, anything to get through that next few moments until the next dance started.
Now Josh said he always thought he was cool as kid even in that hellish junior high school night, at least cool when he was dealing with his corner boy boys that hung out in front of Mama Leclerc’s Pizza Parlor on Main Street up in Olde Saco, that’s up in Maine if you don’t remember (but also remember this could have been anywhere USA then in an age before mall rats when every guy who was not a loser had his boys to protect him, but mainly to hang out on those tough girl-less, dough-less, car-less nights when other guys in the same boat provided an audience for dreams, for thoughts of the great jail-break from whatever the town did not provide). That Mama’s pizza parlor on that corner was by tradition then given over to a new crop of guys once the previous junior high hangers-outers moved up to Johnny’ Roadside Diner in high school (with girls, guys with cars and a jukebox to die for to tell one and all you had arrived). And now too according to Josh although the place has changed hands several times since then and the cops tend to harass the kids more now since the owners are not happy to have a bunch of wise-ass guys hanging around when young families come in for their give-Ma-a-break pizza night.
But this girl thing, pretty or not, and Julie was very pretty, getting Josh worked up or not (actually forget that “or not” part he was worked up, okay) was a lot harder than it looked, once he had exhausted every possible fact about Earth Angel and then had to reach way back in his mind’s recesses again when he tried to do the same for The Clover’s version of Blue Velvet. No sale, Julie didn’t like that one; she smirked, not dreamy enough, meaning more sappy, more for elementary school girls to get all weepy over not for the likes of her to have a guy’s shoulder to rest her face on (she would not give Josh the full explanation until later but that was what she was thinking behind that smirk). Then ditto, naturally, since Josh had felt snubbed trying to almost painfully reach down for what he thought was a surefire girl-winning song when, Julie, seriously trying to hold up her end went on and on about Elvis’ Blue Moon cover. No sale, no way, no dice, too country bumpkin boy sailing under the starry night in some goof movie a girl had asked him to take her to at the Alhambra Theater, said Josh to himself and then to Julie since they had vowed, like some mystical rite of passage passed down from eternal teenager-ness, be candid with each other. (That candor had it limits, its very circumscribed limits, since candor was not a characteristic high on any teen-agers list except that prevailing wisdom deemed it necessary in the boy-girl night to show you have the capacity to show it in the interest of moving things along and in showing you had some gravitas, Jesus, once again.) Finally, Julie’s shuffling through the platters produced The Turban’s When You Dance and things got better. Yes, this was one tough night, one tough first date, first date ever night.
After that seemingly futile bout Josh began to think maybe the whole thing was ill-fated from the beginning. Josh’s friend, maybe best friend, at Olde Saco Junior High, Rene Leblanc, was having his fourteenth birthday party, a party that his mother, as mothers will, insisted on being a big deal. Big deal being Rene inviting boys and girls, nice boys and girls, dressed in suits (remember sweet mother’s choices), or at least jackets and ties (boys), and party dresses (girls, and remember the big nix on mother’s choices something out of the 1920s Jazz Age or some time like that) and matched-up (one boy, one girl as befitted the times). Josh had said recently to Bart over drinks that he would not have known what Mrs. Leblanc would have made of today’s same-sex arrangements probably would have called out high heaven’s damnation, the Gaullic Roman Church’s damnation against the sins that dare not speak their name. For that matter Josh would have at that time fag-dyke baited the hell out of any such relationship that came through the door just like he did down at Olde Saco Beach when the fags hung out at Billy’s Bad Boy Tavern where the placid gay bikers, not Hell’s Angels-types but limp-wristed motorcycle clubbers, from Quebec would hang in summer.
Mrs. Leblanc was clueless that such square get-ups and social arrangements in the be-bop teen night would “cramp” every rocking boy and girl that Rene (or Josh) knew. But the hardest part was that Josh, truth, had never had a boy-girl party date (meaning “petting” might be on the agenda if he played his cards right and did not screw everything up by being too candid) and so therefore had no girl to bring to Rene’s party. And that is where Julie, Rene’s cousin from over in Ocean City, came in. She, as it turned out, had never had a girl-boy date. And since when Mrs. Leblanc with Rene in tow picked Josh up on party night and then went over to Ocean City for Julie, introduced them, and there was no love at first sight clang although she no question pretty but seemed too angelic, too ethereal, Josh figured that this was to be one long, long night.
So the couple, the nervous couple, nervous now because the end of the stack was being reached when mercifully Marvin and Johnny’s Cherry Pie came up, both declared thumbs up, both let out a simultaneous spontaneous laugh. And the reason for that spontaneous laugh, as they were both eager to explain in order to have no hurt feelings, was that Josh had asked Julie if she was having a good time and she said, well, yes just before they hit Cherry Pie pay-dirt. Just then Rene came over and shouted over the song being played on the record player, The Moonglow’s Sincerely, “Why don’t you two dance instead of just standing there looking goofy?” And they both laughed again, as they hit the dance floor, this time with no explanations necessary as Julie almost immediately rested her head on that Josh shoulder. The night turned out not so bad after all. The “petting” well Josh even in his drug high “truth is beautiful” phase out in the high desert left his listeners to figure that out for themselves.
