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Thursday, September 03, 2015
From The Recent Archives- The Socialist Electoral Perspective
The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind
The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind
The Young Women With Long-Ironed Hair- With Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, And Judy Collins In Mind
Funny how trends get started, how one person, or a few start something and it seems like the whole world follows, or the part of the world that hears about the new dispensation anyway, the part you want to connect with. That new dispensation for my generation began back in the late 1950s, early 1960s so maybe it was when older guys started to lock-step in gray flannel suits (Mad Men, retro-cool today, okay) and before Jack and Bobby Kennedy put the whammy on the fashion and broke many a haberdasher’s heart topped off by a soft felt hat. It would be deep into the 1960s before open-necks and colors other than white for shirts worked in but by then a lot of us were strictly denims and flannel shirts or some such non-suit combination. Maybe it was when one kid goofing off threw a hard plastic circle thing around his or her waist and every kid from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon had to have one, to be tossed aside in some dank corner of the garage after a few weeks when everybody got into yo-yos or Davey Crockett coonskin caps. Or maybe, and this might be closer to the herd instinct truth, it was after Elvis exploded onto the scene and every guy from twelve to two hundred in the world had to, whether they looked right with it or not, wear their sideburns just a little longer, even if they were kind of wispy and girls laughed at you for trying to out-king the “king” who they were waiting for not you.
But maybe it was, and this is a truth which I can testify to, noting the photograph above, when some girls, probably college girls (now called young women but then still girls no matter how old except mothers or grandmothers, go figure) having seen Joan Baez on the cover of Time (or perhaps her sister Mimi on some Mimi and Richard Farina folk album cover)got out the ironing board at home or in her dorm and tried to iron their own hair whatever condition it was in, curly, twisty, flippy, whatever don’t hold me to hairstyles to long and straight strands. (Surely as strong as the folk minute was just then say 1962, 63, 64, they did not see the photo of Joan on some grainy Arise and Sing folk magazine cover the folk scene was too young and small then to cause such a sea-change).
Looking at that photograph now, culled from a calendar put out by the New England Folk Archive Society, made me think back to the time when I believe that I would not go out with a girl (young woman, okay) if she did not have the appropriate “hair,” in other words no bee-hive or flip thing that was the high school rage among the not folk set, actually the social butterfly, cheerleader, motorcycle mama cliques. Which may now explain why I had so few dates in high school and none from Carver High (located about thirty miles south of Boston). But no question you could almost smell the singed hair at times, and every guy I knew liked the style, liked the style if they liked Joan Baez, maybe had some dreamy desire, and that was that.
My old friend Sam Lowell, a high school friend who I re-connected with via the “magic” of the Internet a few years ago, told me a funny story when we met at the Sunnyville Grille in Boston one time about our friend Julie Peters who shared our love of folk music back then (and later too as we joined a few others in the folk aficionado world after the heyday of the folk minute got lost in the storm of the British invasion). He had first met her in Harvard Square one night at the Café Blanc when they had their folk night (before every night was folk night at the place when Eric Von Schmidt put the place on the map by writing Joshua Gone Barbados which he sang and which Tom Rush went big with) and they had a coffee together, That night she had her hair kind of, oh he didn’t know what they called it but he thought something like beehive or flip or something which highlighted and enhanced her long face. Sam thought she looked fine. Sam (like myself) was not then hip to the long straight hair thing) and so he kind of let it pass without any comment.
Then one night a few weeks later after they had had a couple of dates she startled him when he picked her up at her dorm at Boston University to go over the Club Blue in the Square to see Dave Van Ronk hold forth in his folk historian gravelly-voiced way. She met him at the door with the mandatory long-stranded hair which frankly made her face even longer. When Sam asked her why the change Julie declared that she could not possibly go to Harvard Square looking like somebody from some suburban high school not after seeing her idol Joan Baez (and later Judy Collins too) with that great long hair which seemed very exotic, very Spanish.
Of course he compounded his troubles by making the serious mistake of asking if she had it done at the beauty parlor or something and she looked at him with burning hate eyes since no self-respecting folkie college girl would go to such a place where her mother would go, So she joined the crowd, Sam got used to it and after a while she did begin to look like a folkie girl (and started wearing the inevitable peasant blouses instead of those cashmere sweaters or starched shirt things she used to wear).
By the way let’s be clear on that Julie thing with Sam back the early 1960s. She and Sam went “dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. Sam and Julie were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued by the other enough to be more than very good friends after the first few dates but folk music was their bond. Despite persistent Julie BU dorm roommate rumors what with Sam hanging around all the time listening to her albums on the record player they had never been lovers. A few years later she mentioned that Club Blue night to Sam as they waited to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie with me and my companion, Laura Talbot, to see if he remembered Van Ronk’s performance and while he thought he remembered he was not sure.
He asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing.
As for the long-ironed haired women in the photograph their work in that folk minute and later speaks for itself. Joan Baez worked the Bob Dylan anointed “king and queen” of the folkies routine for a while for the time the folk minute lasted. Mimi (now passed on) teamed up with her husband, Richard Farina, who was tragically killed in a motorcycle crash in the mid-1960s, to write and sing some of the most haunting ballads of those new folk time (think Birmingham Sunday). Julie Collins, now coiffured like that mother Julie was beauty parlor running away from and that is okay, still produces beautiful sounds on her concert tours. But everyone should remember, every woman from that time anyway, should remember that burnt hair, and other sorrows, and know exactly who to blame. Yeah, we have the photo.
Protest at Blue Angels Airshow Saturday in Brunswick, Maine
Protest at Blue Angels Airshow Saturday in Brunswick, Maine
Dear fellow Maine activists,
I’ve just returned from a month-long trip to the Asia-Pacific. Coming up quickly this weekend at the former Navy base in Brunswick will be ‘The Great State of Maine Air Show’ featuring the Navy Blue Angels stunt team.
I learned yesterday that Maine Veterans for Peace had declined to organize a protest at the airshow. Feeling it important to stand in protest at this event I’ve decided on short notice to put out a call for a protest presence in front of the former Navy Base, now called Brunswick Landing and Executive Airport, in Brunswick.
We will gather from 10:00 am until 1:00 on Saturday, September 5.
It’s obvious that this airshow is a major recruiting gimmick for the Pentagon and is a horrible waste of resources especially during this time of growing government austerity. The carbon bootprint from such a massively polluting event once again underscores the reality that the US military is the largest polluter on the planet. Finally we should all be reminded of the indiscriminate killing that is done by these kind of warplanes in the real world.
If you are so motivated please join those of us who plan to hold banners and signs outside the airshow. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks.
Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (blog)
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. - Henry David Thoreau
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (blog)
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. - Henry David Thoreau
Wednesday, September 02, 2015
***In The Time Of The Hard Motorcycle Boys- “The Wild One” A Film Review-And More
***In The Time Of The Hard Motorcycle Boys- “The Wild One” A Film Review-And More
DVD Review
The Wild One, Marlon Brando, Lee Marvin, produced by Stanley Kramer, 1954
Okay here is the book of genesis, the motorcycle book of genesis, or at least my motorcycle book of genesis. But, before I get to that let me make about seventy–six disclaimers. First, the whys and wherefores of the motorcycle culture, except on those occasions when they become subject to governmental investigation or impact some cultural phenomena, is outside the purview of the leftist politics that dominate my commentaries. There is no Marxoid political line, as a rule, on such activity, nor should there be. Those exceptions include when motorcyclists, usually under the rubric of “bad actor” motorcycle clubs, like the famous (or infamous) Oakland, California-based Hell’s Angels are generally harassed by the cops and we have to defend their right to be left alone (you know, those "helmet laws", and the never-failing pull-over for "driving while biker") or, like when the Angels were used by the Rolling Stones at Altamont and that ill-advised decision represented a watershed in the 1960s counter-cultural movement. Or, more ominously, from another angle when such lumpen formations form the core hell-raisers of anti-immigrant, anti-communist, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-black liberation fascistic demonstrations and we are compelled, and rightly so, to go toe to toe with them. Scary yes, necessary yes, bikes or no bikes.
Second, in the interest of full disclosure I own no stock, or have any other interest, in Harley-Davidson, or any other motorcycle company. Third, I do not now, or have I ever belonged to a motorcycle club or owned a motorcycle, although I have driven them, or, more often, on back of them on occasion. Fourth, I do not now, knowingly or unknowingly, although I grew up in working class neighborhoods where bikes and bikers were plentiful, hang with such types. Fifth, the damn things and their riders are too noisy, despite the glamour and “freedom” of the road associated with them. Sixth, and here is the “kicker”, I have been, endlessly, fascinated by bikes and bike culture as least since early high school, if not before, and had several friends who “rode”. Well that is not seventy-six but that is enough for disclaimers.
Okay, as to genesis, motorcycle genesis. Let’s connect the dots. A couple of years ago, and maybe more, as part of a trip down memory lane, the details of which do not need detain us here, I did a series of articles on various world-shaking, earth-shattering subjects like high school romances, high school hi-jinx, high school dances, high school Saturday nights, and most importantly of all, high school how to impress the girls( or boys, for girls, or whatever sexual combinations fit these days, but you can speak for yourselves, I am standing on this ground). In short, high school sub-culture, American-style, early 1960s branch, although the emphasis there, as it will be here, is on that social phenomena as filtered through the lenses of a working- class town, a seen better days town at that, my growing up wild-like-the-weeds town.
One of the subjects worked over in that series was the search, the eternal search I might add, for the great working class love song. Not the Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel generic mush that could play in Levittown, Shaker Heights or La Jolla as well as Youngstown or Moline. No, a song that, without blushing, one could call one’s own, our working- class own, one that the middle and upper classes might like but would not put on their dance cards. As my offering to this high-brow debate I offered a song by written by Englishman Richard Thompson (who folkies, and folk rockers, might know from his Fairport Convention days, very good days, by the way), Vincent Black Lightning, 1952. (See lyrics below.) Without belaboring the point the gist of this song is the biker romance, British version, between outlaw biker James and black-leathered, red-headed Molly. Needless to say such a tenuous lumpen existence as James leads to keep himself “biked" cuts short any long term “little white house with picket fence” ending for the pair. And we do not need such a boring finish. For James, after losing the inevitable running battle with the police, on his death bed bequeaths his bike, his precious “Vincent Black Lightning”, to said Molly. His BIKE, man. His BIKE. Is there any greater love story, working class love story, around? No, this makes West Side Story lyrics and a whole bunch of other such songs seem like so much cornball nonsense. His BIKE, man. Wow! Kudos, Brother Thompson.
Needless to say that exploration was not the end, but rather the beginning of thinking through the great American night bike experience. And, of course, for this writer that means going to the books, the films and the memory bank to find every seemingly relevant “biker” experience. Thus, readers were treated to reviews of such classic motorcycle sagas as “gonzo” journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels and other, later Rolling Stone magazine printed “biker” stories and Tom Wolfe’ Hell Angel’s-sketched Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and other articles about California subset youth culture that drove Wolfe’s work in the old days). And to the hellish Rolling Stones (band) Hell’s Angels “policed” Altamont concert in 1969. And, as fate would have it, with the passing of actor/director Dennis Hooper, the 1960s classic biker/freedom/ seeking the great American night film, Easy Rider. And from Easy Rider to the “max daddy” of them all, tight-jeaned, thick leather-belted, tee-shirted, engineer-booted, leather-jacketed, taxi-driver-capped (hey, that’s what it reminds me of), side-burned, chain-linked wielding, hard-living, alienated, but in the end really just misunderstood, Johnny, aka, Marlon Brando, in The Wild One.
Okay, we will cut to the chase on the plot. Old Johnny and his fellow “outlaw” motorcycle club members are out for some weekend “kicks” after a hard week’s non-work (as far as we can figure out, work was marginal for many reasons, as Hunter Thompson in Hell’s Angels noted, to biker existence, the pursue of jack-rolling, armed robbery or grand theft auto careers probably running a little ahead) out in the sunny California small town hinterlands.(They are still heading out there today, the last time I noticed, in the Southern California high desert, places like Twenty-Nine Palms and Joshua Tree.)
And naturally, when the boys (and they are all boys here, except for couple of “mamas”, one spurned by Johnny, in a break-away club led by jack-in-the-box jokester, Lee Marvin as Chino) hit one small town they, naturally, after sizing up the local law, head for the local café (and bar). And once one mentions cafes in small towns in California (or Larry McMurtry’s West Texas, for that matter), then hard-working, trying to make it through the shift, got to get out of this small town and see the world, dreamy-eyed, naïve (yes, naive) sheriff-daughtered young waitress, Kathy, (yes, and hard-working, it’s tough dealing them off the arm in these kind of joints, or elsewhere) Johnny trap comes into play. Okay, now you know, even alienated, misunderstood, misanthropic, cop-hating (an additional obstacle given said waitress’s kinships) boy Johnny needs, needs cinematically at least, to meet a girl who understands him.
The development of that young hope, although hopeless, boy meets girl romance relationship, hither and yon, drives the plot. Natch. Oh, and along the way the boys, after a few thousand beers, as boys, especially girl-starved biker boys, will, at the drop of a hat start to systematically tear down the town, for fun. Needless to say, staid local burghers (aka “squares”) seeing what amount to them is their worst 1950s “communist” invasion nightmare, complete with murder, mayhem and rapine, (although that “C” word was not used in the film, nor should it have been) are determined to “take back” their little town. A few fights, forages, casualties, fatalities, and forgivenesses later though, still smitten but unquenched and chaste Johnny (and his rowdy crowd) and said waitress part, wistfully. The lesson here, for the kids in the theater audience, is that biker love outside biker-dom is doomed. For the adults, the real audience, the lesson: nip the “terrorists” in the bud (call in the state cops, the national guard, the militia, the 82nd Airborne, The Strategic Air Command, NATO, hell, even the weren't we buddies in the war Red Army , but nip it, fast when they come roaming through Amityville, Archer City, or your small town).
After that summary you can see what we are up against. This is pure fantasy Hollywood cautionary tale on a very real 1950s phenomena, “outlaw” biker clubs, mainly in California, but elsewhere as well. Hunter Thompson did yeoman’s work in his Hell’s Angels to “discover” who these guys were and what drove them, beyond drugs, sex, rock and roll (and, yah, murder and mayhem, the California prison system was a “home away from home”). In a sense the “bikers” were the obverse of the boys (again, mainly) whom Tom Wolfe, in many of his early essays, was writing about and who were (a) forming the core of the surfers on the beaches from Malibu to La Jolla and, (b) driving the custom car/hot rod/drive-in centered (later mall-centered) cool, teenage girl–impressing, car craze night in the immediate post-World War II great American Western sunny skies and pleasant dream drift (physically and culturally). Except those Wolfe guys were the “winners”. The “bikers” were Nelson Algren’s “losers”, the dead-enders who didn’t hit the gold rush, the Dove Linkhorns (aka the Arkies and Okies who in the 1930s populated John Steinbeck’s Joad saga, The Grapes Of Wrath). Not cool, iconic Marlin-Johnny but hell-bend then-Hell Angels leader, Sonny Barger.
And that is why in the end, as beautifully sullen and misunderstood the alienated Johnny was, and as wholesomely rowdy as his gang was before demon rum took over, this was not the real “biker: scene, West or East. Now I lived, as a teenager in a working class, really marginally working poor, neighborhood that I have previously mentioned was the leavings of those who were moving up in post-war society. That neighborhood was no more than a mile from the central headquarters of Boston's local Hell’s Angels (although they were not called that, I think it was Deathheads, or something like that). I got to see these guys up close as they rallied at various spots on our local beach or “ran” through our neighborhood on their way to some crazed action. The leader had all of the charisma of Marlon Brando’s thick leather belt. His face, as did most of the faces, spoke of small-minded cruelties (and old prison pallors) not of misunderstood youth. And their collective prison records (as Hunter Thompson also noted about the Angels) spoke of “high” lumpenism. And that takes us back to the beginning about who, and what, forms one of the core cohorts for a fascist movement in this country, the sons of Sonny Barger. Then we will need to rely on our Marxist politics, and other such weapons.
*************
ARTIST: Richard Thompson
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Lyrics and Chords
Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Box Hill they did ride
/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /
/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /
Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride
Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride
Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I've got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride
Before The Swing And Sway 1920s Jazz Night- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Basil And Josephine Stories”
Before The Swing And Sway 1920s Jazz Night- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Basil And Josephine Stories”
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Basil and Josephine Stories.
Book Review
The Basil and Josephine Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner’s, New York, 1973
The name F. Scott Fitzgerald is no stranger here as the master writer of one of the great American novels of the 20th century, The Great Gatsby, a story which told us that in the Jazz Age directly after the bloodbath of the First World War there was something wrong, something out of kilter, morally, politically, ethically with the great American night, with New York high society in particular, with the very rich, that that promise those old Dutchmen saw in the new land as they turned the corner of that “great green breast of a new land” has truend to ashes. Additionally, as well, he was one of the key players (many of them spending time in self-imposed European exile, mainly in post- World War I Paris café society) in American literature in the so-called Jazz Age (so called as he named it, gave it life until the hammer came down in 1929. For this writer he formed, along with Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and a little, Dorothy Parker and Gertrude Stein the foundation for modern American writing.
But that recognition by me of the who’s who in modern American literature was a later development, much later, because I knew of Fitzgerald’s work long before I had read any of his (or the others, for that matter) better known works. I knew the Basil and Josephine stories well before that.
As a kid in the 1950s the library that I spent many an hour in was divided, as they are in most libraries even today, into a children’s and adults’ sections. At that time there was something of a Chinese Wall between the two sections in the form of a stern old librarian who made sure that kids, sneaky kids like me, didn’t go into that forbidden adult section until the proper time (after sixth grade as I recall). The Basil and Josephine stories were, fortunately, in the kid’s section (although I have seen them in adult sections of libraries as well). And while the literary merits of the stories are adult worthy of mention for the clarity of Fitzgerald’s language, the thoughtful plots (mainly, although a couple are kind of similar reflecting the mass magazine adult audience they were addressed to), and the evocative style (of that “age of innocence” just before World War I, after which the world changed dramatically. No more “innocent when you dream” notions, not after the mustard gas and the trench warfare) for me on that long ago first reading what intrigued me was the idea of how the other half-the rich (well less than half, much less as it turns out) lived.
This was fascinating for a poor boy, a poor "projects" boy like me, who was clueless about half the stuff Basil got to do (riding trains, going to boarding school, checking out colleges, playing some football, and seriously, very seriously checking out the girls at exotic-sounding dances, definitely not our 1950s plebeian school sock hops with some cranky record player, some cheapjack crepe, and not much else). And I was clueless, almost totally clueless, about what haughty, serenely beautiful, guy-crazy Josephine was up to. So this little set of short stories was something like my introduction to class, the upper class, in literature.
Of course when I talk about the 1950s in the old projects, especially the later part of that decade when I used to hang around with one Billie (not Billy, like he used to say, not like some billy-goat, not if you didn’t want more grief, more knuckle grief, than you thought possible, and that old Basil Lee certainly would have thought possible), William James Bradley, self-proclaimed king of the be-bop night at our old elementary school (well, not exactly self-proclaimed, I helped the legend along a little, maybe more than a little writing stuff up about him in the school newspapers and sending stuff to the real papers, letters mainly about Billie’s talent, one of which was printed) I have to give Billie's take on the matter. His first reaction was- why I was reading this stuff, this stuff that was not required school reading stuff anyway. Then when I kept going on and on about the stories, and trying to get him to read them, he exploded one day and shouted out “how is reading those stories going to get you or me out of these damn projects?”
Good point now that I think about it but I would not let it go at that. I started in on a little tidbit about how one of the stories was rejected by the magazine publishers because they thought the subject of ten or eleven year olds being into “petting parties” was crazy. That got Billie’s attention as he wailed about how those guys obviously had never been to the projects where everyone learned (or half-learned) about sex sometimes even earlier than that, innocent as it might have been. He said he might actually read the stuff now that he saw that rich kids, anyway, were up against the same stuff we were. He never did. But the themes of teen alienation, teen angst, teen vanity, teen love are all there on full display. And while the rich are different from you and I, and the very rich are very different from you and I, and life, including young life, plays out differently for them those themes seem genetically embedded in youth culture and have been ever since teenage-hood because a separate social category. Read on.
Our In The Be-Bop Drive-In Theater Night-Circa 2015
Our In The Be-Bop
Drive-In Theater Night-Circa 2015
From The Pen Of Bart
Webber
Josh Breslin was a
man, is a man of institutionalized memories. Part of that came, comes from his
long ago minute career as a budding journalist in the alternative media world
of the late 1960s and early 1970s when anyone with access to pen and press
could, and did, print plenty of interesting material before the hammer fell
down and that whole universe fell under the ebb tide of the big bad movement,
the counter-revolution as one political wag called it, when the other side,
symbolized by the master criminal Richard Milhous Nixon who also happened to be
President of the United States, let the whirlwinds of reaction have a field day
on our heads. (A couple of the journals that had weathered the storm that he
wrote for like the Rolling Stone which
is today just a glossy reprint of Vogue
or Vanity Fair for the quasi-hip audience
it appeals to and the advertisements it displays which pay the bill, hence the
tiller’s placid reward, and the local Boston Phoenix which went belly up a few years ago after subsisting as a
“hook-up” venue do not undermine that ebb tide understanding on the media front.)
Part of Josh’s
respect for memory also came from his association with the long gone, long
moaned over Pete Markin whom he had met out in San Francisco in the high tide
summer of love, 1967 and who came to a bad end in the mid-1970s down in Sonora,
Mexico after a high-end drug deal went down the wrong way and he wound up face
down who always, always lived to have about two thousand juicy memory
references handy on the off chance that, for example, somebody might quickly
need to know Millard Fillmore’s standing among
American Presidents (just above Richard Nixon at last check) and the
practice had rubbed off on him. On a recent night that memory business got a
full workout as Josh went back deep into his youth (and the youth of his lady
friend, Laura Perkins, who is key to this particular memory flash) returning to
the scene of many a youthful misadventure-the still functioning Olde Saco
Drive-In up in Maine.
Drive-In? Well, yes,
for those who have only heard about this institution of the high golden age
1950s and 1960s automobile and have no personal knowledge that they really
still exist in spots except in “generation of ’68’’ nostalgia movies the
drive-in. Here’s the skinny (or if you are still in disbelief then go to Wikipedia and check the information out).
Back when everybody was dying to have a car from old grand-pappies to barely sixteen
year old boys (and it was mainly boys, girls were usually okay grabbing the
family car for a night out with the girls, a night “cruising’ the boulevards
looking for the heart of Saturday, looking for boys just as Josh and his crowd
were “cruising” looking for girls or sitting, sitting in the front close to
some hunk and glad to be the subject of some Monday morning girls’ lav gossip)
the whole axis of night-life changed once everybody realized that you were no
longer tied to the house (or at most the neighborhood), were not tied to
constantly eating at home, sleeping at home or watching the new-fangled
television or go to the local movie house. In a car-fixated time you could
travel and stay in a motel overnight, you could eat, if you dared, at a
drive-in restaurant or while away the evening in the snugness of your
automobile at the drive-in theater. Hail god car.
Of course while
anybody, child or adult, could do all those things the drive-in movies became
along with the drive-in restaurant one of the moments of the teen ritual, although
we were all back then brought up on parents taking their children to the
drive-in as an easy way to get out of the house what with a double-feature, a
snack bar and a playground to entertain the kiddies. That kids’ stuff is just
that. The teen drive-in movie scene is the stuff of nostalgia. Josh wasn’t sure
when he stopped going to the drive-in except sometime in the 1970s, wasn’t sure
when drive-ins kind of folded up and died away of hubris or indifference at
some point that he did not remember (after in some cases serving up some
soft-core porn to keep an audience) and wasn’t sure if they even existed
anymore. Wasn’t sure that is until he was heading to Portland, Maine for a
conference and decided to take Route One instead of U.S. 95 up from his home in
Boston.
Now that was no
random decision since Josh had grown up
in Olde Saco a few miles south of Portland and had been for a lot of reasons of
late in an Olde Saco frame of mind after the passing of Rene Dubois his old
high school classmate and runaround corner boy back then. As he worked his way
up Route One when he got to Olde Saco he happened to look to the right and
there kind of hidden from view was a sign for the Olde Saco Drive-In and
moreover that the place was still open for business. He did not have time to
stop but that sign, that memory kind of festered in his mind for a few weeks
until he decided to go spent a few days (along with Laura) up at an old
friend’s house in Wells (an old friend of Markin’s really from North Adamsville
down in Massachusetts where they had grown up which is how he had met Jimmy
Jenkins the owner of the place back after the summer of love, 1967). One day Josh
fervently asked Laura to take the ticket, take the ride, an expression that he
used when he wanted them to do something out of the ordinary. And going to a
drive-in, the Olde Saco Drive-In was not something that he had done in about forty
years so he was really doing a memory stretch. Laura at first didn’t want to
go, said she had no history and hence no memory for drive-ins since between her
shoulder to the wheel no-nonsense parents not being the drive-in movie types
and living out in Podunk in upstate New York where she could not remember if
there were drive-ins in the area Josh’s big deal was a deflated balloon to her.
But she eventually relented after he promised her to do about fourteen
different things in return which he took as a fair bargain under the circumstances,
so they were off.
Now this drive-in
thing back in the day had a certain ritual to it, a Josh and his gang ritual
anyway. He had already thought after seeing the old place about the travails of
childhood when after a long shift at the MacAdams Textile Mill where his father,
Prescott, worked as a machinist before
the mills that sustained the town headed south (first American South then the world
South to places like Indonesia and Singapore in search of that greedy increased
profit wrought by cheaper wage packets), and Delores (nee LeBlanc and hence her
hometown of Olde Saco one of the work stopping points heading south from native
Quebec a generation or two before her own), his mother, both work weary would
bundle up he and his four sisters and head to the “Olde Saco” for the night’s
double feature, some illicit snacks (you were not supposed to bring your own
foods in but what was to stop you and it would not be, despite five Breslin
children howls, until he went there with his gang that he would learn of the
delights at the snack bar-the buttered drenched slightly stale, maybe popped from
the night before, popcorn, the fizz-less sodas sickenly sweetly syrup and
caffeine clogged, the desiccated cardboard-like pizza light on cheese, sauce
and flavor, the greasy grimy hamburgers only saved by slathered ketchups and
mustard, no onions, no, onions if you wanted to go in to that good night but
more of that later, and the food-free, calorie free hot dogs in their
grave-like mushy white flour enriched buns that would become his staple on
drive-in nights, his sisters too from what they said, from what they said on their
date nights if the guy wanted to get anywhere, anywhere at all with them, no
cheapskates need apply their motto), and the playground conveniently located at
the end just below the movie screen
where he and his sisters would climb the jungle jim, slide the slide, mangle
the see-saw and seek heaven on the swings. Kindly childhood thoughts as almost
all children would think (and later measured, nicely measured in his parents
favor since they really did not have the surplus dough to spent on such
“frills” when the rent was always behind and his mother made something of a
secular rosary out of her weekly white envelopes on the kitchen table
bill-paying chores always short, always damn short although that remembrance
too late to do him, or them, any good since they had been estranged so long).
No, what drove Josh these
days were the teenage drive-in movies where he had come of age in the Olde Saco
night. Of course it started with larcenous intent (nice legal term courtesy of
Sam Lowell, the lawyer friend of Markin also met after they headed back East together
in the summer of love year 1967) when the late Rene Dubois, a year older than
the rest of the guys since he had just come down from Quebec and was in a
special language immersion class (although they didn’t call it that then but
something like special needs, or for dumb kids or something) for a year before
joining the regular class who got his driver’s license first and more
importantly since he worked at La Croix’s Garage over on Main Street after
school and on weekends his first car an old beat up ‘53 Chevy that he worked on
to bring back to life (as he would do with a succession of cars up to a “boss”
’57 two-toned white and cherry red naturally Chevy that was nothing but a “babe”
magnet and not just for teeny-bopper girls either). But before the girls
started cluttering up Rene’s life (as they would through four freaking
marriages, a bushel of kids, and a bevy of grandkids) he was the “max daddy” of
the road taking his corner boys like Josh to the Olde Saco Drive-In.
Here is where the
larceny comes in though. In those days admission was something like three
dollars a head for the nightly double-feature (Josh urged that he not be quoted
on that price for like lots of things these days that number seems to have come
out of the mist of time and may be totally wrong but the price cheap anyway
although not cheap enough for “from hunger” working class projects kids like
him) so what they would do is pig-pile three or four guys in the big ass trunk
(occasional sightings of 1950s automobile models still on the road and a recent
visit to an automobile museum out in San Diego only confirmed to Josh what he
remembered about how big the trunks were then, and how big bad ass the engines
were too, and although today’s are quite a bit more efficient there was some
psychological lift then in being seen in those big ass cars, certainly the
girls would turn their heads something he had not seen anybody with today’s zip
cars and minis), maybe depending on size a couple of guys in the rear seat
wells so for about six bucks (remember
the guess-aspect please), the admission Rene and whoever was riding shot-gun paid
(later correctly split up among the total number admitted since that was the whole
point) half the freaking neighborhood got into the show for less than a dollar.
Now one might ask,
aside from the silly question of the morality if not the legality of such moves
whether the admission booth attendant would not get wise to the whole scene.
What are you kidding this poor cluck probably got about a dollar an hour for
his or her work and was not worried about playing “copper,” not when that
person probably was running the same scam when he or she was going to the
drive-in. The important thing is that later, later when it wasn’t about “from
hunger” guys but meeting carloads of girls from the neighborhoods who were using
the same “technique” sometimes Josh and the boys would con some poor girls into
the trunk and since it was tight quarters “cop” a quick feel wherever that
stray hand landed (the only really acceptable kind of “copping” when you
thought about it) a quick feel and maybe get them “in the mood” for the fogged up
window scene every guy dream of. (Later
Josh would tell one and all out in California he blushed more than the girls when
he pulled that maneuver although he caught more than his fair share of “in the
mood” girls, he was not known by the moniker the “Prince of Love” in the great
summer of love night, circa 1967, for nothing).
Josh laughed when he
thought about that silly larceny and that “copping” kids’ stuff but later, come
junior and senior years of high school the ritual became much more serious when
three was a crowd time, when it was important to be able to separate out a bit
and go to what was named the “sweat box” by the local guys, the place where the
single guy with a single girl placed their automobile away from the prying
carload of younger teen guys or girls and better still from prying eyes of
young parents, grown suddenly old and responsible once the kids started coming,
shielding their kids from the fogged bound cars at the back of the lot. The “sweat
box” was the section where if one asked a quick question about the plot of the
film one would get some strange answers while the parties were straightening
out their clothes. Josh said if you really thought about it no parent would go
within fifty yards of that “passion pit.”
Not all of Josh’s
memories of the Olde Saco Drive-In were great big cream puff dreams. Later
after the big “cultural revolution” that was the 1960s lost steam guys like
Josh (and more dramatically the moaned for late Pete Markin) were left stranded
for a while, lost their moorings. Like the time Josh was down on his own luck
and forced to sneak back to Olde Saco and stay low for reasons that best not detain
us here. Here’s how he told the story:
“Mimi Murphy knew two things, she
needed to keep moving, and she was tired, tired as hell of moving, of the need,
of the self-imposed need, to keep moving ever since that incident five years
ago with her seems like an eternity ago sweet long gone motorcycle boy, Pretty
James Preston. Poor Pretty James and his needs, no, his obsessions with that
silly motorcycle, that English devil’s machine, that Vincent Black Lightning
that caused him more anguish than she did. And she gave him plenty to think
about as well before the end. How she tried to get him to settle down a little,
just a little, but what was a sixteen old girl, pretty new to the love game,
totally new, but not complaining to the sex game, and his little tricks to get
her in the mood for that, and forget the settle down thing. Until the next
time.
Maybe, if you were from around North Adamsville way, or maybe just Boston, you had heard about Pretty James, Pretty James Preston and his daring exploits back in about 1967 and 1968. Those got a lot of play in the newspapers for months before the end. Before that bank job, the one where as Pretty James used to say all the time, he cashed his check. Yes, the big Granite City National Bank branch in Braintree heist that he tried to pull all by himself, with Mimi as stooge look-out. She had set him up for that heist, or so she thought. No, she didn’t ask him to do it but she got him thinking, thinking about settling down just a little and he needed a big score, not the penny ante gas station and mom and pop variety store robberies that kept them in, as he also said, coffee and cakes but a big payday and then off to Mexico, maybe Sonora, and a buy into the respectable and growing drug trade.
And he almost, almost, got away clean that fatal day, that day when she stood across the street, a forty-five in her purse just in case he needed it for a final getaway. But he never made it out the door. Some rum brave security guard tried to uphold the honor of his profession and started shooting nicking Pretty James in the shoulder. Pretty James responded with a few quick blasts and felled the copper. That action though slowed down the escape enough for the real coppers to respond and blow Pretty James away. Dead, DOA, done. Her sweet boy Pretty James.
Maybe, if you were from around North Adamsville way, or maybe just Boston, you had heard about Pretty James, Pretty James Preston and his daring exploits back in about 1967 and 1968. Those got a lot of play in the newspapers for months before the end. Before that bank job, the one where as Pretty James used to say all the time, he cashed his check. Yes, the big Granite City National Bank branch in Braintree heist that he tried to pull all by himself, with Mimi as stooge look-out. She had set him up for that heist, or so she thought. No, she didn’t ask him to do it but she got him thinking, thinking about settling down just a little and he needed a big score, not the penny ante gas station and mom and pop variety store robberies that kept them in, as he also said, coffee and cakes but a big payday and then off to Mexico, maybe Sonora, and a buy into the respectable and growing drug trade.
And he almost, almost, got away clean that fatal day, that day when she stood across the street, a forty-five in her purse just in case he needed it for a final getaway. But he never made it out the door. Some rum brave security guard tried to uphold the honor of his profession and started shooting nicking Pretty James in the shoulder. Pretty James responded with a few quick blasts and felled the copper. That action though slowed down the escape enough for the real coppers to respond and blow Pretty James away. Dead, DOA, done. Her sweet boy Pretty James.
According to the newspapers a tall,
slender red-headed girl about sixteen had been seen across the street from the
bank just waiting, waiting according to the witness, nervously. The witness had
turned her head when she heard the shots from the bank and when she looked back
the red-headed girl was gone. And Mimi was gone, and long gone before the day
was out. She grabbed the first bus out of Braintree headed to Boston where
eventually she wound up holed up in a high-end whorehouse doing tricks to make
some moving dough. And she had been moving ever since, moving and eternally
hate moving. Now, for the past few months, she had been working nights as a
cashier in the refreshment stand at the Olde Saco Drive-In Theater to get
another stake to keep moving. She had been tempted, a couple of times, to do a
little moon-lighting in a Portland whorehouse that a woman she had worked with
at her last job, Fenner’s Department Store where she modeled clothes for the
rich ladies, had told her about to get a quick stake but she was almost as
eternally tired at that prospect as in moving once again.
Then one night Josh came in. Came in for popcorn and a Sprite she remembered, although she did not remember on that busy summer night what the charge was. He kind of looked her over quickly, very quickly but she was aware that he looked her over and, moreover, he was aware that she knew that he had looked her over. The look though was not the usual baby, baby come on look, but a thoughtful look like he could see that she had seen some woes and, well, what of it. Like maybe he specialized in fixing busted-up red-heads, or wanted to. She knew she wasn’t beautiful but she had a certain way about her that certain guys, guys from motorcycle wild boy Pretty James Boy to kind of bookish college guys like this one, wanted to get next to. If she let them. And she hadn’t, hadn’t not since Pretty James. But she confessed to herself, not without a girlish blush, that she had in the universe of looks and peeks that make up human experience looked him over too. And then passed to the next customer and his family of four burgeoning tray-full order of hot dogs, candy, popcorn and about six zillion drinks.
A couple of nights later, a slow night for it was misting out keeping away the summer vacation families that kept the drive-in hopping before each show and at intermission, a Thursday night usually slow anyway before the Friday change of the double-feature, Josh came in again at intermission. This time out of nowhere, without a second’s hesitation, she gave him a big smile when he came to the register with his now familiar popcorn and Sprite. He didn’t respond, or rather he did not respond right away because right behind him there were a couple of high school couples who could hardly wait to get their provisions and get back to their fogged-up car and keep it fogged up. They passed by him and hurried out the door.
Then one night Josh came in. Came in for popcorn and a Sprite she remembered, although she did not remember on that busy summer night what the charge was. He kind of looked her over quickly, very quickly but she was aware that he looked her over and, moreover, he was aware that she knew that he had looked her over. The look though was not the usual baby, baby come on look, but a thoughtful look like he could see that she had seen some woes and, well, what of it. Like maybe he specialized in fixing busted-up red-heads, or wanted to. She knew she wasn’t beautiful but she had a certain way about her that certain guys, guys from motorcycle wild boy Pretty James Boy to kind of bookish college guys like this one, wanted to get next to. If she let them. And she hadn’t, hadn’t not since Pretty James. But she confessed to herself, not without a girlish blush, that she had in the universe of looks and peeks that make up human experience looked him over too. And then passed to the next customer and his family of four burgeoning tray-full order of hot dogs, candy, popcorn and about six zillion drinks.
A couple of nights later, a slow night for it was misting out keeping away the summer vacation families that kept the drive-in hopping before each show and at intermission, a Thursday night usually slow anyway before the Friday change of the double-feature, Josh came in again at intermission. This time out of nowhere, without a second’s hesitation, she gave him a big smile when he came to the register with his now familiar popcorn and Sprite. He didn’t respond, or rather he did not respond right away because right behind him there were a couple of high school couples who could hardly wait to get their provisions and get back to their fogged-up car and keep it fogged up. They passed by him and hurried out the door.
Just then over the refreshment stand
loudspeaker that played records as background music to keep the unruly crowds a
little quiet while they waited for their hamburgers and hot dogs came the voice
of Doris Troy singing her greatest hit, Just One Look. Then he broke
into a smile, a big smile like he was thinking just that thought that very
minute, looked up at the clock, looked again, and looked a third time without
saying a word, She gave him a slight flirty smile and said eleven o’clock and
at exactly eleven o’clock he was there to meet her. Maybe she thought as they
went out the refreshment stand door she would not have to keep moving,
eternally moving after all.
A couple of fretful months later one
nigh Mimi slipped out the back door of her rooming house over on Atlantic
Avenue and Josh never heard from her again. Josh figured that after telling him
about Pretty James one lonesome whiskey-drinking night she had to move, keep
moving tired or not.”
So not all the old time Olde Saco
Drive-In dreams worked out. And in the big scheme of things in Josh’s life, some
ups, some downs stirred memories, good or bad, of drive-in movie times would usually
rate pretty far down on the list. But these semi-retired days Josh has had time
to think about old time things. Like a lot of guys, gals too but he wouldn’t speak
for them since he had only talked to his guys about those old days he wished to
have a re-run on such things knowing full well that you “can’t go home again,” the
past is dead and gone. Hell, didn’t he know that when he tried to rekindle some
old high school friendships and wound up giving it up after he realized that
time had swept whatever they all had in common away. Know too when he tried
that last reconciliation with his family that it was too late. Hell even a
simple thing like planning to go to class reunion got all balled up when some
old flame, or kind of old flame, wanted to start something up again now that she
was “single” (after three divorces) and Josh too (ditto on the divorces, the number
as well). So he had had to nix that plan.
And that is where Laura came in, Laura
who had “saved” him from some tiresome lonely old age when they finally got
together, finally figured they were “soulmates” as she called it (and he
agreed). See Josh figured some things
maybe can’t be worked out from the past but something simple like a trip down
memory lane at the Olde Saco Drive-In might be a kick. Like was mentioned before
Laura was very cool to the idea but since they were staying nearby, the weather
was warm and the double-bill (yeah, they kept the double-bill tradition alive) while
not her usual arty films were probably passable flicks she finally agreed. So
on a Wednesday night they drove the twenty miles or so up to Olde Saco from
Wells with a certain amount of excitement now that they had decided to do the
thing (Laura with her drive-in-less youth was now curious about the whole ritual).
When Josh drove up to the admissions booth he noticed that the old standard per
carload idea was also still in effect, verifying what he had already told Laura
about the old time larcenies. (By the way he can confirm that times had changed,
that inflation had worked its ways in the forty or fifty years that have passed
since now a carload was twenty dollars and that is a number that he had no
trouble remembering since it was his treat.) As he pass his money along he kiddingly
mentioned to the attendant that he had twelve people in the trunk but instead
of some incomprehension on his part the kid told Josh that he had a few nights
before had to check a couple of trunks and found them filled with teenagers. The
tradition lives! (Although Josh felt some chagrin later over the kid playing “copper”
on the deal).
As Josh and Laura found a spot, a
little out of the way since they had passed a number of carloads of families
with kids not sitting in the cars like the old days but spread out in front of their
spots with lawn chairs so they could have a little quiet. Josh remarked that
except for some overgrown grass the place looked pretty much the same as in the
old days with a few exceptions. First off there were no speakers, you know, the
ones on the posts that you clipped to your slightly opened front door window
(and half the time in your rush to get out of the place in less than an hour as
the traffic jam began at the exit you forgot the damn thing and not a few would
be down on the ground after a night’s work). Nowadays, as Laura noticed on the
screen, you tuned into a number on your car radio. Okay, progress can’t be
stopped and those silly speakers were really a nuisance. Another thing was that
the old time playground that he and his sisters played in as kids were gone, replaced
by a couple more rows of car spots. The most striking thing though was,
probably as a matter of saving dough, the refreshment stand area looked almost exactly
as it had, except maybe a new coat of paint about ten years ago, when he spied
Mimi behind the counter back in the 1970s with the same “menu.” (Don’t tell Laura,
please don’t tell Laura that Josh had some pangs about Mimi seeing that stand,
okay).
Actually the most striking thing about
the evening though was not the same old stand but that there was not a speck of
an indication that the old “sweat box” section was still around. And it made
sense when he and Laura were talking about the subject during intermission.
Kids have about twenty other ways of entertaining themselves, are more
committed to mall-rat-dom and other locales these days so things do move on. Josh
had not expected any such replication although it would have heartened him if
it had. It was okay and they had a nice evening.
Hey, what about the double-feature, what
about the movies. Well, Josh said he was not sure but he thought one was a spy
movie, something out of the Cold War, and the other was a flipped out romance.
And he said Laura agreed. When he named the two titles though when I checked they
had nothing to do with spies or romances, one was a star-wars type movie, the other
a gangster movie. Yeah, some things never change at the drive-in, well almost
never except Josh complained about how hard it was to maneuver these days with
these damn bucket car seats and the console in the middle, and about how they
forgot to bring paper towels to wipe off the fog from the windshields.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Mimi’s Glance, Circa 1963
“Mimi Murphy knew two things, she
needed to keep moving, and she was tired, tired as hell of moving, of the need,
of the self-imposed need, to keep moving ever since that incident five years
ago with her seems like an eternity ago sweet long gone motorcycle boy, Pretty
James Preston. Poor Pretty James and his needs, no, his obsessions with that
silly motorcycle, that English devil’s machine, that Vincent Black Lightning
that caused him more anguish than she did. And she gave him plenty to think
about as well before the end. How she tried to get him to settle down a little,
just a little, but what was a sixteen old girl, pretty new to the love game,
totally new, but not complaining to the sex game, and his little tricks to get
her in the mood for that, and forget the settle down thing. Until the next
time.
Maybe, if you were from around North Adamsville way, or maybe just Boston, you had heard about Pretty James, Pretty James Preston and his daring exploits back in about 1967 and 1968. Those got a lot of play in the newspapers for months before the end. Before that bank job, the one where as Pretty James used to say all the time, he cashed his check. Yes, the big Granite City National Bank branch in Braintree heist that he tried to pull all by himself, with Mimi as stooge look-out. She had set him up for that heist, or so she thought. No, she didn’t ask him to do it but she got him thinking, thinking about settling down just a little and he needed a big score, not the penny ante gas station and mom and pop variety store robberies that kept them in, as he also said, coffee and cakes but a big payday and then off to Mexico, maybe Sonora, and a buy into the respectable and growing drug trade.
And he almost, almost, got away clean that fatal day, that day when she stood across the street, a forty-five in her purse just in case he needed it for a final getaway. But he never made it out the door. Some rum brave security guard tried to uphold the honor of his profession and started shooting nicking Pretty James in the shoulder. Pretty James responded with a few quick blasts and felled the copper. That action though slowed down the escape enough for the real coppers to respond and blow Pretty James away. Dead, DOA, done. Her sweet boy Pretty James.
Maybe, if you were from around North Adamsville way, or maybe just Boston, you had heard about Pretty James, Pretty James Preston and his daring exploits back in about 1967 and 1968. Those got a lot of play in the newspapers for months before the end. Before that bank job, the one where as Pretty James used to say all the time, he cashed his check. Yes, the big Granite City National Bank branch in Braintree heist that he tried to pull all by himself, with Mimi as stooge look-out. She had set him up for that heist, or so she thought. No, she didn’t ask him to do it but she got him thinking, thinking about settling down just a little and he needed a big score, not the penny ante gas station and mom and pop variety store robberies that kept them in, as he also said, coffee and cakes but a big payday and then off to Mexico, maybe Sonora, and a buy into the respectable and growing drug trade.
And he almost, almost, got away clean that fatal day, that day when she stood across the street, a forty-five in her purse just in case he needed it for a final getaway. But he never made it out the door. Some rum brave security guard tried to uphold the honor of his profession and started shooting nicking Pretty James in the shoulder. Pretty James responded with a few quick blasts and felled the copper. That action though slowed down the escape enough for the real coppers to respond and blow Pretty James away. Dead, DOA, done. Her sweet boy Pretty James.
According to the newspapers a tall,
slender red-headed girl about sixteen had been seen across the street from the
bank just waiting, waiting according to the witness, nervously. The witness had
turned her head when she heard the shots from the bank and when she looked back
the red-headed girl was gone. And Mimi was gone, and long gone before the day
was out. She grabbed the first bus out of Braintree headed to Boston where
eventually she wound up holed up in a high-end whorehouse doing tricks to make
some moving dough. And she had been moving ever since, moving and eternally
hate moving. Now, for the past few months, she had been working nights as a
cashier in the refreshment stand at the Olde Saco Drive-In Theater to get
another stake to keep moving. She had been tempted, a couple of times, to do a
little moon-lighting in a Portland whorehouse that a woman she had worked with
at her last job, Fenner’s Department Store where she modeled clothes for the
rich ladies, had told her about to get a quick stake but she was almost as
eternally tired at that prospect as in moving once again.
Then one night Josh came in. Came in for popcorn and a Sprite she remembered, although she did not remember on that busy summer night what the charge was. He kind of looked her over quickly, very quickly but she was aware that he looked her over and, moreover, he was aware that she knew that he had looked her over. The look though was not the usual baby, baby come on look, but a thoughtful look like he could see that she had seen some woes and, well, what of it. Like maybe he specialized in fixing busted-up red-heads, or wanted to. She knew she wasn’t beautiful but she had a certain way about her that certain guys, guys from motorcycle wild boy Pretty James Boy to kind of bookish college guys like this one, wanted to get next to. If she let them. And she hadn’t, hadn’t not since Pretty James. But she confessed to herself, not without a girlish blush, that she had in the universe of looks and peeks that make up human experience looked him over too. And then passed to the next customer and his family of four burgeoning tray-full order of hot dogs, candy, popcorn and about six zillion drinks.
A couple of nights later, a slow night for it was misting out keeping away the summer vacation families that kept the drive-in hopping before each show and at intermission, a Thursday night usually slow anyway before the Friday change of the double-feature, Josh came in again at intermission. This time out of nowhere, without a second’s hesitation, she gave him a big smile when he came to the register with his now familiar popcorn and Sprite. He didn’t respond, or rather he did not respond right away because right behind him there were a couple of high school couples who could hardly wait to get their provisions and get back to their fogged-up car and keep it fogged up. They passed by him and hurried out the door.
Then one night Josh came in. Came in for popcorn and a Sprite she remembered, although she did not remember on that busy summer night what the charge was. He kind of looked her over quickly, very quickly but she was aware that he looked her over and, moreover, he was aware that she knew that he had looked her over. The look though was not the usual baby, baby come on look, but a thoughtful look like he could see that she had seen some woes and, well, what of it. Like maybe he specialized in fixing busted-up red-heads, or wanted to. She knew she wasn’t beautiful but she had a certain way about her that certain guys, guys from motorcycle wild boy Pretty James Boy to kind of bookish college guys like this one, wanted to get next to. If she let them. And she hadn’t, hadn’t not since Pretty James. But she confessed to herself, not without a girlish blush, that she had in the universe of looks and peeks that make up human experience looked him over too. And then passed to the next customer and his family of four burgeoning tray-full order of hot dogs, candy, popcorn and about six zillion drinks.
A couple of nights later, a slow night for it was misting out keeping away the summer vacation families that kept the drive-in hopping before each show and at intermission, a Thursday night usually slow anyway before the Friday change of the double-feature, Josh came in again at intermission. This time out of nowhere, without a second’s hesitation, she gave him a big smile when he came to the register with his now familiar popcorn and Sprite. He didn’t respond, or rather he did not respond right away because right behind him there were a couple of high school couples who could hardly wait to get their provisions and get back to their fogged-up car and keep it fogged up. They passed by him and hurried out the door.
Just then over the refreshment stand
loudspeaker that played records as background music to keep the unruly crowds a
little quiet while they waited for their hamburgers and hot dogs came the voice
of Doris Troy singing her greatest hit, Just One Look. Then he broke
into a smile, a big smile like he was thinking just that thought that very
minute, looked up at the clock, looked again, and looked a third time without
saying a word, She gave him a slight flirty smile and said eleven o’clock and
at exactly eleven o’clock he was there to meet her. Maybe she thought as they
went out the refreshment stand door she would not have to keep moving,
eternally moving after all.
A
couple of fretful months later one nigh Mimi slipped out the back door of her
rooming house over on Atlantic Avenue and Josh never heard from her again. Josh
figured that after telling him about Pretty James one lonesome whiskey-drinking
night she had to move, keep moving tired or not.”
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