Remembrances Of Things Past-With Vietnam Veteran Phil Larkin In Mind

Remembrances Of Things Past-With Vietnam Veteran Phil Larkin In Mind  

By Bart Webber

Frank Jackman had been put the finishing touches on a short piece that he was going to present during the Veterans for Peace annual Memorial Day for Peace program down at Boston Harbor near the major hotels that dot the walkways there when a vision of his old elementary school friend Billy Bradley came into his head. The piece Frank had been working on centered on the terrible pressure by his family, especially by an old grandmother whom he loved, that had been put on a Vietnam War veteran, Phil Larkin, to forget his doubts about fighting in Vietnam and go and maintain the family honor. Frank, a Vietnam-era veteran who did not see service in Vietnam despite being like Phil an 11 Bravo, an infantryman, a grunt, cannon fodder once he got wise to what the American government had expected him to do, had chosen Phil’s story to present after all these years because Phil had been from Carver, down in cranberry country in Southeastern Massachusetts not far from his own hometown of North Adamsville. He had me Phil out in Southern California in the mid-1970s when he for non-service related reasons had found himself running into what would later be called “brothers under the bridge,” mostly veterans who had served in Vietnam and who for one reason or another could not, or would not adjust to the “real world”, once they returned from their tours of duty. Phil had told Frank his story one night along a railroad “jungle” camp outside of Westminster while they were sharing a bottle of cheapjack wine. Yeah it was that kind of time.

Rekindling that Phil story somehow set Frank to thinking about how a lot of working class kids like Phil, like Billy, hell like him, if he thought about it always drew the short end of the stick. Always got kicked around when they tried to reach for the brass ring. That was Billy, William James Bradley, to a tee. Frank was thinking about the time that Billy thought he had a shot at being the “next big thing” after Elvis lighted up the night in the mid-1950s and made all the woman sweat, made every guy from six to sixty start moving his hips in just that provocative way, start spending hours in front of the mirror perfecting that sneer that all the girls were sitting up in their rooms just waiting to take off Elvis’ face in the hopes of being the consolation prize.

Of course the most dramatic kick in the teeth for Billy, really the last straw before he decided that if the world was not on the up and up then then he wouldn’t be either and began what would be a short not so sweet life of crime and jail sentences, was when he lost a dance contest held in the gym at the high school, at North Adamsville High,  one winter night where the winning couples, one from the group of twelves and under, the other thirteen to eighteen, were to get an all-expenses paid trip to Albany to compete in the Northeast regionals. Frank had been there that night in order to cheer his best friend on (or the guy whom he thought was his best friend they never did quite figure that out but if pressed both would call the other that designation at least through sixth grade).

The way the dance contest worked in those days was that the sponsors, a big radio station in Boston, WMEX probably, would put all the names of the contestants into a drum from each division, two drums, one for guys, one for girls (no same-sex or transgender stuff in those days, not for public consumption event though one of Frank’s cousins shunned by the family was well-known in Boston as a “transvestite” as cross-dressers were called then). So it was totally arbitrary who your partner would be. Thus Billy had worked like seven banshees to make sure he knew all the dance steps from fox trot to stroll and back so if he got some dippy girl who had two left feet he would not be stuck, would wow the six judges even if he wound up with a klutz.

Now in the world of competitive dancing, 1950s rock and roll competitive dancing, not some old-timey ballroom dancing, modern dance or ballet stuff you could be pretty wild by comparison to those more tutored forms but there were limits. Limits set by sponsors, radio sponsors and advertisers of stuff geared to kids, who were already under heavy pressure from the authorities, read, parents, churchmen, school administrators, and politicians to reign things in a year like 1958, the year of Billy’s demise. To rein in the “devil’s music” which is what Frank’s mother called it and would not allow it to be played on the family radio. (Frank, Billy too, hell a whole generation got around that problem with the ingenious invention of the transistor radio to keep prying parents at bay.) Billy didn’t get the message though, didn’t want to, listened to his own drummer, praise be, maybe heard something that none of the rest of the kids could hear. That is what Frank thought afterward.

So you already know what happened, or can guess. See Billy drew this young bud, this flaming red-headed girl, this Ida McCarthy who every guy had wet dreams about. He had been her partner in a couple of preliminary dance-offs on the way up to this big night. Billy saw Albany tickets or something, something about Ida that set his twelve year old heart in flames. Of course Ida knew who and what Billy was about but she had her own set of dreams and the look she gave Billy when it was announced that they would be a pair night would have killed a smarter guy, a guy not so hung up in his own stardust.

Still they did pretty well, Billy kept himself in relative check until the final pairings were announced, the two couples who would face off to win the division. Billy and Ida were one pair. A couple from Riverdale were the other pair. Maybe if the last song, the decisive song had been a slow one, maybe a Roy Orbison tune, or Elvis being all dreamy things would have worked out okay but as it turned out the last song was Dale Hawkins’ classic Susie Q, nothing but sex wrapped up in a song. Almost from the first beat Billy was wired, was off in his own world. To say that he had been sexually suggestive in his moves, to the extent that any twelve year old guy was aware that some dance moves were nothing but sublimated sex (what did Billy, Frank, the whole universe of the generation of ’68 know about such concepts then)would be an understatement. Along the way Billy took off his tie, took off his jacket, and maybe if he thought about it he might have taken off his pants. But what did him in was when he went in back of Ida and started grinding away to her motions. The kids in the crowd went crazy and even Ida seemed to get into the groove.

Needless to say Billy and Ida stayed home while that Riverdale couple went to Albany. For a few weeks afterward Billy and Ida were an “item,” were considered cool, very cool and then Ida moved away, her father got a promotion to some place in New Hampshire and Billy more and more frequently turned in on himself, began to start doing the “clip,” the five-finger discount in stores up in Adamsville Center which would lead him very far away from the limelight, more like searchlights. 

Frank had thought later, once he had been broken from Billy’s spell by a couple of close call “clips” when he decided that reading books was less dangerous to his life than stealing onyx rings and such, that maybe Billy was always destined to be the fall guy, the guy who could be broken on the wheel of life with no sweat. The year before, 1957, Billy had been all hopped up to enter and win, he never was a guy who was beset by doubts unlike Frank who then was basically shy and introverted, particularly around girls unlike Billy who drew them like a magnet, a teen caravan contest. This caravan business was sponsored by record companies mainly, maybe some radio sponsorship on the side as well, usually smaller companies looking for that one “Sam Phillips finding Elvis” moment that would bring in fame and fortune.

The caravan idea was that the record company would go to various locales like North Adamsville, usually at the high school then as now, a central institution in the life of kids, of towns and have open auditions, have the winners from the regions go to Boston for a bigger version of the same thing and the winner there would get a record contract (one record and then whatever happened happened, a “one hit” wonder, or a miss usually just like now). So Billy was all amped up to enter. Between his singing and dancing skills Frank thought honestly that Billy’s singing was way ahead, he really did have a good voice, had been the guy who would lead the doo-wop songs in back of the elementary school on summer nights as the sun went down which would bring the girls around all swoony and flirty before everything was over.

Billy was prepared, super-prepared you could say that about him. Even had his poor mother who had enough to do handling Billy and four brothers make him a sport’s jacket like the one Billy Haley wore. The poor woman had to make the damn thing since they were as poor as church mice and couldn’t afford to go to Robert Hall and get a ready-made one. Billy’s old man sprang for the material and his mother made the jacket. See Billy was going to cover Haley’s Rock Around The Clock so that jacket was important to the effect he would have on the judges.

Well the big night came, Frank was there, so were Frank’s parents to cheer Billy on so you know it was a big deal. Billy was on fifth so he was a little nervous. Frank was nervous too because the third act, a group of three sisters doing doo wop, knocked the place for a home run so Billy was up against some serious competition. Billy came out looking good, starting singing up a storm, got the girls, many from school, going with him and then about half way through as he was swaying away, flailing his arms one of the sleeves of his jacket went flying into the audience. The girls went wild, then the other sleeve came flying off. Pandemonium. See the audience, the girls, thought that was part of the act, thought Billy was doing it for them not that Mrs. Bradley in a rush to get the jacket done hadn’t properly sewn the sleeves on. Needless to say Billy didn’t win, that doo wop group was just too good. Billy took it with what seemed good grace for a while and the girls at school wouldn’t leave him alone, especially the two girls who caught the sleeves. (Frank got Billy’s “cast-offs which helped him a lot in the getting to know girls department.) But after that experience Billy stopped singing, stopped leading that summer doo wop stuff that brought the girls around. 

Maybe it was even before that, if you don’t want to get into the branded at birth theory, buy into the sign, the mark, of Cain and Abel stuff. In 1956 Billy despite his age, his young age, was a wrapped up in the new rock and roll thing, the Elvis flood as anybody at ten years of age. Certainly more than Frank, and most of the guys they hung around with although every guy, young or old, old being then maybe twenty to schoolboy eyes was starting to wear his sideburns just a little longer. Long enough for parents to scowl at. Billy probably had a leg up on the Elvis thing, the rock and roll thing from his older brothers and their girlfriends, especially the girlfriends who would go wild when Elvis was played on the record player down in the family room when those brothers had their teen platter (records) parties. 

Somehow though Billy, maybe through some DNA thing, or maybe just the hard fact of coming up hard in a poor family with few resources, figured that just emulating Elvis was not going to get him out from under the feeling he had that things were stacked against him. Stacked against him except that overweening desire of his to break-out, to make his fame and fortune through his musical talent. Frank had already known as that early stage that Billy had a good voice because at school during recess he would croon out the latest tunes and all the girls would be around him like flies. But Billy wasn’t just depending on luck to get him through. In those days as part of the effort by parents and other authorities like the Church (in their neighborhood, in Frank and Billy’s neighborhood that “Church” was nothing but the Roman Catholic one they you hear about so much these days) to curb and control the rock and roll menace, the “sex” menace if you really wanted to know what bothered them,  groups of adults would put together what today would be called “open mics,” places where kids could win prizes, maybe fifty or one hundred dollars, showing off their singing talents.

Every Friday night Father Lally, the youngest priest at Saint Thomas Roman Catholic Church, presided over the weekly singing contests sponsored by the church. The prize: a fifty dollar United States Savings Bond.  A big deal then, especially to kids who thought fifty cents was a huge sum. At first Billy, like Frank had noticed as well, was as caught up in the Elvis thing as any other kid. But lots of kids were, good singers, girls too, so he figured that he had to make his mark another way. Another sound that appealed to him was the beat of Bo Diddley whose signature song Bo Diddley was a big hit at dances. So Billy decided one night that he would cover that song. What Billy, Frank, none of the younger kids knew was that Bo was black, black as the night as they later found out. See they knew Bo from the radio, the transistor radio so they didn’t know, didn’t think much about it probably what color skin Bo had.

But Billy found out that night, found out what the race question was all about in an all-white Northern working class neighborhood quickly that night. After he finished his song which was pretty well received by the kids, an older guy, a guy already out of high school, came up to Billy and said for all to hear that he did not know that Billy wanted to be a “nigger” singer. Needless to say Billy did not win that night. Needless to say that the next week he went back to covering Elvis stuff but without much heart. Needless to say too that the road ahead for Billy dreams would always be paved with pitfalls.                                                                              

The Musical Voice Of The Hills And Hollows Of Coal-Mining Country, Hazel Dickens Passes At 75- Going Back To Harlan

Click on the headline to link to a The New York Times obituary, dated April 22, 2011, for legendary coal-mining, mountain, hills and hollows singer, Hazel Dickens.

From The Anti-War Archives-***War And Remembrance- A Boston Veterans For Peace Memorial Day-May 30, 2011

***War And Remembrance- A Boston Veterans For Peace Memorial Day-May 30, 2011

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Fritz, old battle-scarred and battle-weary purple-hearted Fritz Taylor, Vietnam, 1969-1971, Fritz John Taylor, RA048433691 to be exact, had to laugh as he made his way from Adamsville to the downtown Boston waterfront. To the green jut of land Christopher Columbus Park (and that name, causing further bemusement when he first heard the locale, could itself tell a big story about the old days European-centered military adventures to the Americas)for what he was not sure, exactly, was either the third or fourth annual Veterans For Peace counter-Memorial Day commemoration (really counter-traditional observance).

 

Fritz had not laughed a funny laugh as he was prone to do these days when something struck him as unusual, but laughed out loud at the thought of a no-go, not even boot camp as far as he knew, commander-in chief of all the American imperial armed forces , United States President Barack Obama, suddenly warming up to his post-Osama Bin Laden kill authorization (after having , vicariously, watched the SEAL action in “real time”) very consciously earlier this day placing himself at the center of the Memorial Day action in Arlington National Cemetery trying to draw succor from the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. Talking aimlessly, or maybe better superficially, about valor, about the good of the cause, about the last full measure of devotion, and lastly, what war in the end is all about, saving your buddy’s ass, or he yours.

 

But see, to Fritz’s way of thinking, Lincoln at least had the advantage, the very distinct advantage, of not only having said those kinds of words and those kinds of sentiments first and therefore in a more free-lance, free-wheeling eloquent way but said them at humankind's hallowed Gettysburg in the wake of what turned out to the decisive great Northern victory (along with Grant’s Vicksburg victory) in a war, that by hook or by crook, turned chattel slavery times out the door.

 

What could one imperial chief, Barack Obama, today draw on for succor? Leading a 50,000 troop wind-down in Iraq, a thoughtlessly unjust war if there ever was one, with more than its fair share of collateral damage, read American troop-driven civilian killings, and to call it by its right name murder. Yes, yes, by all means Fritz Taylor knew, knew chapter and verse, that when it did not really count one non-president Barack Obama opposed George’s Follies but that was then, and this, this was desperately now with the latest headlines out of Baghdad announcing a 200,000 mass march calling for an American withdrawal post-haste. And Fritz Taylor, Fritz Taylor who had gotten “religion” on the subject of war, on collateral damage, on don’t give a damn about spending soldiers’ blood and lives since those lost Vietnam days, lost in some drug addiction time, some newspaper-strewn park bench time, some lost family connection time, took a moment to reflect on that fact, and to murmur softly to himself- Obama, Mr. President, since Fritz is putting things in a more kindly fashion now- get the hell out of Iraq, completely out, and stay out.

And Fritz had to laugh, and the nature of that laugh need not be repeated here, about how big bad Barrack Obama, whom almost every non-veteran of any battle, except maybe the battle for the Democratic nomination for President in 2008, or of the bar stool in some ill-lit barroom but those don’t count in real battle scars world, has been touted as some kind of Gandhian pacifist while constantly upping the ante in Afghanistan since about day one of his administration, the troop commitment ante, the one that really counts. And making that ill-conceived policy the lynch-pin for his whole world-wide war strategy, with no serious end date in sight (and no congressional oversight to stop him, according to a recent vote on the question of war budget authorizations-the real deal when it comes to war policy).

 

Fritz’s thoughts just then as well dwelled on the more recent, the more off-hand stuff, the several hundred drones attacks in Pakistan, the few thousand, give or take, cruise missiles (oops, that’s a NATO operation, he forgot, sorry) in Libya and the general policeman of the world carrying a big stick, a very big stick indeed, in the rest of the world. So he felt compelled to murmur under his breathe, no, really curse under his breathe, Mr. President, Fritz still being the soul of politeness these days, these got anti-war “religion,” drug- free, alcohol-free, stable home under his feet days, get the hell out of Afghanistan and stay out. And while you are at it, Mr. Obama, keep American hands off, way off the rest of the world, as he then saw the first of several white dove on black background Veterans for Peace (VFP) flags flying in the wind down near the ferry docks adjacent to this Columbus honor park.

 

And although a moment ago he raged with grievous anger at the American imperial state and its two-bit sheriff (oops, sorry again, President) he felt calmer, as he always felt calmer, when he spied the white-doved, black-background flags because that meant kindred, mainly Vietnam-era kindred but sprinkles of others as well. Guys, mostly, and a few women as well, now graying guys, seriously graying guys, now walking a little more haltingly due to life’s toll, now maybe not in that tip-top shape that made them prime Grade A cannon fodder back in the days, who had been through battles, real battles and post-war battles, some of them anyway just like him, whom he always argued had more than enough “cred” when anti-war talk time came around. And others, other anti-warriors, who only credentials were some well-written papers, some well-spoken speech, or a safely-protected street march in some big or middle-sized American city or town who knew, knew deep in their hearts that Fritz’s point was true. And they were deferential, sometimes just a little too paternally or maternally deferential, when the big brassy white flag-draped veterans came marching their way.

 

Oh sure, this third (or was it fourth) commemoration was not well-attended, maybe a hundred, not the thousands standing on those big and mid-sized city and town street corners, or walking past those benighted American flag-bedecked blessed sweet good night grave sites with their complements of still-grieving kin, but this place, this momentarily hallowed anti-war place is not measured by numbers this day but by remembrance, hard-earned remembrance, hard-earned rage against the night cannon fodder-used and folly remembrance. And, oh sure, the speeches, the speeches by those graying activists, with just the barest sprinkle of newer Iraq and Afghanistan era veterans, were directed at that hundred angel choir of kindred. And Fritz, having heard every anti-war argument before, having heard every political prisoner Private Bradley Manning story before, having heard about the collateral damage, foreign division, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Palestine, civilian horror story before; and every collateral damage, domestic division, devastated military families story before still drank in the words. And said his fair share of old-time protest “right on,” brother, or sister. And yelled loudly and proudly, “Free Bradley Manning.” Yes, these days Bradley Manning’s fight is us, our younger fighting spirit us. The torch has now been passed to the new guys, and the couple of hours as well. Fritz Taylor just for that moment felt ten feet tall for having made this day’s journey. He was charged-up again.

 

On the way home, or rather on the way to meet, over near the Adamsville River, his better other, Lillian, his “sweet pea” he had named her for her sunny disposition, and her tough determination to give him a home to feel planted in and, early on, a little anti-war “religion” bump start too he passed, as thinking about it later he should have expected, a very different Memorial Day celebration sponsored by the Adamsville Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW). Before he got “religion” he had spent many a cheap drinks drinking hour at that same VFW hall, or the American Legion hall farther up the street, and had thought nothing of retelling many bar stool battle stories to anyone who would listen. And listen they did because Fritz had another kind of “cred” in those days, battle-tested credentials, as against the state-side duty and or rear area supply sergeants that populate these VFW and American Legion barrooms.

 

But right now he was chagrined at this tactless “celebration” going on before his eyes, complete with family-friendly barbecue, pony rides and merry-go-round for the kids, and more thoughtless, neglected and discarded American flags than one could shake a stick at. Those quickly passed scenes momentarily brought back to Fritz’s mind ancient unhealed, unheal-able, wounds, and ancient, also unheal-able, angers as well. What was not ancient, although also unheal-able, was when, as he quietly passed by, some long-in-the-tooth ex- supply sergeant VFW honcho noticed Fritz’s still shirt-pinned buttons calling for Obamian troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and freedom for Private Bradley Manning and called him a “commie”. Fritz thought, jesus, where has this guy been but he also reflected, especially seeing the kids unconsciously drink in the warrior atmospherics that went with this celebration, that charged-up or not, he still had a hell of a lot of work to do. A hell of a lot.

 

Memorial Day for Peace

When: Monday, May 30, 2011, 1:00 pm
Where: Christopher Columbus Park • Atlantic Ave. at Long Wharf • Aquarium T • Boston

Start: 2011 May 30 - 1:00pm

Please join Veterans For Peace, Military Families Speak Out, United for Justice with Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee for a ceremony for Peace on Memorial Day.

Speakers to include:

John Schuchardt – House of Peace, Ipswich, MA

Ross Caputi – Marine veteran of the Iraq War (2003 – 2006)

President of Boston University Anti-War Coalition

Kevin & Joyce Lucey, parents of Corporal Jeffrey Lucey, U.S. M.C.

Melida & Carlos Arredondo, Gold Star Families for Peace, parents of Marine Lance Corporal Alex Arredondo U.S,M.C.

Oday Mahmood & Ayfer AbedAljibar– Iraqi Refugees – Will speak on behalf of the new Iraqi community here in Massachusetts.

James Vanloy – Poet

John Olivere – Singer Songwriter

*Films to While Away The Class Struggle By-"Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without A Pause"

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for public intellectual, MIT professor and social activist Noam Chomsky.

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some films that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. In the future I expect to do the same for books under a similar heading.-Markin

DVD Review

Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without A Pause, Noam Chomsky, Carol Chomsky and others, 2003

Let’s face it these days in America it does not take much to gain a left radical reputation. I say that more in anger than in sorrow. Take the case of over-blown director Michael Moore, who is in some right-wing quarters seen as the devil incarnate, while in actuality resting, and resting quite comfortably, in the heartland of the Democratic Party precincts, hardly radical territory these days, if ever. The subject of this documentary review, radical gadfly MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, is also prima facie evidence for that proposition.

Now I have nothing against the good professor- as a linguist. That work I have always found interesting. What is less interesting, and is placed front and center in this 2003 post 9/11 exposition of his views, well, are those views. Or better, not the views, many of them which I actually share, but of his analysis of what to do about it.


Perhaps, as this point in my own long political career, I am a little jaded when someone makes a cogent, if now commonplace, analysis of American imperialism, the industrial-military complex, the over-reaching tentacles of the imperial experience, the cultural/consumer wasteland, the media’s capitulation to the government, and the fear-mongering in place of politics, particularly in the post 9/11 world that form the segments of the professor’s spiel. He presents those position articulately, if as he concedes himself, long-windedly, and that is fair enough. I have already conceded without difficulty that he is an important public intellectual. But hiding behind those views is a long time anarchist position that to take on the “monster” seriously is, in the end, bad form.

Now Professor Chomsky’s anarchy is not that of the old Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers of the World), or of the Haymarket Martyrs. One moreover, in any case, would never mistake him for “Big” Bill Haywood, Alexander Berkman or a host of other action anarchists. Or as a member of the Friends Of Durritti in Spain in the 1930s. Those were heroic figures who demand much respect even from those of us who find ourselves in political opposition to anarchist doctrine. No, the good professor’s brand of anarchism is more philosophical, very philosophical. It is more attuned to that of the moral suasion doctrines of Kropotkin, and the like. Bloodless, and while resting easily in one’s armchair.

Nowhere does that come out better that in the snippets of interviews here where he is asked questions about what to do to fight against the “monster”. There he loses the articulate analysis and fumbles around with searches for self-identity, truthfulness, and intellectual inquiry- all nice things but hardly calculated to make the “beast” tremble. Professor Chomsky gives the game away in one such answer. He is asked about the very legitimate question of organizing, and who and how to do such activity. He mentions, at one point in the answer, that he could not organize, by his life circumstances, steel workers.

Fair enough, life provides each of us with different possibilities. But why in this whole hour presentation did I not see or hear, other than the obligatory mantra about the plight of the working masses, that he wanted to work closely with those who did have such skills. There was nothing in the good-intentioned professor’s presentation that made me break from sometime another old public intellectual, although not an august professor, Karl Marx, said, in effect, in the middle of the 19th century- “It is not enough to merely analysis (or philosophize) about the world- the point is to change it." And we know what that means-if Professor Chomsky doesn’t.

*****Victory To The Fast-Food Workers The Vanguard Of The Fight For $15......

*****Victory To The Fast-Food Workers The Vanguard Of The Fight For $15......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers

 

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Frank Jackman had always ever since he was a kid down in Carver, a working class town formerly a shoe factory mecca about thirty miles south of Boston and later dotted with assorted small shops related to the shipbuilding trade, a very strong supporters of anything involving organized labor and organizing labor, anything that might push working people ahead. While it had taken it a long time, and some serious military service during the Vietnam War, his generation’s war, to get on the right side of the angels on the war issue and even more painfully and slowly on the woman’s liberation and gay rights issues, and he was still having a tough time with the transgender thing although the plight of heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower Army soldier Chelsea Manning had made it easier to express solidarity, he had always been a stand-up guy for unions and for working people. Maybe it was because his late father, Lawrence Jackman, had been born and raised in coal country down in Harlan County, Kentucky where knowing which side you were on, knowing that picket lines mean don’t cross, knowing that every scrap given by the bosses had been paid for in blood and so it was in his blood. Maybe though it was closer to the nub, closer to home, that the closing of the heavily unionized shoe factories which either headed down south or off-shore left slim leaving for those who did not follow them south, slim pickings for an uneducated man like his father trying to raise four daughters and son on hopes and dreams and not much else. Those hopes and dreams leaving his mother to work in the “mother’s don’t work” 1950s at a local donut shop filling donuts for chrissakes to help make ends meet so his was always aware of how close the different between work and no work was, and decent pay for decent work too. How ever he got “religion” on the question as a kid, and he suspected the answer was in the DNA, Frank was always at the ready when the latest labor struggles erupted, the latest recently being the sporadic uprisings amount fast-food workers and lowly-paid Walmart workers to earn a living wage.        

One day in the late summer of 2014 he had picked up a leaflet from a young guy, a young guy who later identified himself as a field organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union filled to the brim with low-end workers like janitors, nurses assistants, salespeople, and the like, passing them out at an anti-war rally (against the American escalations in Syria and Iraq) in downtown Boston. The leaflet after giving some useful information about how poorly fast-food worker were paid and how paltry the benefits, especially the lack of health insurance announced an upcoming “Fight for $15” action in Downtown Boston on September 4, 2014 at noon as part of a national struggle for economic justice and dignity for the our hard working sisters and brothers. He told the young organizer after expressing solidarity with the upcoming efforts that he would try to bring others to the event although being held during a workday would be hard for some to make the time.

In the event Frank brought about a dozen others with him. They and maybe fifty to one hundred others during the course of the event stood in solidarity for a couple of hours while a cohort of fast-food workers told their stories. And while another cohort of fast-food workers were sitting on the ground in protest prepared to commit civil disobedience by blocking the street to make their point. Several of them would eventually be arrested and taken away by the police later to be fined and released.

Frank, when he reflected on the day’s events later, was pretty elated as he told his old friend Josh Breslin whom he had called up in Maine to tell him what had happened that day. Josh had also grown up in a factory town, a textile town, Olde Saco, and had been to many such support events himself and before he retired had as a free-lance writer written up lots of labor stories. The key ingredient that impressed Josh in Frank’s description had been how many young serious black and Latino workers had participated in the actions. Later than night when Frank reflected further on the situation he broke out in a smile as he was writing up his summary of his take on the events. There would be people pass off the torch to when guys like him and Josh were no longer around. He had been afraid that would not happen after the long drought doldrums in the class struggle of the previous few decades. Here is what else he had to say:            

No question in this wicked old world that those at the bottom are “the forgotten ones,” “los olvidados,” those who a writer who had worked among them had long ago correctly described as the world fellahin, the ones who never get ahead. This day we are talking about working people, people working and working hard for eight, nine, ten dollars an hour. Maybe working two jobs to make ends meet since a lot of times these McJobs, these Wal-Mart jobs do not come with forty hours of work attached but whatever some cost-cutting manager deems right to keep them on a string and keep them from qualifying for certain benefits that do not kick in with “part-time” work. And lately taking advantage of cover from Obamacare keeping the hours below the threshold necessary to kick in health insurance and other benefits. Yes, the forgotten people.

But let’s do the math here figuring on forty hours and figuring on say ten dollars an hour. That‘s four hundred a week times fifty weeks (okay so I am rounding off for estimate purposes here too since most of these jobs do not have vacation time figured in).That’s twenty thousand a year. Okay so just figure any kind of decent apartment in the Boston area where I am writing this-say one thousand a month. That’s twelve thousand a year. So the other eight thousand is for everything else. No way can that be done. And if you had listened to the young and not so young fast-food workers, the working mothers, the working older brothers taking care of younger siblings, workers trying to go to school to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty you would understand the truth of that statement. And the stories went on and on along that line all during the action. 

Confession: it has been a very long time since I have had to scrimp and scrim to make ends meet, to get the rent in, to keep those damn bill-collectors away from my door, to beg the utility companies to not shut off those necessary services. But I have been there, no question. Growing up working class town poor, the only difference on the economic question was that it was all poor whites unlike today’s crowd. Also for many years living from hand to mouth before things got steady. I did not like it then and I do not like the idea of it now.  I am here to say even the “Fight for $15” is not enough, but it is a start. And I whole-heartedly support the struggle of my sisters and brothers for a little economic justice in this wicked old world. And any reader who might read this-would you work for these slave wages? I think not. So show your solidarity and get out and support the fast-food and Wal-Mart workers in their just struggles. 

Organize Wal-Mart! Organize the fast food workers! Union! Union!  

       http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/09/04/boston-fast-food-workers-rally-for-wages-unions/bc1ZqZIgwsVcOw0QHIV74M/story.html         

*****John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.

*****John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.

 

Every time I pass the frieze honoring the heroic Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment across from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston, a unit that fought in the American Civil War, a war which we have just finished commemorating the 150^th anniversary of its formal ending (April 1865) I am struck by one figure who I will discuss in a minute. For those who do not know the 54^th Regiment the unit had been recruited and made up of all volunteers, former slaves, freedmen, maybe a current fugitive slave snuck in there, those were such times for such unheralded personal valor, the recruitment a task that the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, himself an ex-slave had been central in promoting (including two of his sons). All knew, or soon became aware that if they did not fight to the finish they would not be treated as prisoners of war but captured chattel subject to re-enslavement or death.  The regiment fought with ferocious valor before Fort Wagner down in South Carolina and other hot spots where an armed black man, in uniform or out, brought red flashes of deep venom, if venom is red, but hellfire hatred in any case to the Southern plantation owners and their hangers-on (that armed black men acting in self-defense of themselves and theirs still bringing hellfire hatred among some whites to this day, no question).

I almost automatically focus in on that old hard-bitten grizzled erect bearded soldier who is just beneath the head of the horse being ridden by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the white commander of the regiment who from a family of ardent abolitionists fell with his men before Fort Wagner and was buried with them, an honor. (See above) I do not know the details of the model Saint-Gauden’s used when he worked that section (I am sure that specific information can be found although it is not necessary to this sketch) but as I grow older I appreciate that old man soldier even more, as old men are supposed to leave the arduous duty of fighting for just causes, arms in hand, to the young.

I like to think that that old grizzled brother who aside from color looks like me when he heard the call from Massachusetts wherever he was, maybe had read about the plea in some abolitionist newspaper, had maybe even gotten the message from Frederick Douglass himself through his newspaper, The North Star, calling Sable Brother to Arms or on out the stump once Lincoln unleashed him to recruit his black brothers for whatever reason although depleting Union ranks reduced by bloody fight after bloody fight as is the nature of civil war when the societal norms are broken  as was at least one cause, he picked up stakes leaving some small farm or trade and family behind and volunteered forthwith. Maybe he had been born, like Douglass, in slavery and somehow, manumission, flight, something, following the Northern Star, got to the North. Maybe learned a skill, a useful skill, got a little education to be able to read and write and advance himself and had in his own way prospered.

But something was gnawing at him, something about the times, something about tow-headed white farm boys, all awkward and ignorant from the heartland of the Midwest, sullen Irish and other ethnic immigrants from the cities where it turned out the streets were not paved with gold and so took the bounty for Army duty, took some draft-dodger’s place for pay, hell, even high-blown Harvard boys were being armed to defend the Union (and the endless names of the fallen and endless battles sites on Memorial Hall at Harvard a graphic testament to that solemn sense of duty then). And more frequently as the days and months passed about the increasing number of white folk who hated, hated with a red-hot passion, slavery and if that passion meant anything what was he a strong black man going to do about it, do about breaking the hundreds of years chains. Maybe he still had kindred under the yolk down South in some sweated plantation, poorly fed, ill-treated, left to fester and die when not productive anymore, the women, young and old subject to Mister’s lustful appetites and he had to do something.

Then the call came, Governor Andrews of Massachusetts was raising a “sable” armed regiment (Douglass’ word) to be headed by a volunteer Harvard boy urged on by his high abolitionist parents, Colonel Shaw, the question of black military leadership of their own to be left to another day, another day long in the future as it turned out but what was he to know of that, and he shut down his small shop or farm, said good-bye to kin and neighbors and went to Boston to join freedom’s fight. I wonder if my old bearded soldier fell before Fort Wagner fight down in heated rebel country, or maybe fell in some other engagement less famous but just as important to the concept of disciplined armed black men fighting freedom’s fight. I like to think though that the grizzled old man used every bit of wit and skill he had and survived to march into Charleston, South Carolina, the fire-breathing heart of the Confederacy, then subdued at the end of war with his fellows in the 54^th stepping off to the tune of John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering In The Grave. A fitting tribute to Captain Brown and his band of brother, black and white, at Harper’s Ferry fight and to an old grizzled bearded soldier’s honor.             

* On Being "Dugout Doug"- William Manchester's "American Caesar"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Americna author William Manchester.

BOOK REVIEW

AMERICAN CAESAR, WILLIAM MANCHESTER

General Douglas MacArthur is one of the few military figures in American history who, even today, evokes heated partisan responses. The title of the headline for this piece clearly tells where this writer is on the partisan divide. The nickname “Dugout Doug” goes back to the days when after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines General MacArthur got himself out of harms way, with due fanfare, while his subordinates and troops for the most part got left behind to face the brunt of the Japanese forces. It was not pretty. This story and many others are detailed in the late journalist William Manchester’s biography of the general.

The history of the United States has produced a few military figures who were flamboyant. It has also produced a fair number with some military skills. It is, however, unusual to have the two come together as they did in the self-advertised grandeur of MacArthur. Europe has had some familiarity with the ‘man on horse back’. One thinks of France, in particular. In America that notion, at least publicly, has not been presented by military leaders while in uniform. MacArthur was an exception. Manchester is not incorrect to see that if there were such a candidate for the role of Caesar (or the modern variant, Napoleon) in the United States MacArthur by skill, élan and appetite fit the bill. That thread runs through the whole story line here.

No one can question that MacArthur had exceptional military skill in both World Wars, especially his role in the Pacific in World War II. One, however, should note, and note carefully his role in dispersing the Bonus Army in Washington, D.C. in the early 1930’s. That might provide a taste of what the American Caesar had in store if he ever took power. Furthermore, one should note that MacArthur was well out of his element when he faced essentially ‘unconventional’ armies in Korea. Call it ‘limited warfare’ if you will but he totally underestimated his North Korean and Chinese opposites in the age of new ‘warfare’. Later American generals faced, and are today facing, similar conditions. And making the same wrong estimations about the enemy's capacities. That MacArthur’s reputation has mainly survived his Korea debacle owes more to hubris, including his own, than reality. In any case, read this book to get a flavor of the old American Army and its most well known general.

*****Once Again On The 1960s Folk Minute-The Cambridge Club 47 Scene

*****Once Again On The 1960s Folk Minute-The Cambridge Club 47 Scene

 

 

From The Pen Of Zack James

Joshua Breslin, Carver down in the wilds of Southeastern Massachusetts cranberry bog country born, had certainly not been the only one who had recently taken a nose-dive turn back in time to that unique moment beginning in the very late 1950s, say 1958, 1959 when be-bop jazz (you know Dizzy, the late Bird, the mad man Monk the guys who bopped swing-a-ling for “cool” high white note searches on the instruments) “beatnik” complete with beret and bop-a-long banter and everybody from suburb land was clad in black, guys in black chinos and flannel shirts, gals in black dresses, black stockings, black shoes, who knows maybe black underwear which in Victoria's Secret time is not hard to image but then something the corner boys in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner salaciously contemplated about the female side of that "beat" scene (what King Kerouac termed beatitude, the search for holiness or wholeness), was giving way to earnest “folkie” time. And no alluring black-dressed gals but unisex flannel shirts, or sometimes once somebody had been to Mexico peasant blouses, unisex blue jeans and unisex sandals leaving nothing in particular to the fervent corner boy imagination) in the clubs that mattered around the Village (the Gaslight, Geddes Folk City, half the joints on Bleecker Street), Harvard Square (Club Blue, the place for serious cheap dates since for the price of coffees and pastries for two you could linger on, Café Blanc, the place for serious dates since they had a five dollar minimum, Club 47, the latter a place where serious folkies and serious folk musicians hung out) and North Beach (Club Ernie’s, The Hungry Eye, all a step behind the folk surge since you would still find a jazz-poetry mix longer than in the Eastern towns). That scene would go on in earnest to the mid-1960s when folk music had its minute as a popular genre and faded a bit. Even guys like Sam Eaton, Sam Lowell, Jack Callahan and Bart Webber, who only abided the music back in the day, now too, because the other guys droned on and on about it under the influence of Pete Markin a guy Josh had met  in the summer of love, 1967 were diving in too. Diving into the music which beside first love rock and roll got them through the teenage night.

The best way to describe that turn from be-bop beat to earnest folkie, is by way of a short comment by the late folk historian Dave Von Ronk which summed up the turn nicely. Earlier in that period, especially the period after Allen Ginsburg’s Howl out in the Frisco poetry slam blew the roof off modernist poetry with his talk of melted modern minds, hipsters, negro streets, the fight against Moloch, the allure of homosexuality, and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road in a fruitless search for the father he and Neal Cassady never knew had the Army-Navy surplus stores cleaning out their rucksack inventories, when “beat poets” held sway and folkies were hired to clear the room between readings Dave would have been thrown in the streets to beg for his supper if his graven voice and quirky folk songs did not empty the place, and he did (any serious look at some of his earliest compositions will tell in a moment why, and why the cross-over from beat to folkie by the former crowd never really happened). But then the sea-change happened, tastes changed and the search for roots was on, and Von Ronk would be doing three full sets a night and checking every folk anthology he could lay his hands on (including naturally Harry Smith’s legendary efforts and the Lomaxes and Seegers too) and misty musty record store recordings to get enough material.

People may dispute the end-point of that folk minute like they do about the question of when the "turn the world upside down" counter-cultural 1960s ended as a “youth nation” phenomenon but clearly with the advent of acid-etched rock (acid as in LSD, blotter, electric kool aid acid test not some battery stuff ) by 1967-68 the searching for and reviving of the folk roots that had driven many aficionados to the obscure archives like Harry Smith’s anthology, the recording of the Lomaxes, Seegers and that crowd had passed.

As an anecdote, one that Josh would use whenever the subject of his own sea-change back to rock and roll came up, in support of that acid-etched dateline that is the period when Josh stopped taking his “dates” to the formerly ubiquitous home away from home coffeehouses which had sustained him through many a dark home life night in high school and later when he escaped home during college, cheap poor boy college student dates to the Harvard Square coffeehouses where for the price of a couple of cups of coffee, expresso then a favorite since you could sip it slowly and make it last for the duration and rather exotic since it was percolated in a strange copper-plated coffee-maker, a shared pastry of unknown quality, and maybe a couple of dollars admission charge or for the “basket” that was the life-support of the performers you could hear up and coming talent working out their kinks, and took those "dates" instead to the open-air fashion statement rock concerts that were abounding around the town.

The shift also entailed a certain change in fashion from those earnest flannel shirts, denims, lacy blouses and sandals to day-glo tie-dye shirts, bell-bottomed denims, granny dresses, and mountain boots or Chuck Taylor sneakers. Oh yeah, and the decibel level of the music got higher, much higher and the lyrics talked not of ancient mountain sorrows, thwarted triangle love, or down-hearted blues over something that was on your mind but to alice-in-wonderland and white rabbit dreams, carnal nightmares, yellow submarines, satanic majesties, and wooden ships on the water.             

Some fifty years out others in Josh-like fits of nostalgia and maybe to sum up a life’s work there have been two recent documentaries concerning the most famous Harvard Square coffeehouse of them all, the Club 47 (which still exists under the name of the non-profit Club Passim which traces its genealogy to that legendary Mount Auburn Street spot in a similar small venue near the Harvard Co-Op Bookstore off of Church Street).

One of the documentaries put out a few years ago (see above) traces the general evolution of that club in its prime when the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Rush, Eric Von Schmidt, the members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (the forming of jug bands, a popular musical form including a seemingly infinite number of bands with the name Sheik in them, going back to the early 20^th century itself a part of the roots revival guys like Josh were in thrall to), and many others sharpened up their acts there. The other documentary, No Regrets (title taken from one of his most famous songs) which Josh reviewed for one of the blogs, The American Folk Minute, to which he has contributed to over the years is a biopic centered on the fifty plus years in folk music of Tom Rush. Both those visual references got Josh thinking about how that folk scene, or better, the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene kept Josh from going off the rails, although that was a close thing.        

Like about a billion kids before and after Josh in his coming of age in the early 1960s went through the usual bouts of teenage angst and alienation aided and abetted by growing up “from hunger” among the very lowest rung of the working poor with all the pathologies associated with survival down at the base of society where the bonds of human solidarity are often times very attenuated. All of this “wisdom” complete with appropriate “learned” jargon, of course figured out, told about, made many mistakes to gain, came later, much later because at the time Josh was just feeling rotten about his life and how the hell he got placed in a world which he had not created (re-enforced when questioned by one Delores Breslin with Prescott Breslin as a behind-the scenes back-up about his various doings) and no likely possibilities of having a say what with the world stacked against him, his place in the sun (and not that “safe” white collar civil service job that Delores saw as the epitome of upward mobility for her brood), and how he didn’t have a say in what was going on. Then through one source or another mainly by the accident of tuning in his life-saver transistor radio, which for once he successfully badgered to get from Delores and Prescott one Christmas by threatening murder and mayhem if he didn’t when all his corner boys at Jimmy Jack’s Diner had them, on one Sunday night to listen to a favorite rock and roll DJ that he could receive on that night from Chicago he found a folk music program that sounded interesting (it turned out to be the Dick Summer show on WBZ, a DJ who is featured in the Tom Rush documentary) and he was hooked by the different songs played, some mountain music, some jug, some country blues, some protest songs.

Each week Dick Summer would announce who was playing where for the week and he kept mentioning various locations, including the Club 47, in Harvard Square. Josh was intrigued, wanted to go if only he could find a kindred for a date and if he could scratch up some dough. Neither easy tasks for a guy in high teen alienation mode.           

One Saturday afternoon Josh made connections to get to a Red Line subway stop which was the quickest way for him to get to Harvard Square (and was also the last stop on that line then) and walked around the Square looking into the various clubs and coffeehouses that had been mentioned by Summer and a few more as well. You could hardly walk a block without running into one or the other. Of course during the day all people were doing was sitting around drinking coffee and reading, maybe playing chess, or as he found out later huddled in small group corners working on their music (or poetry which also still had some sway as a tail end of the “beat” scene) so he didn’t that day get the full sense of what was going on. A few weeks later, having been “hipped” to the way things worked, meaning that as long as you had coffee or something in front of you in most places you were cool Josh always chronically low on funds took a date, a cheap date naturally, to the Club Blue where you did not pay admission but where Eric Von Schmidt was to play. Josh had heard his Joshua Gone Barbados covered by Tom Rush on Dick Summer’s show and he had flipped out so he was eager to hear him. So for the price of, Josh thought, two coffees each, a stretched-out shared brownie and two subway fares they had a good time, an excellent time (although that particular young woman and Josh would not go on much beyond that first date since she was looking for a guy who had more dough to spend on her, and maybe a “boss” car too).

Josh would go over to Harvard Square many weekend nights in those days, including sneaking out of the house a few time late at night and heading over since in those days the Red Line subway ran all night. That was his home away from home not only for cheap date nights depending on the girl he was interested in but when the storms gathered at the house about his doing, or not doing, this or that, stuff like that when his mother pulled the hammer down. If Josh had a few dollars make by caddying for the Mayfair swells at the Carver Country Club, a private club a few miles from his house he would pony up the admission, or two admissions if he was lucky, to hear Joan Baez or her sister Mimi with her husband Richard Farina, maybe Eric Von Schmidt, Tom Paxton when he was in town at the 47. If he was broke he would do his alternative, take the subway but rather than go to a club he would hang out all night at the famous Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford just up the steps from the subway stop exit. That was a wild scene made up of winos, grifters, con men, guys and gals working off barroom drunks, crazies, and… almost every time out there would be folk-singers or poets, some known to him, others from cheap street who soon faded into the dust, in little clusters, coffee mugs filled, singing or speaking low, keeping the folk tradition alive, keeping the faith that a new wind was coming across the land and they, Josh, wanted to catch it. Wasn’t that a time.          

 

*****Present At The Creation-The Penguins’ Earth Angel (1955)

*****Present At The Creation-The Penguins’ Earth Angel (1955)

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Deep in the dark red scare Cold War night, still brewing then even after Uncle Joe fell down in his Red Square drunken stupor spilling potato-etched Vodka all over the Central Committee, the Politburo, or his raggedy-ass cronies who were to pick up the pieces after he breathed his last, one night and never came back, so yeah still brewing after Uncle Joe kissed off in his vast red earth, still brewing as a child remembered in dark back of school dreams about Soviet nightmares, worried about the whether those heathens (later to find out that Miss Todd who first made him and his classmates aware of the scorched red earth menace had been wrong that they were atheists not heathen, a very different thing, but she wanted to make us think they were in need of some high Catholic missionary work and so heathen)under Uncle Joe wondering how the Russkie kids got through it, and still brewing too when Miss Winot in her pristine glory told each and every one of her fourth grade charges, us, that come that Russkie madness, come the Apocalypse, come the big bad ass mega-bombs that each and every one of her charges shall come that thundering god-awful air raid siren call duck, quickly and quietly, under his or her desk and then place his or his hands, also quickly and quietly, one over the other on the top of his or her head, a small breeze was coming to the land (of course being pristine and proper she did not dig down deep to titillate us with such terms as “big bad ass” but let’s face it that is what she meant, and maybe in the teachers' room or some night out in the moonless moors she sued such terms you never know).

Maybe nobody saw it coming although the more I think about the matter somebody, some bodies knew something, not those supposedly in the know about such times, those who are supposed to catch the breezes before they move beyond their power to curtail them, guys in the government who keep an eagle eye on such things, or professors endlessly prattling on about some idea about what the muck of society has turned into due to their not catching that breeze that was coming across their faces like some North wind. 

No those guys, no way they are usually good at the wrap-up. The what it all meant par after the furies were over. Here is what I am talking about when I talk about guys who know what to know, and how to play it to their advantages. Take guys like my older brother Franklin and his friends, Benny, sometimes called "the Knife" and Jimmy, who was called just Jimmy, who were playing some be-bop  stuff up in his room. Ma refused to let Franklin play his songs on the family record player down center stage in the living room or flip the dial on the kitchen radio away from her tunes of the roaring 1940s, her and my father’s coming of age time, so up his room like some mad monk doing who knows what because I was busy worrying about riding bicycles or something. Not girls or dances stuff like that no way. Here’s the real tip-off though he and his boys would go out Friday nights to Jack Slack’s bowling alleys not to bowl, although that was the cover story to questioning mothers, but to hang around Freddie O’Toole’s car complete with turned on amped up radio (station unknown then by me but later identified as WMEX out of Boston and stull in existence the last I heard, including a few hour segment on Saturday replaying the old Arnie "Woo-Woo" Ginsberg shows that drove us wild and drive us to learn about the social customs around drive-in movies and drive-in restaurants when thinking about girls time did come) and dance, dance with girls, get it, to stuff like Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 (a great song tribute to a great automobile which nobody in our neighborhood could come close to affording so hard-working but poorly paid fathers' were reduced to cheapjack Fords and Plymouths, not cool), and guys who even today I don’t know the names of even with YouTube giving everybody with every kind of musical inclination a blast to the past ticket.

Here's something outside the neighborhood just to show it was hard-ass Franklin Webber who was hip to all things rock. So how about the times we, the family, would go up to Boston for some Catholic thing filled with incense and high Latin everybody mumbling prayers for forgiveness, when they did nothing to be forgiven for, into the South End at Holy Cross Cathedral and smack across from the church was the later famous Red Hat Club where guys were blasting away at pianos, on guitars and on big ass sexy saxes and it was not the big band sound my folks listened to or cool, cool be-bop jazz either that drove the "beat" night but music from jump street, etched in the back of my brain because remember I’m still fussing over bikes and stuff like that and not worrying about guys hitting the high white note. Or how about every time we went down Massachusetts Avenue in Boston as the sun went down, the “Negro” part before you hit Huntington Avenue at Symphony Hall (an area that Malcolm X knew well a decade before when he was nothing but a cat hustling the midnight creep with some white girls into kicks and larcenies) and we stopped at the ten billion lights on Mass Ave and all you would hear is this bouncing beat coming from taverns, from the old time townhouse apartments and black guys dressed “to the nines,” all flash dancing on the streets with dressed “to the nines” good-looking black girls. Memory bank.           

So some guys knew, gals too don’t forget after all they had to dig the beat, dig the guys who dug the beat, the beat of  out of some Africa breeze mixed with forbidden sweated Southern lusts if the thing was going to work out. And it wasn’t all dead-ass “white negro” hipsters either eulogized by Norman Mailer (or maybe mocked you never knew with him but he sensed something was in the breeze even if he was tied more closely to an earlier sensibility) or break-out “beats” tired of the cool cold jazz that was turning in on itself, getting too technical and losing the search for the high white note or lumpens of all descriptions who whiled away the nights searching their radio dials for something that they while away the nights searching their radio dials for something that they could swing to while reefer high or codeine low.

If you, via hail YouTube, look at the Jacks and Jills dancing up a storm in the 1950s say on American Bandstand they mostly look like very proper well-dressed middle class kids who are trying to break out of the cookie-cutter existence they found themselves in but they still looked  pretty well-fed and well-heeled so yeah, some guys and gals and it wasn’t always who you might suspect like Franklin, white hipsters, black saints, and sexy sax players that got hip, got that back-beat and those piano riffs etched into their brains.

Maybe though the guys in the White House were too busy worrying about what Uncle Joe’s progeny were doing out in the missile silos of Minsk, maybe the professional television talkers on Meet The Press wanted to discuss the latest turn in national and international politics for a candid world to hear and missed what was happening out in the cookie-cutter neighborhoods, and maybe the academic sociologists and professional criminologists were too wrapped up in figuring out why Marlon Brando was sulking in his corner boy kingdom (and wreaking havoc on a fearful small town world when he and the boys broke out), why  Johnny Spain had that “shiv” ready to do murder and mayhem to the next midnight passer-by, and why well-groomed and fed James Dean was brooding in the “golden age” land of plenty but the breeze was coming.

(And you could add in the same brother Franklin who as I was worrying about bikes, not the two pedal kid powered but some bad ass Vincent Black Lightning kind, getting “from hunger” to get a Brando bike, a varoom bike, so this girl, Wendy, from school, would take his bait, a girl that my mother fretted was from the wrong side of town, her way of saying Wendy was a tramp and maybe she was although she was nice to me when Franklin brought her around still she was as smart as hell once I found out about her school and home life a few years later after she, they, Wendy and Franklin, had left town on some big ass Norton but that is after the creation so I will let it go for now.)               

And then it came, came to us in our turn, came like some Kansas whirlwind, came like the ocean churning up the big waves crashing to a defenseless shoreline, came if the truth be known like the “second coming” long predicted and not just by mad man poet Yeats and his Easter, 1916 mind proclaiming a terrible beauty is born, and the brethren, us,  were waiting, waiting like we had been waiting all our short spell lives. Came in a funny form, or rather ironically funny forms, as it turned out.

Came one time, came big as 1954 turned to 1955 and a guy, get this, dressed not in sackcloth or hair-shirt but in a sport’s jacket, a Robert Hall sport’s jacket from the "off the rack" look of it when he and the boys were “from hunger,” playing for coffee and crullers before on the low life circuit, a little on the heavy side with a little boy’s regular curl in his hair and blasted the whole blessed world to smithereens. Blasted every living breathing teenager, boy or girl, out of his or her lethargy, got the blood flowing. The guy Bill Haley, goddam an old lounge lizard band guy who decided to move the beat forward from cool ass be-bop jazz and sweet romance popular music and make everybody, every kid jump, yeah Big Bill Haley and his Comets, the song Rock Around The Clock.         

Came as things turned to a little more hep cat too, came all duck walk and sex moves, feet moving faster than Bill could ever do, came out of Saint Loo, came out with a crazy beat. Came out in suit and tie all swagger. Came out with a big baby girl guitar that twisted up the chords something fierce and declared to the candid world, us, that Maybelline was his woman. But get this, because what did we know of “color” back then when we lived in an all-white Irish Catholic neighborhoods and since we heard what we heard of rock and roll mostly on the radio we were shocked when we found out the first time that he was a “Negro” to use the polite parlance of the times not always used in the house, the neighborhood, the town, a black man making us go to “jump street.” And we bought into it, bought into the beat, and joined him in saying to Mister Beethoven that you and your brethren best move over because there is a new sheriff in town.   

Came sometimes in slo-mo, hey remember this rock and roll idea was as an ice-breaker with a beat you didn’t  have to dance close to with your partner and get all tied up in knots forgetting when to twirl, when to whirl, when to do a split but kind of free form for the guys (or gals, but mainly guys) with two left feet like me could survive, maybe not survive the big one if the Russkies decided to go over the top with the bomb, but that school dance and for your free-form efforts maybe that she your eyeballs were getting sore over would consent to the last chance  last dance that you waited around for in case she was so impressed she might want to go with you some place later. But before that “some place later” you had to negotiate and the only way to do was to bust up a slow one, a dreamy one to get her in the mood and hence people have been singing songs from time immemorial to get people in the mood, this time Earth Angel would do the trick. Do the trick as long as you navigated those toes of hers, left her with two feet and standing. Dance slow, very slow brother.   

Here is the funny thing, funny since we were present at the creation, present in spite of every command uttered by Miss Winot against it, declaring the music worse than that Russkie threat if you believed her (a few kids, girls mainly, did whether to suck up to her since she would take their entreaties and suck ups seriously although boys were strictly “no go” and I know having spent many a missed sunny afternoon doing some silly “punishment” for her since she was impervious to my sly charms).We were just too young to deeply imbibe the full measure of what we were hearing. See this music, music we started calling rock and roll once somebody gave it a name (super DJ impresario Alan Freed as we found out later after we had already become “children of rock and roll”) was meant, was blessedly meant to be danced to which meant in that boy-girl age we who didn’t even like the opposite sex as things stood then were just hanging by our thumbs.

Yeah, was meant to be danced to at “petting parties” in dank family room basements by barely teenage boys and girls. Was meant to be danced to at teenage dance clubs where everybody was getting caught up on learning the newest dance moves and the latest “cool” outfits to go along with that new freedom. Was meant to serve as a backdrop at Doc’s Drugstore’s soda fountain where Doc had installed a jukebox complete with all the latest tunes as boys and girls shared a Coke sipping slowly with two straws hanging out in one frosted glass. Was meant to be listened to by corner boys at Jack Slack’s bowling alley where Jack eventually had set up a small dance floor so kids could dance while waiting for lanes to open (otherwise everybody would be still dancing out in front of O’Toole’s “boss” car complete with amped-up radio not to Jack’s profit). Was meant to be listened to as the sun went down in the west at the local drive-in restaurant while the hamburgers and fries were cooking and everybody was waiting for darkness to fall so the real night could begin, the night of dancing in dark corners and exploring the mysteries of the universe, or at least the mysteries of Miss Sarah Brown.  Was even meant to be listened to on fugitive transistor radios in the that secluded off-limits to adults and little kids (us) where teens, boys and girls, mixed and matched in the drive-in movie night (and would stutter some nonsense to questioning parents who wanted to know the plot of the movies- what movies, Ma).              

Yeah, we were just a little too young even if we can legitimately claim to have been present at the creation. But we will catch up, catch up with a vengeance.