An Encore-Remembrances Of Things Past-With Jeff Higgins’ Class Of 1964 In Mind

An Encore-Remembrances Of Things Past-With Jeff Higgins’ Class Of 1964 In Mind

 

 

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

 

There was always something, some damn thing to remind Jeff Higgins, Class of 1964, a fateful year in his life and not just because that was the year that he graduated from North Quincy High School down in outer edge of the Southeastern corner of Massachusetts. He had recently, well, let's call it 2014 because who knows when some iterant reader might read this and because that as will be pointed in a second has significant for why Jeff Higgins thought that it was "one damn thing after another" when dealing with that class issue. If you did the math quickly in your head while I was pointing to the significance you would know that year represented the fiftieth anniversary of the his graduation from high school, then as now if less so a milestone on the way to serious-minded adulthood, and furthermore had  gone through something of a serious traumatic experience which left him numb every time something came up about that year, some remembrance.


If you knew Jeff in 1964, and even if did not you knew somebody like Jeff since every high school class had  a Jeff case and moreover his experience was not that uncommon, then you know form whence I speak. Hey, let's say you didn't know him back then in 1964 but only in  2014 that would tell you the same tale, with his three messy divorces and several affairs from flings to some more serious relationships along with scads of children and grandchildren now from the marriages not the affairs. Guess what you would know that it was about a woman, always about a woman, he eternally afflicted as old as he was from coming of age time to coming to the end-times.

So about a woman this time, this eternally afflicted time, named Elizabeth Drury whom  he had had a brief puff of air affair with in that same 2014 but which had seemingly vanished in his dust of memory until he went up in the attic to clean up some stuff. (By the way Elizabeth not Liz, which would show a certain informality, a certain good sport and not standing on ceremony or Betty, a nickname which conveyed continued childhood in those days as old as a woman might be, so no way she was not anything but a proper Elizabeth-type, who held maybe Queen Elizabeth I, you know the so-called Virgin Queen, the one who ruled England for a long time and had more lovers than you could shake a stick at but all we knew then was that she was the Virgin Queen, as her model, even in high school.) 



Yeah finally getting rid of most of stuff which had been gathering dust, maybe mold for years, in anticipation of selling his house and moving to a more manageable condo, down-sizing they call it in the real estate trade, and found a faded tattered copy of his class’ remembrance card. You know those time vault cards that card companies like Hallmark, the source of this one, put out so that people, or this case the whole class by some tabulations, can put down favorite films, people, records, who was President, and other momentous events from some important year like a high school graduation to be looked at in later years and ahhed over.
That yellowed sheet brought back not just memories of that faded long ago year but of Elizabeth in the not so faded past. So, yes, it was always some damn thing, always some damn woman thing.      

Maybe we had better take you back to the beginning though, back to how the year 1964 and the woman Elizabeth Drury had been giving one Jeffery Higgins late of North Quincy nothing but pains. Jeff had been for many, many years agnostic about attending class reunions, had early on after graduation decided that he needed to show his back to the whole high school experience which was a flat-out zero once he thought about every indignity and hurt he had suffered for one reason or another, and to show that same back to the town, a small hick town anyway which needed to be fled to see the big old world.


A lot of that teenage angst having to do with his humble beginnings as a son of a “chiseler,” not meant as a nice term, a father who worked in the then depleting and now depleted granite quarries when there was work for which the town was then famous and which represented the low-end of North Quincy society. The low-end which others in the town including his fellow classmates in high school who were as socially class conscious as any Mayfair swells made him feel like a nobody and a nothing for no known reason except that he was the son of a chiseler which after all he could not help. Of course those social exclusions played themselves out under the veil of his not dressing cool, living off the leavings of his older brothers, living off of Bargain Center rejected materials not even cool when purchased, you know, white shirts with stripes when that was not cool, black chinos with cuffs like some farmer, ditto, dinky Thom McAn shoes with buckles for Chrissake, just as his younger brothers lived off his in that tight budget world of the desperate working poor, of his not having money for dates even with fellow bogger’s daughters, and hanging corner dough-less, girl-less corners with fellow odd-ball bogger outcasts. So Jeff had no trouble drifting away from that milieu, had no trouble putting dust on his shoes to get out and head west when the doings out west were drawing every wayward youth to the flame, to the summers of love.

And there things stood in Jeff’s North Quincy consciousness for many years until maybe 2012, 2013 when very conscious that a hallmark 50^th class reunion would be in the works and with more time on his hands as he had cut back on the day to day operation of his small law practice in Cambridge he decided that he would check out the preparations, and perhaps offer his help to organize the event. He had received notification of his class’ fortieth reunion in 2004 (which he had dismissed out of hand only wondering how the reunion committee had gotten his address for while he was not hiding from anything or anyone he was also not out there publicly since he did not have clients other than other lawyers whom he wrote motions, briefs, appeals and the like for, until he realized that as a member of the Massachusetts bar he would have that kind of information on his very publicly-accessible bar profile page) so via the marvels of modern day technology through the Internet he was able to get hold of Donna Marlowe (married name Rossi) who had set up a Facebook page to advertise the event.

That connection led to Jeff drafting himself onto the reunion committee and lead directly to the big bang of pain that he would subsequently feel. Naturally in a world filled with social media and networking those from the class who either knew Donna or the other members of the committee or were Internet savvy joined the class’ Facebook page and then were directed to a class website (as he found out later his generation unlike later ones was on the borderline of entering the “information superhighway” and so not all classmates, those still alive anyway, were savvy that way). On that website set up by tech savvy Donna (she had worked in the computer industry at IBM during her working career) each classmate who joined the site had the ability to put up a personal profile next to their class photograph like he had done on many other such sites and that is where Jeff had seen Elizabeth Drury’s profile and a flood of memories and blushes.            

In high school Jeff had been smitten by Elizabeth, daughter of a couple of school teachers who worked in the upscale Marshfield school system  and therefore were stationed well above the chiselers of the town. But in things of the heart things like class distinctions, especially in democratically-etched America, are forgotten, maybe not rightly or fully forgotten when the deal goes down but there is enough of façade to throw one off if one gets feeling a certain way, gets the love bug, and sometime in the  genes makes one foolhardy. That had almost happened to Jeff in Elizabeth's case, except his corner boy Jack Callahan had put him wise, had kept him from one more teenage angst hurt.


Jeff and Elizabeth had had several classes together senior year and sat across from each other in English class and since both loved literature and were school-recognized as such they had certain interests in common. So they talked, talked in what Jeff thought was very friendly and somewhat flirty manner (or as he thought later after the youthful lame had burned out and he drifted west maybe he just hoped that was the case) and he had "formed an intention" (that is the way he said it the night he related the story to me so forgive the legal claptrap way he said it) to ask her out even if only to Doc’s Drugstore for an after school soda and a listen to the latest platters on Doc’s jukebox which had all the good stuff that kids were dancing to in those days. He figured from there he could work up to a real date. But sometimes the bumps and bruises of the chiseler life left one with a little sense and so before making attempts at such a conquest Jeff consulted with Jack Callahan to see if Elizabeth was “spoken for” (Jeff’s term if you can believe that like this was some 17th century Pilgrim forebears time).



See Jack, a star football player even if he was also a chiseler's son got something of an exemption from the rigid routine of the social structure of the senior class just by being able to run through defensive lines on any given granite grey autumn afternoon and so had excellent “intelligence” on the whole school system’s social network, in other words who was, or was not, spoken for. (By the way that “grapevine” any high school grapevine, maybe middle school too would put the poor technicians at the CIA and the spooks at NSA to shame with the accuracy of the information. It had to be that resourceful and accurate otherwise fists would fly.) The word on Elizabeth, forget it, off-limits, an “ice queen.” So Jeff saved himself plenty of anguish and he moved on with his small little high school life.

Seeing Elizabeth's name and profile though that many years later made him curious, made him wonder what had happened to her and since he was now again “single” he decided he would write a private e-mail to her profile page something which the website was set up to perform and which the reunion committee was recommending the still standing alumnus to do. That “single” a condition that he now considered the best course after three shifts of alimony, child support and college tuitions made him realize that it was infinitely cheaper to just live with a woman and be done with it.


Jeff wrote a short message asking whether she remembered him and she replied that she very well did remember him and their “great” (her term) conversations about Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton. That short message and reply “sparked” something and they began a flurry of e-mails giving outlines of their subsequent history, including the still important one to Jeff whether she was “spoken for.” She was not having had two divorces although no kids in her career as a professor at the State University.



Somehow these messages led Jeff to tell her about his talk with Jack Callahan. And she laughed not at the “intelligence” which was correct but not for the reasons that Jack gave (her father was an abusive “asshole,” her term for her standoffishness and reputation as an “ice queen”). She laughed because despite her being flirty when they talked in English class, at least that was what she thought she was attempting to do because she certainly was interested when they would talk Jeff had never asked her out and then one day just stopped talking to her for no known reason. Damn.                    

They say, or at least Thomas Wolfe did in the title of one of his novels-you can’t go home again but neither Jeff nor Elizabeth after that last exchange of e-mails about the fateful missing chance back in senior year would heed the message. They decided to meet in Cambridge one night to see if that unspoken truth had any substance. They did meet, got along great, had many stories to exchange and it turned out many of the same interests (except golf a sport which relaxed Jeff when he was all wound up but which Elizabeth’s second husband had tried to teach her to no avail). And so their little affair started, started with great big bursts of flames but wound up after a few months smoldering out and being blown away like so much dust in the wind once Elizabeth started talking about marriage. Jeff was willing to listen to living together but his own strange marital orbit had made him very strongly again any more marriages. So this pair could not go home again, not at all, and after some acrimonious moments they parted.           

Jeff knew that was the best course, knew he had to break it off but it still hurt enough that any reference to 1964 made him sad. As he took a look at the sentiments expressed in that tattered yellowed document he had a moment reprieve as he ahh-ed over the information presented. Had he really forgotten that there was no Vice President then since there was no Vice-Presidential succession when Lyndon Johnson became President after the assassination of home state Irish Jack Kennedy. That My Fair Lady was a  popular Broadway show then as now. That the Beatles had appeared on Ed Sullivan’s Show and done a film, that Chapel of Love had been a hit that year as well. That 1964 was the year the Mustang that he would have died for came out into a candid  world. That gas was only about thirty cent a gallon, and that another Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor, married one Richard Burton for the first time (although not the last). And on that sour note he put the yellowed tattered document he had accidently come across in the trash pile with other tattered documents. He would remember things past in his own way. 

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60^th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)

By Book Critic Zack James

To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes,  I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)

Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).

I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50^th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on  came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).

Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want to yell about here).             

Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned.  Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs,   who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie  and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.

But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.    

Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some   hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode nay Friday or Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.

What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.

The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)

Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60^th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.           

Jack’s Merrimack River. Rough, torrents flowing without a break, rock-stepping rough, boulders really up by the painted sprayed cliffs near the University, cliff names etched in paint going back to Jack time, (then, Jack time, just friendly old Lowell Textile, strictly for the textile trade wonks and wanna-be, not Jack-worthy), undertow dragging against foolhardy feet for the unsteady and first understandings that the world IS a dangerous place but also, without embarrassment, that the river is the river of life. Bridged, bridged at strategic points bridged, brawny steel and trestle bridged to take on all traffics rumbling across the torrent below river, granite foundations stones placed in such a way as to defend against rising rivers, hurricanes, wars, and other earthen disasters.

Bridged, not metaphor bridged, Jack would no heard of it, would smirk that devil’s smirk and dismiss you and your damn metaphor out of hand, so no to some Hemingway mind-wrought big two-hearted Idaho idyllic river but real bridged, Jack London old time bridged, Call Of The Wild nights of the long knives bridged between poor, working poor, working textile poor Lowell on one side and the desperately, or repeatedly poor like clan Kerouac, chronically unemployed, semi-chronically drunk and disorderly, poor, Acre poor.

Blessed Saint Jeanbon, patron saint of the Acre poor, the Acre poor (and throw in some lumpen criminal vagabonds, scavengers, and just plain thugs to boot, they thrive in the easy pickings Acre, and a thousand other Acre places too) known to kindred poor Josh Breslin (mother, nee LeBlanc, the LeBlancs from up Quebec City way) in the French –Canadian Atlantic Avenue Acre over in Olde Saco, Maine and well-known as well to Irish stews Peter Paul Markin down in Acre projects in Adamsville, Massachusetts way. Yes, Saint Jeanbon, patron saint muse of the Acre poor, wherever they are located. The back-biting, bitching, somewhere over the rainbow poor, the Botts diner after midnight heavy-lidded after manly bouts with fugitive whiskey bottles poor, the pick up the fags (okay, okay here cigarette butts) from the Merrimack Street ground, and cadging (while the bartender is not looking) half- finished manly whiskies (or, hell, by midnight whatever is left on napkin-soaked tables and counters), poor. And one thousand, maybe one million other unspoken, always unspoken, pathologies, tics, and whatnots, never allowed to air in the sometimes fetid (although near no oceans or marshes but from mixed and matched industrial chemicals), damn stinking Lowell industrial summer night. And cold, pale blue cold winter too, except maybe not fetid. Pick a cold word, okay.

Jack rough river, working-class Jack rough all brawny and bustle, flowing to great unseen Atlantic shores (where real fetid smells, nature smells from churned seas and drowned marshes, periodically stink the air) and from there to great American homeland England before the fall and real homeland, France, ageless France bountiful and smart long before the bloody Anglos were made hip to using spoons for porridge, before Arcadian Plains of Abraham falls and hard English burnt offering exiles. And damn cursed native tongues (patois they called it) banned just like with the gaelic Irish and the brogue Scots, what madness in Empire, that seaward sun never sets empire thumbing it beefsteak nose at culture brought from courtly France and well-bred manners. And strangers in a strange land (Longfellow homage poem exiles anyway) when Canad soils gave out, or no work prospects loomed , or the lore of two dollars a day (in real money, Anglo-derived money, damn) sent half of Quebec streaming down to the paper and textile mill towns, river towns, Olde Saco, Manchester, Nashua, and sainted, sunned, stunned, acid- stained Lowell.

Merrimack (Jack play word Mary Mack, Markin play word Mary Mack all dressed in black), hometown river of youth, callous youth, question, going into young manhood. Hanging around corner boy LeClerc’s mom and pop variety store cadging quarters from working men streaming out of the second-shift mills, occasionally stealing odd lots of penny candy, you know Baby Ruth, Butterfingers, Snickers (or, snickers), Milky Way, to avoid the heavy tariff at the Bijou Theater come Saturday afternoon double bill, double trouble, matinee specials. And Ma, Meme called so in the old-fashioned back home Montreal way from whence she came trotting for those dame yankee dollars, having to sneak quarters to Mr. LeBlanc to cover those sweet tooth penny candied larcenies . And you thought you were so clever, Jack old boy, old dog. But that was the life, the corner boy life small stealing, small cadging, jack-rolling some drunk kid for his quarters (doled out by his Meme for his penny candy Bijou extravaganzas). Boys, always about boys, and adventures and thinking, and forever writing, writing just in case.

Later dream stories, at those same corners or maybe further the river toward Pawtucketville across from Father Kerouac’s social club (and drinking bout hang-out) but always eternally corner dream stories now long gone to malls and fast food courts and no loitering, no trespassing, no skate-boarding, no breathing human unkind trances. To speak about jail break-outs, about small town prison escapes, the young always seeing even New York City as too small for their outrageous appetites, and good luck, letting Lowell sun eat the dust of your tracks fill the night air, about big time jobs and celebrity (once the word was discovered). And then the talk turned serious as the wisp of a beard showed (more than five o’clock shadows for Jack, dark, French-etched two times a day shaved Jack) turned to manly shavings and childish voice turned to deep bass, serious talk about girls, about what they were made of, and more importantly what made them tick. A lifetime of wonders and sorrows to spill the river-ladened night. A clue though, a clue worth a king’s ransom would have been worth all that lucre if they could just figure out what the hell they wanted. The girls, okay. They, the corner boys, all sized, shaped, smarts, greek, French, ethnic corner boys (who else would inhabit the Acre in those days, the bloody Irish lived in Irishtown, just like they did in Olde Saco and Adamsville, down in Irishtown south Lowell way, down Maggie Cassady way but more on that later) found out soon enough after a few bouts of love dust at the old Starlight Ballroom, now famous, town famous, since Benny Goodman and his band had set its 1939 foot in the front door and blasted everything to be-bop, beepy-be-bop, don’t stop, mad man music including soon to be front singing Jack-enflamed Paula. Yah, that was where she got her start.

Jack’s river of sorrow, of Meme hurts and Maggie Cassidy hurts too. (I told you I would have more on her). Forgotten now Paula (forgotten, even forgotten of red dress seductions which made him toss and turn many a night, many a night before Maggie devoured sleep). Forgotten Meme (and her old-fashioned Montreal French stories that he would use later to bulk out his own stories when his brain ran dry) , forgotten although always hovering as a stark and real cut knives presence (and mixed in as with all mothers , mothers since Eve, generous helpings of love gifts bought with shoe leather- stained hands from working at that damn old mother-twisting shoe mill) really until the Maggie fever had subsided, subsided several years, later but that is a story for another time, a time after New York City lights, Village mysteries, sea adventures and searches for the blue-pink great American West night, and of Neal Cassady romps, and next million word adventures.

What mattered now though was that our boy, our Jack O’Kerouac, or Jack McKerouac, or Jack, hell, let’s leave it at Jack Celtic got himself all balled up over an Irish colleen, from over in Irishtown, well away from the Acre and well away from handy corner boys to hold his hand when old Maggie turned up the heat. Yes, Maggie, blessed virgin Maggie, of the pale blue eyes, of the pale blue heart, and of the lace curtain appetites. Of white picket fences, and houses, white too, to go with them, a spotted dog and a few stray whining kids to keep the cold nights warm. No sale, no Jack of the river sale, not our boy in the end but it was a close call and maybe if she had turned down those silken stockings just once he would have wound up white fence- picketed through his heart in some cozy bungalow close by Dracut Forest.

Yes, Jack would know manly hurts after that one but not before clowning himself before her with feats of modern athletic daring against black ravens , against arch-rival Lawrence gridiron, Lawrence also of the river and of history, of strikes and struggle of a different kind, of bread and roses. Of clowning corner boy clowning, deciding stay or go, stay or go, of drunken dance floor episodes (no, not when Benny Goodman, Hail Be-bop Benny, held forth and made the Starlight Ballroom quake, but other times, other Maggie pouting times, or Maggie tired times, or Maggie “friend” times, the list was endless, and he endlessly patiently impatient as each phase of the Maggie moon turned into ashes. And into Jack death pyre.

Interlude: Jack’s low sun going down behind the river and before that the tree strewn, living tree strewn river upstream, upstream where it all began and where Jack began. Pawtucketville, the Acre, South Lowell, the trolley tracks end, and the endless winter snow walks, the endless summer river ebb walks, the fret Maggie walks, the no dime for carfare (quaint word) walk, the walk to save for penny candy walk, the million word walk, the first school dance walk, the no money for prom car (or car or license, okay) walk, the night before the big game walk, walked in Dracut Forest to avoid mad crashing fans who want to know glory, if only Jack reflected glory, yes, walk, walk too, get out of the house when Meme cursed his dark night.

But really prelude to million mile walks from New Jersey shores, looking out from broken down, oil-stained, oil smelled eastern piers and dreaming hookah Tangiers dreams, from Time Square dope blasts with every faux hipster who could afford a string tie, soft shoes, midnight sunglasses and a be-bop line of patter, pitter patter, really, from rockymountainhills walks in beloved Cassady country poolrooms and juke joints, from ghost dance walks in saline deserts channeling ancient Breton hurts and shamanic wanderlust, from dark bracero Mex walks waiting on broken down senorita love in some stinking Imperial Valley bean field, from Presidio fast by the golden gate bridge, fast by North Beach walks, from Big Sur hunger walks, from life walks, from death walks. Walks, shoe leather- eating walks, okay.

******

Jack of Lowell hometown, Jack of some Micmac-traded ancient Canad French-Canadian fur trader beyond time and back to Breton woods and great field of serf fellaheen peasants plowing, cowing, milking, harvesting, corvee-ing some milord’s land seen in some far distance, since with river running. Ownership burned out in the Yankee mill night, the time-owned night, the day too. Mainly now of triple and double-deckers squalid flats constantly changing renter-ship, constantly babies squabble in six languages, but above all patois, beautiful lilt keltic fringe hard Atlantic seas and torrents of rain Breton coast patois. And so they established an outpost here, among the mix of mill town hands, making mill things, dreaming non-mill things, and for the men working, working hard and long and then off to some card-playing (as disguise for heavy drinking) Franco-American Club, no women, no children, no kikes, no micks, no English (absolutely no English for there is a swollen bone to pick over that on one), no oppressors unnamed and unloved allowed. A man’s life as befits a man whose people came down from places deep in Quebec woods and along the mighty Saint Lawrence.

Those are ancient myths of gentile beggar fellaheen birth among the Canad and pedigree not to be touted in non-pedigree Americas, and certainly not in non-pedigree Lowells (except by certain mill owners who spoke only to god, or to Cabots maybe). And so they mix of fellaheen patois, of roasted fires, of sweet gentle wines to that good night, of sober work, of somber life explained the fate of that American mix, Lowell style. And explained too the greek, french, irish, break-out of ungrateful sons (and daughters but not as well seen). Sons with words to say, with American songs to sing, not Whitman song, that was another time, another place and another America but songs against mill stream night, songs against the death of personal dreams , of wayward sons, well-meaning wayward sons but wayward.

Ah, Lowell setting sun Lowell and its time of great decline, great decline on Jack’s birth river. The stink of tannic acid, the blue dye, the red dye, hell, the yellow dye river dying for lack of work, for worked out mills, for moved to cheap jack cheaper labor southern ports of call. And so the Lowell setting sun turned in on itself, turned to be-bop music and Botts midnight diners with guys, guys who used to work the midnight shift, and restless, now lingering over mad cups of joe to ward off the worthless sense of non-self. Fixed in place and the younger ones seeing that said no mas, not me, and spoke of flights of fancy, and of real flights, flights from Merrimack river roads to trash-strewn asphalt highways west.

Lowell, water Lowell, canal Lowell, fresh-faced farm girl Lowell hands weaving the wicked weave of the loam and then to other pursuits none the worse for wear at least that was the call, the advertised call that brought them from Acton, Concord, and Littleton farms or maybe before those places had names, town names, just Farmer Brown’s rosy-cheeked daughter from over there where that dusty road intersected the corner of Brother Brown’s land. Later gentle waters, gentle confluence waters from high hill brooks and bramble, from flow Concord, Lowell sing, not some sing-song Shepard’s sing, not some cattle- lowing sing, not some elysian fields sing but the sing of great bobbed machines whistling late into the night, hell what night, whistling into daybreak and fearful noises for those poor tenement, double and triple tenement, dwellers who form the perimeter of the mill mile, sweet cloth and money-making mill mile.

And Jack born, born and raised, to term an old phrase a mere stone’s throw away along that same river bend as it curves up the cliffs near Pawtucketville, the old time Meme and Pepe French quarter where Jack would get his fill of double and triple-deckers. And rosy tales of those ancient Breton fields and thieving thrivingFrench fur- traders amid the scream of broken whiskey bottles, a few broken by him, murderous wives bent on murder for having; too many children, too many children close together, too many short paychecks and too many long grocer’s bills, too many drunken husband nights without him or with him all sex hungry and stinking of anglo whiskies or greek anise, or just murderous to be murderous in fear of the lost Hollywood dream and no chance to pull a Mildred Pierce or even a lite Lana Turner twist against some old drunken greek short order chef seaside road diner hell fate.

Jail-break midnight teenagers looking for quick quarters for the jukebox to play Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman or some latest be-bop daddy, standing around in front of the Bijou Theater or the Starlight Ballroom to see if there are any dreams being manufactured inside, and looking for a way to make sense of a world that they didn’t create. That Jack, that Jack teen age boy, teen age corner boy like all the others didn’t create, that played and that ate at him, ate at him from crawl time to crawling down the gutter time. But if you are going to bust out you had better have something more than halfback hero’s good looks, if you are going to go toe to toe with the gods (and we know he was aching, bleeding really, to go toe to toe with them, for a while anyway). So he started, started early, a million word journey use stubbled pencils, and squirrelly inks until, until he got the hang of writing non-stop with a roll of newsprint and a squirrelly old typewriter. Praise Brother Remington

And funny growth too, the sturdy, durable fleet youth, all black hair and oo-la-la French good looks, verified, verified first by wistful small-breasted French girls with long thin legs, also from the old Canad descended and maybe a few rascally fur-traders in the background too. Later wild red-headed Irish girls trying, a little, to break from heathen brown-haired sexless, sex-hate Irish boys murmuring novenas, stations of the cross, and smelling of altar wines and priest pokes would toss and turn dreaming of oo-la-la Frenchmen read about in some school girl school book, or heard on unsavory streets from the older girls, the girls who no longer have the sign of the cross when they passed Saint Joseph’s, or Saint Brigitte’s, or Saint Germaine’s or Immaculate Conception, or Sacred Heart, Saint, saint, saint, Saint Mary’s, okay, or any of the three billion (but I exaggerate) other Lowell holy, holy places where a man can turn from saint Jack to shaman Jack in a wink of an eye.

And that is when she came by, she Maggie she, but call her all girl-kind, no, womankind, with her pale white skin, her pale blue eyes, her dark hair and her well-turned ankles, and disturbed his sleep. And he never got over that, that way that she could keep him on a string while every other girl was ready to throw herself to the ground for him (in order that he could have the stamina to beat Lawrence on Thanksgiving Day, in order for him to write some little ditty for her, in order for him to dance with her at the school dance, in order, one girl claimed she had to “do it” in order to improve her voice so she could sing with some faux- Benny Goodman [all the rage then in the late 1930s be-bop night] quintet, in order, hell, at the end it was just in order to, what did they call it in Lowell High School Monday morning girls’ lav before school girl talkfest about what did, or didn’t happen on Friday or Saturday night, oh yah, to say they had been jacked by him).

Later, later when the reasons changed but the girls (no, women then) still though jacked thoughts he feigned lack of interest, feigned writer’s cramp, feigned zen Buddhist abstinence, feigned, not so feigned maybe, drunk or drugged impotence. But no man, no real man, or fairy (term of art forgiven, please) or even lowly Time Square whores, hookers, drifters and fags (term of art, not forgiven) knew that he had had his insides torn out by old Maggie, Maggie the cat with no downy billows ending long before Tennessee Williams ever put pen to paper. So say a prayer for Jack, Jeanbon Jack, if you are the praying kind and curse hellish dark-haired Irish colleens.

Spinning wheels, million football goals scored, million girls jacked, million drinks drunk with clownish corner boys from age six on, million yards of pure textile loomed enough to satisfy even the haughtiest Lowell Textile School professor, million words written, million smokestack fumes emitted into the cold Lowell air night. Finished, town finished, Maggie finished, corner boy finished, home finished. Break out time, break out to great northern seas to write like some mad monk plastered on cheap jack vineyard wines, homemade, pressed fast and sipped fast (and on the sly). Neon sign break-out, New Jack City beckoned.

Interlude: Four in the morning cold coffee slurps, percolator (quaint word) on the stove brewing up another break- speed batch to endure hours more of non-stop, non-connected, non-punctuated writing. Writing of Trailways bus stop waits, waits for continental visions (if one does not the mind the company, the inevitable, to be kind ,too large company in the next seat), in search of that great blue-pink American West night (and later the international blue-pink night) in dirty washrooms filled with seven hundred manly stinks, and six perfumes to kill the smell, the urinate smell, street-wise rest room for weary travelers, hobos, bums, and tramps, take your pick, maybe some hung over soldier trying to decide on AWOL or frantic rush back to base and evaporated dreams, nightmares really. Of seasick sailors running overboard at the first wave heave, or first explosion in the dread Murmansk run North Atlantic icy waters night one sailor, seasick, no, sick of the sea, writing, writing in disregard of heaves, and lifeboat-worthy explosions.

Of  Village flophouse lofts filled with chattering (to vanish fear)  expatriate  exiles, native born from Iowa, Minnesota, Denver, maybe, in ones and twos, trying to hold out against the impending red scare cold war night, the death night to destroy the promise of golden age utopias. Of Scollay Square whores ready to take your pain away, no questions asked, filled with stories, small dream from small town stories about easy lost virginity and local scandal, with jack-roller ready pimp/boyfriends just in case things got rough, or some easy dough was to be had.

Of some mad notion that writing two million words would take that pain away as easily as that whore promise, and finding some jack-roller instead when the brain ran dry, the pen ink ran dry, the newsprint roll ran out and there were no Meme or Gerald memory blasts to fall back on. Of some ache, some unfound ache to find that Adonis double (Janus, maybe, blond they say, maybe) zen master, gear master, chariot master that everybody in that Village loft, that San Francisco North Beach bungalow, that Malibu henhouse, that Tijuana whorehouse, that Tangiers opium den, hell, even that Trailways stink bathroom was waiting on.                       

********

New York City, Time Square of course, Columbia of course(before the heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), the Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), of movies and movie theaters, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking or urine or Thunderbird wines, of drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggers and minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42^nd Street hurts, of Howard Johnson’s frankfurts eaten by the half dozen to curve hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, of Joe and Nemo’s two AM fatty griddle hamburgers, of fags and fairies, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell and can write too, write one million words on order, and of stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro, and not to speak of Soho or the Village. And of junkies, of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules face down in some dusty Sonora town failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand forgotten murders. Jesus, suffering humanity.

And of men met in New York, really Times Square jungles (post- Maggie girls, women, frills, frails, dames, bitches, etc., etc., of no serious consequence except as pillows, weeps, dreams, and such). Of word magicians, maybe not two million but enough, of great earth-devouring fags (no offense here), chain-smoking New Jersey sodomites, reading Walt Whitman by day and wine drunk and man horny at night (or maybe day too but mainly reading and infernal writing always writing like that was all that life could be except enough experiences to write about. Of Allen om Ginsberg.Of breaking out of silly Eliot great modern bean- counting words in need of glossaries of comprehension, of jazz-inspired be-bop high white words to take the whole red scare, cold war stalinite night away, and to calm the nuclear blast headed our way, butt up (no sexual reference intended and no spite) and chronicle each and every experience with that broken down typewriter, and that roll of low-grade paper ripped out of the be-bop 1950s night. And of Adonis all-american golden boy, Neal, meets all-american dark-haired boy in some Denver saloon, or pool hall yelling, shoot pools , make some dough and off in some 1946 Studebaker in straight forty-eight hour gears-grinding search of the great blue-pink American West night, or maybe just Maggie, that eluded fugitive fragrance that he could never name of Maggie, who knows. Yes, the father that we knew, the father that we did not know. Jack, Jack of the Merrimack.

In Boston- Smedley Butler Brigade- VFP Invitation To March With Us On Armistice Day-Saturday November 11th

In Boston- Smedley Butler Brigade- VFP Invitation To March With Us On Armistice Day-Saturday November 11^th-We would be pleased to have you join us. 

Put Your Marching Sneakers On… Armistice Day For Peace Saturday November 11, 2017

It is that time again. Every year for well over a decade we have had our Armistice Peace March behind the “official” Veterans Day parade in Boston. We continue that tradition this year as well.

Meet at the Corner Of Beacon Street and Charles at the far end of Boston Common at Noon 

We will form up at the corner of Beacon Street and Charles at the edge of the Boston Common at noon for an approximately 1 PM step off. (Depending when the “officials” step off.) We will have flags, banners, etc. but you can bring your own posters especially this year around the war clouds forming over North Korea and Iran.

Armistice Day Program starts at Sam Adams Park in Fanuiel Hall at about 2:00 PM   

After the finish of the march at City Hall Plaza we will walk across the street for our Armistice Day program at Sam Adams Park at Fanueil   Hall from about 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM. This year’s MC will be our Smedley Butler Brigade-VFP coordinator Vietnam veteran Dan Luker. We are lining up speakers knowledgeable about the impending war clouds over Korea and Iran and the long continuing ones over Afghanistan.  We will have music, poetry and other speakers. As usual we will have our canopy up where you can purchase VFP clothing, media, and buttons.    

See you all on Saturday November 11^th at noon at Beacon and Charles –thanks- Executive Committee-Smedley Butler Brigade-VFP

  

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)

In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60^th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)

By Book Critic Zack James

To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just kicks, stuff, important stuff has happened or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation.  Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my older brother Alex thy called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps, half stirred left on corner coffees and cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).

I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50^th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well. So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind. The kind that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).              

Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother Alex’s name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967 just mentioned.  Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid attention to, or dismissed out of hand what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie  and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.

But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had caused a big splash in 1957, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.     

Like I said above Alex was out two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely end. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly from hunger working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some   hot chick’s pants as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.

What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan that was for smooth as silk Frankie to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.

The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)

Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like he wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60^th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.           

Book Review

On The Road, Jack Kerouac, Viking Press, New York, 1957

As I have explained in another entry in this space in reviewing the DVD of “The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg”, recently I have been in a “beat” generation literary frame of mind. I mentioned there, as well, and I think it helps to set the mood for commenting on Jack Kerouac’s seminal ‘travelogue’, “On The Road”, that it all started last summer when I happened to be in Lowell, Massachusetts on some personal business. Although I have more than a few old time connections with that now worn out mill town I had not been there for some time. While walking in the downtown area I found myself crossing a small park adjacent to the site of a well-known mill museum and restored textile factory space.

Needless to say, at least for any reader with a sense of literary history, at that park I found some very interesting memorial stones inscribed with excerpts from a number of his better known works dedicated to Lowell’s “bad boy”, the “king of the 1950s beat writers, Jack Kerouac. And, just as naturally, when one thinks of Kerouac then Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady and a whole ragtag assortment of poets, hangers-on, groupies and genuine madmen and madwomen come to mind. They all show up, one way or another (under fictional names, of course), in this book. So that is why we today are under the sign of “On The Road”.

I have also mentioned elsewhere in this space that my appreciation of Jack Kerouac did not come from being a latter-day devotee of his spontaneous prose writing style or his standoffish, sideline view of life and consciously apolitical lifestyle, as was emphasized in a famous segment on William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” public television show where he went out of his boozy way to dump on the counter-cultural movement (“hippies”, okay) of the 1960s. From early on in my youth I was more likely to be immersed in reading things like “The Communist Manifesto” (if only to dismiss it out of hand-then) and had no time for reading a “beat” travelogue like “On The Road” although I was personally struggling along those same lines to ‘find myself’ (sound familiar?) . Later I would devour the thing (repeatedly) along with the rest of his major works like “Dharma Bums", "Visions Of Cody”. “Big Sur”, “Doctor Sax” and others.

To appreciate Kerouac and understand his mad drive for adventure and to write about it, speedily but precisely, you have to start with “On The Road”. There have been a fair number of ‘searches' for the meaning of the American experience starting, I believe, with Whitman. However, each generation that takes on that task needs a spokesperson and Jack Kerouac, in the literary realm at least, filled that bill not only for his own generation that came of age in the immediate post-World War II era, but mine as well that came of age in the 1960s (and perhaps on later generations, as well, but I can only speculate on that idea here).

The big different between Whitman and Kerouac though for me was that those old pent-up energies, frustrations and fears (of aging, of not having sex, of the bomb, of industrial society, etc.) of Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s character), the legendary Dean Moriarty (the real life “beat”/hippie legend Neal Cassady), Carlos Marx (super-poet Allen Ginsberg) and the supporting cast were familiar, very familiar. I would argue that such a story could only have been written at that time when automobiles, highways and a good “thumb”, or fast feet to “ride the blinds” met , and we have been living off the crumbs of that adventure ever since. Not bad, Jack, not bad at all.

Note: I, on re-reading the book very recently, was struck by something that never even came to my attention when I first read the book in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and on later re-readings. Although this may be a 'search' for America it is very much a man’s book, young or old. The women in the book, and I believe in the “beat” movement itself, seemed to be mere appendages of some male, or washing dishes or as sex objects. Now this book was written well before the rise of the women’s liberation movement and one would not expect to see a great deal of male sensitivity, especially from a guy coming out of the French-Canadian/Catholic milieu of a working class mill town of the 1940s and 1950s. However, I would be interested in knowing how women today, or who read it back then, would react to it. Mainly, in my circle, the women think, with the obvious acknowledgement of the politically incorrect caveats mentioned above, that it is great literature. I agree.

All The Liquor In Costa Ricah-With The Max Daddy Blues Guitarist Taj Majal In Mind

All The Liquor In Costa Ricah-With The Max Daddy Blues Guitarist Taj Majal In Mind

By Zack James 

Seth Garth the old time music critic for the now long gone alternative newspaper The Eye who had followed all the trends in the folk world in the old days once his friend from high school, Jack Callahan, had turned him on to the genre after having heard some mountain music coming on high via the airwaves from a fugitive radio station one summer Sunday night still was interested in what was left of that world. More importantly who was still left still standing from that rough-hewn folk minute of the early 1960s. An important part of that interest centered on who still “had it” from among those who were still standing.

That was no mere academic question but had risen quite sharply in the early part of 2002 when Seth, Jack and their then respective wives had attended a Bob Dylan concert up in Augusta Maine and had come away disappointed, no, more than disappointed, shocked that Dylan had lost whatever voice he had had and depended increasingly on his backup singers and musicians. Dylan no longer “had it.” Both agreed that they would have to be satisfied with listening to the old records, tapes, CDs, and YouTube on sullen nights when they wanted to hear what it was like when men and women played folk music, protest and meaningful existence folk music, for keeps.

That single shocking event led subsequently to an earnest attempt to attend concerts and performances of as many of the old-time folkies as they could find helter-skelter before they passed on. The pair have documented elsewhere some of those others some who have like Utah Phillips and Dave Van Ronk have subsequently passed on. But one night recently, a few months ago now, they were discussing one Taj Majal (stage name not the famous wonder of the world mansion, building, shrine, mausoleum whatever it is in India) and how they had first heard him back in the day in anticipation of seeing him in person up at the great concert hall overlooking the harbor at Rockport.     

Naturally enough if you knew Seth and Jack they disagreed on exactly where they had first seen him after Jack had hear him do a cover of the old country blues classic Corrina, Corrina on that fugitive folk program out of Rhode Island, WAFJ. Seth said it was the Club 47 over in Harvard Square in Cambridge and Jack said they had gone underground to the Unicorn over on Boylston Street in Boston. Of course those disputes never got resolved, never got final resolution. What was not disputed was that they had both been blown away by the performance of Taj and his small backup band that night. His blues mastery proved to them that someone from the younger generation was ready to keep the old time blues tradition alive, including playing the old National Steel guitar that the likes of Son House and Bukka White created such great blues classics on. The highlight that night had been The Sky Is Crying which has been covered by many others since but not equaled.     

The track record of old time folkies had been mixed as one would expect as the shocking Dylan experiences pointed out. Utah Phillips by the time they got to see him at the Club Passim in Cambridge had lost it, David Bromberg still had it for two examples. The night they were discussing and disputing the merit of Taj’s case both agreed that he probably had lost it since that rough-hewn gravelly voice of his had like Dylan’s and Willie Nelson’s taken a beating with time and many performances. Needless to say they should not have worried (although they did when old be-hatted Taj came out and immediately sat down not a good sign for prior experiences with other old time performers) since Taj was smokin’ that night. Played the old Elmore James Television Blues on the National Steel like he was about twenty years old. Did his old version of Corrina proud and his version of CC Rider as well. Yeah, Taj still had it. But if you don’t believe a couple of old folkies and don’t get a chance to see him in person out your way then grab this album Shoutin’ In Key from the old days and see what they meant. Got it.

10/29 Boston Takes a Knee for Justice -Rally and March

Charlie Welch

10/26/2017 5:15 PM

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Info maapb.617@gmail.com

*Boston Takes a Knee for Justice*

· Hosted by Mass Action Against Police Brutality
<https://www.facebook.com/maapb617/>

Sunday Oct. 29th at 1 PM
State House Boston

The silent protest started by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback
Colin Kaepernick to kneel during the national anthem in protest to the
scourge of police violence and brutality disproportionately meted out to
Black people has continued to spread. It has brought a backlash against
those who have joined the protest whose right to voice their views in
this manner has been challenged. Kaepernick's protest itself was in
response to the tens of thousands who have been taking to the streets
demanding justice throughout the country since the police murder of Mike
Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2014.

When President Trump weighed in on the debate he simply added fuel to
the fire. The message has become lost somewhat as a debate over the
right to protest itself. But this was always a protest against police
brutality and racism.

On the one year anniversary of the deadly police shooting of Terrence
Coleman in Boston, MA we call on all supporters of this righteous
protest to join with us as we stand up to the backlash and bring the
focus back to the victims of police brutality and their families.

We are calling on the State Attorney Maura Healy to reopen the cases of
police involved shootings of Terrence Coleman, Usaamah Rahim, Burrell
Ramsey-White, Ross Batista, Denis Reynoso, Eurie Stamps, and all other
victims of police brutality in the state of Massachusetts. We also
protest in solidarity with the people of St Louis who have been taking
to the streets since the acquittal of officer Jason Stockley for the
murder of Anthony Lamar Smith in September.

Immediately appoint a special prosecutor to reopen all past cases of
police brutality!

Jail all killer cops!

Info maapb.617@gmail.com

More contact info on facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/events/683570111837094/?active_tab=about

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