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

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

 

 

 

From The Sam Eaton-Ralph Morris Series

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

*****Pleasure and Piety-The Story Of Perseus And Andromeda-With The Dutch Painter Joachim Wtewael In Mind

*****Pleasure and Piety-The Story Of Perseus And Andromeda-With The Dutch Painter Joachim Wtewael In Mind

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

No question Jack Callahan was tired unto death of being Mr. Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts (and a couple of times being Mr. New England Toyota when he ripped up the 1998 and 2000 Camry record book just like he had when he was the star running back of the 1967 State Class B football champions at his alma mater, North Adamsville High, his rushing records mostly still intact to this day even against a guy in the 1980s who went on to play professional ball for the Steelers). Tired of hustling cars after almost forty years in the business once he could not play football anymore when he had hurt his knee so bad against Boston College when he played for State U that even the starving for recruits (read “grunts,” cannon-fodder and you are not far from the truth) Army gave him a pass. Jack had grown utterly tired of having to spent every waking hour (and some sleeping hours to) worrying about monthly quotas, about whether his sales staff was “pulling his chain” when number crunch time came and he had to finagle the books to keep the whole fucking operation (Jack’s term) running. And tired of hearing Mrs. Toyota Chrissie (nee McNamara), his high school sweetheart nagging him about turning the reins over to somebody else and let them live a little. Not good company policy but a heart-felt cry from the deep.  (Yeah, for every Mr. there has to be a Mrs., or Ms., so recognized officially by the company and in these days of same-sex marriage the Mrs. could be replaced by another Mr. or visa versa for the female version of the marriage arrangement and nobody would bat an eye since gays, lesbians, trans-genders, bi-sexuals, queers, and whatever other sexual orientations there are buy cars, need transportation to get on with their lives and it might as well be in a safe as a bug in a rug Toyota).

No, if that is what you are thinking, neither Jack nor Chrissie are tired of each other, looking to play the field or any other of the things they had heard that happen to some 60-somethings once the kids leave, once the nest goes empty, or once they recognize their own mortality and flip out to do all the lampshade on the head things they have avoided as inappropriate when they were rising above their parents’ station and hoping to push the kids even further up the hill.

To the contrary Chrissie has always been, is, Jack’s rock and visa versa and that core truth has been the basis of their relationship ever since sophomore year in high school. Since the day, night really, when smart-as-a-whip Chrissie decided that she had had enough of Saturday afternoon falling leaves granite grey skies hero football player Jack taking his peeks at her (and she at him) and not doing a damn thing about it and had gone to Salducci’s Pizza Parlor where Jack hung out with his corner boys on Friday nights goofing off and planted herself in Jack’s lap. Even at the 40^th class reunion a few years back Jimmy Jenkins, another corner boy, remembered that long ago night vividly and made everybody at the reunion once again aware of the situation because the look in Chrissie face then said that it would take the whole football team to get her off Jack’s lap. And Frankie Riley, the self-proclaimed but undisputed king of the corner boy night, chimed in and said that the look on Jack’s face said that it would take the whole football team, throw in the junior varsity and the water boys too, to get Chrissie off his lap.

Yeah, it was that way for both of them. They were solid but Chrissie just wanted to get out from under the grind, go a few places that were not company-tainted, go get some culture (pronounced cultuah or something like that in Boston). So one week, for a few days, Jack agreed to go to Washington to visit the art museums and the like. Just the two of them, just for the pleasure of looking at some paintings that have withstood the test of time and fashion.

On a nice spring day for Washington before the cherry blossoms faded Jack and Chrissie could be seen walking arm in arm with a little skip in their step toward the Seventh Avenue entrance to the National Museum of Art. Now you might think that a guy like Jack, a former jock, a former corner boy (or maybe not so former when the surviving members of the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor crew get together and toss down a few at friendly Jack’s Grille in Cambridge where Jimmy Jenkins lives), not much of a student, and a guy who earned his dough hustling cars would give a rat’s ass about art (Jack’s expression carried over from corner boy times when if you did not give a damn about something that was the expression de jus). But you would be wrong because you would not have factored in the effect that the late Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boy Peter Paul Markin dubbed “The Scribe” by Frankie Riley and everybody else picked it up had on Jack Callahan (and the others as well if the truth be known).

Now Markin came to a bad end down in Mexico back in the 1970s when the “wanting habits” hanging over him from his poverty-stricken youth got the best of him over a busted drug deal the details of which never were made clear by the authorities there except to warn everybody off. But in his corner boy days, the sunnier days of the 1960s when he/they thought a new breeze was coming to open things up even for poor ass corner boys he was the fountain of knowledge for about two thousand arcane facts that made him smart in that circle. His whole point then, or most of it, was to use such information to try to impress every girl who would stand still long enough to hear him out (and a few did and not just nerdy girls either). And Markin took Jack up as a special case, as a guy who was going to college for the wrong reasons, to just play football and make State U famous, when he should be imbibing some culture and make everybody really look up to him  (on that culture thing you already know how they pronounce it around Boston). Yeah, you can see even then Markin had his quirky side since half the world could give a rat’s ass about culture however you pronounced it.

So Markin and Jack would go up to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on the QT and look at the masterworks of all the civilizations who put paint to canvas (or chisel to marble or whatever they used to leave a record that they existed and had dreams of eternity too). And Jack loved it (on the QT of course). Loved it too later when Chrissie and he would go to museums like the Getty or Metropolitan on days when they were not attending some Toyota regional or national conference. So Jack had actually been looking forward to the experience since he had not been in the building for about thirty years. Especially wanted to see the Impressionists that he had always been fascinated by.

After getting by the mandatory security check Jack and Chrissie noticed that there was special exhibition by a Flemish painter, a painter named Joachim Wteweal (that is how he thought the name was spelled when he later told Frankie Riley about the experience) neither had ever heard of but the brochure advertising the exhibition looked promising with a photograph of a painting showing a rich palette of colors somewhat unusual for Flemish painters who tended toward the darker sober colors of the wheel. So they headed to the far end of the building on the second floor where the exhibition was staged.

Some of the paintings by Wteweal were in the tradition of the Dutch school, you know portraits of the senile burgers of the country who felt a need to show their greedy little faces to posterity. Some were the nature and food scenes that those self-same burgers loved to show in their houses.  And some were the drawn from Greek and Roman myths always a welcome subject after centuries of holy-shrine Mother and Virgin or death of Christ stuff that was getting to be pretty thin gruel for the better educated and free-spirited artists who survived the Renaissance and the Reformation without facing the lord high executioner or the Inquisition.  It was an example of the latter, a painting from Greek mythology about Perseus rescuing Andromeda that mesmerized Jack that day, had him thinking about what Markin would have said about it and also how it fit in with everything about his growing up times. Maybe too why it took his love Chrissie something like a personal civil war to get him to confess how he felt about her that Salducci’s Friday night.

Naturally it was not until later that Jack found out by looking it up on Wikipedia what the story behind the painting was about. About how Andromeda had offended the gods, or her parents had going on and on about how beautiful she was, and the handmaidens to the gods took a nutty. Thereafter as “penance” Andromeda was chained, chained naked, according to every account (and every painting done on the subject since Wteweal was hardly the first or only painting who saw something exciting in the myth to draw on) to be left on the barren forsaken shoreline some place for a sea monster to have for lunch or whatever sea monsters do with human sacrifices (nothing good from the human skulls which litter the ground beneath Andromeda’s feet). Of course no beauty, whether she upsets some old hags or some other beauty in mythology or modern novels or in Hollywood is going to be lunch for some ugly mist-breathing sea monster. That is where Perseus comes to the rescue and of course slays the dragon. And unchains the fair Andromeda, perhaps. They naturally live happily ever after producing something like seven sons and a couple of daughters so they had a very active sex life. In the end Andromeda got to be immortal and got a constellation in the night skies named after her (and some funky NASA project too so her fame was not fleeting after fifteen minutes).

Jack admitted that at the time he saw the painting none of that latter information entered into his fascination about Andromeda and her chains. What struck him was the whole idea that in the 16^th century artists working for some patron (or patroness) felt comfortable enough to paint a frontal female nude showing all her private parts when until fairly recently such nudes were considered pornography or worse (that worse being some make-shift S&M thing with the chains and the devilish sea monster lurking about). Could show her in that condition for what could only have been meant for a private collector. So a mixture of awe, childhood modesty, some perverse sexual thoughts and some “what would Markin say” got all mixed in that day. He returned to the painting several times and even Chrissie who knew what a modest guy he was around women, although not in her bed once they got around to that shortly after that lap episode at Salducci’s, whispered in his ear that he was a “dirty old man.”

Okay, Jack confessed that might have been part of it but a lot of it was about that Catholic upbringing that they all had been brought up on which skewered what they thought about sex, or thought that they thought. Here is how bad it was one time. The class in seventh grade when Jack first met Markin went on a field trip to the Museum of Science in Boston and while there they came across an exhibition of  female figure showing all her parts (nude in other words). Jack couldn’t look at the figure, grew red in the face when Markin noticed he refused to look at her. Then Markin with his two thousand facts (a few wrong on this occasion) proceeded to tell Jack all about the female anatomy in scientific terms things which previously were left to schoolyard terminology (cunt, pussy, boobs, ass, tits and so on) without knowing what that all represented. So some things don’t change so much (although Chrissie who had an older married sister who she confided in didn’t let that condition go on for long) but that day Jack had the sneaking suspicion that the painter Wteweal really was painting the scene for his own pleasure. And he wished, wished to high heaven that the Protestant Reformation had been more successful. Yeah, Markin would have agreed with that sentiment.                                                

 

An Encore -Eddie Daley’s Big Score –With Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting In Mind

An Encore -Eddie Daley’s Big Score –With Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting In Mind

 

 

 

 

A Sketch From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Eddie Daley, Edward James Daley, to the 1940s slapdash Dorchester triple-decker tenements within earshot of the rattling Redline subway born, dreamed, dreamed big dreams, ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper as the old time used-up now corny expression had it, of making the big score, making easy street, and in the process leaving behind a legend that guys, corner boy guys and grifters would talk about long after he was gone. Talk about in reverent hushed whispers about the guy, Eddie Daley, thereafter to be dubbed the “king of the grifters” who pulled the biggest con that there ever was, and walked away from it free as a bird. Not all big scores, cons, even if consummated, had that final part, that walk away free part, just ask the shade of Frankie Finn who pulled the big Shiloh Fur scam worth two million easy (a lot of money back in the 1950s even when split four ways and a fifth cut for the fence plus his expenses although that sum just walking around money today), pulled it off with just four guys, a good number for the haul, but who “forgot” that he was dealing with one “Rocket Kid,” Johnny Silver, in his entourage who after the heist put two between the eyes of his three confederates, figuring one is easier to count than four no matter than two of the guys were his long time corner boys. The Rocket Kid, Johnny, was subsequently “hit” by one of Buddy Boyle’s boys, everybody though Rolling Rex Buddy’s main contract man did the deed since he had not been seen around for a while, when he tried to fence the stuff since Buddy was the front money man on that caper and Frankie Finn’s cousin to boot. Buddy already rolling in dough had his own way of figuring one is easier to count when he was the one. So that walking away free part was no small part of the leaving a legend behind scenario.

Eddie’s dream might seem strange to the squares, to those who live life on the square, wake up and do the nine to five bit, or whatever the time bit these days with flexible hours, take two weeks’ vacation in Maine in the summer, raise and put three kids through college at great expense and get a gold watch or a pat on the back when they are turned out to pasture. Yeah, that dream definitely might seem odd to those who have never been from hunger, not just “wants” hunger like a million guys have, maybe more, but no food on the table hunger when the old man drank away the week’s paycheck at the Dublin Grille or hand-me-down clothes from older brothers in style or not hunger that ate deeply into every way that Eddie thought about things from very early on. Those who never worried about big scores, or cons since they had it coming in whatever they had to put out in expenses would never figure Eddie’s dreams out.

See Eddie was a what they called, called back in the old days, back in the 1930s, and still called them back in Eddie’s coming of age time in the 1960s when he came of age in that Dorchester section of Boston where he triple decker tenement grew up a natural-born grifter. When Eddie first heard that word used, strangely after he had already done his first con and somebody on the corner, that hang out corner being Mel’s Variety on Neponset Avenue near the Fields Corner subway stop, called him a born “grifter” he faked it and said yeah and then next day went to the library and looked it up in the dictionary and came up with this-“A grifter is someone who swindles you through deception or fraud. Synonyms include fraudster, con artist, cheater, confidence man, scammer, hustler, swindler, etc.”

Eddie smiled the smile of the just on that one. Yeah, a grifter, is a guy like him who figured some angles, any angles, a guy who did this and that, did the best he could without working some nine to five hump job. [Here is a practical corner boy, not Mel’s but Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner down in Carver about thirty miles south of Dorchester but still in “from hunger” land definition- “A grifter to fill in the gaps for the unknowing and clueless was a guy, sometimes a dame, although usually where there was a dame involved she was a roper especially if the mark was hopped up on some sex thing, who spent his eternal life figuring how to go from point A to point B, and point A was wanting dough and point B was getting it by any means necessary but mainly by stealth. By the way do not discount women in the grifter society one of the best who ever lived was a gal who went by the name Delores Del Rio, named herself after the 1940s movie star, who took some duke over in Europe for a cool two million in jewelry after she got him all jammed up and picked him clean leaving him with some fake jewels worth about six dollars in Woolworth’s, beautiful.]

So Eddie started figuring the angles very early on, very early on indeed and would regale, if that is the right word for it, the corner boys in front of Mel’s Variety Store on Neponset Avenue with tales of his daring do once he started hanging out there when he began high school at Dot High. Of course that was all kids’ stuff, baubles and beads stuff, since nobody expected a kid to have the talents for grifting right out of the box (having the heart, the “from hunger” wanting habits heart was a separate and maybe more pressing question) but there are certain guys, certain Eddie guys, who cling to those dreams pretty hard and give themselves a workout getting in shape.

From what one guy, Southie Slim, one of the Mel’s corner boys before he moved on to other stuff told me Eddie started pretty early, started simply conning other kids out of their milk money in elementary school over at the Monroe Trotter School. Here is the skinny on that first round according to Slim who got caught out himself before he picked up the grifter life for a while until he found out dealing high-grade dope to the Beacon Hill crowd was a great deal more profitable, and socially smart too once you added in willing women. Eddie somehow had picked up some dice, yeah, a pair and he would bet other kids, boys or girls it did not matter, their milk money on the results. Of course he somehow had “loaded” them so he would win. Now that was a fairly easy thing but here is where Eddie learned his craft. To keep play going he would let the other kids win occasionally, just enough to keep them interested rather than be a greed-head like big bully Matty Dugan down at my elementary school, Myles Standish, down in Carver who just strong-armed a kid a day for his (or her, it did not matter) milk money. But the real tip he picked up young as he was that as long as kids, people, think they can  “pick you clean” you will always have a willing pool of suckers, of people to swindle, small or large but think large.            

One night, one slow Friday night years later after he had settled deeply into the routine of the life, Eddie was cutting up touches about his old days while smoothing down high-shelf scotch (a no-no when you are on the hustle by the way save that for slow Friday nights when you are cutting up old touches Eddie said), about how he moved up after that dice thing ran its course as all such scams do if for no other reason that the grifter gets tired of the play, and he related what happened after that first scam when he got to the Curley Junior High School. Here is how it went, the basic outline since Eddie was kind of cagey about some of the details like the guys he was talking to that night were going to run right out and pull the scam themselves. Eddie basically ran a pyramid scheme on his fellow students. He conned the kids into giving him their money by saying he knew a guy, a friend of his older brother, Lawrence, who worked as a stable boy at the track and who knew when the fix was on in a race and who could place bets for him and get some bucks fast. Eddie convinced a couple of guys that if they put all their dough together they could buy a ticket and make some easy dough. And it worked for a while since Eddie in his devilish way paid off the guys with his own dough. Each guy getting maybe a buck which to a “from hunger” kid was a big deal. Word got out and soon plenty of kids, even girls were looking to get in on easy street. And so he would dole out some more dough. Then he pulled the plug, told everybody that he was going in for a big score that he was going to put twenty dollars on a sure thing that the stable boy had tipped him to. In the event he actually got about thirty five dollars collected altogether. Of course the horse ran out, never came close so all was lost. Hey, wait a minute have you been listening? Eddie didn’t know any stable boy, didn’t make any bet, so minus his seed money expenses he cleared twenty-five bucks. Here is what Eddie learned though know the “clients” (Eddie’s word) who you are dealing with and don’t be too greedy. He did that same small con for a couple of years and it worked like magic, got him his money for the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner on Gallivan Boulevard and movie money too. Small con wisdom but still wisdom.

Eddie as he got older, got into high school, got hanging around with his corner boys at Mel’s, got restless, always had that idea in back of his mind that he would pull a big score if he learned all the tricks of the trade, if he could get onto something big. For a while in high school it looked like he was on the fast track, he learned how to work the charity circuit for walking daddy (his term) walking around money using the old homeless but proud gag that those private charity donors love that he picked up one day when he was playing hooky from school and ran into an old con man, Railroad Bill, on a bench at Boston Common near the Park Street Station who gave him the tip. Eddie would laugh at how easy it was to pull off walking into let’s say the United Methodist Church Social Services office up on Beacon Street dressed in his very real hand-me- downs and unshaven making him look older but not too old (meaning the old telltale sign that the guy had been “on the bum” too long to be proud and work his way out of his current jam) going through his rough things but wanting to get back on track if he only had a the price of a week’s rent in one of the rooming houses that dotted the other side of the hill then (a few still there even today, significantly fewer though). That was good for ten or twenty at a time although the down side of that caper was that you could only use it once, maybe twice. The upside was that there were numerous private social service agencies like that looking for somebody “worthy” to give the dough to.  

 With that walking around money Eddie would work a variation of his kids’ stuff milk money run, he would sell lottery tickets (in the days before the state got its greasy hands into that racket), for different charities, say he was raising it for blind kids or to send kids to summer camp. Offer as prizes radios, televisions, maybe a record player, stuff like that which people wouldn’t mind spending a dollar or “three for five dollars” on to help some crippled-up kids, give them fresh air, or some other small break or something. So he would grab the dough and then have one or more of his corner boys rip off what was needed over at Lechmere Sales or someplace like that (usually using at first “Five Fingers” Riley or “Rat” Malone who started that racket early once they figured out that if you were fearless in grabbing stuff nobody was going to catch you, and that worked for a long time until they “graduated” to armed robberies and did consecutive nickels, dimes and quarters in various Massachusetts state pens).

See nobody gave a good damn if the charity he was hustling for ever got the dough all they knew was that for a buck, or three for five, they had a chance for their own television, radio, or record player important to hard-pressed high school kids who would not have those items otherwise. Needless to say the corner boys he used were good and he paid them off well like he should to keep them in line, another lesson learned, and so he honed his skills.

When Eddie graduated from high school and was to face the workaday world though he panicked a bit, decided that he needed to move up a step if he was going to avoid the fate of his belabored father, belabored by drink, yes, but also hard work on the docks, not always steady and with a brood of kids and a nagging wife to contend with. If the nine-to-five was not for Eddie neither was staying down in the depths either. (A history teacher had mentioned one time in class that all of her charges should seek to move up the latter of society at least one jump ahead of their parents and that kind of stuck with him.) So he started going into downtown Boston, started hanging around the Commons regularly unlike in high school where he would go just when playing hooky but really to blow off steam when something exploded at home in that damn crowded apartment, started to listen to guys to see if they had any ideas like that time “Railroad Bill” gave him the scoop on the private charity gag, had been on easy street at one time. He didn’t bother with the eternal winos and junkies for they had nothing to say that he could use but to guys and there always were guys who maybe had been on the hustle and got waylaid, or just got old in a young man’s racket and so maybe had some words to share. And before he knew it he met Sidewalk Sam and Bright Boy Benny a couple of guys who told him about old time scams, about how guys survived by their wits in the hard-ass Depression days. And come some old Friday night, a slow girl-less Friday usually, Eddie would hold forth about what he had learned in the world, learned from Sidewalk and Bright Boy.

Here, for example, is what he told the boys one Friday night, one “Five-Fingers” Malone-less Friday night marking the first time he got bagged for doing a robbery, unarmed that time, of a gas station and was doing a six month stretch at Deer Island, which will give you an idea of where Eddie was heading, a story of a scam that seemed impossible to pull off given what they were trying to do. Unless you knew how very greedy some guys, even smart guys were. Let’s call it the wallet switch, an old scam that Eddie would perform a couple of times later, successfully. You need two guys for this, at least. In this case two used to be “from hunger” Great Depression grifters Denver Slim and Gash Lavin. And you must know your mark’s movements pretty well and whether they have dough on them, a more usual circumstance than you might think back then than now that we are in this age of the ATM and cashable credit cards among those a shade to the left of the law (and a whole new Eddie-less generation tech- savvy grifters with their dreams, and stories they are telling their confederates on slow Friday nights). I won’t go into the preliminaries about setting the mark up, but they knew their guy, knew his movements and knew what he was carrying, so just rest assured that Denver and Gash had seeded their mark. Well actually Denver had seeded the mark, one Ricardo “Slice” Russo (you figure out the why of that moniker, okay), who was the bag man for Lou Thorpe’s numbers racket in New York City, yes the Lou Thorpe who ran wild back in the day and made a splash in Vegas to top off his career but this is earlier when he was greedier than Midas and so was particularly susceptible to any scheme that put money in his waiting hands.

Once a week Slice headed for Chicago on the midnight train to pay off Lou’s confederates there (at the high end of the rackets there are always confederates to pay off, cops too so it is just part of the overhead to keep on the streets. Guys down the bottom of the food chain don’t have such financial worries they are too busy keeping one eye out for looming John Law.)

Now bag men are pretty low in the food chain of any criminal enterprise but are like Eddie and every other Eddie-like dreamer also groomed on the con, on easy street dreams. What Denver did was to ask Slice, whom he cornered by evoking “Shark” Mahoney’s name, a mutual acquaintance, as he was heading to the station on the way to Chicago to drop off three thousand to a guy, “Bones” Kelly, also known to both men, on Division Street in that city for him. That money had been placed in a wallet, a black leather wallet similar to the one Slice was carrying the twenty thousand pay-off in, and when Slice got to Chi town he gave the wallet to the Division Street guy, to Kelly, the one with three thousand in it, three thousand in counterfeit money as Kelly later found out. See Slice had figured that doing Denver’s delivery was like finding money on the ground especially when he thought up the fake dough angle. So tough luck, Denver. Worse though, worse for Slice anyway, the mob’s wallet also had twenty thousand in counterfeit money when he delivered the wallet to an office in the Loop.

What had happened was that Gash had been on that train, had in the course of bumping into Slice switched wallets and got off in Cleveland leaving Slice to his troubles. But here is what you have to know, know about the mob. They thought Slice, a troublesome bag man and so an easy fall guy was pulling a fast one on them when he explained what he thought had happened and he wound up in the Illinois River face down before anybody investigated anything. Beautiful work by Denver and Gash who headed out West for a while just to be on the safe side but also know this-if you are running on the high side expect some blow-back, nasty blow-back if you don’t walk away clean. Just ask Slice

One night, another of those aimless nights when there was no action, or maybe Eddie was cooling out from a con, a wise move since overdoing the con scene leads inevitably to trouble, usually fist, gun or John Law trouble, he told the guys a story, a story about the granddaddy of all the scores, a haul of almost half a million back in the 1930s when half a million was not just walking around money like it is today. A story that Nutsy Callahan, another one of the Great Depression guys he would listen to over on the Commons told him about one afternoon after he had played out some luscious honey over on Tremont Street who had “curled his toes” and he was a bit too restless to head home (Eddie wasn’t much for girlfriends or serious female company on his way up and maybe it was better for him to just catch a quick “curl the toes” on an off-afternoon with some passing fancy because no question women are far tougher to deal with that the hardest scam). The way Nutsy told the story implied that he might have been in on the caper, although like all good grifters, grafters, percentage guys, and midnight sifters, he would put the account in the third person just in case the statute of limitations had not run out on whatever the offenses were, or, more likely, some pissed off Capo or his descendants were still looking to take some shots at guys who pulled such scams.

Nutsy had told Eddie a few lesser scams that he had been involved in and Eddie told a few lies of his own but the important thing for Eddie, or rather Eddie’s future was that he was looking to break out of the penny-ante grifts and ride easy street so he was looking for ideas, long ago ideas really because just maybe with a duke here and a juke there the thing could be played again. Eddie didn’t bother to tell Nutsy that for Nutsy would probably not have told the story or as likely dismiss Eddie’s chances out of hand. So Nutsy told the story and Eddie’s eyes went bonkers over the whole set-up.

This one involved “Top Hat” Hogan so named for the simple fact that as long as anybody had known him, or could remember, he always wore a fancy day top hat although rarely, very rarely, with any accompanying evening clothes. Some of his girl friends said he wore the damn thing when he was in bed with them and that was just fine because Top Hat was a walking daddy when it came to loving his women. Top Hat had been widely assumed to have been the brains behind the Silver Smith Fur scam, the Morgan Bank scam and the Golden Gate Mine dust-up which people talked about almost until the war (World War II if you are counting). So Top Hat under any circumstances was a number one grifter who any guy with any dough, any serious dough, had better check up on to see if Top Hat had been in the vicinity if he wanted to keep said cash. The other key guy, and the reason Top Hat, who had been semi-retired at the time of this caper and rightfully so having run the rack already, was a raw kid, a kid with promise but not much else then, was “Jet” Jenkins. And the reason that Top Hat even considered teaming up with a raw kid like Jet, was that he was the son of Happy Heddy Jenkins, a fancy woman who had “curled his toes” back in his younger days. Heddy had had some good days and bad days but one of the bad days had been meeting up with the famous gambler, Black Bart Benson, one of the great flim-flam, flim-flam meaning simply a cheater without mercy and guys, leg-breakers if anybody had a problem with that, poker players of the day.

Old Bart had nevertheless had run into a streak of bad luck at cards which even cheaters face at times, had borrowed and lost almost a one hundred thousand dollars from Heddy (who ran on the best, friendliest, and easiest to enter if you had the money whorehouses in Chicago). Somehow things had taken a turn for the worst after Black Bart left Heddy high and dry and she was back on cheap street trying to raise a helter-skelter growing boy with short funds. Not so Black Bart who had cheated his way to a million dollar bonanza when his luck changed. (That cheating not known, obviously, to the guys taking the beating at the card table but Heddy knew her Bart and imparted that wisdom onto her son.) When Heddy sent Jet to see if Bart would ante up the cash he had borrowed from her he dismissed Jet with a flick of his hand, and after a serious beating by one of his leg-breakers had him dumped him in some back alley in Altoona one night. Bart had, with a laugh, as his boys administered that beating, told Jet that he should sue him in court to get his money back as he wasn’t in the mood to give some bent whore dough that she had gotten from her whorehouse dollies. So Heddy, so Jet, and after hearing about what Bart had called Heddy, so Top Hat were primed for revenge. But more than revenge because that is easy, kids’ stuff, but to send Bart back to cheap street hustling winos with three-card Monte tricks or stuff like that.

The key to understanding Black Bart was that like a lot of con artists, no, most con artists, no, make that all con artists, is that beside being easy prey to any scam especially a scam that plays to their greed they always assume that they are smarter than whoever is making the proposition and can double-back on it to their profit. Top Hat had easy pickings when he ran across guys like Bart. Here is the way that Top Hat worked his magic, although when Nutsy finished telling Eddie the lay Eddie thought the venture had too many moving parts, too many guys in on the score once Black Bart was brought down.

It went like this. “Buggy” Bannon knew Black Bart, knew he was always interested in an easy score so Buggy put the word in Bart’s ear about some silver and gold mining stock that was about to go through the roof once the worst parts of the Depression were over. So Buggy, who had worked with Top Hat on the Silver Smith scam and so was trustworthy, or as trustworthy as any guy working on a scam can be introduced Top Hat to Bart as a chief stockbroker for Merrill Lynch. Then Top Hat went through the traces, got Bart hooked in with the knowledge about the gold and silver stock. Of course Top Hat had had “Horseless” Harry sent up a nice brochure in color all about the various possibilities of the mining stock and Bart got interested, saw quick dollar signs. Of course even an over-the-top greedy guy like Bart had to see some real stuff, some real stockbroker operation, so Top Hat had rented out space in a building in the financial district and created out of sheer nothing a stock market room complete with ticker-tape, running around employees (all grifters from out west so that Bart would not recognize them) or and investors milling around.

That was the part that Eddie thought was over the top, the too many moving parts aspect, but in any case it all looked good to Bart. Here is the carrot Top Hat told Bart to invest a few thousand to see how it went. And so Bart did, bringing to the stock room five thousand in cash as all con artists did then in the days before working kited checks and credit cards and stuff like that opened out new ways to bilk people, including smart guys. A few days later Top Hat delivers ten thousand to Bart, all fresh dough, and so they are off to the races because now he sees that this thing could make him really rich. Of course Top Hat knowing that you have to bring a guy, a sucker along, knowing you needed to whet his appetite had just added five of his own money to Bart’s to bring in the bonanza (writing it off as overhead just like any other legal or illegal operation).

Bart, although no fool and who still had some suspicions, was no question hooked though as Top Hat fed him another stock tip and told him he should let the ten thousand ride, which he did. About a week later Top Hat delivers twenty-two thousand to Bart and he was really hooked, really wants to put more money down. Especially when that twenty-two went to fifty grand a few weeks later. Bart said to Top Hat that it was like finding money on the street. Then Top Hat really got to him, let him know that in South Africa, a known gold, silver and diamond mother lode to everybody in those days that a new field was within days of being explored and discovered and that Bart should be ready to go big and get in on the ground floor. Here is the beauty of the thing though. The financial pages were almost in a conspiracy with Top Hat because they were also projecting some speculation about new minefields. One day Top Hat told Bart to get all the cash he could gather because that South African stock, low, very low at the time would be going through the roof once the discovery was confirmed. So a few days later Bart brought a suitcase filled with cash, about a million maybe a little less, and pushed it over to Top Hat. Top Hat went to the cashier (“Hangman” Henry of all people) and brought back a receipt to Bart.

Now you can figure out the rest. A few days later news of that new minefield did come in and that stock did rise although in a world filled with gold and silver with nobody to buy stuff yet not as much as you would have expected but still a good take. Bart then called Top Hat to tell him to cash in. No answer at Top Hat’s number. Bart then went to the stock exchange room to find nothing but a “for rent” sign on the doors. As for Top Hat and Jet well they were on the train back to New York with that one hundred grand for Heddy and a twinkle came into Top Hat’s eyes about those old days when she “curled his toes,” and might again. Beautiful.

That story etched in his brain Eddie Daley started putting together a few ideas in his head, getting on the phone to a few guys (fewer than Top Hat had in his operation), and started making some dough connections for financing. Out in the grifter night they still talk about Eddie Daley, whereabouts unknown, “king of the grifters” after he took Vince Edwards the big book operator for about a million and a quarter in cold hard cash. You now know the back story on that one.  

*****The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With The Late B.B. King’s Lucille In Mind

*****The Blues Aint Nothing But Lucille On Your Mind- With The Late B.B. King’s Lucille In Mind 

 

 From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Here is the drill. Bart Webber had started out life, started out as a captive nation child listening to singers like Frank Sinatra who blew away all of the swirling, fainting, screaming bobbysoxers who really did wear bobby sox since the war was on and nylons were like gold, of his mother’s generation proving that his own generation, the generation that came of age to Elvis hosannas although to show human progress they threw their undergarments his way, was not some sociological survey aberration before he, Frank,  pitter-pattered the Tin Pan Alley crowd with hip Cole Porter champagne lyrics changed from sweet sister cocaine originally written when that was legal, when you could according to his grandmother who might have known since she faced a lifetime of pain could be purchased over the counter at Doc’s Drugstore although Doc had had no problem passing him his first bottle of hard liquor when he was only sixteen which was definitely underage, to the bubbly reflecting changes of images in the be-bop swinging reed scare Cold War night, Bing Crosby, not the Bing of righteous Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? when he spoke a little to the social concerns of the time and didn’t worry about Yip Harburg some kind of red pinko bastard raising hell among the workers and homeless guy who slogged through World War I  but White Christmas put to sleep stuff dreaming of very white Christmases along with “come on to my house” torchy who seemed to have been to some Doc’s Drugstore to get her own pains satisfied Rosemary Clooney (and to his brother, younger I think, riding his way, Bob and his Bobcats as well), the Inkspots spouting, sorry kit-kating scat ratting If I Didn’t Care and their trademark spoken verse on every song, you know three verses and they touched up the bridge (and not a soul complained at least according to the record sales for a very long time through various incantations of the group), Miss Patti Page getting dreamy about local haunt Cape Cod Bay in the drifty moonlight a place he was very familiar with in those Plymouth drives down Route 3A  and yakking about some doggie in the window, Jesus (although slightly better on Tennessee Waltz maybe because that one spoke to something, spoke to the eternal knot question, a cautionary tale about letting your friend cut in on your gal, or guy and walking away with the dame or guy leaving you in the lurch), Miss Rosemary Clooney, solo this time, telling one and all to jump and come to her house as previously discussed, Miss Peggy Lee trying to get some no account man to do right, do right by his woman (and swinging and swaying on those Tin Pan Alley tunes of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwin brothers and Jerome Kern best with Benny Goodman in wartime 1940s which kept a whole generation of popular singers with a scat of material), the Andrew Sisters yakking about their precious rums and cokes (soft drinks, not cousin, thank you remember what was said above about the switch in time from sweet sister to bathtub gin), the McGuire Sisters getting misty-eyed, the Dooley sisters dried-eyed, and all the big swing bands from the 1940s like Harry James, Tommy Dorsey (and his brother Jimmy who had his own band for some reason, maybe sibling rivalry, look it up if you like) as background music on the family radio in the 1950s.

The radio which his mother, Delores of the many commands, more commandments than even old Moses come down the mountain imposed on his benighted people, of the many sorrows, sorrows maybe that she had picked a husband more wisely in the depths of her mind although don’t tell him, the husband, his hard-pressed father or that she had had to leave her own family house over on Young Street with that damn misbegotten Irish red-nosed father, and the many estrangements, something about the constant breaking of those fucking commandments, best saved for another day, always had on during the day to get her through her “golden age of working class prosperity” and single official worker, dad, workaday daytime household world” and on Saturday night too when that dad, Prescott, joined in.

Joined in so they, mother and father sloggers and not only through the Great Depression and World War II but into the golden age too, could listen to Bill Marley on local radio station WJDA and his Memory Lane show from seven to eleven where they could listen to the music that got them (and their generation) through the “from hunger” times of the 1930s Great Depression (no mean task not necessarily easier than slogging through that war coming on its heels)  and when they slogged through (either in some watery European theater or the Pacific atoll island one take your pick) or anxiously waited at home for the other shoe to drop during World War II. A not unusual occurrence, that shoe dropping, when the lightly trained, rushed to battle green troops faced battle-hardened German and Japanese soldiers until they got the knack of war on bloody mudded fronts and coral-etched islands but still too many Gold Star mothers enough to make even the war savages shed a tear. 

Bart, thinking back on the situation felt long afterward that he would have been wrong if he said that Delores and Prescott should not have had their memory music after all of that Great Depression sacking and war rationing but frankly that stuff then (and now, now that he had figured some things out about them, about how hard they tried and just couldn’t do better given their circumstances but too later to have done anything about the matter, although less so) made him grind his teeth. But he, and his three brothers, were a captive audience then and so to this very day he could sing off Rum and Coca Cola, Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (the Glenn Miller version not the Andrew Sister’s) and Vera Lynn’s White Cliffs of Dover from memory. But that was not his music, okay. (Nor mine either since we grew up in the same working class neighborhood in old Carver, the cranberry bog capital of the world, together and many nights in front of Hank’s Variety store we would blow steam before we got our very own transistor radios and record players about the hard fact that we could not turn that radio dial, or shut off that record player, under penalty of exile from Main Street.)     

Then of course since we are speaking about the 1950s came the great musical break-out, the age of classic rock and roll which Bart “dug” (his term since he more than the rest of us who hung around Jimmy Jack’s Clam Shack on Main Street [not the diner on Thornton Street, that would be later when the older guys moved on and we stepped up in their places in high school] was influenced by the remnant of the “beat” generation minute as it got refracted in Carver via his midnight sneak trips to Harvard Square, trips that broke that mother commandment number who knows what number), seriously dug to the point of dreaming his own jailbreak commandment dreams about rock star futures (and girls hanging off every hand, yeah, mostly the girls part as time went on once he figured out his voice had broken around thirteen and that his slightly off-key versions of the then current hits would not get him noticed on the mandatory American Bandstand, would not get him noticed even if he was on key) but that Elvis-etched time too was just a bit soon for him, us, to be able to unlike Bart’s older brother, Payne, call that stuff the music that he, I came of age to.

Although the echoes of that time still run through his, our, minds as we recently proved yet again when we met in Boston at a ‘60s retro jukebox bar and could lip-synch, quote chapter and verse, One Night With You (Elvis version, including the salacious One Night Of Sin original), Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry, of course, too bad he couldn’t keep his hands off those begging white girls when the deal went down and Mister wanted no interracial sex, none, and so send him to hell and back), Let’s Have A Party ( by the much underrated Wanda Jackson who they could not figure out how to produce, how to publicize -female Elvis with that sultry look and that snarl or sweet country girl with flowers in her hair and “why thank you Mister Whoever for having me on your show I am thrilled” June Carter look ), Be-Bop-a-Lula (Gene Vincent in the great one hit wonder night, well almost one hit, but what a hit when you want to think back to the songs that made you jump, made you a child of rock and roll), Bo Diddley (Bo, of course, who had long ago answered the question of who put the rock in rock and roll and who dispute his claim except maybe Ike Turner when he could flailed away on Rocket 88), Peggy Sue (too soon gone Buddy Holly) and a whole bunch more.   

 

The music that Bart really called his own though, as did I, although later we were to part company since I could not abide, still can’t abide, that whiny music dealing mainly with mangled murders, death, thwarted love, and death, or did I say that already, accompanied by, Jesus, banjos, mandos and harps, was the stuff from the folk minute of the 1960s which dovetailed with his, our coming of chronological, political and social age, the latter in the sense of recognizing, if not always acting on, the fact that there were others, kindred, out there beside us filled with angst, alienation and good will to seek solidarity with which neither of us tied up with knots with seven seals connected with until later after getting out of our dinky hometown of Carver and off into the big cities and campus towns where just at that moment there were kindred by the thousands with the same maladies and same desire to turn  the world upside down.

By the way if you didn’t imbibe in the folk minute or were too young what I mean is the mountain tunes of the first generation of the Carter Family coming out of Clinch Mountain, Buell Kazell, a guy you probably never heard of and haven’t missed much except some history twaddle that Bart is always on top of (from the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music times), Jimmy Rodgers the Texas yodeler who found fame at the same time as the Carters in old Podunk Bristol, Tennessee, the old country Child ballads (Northwest Europe old country collected by Child in Cambridge in the 1850s and taken up in that town again one hundred years later in some kind of act, conscious or unconscious, of historical affinity), the blue grass music (which grabbed Bart by the throat when Everett Lally, a college friend of his and member of the famed Lally Brothers blue grass band let him in on his treasure trove of music from that genre which he tried to interest me in one night before I cut him short although Everett was a cool guy, very cool for a guy from the hills and hollows of Appalachia). Protest songs too, protest songs against the madnesses of the times, nuclear war, brushfire war in places like Vietnam, against Mister James Crow’s midnight hooded ways, against the barbaric death penalty, against a lot of what songwriter Malvina Reynolds called the “ticky-tack little cookie-cutter box” existences all of us were slated for if nothing else turned up by the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Von Ronk and Phil Ochs. Bart said that while he was in college (Boston College, the Jesuit school which was letting even heathen Protestants like Bart in as long as the they did not try to start the Reformation, again on their dime, or could play football) the latter songs (With God On Our Side, Blowin’ In The Wind, The Time They Are A-Changing, I Ain’t Marching No More, Universal Soldier and stuff like that) that drove a lot of his interest once he connected their work with the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene (and the adjacent hanging out at the Hayes-Bickford Cafeteria which he has written plenty about elsewhere and need not detain us here where he hung on poverty nights, meaning many nights.

Bart said a lot of the drive toward folk music was to get out from under the anti-rock and rock musical counter-revolution that he, we although I just kept replaying Elvis and the crowd until the new dispensation arrived, kept hearing on his transistor radio during that early 1960s period with pretty boy singers (Fabian, a bunch of guys named Bobby, the Everly Brothers) and vapid young female consumer-driven female singer stuff (oh, you want names, well Sandra Dee, Brenda Lee, Patsy Cline, Leslie Gore say no more). I passed that time, tough time it was in that cold winter night where the slightest bit of free spirit was liable to get you anywhere from hell form commandment mother to the headmaster to some ill-disposed anonymous rabid un-American committee which would take your livelihood away in a snap if you didn’t come across with names and addresses and be quick about it just ask the Hollywood Ten and lesser mortals if you think I am kidding which I agreed was a tough time in the rock genre that drove our desires, feeling crummy for not having a cool girlfriend to at least keep the chill night out playing my by the midnight phone classic rock and roll records almost to death and worn down grooves and began to hear a certain murmur from down South and out in Chicago with a blues beat that I swear sounded like it came out of the backbeat of rock. (And I  was not wrong, found out one night to Bart’s surprise and mine that Smiley Jackson big loving tune that I swear Elvis ripped off and just snarled and swiveled up. Years later I was proven right in my intuition when it turned out that half of rock and roll depended on black guys selling scant records, “race records” to small audiences.)  

Of course both of us, Bart and me, with that something undefinable which set us apart from others like Frankie Riley the leader of the corner boy night who seemed to get along by going along, being nothing but prime examples of those alienated teenagers whom the high-brow sociologists were fretting about, hell, gnawing at their knuckles since the big boys expected them to earn all that research money by spotting trends not letting the youth of the nation go to hell in a handbasket without a fight, worried that we were heading toward nihilism, toward some “chicken run” death wish or worse, much worse like Johnny Wild Boy and his gang marauding hapless towns at will leaving the denizens defenseless against the horde and not sure what to do about it, worried about our going to hell in a handbasket like they gave a fuck, like our hurts and depressions were what ailed the candid world although I would not have characterized that trend that way for it would take a few decades to see what was what. Then though the pretty boy and vapid girl music just gave me a headache, a migraine if anybody was asking, but mostly nobody was.  Bart too although like I said we split ways as he sought to seek out roots music that he kept hearing in the coffeehouses and on the radio once he found a station out of Providence  (accidently) which featured such folk music and got intrigued by the sounds.

Part of that search in the doldrums, my part but I dragged Bart along a little when I played to his folkie roots interests after he found out that some of the country blues music would get some play on that folk music station, a big search over the long haul, was to get deeply immersed in the blues, mainly at first country blues and later the city, you know, Chicago blues. Those country guys though intrigued me once they were “discovered” down south in little towns plying away in the fields or some such work and were brought up to Newport for the famous folk festival there, the one where we would hitchhike to the first time since we had no car when Steve  when balked at going to anything involving, his term “ faggy guys and ice queen girls” (he was wrong, very wrong on the later point, the former too but guys in our circle were sensitive to accusations of “being light on your feet” and let it pass without comment) to enflame a new generation of aficionados. The likes of Son House the mad man preacher-sinner man, Skip James with that falsetto voice singing out about how he would rather be with the devil than to be that woman’s man, a song that got me into trouble with one girl when I mentioned it kiddingly one time to her girlfriend and I got nothing but the big freeze after that and as recently a few years  when I used that as my reason when I was asked if would endorse Hilary Clinton for President, Bukka White (sweating blood and salt on that National Steel on Aberdeen Mississippi Woman and Panama Limited which you can see via YouTube), and, of course Creole Belle candy man Mississippi John Hurt.

But those guys basically stayed in the South went about their local business and vanished from big view until they were “discovered” by folk aficionados who headed south in the late 1950s and early 1960s looking for, well, looking for roots, looking for something to hang onto  and it took a younger generation, guys who came from the Mister James Crow’s South and had learned at their feet or through old copies of their records like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the guy whose photograph graces this sketch, the late B.B. King, to make the move north, to follow the northern star like in underground railroad days to the big industrial cities (with a stop at Memphis on Beale Street to polish up their acts, to get some street wise-ness in going up river, in going up the Big Muddy closer to its source as if that would give them some extra boost, some wisdom) to put some electric juice in those old guitars and chase my blues away just by playing like they too had, as the legendry Robert Johnson is said to have done one dark out on Highway 61 outside of Clarksville down in the Delta, made their own pacts with the devil. And made a lot of angst and alienation just a shade more bearable.  

B.B. King was by no means my first choice among electrified bluesmen, Muddy Waters and in a big way Howlin’ Wolf, especially after I found out the Stones were covering his stuff (and Muddy’s) got closer to the nut for me, But B.B.  on his good days and when he had Lucille (whichever version he had to hand I understand there were several generations for one reason or another) he got closer to that feeling that the blues could set me free when I was, well, blue, could keep me upright when some woman was two-timing me, or worst was driving me crazy with her “do this and do that” just for the sake of seeing who was in charge, could chase away some bad dreams when the deal went down.

Gave off an almost sanctified, not like some rural minster sinning on Saturday night with the women parishioners in Johnny Shine’s juke joint and then coming up for air Sunday morning to talk about getting right with the Lord but like some old time Jehovah river water cleaned, sense of time and place, after a hard juke joint or Chicago tavern Saturday night and when you following that devil minister showed up kind of scruffy for church early Sunday morning hoping against hope that the service would be short (and that Minnie Callahan would be there a few rows in front of you so you could watch her ass and get through the damn thing. B.B. might not have been my number one but he stretched a big part of that arc. Praise be.