Bizarre Doings In Veteran Peace Action (VPA) Land-A Cautionary Tale With Emphasis On The Tail

Bizarre Doings In Veteran Peace Action (VPA) Land-A Cautionary Tale With Emphasis On The Tail

By Sam Eaton, Executive Board, Veterans Peace Action (VPA)  

Perhaps he is out of fashion now, although once long ago when we were looking for answers out of the impasse of capitalism and imperialism we checked him out with a certain admiration, but Karl Marx once said that history while it does not repeat itself it sometimes presents itself in certain historical circumstances first as tragedy and then flips, goes wild, and turns into farce. That is a somewhat appropriate signpost for what has been happening in our beloved Veterans Peace Action chapter here in Augusta of late. As I have noted in a couple of recent postings under my cyber-signature, Lenny Lawlor, the times are out of sorts. There are some bizarre turns of events which have occurred of late which I alluded to in those posts. Of course even putting the proposition in such a light has the wily and careful readers of  VPA chomping at the bit to find out what the hell is going on. Not about our important political tasks ahead in this Year II of the reign of one Donald J. Trump when the war clouds are more ominous than they have been in the past several years. No, indeed, but about the all-important, all-pressing organizational questions which are burning issues that even the most callous and marginal members live and die to explore ad infinitum.        

That brings up my signpost remark about the fate of history in the raw. This organizational business, mainly about who, and who is not, a member of VPA and why, or why not, and the desperately urgent question seething in the chapter causing a hue and cry to go out throughout the land about paying, certain specific exceptions noted, VPA chapter dues. The whole thing reminded me of a faint echo of the famous disputes in 1903 in the Russian Social-Democratic Party between what became the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks about who was and who was not a true member of that organization. We all know through the dress rehearsal Revolution of 1905 and the real thing in February-October 1917 that little difference turned into something like a tragedy. Our little organizational brouhaha of late takes its proper place as farce.

Here is the way the thing is playing out (playing out is the correct term since the issues are far from resolved and in some aspects may not be short of court action but that is the wave of the future and need not detain us in presenting obliquely to the curious what the hell is going on).       

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Suggestion: While we are in the nomination process-The need for an Inquisitor-General (I-G) for the Smedley Butler Brigade-A FABLE

By Sam Eaton

Okay, okay I know that we are in the tail-end of the nomination process and that hopefully we will have ample “real” veteran   candidates for the various officers. (That “real” in quotation marks to emphasize that by VPA by-laws every candidate must be a veteran in good standing of VPA complete with a real DD214 showing they are in fact veterans.) One would assume that that verification process would be the task of the sitting Executive Committee and that they would use due diligence in this matter. As well as other delicate matters like who is a “real” member of National VPA or local and/or both and insure that every living and breathing VPA current member or membership aspirant, except those skimmers who can show hardship or other extenuating circumstances, has paid his or her local dues.

What I am proposing though since such tasks are of the utmost importance given the demonstrated incapacity of ordinary mortal members of any executive committee, is that in addition to, and separate from, the traditional Executive Committee positions we institute the office of Inquisitor-General. Okay, you don’t like that title since it smacks of the old-time Inquisition in Spain and throughout medieval Europe under the auspices (nice word, right) of the Holy Mother Apostolic Roman Catholic Church (and maybe the Eastern Church as well but I don’t know about that). How about this instead since all “real” veterans will be familiar with the term-Inspector-General which also has the virtue of using the same letters.     

Yeah, I also know what I am proposing is properly addressed to the amendment process. You know bring your motion to a General Meeting and… oh hell, let me just quote the relevant part of the process:

“Individual members may also initiate By-Law changes by submitting a written proposal to the Coordinator for distribution with a notice and agenda for the next General Meeting. Notice of amendment to the By-Laws, in writing, shall be presented for discussion to the monthly General Meeting before the meeting in which the amendment is to be voted on. Amendments must be approved by two-thirds (2/3) of the members present at the monthly General Meeting in which they are voted on.”  

Maybe I will do that but what I am on a tear about today is while we are in the nominating process mood I want to make some propaganda for due consideration for this position if not now for in the future. Such a position as I-G (you decide which I-G term you prefer so I will just use I-G) is desperately needed in these troubled times since the local, hell maybe National too, needs somebody who will ferret out the truth no matter what. No matter what the facts are since, and I hope I am not telling tales out of school, this chapter, VPA is rift with what do they call it, oh yeah, alternate facts. I won’t go into each and every detail but if you can believe this some of our VPA members do not belong to National. Yes, I know the chapter by-laws and long precedent has permitted such egregious and organization-threating practice which a persevering I-G will deal with in short order after a short bout of auto-de-fe loosens up a few tongues.

Worse, worse than your previously innocent nightmares is that “hard” fact that an infinite number of potential members, and not a few current members, have bitterly complained that they were threatened denial of VPA membership because they didn’t fork up the measly thirty bucks to get on the team. This wide-spread abuse of power has been swept under the carpet from what I can gather from my usually reliable sources. A hue and cry should go out through the land unless and until a trusty I-G can work magic and slip them onto the rolls.            

Worst of all though and the strongest reason we need an I-G is the wide-spread indifference, dare I say cover up, by previous Executive Committees and maybe the current one too in checking the DD214s of each and every member who claims to be a veteran. I don’t want to insinuate anything but I have heard cases where Executive Committee members after superficially checking out a DD214 have just let the person get in our organization.  Why haven’t they dotted every “t” or crossed every “I” or is it the other way around on examining each form maybe use a little technology, maybe carbon-dating if that is still done. Jesus, can you believe that malfeasance.

I have also heard, and this is just rumor so take it for what it is worth, that money, filthy lucre has changed hands, hundreds of dollars, maybe more, from guys without “real” DD214s to get in so they can claim to their non-veteran buddies, girlfriends, wives, employers and who knows who else they are veterans on the cheap. Not exactly ‘stolen valor” but close.  Scandalous. 

I am here to tell you that vetting process is utterly superficial. An I-G would have that situation squared away in a couple of weeks after letting every member of the organization, high or low, take a few peeps at each and every DD214 to see what shenanigans have been going on. (Veterans anyway I am not sure on supporters but will take a friendly amendment on that if there is a groundswell of support. In any case not every stray member of the local Left after all every supplicant has a right to a little privacy no matter what they are hiding.)      

Of course the I-G position since it would be almost full-time given the endemic corruption abroad in the chapter would be excused, despite the looming war clouds hovering in the near future and a thousand other pressing social issues that need every person we can put into the breech, from actually having to go out and spread the words of peace. I know this I-G idea is all music for the future but now is the time to begin to sanitize this out-off- hand local chapter. Clear out the driftwood. Come on now can’t a man have a FABULOUS dream.  

Once Again –Sam Eaton

Of course everybody knows that my “suggestion” for creating an Inquisitor-General (or Inspector-General your choice although the more I think about the matter the more I like the former) was a spoof, a parody, a fable, hell if you want a cautionary tale. You know, and most of you have been at this peace and social justice business as reflected in our demographics for as long a time as I have, that you cannot go through these long and sometimes lonely struggles without a sense of humor, without some levity to take away the dark nights. However no spoof, parody, fable, what the hell cautionary tale is created from scratch. Without something in mind. At least my staid old lawyer’s “nothing but the facts, Jack” mind does not have enough imagination to do something out of the pure clothe. But sometimes bizarre things happen, as have happened recently in our chapter, maybe reflecting the age of Trump alternate fact, “if you repeat something enough it will stick” mentality seeping into our chapter, that cry out for comment. Hence the Inquisitor -General spoof.

Frankly even if I was serious I cannot think of one single Smedley who is mean enough, is full-time zealous enough, is driven by the quest for alternative facts again that allegedly over-rated truth enough to qualify for the job. Or who I would trust enough either to do the scorched-earth policy outlined in the spoof.  Moreover our little chapter is in not in need of such an extraordinary overlord figure since over the past period we have been building a collective leadership to carry the heavy work of peace and social justice in front of us forward. That being done even with all our little quirks, all our listening to a different drummer which makes the local what it is as a leading chapter in VPA. So count me as a real time theoretical “no” on creating that silly position.  

But enough of that because, as my addition to the headline notes, this is a shout-out to the divine, intrepid, heart-in-the-right-place long-time important VPA supporter Alice Carson for setting me straight on something that I left as an open-ended question in my “suggestion.”  She noted via a reference to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov that beyond Spain, beyond the Holy Mother Apostolic Roman Catholic Church the Russian Orthodox Church too had it Grand-Inquisitor. The model I had in mind was not taken from Dostoevsky though but from a film called Goya’s Ghost where Brother Lorenzo Casamares, played by evilly and chillingly handsome Javier Bardem, does the Spanish Inquisition’s dirty work in the midst of the French Revolution. He was no stranger to a little auto-de-fe to loosen a few tongues. Of course in the time-honored traditions of such bureaucrats when the tide turned and France occupied Spain he flipped sides as easily as changing his socks once he saw what the new national landscape looked like. And paid the price when the tide turned again. I didn’t expect this to turn to a literary discussion but are there any other religious organizations I am not aware that had Inquisitors-General.           

In The Blessed Age Of #MeToo-The Case Of Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Allan Jackson Former Head Of The American Left History Blog

In The Blessed Age Of #MeToo-The Case Of Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Allan Jackson Former Head Of The American Left History Blog   

By Laura Perkins

Nobody was happier than I was when all the brave, mostly younger women, younger than I am in any case, started the deluge of “outings” of rich, powerful and sexually manipulative men at first Hollywood makers and shakers and then a whole row of dominos in every major cultural, media, and political institution. A tsunami which even drew a coveted “person” of the year nod from Time magazine for the symbolic #MeToo although as my long-time companion and now, once again fellow writer here, Sam Lowell, such notice usually is the “kiss of death” for the cover bearers. That is the good, and will always remain the good part of what developed over the past several months. Behind that breath of fresh air enlightenment though is a situation, a problem if you will, about the line between those righteous “outings” and a witch hunt, which hunt atmosphere anyway. And as with original which hunts from the Inquisition to the Salem witch trials to the 1950s Cold War travails overkill and damages to reputations and livelihoods when the net goes astray.  

That “astray” is the reason that I, as both a woman and as a person who has known the “accused” for a very long time, have been assigned by our new site manager Greg Green to speak about something that has surfaced recently concerning the ouster, “purge” as Sam and the younger writers he was associated with in the process called it plain and simple, of the previous site manager Allan Jackson. As both a woman and as a long-time acquaintance of Allan’s, I wouldn’t say friend since we have seldom touched base over the past decade or more, I felt compelled to take up his cause around the allegations of sexual improprieties. Allan, an old high school growing up neighborhood friend of Sam’s, having been ousted recently during this whole international expose of sexual harassment and sexual crimes has been falsely accused by innuendo of such conduct as part of the reason for his removal.

I had to laugh, a sardonic laugh unfortunately, as did Sam, when we heard this rumor going around the “water cooler” as I like to call such gossip. As to be expected it is hard to trace the origins of such speculations but as far as I, we, could tell it was the girlfriend of one of the younger writers who caught up in the turmoil of the sexual harassment exposes almost naturally, although without proof, assumed anybody, any male who was on the chopping block these days was being removed for that reason. Sam, who has known Allan the longest and has been part of their collective publishing experiences is right now putting together a history of those efforts concluding with the power struggle that actually was the reason, or were the reasons for his removal. I won’t go through that here except the certain snippets which will shed light on how ludicrous those sexual allegations really are.

The hard, hard fact is that despite three wives, a parcel of nice kids, and many girlfriends at least according to Sam, Allan is afraid of /doesn’t understand women. Hasn’t, and Sam at times can be entered into the same category, for a lot of reasons going back to growing up times in their working poor neighborhood in the Acre section of North Adamsville where they grew up and “learned” about girls, women along with several other older writers here. By the way, and it may help explain a few things about those growing up influences that “three wives” thing is hardly a solo Allan phenomenon since all the older writers, except beautiful true blue Jack Callahan, also an Acre boy, with his eternal Chrissie, his eternal highs school sweetheart who have been hitched at the hip since high school, have had at least two wives and various sums of kids, who have taken as Cole Porter, the old-time popular lyricist wrote in another context, “all the gold of more than one man.”

Including my companion Sam coming at in three and a parcel as well which is one reason that we have never married. In the interest of transparency I have had two myself so it was by mutual self-interest and saving lawyer’s fees that we have lived together without the albatross of marriage around our necks.                   

Whoever spread that “water cooler” rumor which, and this has driven Sam to distraction and has made him more isolated from the group, the younger writers to this date have not done anything to dispel that falsehood. Despite their knowing better during the internal struggle. Have in their youthful ignorance not learned the difference between a truthful straight down in the mud political “purge” which is what Sam, and Allan, knew occurred having nothing to with personal problems, idiocrasies, or nasty sexual attitudes. They, veterans of the hard scrabble Acre streets and later of the hard-core radical political waves of the late 1960s when things got kind of tight, knew what the younger writers were clueless about except they had defeated the old guard and unceremoniously ousted the leader.

Moreover these young writers and whoever it was they hung around with who first threw the mud didn’t know a simple fact. The older Acre writers, and in this I include Josh Breslin who grew up in the same set of circumstances up in Olde Saco, Maine looked at girls, women from a very different perspective than all the corrupt bastards from Hollywood, the media and Capitol Hill. Allan and Sam’s crowd of unconscious streetwise budding intellectuals with no dough and plenty of Roman Catholic religion carrying them down. And plenty of larceny in their hearts led, as Allan and Sam will endlessly tell one and all, especially after a few drinks, by the late crazy guy Peter Paul Markin.         

According to Sam there was something like a code of honor that the Acre corner boys, that is what a few generations of such Acre boys called themselves, that if you were rebuffed by a girl, if a girl was “going steady” or if a girl showed no interest you moved on. (That “going steady” ban honored according to Sam more in the breech than the observance but the play was still the same-if rebuffed even there then move on.) None of this high pressure “do it or else” stuff which reflected the also hard fact that these guys had nada, nothing in the way of power to make or break any young woman. More importantly and Sam has tried to explain this to me but since I grew up a Methodist where we did not venerate Mother Mary as in the Catholic Church they were so ignorant of using power tactics to take sexual advantage it was laughable. At least in their crowd. That funny little clot of guys who hung out at some woe begotten pizza parlor and later the bowling allies when they didn’t have dough for dates half the time as Sam would say. A very different ethos even if from the same gender and in not a few instances out of the same age group.

All of that youthful Acre cultural gradient would not absolve anybody, Allan or otherwise, from later corrupting sexual charges except this other decisive hard fact which I have saved until the end for his defense although it did affect me indirectly. With the exception of his first wife, Josie Davis, in the early days, of Leslie Dumont when she was Josh Breslin’s companion and wrote here before moving on to a big byline in Women Today , and of myself when I first started to date Sam Allan never had any women writers, women anything to “harass,” sexually or otherwise working here. And he did not do such things to any of us which we all will gladly swear to. He was just not that kind of guy. Like I said he “loved” women but he really was afraid of them. I know Josie said that she had to “pursue” him or she would never have met him back in the Oakland days. There were a few female stringers back then for a while but for a long time now maybe fifteen years this has been until the recent changeover when Leslie and I came back on board under Greg Green’s leadership this has been a “good old boys” club. Allan wherever he is now took his beating for letting that happen but that is all.  The other stuff is just venom, pure venom.   

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- Betty’s Tale -With The Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- Betty’s Tale -With The Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love In Mind  

EDDIE MY LOVE

(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956

The Fontane Sisters - 1956

The Chordettes - 1956

Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

Also recorded by:

Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

Eddie, my love, I love you so

How I wanted for you, you'll never know

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Eddie, please write me one line

Tell me your love is still only mine

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

(Transcribed from the Teen Queens

recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)

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…come closer, will you, because I have got a story to tell. Come on over here, here nearer me and get away from that midnight phone waiting, that eternal waiting. Waiting now in vain because if he or she has not called by this hour, nine, on a school night they are not going to call and anyway you don’t need Ma to yell at you about wasting your time waiting for that call when you could be doing homework or something. Yeah, like you could do homework with your head filled with anxiety about that call. What do parents know anyway never having been young, never having been in love. Hey, while I am talking maybe you should put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,

Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, or 2000s teens except for the newer techno-gadgets cellphone, iPhone, smart phone ways to wait, to wait that midnight call that are different, well, well this waiting by the phone hasn’t changed that much since the 1950s when this trend started or reached a certain plateau where waiting became one of the ways that you knew you were a forlorn teen-ager, knew that life was going to be filled with ups and downs and so there you have it.

And let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public prints 1950s story since those kinds of relationships had not been deemed okay to tell except maybe in some North Beach, Greenwich Village, Hollywood hills small print, exotic, erotic small press back door scenario. Mainly those kinds of relationships would be gist for the mill in the snicker of boys’ sports after school gym locker room faggot-dyke baiting and well beyond the sad tale I have to tell.

And let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to.

And let’s make it a winter night to kind of fit your mood, kind of make you realize that you are totally alone against the elements, yes, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…

And let’s make it, oh the hell with that, let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along…

I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. No, not that, no she is not in the “family way,” I don’t think, I hope not, hope not because then she will have to suddenly go out of town to visit some ailing aunt, or something like that. What is wrong with Betty is simpler. Her Eddie has flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.

Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. I had noticed Betty’s change of behavior but was not sure what it meant. It first started when she did not return my wave when I waved across the street to her, then she would hang her head down walking like some zombie in the movies. So one day I asked her about what was up and she said she did not want to talk about it, made a serious point to me that she did not want to talk about it when I pressed the issue so I let it drop. Yes, so the way I know the story is because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty continue moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after leaving school with her head down, arriving home with her head moping down even more after the mailman came. I contacted Sue to see what she knew, knew from those little afternoon girl chatting calls or maybe from that mandatory Monday morning before school in the girls’ “lav” talkfest. 

Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a man-trap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie a couple of times when Betty had to go out of town with her parents (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up if I tell it my way what with what I know, or people have told me about Sue and I want you to get the straight dope.  Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge:

“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.

Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes with car, father’s old run-down jalopy which might or might not work like happened one night and it was a close thing that I was not grounded for coming in so late, but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Edward John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,

Eddie gave Sue the “once over,” like guys will do automatically with any girl something about their genetic make-up drives them that way and Sue adds her part by always looking like she has either just finished a roll in the hay or would not mind being talked into it but that is just her come-hither “style” and like I said before don’t make too much of it. Yeah, she knows sex stuff, a lot from what she tells me but mostly it’s to aid that come-hither thing she has with guys.  Besides whatever Sue has, or thinks she has in the guy department I secretly thrill to know that that “once over” is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me, We talked, idle talk, sex in the air flirty talk, don’t talk sex straight out but weave all around it talk, the mating ritual I guess they call it, still a lot of talk for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean charm too.

Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. I left Sue at her house. Truce still, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Edward  John Cooper and that cherry ’55 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was supposed to have a “date,” some dreary poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I closed that cherry red door.

And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me everything.

Late August came as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.

I started crying; crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day”…

Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie had done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that. I know Eddie stuff from the days a few years ago when I used to hang around with junior Eddies, car-less Eddies who only dreamed of foxy Chevys then being underage, at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys over on Thornton Street heading toward the beach. 

Those were my corner boy days before I got into more serious stuff, my poetry readings that Betty sniffed her nose at for her Eddie. And those junior Eddies, and me too, once we got started on the subject of girls which we were clueless about but which began every lonely hearts Friday night holding up the wall conversation, were pretty raw about what we would, or would not, do with girls, mostly the unattainable ones at school, and then move on like the wind. And some of my corner boys like Frankie Riley and Jimmy Jenkins to name names actually proceeded to do just that once they got their wheels.  Yeah, so I know the Eddies of this teenage world and this is the hard truth I would tell Betty if she would listen for one second:

Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Edward John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, or cannot write more than a few simple lines even in the best of times, or is not near some desolate mail box, or, well enough of that for Eddie excuses because that is all the gaff. No, Eddie, let's just say Eddie’s moved on to greener pastures like every other Eddie who did only what he was capable of doing- love ‘em and leave ‘em. Not because he intentionally started out that way with you but because that is his take on the world, the girl world. These guys, even ugly guys like “Whiskey” Pete who you probably have heard of and who lives a few streets over from us, who have “boss” cars operate in the world like that because they know that front passenger seat will not be vacate long when mating season comes ago.  

(I heard later after Sue filled me in and I was curious, but don’t tell Betty because she is weepy enough, when I asked around about it, asked some guys who had known Eddie when he worked at Smitty’s Garage last summer while he was with Betty that Eddie had left for Florida, had a new girl there, or maybe an old girlfriend who had some kind of spell over him but all of that, that last part about some forlorn Eddie love was just guys talking one night. Eddie guys are more in the first category, the new girl and move on claiming that some mother needed desperate support in some other state and they would write. But you never know with Eddie guys on that last part.) 

Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie, My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. Betty then why don’t you call up your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone…

Before “The Last Picture Show” Was The “Last Picture Show” With The Larry McMurtry Book In Mind

Before “The Last Picture Show” Was The “Last Picture Show” With The Larry McMurtry  Book In Mind

Book Review

By Jack Callahan

The Last Picture Show, by Larry Mc Murtry,  

It is time to rally around the troops. Time for me to put my two cents worth in defending my old-time friends who write for this blog (and the on-line editions of American Folk Gazette, American Film Gazette and Progressive Nation among others). Time to honor one old pal, Phil Larkin, known in the old days as Foul-mouth Phil who others have written about in this space and mainly have gotten right about the origin of the name. About the weird twist too of how the girls, including my wife of over forty years Chrissie McNamara, even good go to church, Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, every Sunday and who had rosary beads always present in their hands and a Bible between their knees like her, secretly liked his constant swearing so that he among us all never lacked for dates, at least one date anyway with them. But that is not why I am honoring Phil today since I have much more important business to attend to before I get to a short review of this excellent book by Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show, which I saw as a movie (with Chrissie) long before I first read his book (and a number of other related one about the fictional town of Thalia back in the 1950s) which Seth Garth, a longtime writer for this blog mentioned to me has come out recently in a trilogy according to what he had read in the New York Review of Books).

That other fish to fry deals with Phil’s portentous statements which were taken by most of the older staff here, including me, as the usual rantings of Phil when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, what he considers his due. This time it is centered on a number of statements which he has made as part of his film reviews about the older writers who had been close to the previous site manager being purged, a word at least one of the younger writers has used freely in his reviews so he, they, those now victorious younger writers, must be feeling the wind in their sails. I will not mention his name since the current site manager Greg Green well known for red-penciling, not blue like most editors, copy has “warned” people off doing so under the pretext that “we have to move on” from that pernicious influence) backed up by the newly installed Editorial Board ( a board handpicked by Green and loaded, overloaded, with younger writers who supported him in the internal struggle against that previous site manager and who are really nothing but toadies and rubber-stampers for him).  

Readers familiar with this site, and perhaps with the internal dispute which wound up with the departure and “exile” of that previous manager, know that I have been neither a leading contributor to the writings posted here although I have been the subject of many reminiscences by the older writers including the old gang famous, maybe infamous, one since more than one old fogy has gotten parts wrong, of how Chrissie and I met, nor very vocal in the fight between the younger and older writers which led to that previous manager’s “purge.” (Like I said previously I best put any possible controversial words in quotes to avoid that sweeping Green red pencil despite all the claptrap about the new regime being more democratic, more open to broadening the scope of what is being written about and by whom than previously.) The reason I grabbed this book assignment was that the older writers believed that I would be the only one who had “not burned his bridges” to the new regime which is the way one wag put the matter and could expect to get my piece posted.

Moreover they believed that it would “grease the rails” (I forgot who said that) if I as a big financial backer of the enterprise did the talking about what appears to be coming down the road for the older writers, and who knows maybe some younger recalcitrant writers too (remember the fraught with danger “p” word). That financial backing based on my very successful business as a Toyota car dealer, Mr. Toyota in Eastern Massachusetts with Chrissie as Ms. Toyota so I do not depend on paychecks and fears of lack of paychecks like the others who moreover are closing in on retirement. They don’t want to wind up following the example of the previous manager who with one exception, one important exception, Sam Lowell, who is the only one from the old gang who was placed on that suddenly emergent “democratic” Ed Board, supported him. Don’t want to wind up as the rumors have it hustling newspapers out in Utah for the Mormons with no retirement pension income (I don’t know about his Social Security status), no health plan (if he didn’t have adequate S.S. quarters), and no source for getting steady postings against the dark and wild savage nights going forward (not my expression but one of the older guy’s). I have committed to rallying around the troops and this is the first shot. But enough of this for now.        

*********

As I mentioned in my defense declaration above my first connection with Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show was viewing the film adaptation by Peter Bogdanovich starring Jeff Bridges as Duane  the roughneck’s roughneck, Timothy Bottoms as the gentile roughneck, as Sonny, and Cybil Shepard as the alluring and sexually predatory poor little oil money boomtown rich girl Jacy who has Duane and all the boys in heat, especially Duane and in his dreams Sonny. I should also mentioned that I saw this one the first time at the Hingham, Massachusetts, Plaza Theater when it first opened (a nice counter-position to the “last” in the film title) with Chrissie. That was when we were first living together before we got did get married a couple of years later and well after she had abandoned those rosary bead hands and squeezed Bible knees. Needless to say coming up as an urban, maybe better, suburban roughneck from a hard-struck declining North Adamsville a town like Thalia, with a ton of roughneck friends some of who turned out okay and have written for a long time in places like this blog (although for how much longer is anybody’s guess) and some who didn’t fare so well the film struck a deep chord, “spoke” to me. Spoke to me as well since sports, football in particular, was a subtext for the friendship between Duane and Sonny just like it had been for me and guys like Phil Larkin. (I had been a star football player who led the Blue Warriors to two division state high school Super Bowls which had a lot to do with how Chrissie and I met initially although not how we have stayed together pretty happily for so long.)          

One thing that Seth Garth, a serious writer and a man who has written many well-received articles in this space, who was perhaps my closest friend in high school after we had a fight over Chrissie’s affections and reconciled, has always mentioned to me when writing about films based on novels is how closely they adhere to the storyline of the book. I remember once when we were having a couple of drinks at the old watering hole The Sagamore Grille in Hingham in the days when he could drink unlike now when he has sworn off the stuff we got to talking about fidelity to the book of certain films. This was when I was first interested in writing some reviews for posting here when the previous site manager was more than happy to have an old friend (and serious financial contributor I know helped as well) write up a little something. Seth mentioned that he was appalled when a film screenplay, script, was nothing like the plotline of the book and seemingly the only reason for keeping the title and author’s name was to draw the crowds in based on that cache.        

Seth always would bring up two classic cases both by Ernest Hemingway. One, To Have And Have Not, where in the book the Captain Harry Morgan is a rogue, has-been sea captain running crap to Cuba for the highest bidder with a wife who had seen better days and a parcel of kids. Against the film version where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall sizzle up the screen with what Seth called some of the sexiest hottest scenes of two people with their clothes on he had ever seen while doing yeoman’s service to the French Resistance in the Caribbean during World War II. The other The Killers, a short story which starts and ends with two professional killers acting as hitmen for somebody who wanted an ex-pug out of the way and leaving the narrator wondering why he did not put up any resistance. Against the film starring Burt Lancaster as the ex-pug and fall guy and Ava Gardner as a femme fatale who has him going through the hoops for her as the reason that he went gentle into that good night. A dame in short like has happened to a million other guys except this time old Burt paid with his life for shacking up with her.

In Last Picture Show the film there is no such problem since the film adheres in the basic plotline and better in the spirit of two young roughneck Texas boys coming of age in the early 1950s. I first read the book in the 1990s I think when I was on a Larry McMurtry tear after viewing Texasville which is about this same grouping and town about twenty years later once they have gotten over their teenage angst and alienation. I was struck then as now by how closely the key episodes match up. The only added statement I would make at this time is that the book draws many more explicit sexual scenes, more graphically written than the shyer film does including references to homosexually, male and female orgasms, the sexual frustration aspect of the teen angst and alienation component, and the problems as well as good points of growing up in a small if declining town out in what was then considered the Texas countryside.  Finally, I have changed my opinion as I told Seth one of those nights when we were having those few permitted whiskeys at the Sagamore Grille I think everybody should read the classic book first and then the classic film. Now I wish I had done so.   

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Balducci’s Pizza Parlor Bet –With Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Balducci’s Pizza Parlor Bet –With Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula In Mind

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

Well, be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the girl in the red blue jeans
She's the queen of all the teens
She's the one that I know
She's the one that loves me so

Say be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

Well, she's the one that gots that beat
She's the one with the flyin' feet
She's the one that walks around the store
She's the one that gets more more more

Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby
Be-bop-a-lula, I don't mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula, she's my baby love
My baby love, my baby love

You all know Frankie, right? Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, fierce Frankie when necessary, and usually kind Frankie by rough inclination. Yah, Frankie from the old North Adamsville neighborhood. Frankie to the tenement, the cold-water flat tenement, born. Frankie, no moola, no two coins to rub together except by wit or chicanery, poor as a church mouse if there ever was such a thing, a poor church mouse that is. Yes, that Frankie. And, as well, this writer, his faithful scribe chronicling his tales, his regal tales. Said scribe to the public housing flats, hot-water flats, but still flats, born. And poorer even than any old Frankie church mouse. More importantly though, more importantly for this story that I am about to tell you than our respective social class positions, is that Frankie is king, the 1960s king hell king of Balducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs,” if not then North Quincy’s finest pizza parlor still the place where we spent many a misbegotten hour, and truth to tell, just plain killed some time when we were down at our heels, or maybe down to our heels.

Sure you know about old Frankie’s royal heritage too. I clued you in before when I wrote about my lost in the struggle for power as I tried to overthrow the king when we entered North Quincy High in 1960. By wit, chicanery, guile, bribes, threats, physical and mental, and every other form of madness he clawed his way to power after I forgot the first rule of trying to overthrow a king- you have to make sure he is dead. But mainly it was his "style”, he mad-hatter “beat” style, wherefore he attempted to learn, and to impress the girls (and maybe a few guys too), with his arcane knowledge of every oddball fact that anyone would listen to for two minutes. After my defeat we went back and forth about it, he said, reflecting his peculiar twist on his Augustinian-formed Roman Catholicism, it was his god-given right to be king of this particular earthy kingdom but foolish me I tried to justify his reign based on that old power theory (and discredited as least since the 17th century) of the divine right of kings. But enough of theory. Here’s why, when the deal went down, Frankie was king, warts and all.

All this talk about Frankie royal lineage kind of had me remembering a story, a Frankie pizza parlor story. Remind me to tell you about it sometime, about how we used to bet on pizza dough flying. What the heck I have a few minutes I think I will tell you now because it will also be a prime example, maybe better than the one I was originally thinking about, of Frankie’s treacheries that I mentioned before. Now that I think about it again my own temperature is starting to rise. If I see that bastard again I’m going to... Well, let me just tell the story and maybe your sympathetic temperature will rise a bit too.

One summer night, yeah, it must have been a summer night because this was the time of year when we had plenty of time on our hands to get a little off-handedly off-hand. In any case it would have had to be between our junior and senior years at old North Quincy High because we were talking a lot in those days about what we were going to do, or not do, after high school. And it would have had to have been on a Monday or Tuesday summer night at that and we were deflated from a hard weekend of this and that, mainly, Frankie trying to keep the lid on his relationship with his ever lovin’ sweetie, Joanne. Although come to think of it that was a full-time occupation and it could have been any of a hundred nights, summer nights or not. I was also trying to keep a lid on my new sweetie, Lucinda, a sweetie who seemed to be drifting away, or at least in and out on me, mostly out, and mostly because of my legendary no dough status (that and no car, no sweet ride down the boulevard, the beach boulevard so she could impress HER friends, yah it was that kind of relationship). Anyway it's a summer night when we had time on our hands, idle time, devil’s time according to mothers’ wit, if you want to know the truth, because his lordship (although I never actually called him that), Frankie I, out of the blue made me the following proposition. Bet: how high will Tonio flip his pizza dough on his next pass through.

Now this Tonio, as you know already if you have read the story about how Frankie became king of the pizza parlor, and if you don’t you will hear more about him later, was nothing but an ace, numero uno, primo pizza flinger. Here’s a little outline of the contours of his art, although minus the tenderness, the care, the genetic dispositions, and who knows, the secret song or incantation that Tonio brought to the process. I don’t know much about the backroom work, the work of putting all the ingredients together to make the dough, letting the dough sit and rise and then cutting it up into pizza-size portions. I only really know the front of the store part- the part where he takes that cut dough portion in front of him in the preparation area and does his magic. That part started with a gentle sprinkling of flour to take out some of the stickiness of the dough, then a rough and tumble kneading of the dough to take any kinks out, and while taking the kinks out the dough gets flattened, flattened enough to start taking average citizen-recognizable shape as a pizza pie. Sometimes, especially if Frankie put in an order, old Tonio would knead that dough to kingdom come. Now I am no culinary expert, and I wasn’t then, no way, but part of the magic of a good pizza is to knead that dough to kingdom come so if you see some geek doing a perfunctory couple of wimpy knead chops then move on, unless you are desperate or just ravenously hungry.

Beyond the extra knead though the key to the pizza is the thinness of the crust and hence the pizza tosses. And this is where Tonio was a Leonardo-like artist, no, that’s not right, this is where he went into some world, some place we would never know. I can still see, and if you happened to be from old North Quincy, you probably can still see it too if you patronized the place or stood, waiting for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus, in front of the big, double-plate glass pizza parlor windows watching in amazement while Tonio tossed that dough about a million times in the air. Artistry, pure and simple.

So you can see now, if you didn’t quite get it before that Frankie’s proposition was nothing but an old gag kind of bet, a bet on where Tonio would throw, high or low. Hey, it’s just a variation on a sports bet, like in football, make the first down or not, pass or rush, and so on, except its pizza tosses, okay. Of course, unlike sports, at least known sports, there are no standards in place so we have to set some rules, naturally. Since it was Frankie’s proposition he got to give the rules a go, and I could veto.

Frankie, though, and sometimes he could do things simply, although that was not his natural inclination; his natural inclination was to be arcane in all things, and not just with girls. Simply Frankie said in his Solomonic manner that passed for wisdom, above or below the sign in back of Tonio’s preparation area, the sign that told the types of pizza sold, their sizes, their cost and what else was offered for those who didn’t want pizza that night.

You know such signs, every pizza palace has them, and other fast eat places too. You have to go to “uptown” eateries for a tabled menu in front of your eyes, and only your eyes, but here’s Tonio’s public offerings. On one side of the sign plain, ordinary, vanilla, no frills pizza, cheap, maybe four or five dollars for a large, small something less, although don’t hold me to the prices fifty years later for chrissakes, no fixings. Just right for “family night,” our family night later, growing up later, earlier in hot-water flats, public housing hot-water flats time, we had just enough money for Spam, not Internet spam, spam meat although that may be an oxymoron and had no father hard-worked cold cash for exotic things like pizza, not a whole one anyway, in our household. And from what Frankie told me his too.

Later , when we had a little more money and could “splurge” for an occasional take-out, no home delivery in those days, when Ma didn’t feel like cooking, or it was too hot, or something and to avoid civil wars, the bloody brother against brother kind, plain, ordinary vanilla pizza was like manna from heaven for mama, although nobody really wanted it and you just felt bloated after eating your share (and maybe the crust from someone who doesn’t like crust, or maybe you traded for it); or, plain, by the slice, out of the oven (or more likely oven-re-heated after open air sitting on some aluminum special pizza plate for who knows how long) the only way you could get it after school with a tonic (also known as soda for you old days non-New Englanders and progeny), usually a root beer, a Hires root beer to wash away the in-school blahs, especially the in-school cafeteria blahs.

Or how about plump Italian sausage, Tonio thickly-sliced, or spicy-side thinly-sliced pepperoni later when you had a couple of bucks handy to buy your own, and to share with your fellows (those fellows, hopefully, including girls, always hopefully, including girls) and finally got out from under family plain and, on those lucky occasions, and they were lucky like from heaven, when girl-dated you could show your stuff, your cool, manly stuff, and divide, divide, if you can believe that, the pizza half one, half the other fixings, glory be; onion or anchovies, oh no, the kiss of death, no way if you had the least hope for a decent night and worst, the nightmarish worst, when your date ordered her portion with either of these, although maybe, just maybe once or twice, it saved you from having to do more than a peck of a kiss when your date turned out not to be the dream vision you had hoped for; hams, green peppers, mushrooms, hamburg, and other oddball toppings I will not even discuss because such desecration of Tonio’s pizza, except, maybe extra cheese, such Americanized desecration , should have been declared illegal under some international law, no question; or, except, maybe again, if you had plenty of dough, had a had a few drinks, for your gourmet delight that one pig-pile hunger beyond hunger night when all the fixings went onto the thing. Whoa. Surely you would not find on Tonio’s blessed sign this modern thing, this Brussels sprouts, broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, wheat germ, whole wheat, soy, sea salt, himalaya salt, canola oil, whole food, pseudo-pizza not fit for manly (or womanly) consumption, no, not in those high cholesterol, high-blood pressure, eat today for tomorrow you may die days.

On the other side of the sign, although I will not rhapsodize about Tonio’s mastery of the submarine sandwich art (also known as heroes and about seventy-six other names depending on where you grew up, what neighborhood you grew up in, and who got there first, who, non-Puritan, got there first that is) are the descriptions of the various sandwich combinations (all come with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, the outlawed onions, various condiment spreads as desired along with a bag of potato chips so I won’t go into all that); cold cuts, basically bologna and cheese, maybe a little salami, no way, no way in hell am I putting dough up for what Ma prepared and I had for lunch whenever I couldn’t put two nickels together to get the school lunch, and the school lunch I already described as causing me to run to Tonio’s for a sweet reason portion of pizza by the slice just to kill the taste, no way is right; tuna fish, no way again for a different reason though, a Roman Catholic Friday holy, holy tuna fish reason besides grandma, high Roman Catholic saint Grandma, had that tuna fish salad with a splash of mayo on oatmeal bread thing down to a science, yah, Grandma no way I would betray you like that; roast beef, what are you kidding; meatballs (in that grand pizza sauce); sausage, with or without green peppers, steak and cheese and so on. The sign, in all its beatified Tonio misspelled glory. 

“Okay,” I said, that sign part seemed reasonable under the circumstances (that’s how Frankie put it, I’m just repeating his rationalization), except that never having made such a bet before I asked to witness a few Tonio flips first. “Deal,” said Frankie. Now my idea here, and I hope you follow me on this because it is not every day that you get to know how my mind works, or how it worked differently from star king Frankie, but it is not every day that you hear about a proposition based on high or low pizza tosses and there may be something of an art to it that I, or you, were not aware of. See, I was thinking, as many times as I had watched old saintly Tonio, just like everybody else, flip that dough to the heavens I never really thought about where it was heading, except those rare occasions when one hit the ceiling and stuck there. So maybe there was some kind of regular pattern to the thing. Like I say, I had seen Tonio flip dough more than my fair share of teenage life pizzas but, you know, never really noticed anything about it, kind of like the weather. As it turned out there was apparently no rhyme or reason to Tonio’s tosses just the quantity (that was the real secret to that good pizza crust, not the height of the throw), so after a few minutes I said "Bet." And bet is, high or low, my call, for a quarter a call (I had visions of filling that old jukebox of Tonio’s with my “winnings” because a new Dylan song had just come in that I was crazy to play about a zillion times, Mr. Tambourine Man). We are off.

I admit that I did pretty well for while that night and maybe was up a buck, and some change, at the end of the night. Frankie paid up, as Frankie always paid up, and such pay up without a squawk was a point of honor between us (and not just Frankie and me either, every righteous guy was the same way, or else), cash left on the table. I was feeling pretty good ‘cause I had just beaten the king of the hill at something, and that something was his own game. I rested comfortable on my laurels. Rested comfortably that is until a couple of nights later when we, as usual, were sitting in the Frankie-reserved seats (reserved that is unless there were real paying customers who wanted to eat their pizza in-house and then we, more or less, were given the bum’s rush) when Frankie said “Bet.” And the minute he said that I knew, I knew for certain, that we are once again betting on pizza tosses because when it came right down to it I knew, and I knew for certain, that Frankie’s defeat a few nights before did not sit well with him.

Now here is where things got tricky, though. Tonio, good old good luck charm Tonio, was nowhere in sight. He didn’t work every night and he was probably with his honey, and for an older dame she was a honey, dark hair, good shape, great, dark laughing eyes, and a melting smile. I could see, even then, where her charms beat out, even for ace pizza-flinger Tonio, tossing foolish old pizza dough in the air for some kids with time on their hands, no dough, teenage boys, Irish teenage boys to boot. However, Sammy, North Quincy High Class of ’62 (maybe, at least that is when he was supposed to graduate, according to Frankie, one of whose older brothers graduated that year), and Tonio’s pizza protégé was on duty. Since we already knew the ropes on this proposition I didn’t even bother to check and see if Sammy’s style was different from Tonio’s. Heck, it was all random, right?

This night we flipped for first call. Frankie won the coin toss. Not a good sign, maybe. I, however, like the previous time, started out quickly with a good run and began to believe that, like at Skeet ball (some call it Skee-ball but they are both the same–roll balls up a targeted area to win Kewpie dolls, feathery things, or a goof key chain for your sweetie) down at the amusement park, I had a knack for this form of betting. Anyway I was ahead about a buck or so. All of a sudden my “luck” went south. Without boring you with the epic pizza toss details I could not hit one right for the rest of the night. The long and short of it was that I was down about four dollars, cash on the table. Now Frankie’s cash on the table. No question. At that moment I was feeling about three-feet tall and about eight-feet under because nowadays cheap, no meaning four dollars, then was date money, Lucinda, fading Lucinda, date money. This was probably fatal, although strictly speaking the fate of that relationship was another story and I will not get into the Lucinda details, because when I think about it now that was just a passing thing, and you know about passing things- what about it.

What is part of the story though, and the now fifty years later still temperature-rising part of the story, is how Frankie, Frankie, king of the pizza parlor night, Frankie of a bunch of kindnesses, and of a bunch of treacheries, here treachery, zonked me on this betting scandal. What I didn’t know then was that I was set up, set up hard and fast, with no remorse by one Francis Xavier Riley, to the tenements, the cold-water flat tenements, born and his cohort Sammy. It seemed that Sammy owed Frankie for something, something never fully disclosed by either party, and the pay-off by Sammy to make him well was to “fix” the pizza tosses that night I just told you about, the night of the golden fleecing. Every time I said "high" Sammy, taking his coded signal from Frankie, went low and so forth. Can you believe a “king”, even a king of a backwater pizza parlor, would stoop so low?

Here is the really heinous part though, and keep my previous reference to fading Lucinda in mind when you read this. Frankie, sore-loser Frankie, not only didn’t like to lose but was also low on dough (a constant problem for both of us, and which consumed far more than enough of our time and energy than was necessary in a just, Frankie-friendly world) for his big Saturday night drive-in movie-car borrowed from his older brother, big-man-around-town date with one of his side sweeties (Joanne, his regular sweetie was out of town with her parents on vacation). That part, that unfaithful to Joanne part I didn’t care about because, once again truth to tell, old ever lovin’ sweetie Joanne and I did not get along for more reasons than you have to know. The part that burned me, and still burns me, is that I was naturally the fall-guy for some frail (girl in pizza parlor parlance time) caper he was off on.

Now I have mentioned that when we totaled up the score the Frankie kindnesses were way ahead of the Frankie treacheries, no question, which was why we were friends. Still, right this minute, right this 2014 minute, I am ready to go up to his swanky downtown Boston law office (where the men’s bathroom is larger than his whole youth time old cold- water flat tenement) and demand that four dollars back, plus interest. You know I am right on this one.