This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Every leftist, hell,
everybody who stands on the democratic principle that each nation has the right
to self-determination should cautiously rejoice at the “defrosting” of the
long-time diplomatic relations between the American imperial behemoth and the
island of Cuba (and the freedom of the remaining Cuban Five in the bargain).
Every leftist militant should understand that each non-capitalist like Cuba
going back to the establishment of the now defunct Soviet Union has had the
right (maybe until we win our socialist future the duty) to make whatever
advantageous agreements they can with the capitalist world. That despite
whatever disagreements we have with the political regimes ruling those
non-capitalist states. That is a question for us to work out not the
imperialists.
For those who have
defended the Cuban Revolution since its victory in 1959 under whatever
political rationale (pro-socialist, right to self-determination, or some other
hands off policy) watching on black and white television the rebels entering
Havana this day which commemorates the heroic if unsuccessful efforts at
Moncada we should affirm our continued defense of the Cuban revolution. Oh yes,
and tell the American government to give back Guantanamo while we are at it.
Cuban Missile Crisis, 50 years ago
October 24, 2012
The Cold War had never come closer to getting hot. Although proxy wars had been fought, and more would follow, the United States and the Soviet Union had avoided directly exchanging fire. The discovery of a secret missile base under construction in Cuba threatened to change that. Fifty years ago this week, the world waited while the two superpowers bluffed and negotiated, a nuclear holocaust growing perilously real. From October 14, 1962, when the missile base was discovered by aerial reconnaissance, until an agreement was announced thirteen days later, the tension mounted. Ultimately, the Soviet Union dismantled the bases and the US agreed not to invade Cuba. A secret agreement saw the US dismantle missiles in Turkey and Italy. - Lane Turner and Lisa Tuite
Associated Press
Sept. 19, 1962 / A Cuban worker leaped ashore from a ferry boat that brought the regular morning force of workers to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Each morning the ferry hauled Cuban workers from a nearby town to the US base. In the background are US ships. Fidel Castro's militia units stopped Cuban cars and commercial buses from transporting Cuban workers into the base at Guantanamo. The Navy sent its own buses to the base's main gate to pick up the workers.
Associated Press
Sept. 27, 1962 / Soviet technicians and military men raised their arms and chanted songs as they disembarked in Havana. This picture was obtained by Bohemia Libre, a Latin American magazine formerly edited in Havana, but published by Cuban exiles in New York.
Associated Press
Oct. 22, 1962 / An unidentified baby, one of several hundred dependents of US Navy personnel evacuated by air from the US Naval Base at Guantanamo, was removed by Marines from the troop transport that brought him home.
Associated Press
Oct. 26, 1962 / This US aerial reconnaissance photograph of a missile site on Cuban soil was released by the Pentagon and used by US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin had contended that the United States had no evidence of such missile sites. When the photographs were produced he branded them forgeries without looking at them. Military men adept at interpreting aerial photographs pointed out the oxidizer vehicles at left and fueling vehicles at right. Missiles, unlike automobiles, must carry their own air to mix with the fuel. Above the fueling vehicles are two "missile ready" buildings where ICBMs could be stored until ready to move up to the pad. The cherry picker indicated, but barely visible, was a moving crane that readied ICBMs for firing. The launch pads are shown at the left and right of the cherry picker.
Associated Press
Oct. 27, 1962 / US Army antiaircraft rockets were mounted on launchers and pointed out over the Florida Straits in full view of the public driving along Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West, Fla. The rocket positions were manned day and night. Off-duty missilemen slept in sleeping bags on the beach while other soldiers walked guard duty with rifles. “We’re trained to perfection and ready to go,” one soldier reported to newsmen.
UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos
October 1962 / President John F. Kennedy met with his Cabinet and advisers in the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. From left were Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Llewellyn Thompson, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Deputy Undersecretary of State Alexis Johnson, CIA Director John McCone (hidden), Undersecretary of State George Ball, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, President Kennedy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric, Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Nitze, Don Wilson of the USIA, presidential adviser Ted Sorenson, presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy (hidden), Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (hidden).
Associated Press
November 1962 / Soviet missiles were withdrawn from Cuba in one climactic chapter of the Cuban crisis. A US Navy patrol plane hovered overhead as the destroyer USS Barry escorted the Soviet freighter Anesov with a presumed cargo of outbound canvas-covered missiles on its deck.
US Navy
Nov. 9, 1962 / A US Navy helicopter hovered over a Soviet submarine operating in the area of the Cuban quarantine fleet operations.
When Bree Newsome pulled down the Confederate flag—the banner of fascist Ku Klux Klan terror, akin to the Nazi swastika—from in front of the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia on June 27, she gave brief, heroic expression to an anger felt far beyond the Lowcountry over the bloody massacre in Charleston ten days earlier.
The young black activist’s exemplary act of protest recalled a series of events three decades ago, not in a bastion of the Old South ruled by Republican nut jobs, but 2,500 miles away in liberal San Francisco. San Francisco Chronicle journalist Peter Hartlaub recounted in a June 21 posting on his SFGate.com blog that the Confederate battle flag used to fly in the S.F. Civic Center Plaza. Hartlaub wrote that he’s not sure when the flag “came down for good.” The answer is 1984, when supporters of the Spartacist League, Spartacus Youth League and Labor Black League for Social Defense removed it in the face of strenuous efforts to keep it flying by the city’s then mayor Dianne Feinstein, now a longtime leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate known for pushing U.S. imperialist wars and NSA snooping.
On 15 April 1984, SL and LBL supporter Richard Bradley, clad in the Civil War uniform of a Union Army soldier, scaled a 50-foot flagpole at the S.F. Civic Center and ripped down the Confederate flag of slavery that had flown over the city for too many years. At ground level, what was left of the flag was burned by a member of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 6.
As the hated symbol of racism and Klan terror was set ablaze, a crowd of black people, trade unionists and socialists broke into jubilant cheers and a chorus of “John Brown’s Body” rang out. Black people in the Bay Area welcomed the victory as their own; press clippings make clear that people across the city were glad to be rid of the insult.
At the time, Feinstein, who was in the running for the Democratic vice presidential nomination, was seeking to curry favor with the Dixiecrats who would be arriving in town three months later for the Democratic National Convention. She had the flag put back up—a racist provocation that came one day after the outrageous acquittal of a KKK/Nazi death squad who had gunned down five leftists, civil rights activists and union organizers in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979. Bradley and the SL responded by going right back and tearing the new flag to pieces, just hours after Feinstein had hoisted it.
Bradley, who knew well from his childhood in South Carolina what that flag stood for, was arrested for the second time and would be put on trial for “vandalism.” In the eyes of Feinstein and the racist cops, he was a criminal for tearing down the slavocracy’s rag, but in the Bay Area, Ritchie was a local hero, unable to walk into a bar or restaurant without having a drink or meal bought for him. Telegrams and phone calls poured into the mayor’s office, including from local union leaders, forcing Feinstein to back down and promise that the hated flag would not fly again.
Bradley climbed the flagpole a third time, this time to put up a replica of the historic Union garrison flag that flew over Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor when Confederate forces fired the opening shots of the Civil War. Demonstrating again her scorn for those who fought to smash slavery, Feinstein vindictively had the Union flag removed and it was shredded.
The actions of Bradley and the SL garnered support and gratitude far and wide, including from the incomparable writer Gore Vidal, who inscribed a copy of his new novel Lincoln with the words “Lincoln would also have wanted the flag’s symbolic removal.” On June 4, Bradley’s trial ended with a hung jury (eight for acquittal). One juror told Bradley, as he shook his hand, “I would have done it if I had the guts.” The juror donated $20 to the defense and bought a subscription to Workers Vanguard. A week later, in an attempt to avoid further embarrassment for the city administration, Feinstein’s district attorney moved to dismiss all charges, over the strenuous objections of the defense with Bradley insisting on his day in court.
But the story didn’t end there. Feinstein just would not let it die. At the end of June, on the same flagpole that Bradley had twice scaled to remove the Confederate battle flag, the mayor raised the “Stars and Bars,” the first flag of the Confederacy. That flag was a call to arms for the slaveholders in 1861, just as the Confederate flag is today for the paramilitary KKK and Nazi killers. It was moreover an affront to the history of California, which entered the Union as a free state in 1850 and supplied troops for the Union Army.
In the early morning hours of June 29, anti-racist militants not only took down the flag of slavery but also felled the pole. One of these union workers later wrote to Workers Vanguard, describing the carefully planned action. His report began: “Using an acetylene cutting torch we first cut out a wedge, or fish mouth, to determine the direction of the fall,” and it went on to detail the safety precautions taken to ensure no one was injured.
The Spartacist League saw to it that the Confederate flag, the banner of racist terror, didn’t fly at the S.F. Civic Center. We have a long and proud history of fighting for black freedom based on the understanding that it will be fully achieved through a third, socialist American revolution. Join us in this task. Finish the Civil War!
Usually when I post something
from some other source, mostly articles and other materials that may be of interest
to the radical public that I am trying to address I place the words “ A View
From The Left” in the headline and let the subject of the article speak for itself,
or the let the writer speak for him or herself without further comment whether
I agree with the gist of what is said or not. After all I can write my own
piece if some pressing issue is at hand. Occasionally, and the sentiments expressed
in this article is one of them, I can stand in solidarity with the remarks made.
I do so here.
Workers Vanguard No. 1071
10 July 2015
On the Charleston Massacre: Who’s Next?-Hate Your Enemy!
The following contribution was submitted to Workers Vanguard by Spartacist League Central Committee member Don Alexander.
The soil is extremely fertile for resurgent racist terror and fascist provocations. Too few victorious strikes; too few victories wrested through bitter struggles from the hands of the exploiters prepare greater defeats.
The Charleston massacre is one of the bloody signatures of the Obama years. The nine black people mowed down at the hands of a vicious racist killer is not just a “wake-up call” but, more importantly, the moment to raise in its full force the question: What road to black liberation, revolutionary integrationism or submission to the yoke? No amount of praying can cover up the truth that, 150 years after the end of the Civil War, black skin is still being hunted.
We view the burning questions of the day from a class standpoint: Whose interests are served, the oppressed or oppressor, the exploited or the exploiters? Depending upon the answer is the only way to judge one’s friends or one’s enemies. As long as our class remains tied to the parties and agencies of the class enemy, the exploiters win hands down. We need our own party—a revolutionary workers party that is a tribune of the people, that tears the masses away from capitalist ideology promulgated by the ruling class and their political agents within the labor movement.
The fight for black liberation through socialist revolution is the only way out. A class-struggle program for black liberation—a revolutionary integrationist fight against the special oppression of black people, not on the basis of inch at a time, go slow gradualism (i.e., liberal integrationism), but militant, racially integrated class struggle for black freedom. This fight is bound up with the liberation of the entire working class from the brutal capitalist system.
“Separate but equal” is effectively the reality in this country. The brutal whips of the modern-day slaveholders emanate from the White House (with a smile), the halls of Congress, the Supreme Court, the “Justice” Department, no matter who are their occupants. As they shed crocodile tears for the dead, their entire system reeks of capitalist greed, venality, mass murder, brutal poverty, repression and hunger targeting workers, black people, Latinos and immigrants, women, gays and youth.
Don’t forget that it was only recently that the Democrats—black and white—and their liberal allies were basking in the glory of bloody Selma to cover themselves with the mantle of civil rights martyrs, while pretending that this was “ancient history.” At the same time, their lying capitalist propaganda machine endlessly repeats the big lie that “much progress has been made and there is still work to be done.” In other words, we can be half-free and half-slave. NO! BLACK PEOPLE ARE OPPRESSED BY THIS DECREPIT, VIOLENTLY RACIST CAPITALIST SYSTEM.
Black oppression—the legacy of slavery and segregation—has been and remains the foundation of “free world” racist American capitalism. Look around—the only institutions that black people have “taken over” are its jails and prisons. The men and women, young and old, gunned down in a black church form an unbreakable link with the thousands who perished before them through countless lynchings and police murders.
This could happen again. Multiracial labor’s power should be mobilized to strike a blow at the modern-day lynchers. It is at the point of production and distribution, where its strength lies, where it can throw a wrench into the exploiters’ machinery. This power is feared and hated by the bosses, their kept labor statesmen and capitalist politicians of all colors and sexes. The labor lieutenants of capital in Charleston and elsewhere view the world through the lens of what’s good for the exploiters’ profit system. In the course of class struggle, the Confederate flag must go the way of smallpox.
As the 2016 elections get underway, some of the capitalist politicians of both parties “see the light” and have started talking about removing this symbol of “hate.” (They are echoed by the International Socialist Organization, which claims that if the South Carolina politicians don’t remove it, then it means they don’t care about black lives.)
It is evident that having the flag of slavery so prominently displayed is bad for business. This is a state that is actively courting more corporations to invest so they can expand their open shop empire. So it doesn’t look good for doing business if they send out on their letterheads logos of homage to slaveholders.
At any rate the Confederate flag is more than a “symbol of hate”; it is a call to arms for racist terror everywhere.
Now Obama and his administration can piously intone (croak) how the flag should be removed—backed up by his aspirant presidential successor, Hillary Clinton. In 2008, when Obama first ran for president, he spoke in South Carolina to celebrate his victory in the state’s primary. The New York Times commented:
“The voting took place at the conclusion of a weeklong campaign, where issues were interwoven with discussions of race. A poignant reminder of South Carolina’s historic racial divide, the Confederate flag, swayed in the cool breeze on Saturday only a few yards from where supporters waved placards for Mr. Obama, who if elected would become the nation’s first black president.”
— “Obama Carries South Carolina by Wide Margin,” 27 January 2008
His speech is worth reading because at the time Obama bragged about how a former prominent supporter of arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond was then campaigning for him in South Carolina. That is why I began by saying the murder of the nine is one of the bloody signatures of the Obama years. Oppressed black people were further beaten down and chained under his presidency. Yes. Beaten down by a “brother.”
It took a bloody civil war in which over 200,000 black soldiers and sailors, arms in hand, played a critical role in smashing the slavocracy and black chattel slavery. They provided a powerful answer to today’s advocates of gun control for the oppressed.
P.S. WV 572 (26 March 1993) has a good article, “Down With the Confederate Flag and Monuments to Slavery!”
Every leftist, hell,
everybody who stands on the democratic principle that each nation has the right
to self-determination should cautiously rejoice at the “defrosting” of the
long-time diplomatic relations between the American imperial behemoth and the
island of Cuba (and the freedom of the remaining Cuban Five in the bargain).
Every leftist militant should understand that each non-capitalist like Cuba
going back to the establishment of the now defunct Soviet Union has had the
right (maybe until we win our socialist future the duty) to make whatever
advantageous agreements they can with the capitalist world. That despite
whatever disagreements we have with the political regimes ruling those
non-capitalist states. That is a question for us to work out not the
imperialists.
For those who have
defended the Cuban Revolution since its victory in 1959 under whatever
political rationale (pro-socialist, right to self-determination, or some other
hands off policy) watching on black and white television the rebels entering
Havana this day which commemorates the heroic if unsuccessful efforts at
Moncada we should affirm our continued defense of the Cuban revolution. Oh yes,
and tell the American government to give back Guantanamo while we are at it.
Click On Title To Link To "New York Times" July 6, 2009 Obituary For Robert S. McNamara.
DVD REVIEW
The Fog of War, starring former Secretary of War Robert Strange McNamara, 2003
In the normal course of events former high level bureaucrats in American presidential administrations usually save their attempts at self-justification for high ticket published memoirs or congenial `softball' speaking tours and conferences. In short, they prefer to preach to the choir at retail prices. Apparently, former Kennedy and Johnson Administration Cold Warrior extraordinaire Secretary of War Robert Strange McNamara felt that such efforts were not enough and hence he had to go before the cameras in order to whitewash his role in the history of his times. Despite an apparent agreement with his interviewer not to cover certain subjects and be allowed to present his story his way it is always good to catch a view of how the other side operates. It ain't pretty.
After a lifetime of relative public silence, at the age of 85, McNamara decided to give his take on events in which he was a central figure like dealing with the fact of American imperial military superiority in the post- World War II period, dealing with the Russians and the fight for American nuclear superiority during the Cold War, the ill-conceived Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the later Cuban Missile crisis and above all his role in the escalation of the wars in Southeast Asia, primarily Vietnam.
Very little here focuses on his time at the World Bank, a not unimportant omission that would highlight my point that he might have changed his clothing in the course of his career but not his mindset. While those of us interested in learning the lessons of history have long understood that to know the political enemy is the beginning of wisdom one will not find much here that was not infinitely better covered by the late journalist David Halberstam in his classic The Best and The Brightest.
McNamara has chosen to present his story in the form of parables, or rather, little vignettes about the `lessons' to be drawn from experiences. Thus, we are asked to sit, embarrassingly, through McNamara's Freshman course in revisionist history as he attempts to take himself from the cold-hearted Cold Warrior and legitimate `war criminal' to the teddy-bearish old man who has learned something in his life- after a lifetime of treachery.
In the end, if one took his story at face value, one could only conclude that he was just trying to serve his bosses the best way he could and if things went wrong it was their fault. Nothing new there, though. Henry Kissinger has turned that little devise into an art form. Teary-eyed at the end McNamara might be as he acknowledges his role in the mass killings of his time, but beware of a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yet, you need to watch this film if you want to understand how these guys (and gals) defend their state.
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Comes To A Close... Some Remembrances
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth form all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts. Also clogged, or rather thrown in the nearest bin were the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Other than isolated groups and individuals mostly in the weaker countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove thir manhood.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the last month of the first year of war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20th century when the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war on the fronts (that is how the generals saw it mainly having won their promotions in those earlier wars and so held captive to the past). However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.
The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can, hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’sprisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America the Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell), were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day.
So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.
They say that the blues, you know, the quintessential black musical contribution to the American songbook along with first cousin jazz that breaks you out of your depression about whatever ails you or the world, was formed down in the Mississippi muds, down in some sweat-drenched bayou, down in some woody hollow all near Mister’s plantation, mill, or store. Well they might be right in a way about how it all started in America as a coded response to Mister’s, Master’s, Captain’s wicked perverse ways back in slavery times, later back in Mister James Crow times (now too but in a different code, but the same old Mister do this and not that, do that but not this just like when old James ran the code). I do believe however they are off by several maybe more generations and off by a few thousand miles from its origins in hell-bent Africa, hell-bent when Mister’s forbears took what he thought was the measure of some poor grimy “natives” and shipped them in death slave boats and brought them to the Mississippi muds, bayous and hollows (those who survived the horrendous middle passage without being swallowed up by the unfriendly. Took peoples, proud Nubians who had created very sharp civilizations when Mister’s forbears were wondering what the hell a spoon was for when placed in their dirty clenched fingers, still wondered later how the heck to use the damn thing, and why and uprooted them whole.
Uprooted you hear but somehow that beat, that tah, tat, tah, tah, tat, tah played on some stretched string tightened against some cabin post by young black boys kept Africa home alive. Kept it alive while women, mothers, grandmothers and once in a while despite the hard conditions some great-grandmother who nursed and taught the little ones the old home beat, made them keep the thing alive. Kept alive too Mister’s forced on them religion strange as it was, kept the low branch spirituals that mixed with blues alive in plain wood churches but kept it alive. So a few generations back black men took all that sweat, anger, angst, humiliation, and among themselves “spoke” blues on juke joint no electricity Saturday nights and sang high collar blues come Sunday morning plain wood church time. Son House, Charley Patton, Skip James, Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi John Hurt and a lot of guys who went to their graves undiscovered in the sweat sultry Delta night carried on, and some sisters too, some younger sisters who heard the beat and heard the high collar Sunday spirituals. Some sisters like Odetta, big-voiced, who made lots of funny duck searching for roots white college students mainly marvel that they had heard some ancient Nubian Queen, some deep-voiced Mother Africa calling them back to the cradle of civilization.
From The A Dimmed Elegy For The Late Peter Paul Markin Series- Bowling Alone In America?- For Chrissie M., Class Of 1967
A New
Introduction 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 year or so after an 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. That reminder
had been triggered one night the year before when Bart took the visiting
grandchildren of his son Lenny who now lived in New Haven, Connecticut and
worked at Yale to Salducci’s ’ Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” in North Adamsville
for some pizza and soda (that “up the Downs” not some quirky thing Bart made up
but the actual name of the shopping area known bythat name to one and all not far from the
high school although nobody ever knew exactly how it got that moniker). Of
course that Salducci’s Pizza Parlor had been the local corner boy hang-out for
Bart, Frankie Riley, Jimmy Jenkins, Johnny Callahan, Fran Rizzo, Markin, me and
a roving cast of sometime corner boys depending on who we picked up (or who had
ditched or been ditched by some faithless girl and thus had time to hang rather
than spent endless hours prepping for dates, or going through “the work-out”
down at Adamsville Beach in some car) before Tonio who treated Frankie Riley
like a son sold the place to moved back to Italy and the new owners did not see
“no account” (their description) corner boys as an asset to their
family-friendly pizza dreams. The corner boys subsequently “hung” at Jack
Slack’s bowling alleys, the ones on Thornton Street near the beach not the ones
in Adamsville Center which was strictly for people who actually bowled, liked
to anyway although that latter information is strictly on the side since what
got Bart Webber in a lather was from Salducci times.
Bart had thereafter
approached me about doing the chore, about writing some big book memory thing since we now live in the same town, the same
suburban town which represents a small step up from our growing up in strictly
working-class North Adamsville (and still is), Carver about thirty miles south
of that town (and a town which had its own working-class history with its
seasonal “boggers” who worked the cranberry bogs which originally made the town
famous but is now a bedroom community for the high-tech firms on U.S. 495).
Bart figured that since he had retired from the day to day operations of his
print shop which was now being run by his oldest son, Jeff, and I was winding
down my part in the law practice I had established long ago I would have plenty
of time to write and he to “edit” and give suggestions. He said he was not a
writer although he had plenty of ideas to contribute but that I who had spent a
life-time writing as part of my job would have an easy time of it. Bart under
the illusion that writing dry as dust legal briefs for some equally dry as dust
judge to read is the same as nailing down a righteous piece about an old time
corner boy mad man relic of a by-gone era, with his mad talk, his mad dreams,
his mad visions, who was as crooked as they come, who was as righteously for
the “little guy” as a man could be, who had some Zen under the gun magic which
made our nights easier and who I would not trust (and did not have to trust
since we had the truly larcenous Frankie Riley to lead the way) to open a door
sainted bastard. I turned him down flat which I will explain in a moment.
The way Bart
presented that proposal deserves a little mention since he made the case one
night when the remnant of Markin’s old comrades still alive and who still
reside in the area, Frankie, Josh, Jack Callahan, Jimmy Jenkins, Bart and me
were drinking now affordable high-shelf liquors at “Jack’s” in Cambridge near where
Jimmy lives (that high-shelf liquor distinction important for old corner boys
who survived and moved upa peg in the world who drank cheap Southern Comfort by
the fistful pints and later rotgut maybe just processed whiskies from the very
low-shelves). During the conversation, not for the first time, Bart mentioned
that he was still haunted by the thought he had had a few years before about the time
that Markin had us in thrall one night out in Joshua Tree in 1972 when we were
all high as kites on various drugs of choices and he, Markin, at first alone,
and then with Josh began some strange Apache-like dance and they began to feel
(at least according to Josh’s recollection) like those ancient warriors who
tried to avenge their loses when white settlers had come to take their lands
and we all for one moment that long ago night were able to sense what it was
like to be warrior-avengers, righters of the world’s wrongs that Markin was
always harping on. Markin had that effect on the rest of us, was always
tweaking us on some idea from small scale larcenies to drug-induced flame-outs.
Yeah, that miserable, beautiful, so crooked he could not get his legs in his
pants, son of a bitch, sainted bastard still is missed, still has guys from the
old days moaning to high heaven about that lost. Bart insisted there was a
story there, a story if only for us and someone (all eyes on me) should write
it up.
I can say
all of that and say at the same time that I can say I couldn’t write the piece.
See while at times Markin was like a brother to me and we treated each other as
such he also could have his “pure evil” moments which the other corner boys
either didn’t see, or didn’t want to see. These may be small things now on
reflection but he was the guy who almost got me locked up one night, one summer
night in 1966 before our senior year when Frankie who usually was the “on-site”
manager of our small larcenies was out of town with his girlfriend. Markin
figured since he was the “brains” behind the various capers that he could do
one on his own but he needed a look-out, me. The caper involved a small heist
of a home in the Mayfair swells part of North Adamsville whose owners were
“summering” somewhere in the Caribbean. Markin had “cased” or thought he had
cased the place fully except he didn’t factor in that the owners had a house-sitter
during that time, some college girl doing the task for a place to stay near
Boston that summer from what we figured later. Markin startled her as he
entered a side door, she screamed, Markin panicked, as she headed for the
telephone to call the police and he fled out the door. But see Markin came
running out that door toward me just when the cops were coming down the street in
their squad car directly toward us where we met up. They stopped us, told to get
in the car and headed back to that Mayfair house. As it turned out the
house-sitter couldn’t identify either of us, couldn’t identify Markin and the
cops had to let us go. No question Markin panicked and no question he made a
serious mistake by heading my way knowing what he knew had happened with the
sitter and her response to the invasion. I had, and have always had, the
sneaking suspicion that he might have rolled me over as the B&E guy if it
had been possible. I have a few other stories like that as well but that gives
you a better insight into what Markin could turn into when cornered.
Clara, now a
professor at a New York college and with a great husband and three great kids, a
bright young woman with great promise even then except around Markin who had
some spell on her, had that spell on her even later when she had a boyfriend her
own age and would come into Salducci’s trying to make him jealous from the way
she acted, cried to high heaven when I told her the news of his fate. Although
I left out the more gruesome parts about the where and howof his demise since I knew that would upset
her more. Even recently after all these years when I told her of Bart’s piece
she welled up.I tried to ask her
exactly what hold he had over her after all these years just to see if there
was something I had missed about my own feelings about the man after all these
years but all she said was that he was her “first love” and more cryptically
that he was the first male whom she would have been willing to abandon
everything for at the time, including her reputation as a good Catholic girl
with the novena book in one hand and rosary beads in the other the way we put
such things back then. Clara too said too something about those two million
facts he had stored in his head and how he swooped her up with them, that and
the look in his fierce blue eyes when he was spouting forth. Jesus, that
bastard Markin had something going, some monstrous Zen-like hold when his
contemporaries are still moaning to high heaven of him, moaning over something
good he represented in his sunnier days when he carried us over more than a few
rough spots)
The flame
thing involved Laura Perkins who I was “hot” for from the ninth grade on and
who I had several dates with in the tenth grade and it looked like things were
going well when she threw me over for Markin. Now that situation has happened
eight million times in life but corner boys were supposed to keep “hands off”
of other corner boys’ girls although I was not naïve enough to believe that was
honored more in the breech than the observance having done a couple of
end-around maneuvers myself but this Laura thing strained our relationship for
a while. Here is the funny part though after a few weeks she threw Markin over
for the captain of the football team (she was a cheerleader as well as bright
student, school newspaper writer, on the dance committee and a bunch of other
resume-building things) who we all hated. Funnier still at our fortieth reunion
a few years back Laura and I got back together (after her two marriages and my
two marriages had flamed out something we laughed about at the time of the
reunion) and we have been an “item” ever since. But you can see where I would,
unlike say Bart, have a hard time not letting those things I just mentioned get
in my way of writing something objective about that bastard saint.
So Bart
wrote the piece himself, wrote the “dimmed” elegy (the “dimmed” being something
I suggested as part of the title) and did a great job for a guy who said he
couldn’t write. Frankly any other kind of elegy but dimmed would fail to truly honor
that bastard saint madman who kept us going in that big night called the early
1960s and drove us mad at the same time with his larcenous schemes and
over-the-top half-baked brain storm ideas and endless recital of the eight
billion facts he kept in his twisted brain (estimates vary on the exact number
but I am using the big bang number to cover my ass, as he would). I need not go
into all of the particulars of Bart’s piece except to say that the consensus
among the still surviving corner boys was that Bart was spot on, caught all of
Markin’s terrible contradictions pretty well. Contradiction that led him from
the bright but brittle 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 or 1977
when some drug deal (involving several kilos of cocaine) he was brokering to
help feed what Josh said was a serious “nose candy” habit went sour for reasons
despite some investigation by Frankie Riley, myself and a private detective
Frankie hired were never made clear. The private detective, not some cinema Sam
Spade or Philip Marlowe, but a good investigator from his scanty report was
warned off the trail by everybody from the do-nothing Federales to the U.S.
State Department consular officer in Sonora, and warned off very indirectly
both down there and in Boston not to pursue the thing further, the implication
being or else. What was clear was that he was found face down on some dusty
back road of that town with two slugs in his head and is buried in the town’s
forlorn potter’s field in 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. Even he would in his candid moments accept that “small” designation.
Yes, been the end of the legend except the moaning to high heaven every time
his name comes up. Except this too. Part of Bart’s elegy referenced the fact
that in Markin’s 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 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 prize.
Pushed on by
Bart’s desire to tell Markin’s story as best he could who must have been driven
by some fierce ghost of Markin over his shoulder to do such yeoman’s work, he, Frankie
(as you know our corner boy leader back then who had Markin as his scribe and
who coined the moniker “the Scribe” for him that we used to bait or honor him
depending on circumstances 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 awayafter 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 in his piece, 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 a 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 then, if silent now when those aging vets desperately a voice.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
short 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 back
like I mentionedthen and when that side
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 Markin
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 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 so
interesting. Ready to make us laugh, cringe, get red in the face or head toward
him to slap him down, to menace him, if he got too ungodly 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 then that old Markin threw his way, and maybe he was a little off
on the reasons why I gave up the hitchhike highway blue-pink Great American
West night quest that he was pursuing (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, that, ah, that’s enough I have said
enough except I like Bart still miss and mourn the bastard.”
Here is something
Markin wrote about bowling, Jesus about bowling which none of us gave a damn
about, and could care have cared less about. Except of course in senior year
after we were unceremoniously dumped from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor
by the new owners after Tonio left to go back to Italy (actually the police told
us in no uncertain terms to “get lost” or get jail which they would not have
minded in the least since while they never had anything concrete on us they
“suspected” us of many of the unsolved larcenies and breaking and enterings in
the nighttime from that time) and we found a new spot down at Jack Slack’s
bowling alley on Thornton Street near the beach. Except of course on
dough-less, girl-less, car-less weekend nights when Jack’s son, Ricky, a
classmate of ours was on duty and would let us bowl for free (including
furnishing a pair of wrong-sized smelly bowling shoes to work our way down the
lanes) which got us some play from the clots of girls bowling boy-less which
was a whole other matter. Except of course that Markin could have given a rat’s
ass about the supposed “injury” done to boys and girls who had had to by some
arcane school rule had to bowl separately and not as mixed teams since he had
bigger fish to fry like world peace, the brotherhood of man (now just say “the
oneness of humankind,” okay), and the absolute down and dirty fight against
every kind of oppression. Except of course that “inequality” boo who business
was just a screen to pursue Chrissie. And don’t let anybody kid you otherwise
even though he used Jimmy Jenkins name as stodge to fill in for him since who
knows when he wrote it in the early 1970s he might have still been holding the
torch for her. Hell half the guys in the class, including me, were ready to
bowl until eternity for one sweet ruby-red lipped kiss from that young woman.
Bowling
Alone In America?- For Chrissie M., Class Of 1967 From The Pen
Of The Later Peter Paul Markin, Class Of 1964 Chrissie, Christine Anne
McNamara, bowled. Chrissie McNamara, the “hottest” sweet sixteen quail in 1965
at North Adamsville High School bowled. Oh sure Chrissie did other things,
things like cheer-leading for the raider red gridiron goliaths in the brisk,
bright, leaf-filled fall with all the guys taking dead aim at her from the
stands, including Jimmy Jenkins, and I hear that guys, plenty of guys attended
cheer-leader practice held in the corner of the “dust bowl,” the place where they
practiced, never heard of previously (oh yeah, and the football team practiced
there too but only geeks and water-boys watched that saga). This will give you
a flavor of how serious she was about bowling because Chrissie broke many
hearts when she did not cheer-lead the basketball team for winter time is primo
bowling time in this town, if anybody wants to know. To continue with her
resume Chrissie also participated in the school play (had the lead as the ace
female reporter in His Girl Friday sophomore
year), wrote, get this, under her own by-line a column on current events for The Magnet, the school newspaper, and
created quite a stir when she called on her fellow students to support the
efforts of black people down South to get the vote when that was a big issue
down there (and a cause for many thoughtless racial remarks up North, including
in North Adamsville High which had zero, that’s right, zero black students at
the time), had a sweet what-you-see-is-what-you get personality (and hopefully
still does), and was off-handedly beautiful. Not your drop dead, remote ice
queen, who will need plenty of cosmetic help as she frightens away the age
lines coming, beautiful but whole package beautiful (looks, personality,
intellect) that would have you, hell, had Jimmy Jenkins scratching his head. Had Jimmy, one of my corner boys
from around Salducci’s Pizza Parlor and a guy who lived a few blocks from my
own shack of a growing up house, one day in school scratching and figuring as he
watched her reading something while she was sitting about two rows over from
where he was sitting in some dead-ass last period study class where silence was
the rule but mostly kids rested their heads on their books and nodded out a
little before heading out the goddam door to get to someplace where they could
breathe and listen to the latest rock and roll releases. While Jimmy was looking
at Chrissie he thought best of all, even if all the scratching and figuring didn’t
work out that day, in not too many minutes he would get to go past her house, after
he have made sure she was walking in front of him, on the way to his own house,
and would probably get a big Chrissie smile as he did so. And maybe a “Hi, Jimmy
Bimmy” from her as well. The Jimmy Bimmy thing was from the kids’ stuff back in
middle school when the rhyming simon craze went through the school (maybe the country)
for a minute and Jimmy didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. Except from
Chrissie it was, well, okay. Yeah, it was like that. Yes, but here was Jimmy problem
in a nutshell, the thing he was scratching and figuring out about in that
dead-ass last period study class, Chrissie bowled, and if you wanted to get
anywhere with Chrissie, as everybody knew, and had known since about fourth
grade, way before Jimmy got to North Adamsville from some Podunk town in New
Hampshire when his father’s company moved down here, was that you had better
bowl too. You could be James Bond 007 (or Sean Connery back then) and have done
all kinds of adventurous stuff but if you didn’t bowl go slump-shouldered to
the back of the Chrissie line. You could have been the greatest running back in
the history of football, breaking every record and every linebacker’s
mean-spirited heart but no bowl-no go. Or get, heart-broken, in back of Sean in
that just-mentioned line. If you were a nerdy guy (as Jimmy was, somewhat since
that was how he got that Jimmy Bimmy moniker since he couldn’t do the shimmy when
that dance was the craze and everybody would say “Jimmy Bimmy can’t do the
Shimmy,” yeah, kids are cruel, and goofs) but if you bowled, well,
theoretically you had a chance. Jimmy thought though that “let’s face it plenty
of talented, good-looking guys, who under ordinary circumstances would give
bowling the gaff, were, even as he was thinking up his plan, sharpening up
their games to get a crack at those ruby-red lips. Jimmy had a moment of doubt
and said “Damn” to himself. See Jimmy had been in love, or
half in love, or some percentage in love with Chrissie ever since she gave him an
innocent kiss at her twelfth birthday back when he first came to North
Adamsville in the seventh grade. Really, the kiss was nothing but a good wishes
peck on the lips that wouldn’t count for anything for older guys (or girls,
either) but for a shy twelve-year old new boy Jimmy was in very heaven. Every
once in a while though he would think-“Call me crazy, call me a nutcase ready
for the funny farm, but every once in a while when Chrissie calls me Jimmy
Bimmy from her front door I swear she says it in such a way that maybe that
kiss wasn’t so innocent after all.” Such
sentiments big cloud-puff dreams are made of, and plans hatched. In any case Jimmy
had been plotting, maybe not every day, but plotting ever since to get a
second, a real kiss from her ruby-red lips. And to hold that slender hour glass
figure, to dance close to those well-formed legs, and to tussle with that
flaming mass of red hair that goes with those ruby-red lips. And, and… well you
get the idea. But see Chrissie bowled and Jimmy
I didn’t, although he had, lately anyway, been spending a fair amount of time at Jake’s Bowl-a-World,
the bowling alley located downstairs across from our real hang-out, our corner boy hang-out, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up
the Downs.” (Don’t ask about how the main shopping area in that part of town
got that moniker but everybody local from my grandmother who was born here down
has always called it that name and nobody, nobody living knows why). Now Jake’s
(now long torn down for condos) was not the kind of bowling alley that Chrissie
or any other foxy girl would hang out in because, honestly, it was a creepy
place where young junior high school wannabe hoods, real high school drop-outs,
rejected no-go corner boys, and beer-swilling adults hung out and made noise. (For serious bowling you would go to Jack Slack’s
bowling alleys not the one near the beach that was for other obvious purposes,
obvious teen-age purposes but the one up in Adamsville Center where people
actually bowled, and liked it.) But, see, it was the perfect place for a not
bowling guy to hang out and “learn” bowls, on the quiet. Oh, did I mention Jimmy’s other
problem, the problem beyond his not bowling, his not being (thus far) worthy of
that second ruby-red lipped Chrissie kiss. I see that I haven’t now that I have
read back. Well, here it is if you can believe it. Jimmy couldn’t get to bowl
with Chrissie, couldn’t get to bowl with her that is unless he asked her for a
date which was way ahead of where his current plans for her had unfolded,
because at school, at foolish North, the boys and girls had separate bowling
teams that didn’t even bowl at the same places. Yes, I thought you would see poor
Jimmy’s dilemma. See the idea was that Jimmy would start bowling with one of
the teams, Chrissie would notice him and notice that he could use a few
pointers, would come over and give him those few pointers, and then when he
walked by her house not only would she give Jimmy that big warm smile but would
probably want to talk about this or that, bowling this or that, and that would
be his opening to ask her to go bowling, bowling alone with him. Foolproof,
right? It even sounded good to me and I was always skeptical of anything, any
plan, any other corner boy plotted, except my own or our leader’s Frankie Riley.
Foolproof, except for that stupid school rule thing. Now here is how Jimmy heard the
story when he explained his dilemma one girl-less, dough-less Friday night,
although he might be off on a few points, of why there were two separate teams
and why they bowled at different places. A few years before Jake’s used to be
the place where everybody, boys and girls, bowled after school for practice a
couple of days a week and for the home competitions with other schools. And
that made sense because it only took about ten minutes to get there from
school. Now, like I explained to you already, this Jake’s was nothing but a
run-down place with about ten lanes, an ice cooler filled with tonic (that’s
soda for you foreigners, you not from New England back then), a couple of food
vending machines, a few pinball wizard machines, a rest room everybody avoided
using, if possible, and that was about it. Small time stuff. Everything kind of
dusty and seedy from the minute you headed down the darkened stairs right on
through. Good enough, like I said before for hoods, corner boys, and rookie
bowlers. But then, back in the bowling
team days, it was kept up better and was a magnet for kids, boys and girls
alike, to come and bowl…and other things. Those other things being listening to
the big oversized jukebox filled with a ton of records, rock and roll records
to cry for, and three for only a quarter too, dancing, close dancing, on the
small dance floor that was set up then (and that you could still see all
scuffed up and scummy), and some off-hand hanky-panky, kids’ stuff really, from
what Jimmy heard, the usual boys copping a “feel” and the girls letting them do
so like has been going on since they invented teenagers, in a couple of small
back rooms that Jake, sweet brother Jake, let the kids use. You can see where this after
school jukebox rock and roll, close dancing, back room thing was going, just
like I could when I heard it. Murder and mayhem. No, not from the kids gone
wild under the influence of communistic rock and roll, or libertine close
dancing, or hell-bent back rooms but when the parent police heard about it.
That part was foggy but it, as usual, involved a snitch by someone to his (or
her) parents, or something overheard on the telephone by a parent, or
something. And from there to the headmaster police, and from there to the real
cops. Nothing ever came of it from the real cops, which tells you automatically
that the parent and headmaster cops overreacted, as usual. But now you can see
what a fix Jimmy was in. Jimmy in a rage over this injustice which he tried to
enlist us into that night said he thought Chrissie right that minute was
probably chalking up spares over at the North Adamsville Bowl-a-Drome and the
guys were over the other side of town at Mr. Bowl’s place and never the twain
shall meet. And get this bit of Jimmy philosophy-“you wonder why kids,
including this kid, are ready to jump off the rails, and none too soon either.
But I still hold my dream of bowling alone with those ruby-red lips. I’ll let
you know if I work out another fool-proof plan, okay.”
Associated PressSept. 19, 1962 / A Cuban worker leaped ashore from a ferry boat that brought the regular morning force of workers to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Each morning the ferry hauled Cuban workers from a nearby town to the US base. In the background are US ships. Fidel Castro's militia units stopped Cuban cars and commercial buses from transporting Cuban workers into the base at Guantanamo. The Navy sent its own buses to the base's main gate to pick up the workers.
Associated PressSept. 27, 1962 / Soviet technicians and military men raised their arms and chanted songs as they disembarked in Havana. This picture was obtained by Bohemia Libre, a Latin American magazine formerly edited in Havana, but published by Cuban exiles in New York.
Associated PressOct. 22, 1962 / An unidentified baby, one of several hundred dependents of US Navy personnel evacuated by air from the US Naval Base at Guantanamo, was removed by Marines from the troop transport that brought him home.
Associated PressOct. 26, 1962 / This US aerial reconnaissance photograph of a missile site on Cuban soil was released by the Pentagon and used by US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin had contended that the United States had no evidence of such missile sites. When the photographs were produced he branded them forgeries without looking at them. Military men adept at interpreting aerial photographs pointed out the oxidizer vehicles at left and fueling vehicles at right. Missiles, unlike automobiles, must carry their own air to mix with the fuel. Above the fueling vehicles are two "missile ready" buildings where ICBMs could be stored until ready to move up to the pad. The cherry picker indicated, but barely visible, was a moving crane that readied ICBMs for firing. The launch pads are shown at the left and right of the cherry picker.
Associated PressOct. 27, 1962 / US Army antiaircraft rockets were mounted on launchers and pointed out over the Florida Straits in full view of the public driving along Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West, Fla. The rocket positions were manned day and night. Off-duty missilemen slept in sleeping bags on the beach while other soldiers walked guard duty with rifles. “We’re trained to perfection and ready to go,” one soldier reported to newsmen.
UPI/Bettmann NewsphotosOctober 1962 / President John F. Kennedy met with his Cabinet and advisers in the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. From left were Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Llewellyn Thompson, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Deputy Undersecretary of State Alexis Johnson, CIA Director John McCone (hidden), Undersecretary of State George Ball, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, President Kennedy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric, Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Nitze, Don Wilson of the USIA, presidential adviser Ted Sorenson, presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy (hidden), Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (hidden).
Associated PressNovember 1962 / Soviet missiles were withdrawn from Cuba in one climactic chapter of the Cuban crisis. A US Navy patrol plane hovered overhead as the destroyer USS Barry escorted the Soviet freighter Anesov with a presumed cargo of outbound canvas-covered missiles on its deck.
US NavyNov. 9, 1962 / A US Navy helicopter hovered over a Soviet submarine operating in the area of the Cuban quarantine fleet operations.
