Scenes From An Ordinary Be-Bop Life-Scene Seven-Moline Meltdown Madness-An Interlude, Late Summer 1969

Scenes From An Ordinary Be-Bop Life-

Scene Seven-Moline Meltdown Madness-An Interlude, Late Summer 1969



Defeat takes many forms, no question, no question at all, but on the hard-scrabble, white-lined hitchhike highway nothing augured defeat like three or four days of hard, hard-driving, hard-bucket, squishing, swirling, streaming, overflowing the drain spouts, rain. But see, at just that minute on just that road we, Angelica and I, did not know though that we faced that sock in the jaw by dear Mother Nature, having only been out there for a couple of hours. The rain, steady, steady as the homeward-bound after a hard day’s work traffic that passed us by, had started about an hour earlier. Not long, but long enough to get ourselves rain-dripped to perdition.



Rain, rain that dripped deep into your bones, and maybe to your soul if you had one handy that could get wet, and added at least five hundred pounds to your load. No, not the soul the rain soak, and more consequentially, dripped down the back of your neck into your collar despite the best efforts of your seaman’s cap to absorb and contain all before the deluge. And pancho-ed Angelica, patient yellow pancho-ed Angelica, hood up covering half her face, and maybe all of her peripheral vision, acted the trouper, as usual. Drawing strength, drawing vital strength, from somewhere deep in that pioneer American Midwest good night stock from whence she came. The road, the far too long road from gentle, restful, lazy farm, joints and music, edenic commune Springfield of the last scene has sapped some of her energy, and, hell, mine as well.



Ya, but take a guess at what human solidarity, or at least what one would hope would rise from the human sink on such an occasion, and would provide as a natural curative in these circumstances. One could guess, and hopefully not too be far off that the sight of two young, not too disheveled, if somewhat “hippie” attired, rain-beaten people standing on the shoulder of a hitchhike 1969 road would cause at least one lonely-hearted car, one battered truck, one moseying hay wagon, one misplaced mule team, or whatever was out there on State Route 5 in Moline, where our last ride let us off, Moline, Illinois, the one near the Mississippi River, the Quad Cities one that is, in case there is another Moline that I don’t know about and might curse by mistake. But one would be wrong.



No, these were all fair-weather farm people who had that look on their faces as they passed by, not of fear or menace, but that those young folk on the road, meaning us, on their industrious road, did not work. Not at least at anything respectable, this out here means something to do with the land, the sweet sweat of backbreaking labor on the land, and of endless toil. No these two young vagabonds were not like their Johnnies and Sues already lined up by age fourteen to take over the farm, to marry that nice girl or guy the next few farms over, have their fair share of children, and then…on some 1989 or 1999 rain-soaked, white-lined hitchhike road they will be able to give some young nature-devastated couple that selfsame look, if there are still any such hearty souls left by then to tweak their ire.



But enough of that, by this time things were serious and I could tell by the look of Angelica’s stance, or rather her ballooning yellow poncho-covered half-stance against the hardness of the rain that I had better come with some idea, some idea better than standing on this side road being sneered at, or worst, ignored by the local kulaks. And I did. Look, if I had been out there on that windswept piece of flatland alone I could have found myself some old barn to share with the local farm animals, or if that didn’t work out then some lean-to. A fallback option, although I would have rather not, was to draw a beeline to the railroad yards and seek shelter in an empty freight car. Except every hobo, bum, tramp and faux vagabond within fifty miles of there would have had has the same idea and while I can respect the lore of the comradely road as well as the next man, frankly, that lore is overrated when you get twenty males of various physical and mental conditions communing in a freight. But right then I was a respectable “married” man and I had to seek some more appropriate shelter at least for this night for my better half, or else.



And, of course, we were not in covered-wagon, prairie schooner days but in a heartland city so off we went back up the road a bit to find some kind of cheap, flea-bitten motel to wait out this, hopefully, passing storm. Sure, we were pinching pennies and we certainly did not expect to have had lay over there but such is the such of the road, the “married” road. Needless to say I already knew the motel we would wind up at. No, I had never been in Moline before; at least I did not think so. But I did know the motel. I didn’t know the actual name of the place, although Dew Drop Inn rated pretty high as a quick guess. And I did not know the exact layout of the rooms except that there would be about sixteen to twenty identical units, all on the first floor; park the car, if you had a car, directly in front of your little bungalow. After the formality of payment and registration, that is.

Thereafter, open the plywood-thick “security” door, cheaply painted, to gain the first view of your “suite” and inhale the ammonia, bleach, smoke-stained smells that are guaranteed with the room key. And as a bonus whatever odors the previous tenants had left. These cheap, flea-bitten places frown upon pre-inspection, and those who find themselves, like us, in reduced circumstances, would rather not “inspect” the room anyway.


Take my word for this, please. Go on then to view your slightly sagging twin bed, with almost matching pillows and sheets, usually lime and pink. Your deluxe color television (guaranteed to run, the colors that is). Your complimentary tray, your Salvation Army-found bureau and night table (complete with Gideon’s Bible) and your bathroom (shower, no bath) with about seventeen sets of laundry over-bleached towels for every possible usage from face to figure. Set off by a genuine reproduction of a reproduction of some seascape on the wall to add a homey touch by an artist whose name will just escape your remembrance. But I have now given it all away, even before we found our cozy cottage. Not to worry there it is. No, not Dew Drop Inn this time, E-Z Rest. All for sixteen dollars a night, plus tax (and two dollar deposit on the television, returnable on departure, returnable presumably if you didn’t decide in a frenzied moment to “steal” the damn thing). Oh ya, I was off on the picture on the wall, it was a farm scene. Silly me.



I will say this for Angelica, for the several weeks that we had been on the road, through all the hassles we have faced up until then; she has been remarkably good-natured about things. Remarkable, as well, I might add for the first time out on the road. Remarkable, moreover, for an Ivory soap naïve Midwestern gal who a few months before had hardly ever left Muncie, as she related parts of her life to me while we, sometimes seemingly endlessly, waited for rides. Remarkable, above all, for her innate ability to face adversity without having a nervous breakdown about it every five minutes. Flame, Boston flame, that I had just run away from, Joyel, would have been a pretty high up number in her one thousand frustrations wearing on my nerves by now. The reason I mention this is that out back there on the Route 5 no-ride road, the rain-swept road that drove us inside I had a feeling for just a minute, but a feeling just the same, that the wilds of the road, the “freedom” of the road, the adventure now not when we are too old to do anything about it, was starting to weight down on her, and on her dreams. Not a good sign, especially not a good sign as the rain kept tap-tapping relentlessly down the spout outside and on top of the creaky rooftop that made you think that it was going to come in the room in about five minutes. And as if she too caught a glimpse of that notion that I felt she sidled up to me and said to me that we needed to take a “nap” to get the chill off from the road. I was only following doctor’s on that command, okay, well the future radiologist’s orders, if that‘s how things worked out. It’s kind of the same, right?



“Married” or not. Remarkable or not. After what turned out to be three days of steady rain and three days of a foul, cumbersome room with nothing but drippy-runny colored television and some light (meaning non-political for me, romance novels for her) reading material bought up the road at a very strange bookstore that ran the gamut in light reading from 17th century novels to soft-core porn (smut, okay) to while away the hours we both were getting severe cases of cabin fever. Remind me to tell you about the bookstore, and another one out in the middle of the desert in California some time but right then I could sense, and more importantly, fair Angelica could sense, that something was wrong. Wrong, right now. And so wrong that it needs to be fixed, right then. It boiled down to this (I will give her version but it will do for my sense of the thing as well). Why were two seemingly sane young people sitting in some dusty, broken down, rain-splattered, motel room in god-forsaken yes, god-forsaken, Moline, Illinois waiting for the rain to stop, or to let up enough so that we could move on to the “bright lights” of Davenport, Iowa or points west.



I will not detail all the talk back and forth that ensued except to say that that momentary glance I had noted back on the road a few days ago when we hit town had some meaning behind it. Angelica was road-weary. Hell, I was a little weary myself. But, I was not ready to go off the road, not ready to go back to the same old, same old. And here is the truth. Just at that minute my delights in Angelica were running just about three to two in her favor, and dropping. This called for drastic measures. I had to unwind the story of the search for the blue-pink great American West night that I had been holding back on. You already know the story, but old Angelica didn’t. Seemed clueless about what I meant when I even mentioned the words. Before this it just seemed too complicated to run by someone who was just traveling on the road to travel on the road. Not someone looking for some ancient, unnamed, unnameable quest that spoke more to the stuff of dreams than anything else.



If you know this old saga, although I did touch it up a little here, then you can kind of skip this part and proceed to find out what Angelica though of the whole thing. Or, maybe, you can re-read it to rekindle that old time wanderlust that drove your dreams, you name the color, you name the place, and you name the pursuit of them:

“I, once was asked, in earnest (by an old flame), what I meant by the blue-pink western skies. Or rather the way I would prefer to formulate it, and have always taken some pains to emphasize it this way, the search for the blue-pink great American West night. Well, of course, there was a literal part to the proposition since ocean-at-my back (sometimes right at my back) New England homestead meant unless I wanted to take an ill-advised turn at piracy or high-seas hijacking or some such thing east that the hitchhike road meant heading west.



So that night was clearly not in the vicinity of the local Blues Hills or of the Berkshires back in ocean-fronted Massachusetts, those are too confined and short-distanced to even produce blues skies much less that west-glanced sweet shade just before heaven, if there was a heaven shade, blue-pink. And certainly not hog-butcher-to-the-world, sinewy Midwest Chicago night, Christ no, nor rarefied, deep-breathed, rockymountainhigh Denver night, although jaded sojourner-writer not known for breathe-taking, awe-bewilderment could have stopped there for choice of great western night. Second place, okay.



But no, onward, beyond, beyond pioneer, genetically-embedded pioneer America, past false god neon blue-pink glitter Las Vegas in the Nevada desert night to the place where, about fifty miles away from sanctified west coast, near some now nameless abandoned ghost town, nameless here for it is a mere speck on the map you would not know the name, you begin, ocean man that you are, if you are, and organically ocean-bred says you are, to smell the dank, incense-like, seaweed-driven, ocean-seized air as it comes in from the Japanese stream, or out there somewhere in the unknown, some Hawaii or Guam or Tahiti of the mind, before the gates of holy city, city of a thousand, thousand land’s end dreams, San Francisco. That is where the blue-pink sky devours the sun just before the be-bop, the bop-bop, the do wang-doodle night, the great American Western star-spangled (small case) night I keep reaching for, like it was some physical thing and not the stuff of dreams.”



See, though Angelica got all confused by this way of telling about the night, hell, I started to get a little balled up on it myself. She was getting fidgety toward the end and I could tell by her facial expressions that, rain beating down outside, I had not made the right “adjustment” this time. Okay, off came the gloves, here is the” real” story, and as the rain started beating harder I got into a trance-like state telling Angelica of the following:



“Okay, let me tell this thing straight through without questions even though I know that it will sound off-kilter to you anyway I say it, hell it will sound half off-kilter to me and I lived through the thing. But let’s get to it anyway; we can gab about it later. See, back a few years ago, ya, it was a few years back when I was nothing but a summer-sweltered sixteen year old high school kid, a city boy high school kid, with no dough, no way to get dough, and nobody I knew who had dough to put a touch on, I went off the deep end. Plus, plus I had about thirty-six beefs with Ma, around par for the course for a whole summer but way too many for a couple of weeks in, and not even Fourth of July yet. Worst, worst, if you can believe this, I had a few, two maybe, beefs with the old man, and having a beef with him with Ma the official flak-catcher meant things were tough, too tough to stay around.



Sure, I know, how tough can it be at sixteen to stay put waiting for the summer heat to break and maybe have some clean clear wind bring in a change of fortune. But don’t forget, don’t ever forget when I’m telling you this story that we are talking about a sixteen year old guy, with no dough and plenty of dreams, always plenty of dreams, whatever color they turned out to be. So I threw a few things together in an old green beaten up knapsack, you know enough to get by until things break, that stuff and about three dollars, and I headed out the door like a lot of guys headed out that same kind of door before me in search of fame and fortune, Looking back on it I’ll take the fortune, if I have a choice.



I hit the main street with a swagger and immediately start thumbing as if my life depended on it, or at least that I had to act that way to click the dust of the old town off my heels pronto. And right away a car, although I hadn’t seen where it had come from before it came into my view, a late model car, looked like a 1961 Ford, came up on me, slowed down, the driver rolled down his passenger side window and asked where was I heading. I said “west, I guess,” he says “I’m heading up to Maine, Portland, Maine to work. Too bad I can’t help you.” As he readied to make tracks I say, “Hey, wait a minute, I‘ll take that ride, North or West it’s all the same to me.” Whoever said that my fortune could not be made in Maine just as easily as in California.



This guy, if you are thinking otherwise, turned out to be pretty interesting, he wasn’t any fruit like a lot of guys who stop when they see a young guy with a dour, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders pan like mind, and are ready to pounce on that fact. Seems that Kenny, Kenny of a thousand ships, his name was, worked the boats, the ferries out of Portland and Bar Harbor over to Nova Scotia and filled the time we traveled with stories about different funny things that happened on the trips back and forth. Funny things that happened to landlubbers that is, those who were not used to the open sea and who got seven shades of seasick. And he told this one story that I didn’t think anything of, just a guy puffing himself up like a million other guys, like I have myself when I’d brag about how I had so many girlfriends that I was going to have invent some extra days in the week and really I’d, usually, just be scratching and crawling on all fours for one date, and praying for that to come through.


Like I say, just puffing. He went on a bit about how one time out in the misty mist his uncle, Captain he called him, some old swamp Yankee, whom he served under in some boat saved a bunch of people off an island ferry off of Portland Light, got them to shore, and went back out looking for more.



Well, he is telling his stories, and I am telling mine about this and that, but mainly about my love of the sea, and about going west to see the Pacific when I get tired of the Atlantic but it looks like not today because where we are heading is nothing but cold hard, windy fighting Atlantic. But that dream, as I start talking myself around it, that getting tired of the Atlantic, is only a maybe because today now that I have made my break-out I can see where going to the coast of Maine to start my new life seems just about right. Suddenly, Kenny says out of the blue, “Hey, if you’re gonna bum around I’ll leave you off at Old Orchard Beach, right at the beach, there’s plenty of places to sleep without being bothered. And besides…” But before he can get the words out I say, hey, there is an amusement park there, right?



Hell, this was getting better all the time. I remember one time we, meaning me and my family, went up there and I played Skees, which I love, and I met a girl there who was watching me play and I impressed her by winning a penny whistle for her. I think I was ten or eleven then, okay, so lay off. See, though this guy, Kenny, was so good, such a good guy, that when we get to the Old Orchard exit he doesn’t just let me off on Route One and so I have to thumb another ride into town like most guys would do but takes me right down to the pier, the amusement park pier. Then he says you know it is probably better to get away from this crowded area, let me take you down Route 9 to the Saco jetty where you can set yourself up in an empty boat. Okay, that sounds right and besides it’s won’t be dark for hours and it’s not dark enough yet for me to make my big teenage city boy, Skeet champion city boy, amusement park moves on the local twists. Nice guy, Kenny, right, a prince of the road. We shook hands as he left, saying see you around.



I can see right away that Kenny was right, this place is quiet and there are many boats just waiting to be used for housekeeping purposes. But, what got my attention was, maybe fifty yards away, the start of the longest jetty in the world, or so I thought. Hey, I had walked a few jetties before and while you have to be careful for the ill-placed boulders when you get to the end you feel like the king of the sea, and old Neptune better step aside. I started walking out, Christ this is tough going I must be a little tired from all the travel. Nah it’s more than that, the granite slabs are placed helter-skelter so you can’t bound from one to another and you practically have to scale them. After about a hundred yards of scraping my hands silly, and raw, I say the heck with this and head back. But put sixteen, hunger for adventure, and hunger to beat old fellaheen king Neptune down together and you know this is not the end. I go around looking at my boat selection just exactly like I am going to rent an apartment. Except before I set up housekeeping I am going to take the old skiff I select out along the jetty to the end. So I push one off the sand, jump in and start rowing.



Now I am an ocean guy, no question. And I know my way around boats, a little, so I don’t think much of anything except that I will go kind of slow as I work my way out. Of course a skiff ain’t nothing but a glorified rowboat, if that. It’s all heavy lifting and no “hi tech” like navigation stuff or stuff that tells you how far the end of jetty is. Or even that there is a heavy afternoon fog starting to roll in on the horizon. Ya, but intrepid that’s me. Hey, I’m not going to England just to the end of the jetty. I said that as the fog, the heavy dark fog as it turned out, enveloped the boat and its new-found captain. I started rowing a little harder and a little more, I ain’t afraid to say it, panic-stricken. See I thought I was rowing back to shore but I know, know deep somewhere in my nautical brain, that I am drifting out to sea. I’m still rowing though, as the winds pick up and rain starts slashing away at the boat. Or course, the seas have started swelling, water cresting over the sides. Christ, so this is the way it is going to finish up for me. What seemed like a couple more hours and I just plain stopped rowing, maybe I will drift to shore but I sure as hell am not going to keep pushing out to sea. Tired, ya, tired as hell but with a little giddy feeling that old Neptune is going be seeing me soon so I decide to put my head down and rest.



Suddenly I am awoken by the distinct sound of a diesel engine, no, sounds about six diesels, and a big, flashing light coming around my bow. I yell out, “over here.” A voice answers, “I know.” Next thing I know an old geezer, a real old geezer decked out in his captain’s gear is putting a rope around the bow of my boat and telling me to get ready to come aboard. Ay, ay, Captain. After getting me a blanket, some water and asking if I wanted a nip of something (I said yes) he, old Captain Cob his name was, said I was lucky, lucky as hell that he came by. Then he asked what I was doing out here in the open sea with such a rig, and wasn’t I some kind of fool boy. Well, I told my story, although he seemed to know it already like he made a daily habit of saving sixteen year old city boys from the sea, or themselves. So we swapped stories for a while as we headed in, and I had a nip or two more. As we got close to Saco pier though he blurted out that he had to let me off in my boat before the dock because he had some other business on the Biddeford side.



Here is where it gets really weird though. He asked me, as we parted, did I know the name of his boat (a trawler, really). I said I couldn’t see it in all the fog and swirling sea. He told me she was the “Blue-Pink Night”. I blurted out, “Strange name for a boat, what is it a symbol or something?” Then he told me about how he started out long ago on land, as a kid just like me, a little older maybe, heading to California, and the warm weather and the strange blue-pink night skies and the dreams that come with them. I said how come you’re still here but he said he was pressed for time and left. Here is the thing that really threw me off. He gave me a small dried sea shell, a clam shell really, that was painted on its inner surface and what was painted was a very intricate, subliminally beautiful scene of what could only be that blue-pink California sky. I said, Thanks; I’ll always remember you for this and the rescue." He said, “Hell lad that ain’t nothing but an old clam shell. When you get over to that Saco café at the dock just show it to them and you can get a meal on it. That meal is what you’ll remember me by.”



Hungry, no famished, I stumbled into the Saco café, although that was not its name but some sea name, and it was nothing but a diner if you though about it, a diner that served liquor to boot so there were plenty of guys, sea guys, nursing beers until the storm blew over, or whatever guys spend half the day in a gin mill waiting to blow over. I stepped to the counter and told the waitress, no, I asked politely just in case this was a joke, whether this old clam shell from the captain of the “Blue-Pink Night” got me a meal, or just a call to take the air. All of a sudden the whole place, small as it was, went quiet as guys put their heads down and pretended that they didn’t hear or else though the joint doubled up as a church. I asked my question again and the waitress said, “What’ll you have?” I called my order and she called it to the short order cook. The she said did I know anything about this captain, and how did he look, and where did he meet me, and a whole bunch of questions like this was some mystery, and I guess maybe there was at that.



Then the waitress told me this (and I think every other guy in the room by the loudness of her voice), “ A few years back, yes, about six or seven years ago, there was a big storm that came through Portland Light, some say a perfect storm, I don’t know, but it was a howler. Well, one of the small ferries capsized out there and somehow someone radioed that there were survivors clinging to the boat. Well, the old captain and his nephew, I think, started up the old “Blue-Pink Night” and headed out, headed out hard, headed out full of whiskey nips, and one way or another, got to the capsized boat and brought the survivors into shore and then headed out again. And we never saw them again. And here is the funny part; when he was unloading his passengers he kept talking, talking up a perfect storm about seeing the blue-pink night when he was out there before and maybe it was still there. I guess the booze got the best of him. But hear me son, old captain was square with every one in this place, he used to own it then, and some of his kin are sitting right here now. He was square with them too. So, eat up kid, eat up on the house, ‘cause I want you to save that old clam shell and any time you are on your uppers you can always get a meal here. Just remember how you got it.” “Thanks, ma’am,” I said. Then I slowly, like my soul depended on it, asked, “Oh, by the way, what was that old captain’s nephew's name?” and I said it in such a way that she knew, knew just as well as I did, that I knew the answer. “Kenny, Kenny Cob, bless his soul.”



And that story my friends, got me a week’s reprieve from being abandoned by Angelica on the road. Not bad, right? Ya, but she didn’t believe the story really, just like you, but tell me this what is this now faded, scratched and worn out painted blue-pink great American West night clam shell that I am looking at right now anyhow.

Scenes From An Ordinary Be-Bop Life-Scene Six: Westward Ho!-Mid-Summer 1969

Scenes From An Ordinary Be-Bop Life-Scene Six: Westward Ho!-Mid-Summer 1969



As I stepped down onto the yellow-sunned, farm-fresh soil from the farm-fresh cab of the farm-fresh truck that had deposited Angelica and I out into the waving-fielded, farm-fresh Neola, Iowa September day I quickly flashed back to stepping down from Colonel Eddie’s truck cab in Winchester, Kentucky that had started this whole segment of the trip westward. Christ that seemed like an eternity ago although it had been only a few summer heated, summer sweat-soaked heated weeks. Life on the road had it own tempos but this one, for reasons that I will discuss later, had run out of tempo and we were living on pure fumes just then.



While I am thinking about Winchester, Kentucky I might as well tell you what had happened since then to get us here to yellowed-sunned, waving-fielded, farm-fresh country and that will go a long way to explaining our need, our desperate need, for a jump start. Needless to say if you read the last scene, the scene where fair Angelica and me are kicking our heels up at a barn dance (and kicking those same heels up after as well) in greater Prestonsburg, Kentucky and me about four sheets to the wind, no five or six sheets to the wind from the local , well-aged (about six minutes) “white lightning” then you know that we, thanks to Angelica, got promised a ride from Prestonsburg to Winchester which is just outside of Lexington, Kentucky.



Our chauffer, our Angelica-smitten chauffer, for the occasion turned out to be one ancient hard-driving (as we quickly found out), hard-drinking (as I knew from his condition as we met up with him), ghost of a truck-driving Colonel Eddie. (The colonel part is made-up, made up by him, all these Kentucky guys from the lowliest pig farmer on up call themselves colonel, or did back then. I think for about two bucks you could get yourself an “official” certificate designating you as such. If old Eddie had been a “real” colonel then that would go a long way to explaining the South’s righteously deserved lost back in Civil War days). And despite this awful build-up of the guy, and a little off-hand character assassination above, he actually got us there, to Winchester that is, in one piece. Colonel Eddie was one the last of the good old boys, for sure.



What that one piece, by the way, looked like after traveling more back roads in the Commonwealth of Kentucky that seemed humanly possible in order to us get there is another story. See that is where the “white lighting” (rotgut, according to a somewhat miffed Angelica) had something like seven lives. Every time I thought I was feeling better, just a tiny bit better like maybe I would actually survive the day, we would hit a double-reverse triple somersault hairpin turn followed by a triple-reverse double somersault hairpin turn that made me wish that, if there was any mercy in this flea-bitten old world, we would just go over the top down into some heavenly embankment and be done with it. But, as I said, we got there, and although we were pinching pennies a little, my condition was terminal and we needed, as a matter of simple primitive medical wisdom, to stay at one of those cheapjack motels that dot the back roads of this world to rest up for future battles, for future tilts at the westward windmills.



No, I am not going to descript this cheapjack motel, this back road, and what did or did not happen there, for the simple reason that I don’t really remember much about what it looked like it, or what happened there. Except this, this is etched in my brain and I can feel the cool- handed, cool-toweled sensation even as I am writing. Angelica, miffed or not, had taken a towel, wrapped some ice from the ubiquitous, usually whiskey fixings-friendly motel ice machine in it, and placed it on my forehead and held her hand on the compress for a while until I fell asleep. Of such kindnesses long-lasting civilizations should be created.



But enough of medical reports and folk wisdom medicines, sweet-gestured or not. We were on the road west now, the blue-pink road west and for the first time since Angelica and I had met really on our own. Winchester, Kentucky heading to Lexington on our way west. Next morning, next already hot, steamy, sulky July Monday morning, having had a decent night’s recovery, and a thimbleful of food in my stomach to be on the safe side, we are off. Tonight we will sleep in no “bourgeois” roadside motel, ice cubes included free of charge or not, but out in the great outdoors, out in the promised great American night, and save our dwindling cash for stormier times. Thumb out, Angelica thumb out here, and we are indeed off. A half hour later after being picked up by a wayward sedan, driven by a nondescript but kindly driver, we are on the road to Lexington. And arrive we do without fanfare, or flourish.



This is really what is important about Lexington though. See, like I told you and I know I told Angelica before, that suitcase that she had packed up for Steubenville in her Muncie break-out days was fine to live out of for Steubenville motel cabin existences but no good on the hitchhike road, of whatever color. I didn’t tell you this before because Angelica had been such a trouper, especially with that ice-encrusted towel, but she had complained like hell about the damn dangling suitcase every time we had to push on in a hurry. Truth be told I had carried the thing more than she had, invalided as I was. So when we hit Lexington we hit the first Army-Navy store we could find to get her one of those fungible mountaineer backpacks.



Army-Navy store? Ya, Army-Navy store. Don’t snicker about so, well, about so yesterday, okay? Out on the hitchhike road you needed sturdy stuff, whatever it was you needed, because stuff got pretty banged around and your “faux” hitchhike road designer goods would last about seven miles (or about as long as the owner of such goods would be on the road before hailing a cab to the nearest airport). And as much as we hated the notion of deadly military weapons and anything military in those days we, we of youth nation, were strangely drawn to that fashion look, and the indestructible nature of their “camping” equipment. Besides the stuff was cheap, remember it was bought as World War II surplus mainly, hell, maybe World War I, but cheap.



Naturally, as events kept unfolding Angelica was showing more and more her origins as a Midwestern flower, and although a total stranger to such a place was thrilled (and mystified) by this place, including the odd , musty smell that goes with such stores. I will quote her, “Wow, does all this stuff really work?” So you can see by that simple statement that, every once in a while, she will throw out her Indiana naïve to confuse me. In any case, soon enough she will know whether it works or not. Of course she took forever to decide on which of two types of olive green backpacks “fit” her. Christ, women (oops, sorry). After that we made other purchases in order to set up “housekeeping”. Like. Well, like a small very portable army pup tent, complete with staves, to shelter us from storms and summer bugs. And a couple of canteens, small useful three-prong knives, a shovel, and mess kits.



I, as I write this, still smile over the fact that Angelica talked for days about how whoever invented such a useful thing as a mess kit was a genius, a pure genius. So you see again what I meant about that Muncie thing. Best of all to her sheer unmitigated delight we purchased a warm, cozy, snuggly army surplus sleeping bag (hey, the best kind okay, you can’t have soldiers freezing their buns off in Alaska, Korea, Northern China or wherever). And also delighted, blushingly delighted, when I, off-handedly, whispered in her ear about how many people could fit inside the thing, in a pinch. And, finally, a green (naturally) army blanket, for emergencies, real emergencies, not those in a pinch kind.



After completing those purchases we stepped just outside the store door to a nearby bench, placed there probably for just such purposes, and ceremoniously transferred her stuff from the suitcase to the backpack. Here is the kicker though, which may tell something about human nature or maybe not. I just kind of threw everything into my knapsack and hoped for the best. Hope, for example, that a pair of socks, matched, showed up when needed. Angelica, as I noticed back in the Steubenville pack-up, neat of suitcase also took pains (and would do so throughout the trip) to keep her stuff organized just like in the suitcase. I wonder if we had decided that plastic bags were absolutely the best for travel gear whether she would have done the same. Probably. In any case, Angelica’s yesterday Angelica miffs had turned around and she was beaming, at me, at her new existence, at the whole wide world for all I know. I liked it, I told her so, and we are off to a campground just outside of town that the Army-Navy store owner told me about to “camp out” in the great dark American night. Hell, even I was excited. Still I noticed, just a glimmer of a notice, that she turned back wistfully for just a second to take one last look at the suitcase that we left on that bench for someone else in need.



Every once in awhile, just as things are going right and this old world seems full of bright-eyed possibilities, things get twisted around. Let me tell you about it and see what you think. As we were walking, Angelica proudly practically hip-hop walking with her new backpack bouncing up and down with each step, decided she needed to discuss something, one of our little “adjustments” talks. Apparently the miffed Angelica of yesterday was not so much miffed at my condition as that when we went to sign in at that cheapjack motel I wrote down my real name and her real name indicating that we weren’t married, or at least not related. Some primordial sense of modesty, no, I know, just Muncie conventionality, made her feel ashamed.

Christ Angelica, there is not one cheapjack (or five star, for that matter) motel, hotel, inn, youth hostel, ashram, whatever in the whole world that in the year 1969 cares who you sign in as. I could have put down Queen Elizabeth and Richard Nixon (although that combination might have raised my eyebrow) and they would have been nonplussed, as long as the coin of the realm, cash, was in hand. I didn’t put quotation marks around the above sentences but I think I could have because that, in my mind’s eye, is probably exactly what I said to her. Her plea, and here I will quote, “I feel ashamed and like a tramp (exact word) and couldn’t we just say we were married when we signed into places?” Apparently the time I was going to spend with this woman was going to be filled with throwing in towels because that is just what I did, I agreed to this proposition. Why? Well, in those days I, frankly, didn’t have an opinion, at least a strong opinion, about married or not married and to keep peace I conceded the point. Now would be a different story. But, hell, let’s get to the camp and the great American night.



There are camp sites and there are camp sites. Today you can belly up to some sites with your seven ton, overloaded monster “trailer” home and put in a plug or two and act just like you never left Cicero, Albany, or whatever your port of origin. Or you can go back up into the hills, some forlorn shaggy hills, mainly some Western hills these days, carrying in with you whatever you are going to bring on your back, and be not that far removed from those old pioneers who feared every dangerous animal, dangerous man, dangerous natural condition step of the western way, and carried on nevertheless. The real westward ho crowd. That day though Angelica and I found ourselves at a plain old-timey campsite which we could see from the road in was dotted with various tents, some small trailers sitting in the beds of pick-up trucks, some free-form trailers pulled by trucks and a couple of psychedelically multi-colored converted school buses. The last had been popping up on the road ever since people started hearing about Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters and their mad eastward escapades a few years earlier. Not a monster trailer in the house, a good sign. I can see a little river as well. Best of all there a small supermarket right across the street. Yes, this portends to be a great American night, and maybe nights.



After I passed the test at the camp office we went to our site, a cozy little site for a tent not too far from the river. What test? Come on now, pay attention, you know the test. Did I or did I not sign us in as Mr. and Mrs. (no Ms. then). Well, I am still sitting here writing this thing so of course I did. Angelica was beaming, beaming like an old married lady (at nineteen, jesus) but, maybe, just maybe because her “hubby” played it straight with her. (I never did get all the details, and she never put them all out there for me, but back in staid old homey Muncie some guys definitely did her wrong, tramp-treating wrong). Of course unlike the “bourgeois” upper class dwellers here in their little campers we were primitives (a word I have actually seen used to designate some campsites) and had to set up camp from scratch. Hell, we had more fun trying to set that damn Army-Navy tent and setting up for dinner on our little fireplace. There are not many times in life when just a couple of goofy, simple things provided so much entertainment. We napped then feasted.



As it got dark though I heard some music, the Stones, I think coming from one of the multi-colored painted, converted buses down the dirt lane. Nothing loud, but also something that said “youth nation” among the families of three and four that seemed to dominate the camp. We moseyed (like it?) on down and as we got closer I knew we had found kindred spirits, at least I thought we had. Angelica said, “What’s that strange smell?” Of course it was nothing but grass (marijuana, herb, ganja, whatever your term), and from the smell high-grade stuff. I thereafter proceeded to tell Angelica the “skinny”. She seemed a little non-plussed by the news but, however, confessed that she had never smoked or done any other drugs. And from the tone of that response seemingly did not want to.



Those were good and simple days to be young, especially on a road situation like this. Perfect strangers, unknown to one another, except by a telltale beard, or longhair, or long dresses or some slightly off-key sign, immediately embraced and as a welcome “gift” passed you a joint (or whatever drug of choice was available that day) and you passed whatever you had. We had some store-bought wine. I knew, knew from hard Arizona and Connecticut experiences, as well as the lore of the road, that carrying drugs was not “cool.” Many a road comrade spent many a night in some godforsaken cooler for making that mistake when the grim-reaper, usually small town, cops needed to boost their arrest records. Thus, for me it was nice to have a chance to get “high.” (inhaling even) although Angelica passed and was happy getting a little silly on the wine. We spent a nice night hanging out, listening to the Stones and the Doors, and a couple of other things that I don’t remember. I do remember, as we went back to our own site to turn in, that Angelica said she finally “got” what her parents, her neighbors, her minister, her schoolteachers, and some of her former boyfriends were afraid of. The feared great boxed-in break-out. She started to go on about it, but I gave her a knowing “preaching to the choir” smile and she stopped.



We wound up staying for few days, got to know most of the twelve or fifteen people connected with the buses (two at two adjoining sites, actually) and found out that they were on “vacation” from a little farm house that they all lived in communally, including some primitive farming and weaving to keep body and soul together, just outside of Springfield, Illinois. They were leaving Saturday morning and we were welcome to join them and stay at the farm for a while. We talked it over and it seemed right, especially for Angelica, as we could by-pass sweet home Indiana that she wanted avoid at all costs, so we left with them. That Saturday morning Angelica with great tenderness, and by herself, struck our camp (“our home” she called it by the end) as we prepared for the next leg of our journey. Ah, pioneer woman.



You know some towns you can say that you have been in but that is misleading. You might have passed through them, you might have been caught having to sleep on some forsaken bench in some lonely bus stop there, or stretched a watery cup of joe in some lonelier diner against some cold , rainy night wait, or, in flusher times, just hopped on a plane out of the place. So, yes you can tick that town off on your map as you move along in the world but you don’t know the town, no way. That is my recollection of Springfield. Oh sure I knew it was Lincoln’s home area, I knew it was the capital of the state of Illinois, I knew that people in that area were not Mayor Daly’s (the first one) people and that there was plenty of farmland there. But Springfield on this trip (or ever) was just that dot on the map because once we passed through it and we got to the farm a few days and joints after leaving Lexington that was it. We spent some quiet, well maybe no so quiet when the music went decibel high, but youth quiet time on the farm, did a little work for our keep, Angelica got a little more sun that she thought was good for her, and we relaxed before pushing on. Westward ho, ever westward ho in the blue-pink great American West night.

Reflections In The Aftermath Of The 40th Anniversary Of Bruce Springsteen’s First Album Born To Run- And More

Reflections In The Aftermath Of The 40^th Anniversary Of Bruce Springsteen’s First Album Born To Run- And More

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Last year, 2015, I like a billion other citizen-music critics meaning no more than that I wrote a small sketch about the 40^th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s iconic first widely admired album, Born To Run (“iconic” a word now attached to every half-baked event and fully-baked person that has ever come to the surface with the slightest bit of renown but until the fever flavor of the month gets replaced by a more sober assessment like enigmatic I will follow the herd on this one) and placed my assessment in various blogs that I follow and other relevant social media sites but also no less than I had the same right as professional music critics to commemorate a milestone event in my own trek through life.

 

Since then I have been thinking about what I said back then and I have some additional things that might be of interest to “Bruce Springsteen nation” even though we will presumably not be commemorating the anniversary of the first distribution of that album for about another ten years. Part of the impetus for reflecting on the album was that one night my old Carver High School friends Bart Webber, Sam Eaton and Jack Callahan were discussing my sketch at one of our periodic get-togethers at the Rusty Nail, a bar we hang out in of late near Kenmore Square in Boston, now that we are all retired or semi-retired and have time to philosophize over some high-shelf scotches and whiskeys. (For those who do not frequent bars, are tee-totallers, or are just curious that “high-shelf” designation is important especially to four guys who grew up “from hunger” down in Carver, then the cranberry capital of the world or close to it who when young and thirsty drank Southern Comfort, low-shelf whiskeys like Johnny Walker Black, no scotches high-shelf or low, and if pressed hard drunk Thunderbird or Ripple wines.)

 

That night we got, as we have been doing since those high school days when we hung out in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys pining away, into a dispute, although we always called it a beef back then about the virtues of Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics on stuff like Thunder Road and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out. Their collective wisdom was that Bruce “spoke” to that Saturday night “chicken run” everything is all right down at the far end of the beach as long as you have your honey on board, take your baby for a ride, see the sights but get the hell out of Carver at all costs unless we wanted to wind up like our parents tied by a million cords to the freaking bogs. Me, well me, I thought they all had had too much to drink that night, maybe too much to dream too since while I am willing to give Bruce plenty of simpatico for merely having survived his youth in Jersey a few years after us that we were driven much more by guys like the literary on the road Jack Kerouac, the poetic mad monk Moloch-hunter Allen Ginsburg, and muse musically by Bob Dylan. They raised a collective sigh and then made the inevitable comment that covers all our disputes these days that I had probably done too much grass/ cousin/speed/hash or any combination thereof and the chickens have finally come home to roost. Here in my updated version of that sketch from last year reflecting that conversation with my friends. I hope it will hold everybody’s tongues until mid-2025 when we have to think through the damn thing again:                               

 

“I got my ‘religion’ on Bruce Springsteen ass-backward (something unkind souls of my acquaintance, that trio of corner boys who still think I am addled by the acid trips of my youth and therefore feel free to discount everything I have said for the past forty years, would say was a more generalized condition), meaning, my meaning anyway, was that I was not an E Street Irregular back in the day, the day we are commemorating with this little sketch, the day when Bruce Springsteen busy in the subterranean world around New York City trying to catch on well after the folk minute and acid rock moments had played out sprung his sweet baby everything is all right Saturday night Jersey boy of a different kind magic on the rock and roll scene with the album Born To Run on a candid world. You see I was in a monastery then, or might as well have been, and did not get the news of the new dispensation, that a small stab was being attempted to create a “new breeze” after the previous breeze had played out a few years before, that there was a new “max daddy” rock and roll star out in the firmament and so I let that past. (As will be explained presently there were reasons for that, reasons that the in-tune Bart, Sam and Jack did not have to deal and they could track the rise of Springsteen in the normal progressive of their rock musical interests.)  

“Here comes reason for that ass-backward part though. See I really was ‘unavailable’ in that 1975 year since I was one among some guys, really a lot of guys although that was something I didn’t know until many years later, some Vietnam veterans who were living under bridges, along the riverbanks, along the railroad tracks of the East Coast from about Boston in summer (the area which I had come from since Carver is about thirty miles south of Boston) to D.C. maybe a little further south as the weather got colder trying to cope as best we could with the ‘real’ world when we got home. The post ‘Nam ‘real’ world that just wasn’t the same as before we left from home and our standard dreams of marriage, white picket fence houses, kids and dogs after whatever we left of ourselves in burning, shooting, napalming, molesting a whole race of very busy people with whom we had not quarrel, no quarrel at all. Plenty of guys, most probably if anybody took a survey on the subject of post-war adjustment, got back and just went to their standard dream lives. Others of us, me and my brothers under the bridge, took a detour, a wrong detour but a detour and so the old hangout with the buddies world of high school chatting about girls with didn’t have or if we did have didn’t have dough to take out properly, about cars we didn’t have either and mostly just hung out talking about music, about what we talk about since we always had a spare quarter to play the latest tunes on Jack Slack’s jukebox, or our leader madman Frankie Riley did, seemed very far away. The fight to keep warm, to keep doped up, to keep from jail except when we wanted to be “vagged” to get indoors and some food and a shower, and most of all to keep moving, something that I still feel even today at times, is what drove our sullen dreams.      

“So we, me, were not doing a very good job of getting along with our lives, mostly. Not succeeding against the drugs (my personal problem from cocaine to meth and back depending on when you ran into me, if you dared), the liquors (my boy Seaside Sean from up in Hampton Falls in New Hampshire who gathered a fistful of medals in Vietnam and who tossed them over the fence at the United States Supreme Court building in that famous VVAW demonstration earlier in the decade unlike me who only survived because a couple of black kids from Harlem saved my ass a couple of times although later not their own, whom I couldn’t save one night when the DTs got to him so bad he went down into the Hudson River from the nearest bridge he was so lost), the petty robberies (Jesus, holding up White Hen convenient stores with my hands so shaky I could barely keep the gun from jumping out of them and if the young girl behind the register had decided to take a stand I probably would not be writing this, at least not as a free man), and the fight to stay away from the labor market. Work which seemed so irrelevant then, work for what purpose if your dreams were not of white picket fences,  the curse of the ‘lost boys of the bridges,’ the boys who wanted no connection  with Social Security numbers, VA forms, forwarding  addresses, hell even General Post Office boxes just in case some dunning repo man, or some angry wife was looking for support, support none of us could give for crying out loud why do you think we worked the stinking garbage strewn rivers, rode the dreamless smoke streams trains, faced the rats mano y mano under the bridges. Work if pressed up against the wall only at some day labor joint giving false social security numbers, pearl-diving where no question were asked as long as the dishes and pans didn’t pile up, or in-kinf for a few nights reprieve from the bridges at some Sally (Salvation Army) harbor lights mission. Not the time to be worrying about grabbing that girl heading to Thunder Road.  

“Yeah, tough times, tough times indeed, and a lot of guys had a close call, a very close call, including me, and a lot of guys like now with our brethren Afghan and Iraq soldier brothers and sisters didn’t make it, guys like Sean who if you looked at him you could not believe how gone he really was with that baby-face of his I still see now, still see as he trogged his way to that night bridge and just let himself free fall I hope somebody up in Hampton Falls claimed him for we, I, couldn’t do so since I was on the run myself, didn’t make it but are not on the walls in black granite  down in D.C.-although maybe they should be.

“Of course Brother Springsteen immortalized the Brothers Under The Bridge living out in Southern California along the arroyos, riverbanks, and railroad tracks of the West in a song which I heard some guys playing one night when I was at a VA hospital in the early 1980s trying to get well for about the fifteenth time (meth again, damn I can still feel the rushes, still want my sweet jesus high, when I say the word) and that was that. I cried that night for my lost youth, for Sean, for the guys who played the song over and over again, Saigon, long gone… no way long gone. The next step, after a few more months of recovery,  was easy because ever since I was kid once I grabbed onto something that moved me some song, some novel, some film I checked out everything by the songwriter, author, director I could get my hands on.          

“Once I did grab a serious chunk of Springsteen’s work, grabbed some things from the local library since my ready cash supply was low I admit I got embarrassed. Admitted to myself that I sure was a long gone daddy back in 1975 and few years thereafter. How could I not have gravitated earlier to a guy who was singing the high hymnal songs of the holy goof corner boys who I grew up with, the guys out in the streets making all that noise (and where are they now, Frankie, Markin, Josh, Jimmy, Tiny, Dread, and a few other who faded in and out over the high school years).

“Singing about getting out on that Jack Keroauc-drenched hitchhike highway that I dreamed of from my youth, of hitting the open road and searching for the great American West blue-pink night that before ‘Nam every one of my corner boys dreamed of and Sam, Sam Lowell even did, did hit that road, of hitting the thunder road in some crash out Chevy looking for Mary or whatever that dish’s name was, looking for that desperate girl beside him when he took that big shift down in the midnight “chicken run,” in taking that girl down to the Jersey shore everything is alright going hard into the sweated carnival night. Later getting all retro-folkie, paying his Woody and Pete dues looking for the wide Missouri, looking for the heart of Saturday night with some Rosalita too (and me with three busted marriages to show for those dreams), and looking, I swear that he must have known my story for my own ghost of Tom Joad coming home bleeding, bleeding a little banged up, out of the John Steinbeck Okie night, coming home from Thunder Road maybe dancing in the streets if the mood took him to that place that you could see in his eyes when he got going, coming home from down in Jungle-land the place of crashed dreams out along the Southern Pacific road around Gallup, New Mexico  dreaming of his own Phoebe Snow. Yeah, thanks Bruce, thanks from a brother under the bridge.”

*****The Latest From The "Fight For $15"It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 And “Fight For $15” Are The Slogans Of The Day.

*****The Latest From The "Fight For $15"It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 And “Fight For $15” Are The Slogans Of The Day.

Click below to link to the Fight For $15 website  for the latest national and international labor news, and of the efforts to counteract the massively one-sided class struggle against the international working class movement.

http://fightfor15.org/april15/

@timfranzen

http://fightfor15.org/april15/

 

Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now in the early 2000s unlike in their youth not being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions, (or unions now rather consciously led by union leaders who have no or only attenuated links to past militant labor actions like strikes, plant sit-downs, hot-cargo of struck goods, general strikes and such and would go into a dead faint if such actions were forced upon them and are so weakened as to be merely dues paying organizations forwarding monies to the Democratic “friends of labor” Party). They had come of political age as anti-war radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell. Ralph from the hard-shell experience of having fought for the beast in the Central Highlands in that benighted country and who became disgusted with what he had done, his buddies had done, and his government had done to make animals out of them destroying simple peasants caught in a vicious cross-fire and Sam, having lost his closest high school hang around guy, Jeff Mullin, blown away in some unnamed field near some hamlet that he could not pronounce or spell correctly. The glue that brought them together, brought them together for a lifetime friendship and political comity (with some periods of statutory neglect to bring up families in Carver, Massachusetts and Troy, New York respectively) the ill-fated actions on May Day 1971 in Washington when they attempted along with several thousands of others to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. All those efforts got them a few days detention in RFK stadium where they had met almost accidently and steel-strong bonds of brotherhood from then on.     

They had seen high times and ebbs, mostly ebbs once the 1960s waves receded before the dramatic events of 9/11 and more particularly the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 called off what they had termed the “armed truce” with the United States government over the previous couple of decades. So Ralph and Sam were beside themselves when the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011.  That term “powder puff” not expressing the heft of the movement which was not inconsiderable for a couple of months especially in hotbeds like New York, Boston, L.A. and above all the flagship home away from home of radical politics, San Francisco but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got started giving up the huge long-term fight the movement was expected to wage to break the banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”).

Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions, both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy,” Ralph having taken over his father’s electrical shop in Troy when his father retired and Sam had gone back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s that had been run by a hometown friend in his many absences. However having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly working-class towns, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled the roost, had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it. Moreover despite their backing away from the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,” the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.   

So Ralph and Sam would during most of the fall of 2011   travel down to the Wall Street “private” plaza (and site of many conflicts and stand-offs between the Occupy forces on the ground and then Mayor Blumberg and his itchy cops) which was the center of the movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after the long drought of such activity both for them personally and for their kind of politics. They were crestfallen to say the least when the thing exploded after Mayor Blumberg and the NYPD the police pulled down the hammer and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the country and across the world and police departments doing likewise acting in some concert as it turned out once the dust settled and “freedom of information” acts were invoked to see what the bastards were up to).

Of more concern since they had already known about what the government could do when it decided to pull down the hammer having learned a painfully hard lesson on May Day 1971 and on a number of other occasions later when Ralph and Sam and their comrades decided to get “uppity” and been slapped down more than once although they at least had gone into those actions with their eyes wide open had been the reaction of the “leadership” in folding up the tents (literally and figuratively).

Thereafter the movement had imploded from its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on toes, to let everybody do their own thing, do their own identity politics which as they also painfully knew had done   much to defang the old movements, refusing out of hand cohering a collective leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly wanting to bring the monster down.

Ralph and Sam in the aftermath, after things had settled down and they had time to think decided to put together a proposal, a program if you like, outlining some of the basic political tasks ahead to be led by somebody. Certainly not by them since radical politics, street politics is a young person’s game and they admittedly had gotten rather long in the tooth. Besides they had learned long ago, had talked about it over drinks at Jack Higgins’ Grille in Boston more than once in their periodic reunions when Ralph came to town, how each generation had to face its tasks in its own way so they would be content to be “elder” tribal leaders and provide whatever wisdom they could, if asked. 

Working under the drumbeat of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up something of a “national anthem” for what went on among the better elements of Occupy are some points that any movement for social change has to address these days and fight for and about as well. Sam, more interested in writing than Ralph who liked to think more than write but who contributed his fair share of ideas to the “program,” wrote the material up and had it posted on various site which elicited a respectable amount of comment at the time. They also got into the old time spirit by participating in the latest up and coming struggle- the fight for a minimum wage of $15 an hour although even that seems paltry for the needs of today’s working people to move up in the world:      

*TOM PAINE-INTERNATIONALIST REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRAT

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Tom Paine

BOOK REVIEW

TOM PAINE AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, ERIC FONER, HYPERION, NEW YORK, 2004

If Leon Trotsky was considered by many to be the “prince of pamphleteers” for his efforts on behalf of the Russian Revolution and socialism then Tom Paine can rightly be regarded as the “prince of pamphleteers” for his efforts on behalf of the American and French Revolutions (and its offshoot- the pro-revolutionary English radical movement of the 1790’s) and plebeian democracy. Mr. Foner centers his biography of Tom Paine on the meaning of his key works Common Sense, The Rights of Man and the Age of Reason and the influence they had on the plebeian masses in the Age of Revolution. This, in itself, makes the book worthwhile reading.

These tracts are Paine’s classic arguments for plebeian democracy and the expansion of the capitalist market. Make no mistake, Paine is no socialist but as an agent of the revolutionary plebeian democratic movement- when and where it counted- we can claim him for our own. Mr. Foner also gives a rather detailed picture of Pennsylvania prior to and during Tom Paine’s entrance on the political scene there to help set the impact of his propaganda, especially Common Sense, on the developing American national liberation struggle against England.

Tom Paine, like many important revolutionaries in their time, had an impact on more than one revolutionary movement and therefore justly earned for himself an honored place in plebeian democratic history much to the chagrin of some later historians of these movements. In an age when sales of printed matter were small his tracts sold in the hundreds of thousands and those purchases were not for the coffee table at a time when money was dear. That alone helps defines the impact of his work.

Tom Paine, like other revolutionary leaders, has suffered through the ups and downs of reputation depending on the times. His Age of Reason, the consummate tract in defense of popular deism, led to a steep decline in his reputation for most of the 19th century, an age in America of religious piety. He has fared better lately, in an age that is much more secular and which is not shocked by deist conclusions. Paine also comes in handy as an ally when democratic rights are, like now, under full-scale attack in the name of the ‘war on terrorism’. Let me conclude by saying this, if a closet-Tory like Founding Father John Adams can look pretty damn good in comparison to today’s bourgeois politicians then Tom Paine can rightly take his place in our pantheon of revolutionary heroes.

*****Four Ways To Support Freedom For Chelsea Manning- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

*****Four Ways To Support Freedom For Chelsea Manning- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

 

 

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

The Struggle Continues …

Four  Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea  Manning

*Sign the public petition to President Obama – Sign online http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/chelseamanning  “President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning,” and make copies to share with friends and family!

You  can also call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) to demand that President Obama use his constitutional power under Article II, Section II to pardon Private Manning now.

*Start a stand -out, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, in your town square to publicize the pardon and clemency campaigns.  Contact the Private Manning SupportNetwork for help with materials and organizing tips https://www.chelseamanning.org/

*Contribute to the Private  Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has finished funds are urgently needed for pardon campaign and for future military and civilian court appeals. The hard fact of the American legal system, military of civilian, is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Private Manning’s. The government had unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Private Manning at trial. And used them as it will on any future legal proceedings. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to https://www.chelseamanning.org/

*Write letters of solidarity to Private Manning while she is serving her sentence. She wishes to be addressed as Chelsea and have feminine pronouns used when referring to her. Private Manning’s mailing address: Chelsea E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304.

Private Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30   

Markin comments (Winter 2014):   

There is no question now that Chelsea Manning’s trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that her case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity, including in the New York Times, a newspaper which while recoiling at the severity of the sentence in the immediate reaction did not question the justice of the conviction, and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity (which the Army has stonewalled on and which even the New York Times has called for implementing) to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to Google Amnesty International and sign on to the online petition to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked these days in speaking for her release about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to “not leave our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally much more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time. This is how I put the matter at one meeting:

“No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions during the pre-trial and trial periods.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.”            

Over the past year or so Chelsea Manning has been honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade in Boston in such events as the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, the Memorial Day anti-war observance, the yearly Gay Pride Parade, the Rockport July 4^th parade, the VFP-led Veterans Day Peace Parade, and on December 17^th her birthday. We have marched with a banner calling for her freedom, distribute literature about her case and call on one and all to sign the pardon petitions. The banner has drawn applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

Additional Markin comment on his reasons for supporting Chelsea Manning:

I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I had felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside once I got “religion” on the war issue first-hand. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.

Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went then, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, many who had already served in hell-hole Vietnam, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste, and macho talk of war.

Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so has produced no great GI resistance like against the Vietnam War when half the Army in America and Vietnam seemed to be in mutiny against their officers, against their ugly tasks of killing every “gook” who crossed their path for no known reason except hubris, and against the stifling of their rights as citizens. At one point no anti-war march was worthy of the name if it did not have a contingent of soldiers in uniform leading the thing. There are many reasons for this difference in attitude, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still firmly believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Since we are commemorating, if that is the right word the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I check out what happened, for example, on the Russian front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar, with the trenches, with the landlords, and the whole senseless mess.

Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea took her actions while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              

 

All Out July 9th In New York City-Anti-NATO Rally

All Out July 9th In New York City-Anti-NATO Rally