In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby Boom Jail Break-Out- The “Boss” Car

In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby Boom Jail Break-Out- The “Boss” Car

 

Introduction by Zack James

 

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Eddie Cochran performing Somethin' Else.

 

 

Bradley Samuel had a thing for cars, old cars, old cars when he was young in the 1960s and so ‘49 Hudsons and ‘50 Studebakers drove him crazy and a few years later when his buddy Steve Cadger had one after his father turned his in for a newer model, a ’57 Chevy. Even later he went ga-ga over Mustangs (and Mustang Sallys, listen to the song of the same name on YouTube if you want to know of what I speak). Any city, say Boston when he ran around that town in the early 1970s would find him running over to the famous Larz Anderson auto museum in Brookline to ogle those beauties. On the West Coast when he lived there in the 1980s when there was still a small audience for alternative journalism with a bit he would run down to San Diego and go crazy over the autos there but really more the motorcycles which included his favorite, the British-built very fast, very, very fast, Vincent Black Lightning (a bike that Richard Thompson, a Brit and a folk-rocker wrote about extolling bad boy outlaw James Ardie and his red-headed girl who came to a bad end-one of the great modern working-class love songs). Still out on the Coast he would occasionally wrangle an assignment to cover the elite expensive automobiles auctioned off at Pebble Beach near Carmel every year or so.            

 

All of this “hot car” interest, by the way, from a guy who did not get his license until he was twenty-one not because he didn’t want to get the damn thing but because he had failed the Massachusetts state driving test three times and was “ordered” to wait (and go to driver training school) before trying a fourth time.  All of this by a guy who for big chunks of his life did not even own an automobile, any, sometimes because he couldn’t afford one and sometimes he lived in cities like New York where car ownership is akin to being robbed on a daily basis. All this from a guy who needed instruction to find where the gas cap was and how to get it unscrewed in order to put gas in the damn car. Forget about any minor maintenance like changing oil or tires. So there is no accounting for tastes but I would take a big slice of what he has to say about his youthful adventures with cars-and with girls which go symbiotically together. You are forwarded.  

 

By Bradley Samuel 

 

This review will get around to be about cars, “boss” cars as we used to say in Riverdale where I grew up but let me explain what the general assignment was about and place the thing in context. I wrangled a small assignment (they seem to be getting smaller these days as the print medium is taking a beating in the digital age and the natural constituency that would read what I have to say is dying off (or following the young going to the digital age too, if not the digitalis age as well) from West Coast Automobile, a journal geared to classic cars but also to the music of the times of the classic cars since a number of its advertisers are (or maybe were) record companies who dealt with putting out nostalgia CD compilations to what in the business is called demographically-targeted niche audiences (and financially as well with some discretionary income to buy their products for those who thrown or otherwise lost their youthful purchases when buying records at places like Sidewalk Sam’s Records was considered a sacred duty). 

 

I had thus for several months been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in an extensive classic rock ‘n’ roll series (now classic, then just our music). A lot of those reviews had been driven by the artwork which graced the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may, to the themes expressed in those artwork scenes. In this review we have the latter, the not fit in part, for this reviewer anyway. The latter is the case here although the cover art was simplicity itself- the rear view of an aerodynamically-contoured rear fin (yes, fin) of a “boss” (yes, boss) 1950s automobile of unknown provenance (but we can guess, right?)

 

Yes, and that slight description is all that is needed for those of us who came of age in the “golden age of the automobile” in the speed and thrills-craving aftermath of World War II when restless Americans, young and old, more young as it turned out, went into spasms over the latest “boss” (yes, boss) vehicle coming out of Detroit, the motor capital of the world then. Of course the cars kind of sorted themselves out- you wouldn’t, if you were young, dream of driving something that your father drove. So if you got his hand-me-down after he decided that he needed, just absolutely needed, that much more power in his automobile in order to keep up with the Joneses, you would move might and main in order to transform that old clunky dad car into a respectable tool. A rocket-like tool to fit the age, to ride and to ride with some sweet honey at your side, on those hot sticky, sultry summer nights down by the seaside, or at the drive-in, either to see a movie or for some late night food (a whole dissertation could be written, maybe has, on onions, hamburgers, French fries, sodas, and the etiquettes of those Friday and Saturday night hot dates with some youthful Laura), your choice.

 

Yes, and this is why even a mainly a “not fit in no car boy” like me, from a mainly no car family, could (and maybe still could) stare his eyes out over some boss of the bosses ’57 Chevy charging down the be-bop night boulevard, or a lanky turbo-driven long-line Lincoln, or a rebuilt Cadillac or a tear-up Thunderbird. Relics from a high cubic volume engine age when your twenty-nine cents a gallon gas took you about three feet per gallon. But still, come on now, they looked, well, boss.

 

Oh, yes, and of course you needed to amp up that boss wagon car radio, previously set exclusively to some father business news station (jesus), booming out the latest rock and roll hits about cars, especially West Coast car legends and their chicken runs, girls (East coast or West coast, hell, even the Mid-West Coast if they have one), girls and boys in trouble, in love, out of love (ditto on that geography thing), chasing that sunset ocean-flecked dream. But mainly, when the dust settled, you had to worry about how and who was going to front that dough to get that new back chrome fender you just needed, absolutely needed, needed like crazy to keep up with the Jones’ son.

 

But on that boss car radio you were likely, very likely, to be cruising to (even if only riding shotgun in some buddy’s boss car cruising that boulevard looking for, what else, girls who just that moment might be in need of some seaside company, or wanted to go the drive-in, you know that movie or food thing, their choice) many of the tunes reviewed in that series. Stick-outs on this fin tail art beauty included: For Your Love, Ed Townsend; Silhouettes, The Diamonds; Somethin’ Else, Eddie Cochran (totally underrated in the classic rock scheme of things after he died in a car accident, naturally, especially his classic Summertime Blues that was a rite of passage each summer vacation); and, as always when you talk 1950s rock, the serious stuff, the serious riffing guitar stuff from the place where rock met the blues, Chuck Berry on Almost Grown, not his number one, A-list material but good in this company. Enough said. 

 

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

 

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

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

February is Black History Month

 

 

 

 

Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

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

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

 

Langston Hughes

 

…he, Ezra Benton, Ezra Benton named after his father and his father before him who had worked, had worked back-breaking hard, worked his way up from nothing but a half-whipped nigra hot sun beating down cotton field hand hands all blistered, stinking like God knows what, always water thirsty to the assistant plantation blacksmith, assistant to Mister George Wright the white man from town who had seen him in one of the cabins all big and strong and asked if he could handle a hammer and there he was sitting in the cool shed when not flaming the kiln fires, there he was the man who shoed the damn horses when some fool drove the beasts too hard, heard , heard through the grapevine that now that Atlanta had fallen, had fallen to Sherman and his bummers, that Father Abraham up in the United States, up in Washington, D. C. was going to break up Mister’s plantation and give each nigra family, and maybe others too, maybe some upstart young buck with ambition like  him, forty acres and a mule to get them started now that slavery days were falling down.

 

With that news, Ezra, who normally took news from the grapevine with a grain of salt, no more, got a little wistful. Wistful about how he would collect his now far- flung family scattered here and there throughout the delta, take his forty acres and his mule and plow, plow night and day until the heavens came home, maybe buy some more land, forty acres was only the beginning for a strong-hearted, strong-willed man like him maybe built him a little white picket fence house like he had seen in town, and mainly make sure that his ever hungry kin, and his ever hungry own self had enough to eat, and then some. And so he dreamed…

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Break With The Two Parties Of Wall Street- A Cautionary Tale In The Age Of Bernie Sanders -A Postscript

Break With The Two Parties Of Wall Street- A Cautionary Tale In The Age Of Bernie Sanders -A Postscript

 

By Frank Jackman

Fall 2012

 

 

 

Bradley Fox had to laugh when he heard the news about Sam Lowell. Sam had told Bradley a few years ago, sometime in the early fall of 2012 amid the hurly-burly of that presidential election year, when they had first met at an anti-war rally on Boston Common after the very first rumblings of going to yet another war, this time in Syria, was uppermost on the Democrat Obama Administration’s mind that he continued to hold the Democratic Party responsible along with the Republicans for their continuing bi-partisan support for every war that comes along, every war opportunity as well it had seemed of late. Sam had said that while the Democrats “talk the talk” about avoiding war, or stopping the onslaught of the military budget as a drag on the possibilities of taking care of some serious domestic social questions when the deal goes down they en masse vote for the war budgets. The big general one, you know the six or seven hundred billion dollar one, AND the supplemental ones for operations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or wherever else they want to throw some mud. In short, they don’t as a party, as a capitalist party the way Sam had put it to Bradley that day “walk the walk.”

That pro-imperial policy by the Democrats meant that under no conditions could Sam support any Democratic Party candidate- at the federal level anyway. Had said to Bradley during the course of their conversation that had been his position at least since the early 1970s when he had gone through hell in the Army in his opposition to the Vietnam War and saw the Democrats as complicit as the Republicans when they did not make motions to cut off the Vietnam War budget requests. Consistent anyway on both side, Sam calling for “no” votes to the war budgets and the Democrats (with few exceptions) giving up the ghost with all arms and feet.  

That was then but this was now, now being 2016 and according to Bradley’s sense of things, and what he had supposed was Sam’s, yet another bummer of presidential campaign between Democrats and Republicans in America has begun to unfold. And guess who has since the first of the year been in the thick of the campaigning supporting Bernie Sanders as he makes a bid to be the Democratic Party candidate. Not as an Independent which would have given Sanders a nod for support but as a tried and true candidate right in the heart of the beast. Yes, one Samuel Lowell. So all that business about being anti-war, forcing whoever wanted his vote, or support, having to take the pledge to vote against the war budgets as a minimum step in the right direction was so much hot air when the deal went down.

Sam’s reasoning and the pressures of politics require a little explaining though in order that others who might be thinking of breaking their opposition to the Democrats (the myriad Republicans running helter-skelter are beyond the pale) might take a little pause before leaping into the abyss. That is the idea Bradley had in mind after he had heard the news from Bart Webber when he thought about how a stand-up anti-war guy like Sam could fall down like that. They, remember, had of all things met at an anti-war rally. Bradley, considerably younger than Sam, had only in 2012 begun to feel queasy about where this country was going, queasy too about the endless wars even under an administration of a guy who won the Nobel Peace Prize and when the war cries to get knee-deep into the Syrian Civil War began to be heard he had decided that he needed express public opposition to those efforts. He had heard through the Internet grapevine that a bunch of peace organizations like Peace Action, United for Justice and Peace, the Quakers and others were planning a rally for a Saturday in later September on the Common to express their opposition.    

Bradley, not used to public demonstrations of his political views (then), was a little leery as he emerged from the depth of the Park Street subway station where there were about fifty people milling around, carrying signs mostly anti-war signs against the continuing wars in various spots in the Middle East. He had not expected a huge crowd, hadn’t since about 2002 when the war drums for Iraq had started and millions, not including him then, had marched in the streets of the world in a desperate attempt to stop a bloody senseless war there but he had been intimidated by the smallness of the rally a bit. Also by the flotsam and jetsam that pass through that historic protest area on their ways to other business or as with the homeless just hanging out. Then a guy wearing a Veterans For Peace shirt, carrying a VFP dove-emblemed flag swirling in the wind, a Socialist Alternative button on his jacket and a small stack of leaflets came up to him and asked if he was there for the demonstration. He had said “yes.”              

That was Bradley’s introduction to one Sam Lowell, although that would not be their last meeting, not by a longshot. That day though Sam had presented some important ideas to Bradley about the nature of American society, about how almost all the establishment power structure went along with the endless wars and that it was the wars among other things inherent in the inequities of the capitalist system that led to the bloodshed and led to not getting lots of more positive things done. Bradley listened with some interest because some of what Sam had to say were things that had been upsetting him of late. The fact that Sam was an actual veteran didn’t hurt either, the voice from those who served carried weight with him (although when he found out the details of Sam’s story later he had more admiration for anti-war veterans who didn’t fold). Then Sam passed Bradley a leaflet (see about) which took him aback for a moment.

The headline-“Break with the two parties of Wall Street” confused him. See Bradley had for the four pervious election cycles since he had come of voting age had voted for the Democratic candidate for President, saw that as his only option and something he had been proud of in 2008 when he cast a vote for the first black President. He had asked Sam what that meant, asked him who he would be voting for. That day Sam gave him a short explanation since he had other responsibilities day around organizing the rally about why he had broken with the two parties. Had mentioned as well why as a small gesture in the right direction he knew he would be voting for the Green Party candidate-Jill Stein. He also told Sam that the organization he supported (although he said he was not yet a member) Socialist Alternative was doing the same thing.

Sam also suggested that if Bradley wanted to know more about why he (and SA) were not voting for the Democrats (for Obama) he would be happy to meet with him and discuss that matter. Bradley gave Sam his e-mail address and Sam a few days later followed up with an e-mail inviting him to meet at his convenience. As for the rally he had been glad that he had gone, glad that he had made that small public anti-war gesture and seriously thought about meeting up with Sam.                  

A couple of weeks later Sam and Bradley met at the Blackbird Café where Sam went through his paces after Bradley had asked about Sam’s political history and about why he refused to vote for the Democrats against the beastly Republicans and why his vote for the Green Party was not wasted energy. Sam had said that he had grown up in a working-class family with very strong ties to the Democrats going back to the FDR era and that he himself had after college expected to pursue a career in politics through the Democratic Party. Had as late as 1968 been a crazed Bobby Kennedy supporter campaigning for him all over the country and after he was assassinated went to work on the Humphrey campaign (also all over the country). Reason: a classic one, a “lesser evil” one if you wanted to know the truth-one Richard M Nixon who was the number one bad ass politician that everybody rightly feared would be elected and continue the Vietnam War forever. Of course Hubert Humphrey been neck-deep in the machinations of the Lyndon Johnson escalations of the war but Sam had not seen things that way-then.   

In 1969 Sam had been drafted into the Army and that event had changed everything. He had allowed himself to be inducted which he found out after a very few days of basic training was a mistake. All the signs were that he was being trained for nothing else but to kill “commies” in Vietnam. No go. He had no quarrel with Vietnamese peasants among other reasons. Without going into all the details Sam when he had gotten orders for Vietnam after completion of Advanced Infantry Training (and that training signified only one thing because Uncle Sam only needed, desperately needed, grunts, foot soldiers, cannon-fodder in one place that year-Vietnam) decided to refuse to go. He wound up spending the better part of the next two years in the stockade, or waiting to go into the stockade, although he finally got out with an honorable discharge ordered by the federal district court in New Jersey where he was being held in detention at Fort Dix. That critical experience, and the reflection that after all the Democrats, his previously beloved Democrats had been neck-deep in the escalations as well as Nixon, was the initial crack. Further reading, thinking, association with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, associations with various independent socialist types and later in the 1980s Veterans for Peace flushed out the other reasons for breaking with the Democrats (the Republican wing of the two parties of Wall Street was so much hot air since he would then, and now, never consider supporting that group of heartless bastards).          

Sam and Bradley went back and forth that day for a couple of hours and Sam suggested that if Bradley was looking for more information that Socialist Alternative had study groups which he could join and learn more about their perspective. Bradley had attended several classes before he decided that while he would continue to be a public anti-war activist (and other issues too like the death penalty, the fight for a higher minimum wage, stopping immigrant deportations and the like) that he preferred not to belong to any organization since with three growing kids he would not have the time necessary to devote whole-heartedly to the cause. He did later run into Sam (and others as well since it is a very small cadre of those who are interested in fighting injustices in the public square these days) at many events and went out of his way to attend VFP-sponsored events.      

Bradley also took to heart what Sam had said about the two parties of Wall Street although he never really got used to that way of putting it and did not vote for President in the 2012 election cycle (he could not see the gesture of voting for the Green Party as anything but a futile gesture). He had not planned and continues to plan not to vote for President in the 2016 election cycle, although he sorely wished that Bernie Sanders had decided on an independent candidacy so he could work for him.    

As for Sam, Bradley after he had heard that Sam was working for Sanders in New Hampshire canvassing voters in that state (as was Socialist Alternative which was also neck-deep in that campaign), decided to go to Park Street Station where a weekly anti-war rally is held every Saturday (and has been since something like 1998) and where he expected to find Sam standing with his VFP flag. And he was there. When Bradley asked him what in the world had changed about the Democratic Party of Wall Street since the last election cycle he said “that is where the kids are, that is who we who are older have to get to, hell, Bernie is the only game in town, the only one who will stand up to the beasts.”  Yeah, Bradley thought “that was then but this is now” as he remembered that final paragraph from that leaflet that he still had in his home office desk drawer.  (See above and read and weep.)     

Post-Iowa Postscript-Frank Jackman

You already know from the above that Sam Lowell had gone overboard about the supporting the Bernie Sanders Democratic Party Presidential nomination after years, many years, of calling for a break with that party (the Republicans don’t count in this universe, no reason since about 1864 to support them so no reason to call for a break with that organization except for symmetry) and the creation of a labor party to address the pressing issues of the working-class and other oppressed. Immediately after the Iowa caucuses on February 1^st he called up his old high school friend Bart Webber whom he is still in contact with and tried to talk him into going up to Manchester, New Hampshire the next day with him and his longtime companion Laura Perkins to canvass for Bernie in that city in front of the upcoming February 9^th presidential primary. He told Bart that with the groundswell for Bernie in Iowa that he planned to go all out and stay in Manchester until the primary was over. Bart told him he was starting to think about Bernie a bit with all the hubbub but that he couldn’t take the time off to go when he was not sure that he still didn’t prefer the slogan-break from the Democrats this presidential season when it might do some good. As for Bradley Fox he had not wavered from the “break from the Democrats” slogan that he had learned at the feet of that same Sam Lowell in sunnier days. How the mighty have fallen.         

*****From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog-Viva La Quince Brigada

*****From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog-Viva La Quince Brigada

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

Jackman comment:

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!  
*******

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sam Lowell knew in his blood-stained heart, his Vietnam War blood-stained heart that as much as he had come to hate and oppose that war as a participant, as an unwilling and unwitting tool of forces in the government who were clueless about ‘Nam, about people who had done them, and him no harm, about people with which he had no quarrel he could never go all the way in his opposition to wars. Although after the fact, after his service, he had spent a fair amount of time in the streets with fellow veterans trying to get the word out that a monster was on the loose, the American government, a government that had made him, made his war buddies nothing but savages, trying to work the anti-war veteran point of view which had some “cred” to all who would listen, half-listen anyway, he would never really be able to fully make himself a pacifist. Never make himself a solid almost biblical in the wilderness turning the other cheek man of peace for all seasons. Go the distance on some “Gandhi trip” as he called it talking to his old high school friend Bart Webber one night years later when they were mulling over the question of how far they were willing to go in the search for what the Quakers called the “peace witness.”  Not when in his head he knew there were causes, just causes that could not be resolved short of blood and iron if humankind was to roll the rock of progress up the hill a little, hell, to even get a little justice in this wicked old world. He favored not that “Gandhi trip” but an idea of some long-bearded robe sheet-clothed Jehovah all fire and brimstone come seeking vengeance against the night-takers until the world was gotten rid of night-takers. 

That is why Sam, despite his misgivings about the Vietnam War had never really opposed it personally via some application for conscientious objector status. Never saw himself as the friendly Quaker, Mennonite, Amish man of good cheer and no grudges. Never had been around such people when it counted as he was growing up although he had heard about their gentility and had seen it in action down in Pennsylvania Amish country. Even a serious attempt later after Vietnam had taken so much out of him, had depleted his abstract  hates, to become more Quakerly when he had had a Quaker girlfriend, Susan Rich, failed to his own hubris and sense that fixing even the small woes of the world required more fire that the “inner light.” (They would quarrel endlessly if civilly about such matters to no good end and they eventually kind of drifted apart once each realized that there was no longer enough glue holing them together.)

What Sam came to believe, or maybe believed all along and Vietnam and that lovely quiet Quaker girl just brought his notions to a head, was that his whole blessed life was stacked against such gentility. He asked himself, and asked Bart as well since they came from the same poor as church mice neighborhood although Bart had not faced the ultimate induction crisis since due to a severe childhood injury to his right leg he was declared by his friends and neighbors at the local draft board to be 4-F, unfit for military duty, where in his, their growing up ethos was their room for such thoughts having grown up in working class Carver. Carver a town where guys volunteered for military service in droves if for no other reason than to get out of the hick town, get away from being boggers, cranberry bog workers when Carver was something like the cranberry capital of the world or else accepted quietly and without rancor induction if drafted. He would have received no support, from family, friends, including Bart who held all the same support the government without question at the time and had only come around when their corner boy friend Jeff Mullins was killed in the Central Highlands and after Sam had come back to the “real” world to  give the real story of the murderous assault on human dignity he had taken part in, and neighbors. Neighbors who had, as he recalled to Bart, looked askance at him when in 1966 he had expressed some reservations about the carpet-bombing of Vietnam back to the Stone Age which was the effective policy of the military doctrine of the day. Sam frankly said to Bart that talking night that he would not have known even how to go about doing such a thing as filing an application for CO status. And if he had known under the conditions existing in 1966 to obtain CO status, although not a few years later when though court decisions and changes in draft board policy such applications were not denied out of hand except for historically recognized objectors, he would not have been granted that status since he had been raised a Catholic, a church organization which held to a just war theology rather than an absolute opposition to war like the Quakers and Mennonites, people who held such historic pacifist positions.

Although after Vietnam Sam went through a crisis on the question of war and peace in which he came to err on the “side of the angels” and he abandoned the Catholic Church and its version of the just war theory which seemed to more often, much more often than not, justify all of Caesar’s wars without fail, he still held to a secular version of that just war theory. When thinking about the matter of just wars then in the late 1960s and early 1970s the Spanish Civil War had come to mind since he had been something of a buff about that event as far back as freshman year in high school when he had written a term paper for a history class on the subject. In that desperate 1930s conflict which pre-figured World War III whose struggles enflamed his dreams he saw himself obviously fighting, arms in hand, whatever arms they had which at times were scanty, for the Republican side against the Nazi-backed Franco forces. He had dreamed as well that he would have, if he had been around then, signed up as a volunteer for the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades, the famous Abraham Lincolns who did heroic battle around the Jarama and in other tough spots when it counted.

Sam knew from his readings that those organizations were controlled by the Communists of that age but while in high school he was as fervent an anti-communist as anybody in town he would give them a pass for the duration of the war, would have joined the united front even if he was not sure that he would have supported the “revolution and war” ideas expressed by those to the left of the Communists and Socialists, mostly Trotskyists and anarchists of one stripe or another. He was still bitter, always would be, when the U.S. under the liberal oligarch Roosevelt called for hands-off, for neutrality in the conflict and the British and French sat on their hands while Spain died a thousand deaths. It would not be until later when he had to deal with the American progeny of Joe Stalin in the anti-Vietnam War movement that he would come to curse Uncle Joe’s withdrawal of the International Brigades while there was still some fight left in the Republican forces. No, Sam would not have sat on his hands on that one.      

Later, several years later in the late 1970s when the turmoil which had beset America had settled down and an ebb tide had taken over in the land postponing to the indefinite future the question of whether a 1960s-type “new breeze” was going to come again, a time when he was beginning to make a small name for himself in the legal profession around the South Shore of Boston he developed a strong interest in the American Civil War, a strong interest in the importance of the Union victory and the abolition of slavery. This interest had been kick-started one day as a result of his going into Boston on a legal matter at the Suffolk County Courthouse on Beacon Hill and passing what was then a much neglected frieze of the heroic Colonel Robert Gould Shaw-led Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteers in front of the State House who did themselves proud down before Fort Wagner and later in 1865 would march into the citadel of the Confederacy Charleston, South Carolina singing the John Brown song.     

Sam had in high school based on admittedly sketchy information rather grudgingly admired that Captain John Brown, late of Harper’s Ferry, and the exploits of his small multi-racial band of brothers in trying to break the back of slavery by a military expedition to free the slave and create an insurrection. Once Sam delved into Civil War history, read more in depth about Brown and what history would have looked like if he had had a modicum of success Sam saw Brown as the Calvinist “avenging angel” high Jehovah scourge of the night-takers of his day. In short, that same thought that he had long held in his mind concerning the righteous agents of just wars like his Lincolns in Spain. [Interesting to Sam then the cosmic link of Brown in the 19^th century and the Lincolns in the 20^th as the epitome of American just causes revolving around key Civil War names.] While Sam held such thoughts about Brown and men of action like Brown in ante-bellum times who were not afraid to rankle feathers he admitted to himself that he would, unlike with the Internationals, not have very likely joined such an expedition. 

As Sam studied the military situations, the military strategy and tactics that one must invariable do to catch any idea of why men, brothers and cousins in many cases, would get their blood lusts rising so savagely, he did find himself drawn to the General William Tecumseh Sherman-led march through Georgia to the seas. A relentless organized march to break the will, break the communications, break the supply routes, to deny the Confederacy the capacity to produce much of anything. So in his imagination he could see himself as one of “Billy’s bummers” marching sore-footed through Georgia, making Jeff Davis squeal, making Robert E. Lee reach for the white flag. Make old Captain Brown a man ahead of his times. Yeah, Sam would not have sat on his hands on that freedom fight either.

Still Sam could never quite get that imagine of himself as a Lincoln Battalion rank and filer out of his mind, could never quite forget Pete Seeger’s version of Viva La Quince Brigada  heard long ago when he had listened to a folk radio station out of Boston as after a girl, a folkie girl he called her, recommended that he listen to the station if he wanted to get anywhere with her (which he did, listen to, and did get somewhere with her) and of the plight of the veterans of the Lincoln Battalion when the American government pulled the red scare Cold War hammer down on them as “commies.” Bart, a few years ago knowing of his interest, had asked Sam to write something for his grandson, Sean, who as fate would have it also was interested in the Spanish Civil War and was, in his turn, doing a term paper on it for his history class and wanted Sam to give Sean some personal reflections to aid his own understanding of the conflict as he wrote his paper. Not do the paper, no way, but give a feel for the need for blood and iron, and for men and women to be willing to lay down their heads as “pre-mature anti-fascists” in that conflict. Here is what Sam had to say:

Sean,

Your grandfather and my friend of many, many years going back to high school down there in Carver where we grew up asked me to give you a little leg up, a little flavor of what I thought about the Spanish Civil War since he knew that I was interested in the subject and that you were too. At least enough to decide to use that magnificent struggle as a subject worthy of your first serious term paper (the first of many I hope). A few years ago when I was writing a little something about the 70^th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War I wrote a short review of a book by Leon Trotsky about the possibilities of revolution, of successful revolution in Spain in those days. The book entitled THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39 (LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973) while written from an extreme left-wing position while Trotsky was in exile from the Soviet Union whose revolution of 1917 he was a central participant looks at lots of issues that might interest you as you prepare your paper. I know I got a lot out of it although personally I am not as sure as Trotsky was that a successful revolution could have held its ground given the international situation where Spain would be isolated from the rest of West Europe when the Nazis and Fascists were pulling their respective hammers down and the rest of Europe looked away while Spain died a thousand deaths.



“I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has some continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice.



Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basis for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations.”

I hope this little review gives you a couple of ideas to speculate on although you have to be careful with history in the alternative and only suggest the trends that were most probable not every possible “what if.”

In thinking about the Trotsky review I also came back to some thoughts about the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades of workers and leftist militants who went from many countries to fight, and if necessary die to defend the Spanish Republic under assault from the Nazi-backed Franco forces which as a kid reading about their heroic if doomed exploits in Spain enflamed my imagination. I have added a short review I also did several years ago by Peter Carroll who probably knows more about the battalion than anybody else, anybody else now. The title of the book is THE ODYSSEY OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE: AMERICANS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, (Peter N. Carroll, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994). As happens when a person reviews several books on the same general subject especially in the age of easy cut and paste I have used the introductory paragraph in several Spanish Civil War items I have reviewed and have eliminated them here:   




“…Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917. That calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Mr. Carroll’s book while not directly addressing that issue nevertheless demonstrates through the story of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion how the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and through it the policy of the Communist International in calling for international brigades to fight in Spain aided in the defeat of that promising revolution.

“Mr. Carroll chronicles anecdotally how individual militants were recruited, transported, fought and died as ‘premature anti-fascists’ in that struggle. No militant today, or ever, can deny the heroic qualities of the volunteers and their commitment to defeat fascism- the number one issue for militants of that generation-despite the fatal policy of the the various party leaderships. Such individuals were desperately needed then, as now, if revolutionary struggle is to succeed. However, to truly honor their sacrifice we must learn the lessons of that defeat through mistaken strategy as we fight today. Interestingly, as chronicled here, and elsewhere in the memoirs of some veterans, many of the surviving militants of that struggle continued to believe that it was necessary to defeat Franco first, and then fight for socialism. This was most dramatically evoked by the Lincolns' negative response to the Barcelona uprising of 1937-the last time a flat out fight for leadership of the revolution could have galvanized the demoralized workers and peasants for a desperate struggle against Franco.

“Probably the most important part of Mr. Carroll’s book is tracing the trials and tribulations of the volunteers after their withdrawal from Spain in late 1938. Their organization-the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- was constantly harassed and monitored by the United States government for many years as a Communist 'front' group. Individuals also faced prosecution and discrimination for their past association with the Brigades. He also traces the aging and death of that cadre. In short, this book is a labor of love for the subjects of his treatment. Whatever else this writer certainly does not disagree with that purpose. If you want to read about what a heroic part of the vanguard of the international working class looked like in the 1930’s, look here. Viva la Quince Brigada!!”

*****Revelations -For Chelsea Manning And All The Military Resisters To America’s Endless Wars

*****Revelations -For Chelsea Manning And All The Military Resisters To America’s Endless Wars  

 

 

 

From The Sam Eaton-Ralph Morris Series

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Ralph Morris had always considered himself a straight-up guy. Straight up when he dealt with customers in his high-precision electrical shop in Troy, New York he had inherited from his father after he retired before he himself recently retired and turned it over to his youngest son, James, who would bring the operation into the 21^st century with the high tech equipment-driven  precision electrical work needs nowadays. Straight up when he confronted the trials and tribulations of parenthood and told the kids that due to his political obligations (of which more in a minute) he would be away and perhaps seem somewhat pre-occupied at times but he would answer any questions they had about anything as best he could. The kids in turn when characterizing their father to me, told me that he was hard-working, distant but had been straight up with them although those sentiments said in a wistful, wondering, wishing for more manner like there was something missing in the whole exchange and Ralph agreed when I mentioned that feeling to him that I was probably right but that he did the best he could.

Straight up after sowing his wild oats along with Sam Eaton, Pete Markin, Frankie Riley and a bunch of other guys from the working-class corners of the town they grew up in who dived into that 1960s counter-cultural moment and hit the roads, for a short time after the stress of eighteen months in the bush in Vietnam. Meaning sleeping with any young woman who would have him in those care-free days when they were all experimenting with new ways to deal with that fretting sexual issue and getting only slightly less confused that when they got all that god-awful and usually wrong information in the streets where most of them, for good or evil learned to separate their Ps and Qs. After which he promised his high school sweetheart, Lara Peters, who had waited for him to settle down to be her forever man. And straight up with what concerns us here his attitude toward his military service in the Army during the height of the Vietnam War where he did his time, did not cause waves while in the service but raised, and is still raising seven kinds of holy hell, once he became totally disillusioned with the war, with the military brass and with the American government (no “our government” in his vocabulary signifying that while he was still in love with his country he was not of its governance-his way of saying it is not mine) who did nothing but make thoughtless animals out of him and his buddies.            

Giving this “straight up” character business is important here because Ralph several years ago along with Sam Eaton, a non-Vietnam veteran having been exempted from military duty due to his  being the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after his ne’er-do-well father died of a massive heart attack in 1965, joined a peace organization, Veterans For Peace (VFP), in order to work with others doing the same kind of work (Ralph as a veteran automatically a full member, Sam an associate member in the way membership works in that organization although both have full right to participate and discuss the aims and projects going forward) once they decided to push hard against “the endless wars of the American government” (both Ralph and Sam’s way of putting the matter).

Without going into greater detail Sam and Ralph had met down in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 when they with their respective groups (Sam with a radical collective from Cambridge and Ralph with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a predecessor organization of VFP) attempted to as the slogan went-“shut down the government if it did not shut down the war.” Unfortunately they failed but the several days they spent together in detention in RFK Stadium then being used as the main detention area cemented a life-time friendship, and a life-time commitment to work for peace. (Sam’s impetus the loss of his best corner boy high school friend, Jeff Mullins, killed in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1968 who begged him to tell everybody what was really going on with war if he did not make it back to tell them himself.)       

That brings us to the Ralph straight up part. He and Sam had worked closely with or been member of for several years in the 1970s of VVAW and other organizations to promote peace. But as the decade ended and the energies of the 1960s faded and ebbed they like many others went on with their lives, build up their businesses, had their families to consider and generally prospered. Oh sure, when warm bodies were needed for this or that good old cause they were there but until the fall of 2002 their actions were helter-skelter and of an ad hoc nature. Patch work they called it. Of course the hell-broth of the senseless, futile and about six other negative descriptions of that 2003 Iraq war disaster, disaster not so much for the American government (Sam and Ralph’s now familiar term) as for the Iraqi people and others under the cross-fires of the American military juggernaut (my term).

They, having then fewer family and work responsibilities, got  the old time anti-war “religion” fires stoked in their brains once again to give one more big push against the machine before they passed on. They started working with VFP in various marches, vigils, civil disobedience actions and whatever other projects the organization was about (more recently the case of getting a presidential pardon and freedom for the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle –blower soldier Chelsea Manning sentenced to a thirty-five year sentence at Fort Leavenworth in 2013 for telling the truth about American atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan). Did that for a couple of years before they joined. And here is really where that straight up business comes into play. See they both had been around peace organizations enough to know that membership means certain obligation beyond paying dues and reading whatever materials an organization puts out-they did not want to be, had never been mere “paper members” So after that couple of years of working with VFP in about 2008 they joined up, joined up and have been active members ever since.       

Now that would be neither here nor there but Ralph had recently been thinking about stepping up his commitment even further by running for the Executive Committee of his local Mohawk Valley  chapter, the Kenny Johnson Chapter. (Sam as an associate member of his local chapter, the James Jencks Brigade is precluded as a non-veterans from holding such offices the only distinction between the two types of membership.) He ran and won a seat on the committee. But straight up again since he was committed to helping lead the organization locally and perhaps take another step up at some point he decided in 2015 to go to the National Convention in San Diego (the geographic location of that site a definitive draw for other reasons) and learn more about the overall workings of the organization and those most dedicated to its success.

So Ralph went and immersed himself in the details of what is going on with the national organization. More importantly he got to hear the details of how guys (and it is mostly guys reflecting the origins of the organization in 1985 a time when women were not encouraged to go into the service), mostly guys from his Vietnam War generation as the older World War II and Korea vets have begun to pass on and the Iraq and Afghan war vets who are still finding their “voice” came to join the organization. What amazed him was how many of the stories centered on various objections that his fellow members had developed while in whatever branch of the military they were in. Ralph had kept his “nose clean” despite his growing disenchantment with the war while serving his eighteen months in country. He had been by no means a gung-ho soldier although he had imbibed all the social and political attitudes of his working class background that he had been exposed to concerning doing military service, fighting evil commies and crushing anything that got in the way of the American government. He certainly was not a model soldier either but he went along, got along by getting along. These other guys didn’t.

One story stood out not because it was all that unusual in the organization but because Ralph had never run up against anything like it during his time of service from 1967-1970. Not in basic training, not in Advanced Infantry Training (AIT), not in Vietnam although he had heard stuff about disaffected soldiers toward the end of his enlistment. This guy, Frank Jefferson, he had met at one of the workshops on military resisters had told Ralph when he asked that he had served a year in an Army stockade for refusing to wear the uniform, refusing to do Army work of any kind. At least voluntarily.

The rough details of Frank’s story went like this. He had been drafted in late 1968 and was inducted into the Army in early 1969 having had no particular reason not to go in since while he was vaguely anti-war like most college students he was not a conscientious objector (and still doesn’t feel that way since he believes wars of national liberation and the like are just and supportable, especially those who are facing down the barrel of American imperialism), was not interested in going to jail like some guys, some draft resisters, from his generation who refused to be inducted and he did not even think about the option of Canada or some such exile. Moreover the ethos of his town, his family, his whole social circle was not one that would have welcomed resistance, would not have been understood as a sincere if different way of looking at the world. Add to that two guys had been killed in Vietnam from his neighborhood and the social pressure to conform was too great to buck even if he had had stronger convictions then. 

Three days, maybe less, after Frank was deposited at Fort Jackson in South Carolina in January, 1969 for basic training he knew he had made a great mistake, had had stronger anti-war feelings, maybe better anti-military feelings than he suspected and was heading for a fall. This was a period when draftees, those fewer and fewer men who were allowing themselves to be drafted, were being channeled toward the infantry, the “grunts,” the cannon-fodder (words he learned later but not known to him as he entered the Army) and that was his fate. He was trained as an 11 Bravo, killer soldier. Eventually he got orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transport to Vietnam. On a short leave before he was requested to report Frank went back to Cambridge where he grew up and checked in with the Quakers which somebody had told him to do if he was going to challenge his fate in any way. The sympathetic counsellor in the basement of the Quaker Meeting House off Brattle Street advised him to put in a CO application at Fort Devens nearby. He did so, was turned down because as a Catholic and general moral and ethical considerations objector he did not qualify under the doctrine of that church. (And he still held to his “just war” position mentioned above). He tried to appeal that decision through military then civilian channels with help from a lawyer provided by the Quakers (really their American Friends Service Committee) although that was dicey at best.

Then, despite some counsel against such actions Frank had an epiphany, a day of reckoning, a day when he decided that enough was enough and showed up at parade field for the Monday morning report in civilian clothes carrying a “Bring The Troops Home” sign. Pandemonium ensued, he was man-handled by two beefy lifer-sergeants and taken to the Provost Marshall’s office for identification since the MPs were not sure whether he was not some hopped-up radical from nearby Boston who were starting to hold anti-war rallies in front of the Main Gate to the base. Once identified as a soldier he was thrown in the stockade. Eventually Frank was tried and sentenced to six month under a special court-martial for disobeying orders. He served the whole term (minus some days for good conduct). When he got out after during that stretch he continued to refuse to wear the uniform or do work. So back to the stockade and another special court-martial trial  getting another six months, again for disobeying lawful orders.

Fortunately that civilian lawyer provided by the Quakers (and who had grudgingly since he did not agree with Frank’s way of making a statement while other legal remedies were available been his lawyer at both trials) had brought the CO denial case to the Federal Court in Boston on a writ of habeas corpus and the judge ruled that the Army had acted wrongly in denying the application. A few weeks later he was released with an honorable discharge as a CO, one of the first in that category in the military. Frank said with a twinkle in his eye that if that legal relief had not cut the process short he still might forty plus years later be doing yet another six month sentence. So that was his story and there were probably others like him whose stories went untold during that turbulent time when the Army was near mutiny in America and Vietnam (the jails as Long Binh, LBJ for short, were then always full with miscreant soldiers).

Ralph said to himself after hearing the Jefferson story, yeah, these are the brethren I can work with. Guys like Jefferson really won’t fold under pressure when the American government tries to pull the hammer down on political dissent. Yeah, that’s right Ralph.