This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
In Honor OfWomen’s History Month- From The Archives-The Anniversary Of Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique-In The Time Of Not Her Time
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Delores Reilly had to laugh, chuckle really, with a little sourness around the edges, as she listened to her daily kids at school show on the radio The Sammy Williams Show, the two hour morning talk on the Boston station WMXY. This morning Sammy had a panel, a panel of women, mostly from the sound of it, professional women, who were discussing this latest bombshell book by a woman named Betty Freidman, a book entitled The Feminine Mystique. What Betty had written about was the vast number of women, women from her generation or a little younger, who were now fed up with their little suburban white picket fence manicured lawn ranch house- all spic and span modern appliances- have a martini ready for hubby at five, maybe a roll in the hay later after the kids went to bed, missionary-style- five days a week house-bound routine and weekends not much better, hubby tired after gouging somebody all week-over-educated under-loved, under-appreciated and under-utilized lives. After listening in some disbelief, and in some hidden sorrow, for a while Delores Reilly (nee Kelly) got a little wistful when she thought about her own life, her own not suburban Valhalla life.
Funny she had been somewhat educated herself, her father the distant old Daniel who nevertheless was practical and insisted that she get more education after high school, to learn a skill, although maybe not like those panel women, not like Betty’s complaining suburbanite women from Wellesley, Sarah Lawrence or Barnard, having gone to Fisher Secretarial School over in Boston and having worked down at the North Adamsville Shipyard before she got married, married to her love, Kenneth Reilly. But that is where the breaks kind of stopped, that marriage point. She had met Kenneth at a USO dance down at the Hingham Naval Depot toward the end of World War II when many soldiers and sailors were being processed for demobilization. Kenneth had been a Marine, had seen some tough battles in the Pacific, including Guadalcanal (although he like many men of his generation did not talk about it, about the hellish war, all that much) and had been stationed at the Depot. He sure looked devilishly handsome in his Marine dress uniform and that was that. They were married shortly after that, moved to the other side of North Adamsville in an apartment her father found for them, and then in quick succession within a little over three years they had produced three sons, three hungry sons, as it turned out.
Not an unusual start, certainly not for the generation who had withstood the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought the devils in World War II. However, Kenneth, dear sweet Kenneth, might have been a great Marine, and might too have been a great coalminer down where he came from in Prestonsburg down in coal country Harlan and Hazard, Kentucky before he joined up to fight but he had no skills, no serious money skills that could be used around Boston. So they had lived in that run- down apartment for many years even after the three boys had outgrown the place. Kenny’s work history, last hired usually, first fired always meant too that Delores had to work, not work in her skilled profession but mother’s hours (really any hours she could get, including nights) at Mister Dee’s Donut Shop filling jelly donuts and other assorted menial tasks. And that was that for a number of years.
For a while in the late 1950s Kenny had a steady job, with good pay, and with her filling donuts (the poor kids had many a snack, too many, of day-old left over donuts she would bring home), they were able to purchase a small shack of a house on the wrong side of the tracks, though at least a house of their own. Not a ranch house with a manicured lawn like Betty’s women were complaining of, but a bungalow with a postage stamp- sized lawn filled when they arrived with the flotsam and jetsam of a million years’ worth of junk left by the previous owners. Something out of a Walker Evans photograph like ones she would see in Life magazine now that Jack Kennedy was doing something for her husband’s kindred down in Appalachia.A place with no hook-up for a washing machine and dryer so she had to every week or so trudge down to the local Laundromat to do the family washing. A place with just enough room to fit a table in the kitchen if the kids ate in shifts. A place where, well why go on she thought, those were the breaks and while things had been tough, money tight, other kids making fun of her kids when they were younger and having fights over it, those three boy starting to get old enough to get in some trouble, or close to it, she had her man, she had her stalwart Kenny who never complained about his lack of breaks. Still, still Delores dreamed, wistful dreamed that she had had a few things those women were getting all hot and bothered about being stuck with…
And hence this Women’s History Month commemoration.
The Max Daddy Of The Jazz Scene-When Chet Baker Held Forth In The Be-Bop Night
Lenny Gorman comment: Jazz was/is a sometime thing with me but when you keep running up against the name Chet Baker in every important study of the subject you have to check out the "daddy." So here we are-be-bop-be-bop -listen to the guy blow those high white notes...
For All The Girls Who Waited By The Midnight Phone- Janis Ian’s Song “At Seventeen”
Lance Lawrence comment;
A lot of guys, guys like me at seventeen, hung around the midnight phone, forlornly hung around the midnight phone waiting, two or three hour waiting for that call that was supposed to come at eight for me to pick up some date by nine-if she was ready- if she was available-if she didn’t have a date with Harry and his “boss’ Chevy the pick of the liter in our working class neighborhood-if she didn’t have anything else to do-the next day’s excuses.
But this is Women’s History Month and while hanging by the midnight phone or being ugly in some fool’s blind eye may not be the highest priority for what anybody would call oppression at seventeen as the song presented here notes it does mean just that, means it big time with a bow around it. So listen up all you seventeen midnight by the phone girl dreamers-all you seventeen girl dreamers who worry to perdition about your weight, your shape, your “figure” and whether some benighted fool (or fools) call you ugly either to your face or behind your back. This song will tell you that you are not alone-and you will survive.
*******
"AT SEVENTEEN"
By Janis Ian
I learned the truth at seventeen That love was meant for beauty queens And high school girls with clear skinned smiles Who married young and then retired The valentines I never knew The Friday night charades of youth Were spent on one more beautiful At seventeen I learned the truth...
And those of us with ravaged faces Lacking in the social graces Desperately remained at home Inventing lovers on the phone Who called to say "come dance with me" And murmured vague obscenities It isn't all it seems at seventeen...
A brown eyed girl in hand me downs Whose name I never could pronounce Said: "Pity please the ones who serve They only get what they deserve" The rich relationed hometown queen Marries into what she needs With a guarantee of company And haven for the elderly...
So remember those who win the game Lose the love they sought to gain In debitures of quality and dubious integrity Their small-town eyes will gape at you In dull surprise when payment due Exceeds accounts received at seventeen...
To those of us who knew the pain Of valentines that never came And those whose names were never called When choosing sides for basketball It was long ago and far away the world was younger than today when dreams were all they gave for free to ugly duckling girls like me...
We all play the game, and when we dare We cheat ourselves at solitaire Inventing lovers on the phone Repenting other lives unknown That call and say: "Come on, dance with me" And murmur vague obscenities At ugly girls like me, at seventeen...
It Wasn’t Always The Trail Of Tears That Told The Tale-Or The Cigar Store Indian Either-The Art Of T.C. Cannon At The Peabody-Essex Museum
By Frank Jackman
Every red-blooded kid, boy kid anyway and don’t ask me about girl kids because frankly I couldn’t tell you since we were not on speaking terms-then- back in the day, back in the golden age of television longed to fight the “injuns.” Fight the “injuns” depicted on one thousand television screens and the unworthy opponent of the “avenging angel” white man. Except for maybe Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick and philosophical brethren and even he was suspect when the actually fighting began ad he might return to the well-known savagery his race was known for. Of course those were simpler days, so-called, when at least in America, at least among the knowledgeable everything thing was black and white (beyond the television set as well). The Americans were the good guys against the red hordes that were ready to descend on Western Civilization and make us their robotic slaves and the good guys in the ubiquitous Westerns that sated our reading hours, our evening T.V fare and our Saturday afternoon double feature matinee imaginations wore white hats and the bad guys black. And to quote a term of the time if only metaphorically from Zane Grey or Louis Lamour “the only good injun was a dead one.”
That is quite a psychic barrier to overcome, no question if you were not an Indian, what now are more familiarly called Native Americans or better indigenous peoples since that term has a too anthropomorphic look on the page. (Although as late as the 1970s when many identity groups began to assert their identities the most famous name from such struggles led-by still unjustly imprisoned Leonard Peltier after the shoot-out at Wounded Knee was the American Indian Movement, AIM.) So delving into the book, the real history of the West book (neglecting the very real native presence right at the Eastern door forgetting that this is all sacred land if not to the white intruder then to those who were here already) and not some dime store novels the ragings of the white man for the land, for the water, for the destruction of the many cultural gradients that have made up the in native experience we, some of us anyway, began to see some serious justice in those cries from the trail of tears. Began to admire those warrior-kings, those ghost-dancers mourning the lost night and began to create a different look, the proud warrior look from some deep place in the imagination.
Then along came an artist, one T.C. Cannon, a gringo name, but deepest die Native American who did not give a flying fuck about what image the white man had of the “injun.” Did not care whether the white man thought he was a cigar store Indian on some dusty road to the Petrified Forest or thought Sitting Bull was right or thought that Ira Hayes got another raw deal after all. Didn’t care. He was making art, too short a lifespan making art killed in the inevitable car accident before his time, for his people to look at, for his people to respond to, for the sake of the song, for ten thousand years of warrior-kings. (Like Ira Hayes another warrior from out West famed at Iwo Jima he served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Served like a disproportionate number of young Native American in all this country’s war). Painted them, beautiful, sad, depressed, silly, dandified, every which way, warts and all. And now we whom he did not paint for, whom he did not care whether we liked his art or not can appreciate what he had wrought at the Peabody-Essex.
The Resurrection And The Light-The 50th Anniversary Revival Of Doctor King’s Poor People’s Campaign-Join Us, Join The Struggle Against Poverty-Join The Resistance
By Leslie Dumont
Doctor Martin Luther King was personally a brave man. Brave in that understated way that young women like myself could admire and follow if it came down to that as it had down in hell-hole Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, all those places where the anguished cries for justice could be heard. Bravely withstood jails, beatings and blood.
I was a young girl actually since I was only twelve when the whirlwind of 1968 hit my home in Cambridge, North Cambridge like a storm (although social and cultural movement like the folk and poetry music period of the early 1960s, the bulk of the black civil rights struggle as it headed north, the draft resistance and anti-Vietnam War protests which were a daily occurrence happening right down the street in Harvard Square). The Tet offensive in Vietnam by the North Vietnamese which meant that the war there was far from over and that I had a sneaking suspicion filtered down by my father that America was on the short end of the stick as far was winning went. Doctor King’s death which left his last great project The Poor People’s Campaign the revival of which I am introducing here. Ruthless, idealistic beautiful Robert Kennedy dead as well so that the hopes for a “newer world” he kept touting would be stalled, continue to be stalled. The disaster of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a bloodbath that I wept tears for a long time. All too much for a twelve year old girl to understand, to take in. Still hard fifty years later when 2018 places all those events before the still-divided, cold civil war divided, country again.
The war, the Vietnam War, Sam Lowell keeps telling me we have to reference which war for the younger crowd to distinguish that war from the myriad others the American government has pursued or purchased proxies for since then, took the stuffing out of a lot of other social movements, other points on the national social agency. That stuffing being pulled including the War on Poverty that then President thought might be his legacy but which went to ground in the rice fields and highlands of Vietnam. Like I say I was too young to appreciate all of that, of the lost. But I still kept thinking and reading about it, about how to reduce the poverty around that was not doing anybody any good. My father, my late father, was deeply concerned about the poverty issue especially the white Appalachian Mountains poverty from whence he came. He had this book, this The Other America by Michael Harrington which dealt with just that neglected (and still neglected) rural poverty, in his library which I asked him about after I read it. He told me some stories about his growing up dirt poor with nothing to hang onto but some bastardized dream of getting the hell out of there one way or another.
So I was very disappointed, very concerned when the first Poor People’s Campaign, the Resurrection City campaign down in Washington produced nothing, or not enough to banish poverty from this great over abundant country. And now in some truly ironic twist of silly fate there is a movement, a recent movement, afloat to go back to the ideas presented in Doctor King’s dream of eradicating poverty. The damnation is that in the 2018 as in 1968 the poor are still with us and still need champions working like seven dervishes to get the story back on the public agenda. Good luck to you, good luck to me too since unlike that twelve and too young to fathom the whole thing I am ready to roll now.
Charade is the perfect title for this vehicle since right up until the end we have every central character twisting the truth of their personas every which way-living to play whatever charade advances their agenda. That is everybody but Reggie, the role played by Ms. Hepburn. She is the only one, naively at times, who plays the whole deal straight. Here’s how it played for her, played straight. Her husband was found dead on the side of railroad track in Paris while she was on holiday in the mountains and after she returned to an empty apartment was informed of such by a police inspector assigned to the case. After a morgue identification Reggie was given his last effects which are important to the plot line, especially a letter addressed to her..
All well and good since she was going to divorce the cad anyway but them her world gets very weird. She was summoned to the American Embassy to talk to a CIA operative, played by Walter Matthau. He told her a story that she could hardly believe even though she did not know much about her late husband’s doings. It seems he and four other soldiers s during World War II were assigned to deliver $250, 000 in sweet sugar gold to the French Resistance (I know just walking around money now but big dough in the 1940s and maybe in the 1960s too). Instead of giving the money to the Resistance they decided to steal it. No problem except they were ambushed by a German patrol and one of their number was killed, Dyle. Moreover her husband had double-crossed his comrades and grabbed the whole thing. So only three guys are left. But they want the dough. And the U.S. government wants the dough too. All eyes are on Reggie since logically she is the only one who would know where the dough was. So they take aim, dead aim at her.
Enter suave, sophisticated and funny Peter (we will call him Peter throughout although in his part of the charade he had several names), played by Cary Grant, whom she had met on that ski holiday to the rescue. After a million subterfuges and false leads Reggie found out that Peter was nothing but a no good thief looking for that dough on his own hook. That however does not stop the dewy-eyed Reggie from going for Peter romantically against all good reason-except he is her knight gallant against the other three villains of the piece. At least until he can figure out whether she really does know where the dough is.
As the film moves along each one of those three pursuers winds up dead, very dead. Reggie suspects against all good reason that Peter is the murderer (all good reason because everybody in the audience knows the suave Grant is not cast as the villain in films but as the good guy). But if it not Peter who is it? And where is the dough? Then before he passes into the shades one of the villains finally has an epiphany (although he probably didn’t have any idea that was what it was called) at the weekly stamp festival that he was staking out since that was the last place Reggie’s husband had in his appointment book. The lightbulb went on that his old comrade had converted the money to stamps, very rare stamps which were attached to the letter to Reggie. (Now you don’t have to be a serious philatelist, you know a stamp collector, to know that putting rare stamps, hell, any stamps lose a great deal of value if you adhere them to an envelope but we will let that pass). That same lightbulb hit Peter and subsequently Reggie.
The chase was on once Reggie found out that her friend’s son, an avid philatelist, (come on how many times do I get to use that word in a review so indulge me for using it twice especially since I explained to the clueless that it is just stamp-collecting) had grabbed them off the letter to Reggie from her late husband. Then thing got very dicey for Reggie once she had the stamps in her possession as she was ready to turn them over to that helpful CIA operative. Guess what he too was playing a charade. He was the one of the five, the one who was “killed” in that German ambush. Except he was only severely wounded and spent time in a German POW camp. So you could have excused him if he wasted those other four comrades who left him behind. Naturally when it came to gun play to save Reggie’s bacon Peter did his duty and killed that fake CIA operative. As for who Peter really was check out the film. I am going to call this a thriller, okay.
In
The Age Of A Cold Civil War-Immigrant Or Citizen- Know Your Rights From The ACLU-Short Course
Comment
In
the age of Trump no matter how many generations you and yours have been here in America the beginning of wisdom is to know your rights such as they are and who
to contact if they “come in the morning” for you and yours.
Did you hear? Just this past Friday, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! provided in-depth coverage on Reality Winner's case!
Amy had both Reality's mother, Billie Winner-Davis, and Kevin Gosztola on the show for a full half hour. Kevin, managing editor at Shadowproof, has been closely following the case and reports on the pre-trial hearing last week.
"Mother of Accused NSA Leaker Reality Winner: My Daughter Wasn’t Read Her Miranda Rights" Democracy Now! 3/2/18
"I was stunned to see her brought into the (court)room in an orange jumpsuit. I had covered other cases similar to this. And I was under the assumption that she would be brought into a back room, allowed to change into whatever she wanted to wear, and then brought out in those clothes.
And when she entered, she had shackles on her feet, she had cuffs. They brought her all the way up to the defense table and then took the handcuffs off. I believe they kept the shackles on her legs, so she sat down with those
. . . seems to me that what’s going on here is some serious dehumanization of somebody right before a judge’s very eyes." - Kevin Gosztola
Have you DONATED yet this month for Reality's defense?
From the pre-trial hearing on Tuesday it is just so evident how important her legal team really is! Join us to defend our whistleblower of conscience ► DONATE NOW
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When Mister Beethoven Got Rolled Over-With The Music Of Mister Chuck Berry In Mind
CD Review
By Zack James
Chuck Berry: The Definitive Collection, Chuck Berry, Chess Records, 2006
You never know when two or more old guys, two or more mature forget calling the old at your peril gals too but this one is about guys, will gather down memory lane or what will trigger that big cloudburst. Seth Garth and Jack Callahan two old time friends from high school in Riverdale about forty miles west of Boston had an abiding interest in music successively rock and roll, the blues and folk music (never losing interest in any in the process just that one genre would wax and wane at any given time). Seth had eventually become as an early part of his journalistic career a music critic for the now long defunct The Eye, an alternative newspaper out in the Bay Area in the days when he, Jack and a few other guys like Phil Larkin headed out there to see what everything was all about in the later part of the 1960s.
Recently though Seth and Jack, and occasionally Phil would get together and talk music shop at the Erie Grille where they would down a few scotches to level out (their expression). One night they had been at Seth’s request discussing the first time they had heard the legendary Woody Guthrie sing his songs, or one of them anyway. As it turned out Seth had drawn a blank on when that might have occurred and he begged Jack to think the matter through since he was preparing an article, an unpaid article, for the American Folk Music Review and needed a frame of reference. Jack had come up with the answer-in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh grade music class when he put on Woody and a bunch of other stuff to try to ween them off rock and roll which he hated (and which they loved, loved to perdition). Seth had accepted that answer (although later he contacted Phil and Phil reminded him about the song This Land Is Your Land covered by the Weavers with Pete Seeger in Miss Winot’s fourth grade class on her cranky old record player and he would use that source in the article).
All this talk of that fateful seventh grade music class, and Mr. Lawrence, is probably what solidified everybody in the class in their devotion to rock and roll. Mr. Lawrence was just the front man for all kinds of parents, school principals, priests minsters, mayors and city councilors, cops and whoever else weighted in on the deleterious effect of rock and roll, on the “devil’s music in some quarters on the youth of the nation. So that unanimous devotion to rock and roll was a hard fought and paid for devotion. A few days after the night drinking with Jack at the Erie Grille Seth woke up from a nap thinking about the time in Mister Lawrence’s class when he was being crazy about Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and wanted the class to appreciate classical music, wanted the class to appreciate the finer things in life. Seth, Jack and Phil had had enough and started in one class singing Chuck Berry’s throwing down the gauntlet song Roll Over Beethoven and the class cheered them on.
Of course in this penalty-ridden world Mr. Lawrence took his revenge and the trio spent several afternoons after school listening to Beethoven and his crowd since they had adamantly refused to apologize for their outbursts. Seth smiled to himself-Yeah, rock and roll will never die. To prove that assumption just listen to Mister Chuck Berry’s gold star compilation here. And be prepared to do something rash.
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of
’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Gary Ladd Danced The North
Adamsville High School Be-Bop Hop Dance Night Away
From The Archives Of Allan Jackson
A YouTube film
clip of The Shirelles performing their 1960s teen angst classic Mama Said
[As of this introduction
negotiations between Sam Lowell and current site manager Greg Green around full
credit attribution, including 2018 updated introductions and reflections, for
previous site manager Allan Jackson are still on-going. There has been
something of a groundswell by both older writers who have longtime relations
with Allan going back to high school days in their collective 1960s growing up
and coming of age in the working class Acre section of North Adamsville and the
younger writers who led the charge to have Allan replaced after he lost a vote
of no confidence. Probably all are, not unimportantly, worried about their
attribution status on a site that is committed to free usage, fair usage and
common copyright. In the meantime old high school friend Allan had asked me to
respond to any rumors that might surface, have surfaced until he can respond on
his own (assuming Greg does the right thing after having done the wrong thing
by having somebody else “front” for the series.
I have already mentioned in a
previous introduction rumors that Greg Green had somehow done Allan in, done to
him what was characterized as physical harm after the internal struggle which
led to Allan’s demise. That far-fetched notion like this was some
Stalin-Trotsky fight flight of imagination probably fueled by the older writers
who lived and died for such drama back in their 1960s radical pasts. It turned
out Greg had put the word out to the media world that Allan was “hard to work
with” almost as much a kiss of death as any physical action. That blown-up
rumor led to another which proved to be partially true that Allan was out in
American Siberia in Utah and that he had sold out to the Mormons and to U.S.
Senatorial candidate Mitt Romney to get a job after Greg had “black-listed” him
in the major markets. That turned out to be pretty true as Allan did to make
his daily bread attempt this end-around. The close-knit Mormons kind of laughed
it off given Allan’s reputation for skewering old Mitt back in in 2008 and
2012.
Allan never had a reputation say
like Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell despite his three ex-wives as a womanizer, as
a skirt-chaser and especially not as a chaser of younger women so the rumor
that he had been holed up in La Jolla out in California with some
twenty-something part time waitress met at a diner who was teaching him how to
surf and who knows what else did not ring true. When, concerned about his
whereabouts in the aftermath of the internal fight, Sam and I tracked him down
to old haunt Bar Harbor in Maine we were incredulous when he confided in us
that he had done so and that once he raised some cash he was going to bring her
out to Maine and see if she liked Eastern surfing. Yes, you can say we were
dumbfounded although Allan’s respond was “what of it” both parties were of age
and that was that. Christ he has daughters older than that.
What happened as Allan was at pains
to lay out once he saw our discomfort was that after the Utah stuff fell
through he kind of had given up hope. He knew that Mormon- Mitt Romney thing
was a longshot, he knew they took care of their own in such matters and he had
heaped as much scorn as anybody on the perfidious Mitt who would say anything,
do anything to take his main chance as he saw it. We laughed when Allan,
gallow’s humor Allan, mentioned that had he fallen under the wheel and gotten a
job he very well might meet some Stalin-like end from those sanctimonious
bastards, hell, their whole history of survival in Utah was by running
everybody else off-by nay means necessary. Once he saw the writing on the wall
and not wanting to head back East he headed to Southern California, toward
Carlsbad where he and one of his wives, Mimi Murphy if I recall, had had a time
share. Once he got to Carlsbad though he saw too many old memories on the waves
and headed further south to La Jolla.
One day, hungry, he went into Dave’s
Diner, a locale we all know both from back in the 1960s when we were all riding
on the yellow brick road bus in the Summer of Love, 1967 with Captain Crunch
(that whole thing is a long story and one of the sketches in this series will
deal with it so let’s move on) and from later golfing outings at near-by Torrey
Pines. Dave’s was the spot to get a good meal and look at the eye candy for
waitresses (now wait staff but still eye candy) who were classic Southern
California corn-fed blondes who a couple of generations before had forbears
from places like Oklahoma and Iowa when things where bad there and were
strictly from hunger. Now these sleek blondes had lost that look and had the
surfer girl look we remember from back in the Beach Boys days except now the
surfer girls don’t wait on the beaches for their surfer boys to get that
perfect wave but go for it themselves. Make enough to stay alive and surf at
jobs like wait-staffing to pursue the dream. Dave’s in any case a good tipping
crowd-or else per Dave who still hustles hamburgers on the back of the house
stove once in a while.
It was kind of a slow day when Allan
stepped up to the counter stools which are a god-sent for singles when Damask,
his blonde, blue-eyed wait person who was tending the counters which truth be
told was where in the real tips came from by single guys mostly and not that
six person booth with about a three dollar tip for a hundred dollars’ worth of
meals asked him if he would like coffee before making his meal selection. He told
her that while he once loved coffee he couldn’t deal with it anymore because
his system couldn’t take it. That got Damask started on her own inability or
desire to drink coffee and made Allan laugh when she said they would put
Starbuck’s out of business. That kind of back and forth went on throughout the
meal. Along the way Damask mentioned although Allan already had an idea that
she loved to surf and did he know how. No, Jesus, no he blurted out although
that only elicited a response from her about wouldn’t he like to learn. One
thing led to another and out of the blue he flat out asked her if she would
like to have dinner with him giving her the sad story about his being down in
the dumps and could use the company.(Allan would mention that he now knew how
old friend “forever young” Phil Larkin felt a couple of years ago when he wound
up with some young thing which formed the basis for a few stories in this
series). Just for the company, that was all. To his surprise she said that it
would be nice to go to Scudder’s, another local hot spot although very pricey.
Done (thank god for credit cards and 401ks said Allan).
As it turned out Damask was both a
surfer and a graduate student in physical therapy at U/Cal-San Diego up the
road and while totally clueless about many things, many 1960s things which
Allan had the good sense to notgo on
and on about she loved literature and they had a grand old time that night. As
they went their separate ways from Scudder’s (a good idea on Allan’s part
showing that he still knew a thing or two after three marriages about keeping
woman feeling safe around him) Damask mentioned that she was going surfing the
next day and maybe he could come by the beach around nine and she would show
him some surfing stuff. Bingo. (Neither Sam nor I had the heart to look askance
at Allan when he mentioned her name without a bit of irony since when we were
growing up Mary, Betty, Janice, Sandra and maybe something as exotic Mary Beth formed
the female names world).
As for what happened to have Allan
once again foot the bill for some love interest and Damask accepting his
invitation East (where she had never been unlike us who were all crazy to go to
California when we were younger) outside whatever surfing tips she taught him
that will have to wait until he can “tell the tale” himself (our old
neighborhood expression concerning exploits with women based on each and every
one of us lying like crazy about what did, or did not, happen under the
covers). Jack Callahan]
************
Saturday night from seven to eleven,
any third Saturday of the month from September to May, every red-blooded teen
boy and girl in the 1961 North Adamsville High School be-bop, be-bop night
could only be in one locale, or want to be. That was the night of the monthly seasonally-themed
high school hop. The Fall Frolic, Pumpkin Ball, Mistletoe Magic, Frozen Frolic,
and so on themes with hop at the end to give the old-timey innocent high school
feel to the night in a town which had had such dances since the school’s founding
in the 1920s, although the term “hop” had been of more recent vintage
reflecting the effect that such cultural phenomena as the afternoon television
program American Bandstand and Danny
and the Juniors classic song At The Hop
had invested the word with significant teen meaning. More importantly this
monthly hop, unlike the more exclusive Autumn Leaves, Holly Hock and Spring
Fling dances which were meant solely for juniors and seniors and their guests
and which were not designated hops or any other such shorthand reflecting the
new rock and roll breeze that had been stirring through the nation for some
time by then, anyone, even freshmen and sophomores, could ante up the dollar
admission and dance the night away.
The large attendance of wallflower-like
freshman, girls and boys alike, all red-faced, all sweaty palms, all trying to
look nonchalantly like they had been going to these things for ages to hide
their wallflower fears who were hanging off the walls in the transformed festooned
gym and of sophomores, a little more self-assured and hovering around the
bleachers which had been extended to provide some seating, but still worried
about whether they, the boys, had put on enough underarm deodorant, had swigged
enough mouthwash, had combed enough parted Wild Root-infestedhair, and the girls, whether that stolen
mother’s perfume would seem too strong, their permed hair was still in array
and that that padded dress showed their figures to good effect were witness to
the fact that anyone, sweaty palms or not if they had enough moxie could dance
the night away.
Well almost everybody in attendance had
the chance to dance the night away. And that had been the dilemma confronting
one freshman, Gary Ladd, he the “wallflower” way off to the side of the gym
almost into the wall if you didn’t think you had seen him on one of the third
Saturday nights in question. And right next to him is another guy, me,
hair-slicked, underarm-protected, Listerine-inhaled, his best friend since
junior high days when I moved to town from Clintondale and we have since tried
to defend each other against the hardships of American wayward youth times,
times when we both would have rather just that moment had cool sunglasses on to
stifle our fears. But let’s get back to Gary because the night I am referring
to was his night after some many failed efforts and my story can be simply
stated. I will wind up going home at intermission kind of defeated since
nobody, nobody at all had asked me to dance, believing that I had not put
enough deodorant on, enough Wild Root or swilled enough mouthwash and had been
defeated by the ever-present bane of the wallflowers-personal hygiene.
[I would find out a couple of days
later when I mentioned my defeat to Emma Wilson in History Class that most of
the freshman girls that she knew kept an arm’s distance from me not for
personal hygiene, some girls thought that I was “cute,” but no girl, no
self-respecting girl could permit herself to be barraged by the two thousand
odd-ball facts that I would spew out in order to impress them during the dance.
I have seen decided to take her comment under advisement. But back to
Gary.]
What had been bothering Gary, though,
we might as well have our moment of truth right up front since this is a
confessional age and the truth would have come out anyway, is that he can’t
dance. Can’t dance a damn, to hell, heaven or any place in between. Couldn’t
dance in junior high when I tried to shadow-box teach him a few steps and when
the moment of truth came he almost broke poor, beautiful Melinda Loring’s big
toe. Such a reputation in a small town is hard to break. My corner boy’s
problem: two- left feet. Two left-feet despite the more recent best efforts of
one Agnes Ladd, North Adamsville Class of 1961 Vice President, whose own feet
have taken a terrible beating, and has earned some kind of medal for service
above and beyond the call of duty, trying to teach little brother Gary the
elements of the waltz, the fox trot, and hell, even two feet away from your
partner rock and roll moves and the twist to no avail.
All of this teaching done under the
cover of tight security since Gary had sworn Agnes to secrecy about their
doings. Agnes, for her part, one of the smartest and most popular girls in the
senior class, had no intention of telling anybody that she was talking to, much
less teaching dance to a freshman even if it was her own brother. Those are the
school conventions, and nobody, nobody who is smart and popular is going to
defy conventions like that. The freshman, as Agnes told Gary, would have their
day in a few years and would in turn snub their subordinate freshman. That is
the way it is. But Gary, no twerp under his two left-footed exterior, has
always, as he put it, exercised his democratic right as a freshman in good
standing to be at these universal dances, come hell or high water.
But that night, that warm April Bring
Spring Hop night I am talking about, things were destined to be a little
different as Gary has already staked his place against the far wall (the wall
farthest away from the girl “wallflowers” just in case you wanted an exact
location. Mostly wallflowers, boy or girl, although not me, were keeping their
respective distances on the odd chance that someone may actually come up and ask
them to dance. First off this month, unlike most months when some lame student
DJ from Communications class spins platters on a feisty school record player,
the local craze rock band sensations, The Rockin’ Ramrods, were performing live
on the makeshift bandstand and were guaranteed to have everybody who gets to
dance rocking before they are done, including Gary and me who are scared but
still hopeful. Just that minute as Gary shifted his weight and places his back
to the wall they were tuning up before their first set of three with the
appropriately named Please Stay by the Drifters. Secondly but in line
with that Gary hopeful, a new girl in town, Elsie Mae Horton, had told Gary
that she would be coming to the hop, her first since moving to town a couple of
months before. Naturally the mere fact that she said she would come was an
added reason why Gary was thereall that
exercising democratic rights stuff be damned (and also why he had tortured his
sister Agnes to try, try in vain, to teach him some dance steps). See Gary has
the “bug” for Elsie Mae, Yeah, as I well know since I had taken a failed and
fruitless run at her with my two thousand facts in Civics class and had
gottenthe deep freeze, he is smitten.
Now this Elsie Mae is maybe, on a scale
of one to ten, about a six so it is not looks that had Gary (and about six
other guys, five and me), well, smitten. An okay body, fair legs, nice brown
hair and eyes, a so-so dresser like I say a “six” (and Gary agreed with me
although in that department although if you see Elsie Mae I never said that,
nor did he). See what Elsie Mae has is nothing but smarts, book smarts which is
how I made my approach to her in Civics class talking about this book we were
reading about President Andrew Jackson and how he broke the back of the
aristocrats like the Adams family who wanted to keep political power in the
hands of some self-selected elite, themselves and forget the guys going west,
yeah I know not exactly the smoothest move. Idea smart too which enthralled
Gary since he likes to talk about novels and such which is what Elsie Mae was
into, talk smarts you name it smarts and one of the sweetest smiles this side
of heaven. And, as Gary found out early on in one of their shared classes, very
easy to talk to about anything, if she wanted to talk to you. Yes, he is
smitten; the only unknown in his mind is whether she can dance good enough to
stay out of his way if it comes to that. That is if he gets up the nerve to ask
her. And as the Ramrods started their first set with Gary Bonds’ School Is
Out (praise be) he noticed her coming in the door. Heart pounding he
started sinking into the wall again. As they finished with Brother Bonds the
Ramrods start in on The Impressions’ Gypsy Woman before Gary realized
that Elsie Mae has drawn a bee-line straight for him and was standing right in
front of him, turning a little red after he did not greet her. “Oh, my god,”
Gary whispers under his breathe, “she is going to ask me to dance. No way.” The
usually easy to talk to Elsie Mae though said nothing, nothing but turned a
little redder as the Ramrods covered the Pips Every Beat Of My Heart
(nicely done too). She stood there waiting for Gary to ask her, if you can
believe that. Well, two-left feet or not, he did ask her. And she smiled a little
smile as she “accepts.” Relief.
Needless to say when they did their
dance, The Edsels’ Rama Lama Ding Dong, it was nothing but a disaster. A
Gary disaster? Yes. Although you can use fake moves galore on such a tune Gary,
maybe nervous, maybe just trying to show off started moving all his arms all
over the place so he looked from my wall position like one of those devilish
Hindu gods with a ton of arms. And while in motion he hit Ella Mae a couple of
times, not hard but not cool either. Once she came close to him and he moved
back into another couple, a senior couple and I thought the senior, Bill Daley
from the football team, was going to level poor Gary but he just moved away
with his date with the meanest look of scorn I had seen in a while. So disaster
was the right word. But here is the funny part. Elsie Mae Horton, formerly of
Gloversville, a town in farm country a few miles away and known for the
Gloversville Amusement Park on Route 9 and nothing else really, and new to
North Adamsville so of unknown dance quality, had two-left feet too. When she
had been closing in on Gary it was because she had lost her balance and was
ready to careen into him. Get this though. When the dance was mercifully
finished, and the two had actually survived, Elsie Mae thanked Gary and told
him that he was a wonderful dancer and said she wished that she could dance
like him. Whee! Here is the real kicker though. Elsie Mae had also been taking
dancing lessons on Saturday mornings at the YWCA, unsuccessfully. Dancing lessons
solely so that two-left feet Elsie Mae Horton could dance with Gary Ladd. See,
she was “smitten” too. And so if you did not see Gary or Elsie Mae at the
Mayfair Dance last month you have now solved that mystery. That night they were
sitting, sitting very close to each other, on the seawall down at Adamsville
Beach laughing about starting a “Two-Left Feet” Club. With just two members.
[As for my fate that night I went to
the hop with Emma Wilson. See after she clued me in to what was what I ran into
her at the library and we talked, or rather she talked, not two thousand facts,
talked but talked. And I let her. And she asked me to escort her, her word, to
the hop.]
