*****Searching For The American Songbook - In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute-The Joy Street Coffeehouse In Mind

*****Searching For The American Songbook - In The Time Of The 1960s Folk Minute-The Joy Street Coffeehouse In Mind

 

Introduction

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

I recently completed the second leg of this series, sketches from the time of my coming of age classic rock and roll from about the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, a series which is intended to go through different stages of the American songbook as it has evolved since the 19^th century, especially music that could be listened to by the general population through radio, record player, television, and more recently the fantastic number of ways to listen to it all from computers to iPods. This series was not intended to be placed in any chronological order so the first leg dealt, and I think naturally so given the way my musical interests got formed, with the music of my parents’ generation, that being the parents of the generation of ’68, those who struggled through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s.

This third leg is centered on the music of the folk minute that captured a segment of my generation of ’68 as it came of social and political age in the early 1960s. It is easy now to forget in the buzz of the moment that this segment was fairly small to begin with people who stayed with it for a few years and then like the rest of us got back to the new rock and roll that was taking center stage by the time of the summers of love. Today when talking to people, to those who slogged through the 1960s with me, those who will become very animated about Deadhead experiences, Golden Gate Park Airplane going-ons, their merry-prankster-like “on the bus” experiences, even death Altamont when I ask about the influence of folk they will look at me with pained blank expressions or cite ritualistically Bob Dylan confirms how small and where that folk minute was concentrated.

Early on though some of us felt a fresh breeze was coming through the land, were desperately hoping that it was not some ephemeral rising and then back to business as usual, although we certainly being young did not dwell on that ebb tide idea since like with our physical selves we thought our ideas once implanted would last forever. Silly kids. Maybe it was the change in political atmosphere pulling us forward as men (and it was mostly men then) born in the 20^th century were beginning to take over from the old fogies (our father/uncle/godfather Ike and his ilk) and we would fall in behind them. Maybe it was the swirl just then being generated questioning lots of old things like the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) red scare investigations, like Mister James Crow in the South and  the ghettos of the North, like why did we need all those nuclear bombs that were going to do nothing but turn us into flames. Maybe it was that last faint echo of the “beats” with their poetry, their be-bop jazz, their nightly escapade trying to hold onto that sullen look of Marlon Brando, that brooding look of James Dean, that cool pitter-patter of Alan Ginsberg against the night-stealers. Heady stuff, no question.

Maybe too since it involved cultural expression (although we would be clueless to put what we felt in those terms, save that for the folk music academics complete with endnotes and footnotes after the fire had burned out) and our cultural expression centered around jukeboxes and transistor radios it was that we had, some of us, tired of the Fabians, the various Bobbys (Vee, Darin, Rydell, etc.), the various incarnations of Sandra Dee, Leslie Gore, Brenda Lee, etc., wanted a new sound, or as it turned out a flowing back to the roots music, to the time and place when people had to make their own music or go without (it gets a little mixed up once the radio widened the horizons of who could hear what and when). So, yes, we wanted to know what on those lonely Saturday nights gave our forebears pause, let them sit back maybe listen to some hot-blooded black man with a primitive guitar playing the blues (a step up from the kids’ stuff nailed one-eyed string hung from the front porch but nowhere near that coveted National Steel beauty they eyed in the pawnshop in town just waiting to rise up singing), some jazz, first old time religion stuff and then the flicker of that last fade be-bop with that solid sexy sax searching for the high white note, mountain music, all fiddles and mandolins, playing against that late night wind coming down the hills and hollows reaching that red barn just in time to finish up that last chance slow moaning waltz. Yes, and Tex-Mex, Western swing, Child ballads and the “new wave” protest sound that connected our new breeze political understandings with our musical interests.

The folk music minute was for me, and not just me, thus something of a branching off for a while from rock and roll in its doldrums since a lot of what we were striving for was to make a small musical break-out from the music that we came of chronological age to unlike the big break-out that rock and roll represented from the music that was wafting through many of our parents’ houses in the early 1950s.

In preparing this part of the series I have been grabbing a lot of anecdotal remarks from some old-time folkies. People I have run into over the past several years in the threadbare coffeehouses and cafes I frequent around New England. You know, and I am being completely unfair here, those guys with the long beards and unkempt balding hair hidden by a knotted ponytail, flannel, clean or unclean, shirt regardless of weather and blue jeans, unclean, red bandana in the back pocket, definitely unclean and harmonica at the ready going on and on about how counter-revolutionary Bob Dylan was to hook up the treasured acoustic guitar to an amp in about 1965 and those gals who are still wearing those shapeless flour bag dresses, letting their hair grow grey or white, wearing the formerly “hip” now mandatory granny glasses carrying some autoharp or other such old-time instrument like they just got out of some hills and hollows of Appalachia (in reality mostly with nice Ivy League seven sisters resumes after their names)  arguing about how any folk song created after about 1922 is not really a folk song both sexes obviously having not gotten the word that, ah, times have changed. In short those folkies who are still alive and kicking and still interested in talking about that minute. And continuing to be unfair not much else except cornball archaic references that are supposed to produce “in the know” laughs but which were corny even back then when they held forth in the old Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford of blessed memory where budding songwriters wrote on etched napkins the next great Kumbaya hit, non-songwriters tuned up their Yamaha guitars by ear, by ear, Jesus, to play for the “basket” out in the mean streets after they had their fill of the see-through coffee provided by the place, small-voiced poets echoed Ginsberg eve of destruction sonnets, and new guard writers wore down pencil stubs and erasers catching all the sounds and hubris around them mixed with sotted winos, sterno bums , con men, hustlers, misguided hookers, and junkies to fill the two in the morning air.

For those not in the know, or who have not seen the previously described denizens of the folk night in your travels, folk music is still alive and well (for the moment, the demographic trends are more frightening as the dying embers flicker) in little enclaves throughout the country mainly in New England but in other outposts as well. Those enclaves and outposts are places where some old “hippies,” “folkies,” communalists, went after the big splash 1960s counter-cultural explosion ebbed in about 1971 (that is my signpost for the ebb, the time when we tried to “turn the world upside down” in Washington over the Vietnam war by attempting to shut the government down if they refused to shut down the war and got nothing but teargas, police sticks and thousands of arrests for out troubles, others have earlier and later dates and events which seemed decisive but all that I have spoken to, or have an opinion on, agree by the mid-1970s that wave had tepidly limped to shore). Places like Saratoga, New York, Big Sur and Joshua Tree out in California, Taos, Eugene, Boise, Butte, Boulder, as well as the traditional Village, Harvard Square, North Beach/Berkeley haunts of memory. They survive, almost all of them, through the support of a dwindling number of aficionados and a few younger kids, kids who if not the biological off-spring of the folk minute then very much like those youthful by-gone figures and who somehow got into their parents’ stash of folk albums and liked what they heard against the current trends in music, in once a month socially-conscious Universalist-Unitarian church basement coffeehouses, school activity rooms booked for the occasional night, small local restaurants and bars sponsoring “open mics” on off-nights to draw a little bigger dinner crowd, and probably plenty of other small ad hoc venues where there are enough people with guitars, mandos, harmonicas, and what have you to while away an evening.            

There seems to be a consensus among my anecdotal sources  that their first encounter with folk music back then, other than when they were in the junior high school music class where one  would get a quick checkerboard of various types of music and maybe hear This Land Is Your Land in passing, was through the radio. That junior high school unconscious introduction of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land had been my own introduction in Mr. Dasher’s seventh grade Music Appreciation class where he inundated us with all kinds of songs from everywhere like the Red River Valley and the Mexican Hat Dance. For his efforts he was innocently nicknamed by us “Dasher The Flasher,” a moniker that would not serve him well in these child-worried times by some nervous parents.    

A few folkies that I had run into back then, fewer now, including a couple of girlfriends back then as I entered college picked up, like some of those few vagrant younger aficionados hanging around the clubs, the music via their parents’ record collections although that was rare and back then and usually meant that the parents had been some kind of progressives back in the 1930s and 1940s when Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Pete Seeger and others lit up the leftist firmament in places like wide-open New York City. Today the parents, my generation parents would have been in the civil rights movement, SDS or maybe the anti-war movement although the latter was drifting more by then to acid rock as the foundational music.

That radio by the way would be the transistor radio usually purchased at now faded Radio Shack by frustrated parents, frustrated that we were playing that loud unwholesome rock and roll music on the family record player causing them to miss their slumbers, and was attached to all our youthful ears placed there away from prying parents and somehow if you were near an urban area you might once you tired of the “bubble gum” music on the local rock station flip the dial and get lucky some late night, usually Sunday and find an errant station playing such fare.

That actually had been my experience one night, one Sunday night in the winter of 1962 (month and date lost in the fog of memory) when I was just flipping the dial and came upon the voice of a guy, an old pappy guy I assumed, singing a strange song in a gravelly voice which intrigued me because that was neither a rock song nor a rock voice. The format of the show as I soon figured out as I continued to listen that night was that the DJ would, unlike the rock stations which played one song and then interrupted the flow with at least one commercial for records, drive-in movies, drive-in theaters, maybe suntan lotion, you know stuff kids with disposable income would take a run at, played several songs so I did not find out who the singer was until a few songs later. The song was identified by the DJ as the old classic mountain tune “discovered” by Cecil Sharpe in the hills and hollows of Appalachian Kentucky in 1916 Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies, the singer the late Dave Von Ronk who, as I found out later doubled up as a very informative folk historian and who now has a spot, a street last I heard, in the Village in New York where he hailed from named after him, the station WBZ in Boston not a station that under ordinary circumstances youth would have tuned into then since it was mainly a news and talk show station, the DJ Dick Summer a very central figure in spreading the folk gospel and very influential in promoting local folk artists like Tom Rush on the way up as noted in a recent documentary, No Regrets, about Rush’s fifty plus years in folk music. I was hooked.

That program also played country blues stuff, stuff that folk aficionados had discovered down south as part of our generation took seriously the search for roots, music, cultural, family, and which would lead to the “re-discovery” of the likes of Son House (and that flailing National Steel guitar that you can see him flail like crazy on Death Letter Blues on YouTube these days), Bukka White (all sweaty, all feisty, playing the hell out of his National face up with tunes like Aberdeen, Mississippi Woman and Panama, Limited) Skip James (all cool hand Luke singing that serious falsetto on I’d Rather Be The Devil Than Be That Woman’s Man which got me in trouble more than one time with women including recently), and Mississippi John Hurt (strumming seemingly casually his moaning Creole Belle and his slyly salacious Candy Man).

I eventually really learned about the blues, the country stuff from down south which coincides with roots and folk music and the more muscular (plugged in electrically) Chicago city type blues that connects with the beginnings of rock and roll, which will be the next and final leg of this series, straight up though from occasionally getting late, late at night, usually on a Sunday for some reason, Be-Bop Benny’s Blues Hour from WXKE in Chicago but that is another story. Somebody once explained to me the science behind what happened on certain nights with the distant radio waves that showed up mostly because then their frequencies overrode closer signals. What I know for sure that it was not was the power of that dinky transistor radio with its two nothing batteries. So for a while I took those faraway receptions as a sign of the new dispensation coming to free us, of the new breeze coming through the land in our search for an earthly Eden. Praise be.          

If the first exposure for many of us was through the radio, especially those a bit removed from urban areas, the thing that made most of us “folkies” of whatever duration was the discovery and appeal of the coffeehouses. According to legend (Dave Von Ronk legend anyway) in the mid to late 1950s such places were hang-outs for “beat” poets when that Kerouac/Ginsberg/Cassady flame was all the rage and folkies like him just starting out were reduced to clearing the house between shows with a couple of crowd-fleeing folk songs, or else they got the boot and the remnants of street singer life forlorn “basket” in front trying to make rent money.

But by the early 1960s the dime had turned and it was all about folk music. Hence the appeal for me of Harvard Square not all that far away, certainly close enough to get to on weekends in high school. With Club 47, the “flagship,” obviously, Café Nana, the Algiers, Café Blanco, and a number of other coffeehouses all located within a few blocks of each other in the Square there were plenty of spots which drew us in to that location. (That Cub 47, subject a few years ago to its own documentary, was the spawning grounds and the testing ground for many folk artists like Dylan, Baez, Rush, Von Schmidt, Paxton, to perform and perfect their acts before friendly appreciative audiences that would not heckle them. The Club which has had something of a continuous history now operates as a non-profit as the Club Passim in a different location in Harvard Square near the Harvard Co-Op Bookstore.)    

The beauty of such places for poor boy high school students like me or lowly cash-poor college students interested in the folk scene was that for the price of a coffee, usually expresso so you could get your high a little off the extra caffeine but more importantly you could take tiny sips and make it last which you wanted to do so you could hold your spot at the table in some places, and maybe some off-hand pastry (usually a brownie or wedge of cake not always fresh but who cared as long as the coffee, like I said, usually expresso to get a high caffeine kick, was fresh since it was made by the cup from elaborate copper-plated coffeemakers from Europe or someplace like that), you could sit there for a few hours and listen to up and coming folk artists working out the kinks in their routines. Add in a second coffee unless the girl had agreed to an uncool “dutch treat,” not only uncool but you were also unlikely to get to first base especially if she had to pay her bus fare too, share the brownie or stale cake and you had a cheap date. 

Occasionally there was a few dollar cover for “established” acts like Joan Baez, Tom Rush, the Clancy Brothers, permanent Square fixture Eric Von Schmidt, but mainly the performers worked for the “basket,” the passing around of the hat for the cheap date guys and others “from hunger” to show appreciation, hoping against hope to get twenty buck to cover rent and avoid starving until the next gig. Of course since the audience was low-budget high school students, college kids and starving artists that goal was sometimes a close thing and accordingly the landlord would have to be pieced off with a few bucks until times got better.

Yeah, those were “from hunger” days at the beginning of their careers for most performers as that talent “natural selection process” and the decision at some point to keep pushing on or to go back to whatever else you were trained to do kept creeping foremost in their thoughts when the folk minute faded and there was not enough work to keep body and soul alive whatever the ardent art spirit. Some of them faced that later too, some who went back to that whatever they were trained to do and then got the folk music gig itch again, guys like Geoff Muldaur and Jim Kweskin from the Kweskin Jug Band, David Bromberg, gals like Carolyn Hester, Minnie Smith after somebody said “hey, whatever happened to….” and they meant them. That natural selection thing was weird, strange for those who had to make decisions in those days (now too) about talent and drive over the long haul. You would see some guy like Paul Jefferson a great guitar player who did lots of Woody Guthrie covers and had a local following in the Café Nana working hard or Cherry La Plante who had a ton of talent and a voice like floating clouds and had steady work in the Café Blanc fold up their tents once they hit a certain threshold, a few years working the local clubs and no better offers coming along and so they bailed out. They and those like them just did not have the talent or drive or chutzpah to keep going and so they faded. You still see Paul once in a while at “open mics” around Boston performing for much smaller crowds than in the old days and the last I heard of Cherry was that she had drifted west and was getting a few bookings in the cafes out in Oregon. But in the day it was all good, all good to hear and see as they tried to perfect their acts.   

For alienated and angst-ridden youth like me (and probably half my generation if the information I have received some fifty years later stands up and does not represent some retro-fitted analysis filtered through a million sociological and psychological studies), although I am not sure I would have used those words for my feelings in those days the coffeehouse scene was the great escape from household independence struggles of which I was always, always hear me, at the short end of the stick. Probably the best way to put the matter is to say that when I read J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, over a non-stop weekend I was so engrossed in the page after page happenings, I immediately identified with Holden Caulfield whatever differences of time, place and class stood between us and when asked my opinion of him by my English teacher I made her and the whole class laugh when I said “I am Holden Caulfield”), or when I saw The Wild One at the retro-Strand Theater in downtown Carver I instinctively sided with poor boy Johnny and his “wanting habits” despite my painfully negative experiences with outlaw motorcycle guys headed by local hard boy Red Riley who hung out at Harry’s Variety Store as they ran through our section of town like the Huns of old. If I had been able to put the feelings into words and actions it would have been out of sympathy for the outcasts, misfits, and beaten down who I identified with then (not quite in the Jack Kerouac beaten down hipsters or night-dwellers who survived with a certain swagger and low hum existence sense). So yeah, the coffeehouses offered sanctuary.

For others (and me too on occasion) those establishments also provided a very cheap way to deal with the date issue, as long as you picked dates who shared your folk interests. That pick was important because more than once I took a promising date to the Joy Street Coffeehouse up on Boston’s Beacon Hill where I knew the night manager and could get in for free who was looking for something speedier like maybe a guy with a car, preferably a ’57 Chevy or something with plenty of chrome, and that was the end of that promise.  For those who shared my interest like I said before for the price of two coffees(which were maybe fifty cents each, something like that, but don’t take that as gospel), maybe a shared pastry and a couple of bucks in the “basket” to show you appreciated the efforts, got you those hours of entertainment. But mainly the reason to go to the Square or Joy Street early on was to hear the music that as my first interest blossomed I could not find on the radio, except that Dick Summer show on Sunday night for a couple of hours. Later it got better with more radio shows, some television play when the thing got big enough that even the networks caught on with bogus clean-cut  Hootenanny-type shows, and as more folkies got record contracts because then you could start grabbing records at places like Sandy’s in between Harvard and Central Squares.               

Of course sometimes if you did not have dough, or if you had no date, and yet you still had those home front civil wars to contend with and that you needed to retreat from you could still wind up in the Square. Many a late weekend night, sneaking out of the house through a convenient back door which protected me from sight, parents sight, I would grab the then all-night Redline subway to the Square and at that stop (that was the end of the line then) take the stairs to the street two steps at a time and bingo have the famous (or infamous) all-night Hayes-Bickford in front of me. There as long as you were not rowdy like the winos, hoboes, and con men you could sit at a table and watch the mix and match crowds come and go. Nobody bothered you, certainly not the hired help who were hiding away someplace at those hours, and since it was cafeteria-style passing your tray down a line filled with steam-saturated stuff and incredibly weak coffee that tasted like dishwater must taste, you did not have to fend off waitresses. (I remember the first time I went in by myself I sat, by design, at a table that somebody had vacated with the dinnerware still not cleared away and with the coffee mug half full and claimed the cup to keep in front of me. When the busboy, some high school kid like me, came to clear the table he “hipped me” to the fact that nobody gave a rat’s ass if you bought anything just don’t act up and draw attention to yourself. Good advice, brother, good advice.)

Some nights you might be there when some guy or gal was, in a low voice, singing their latest creation, working up their act in any case to a small coterie of people in front of them. That was the real import of the place, you were there on the inside where the new breeze that everybody in the Square was expecting took off and you hoped you would get caught up in the fervor too. Nice.        

As I mentioned in the rock and roll series, which really was the music of our biological coming of age time, folk was the music of our social and political coming of age time. A fair amount of that sentiment got passed along to us during our folk minute as we sought out different explanations for the events of the day, reacted against the grain of what was conventional knowledge. Some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to why we were attuned to this music when we came of age in a world, a very darkly-etched world, which we too like most of our parents had not created, and had no say in creating. That clueless in the past about the draw included a guy, me, a coalminer’s son who got as caught up in the music of his time as any New York City Village Jack or Jill or Chi Old Town frat or frail. My father in his time, wisely or not considering  what ill-fate befell him later, had busted out of the tumbled down tarpaper shacks down in some Appalachia hills and hollows, headed north, followed the northern star, his own version, and never looked back and neither did his son.

Those of us who came of age, biological, political, and social age kicking, screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the time of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all fronts and that included from the commercial Tin Pan Alley song stuff. The staid Eisenhower red scare cold war stuff (he our parents’ organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike). Hell, we knew that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go down into some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to high heaven that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the bomb,” many bombs. And every righteous teenager had restless night’s sleep, a nightmare that, he or she, was trapped in some fashionable family fall-out shelter bunker and those loving parents had thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage beasts for the duration. Yelling in that troubled sleep please, please, please if we must die then at least let’s go out to Jerry Lee’s High School Confidential. And as we matured Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind.    

We were moreover, some of us anyway, and I like to think the best of us, driven by some makeshift dreams, ready to cross our own swords with the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby, sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear in this quarter, quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a newer world.” Those who took up the call to action heralded by the new dispensation and slogged through the 60s decade whether it was in the civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came down were kindred. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for, desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone.

These following sketches and as with the previous two series that is all they are, and all they pretend to be, link up the music of the generation of ‘68s social and political coming of age time gleaned from old time personal remembrances, the remembrances of old time folkies recently met and of those met long ago in the Club 47, Café Lena, Club Paradise, Café North Beach night.

The truth of each sketch is in the vague mood that they invoke rather than any fidelity to hard and fast fact. They are all based on actual stories, more or less prettified and sanitized to avoid any problems with lose of reputation of any of the characters portrayed and any problems with some lingering statute of limitations. That truth, however, especially in the hands of old-time corner boys like me and the other guys who passed through the corner at Jack Slack’s bowling  alleys must always be treated like a pet rattlesnake. Very carefully.

Still the overall mood should more than make up for the lies thrown at you, especially on the issue of sex, or rather the question of the ages on that issue, who did or did not do what to whom on any given occasion. Those lies filled the steamy nights and frozen days then, and that was about par for the course, wasn’t it. But enough of that for this series is about our uphill struggles to make our vision of the our newer world, our struggles to  satisfy our hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in our youth  we dreamed by on cold winter nights and hot summer days.  

 

*****Support "Courage To Resist"-The Organization Supporting Chelsea Manning And Other Military Resisters

*****Support "Courage To Resist"-The Organization Supporting Military Resisters And Chelsea Manning 

Frank Jackman comment on Courage To Resist and military resisters: 

During the early stages of the Vietnam War, say 1965, 1966, frankly, I was annoyed at, dismayed by, appalled by and perplexed by guys my age, who were refusing to be drafted, refusing in some cases to even sign up for the draft (although I admit I was “late” signing up myself not for political or moral reasons but because I was not living at home having left on the first of about six estrangements from my family and did not receive the letter about the legal requirement to register until much later). Refusing and making a big public deal out of it. And this draft resistance movement was not some faraway situation heard on the news out in the suburbs about actions in the big cities or on some ivy-covered Ivy League elitist campuses but because while I was going to school I supported myself by getting up very early and servicing coffee- making machines in various locales in downtown Boston, including near the landmark draft resistance center, the Arlington Street Church (now U/U –Universalist-Unitarian but then I believe home to only one of the two having subsequently united but I am not sure which denomination ruled the roost at that location then although I believe it was the blessed Unitarians, now blessed for their generous help in the struggles against war and lesser known place of refuge for vagrant monthly folk-music friendly coffeehouses.)

 

The Arlington Street Church moreover held itself out as a main sanctuary protecting under long time religious principles draft-resisters who had taken shelter there in order to avoid being arrested by federal law enforcement agents. So many mornings there would be a bee-hive of activity outside and around the church in support of the resisters. The sight of straggly guys and their supporters protesting would get my blood pressure rising.   

Now it was not that I was particularly pro-war even then, probably had not been in favor of escalation of that war and support to the South Vietnamese government since about the time of the Diem regime, the time before Jack Kennedy was murdered in 1963. Somehow I sensed that with each tragic turn there the noose of the draft would tighten around my own neck. But in those days, whatever else I held politically sacred, I, a working class guy from North Adamsville, held all of the usual patriotic sentiments about country, about service and about military duty of my neighborhood and upbringing.

As my grandfather, a veteran of World War I, said of his own experience of volunteering when President Wilson pulled the hammer down looking for recruits back then, never volunteer but if called you go, say you went willingly if anybody asked. So the thought of anybody “shirking” their duty if called really rankled me and while later I did a complete turn-around about the draft resisters, especially the ones who chose jail rather military service then I was disgusted. Disgusted as well by what I perceived vaguely as a class-bias about who was refusing to go and who had to go if those who would normally be called refused to go-working class and minority guys. Don’t hold me to some kind of prescience on that because that was just a vague underpinning for my general reasons of patriotic duty but in the case when I did my own military service, my infantryman grunt service guess who the other guys in the barracks and tents were-yeah, working class and minority guys.

I, on the other hand, have always admired military resisters since my knowledge of them and their actions came later after I had begun my sea-change of views. Knowing too by personal experience that “bucking” the Army system and winding up in the stockade, or worse the dreaded Fort Leavenworth every drill sergeant made a point of telling us about if we screwed up. But I was no resister having, frankly, done my time in the military, Vietnam time, without any serious reflection about the military, my role in the military, or what was just and unjust about that war until after I got out. After I got out and began to see things without “the fog of war” and its infernal “do it for your buddies” which is what a lot of things came down to in the end blinding me and got serious “religion” on the questions of war and peace from several sources.

At first I began working with the Cambridge Quakers who I had noticed around the fringes of anti-war GI work in the early 1970s when there was a serious basis for doing such work as the American army, for one reason or another whether the craziness of pursuing the war, racism, or just guys being fed-up with being cannon-fodder for Mister’s war, was half in mutiny and the other half disaffected toward the end of American involvement in that war. The Quakers front and center on the military resisters just as they had been with the draft resisters at a time when there was a serious need as guys, guys who got their “religion” in the service needed civilian help to survive the military maze that they were trying to fight. This connection with the Quakers had been made shortly after I got out of the service when my doubts crept in about what I had done in the service, and why I had let myself be drafted and why I hadn’t expressed serious anti-war doubts before induction about what the American government was doing in Vietnam to its own soldiers. But, more importantly, and this was the real beginning of wisdom and something I am keenly aware every time the American government ratchets up the war hysteria for its latest adventure, to the Vietnamese who to paraphrase the great boxer Mohammed Ali (then Cassius Clay) had never done anything to me, never posed any threat to me and mine. But as much as I admired the Quakers and their simple peace witness, occasionally attended their service and briefly had a Quaker girlfriend, I was always a little jumpy around them, my problem not theirs, since their brand of conscientious objection to all wars was much broader than my belief in just and unjust wars.

Later I worked with a couple of anti-war collectives that concentrated on anti-war GI work among active GIs through the vehicle of coffeehouses located near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and Fort Dix down in New Jersey. That work was most satisfying and rewarding as I actually worked with guys who knew the score, knew the score from the inside, and had plenty to tell, especially those who had gotten “religion” under fire although that experience was short-lived once American on the ground involvement in Vietnam was minimalized and the horrific draft was abolished as a means of grabbing “cannon fodder” for the damn war. Once the threat of being sent to Vietnam diminished the soldiers drifted off and the anti-war cadre that held things together as well.

What really drove the issue of military resistance home to me though, what caused some red-faced shame was something that I did not find out about until well after my own military service was over. A few years later when I went back to my hometown on some family-related business (another futile attempt to rekindle the family ties) I found out after meeting him on the street coming out of a local supermarket that my best friend from high school, Sean Kiley, had been a military resister, had refused to go to Vietnam, and had served about two years in various Army stockades here in America for his efforts. Had done his “duty” as he saw it. Had earned his “anti-war” colors the hard way.

See Sean like me, like a lot of working-class kids from places like our hometown  up in Massachusetts, maybe had a few doubts about the war but had no way to figure out what to do and let himself be drafted for that very reason. What would a small town boy whose citizens supported the Vietnam War long after it made even a smidgen of sense, whose own parents were fervent “hawks,” whose older brother had won the DSC in Vietnam, and whose contemporaries including me did their service without a public murmur know of how to maneuver against the American military monster machine. But what Sean saw early on, from about day three of basis training, told him he had made a big error, that his grandmother who grew up in Boston and had been an old Dorothy Day Catholic Worker supporter had been right that there was no right reason for him to be in that war. And so when he could, after receiving orders for Vietnam, he refused to go and did his time in the military that way.           

[In an earlier version of this sketch I mentioned that I would fill in more about Sean’s anti-war military resister story when I got a chance to talk to him about some of the details of that story that I had forgotten. We recently got together as part of a contingent from Boston Veterans for Peace that went up to Maine to walk part of the way in the Maine VFP-led sixteen day walk from Ellsworth up near Bar Harbor along U.S. Route One to the Portsmouth Naval Base in New Hampshire calling for the demilitarization of the seas. As fate would have it a Quaker woman, Sally Rich, who had helped to publicize Sean’s case had joined the walk in Freeport where she now lives. This surprise encounter led to the two of them talking one evening during a pot luck supper in Portland about Sean’s case. Other younger walkers were very interested in hearing the story and so Sean told it and these are my recollections of what he said that night. I checked with him to make sure I had it right so this is pretty close to what happened back then.]     

 

 “You know I haven’t told this story in years, haven’t had to since the draft went down in flames back in the 1970s and except for people like most of you, people who won their spurs in the peace movement way back in the 1960s, maybe before, there had been not need to tell it. It really is the story of why almost fifty years later I am pounding the bloody pavements of Maine something I would probably not be doing if the fates had worked otherwise. Certainly I would not use the story, most of it anyway, if we were out counter-recruiting in the high schools because with the volunteer military it would go over their heads. But you can relate to this story because you, somebody you know, or knew, some guy anyway back then had to face the draft and what to do, or not do about it.

Now I was a college student back in Boston in the mid-1960s as the crescendo of anti-Vietnam War activity came through the campuses and so I was vaguely anti-war, probably as much as any Boston college student but not actively. Strangely on that issue I was kind of behind the curb since on social issues; the war on poverty, civil rights in the South which meant black civil rights, abolition of capital punishment, and nuclear disarmament I was well left of center, left of Bobby Kennedy my political hero then whom I worked for that fateful spring of 1968 until he was assassinated. I wasn’t into draft resistance, street protests, that kind of thing although I wasn’t hostile to any such efforts. Mostly though I was interested in my girlfriend, having sex, doing a little drugs, not much by the standards of the day but enough, going to rock concerts and letting tomorrow take care of itself, stuff like that and working for candidates like Bobby who were in the system since I wanted my own Democratic Party career, something like that.        

After graduation I had planned to go to law school as a way to put off the draft question that as the escalations in Vietnam continued and as the American body count got larger I started to focus on a bit more. Especially since by 1968 the need for ground troops was growing faster than guys were volunteering or being dragooned by their National Guard units into active service and they were no longer exempting law school students from the draft. Then in the fall of 1968 I got my notice to appear for a physical and subsequently after successfully completing that physical I got my notice to report to the Boston Army Base for induction.

Here’s where everything gets tricky though, or really my whole past, who I was, where I came from got me caught in a web. My girlfriend’s brother was in Vietnam, I had come from a family, a working class family where military service was expected, my father was a Marine in World War II and one of my uncles a lifer who would eventually become Sergeant-Major of the Army, the highest enlisted man, a couple of guys on my small street had been killed in Vietnam already so there was no social support for doing anything but take the induction. I wasn’t a CO, I didn’t even consider jail or Canada they were really not even on the radar and so although I had my qualms, maybe fears of getting killed mixed in too, I was inducted in early 1969 and sent to Fort Gordon down in Georgia, Augusta where they play the Masters golf tournament every year.

About three days, maybe four days, in I realized that I had made a very serious mistake, had not thought how contrary to my self-identity that whole basic training scene was. I was getting “religion” on the questions of war and peace very quickly. As the weeks in basic went by I got stronger in my resolve to not go to Vietnam but kept quiet about it since I was in the middle of nowhere with no resources to do anything except eat that rich red Georgia clay we grabbed every day in training. After basic I was assigned to Advanced Infantry Training, AIT, at Fort McClellan in goddam Alabama the die was cast, the noose was getting tighter since the only place for infantry men, grunts, 11 Bravos, cannon fodder was in Vietnam. The only thing I knew was when I got home I was getting some help, some outside help in order to resist orders to Vietnam that were inexorably coming at the end of that training.

After I got my orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transit to Vietnam I got to go home for thirty days on leave before reporting, the standard procedure then but a mistake by the Army in my case. After checking in with my girlfriend who was not sympathetic with my situation and whom I decided to forsake (okay dump) I went to AFSC in Cambridge since although I did not know that much about Quakers I did know that they were historically against war and knew something about CO status. I was counselled there by a guy, I forget his name, do you remember him, Sally, a tall guy with a long ponytail [Sally: no] who laid out some options without telling me what to do but with a wink. What I did was go AWOL for thirty-three days since once you have passed thirty days you are automatically dropped from the rolls of the place you were assigned to they called it. Which meant that those orders to Fort Lewis were no longer in effect since I didn’t belong there at that point. I turned myself in up at Fort Devens, the closest Army post in the area and was put in what they called a Special Detachment Unit (SPD), a unit for AWOLs and other problem children after I told them I wanted to put in for CO status.     

Now in those days except for Quakers, religious people with long histories of pacifism, it was hard to get CO status from civilian draft boards much less from the Army although federal court cases were coming through that would help both classes of cases, would help me eventually. So I put in my application, went through the procedure which I won’t go through since while I was termed “sincere” which would also help me later I was turned down. Turned down in the Army meant to get those orders to Vietnam again.

I was not going, no way not after that trial by fire in my head and that is when after a ton of thought I decided that I was going to refuse to wear the uniform at the weekly Monday morning head count, the morning report they called it to see who was in and who was missing, AWOL. I did so also carrying a sign when said “Bring The Troops Home.” Needless to say I was in trouble, deep trouble, deep trouble in the immediate sense because two burly lifer-sergeants tackled me to the ground, handcuffed me and escorted me to the stockade where they put me in solitary for a while I guess to see what kind of monster they had on their hands. I was given what they called a special court martial which was not bad since it meant the maximum they could give me was six months which they did and which I served in full at the Devens stockade. When I was released from the stockade though because of some legal action my civilian attorney provided by AFSC who had gotten before a judge to keep me at Devens I had to go through the whole refusal thing again and again received a six month sentence. Most of which I served.         

I have to laugh when I think about it now but I could have endlessly been given six months sentences for refusing to wear the uniform and still been in the stockade or some such place today. That is where the extra civilian legal help came in to save my ass. The key point was that all the Army paperwork said I was sincere so my civilian lawyer, Steve Larkin, who worked out of an office in Central Square in Cambridge and had done a bit of military resistance work previously submitted a writ of habeas corpus to the Federal District Court in Boston stating that I had been “arbitrarily and capriciously,” those words have legal significance, denied my CO status by the Army. Of course as you know the courts take a while to make decisions on anything so I waited in jail for the decision. Steve had said to expect the worse though since the judge in the case was not known for being sympathetic to such cases. What helped was the “sincere” part and the fact that the United States Supreme Court had loosened up the standards for CO status so the judge granted the writ and after few minor delays I was honorably discharged from the Army and told never to return to a military base in this lifetime.

I, a short time later, joined in the anti-war GI resistance work at a coffeehouse outside Fort Devens and later at Fort Dix down in New Jersey. Where Sally and others had come in on my case was to organize rallies at the front gate of the fort against the war and calling for my release. As every political prisoner knows, people like Chelsea Manning today, a case that I have been involved in supporting, that outside public help went a long way toward keeping my spirits up especially after that second court-martial. So again kudos to Sally and the others who came out in support.”      

Maine Activists to Commit Civil Disobedience at BIW Destroyer ‘Christening’ June 18 in Bath

Maine Activists to Commit Civil Disobedience

at BIW Destroyer ‘Christening’

June 18 in Bath

 

 

 

For Immediate Release

 

Contact:  Bruce Gagnon 443-9502  globalnet@mindspring.com

 

 

Maine peace activists have announced their intention to commit acts of non-violent Civil Disobedience at the planned June 18 ‘Christening’ of the $4 billion Zumwalt ‘stealth’ destroyer at Bath Iron Works (BIW).

 

The activists maintain that the Zumwalt is a provocative escalation of the already out-of-control arms race aimed at China and Russia.

 

“It is time for us to stand up and call for the reversal of this endless and illegal war cycle that our country is engaged in,” the peace activists maintained in a statement released to the media.

 

“It is the children that these weapons are ultimately aimed at as we see the growing refugee crisis from countries where the US has been waging war. 

 

“We stand in solidarity with people around the world who are protesting at bases where the US will port these warships.  Not only would these destroyers kill innocent people but their sonar also severely impacts ocean life and the toxic materials released by these ships pollute the seas and the local environments where they are ported.

 

“Christ would not approve of his name being used to ‘bless’ such violence and the massive waste of the public treasury, especially when so many are hungry, homeless and without jobs and medical care.” 

A University of Massassachusetts-Amherst Economics Department study reveals that military spending is actually the worst way to create jobs.  At the very time we face the coming ravages of climate change our tax dollars should be spent on building commuter rail systems, offshore wind turbines, tidal power systems, and solar power – all of which would create more jobs at BIW.

 

“We intend to stand at BIW on June 18 for those who can no longer stand or speak out, like Fr. Daniel Berrigan who left this world in May. Our elected officials don’t seem to hear the many calls for the conversion of the war machine to peaceful and sustainable purposes.  We feel we must risk arrest to wake up all those whose hearts are closed to the real message of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.” 

A legal demonstration will also be held on June 18 at BIW from 9:00 am to noon along Washington Street in Bath.  Speakers and music will be featured.

 

- End -

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Sekou Kambui, (William Turk)

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Sekou Kambui, (William Turk)

 

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

 

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

 

Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- Introduction

 Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- Introduction

 

Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-A Journey



In Lieu Of A Preface


By Frank Jackman





These scenes were originally posted in this space as separate entries, and they can be read as such. They can also be read, collectively in sequence, as part of a greater experience and thus I have gathered them together here in one place. The genesis of these scenes, or stories if you insist, initially came together, as noted in the introduction below, as a result of a question, no, not a question really but a sense of bewilderment, that a young political co-worker of mine had about my use of the term “in search of the blue-pink great American West night” in many of the commentaries that I was writing now some time back. That query lead to some necessary introspection on my part about the great 1960s hitchhike highway, physical, mental and spiritual of my youth and a short reply. But that was hardly the end of it. The reply triggered further remembrances and, as such things do, triggered some more after that led to the stream of scenes presented under this title.



Of course that co-worker’s spark only tells part of the story. No question that I had already been thinking a lot about those 1960s days, and the influence of re-re-reading Jack Kerouac’s “beat” travelogues, especially On The Road during that period is, or should be, obvious as well. I made many trips across the country in those days, mostly through use of the hitchhike thumb, for lack of cash if no other reason, but the choice of the mainly 1969 sweet youth, sweet youth love, sweet Angelica company trip scenes are calculated to give the best sense of those trips, and the closest I every came to finding out some truth on that damn quest. And if all those reasons individually, or collectively, do not tell the story behind the scenes then let’s just leave it as this-the restlessness that drove that youthful quest is still in my bones, still driving my old bones enough to keep me restless forty years later. Enough said.

***********

An Introduction



This entry is a response to a young reader and co-worker who has been curious about, and somewhat mystified by, my recent references to some "search for a blue-pink great American West night." Here, slightly abridged, for this compilation is my response. Whee!



"I have recently been taken to task by this fellow member of the local anti-imperialist, anti-war ad hoc committee that I have belonged to for the past several years (and that I have written about previously in this space) who is miffed (I am being polite) at me for my constant use of the term, or variations of the term, “the great blue-pink  American night”, especially when dealing with the 1950s “beat” generation writers (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, the gangster poet Gregory Corso and the usual suspects). Now this is one of the fellow workers, a younger one, that I go back to the days of ancient memory Bush post-9/11 Afghan October war, bombing-them-back-them-to-the-stone-age, with, and who helped us, in all manner of ways, to get through those tough days when opposition to that war on the streets of Boston, and elsewhere in America, was an extremely dicey thing. So under normal circumstances I would be all ears when he had some comment or criticism. But here he is just “cannon fodder” for my commentary.



As readers may, or may not, know this ad hoc committee is made up of various political types and is, most importantly, not bound by Leninist democratic centralist principles (nor could it be, as a patched together, if coherent, propaganda bloc composed of, well, I’ll be nice, characters) and therefore I am not telling “tales out of school” by replying publicly here. Moreover, although Leninist organizations adhere to a single political line, publicly, and expect their members to maintain discipline on general questions those questions that fall outside of politics, like the subject of one’s attitude toward the “beats”, the use, or overuse of the term, “great blue-pink  American night”, or your favorite forms of music are matters of personal preference, as a rule. So I am firing away.



But there is more gnawing at me than making a public point at his expense. Go back to that young brother's point. We all come to leftist politics, young or old, in our own ways, and in our own good time. I have always been somewhat amazed at the variety of such experiences that, by now, almost defy categorization. We also come to our personal predilections in much the same way. Jazz, be-bop, bop-bop, techno-hop, hip-hop, poetry slam, folk jam, and so on. For a fact though he knows not, and I have drilled him on this, of ancient dreams of blue-pink great American West night dreaming old men, passed down from older men (mostly). Know or not know though, here is his answer.

********

There is no question that over the past year or so I have been deep in remembrances of the influences, great and small, of the 1950s “beats” on my own sorry teen-aged alienation and teen-aged angst (sometimes they were separate anguishes, sometimes tied together like inseparable twins, mostly the later) and the struggle to find my place in the sun, to write in bright lights my own beat plainsong. Of course, that "beat" influence was blown over me second-hand as I was just a little too young, or a little too wide-world unconscious, to be there at the creation, on those first roads west, those first fitfully car-driven, gas-fuelled, thumb hanging-out, sore-footed, free exploration west roads, in body and mind. And of that first great rush of the adrenal in trying to discover, eternally discover as it has turned out, the search for the meaning of the great blue-pink American West night. Ah, pioneer-boys, thanks.



I just got a whiff, a passing whiff of that electric-charged air, the sweet “be-bop”, bop-bop, real gone daddy, cooled-out, pipe-filled with whatever, jazz-sexed, high white note-blown, howling in the wind plainsong afterglow. Moreover, somewhat tarnished, a little sullen and withdrawn, and media-used up by my time. More than one faux black chino-wearing, black beret’d, stringy-bearded; nightshade sun-glassed, pseudo-poetic-pounding, television-derived fakir crossed my path in Harvard Square in those high stakes early 1960s high school days. And a few real ones, as well. (A couple, whom I still pass occasionally, giving a quick nod to, have never given up the ghost and still haunt the old square looking for the long-gone, storied Hayes-Bickford, a place where the serious and the fakirs gathered in the late night before dawn hour to pour out their souls, via mouth or on paper. Good luck in your search, men.). More to the point, I came too late to be able to settle comfortably into that anti-political world that the “beats” thrived in. Great political and social events were unfolding and I wanted in, feverishly wanted in, with both hands (and, maybe, feet too).



You know some of the beat leaders, the real ones, don’t you? Remembered, seemingly profusely remembered now, by every passing acquaintance with some rough-hewn writing specimen or faded photograph to present. Now merely photo-plastered, book wrote, college english department deconstruction’d , academic journal-debated, but then in full glory plaid shirt, white shirt, tee shirt, dungarees, chinos, sturdy foot-sore cosmic traveler shoes, visuals of heaven’s own angel bums, if there was a heaven and there were angels and if that locale needed bums.



Jack, million hungry word man-child sanctified, Lowell mills-etched and trapped and mother-fed, Jack Kerouac. Allen, om-om-om, bop, bop, mantra-man, mad Paterson-trapped, modern plainsong-poet-in-chief, Allen Ginsberg. William, sweet opium dream (or, maybe, not so sweet when the supply ran out), needle-driven, sardonic, ironic, chronic, Tangiers-trapped, Harvard man (finally, a useful one, oops, sorry), Williams S. Burroughs. Neal, wild word, wild gesture, out of ashcan all-America dream man, tire-kicking, oil-checking, gas-filling, zen master wheelman gluing the enterprise together, Neal Cassady. And a whirling crowd of others, including mad, street-wise, saint-gunsel, Gregory Corso. I am a little fuzzy these days on the genesis of my relationship to this crowd (although a reading of Ginsberg’s Howl was probably first in those frantic, high school, Harvard Square-hopping, poetry-pounding, guitar-strummed, existential word space, coffee, no sugar, I’ll have a refill, please, fugitive dream’d, coffeehouse-anchored days). This I know. I qualified, in triplicate, teen angst, teen alienation, teen luddite as a card-carrying member in those days.



More recently that old time angst, that old time alienation and a smidgen of that old time luddite has cast its spell on me. I have been held hostage to, been hypnotized by, been ocean-sized swept away by, been word ping-pong bounced off of and collided into by, head over heels language-loved by, word-curled around and caressed by the ancient black night into the drowsy dawn 1950s child view vision Kerouac/Ginsberg/Burroughs/Corso-led “beats” homage to the great American West night. (Beat: life beat-up, fellaheen beat-down, beat around, be-bop jazz beat, beatified church beat, howl poem beat, beat okay, anyway you can get a handle on it, beat.). The great American West “beat” breakout from the day weary, boxed-in, shoulder-to-the-wheel, eyes forward, hands to the keyboard, work-a-day-world, dream-fleshed-out night. Of leaving behind on the slow-fast, two-lane, no passing, broken-lined old Route 6, or 66, or 666, or whatever route, whatever dream route, whatever dream hitchhike gas station/diner highway beyond the Eastern shores night, of the get away from the machine, the machine-making machines, the “little boxes” machine night, and also of the reckless breakout of mannered, cramped, parlor-fit language night. Whoa!



This Kerouacian wordplay on-the-road’d, dharma-bummed, big sur’d, desolation angel’d night, this Ginsberg-ite trumpet howl, cry-out to the high heavens against the death machine night, this Burroughs-ish languid, sweet opium-dreamed, laid-back night, this Neal Cassady-driven, foot-clutched, brake-pedaled, wagon-master of the to and fro of the post-World War II American West night, was not my night but close enough so that I could touch it, and have it touch me even half a century later. So blame Jack and the gang, okay and I will give you his current Lowell, Massachusetts home address upon request so that you can direct your inquiries there.



Blame Jack, as well, for the busting out beyond the factory lakes, corn-fed plains, get the hell out of Kansas flats, on up into the rockiesmountainhigh (or is it just high) and then straight, no time for dinosaur lament Ogden or tumbleweed Winnemucca, to the coast, come hell or high water. Ya, busting out and free. Kid dream great American West night, car-driven (hell, old pick-up truck-driven, English racer bicycle-driven, hitchhike thumbed, flat-bed train-ridden, sore-footed, shoe-beaten walked, if need be), two dollar tank-filled, oil-checked, tires-kicked, money pocket’d, surf’s up, surf’s crashing up against the high shoulder ancient seawalls, cruising down the coast highway, Pacific Coast Highway One, the endlessly twisting jalopy-driven pin-turned coast highway, down by the shore, sand swirling, bingo, bango, bongo with your baby everything’s alright, go some place after, some great American West drive-in place. Can you blame me?



So as for that comrade, that well-respected young comrade, what would he know, really, of the great blue-pink American West night that I, and not I alone, was searching for back in those halcyon days of my youth in the early 1960s. What would he know, for example, except in story book or oral tradition from parents or, oh no, maybe, grandparents, of the old time parched, dusty, shoe-leather-beating, foot-sore, sore-shouldered, backpacked, bed-rolled, going-my-way?, watch out for the cops over there (especially in Connecticut and Arizona), hitchhike white-lined road. The thirsty, blistered, backpacked, bed-rolled, thumb-stuck-out, eternally thumb-stuck-out, waiting for some great savior kindred-laden Volkswagen home/collective/ magical mystery tour bus or the commandeered rainbow-marked, life-marked, soul-marked yellow school bus, yellow brick road school bus. Hell, even of old farmer-going-to-market, fruit and vegetable-laden Ford truck, benny-popping, eyes-wide, metal-to-the-pedal, transcontinental teamster-driving goods to some westward market or kid Saturday love nest, buddy-racing cool jalopy road. Ya, what would he know of that.



Of the road out, out anywhere, anywhere west, from the stuffy confines of worn-out, hard-scrabble, uptight, ocean-at-you-back, close-quartered, neighbor on top of neighbor, keep your private business private, used-up New England granite-grey death-chanting night. Of the struggle, really, for color, to change the contour of the natural palette to other colors brighter than the New England leafy greens and browns of the trees and the blues, or better blue-greens, or even better yet of white-flecked, white foamed, blue-greens of the Eastern oceans. (Ya, I know, I know, before you even start on me about it, all about the million tree flaming yellow-red-orange autumn leaf minute and the thousand icicle-dropped, road strewn dead tree branch, white winter snow drift eternity, on land or ocean but those don’t count, at least here, and not now)



Or of the infinite oil-stained, gas-fumed, rag-wiped, overall’d, gas-jockey, Esso, Texaco, Mobil, Shell stations named, the rest lost too lost in time to name, two dollar fill-up-check-the-oil, please, the-water-as-well, inflate the tires, hit the murky, fetid, lava soap-smelled bathrooms, maybe grab a Coke, hey, no Hires Root Beer on this road. This Route 66, or Route 50 or Route you-name-the route, route west, exit east dream route, rolling red barn-dotted (needing paints to this jaded eye), rocky field-plowed (crooked plowed to boot), occasionally cow-mooed, same for horses, sheep, some scrawny chickens, and children as well, scrawny too. The leavings of the westward trek, when the westward trek meant eternal fields, golden fields, and to hell with damned rocks, and silts, and worn-out soils absent-mindedly left behind for those who would have to, have to I tell you, stay put in the cabin'd hollows and lazily watered-creeks. On the endlessly sulky blues-greens, the sullen smoky grey-black of mist-foamed rolling hills that echo the slight sound of the mountain wind tunnel, of the creakily-fiddled wind-song Appalachian night.



Or of diner stops, little narrow-aisled, pop-up-stool’d, formica counter-topped, red (mostly) imitation leather booth seats, smoked-filled cabooses of diners. Of now anchored, abandoned train porter-serviced, off-silver, off-green, off-red, off any faded color “greasy spoon” diners. Of daily house special meat loaf, gravy-slurp, steam-soggy carrots, and buttered mashed potato-fill up, Saturday night pot roast special, turkey club sandwich potato chips on the side, breakfast all day, coffee-fill-up, free refill, please, diners. Granddaddies to today’s more spacious back road highway locales, styled family-friendly but that still reek of meat loaf-steamed carrots- creamed mashed tater-fill. Spots then that spoke of rarely employed, hungry men, of shifty-eyed, expense account-weary traveling men, of high-benny, eyes-wide, mortgaged to the hilt, wife ran off with boyfriend, kids hardly know him, teamsters hauling American product to and fro and of other men not at ease in more eloquent, table-mannered, women-touched places. Those landscape old state and county side of the highway diners, complete with authentic surly, know-it-all-been-through-it-all, pencil-eared, steam-sweated uniform, maybe, cigarette-hanging from tired ruby red lips, heavily made-up waitress along the endless slag-heap, rusting railroad bed, sulphur-aired, grey-black smoke-belching , fiery furnace-blasting, headache metal-pounding, steel-eyed, coal dust-breathe, hog-butcher to the world, sinewy-muscled green-grey, moonless, Great Lakes night.



Or of two-bit road intersection stops, some rutted, pot-holed country road intersecting some mud-spattered, creviced backwater farm road, practically dirt roads barely removed from old time prairie pioneer day times, west-crazy pioneer times, ghost-crazy-pioneer days. Of fields, vast, slightly rolling, actually very slightly rolling, endless yellow, yellow–glazed, yellow-tinged, yellow until you get sick of the sight of yellow, sick of the word yellow even, acres under cultivation to feed hungry cities, as if corn, or soy, or wheat, or manna itself could fill that empty-bellied feeling that is ablaze in the land. But we will deal with one hunger at a time. And dotted every so often with silos and barns and grain elevators for all to know the crops are in and ready to serve that physical hunger. Of half-sleep, half hungry-eye, city boy hungry eyes, unused to the dark, dangerous, sullen, unknown shadows, bed roll-unrolled, knapsack-pillowed, sleep by the side of the wheat, soy, corn road ravine, and every once in a blue moon midnight car passings, snaggly blanket-covered, knap-sack head rested, cold-frozed, out in the great day corn yellow field beneath the blue black, beyond city sky black, starless Iowa night.



Or of the hard-hilled climb, and climb and climb, breathe taken away magic climb, crevice-etched, rock-interface, sore-footed magic mountain that no Thomas Mann can capture. Half-walked-half-driven, bouncing back seat, back seat of over-filled truck-driven, still rising up, no passing on the left, facing sheer-cliff’d, famous free-fall spots, still rising, rising colder, rising frozen colder, fearful of the sudden summer squalls, white out summer squalls. Shocking, I confess, beyond shocking to New England-hardened winter boy, then sudden sunshine floral bursts and jacket against the cold comes tumbling off. And I confess again, majestic, did I say majestic and beats visions of old Atlantic Ocean swells at dawn crashing against harmless seawalls. Old pioneer-trekked, old pioneer-feared, old rutted-wheeled, two-hearted remembrances, two-hearted but no returning back (it would be too painful to do again) remembrances as you slide out of Denver into the icy-white black rockymountainhigh night.



Of foot-swollen pleasures in some arid back canyon arroyo, etched in time told by reading its face, layer after layer, red, red-mucked, beige, beige-mucked, copper, copper-mucked, like some Georgia O'Keeffe dream painting out in the red, beige, copper black-devouring desert night. Sounds, primal sounds, of old dinosaur laments and one hundred generations of shamanic Native American pounding, crying out for vengeance against the desecrations of the land. Against the cowboy badlands takeover, against the white rampages of the sacred soil. And of canyon-shadowed, flame-shadowed, wind swept, canteen stews simmering and smoky from the jet blue, orange flickering campfire. Of quiet, desert quiet, high desert quiet, of tumbleweed running dreams out in the pure sandstone-edged, grey-black Nevada night.



And then...



the great Western shore, surf’s up, white, white wave-flecked, lapis-lazuli blue-flecked ocean, rust golden-gated, no return, no boat out, lands end, this is it coast highway, heading down or up now, heading up or down gas stationed, named and unnamed, side road diners, still caboose’d, ravine-edged sleep and beach sleeped, blue-pink American West night.

Yes, but there is more. No child vision but now of full blossom American West night, the San Francisco great American West night, of the be-bop, bop-bop, narrow-stepped, downstairs overflowed music cellar, shared in my time, the time of my time, by “beat” jazz, “hippie’d folk”, and howled poem, but at this minute jazz, high white note-blown, sexed sax-playing godman, unnamed, but like Lester Young’s own child jazz. Smoke-filled, blended meshed smokes of ganja and tobacco (and, maybe, of meshed pipe smokes of hashish and tobacco), ordered whisky-straight up, soon be-sotted, cheap, face-reddened wines, clanking coffee cups that speak of not tonight promise. High sexual intensity under wraps, tightly under wraps, swirls inside it own mad desire, black-dressed she (black dress, black sweater, black stockings, black shoes, black bag, black beret, black sunglasses, ah, sweet color scheme against white Madonna, white, secular Madonna alabaster skin. What do you want to bet black undergarments too, ah, but I am the soul of discretion, your imagination will have to do), promising shades of heat-glanced night. And later, later than night just before the darkest hour dawn, of poems poet’d, of freedom songs free-verse’d, of that sax-charged high white note following out the door, out into the street, out the eternity lights of the great golden-gated night. I say, can you blame me?



Of later roads, the north Oregon hitchhike roads, the Redwood-strewn road not a trace of black-dressed she, she now of blue serge denim pants, of brown plaid flannel long-sleeved shirt, of some golfer’s dream floppy-brimmed hat, and of sturdy, thick-heeled work boots (undergarments again left to your imagination) against the hazards of summer snow squall Crater Lake. And now of slightly sun-burned face against the ravages of the road, against the parched sun-devil road that no ointments can relieve. And beyond later to goose-down bundled, hunter-hatted, thick work glove-clad, snowshoe-shod against the tremors of the great big eternal bump of the great Alaska highway. Can she blame me? Guess.



Ya, put it that way and what does that young comrade, a dreamer of his own dreams, and rightly too, know of an old man’s fiercely-held, fiercely-defended, fiercely-dreamed beyond dreaming blue-pink dreams. Or of ancient blue-pink sorrows, sadnesses, angers, joys, longings and lovings, either.

Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Jukebox Night

Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Jukebox Night-An Encore

By Zack James

 

Everybody knows, or should know by now, that I was one of those guys, one of those working-class neighborhood guys, my particular working-class neighborhood being the Acre section of old North Adamsville where the poorest of the poor eked out their existence was what they called then a JD, juvenile delinquent. We called ourselves, as did other who were in the same condition the more literarily romantic “corner boys.” Corner boys who mainly worked their way up the age-defined grapevine to hang in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor by high school time. In my time the king hell king of the corner boy night was one Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie, my best friend from junior high school days until a few years ago when they finally laid him to rest.    

No question Frankie was our leader, and no question either that whatever legend was built up about him, true or false, had my fingerprint all over it. See I was Frankie’s “flak,” his PR man if you like and at some point I had him set up like the “second coming,” set up so heroically that I almost believed half the stuff I wrote about myself, and maybe he did too.  

No question Frankie, a really good-looking guy in the Irish good-looks way and a fast-talker also in the Irish budding politician way had all the girls our age around the neighborhood, some older girls too, all wrapped around his finger. Frankie, of course, although we had some tight moments, giving the devil his due, guided me fairly well through the intricacies of, well, ah, girls, girlish ways, and girlish charms. He took me under his wing after my family had moved to that side of town from Adamsville and we moved in across the street from his house. No question that I would have been left to dry out, alone, utterly alone, in that great teenage angst night if not for my brother, Frankie. He was always hipping me to different techniques he had worked out in his fertile brain, some which worked, worked for him and some that busted out, busted out for me. I’ll give you one example that worked for him all the time and sometimes for me, and you can judge for yourself.

What got me thinking about this old trick was just the other day I was, after being appalled that a diner I was having a little lunch at had a jukebox where you got exactly one selection for a quarter, telling someone about how in the great 1960s teen corner boy night a lot of our time, our waiting around for something, anything to happen time, was spent around places like pizza parlors, drugstore soda fountains, and corner mom and pop variety stores throwing coins into the old jukebox to play the latest “hot” song for the umpteenth time. This was the scene that Frankie ruled over wherever he set up his throne. I was also telling that person about a little “trick” that I used to use when I was, as I usually was, chronically low on funds to feed the machine.

See, part of that waiting around for something, anything to happen, a big part, was hoping, sometimes hoping against hope, that some interesting looking frail (girl in the old neighborhood terminology, boy old neighborhood terminology that is, first used by Frankie, and then picked up by everyone else) would come walking through that door. And, especially on those no dough days, would put some coins in that old jukebox machine. I swear, I swear on anything, that girls, girls, if you can believe this, always seemed to have dough, at least coin dough, in those days to play their favorite songs.

 

So here is the trick part, and see it involves a little understanding of human psychology too, girl human psychology at that. Okay, say, for a quarter if you can believe this you got five selections on the juke box like you did at Salducci’s who used the cheap juke as an enticement to get kids in after school for pizza and soda. Well, the girl, almost any girl that you could name, would have a first pick set, some boy romance thing, and the second one too, maybe a special old flame tryst that still hadn’t burned out. But, see after that, and this is true I swear, they would get fidgety about the selections. And, boy, that is where you made your move. You’d chime up with some song that was on your “hot” list like Save the Last Dance for Me, or some other moody thing and, presto, she hit the buttons for you.

 

Here’s where the psychology came in, the girl human psychology. That sentimental choice by you rather than, let’s say Breathless by Jerry Lee Lewis which had been your real “hot” choice told her you were a sensitive guy and worthy of a few minutes of her time. So you got your song, you got to talk to some interesting frail and maybe, maybe in that great blue-pink great American teen night you got a telephone number even if she had a boyfriend, a forever boyfriend. Nice, right?

 

But here is the part, the solemn serious part that makes this a Frankie story although he is not present in this scene, at least not physically present. Who do you think got me “hip” to this trick? Yes, none other than Francis Xavier Riley, Frankie, king of the teen night, king of the North Adamsville teen night. And, this is why he was king. He was so smooth, after a while, at directing the selections that girls would not even get a chance to pick those first two current flame and old flame selections but he would practically be dropping their quarters in the machine for them. Hail Frankie.