*****Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind

*****Frank Jackman’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters of War In Mind

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Jack Callahan’s old friend from Sloan High School in Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts Zack James (Zack short for Zachary not as is the fashion today to just name a baby Zack and be done with it) is an amateur writer and has been at it since he got out of high school. Found out that maybe by osmosis, something like that, the stuff Miss Enos taught him junior and senior years about literature and her favorite writers Hemingway, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Parker to name a few, that she would entice the English class stuck with him with through college where although he majored in Political Science he was in thrall to the English literature courses that he snuck in to his schedule. Snuck in although Zack knew practically speaking he had a snowball’s chance in hell, an expression he had learned from Hemingway he thought,  of making a career out of the literary life as a profession, would more likely wind driving a cab through dangerous midnight sections of town  occasionally getting mugged for his night’s work. That Political Science major winding up producing about the same practical results as the literary life though. Stuck with him, savior stuck with him, through his tour of duty during the Vietnam War, and savior stayed with him through those tough years when he couldn’t quite get himself back to the “real” world after ‘Nam and let drugs and alcohol rule his life so that he wound up for some time as a “brother under the bridge” as Bruce Springsteen later put the situation in a song that he played continuously at times after he first heard it “Saigon, long gone…."  Stuck with him after he recovered and started building up his sports supplies business, stuck with him through three happy/sad/savage/acrimonious “no go” marriages and a parcel of kids and child support.  And was still sticking with him now that he had time to stretch out and write longer pieces, and beat away on the word processor a few million words on this and that.  

Amateur writer meaning nothing more than that he liked to write and that writing was not his profession, that he did not depend on the pen for his livelihood(or rather more correctly these days not the pen but the word processor). That livelihood business was taken up running a small sports apparel store in a mall not far from Lexington (the Lexington of American revolutionary battles to give the correct own and state) where he now lived. Although he was not a professional writer his interest was such that he liked these days with Jimmy Shore, the famous ex-runner running the day to day operations of the store, to perform some of his written work in public at various “open mic” writing (and poetry) jams that have sprouted up in his area.

This “open mic” business was a familiar concept to Jack from the days back in the 1960s when he would go to such events in the coffeehouses around Harvard Square and Beacon Hill to hear amateur folk-singers perfect their acts and try to be recognized as the new voice of their generation, or something like that. For “no singing voice, no musical ear” Jack those were basically cheap date nights if the girl he was with was into folk music. The way most of the "open mics" although they probably called them talent searches then, worked was each performer would sign up to do one, two, maybe three songs depending on how long the list of those wishing to perform happened to be (the places where each performer kicked in a couple of bucks in order to play usually had shorter lists). These singers usually performed in the period in front of the night’s feature who very well might have been somebody who a few weeks before had been noticed by the owner during a pervious "open mic" and asked to do a set of six to sixteen songs depending on the night and the length of the list of players in front of him or her. The featured performer played, unlike the "open mic" people, for the “basket” (maybe a hat) passed around the crowd in the audience and that was the night’s “pay.” A tough racket for those starting out like all such endeavors. The attrition rate was pretty high after the folk minute died down with arrival of other genre like folk rock, heavy rock, and acid rock although you still see a few old folkies around the Square or playing the separate “open mic” folk circuit that also ran through church coffeehouses just like these writing jams.

Jack was not surprised then when Zack told him he would like him to come to hear him perform one of his works at the monthly third Thursday “open mic” at the Congregational Church in Arlington the next town over from Lexington. Zack told Jack that that night he was going to perform something he had written and thought on about Frank Jackman, about what had happened to Frank when he was in the Army during Vietnam War times.

Jack knew almost automatically what Zack was going to do, he would somehow use Bob Dylan’s Masters of War lyrics as part of his presentation. Jack and Zack ( a Vietnam veteran who got “religion” on the anti-war issue while he in the Army and became a fervent anti-war guy after that experience despite his personal problems) had met Frank in 1971 when they were doing some anti-war work among the soldiers at Fort Devens out in Ayer about forty miles west of Boston. Frank had gotten out of the Army several months before and since he was from Nashua in the southern part of New Hampshire not far from Devens and had heard about the G.I. coffeehouse, The Morning Report, where Jack and Zack were working as volunteers he had decided to volunteer to help out as well.

Now Frank was a quiet guy, quieter than Jack and Zack anyway, but one night he had told his Army story to a small group of volunteers gathered in the main room of the coffeehouse as they were planning to distribute Daniel Ellsberg’s sensational whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various spots around the base (including as it turned out inside the fort itself with one copy landing on the commanding general’s desk for good measure). He wanted to tell this story since he wanted to explain why he would not be able to go with them if they went inside the gates at Fort Devens.

Jack knew Zack was going to tell Frank’s story so he told Frank he would be there since he had not heard the song or Frank’s story in a long while and had forgotten parts of it. Moreover Zack wanted Jack there for moral support since this night other than the recitation of the lyrics he was going to speak off the cuff rather than his usual reading from some prepared paper.  

That night Zack was already in the hall talking to the organizer, Eli Walsh, you may have heard of him since he has written some searing poems about his time in three tours Iraq. Jack felt right at home in this basement section of the church and he probably could have walked around blind-folded since the writing jams were on almost exactly the same model as the old folkie “open mics.” A table as you entered to pay your admission this night three dollars (although the tradition is that no one is turned away for lack of funds) with a kindly woman asking if you intended to perform and direct you to the sign-up sheet if so. Another smaller table with various cookies, snacks, soda, water and glasses for those who wished to have such goodies, and who were asked to leave a donation in the jar on that table if possible. The set-up in the hall this night included a small stage where the performers would present their material slightly above the audience. On the stage a lectern for those who wished to use that for physical support or to read their work from and the ubiquitous simple battery-powered sound system complete with microphone. For the audience a bevy of chairs, mostly mismatched, mostly having seen plenty of use, and mostly uncomfortable. After paying his admission fee he went over to Zack to let him know he was in the audience. Zack told him he was number seven on the list so not to wander too far once the session had begun.

This is the way Zack told the story and why Jack knew there would be some reference to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War that night:

Hi everybody my name is Zack James and I am glad that you all came out this cold night to hear Preston Borden present his moving war poetry and the rest of us to reflect on the main subject of this month’s writing jam-the endless wars that the American government under whatever regime of late has dragged us into, us kicking and screaming to little avail.  I want to thank Eli as always for setting this event up every month and for his own thoughtful war poetry. [Some polite applause.] But enough for thanks and all that because tonight I want to recite a poem, well, not really a poem, but lyrics to a song, to a Bob Dylan song, Masters of War, so it might very well be considered a poem in some sense.   

You know sometimes, a lot of times, a song, lyrics, a poem for that matter bring back certain associations. You know some song you heard on the radio when you went on your first date, your first dance, your first kiss, stuff like that which is forever etched in your memory and evokes that moment every time you hear it thereafter. Now how this Dylan song came back to me recently is a story in itself.

You remember Eli back in October when we went up to Maine to help the Maine Veterans for Peace on their yearly peace walk that I ran into Susan Rich, the Quaker gal we met up in Freeport who walked with us that day to Portland. [Eli shouted out “yes.”] I had not seen Susan in about forty years before that day, hadn’t seen her since the times we had worked together building up support for anti-war G.I.s out at the Morning Report coffeehouse in Ayer outside Fort Devens up on Route 2 about thirty miles from here. That’s when we met Frank Jackman who is the real subject of my presentation tonight since he is the one who I think about when I think about that song, think about his story and how that song relates to it.   

Funny as many Dylan songs as I knew Masters of War, written by Dylan in 1963 I had never heard until 1971. Never heard the lyrics until I met Frank out at Fort Devens where after I was discharged from the Army that year I went to do some volunteer anti-war G.I. work at the coffeehouse outside the base in Army town Ayer. Frank too was a volunteer, had heard about the place somehow I forget how, who had grown up in Nashua up in southern New Hampshire and after he was discharged from the Army down at Fort Dix in New Jersey came to volunteer just like me and my old friend Jack Callahan who is sitting in the audience tonight. Now Frank was a quiet guy didn’t talk much about his military service but he made the anti-war soldiers who hung out there at night and on weekends feel at ease. One night thought he felt some urge to tell his story, tell why he thought it was unwise for him to participate in an anti-war action we were planning around the base. We were going to pass out copies of Daniel Ellsberg’s explosive whistle-blower expose The Pentagon Papers to soldiers at various location around the fort and as it turned out on the base. The reason that Frank had balked at the prospect of going into the fort was that as part of his discharge paperwork was attached a statement that he was never to go on a military installation again. We all were startled by that remark, right Jack? [Jack nods agreement.]

And that night the heroic, our kind of heroic, Frank Jackman told us about the hows and whys of his Army experience. Frank had been drafted like a ton of guys back then, like me, and had allowed himself to be drafted in 1968 at the age of nineteen not being vociferously anti-war and not being aware then of the option of not taking the subsequent induction. After about three week down at Fort Dix, the main basic training facility for trainees coming from the Northeast then, he knew two things-he had made a serious mistake by allowing himself to be drafted and come hell or high water he was not going to fight against people he had no quarrel with in Vietnam. Of course the rigors of basic training and being away from home, away from anybody who could help him do he knew not what then kept him quiet and just waiting. Once basic was over and he got his Advanced Infantry Training assignment also at Fort Dix which was to be an infantryman at a time when old Uncle Sam only wanted infantrymen in the rice paddles and jungles of Vietnam things came to a head.

After a few weeks in AIT he got a three day weekend pass which allowed him to go legally off the base and he used that time to come up to Boston, or really Cambridge because what he was looking for was help to file an conscientious objector application and he knew the Quakers were historically the ones who would know about going about that process. That is ironically where Susan Rich comes in again, although indirectly this time, since Frank went to the Meeting House on Brattle Street where they were doing draft and G.I. resistance counseling and Susan was a member of that Meeting although she had never met him at that time. He was advised by one of the Quaker counselors that he could submit a C.O. application in the military, which he had previously not been sure was possible since nobody told anybody anything about that in the military, when he got back to Fort Dix but just then, although they were better later, the odds were stacked against him since he had already accepted induction. So he went back, put in his application, took a lot of crap from the lifers and officers in his company after that and little support, mainly indifference, from his fellow trainees. He still had to go through the training, the infantry training though and although he had taken M-16 rifle training in basic he almost balked at continuing to fire weapons especially when it came to machine guns. He didn’t balk but in the end that was not a big deal since fairly shortly after that his C.O. application was rejected although almost all those who interviewed him in the process though he was “sincere” in his beliefs. That point becomes important later.

Frank, although he knew his chances of being discharged as a C.O. were slim since he had based his application on his Catholic upbringing and more general moral and ethical grounds. The Catholic Church which unlike Quakers and Mennonites and the like who were absolutely against war held to a just war theory, Vietnam being mainly a just war in the Catholic hierarchy’s opinion. But Frank was sincere, more importantly, he was determined to not got to war despite his hawkish family and his hometown friends’, some who had already served, served in Vietnam too, scorn and lack of support. So he went back up to Cambridge on another three day pass to get some advice, which he actually didn’t take in the end or rather only partially took up  which had been to get a lawyer they would recommend and fight the C.O. denial in Federal court even though that was also still a long shot then.  

Frank checked with the lawyer alright, Steve Brady, who had been radicalized by the war and was offering his services on a sliding scale basis to G.I.s since he also had the added virtue of having been in the JAG in the military and so knew some of the ropes of the military legal system, and legal action was taken but Frank was one of those old time avenging Jehovah types like John Brown or one of those guys and despite being a Catholic rather than a high holy Protestant which is the usual denomination for avenging angels decided to actively resist the military. And did it in fairly simple way when you think about it. One Monday morning when the whole of AIT was on the parade field for their weekly morning report ceremony Frank came out of his barracks with his civilian clothes on and carrying a handmade sign which read “Bring the Troops Home Now!”

That sign was simply but his life got a lot more complicated after that. In the immediate sense that meant he was pulled down on the ground by two lifer sergeants and brought to the Provost Marshal’s office since they were not sure that some dippy-hippie from near-by New York City might be pulling a stunt. When they found out that he was a soldier they threw him into solitary in the stockade.

For his offenses Frank was given a special court-martial which meant he faced six month maximum sentence which a panel of officers at his court-martial ultimately sentenced him to after a seven day trial which Steve Brady did his best to try to make into an anti-war platform but given the limitation of courts for such actions was only partially successful. After that six months was up minus some good time Frank was assigned to a special dead-beat unit waiting further action either by the military or in the federal district court in New Jersey. Still in high Jehovah form the next Monday morning after he was released he went out to that same parade field in civilian clothes carrying another homemade sign “Bring The Troops Home Now!” and he was again manhandled by another pair of lifer sergeants and this time thrown directly into solitary in the stockade since they knew who they were dealing with by then. And again he was given a special court-martial and duly sentenced by another panel of military officers to the six months maximum.

Frank admitted at that point he was in a little despair at the notion that he might have to keep doing the same action over and over again for eternity. Well he wound up serving almost all of that second sex month sentence but then he got a break. That is where listening to the Quakers a little to get legal advice did help. See what Steve Brady, like I said an ex-World War II Army JAG officer turned anti-war activist lawyer, did was take the rejection of his C.O. application to Federal District Court in New Jersey on a writ of habeas corpus arguing that since all Army interviewers agreed Frank was “sincere” that it had been arbitrary and capricious of the Army to turn down his application. And given that the United States Supreme Court and some lower court decisions had by then had expanded who could be considered a C.O. beyond the historically recognized groupings and creeds the cranky judge in the lower court case agreed and granted that writ of habeas corpus. Frank was let out with an honorable discharge, ironically therefore entitled to all veteran’s benefits but with the stipulation that he never go onto a military base again under penalty of arrest and trial. Whether that could be enforced as a matter of course he said he did not want to test since he was hardily sick of military bases in any case.                                       

So where does Bob Dylan’s Masters of War come into the picture. Well as you know, or should know every prisoner, every convicted prisoner, has the right to make a statement in his or her defense during the trial or at the sentencing phase. Frank at both his court-martials rose up and recited Bob Dylan’s Masters of War for the record. So for all eternity, or a while anyway, in some secret recess of the Army archives (and of the federal courts too) there is that defiant statement of a real hero of the Vietnam War. Nice right?      

Here is what had those bloated military officers on Frank’s court-martial board seeing red and ready to swing him from the highest gallow, yeah, swing him high.

Masters Of War-Bob Dylan 

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Four- A Home Of One's Own

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Four- A Home Of One's Own

Lettie Morse had been sitting on the rim of the world.  Lettie , all of eighteen, and sweet child- mother of three young children (ages, if you can believe this, and you will once the facts become known, two girls four and three and a boy, one) was just that moment sheltered against the rawness of life, if just for that moment, over at that Sally ‘s Harbor Lights safe house (Salvation Army for those not in need of their facilities and only familiar with their operations at supermarkets and the like ringing bells and seeking dollars at Christmas) in the deep South End section of  Boston over by Blackstone Park.  And like all such citizens caught up on the rim of the world Lettie had a story, and a dream too. Not a long story, not at eighteen, and not when one is on the rim of the world when just getting by from one day to the next, hell, just one step in front of you to the next, took up your hours, and not the stuff of story, or parable either.                 

See Lettie, sweet child-mother Lettie, considered herself, and was considered by friend and family alike to be, how to put it kindly, an ugly duckling (although motherhood became her as she held forth black Madonna-like in facing that one step after the next day), the runt of the litter of seven children when Vernon and Eleanor Morse (yes, named after the former First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt, for her kindnesses toward  the Negro people) when they had come up from Clarksville down in the Mississippi delta after hearing that Boston was the “land of milk and honey” and had landed smack dab in the recently constructed Columbia Point Housing Project over by the waters of Dorchester Bay. As so whether that was a wise or foolish decision (probably wise given hellhole Mister James Crow Mississippi goddam) the “projects” was where Lettie came of age, came of age fast, too fast.     

She would not speak of her troubles adjusting, adjusting as best she could, to northern urban life, bunched up in a shared small corner room with two other pretty sisters slightly older, of the slow heavy as molasses drawl she inherited from her maternal grandmother and which drew howls of laughter at the junior high school that serviced the projects, or of the cruel ugly duckling taunts from boys (and a wayward girl or two). Like a lot of not pretty girls (and maybe pretty girls too but that is best left for another story, today we are on the rim of the world with black Madonna Lettie) she substituted being sexually available to the boys for anything else she might have felt. And they, as boys will, when the midnight whistle blows and they hear of some “easy piece” had their way with her, and then left her, left her that first time, well not exactly empty- handed, but with child, one of them anyway, and hence Christine .

Things went along okay for a while in that “projects”  Morse home, she making room for her baby in her shared room, but Lettie, got a little restless as young girls will, and a boy, a not from the projects boy, took an interest in her. What she did not know was that he was selling reefer like crazy to the kids over near Uphams Corner (a school nearby the central point of sales) and eventually got busted, busted flat and sent away to reform school for a while. However, not leaving her empty-handed and thus Shana. That episode broke the camel’s back in the Morse household as fragile as it was. Lettie was unceremoniously told to pack her bags and she did. And so with two small children, no money, no home and no prospects she hit the streets, the mean streets. Lettie said to tell you no matter how bad things get, no matter how rough you think life is stay away from Mister’s streets, from his trick streets, from his walking daddy hustler’s streets, from his pimp daddy streets. She learned that lesson the hard way although she was not left empty-handed and hence Robert, father unknown, maybe unknowable.

So things kind of went downhill from there for a while, as Lettie tried to keep her little family together, tried to get off the streets, tried to get off the rim of the world, and so she landed at the Sally’s  safe house. She would stay there as long as it took for that promised apartment in the Orchard Park Housing Authority to come through. And that thought, the thought of  getting off the rim of the world, that thought of fixing up a home, a home to keep her children safe, a home of her own kept her focused… 

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]

 

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

 

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

 

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

 

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

 

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

 

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

 

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

 

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

 

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

 

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

 

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

 

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

 

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Philip Marlowe-Redux- With Raymond Chandler and Robert Parker’s Poodle Springs in Mind.

Philip Marlowe-Redux- With Raymond Chandler and Robert Parker’s Poodle Springs in Mind.

Book Review

By Lester Lannon

Poodle Springs, based on an unfinished story by Raymond Chandler finished up by Robert Parker, Putnam and Sons, New York, 1989

A while back, maybe a couple of years ago now, back in 2013, 2014 somewhere around there Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris at one of their increasingly frequent get-togethers courtesy of their then recent respective retirement statuses got together to “chew the fat” about the old days, the old days when they first met back in 1971 under unusual circumstances and had found then that they had many interests in common. The common interests in a moment but it is worthwhile since I lured the reader in by that “unusual circumstances” of their initial meeting to once again explain how both guys who came from different geographically areas but more importantly different social and political perspectives bonded  for a lifetime as a result.   

To make a long story short they met in jail, well, maybe jail is too strong a term but in detention, while being detained. That 1971 date is important to explain why two basically law-abiding young men (and subsequently too courting arrest only by choice) with very different perspectives found themselves in Washington, D.C. on May Day of that year with their respective groups trying to shut down the American government. Of course that was Vietnam War times and a goodly number of people who were at wits end about stopping that war and had come, rightly, under the sway of those who said forever larger marches on Washington was not going to end the war and therefore more direct action was necessary. Ralph, an embittered Vietnam veteran from Troy, New York had gone with a group of fellow members of the Albany area Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) with the idea of blocking the Pentagon (somewhat along the lines of the “levitation” explained in Norman Mailer’s Armies Of The Night about an anti-war action at that site in 1967 although practically speaking not one Vet expected them to be able to actually shut down the site, not without serious bloodshed). Sam, not a veteran due to a hardship exemption after his father died leaving his mother and four younger sisters dependent on him, had become radicalized if that was the right word after his best friend from high school in Carver down in Southeastern Massachusetts, Jeff Mullins, had been killed in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Jeff had before he died in letters home begged Sam to tell the world, the world that would listen anyway, the war was all wrong if he did not make it back to do so himself. That spurred Sam on and he eventually drifted up to Cambridge and joined one of the burgeoning radical direct action collectives there, the John Brown Collective. Their collective’s task in Washington was to try to shut down the White House which unlike the more realistic veterans they fully expected to do with enough forces. In the event neither man nor their respective groups even got close to achieving what they had set out to do that early May Day Monday morning. All they, and thousands of others, got for their efforts were batterings with police sticks, tear gas, and trips to the bastinado by a counter-force of police and military who were more than ready to insure that the government was not shut down by a bunch of “crazies.”        

That bastinado bit turned out to be a football stadium, ironically the Robert F. Kennedy Stadium the home of the professional Washington Redskins. Many of the thousands were thrown in there once the jails had been filled. Ralph had run into Sam on the floor of the field when he had noticed that Sam had a VVAW button on his shirt and asked if he was a veteran and from where. Sam told Ralph his story about Jeff and from there it turned out although they had come to that place under different reasonings over the few days being held there they found out they shared some things including class background in common.   

The “things in common” they had initially discussed on that football field and which they would do in that subsequent meeting in 2014 at Jack’s Grille in Cambridge where they would go for a few drinks and while away a few hours was an intense interest in the American Civil War which was at the time of the Jack’s Grille meeting in its 150^th anniversary years of commemoration. That conversation had begun because Sam had just recently re-read Bruce Catton’s Terrible Swift Sword about the decisive middle years of that war turning it from a half-hearted fight to preserve the union into a revolutionary struggle to overthrown the institution of slavery forever. After a few drinks and some heated talk about General McClellan’s merits as commander of the key Army of the Potomac and Lincoln’s determined efforts to abolish slavery when he felt that was the only way to preserve the union as it was they turned to a very different subject of noir detectives, of their love for the old time detective stories (and film adaptations) by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.    

The initial conversation down in Washington about the film detectives had been spurred by Sam telling Ralph about Dashiell Hammett’s harassment by the government for being a strong vocal sympathizer of the American Communist Party and its various groups. Had spent time in jail for contempt. Ralph, still in the throes of a the vacuous anti-communist red scare Cold war night dreams of his youth, refused to believe that at first since Hammett’s detectives seemed so apolitical and macho (although he probably did not use that word which was just beginning to creep into the language with the rise of the women’s liberation movement). That discussion had gotten them into a whole range of topics around the qualities they liked in the old time detectives and over the subsequent years they would renew their conversations whenever one or the other read, or rather re-read, one of the classics (or saw one of the film adaptations Sam had seen The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor about ten times and could quote some of the dialogue by heart).         

The conversation that night in 2014 had been brought on after Ralph told Sam that he had been at the Troy Public Library in order to try and find a copy of Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely after having just seen through the beauty of Netflix the film adaptation with Dick Powell as the famous Chandler detective Philip Marlowe (presented under the movie title Murder, My Sweet) which differed in some respects from what he remembered from reading the book as a kid. He couldn’t find that book (it was out in circulation) but came across another Chandler book that he had never heard of, Poodle Springs. The reason that he had never heard of it was that it had never been finished by Chandler before he died in La Jolla in 1959. What had happened was the then currently famous (1989) detective story writer (the Spenser series among others), Robert Parker had taken it upon himself as an act of respect to finish the story. To give his take on what old Philip Marlowe would morph into in the 1960s (or later) if Chandler had finished the novel.           

Sam was a bit intrigued by what Ralph had stumbled upon and since he (they) knew that Parker’s detectives tended to be ultra-cool and less hard-boiled than Marlowe he asked Ralph to give him the skinny on the story-line and how Parker treated the iconic Marlowe. First off Ralph surprised Sam with the fact that old hard-bitten loner Marlowe had gotten married to some hot sexy rich as Midas dish although the circumstances of their meeting and marriage had not been revealed. Sam, having been married three times and divorced as many, smirked and remarked that one of the things that had attracted him to Marlowe in his periodic re-readings was that while he liked the ladies (and the ladies liked him as they did in Poodle Springs as well) he could take them or leave, could go to bed with them one night and turn them in to the coppers the next morning. No good could come of marriage to tie him down in the rough-hewned search for a little rough justice in the world. Ralph, having been married three times and divorced twice, laughed and said he had that exact same feeling. A Marlowe for the modern age they both thought like Eliot Gould was in the film adaptation of The Long Good-bye all ultra-cool and kind of detached from the windmill-seeking world.       

Ralph continued. Naturally being married to a rich as Midas (or her father was anyway) hot sexy young woman who plunked them out into exclusive, very exclusive, Poodle Springs there was nothing but tension between Philip and the Mrs. (Linda) since he had to make his own nut in the world and that meant for an old-time detective with plenty of scars, knocks on the head, and a few night in the pokey to set up shop out among the heathen rich and see what played out. That tension between them would never get resolved, or only got resolved by them separating but continuing to have rolls in the hay together (you know friend’s with privileges in today speak) but it took up far too much of the couple of hundred pages with her carping and him saying he had be his own man and not some poodle, or some kind of dog to be walked around with among the high and mighty. Ralph said he longed for the old days when Marlowe would have tossed a Velma or a Sternwood daughter to the wolves for trying to rein him in like that. 

Of course in order to have a detective story Marlowe needed a client and presto up came Lippy, Lippy the front-man casino owner, even before he had set up an office. Lippy needed Marlowe to find a guy who owned him a ton of dough on a gambling debt, or else. Marlowe hopped right to it, found the guy no problem. Well, not no problem because the guy Les/Larry was a risk addict married to two woman, a bigamist, one for love the other for her dough or rather her father’s dough. Not only that his profession, or had been profession, backdoor sleaze pornographic photographer was creeping up on him. See he was being blackmailed by some frail who had the goods on his kinky rich second wife. And that frail wound up very dead in Les/Larry’s office. Guess who found her very dead. Yeah, Marlowe. Guess who also wound up dead, Lippy. Guess who found him. Yeah, Marlowe. So you know he will take some heat from the coppers who still don’t’ like gumshoes messing in their nice set-up murder cases. Of course Marlowe was silent about who might have killed the pair since he figured Les/Larry was not build for such heavy duty. It turned out that that kinky wife whose father had some kind of incestuous hold over her had done the deed since she loved her Les/Larry no matter what kind of heel his was. In the end though she went over the edge killing her father and tried to do so to anybody else who might get in the way. Too late for her father his bodyguard wasted her. And Les/Larry?  Marlowe a romantic at heart like in the old days, the old knight errant let him and that first wife walk off into the sunset.       

Of course along the way old Marlowe got knocked up on the head, got some jail time, smoked a million cigarettes, drank good and booze and stuck to his guns. So not a bad job by Parker to fill Chandler’s big shoes. But at the end of the evening, having maybe about three drinks too many, both Ralph and Sam were shaking their heads about why in the end Marlowe let that nagging wife no matter how sexy and bed-mate worthy back into his bedroom. Damn.  

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam"-In Honor Of Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird"

Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Nina Simone performing her "Mississippi Goddam. Thanks, Nina.

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

Markin comment:

On a day when I am honoring Harper Lee's Alabama-based classic, "To Kill A Mockingbird", Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" easily comes to mind.

Markin comment:
50 years later and even the mere mention of Mississippi puts me directly in mind of Nina Simone's no-nonsense song about the struggle down South in the early part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Thanks, Nina.

Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we

Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it for now! see ya' later

From The Archives- Alabama, Goddam- The Late Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird"- A 50th Anniversary Encore-

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of a section of the movie based on Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill A Mockingbird", as background for this entry. May this literary gem be read and watched for another fifty years.

DVD REVIEW

To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck, black and white, 1962

This film is an excellent black and white adaptation of Harper Lee’s book of the same name. The acting, particularly by Gregory Peck (and a cameo by a young Robert Duval), brings out all the pathos, bathos and grit of small town Southern life in the 1930’s. The story itself is an unusual combination, narrated by Peck’s film daughter Scout (and presumably Lee herself), of a coming of age story that we are fairly familiar with and the question of race and sex in the Deep South (and not only there) with which we were (at the time of the film’s debut in 1962) only vaguely familiar. That dramatic tension, muted as it was by the cinematic and social conventions of the time, nevertheless made a strong statement about the underlying tensions of this society at a time when the Southern black civil rights struggle movement was coming into focus in the national consciousness.

The name Atticus Finch (Peck’s role) as the liberal (for that southern locale) lawyer committed to the rule of law had a certain currency in the 1960’s as a symbol for those southern whites who saw that Jim Crow had to go. Here Finch is the appointed lawyer for a black man accused of raping a white women of low origin- the classic ‘white trash’ depicted in many a film and novel. Finch earnestly, no, passionately, in his understated manner, attempts to defend this man, a brave act in itself under the circumstances.

Needless to say an all white jury of that black man’s ‘peers’ nevertheless convicts him out of hand. In the end the black man tries to escape and is killed in the process. In an earlier scenario Finch is pressed into guard duty at the jailhouse in order to head off a posse of ‘white trash’ elements who are bend on doing ‘justice’ their way- hanging him from a lynching tree. On a mere false accusation of a white woman this black man is doomed whichever way he turns. Sound familiar?

The other part of the story concerns the reactions by Finch’s motherless son and tomboyish daughter to the realities of social life, Southern style. That part is in some ways, particularly when the children watch the trial from the “Negro” balcony section of the courtroom, the least successful of the film. What is entirely believable and gives some relief from the travesty that is unfolding are the pranks, pitfalls and antics of the kids. The tensions between brother and sister, the protective role of the older brother, the attempt by the sister to assert her own identity, the sense of adventure and mystery of what lies beyond the immediate household that is the hallmark of youth all get a work out here. But in the end it is the quiet dignity of solid old Atticus and the bewildered dignity of a doomed black man that hold this whole thing together. Bravo Peck. Kudos to Harper Lee.

In Defense Of The Monkeys-Cary Grant And Ginger Rogers’ Monkey Business

In Defense Of The Monkeys-Cary Grant And Ginger Rogers’ Monkey Business

DVD Review

By Lester Lannon

Monkey Business, starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, directed by Howard Hawks, 1952   

Let’s face it not every actor, not every director draws to the high hand when acting in or directing movies. Why they take on acting or directing chores in vehicles that don’t showcase their talents has always been a mystery to me. Maybe it was strictly for the money (which I hope against hope was the reason here), as a favor for some past service, thinking that the script they read was not that bad until they saw what happened in production or maybe out of boredom but whatever it was did a disservice to the big talents in this production. That was my distinct impression after sitting through this stinker (I rarely give a one star), Monkey Business, about the wasted talents of legendary Cary Grant (think of any movie from Arsenic and Old Lace to To Catch A Thief and beyond), Ginger Rogers (all those great dance movies with Fred Astaire) and director Howard Hawks (including an early animal film Bringing Up Baby which was a least clever and filled with nice repartee between Grant and Katherine Hepburn). On top of that after viewing the antics that the former two were forced to prance through I felt an overwhelming need to come to the defense of monkeys, monkeys in general and the monkeys in the film who after all no matter how intelligence, no matter how close they are to humankind’s ancestry didn’t know any better.    

Here is why I have my dander up. Doc Barnaby, the role assigned to Cary Grant, was a chemist for a commercial chemical company (nice alliteration, right) who was working his butt off trying to find the fountain of youth, or rather the modern day short-cut a pill that will make one young again, or feel better as one ages anyway. Of course in order to see if the drug concoctions he was working on worked he needed clinical tests and so a couple of poor not so stupid monkeys who were forced into the service of humankind to test the stuff out. But Doc was one of those fly-by-the-seat-of his-pants guys and decided to try a particular concoction on himself. But here is where monkeys will be monkeys. One monkey, one very active monkey, got out of the cage and fooled around in the lab making a concoction which wound up in the water cooler. Doc drank the concoction he made up then grabbed a drink of tainted water from the cooler.           

Bang! Doc started acting like a guy of twenty including trying some hanky-panky with the boss’s secretary (a small part for Marilyn Monroe here before she became big, very big) and other twenty something antics. Naturally the boss was head over heels for the success of this new elixir for youth once he saw what it had done to Doc and was counting the money as he spoke. Problem was when they found out the whole experiment was monkey business they needed to figure out what chemicals went to the formula. So back to the grindstone.  

 Then came the monkey wrench (ouch). While working on a batch of the new concoction Barnaby’s wife, Edwina, played by legendary dancer Ginger Rogers, gulped down some of the drug (with a tainted water chaser).  She reverted to childhood, her second. Barnaby joined her and they thereafter acted like, well, ten-year olds. And it went downhill from there once the boss and Barnaby’s fellow researchers got at the cooler. Needless to say when the magic wore off and the water cooler empty, the fountain of youth going the way of Ponce Deleon, the whole thing was put on the back burner. Which I believe would have been a good place for this film.