The 100th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In The Trenches”-A Comment

The 100^th Anniversary Of The Last Year Of World War I- Francis Tolliver’s “Christmas In The Trenches”-A Comment

My name is Francis Tolliver. I come from Liverpool
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away
I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I "Now listen up me boys", each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear
"He's singin' bloddy well you know", my partner says to me
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony
The cannons rested silent. The gas cloud rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent
'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht". "Tis 'Silent Night'" says I
And in two toungues one song filled up that sky
"There's someone commin' towards us" the front-line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
As he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night
Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone for ever more
My name is Francis Tolliver. In Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same

-- John McCutcheon "Christmas in the trenches

By Alex Radley

  

Jim Anderson’s great-grandfather whom Jim just barely knew before he passed away was very proud of his military service in World War I with what he always called Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force. And for a long time, certainly as long as he lived Jim was on his knee proud too. Jim’s grandfather in his turn was proud, quietly proud not speaking much about his experiences in the Pacific war part of World War II as was common among that generation according to Jim’s father who told him very little when he questioned his father about the medals that were tucked in a family chest covered in a heavy clothe jacket. Jim’s father in his turn, also quiet about the specific of his service in Vietnam, would say that overall whatever the “damn,” his word when he mentioned that war, purpose of fighting that war was which still eluded him that he was proud of his service. But Jim remembered distinctly nights when he would hear his father being consoled by his mother when he woke up screaming with what must have been nightmares although like Jim said not much was spoken about the matter. And Jim for a long time, having no reason to doubt it, held all of this family pride in his person. As much as a person who did not serve could. Then his generation’s war, the Iraq war of 2003 came and although Jim had no inclination to join up to fight what his grandfather called “the heathens” he did have to think, or better rethink some stuff about war, and guts and glory, and about the horrible waste.              

All of this was aided by his then girlfriend, Susan, whom he called Susan of the Flowers since she had that retro-something out of the 1960s hippie look, and who was now his wife who was fervently against the Iraq war build-up and dragged him  along with her when they were students at Michigan. Peace, really pacifism, came easily to Susan since she had been brought up a Friend, a Quaker, although she was “lapsed” if you can be in such a society unlike Jim’s own Catholicism where he would make people laugh (not his parents though) by saying being lapsed was almost a sign of grace. Jim remembered the first time that she gave him a copy of Christmas in the Trenches he was shocked, great-grandfather- derived shocked that enemy soldiers, close quarter combatants  would call their own short haul “truce” in that World War I that he had been so proud of. That got Jim looking into the matter more closely especially when after all the protesting they had done (along with millions of others throughout the world) in the build-up to the Iraq War Bush II went ahead and blew the place apart for what turned out to be no reason at all. “Fake information” in today’s fevered newsprint world.        

World War I was an important watershed in the history of war because with the strategy of trench warfare on the ground killing would be done for the first time on an industrial scale (although for its day, especially at Cold Harbor, the American Civil War would give a gruesome preview of what was to come when things got out of hand. What had started out as something of a “jolly little show” quickly over by Christmas 1914 assumed by all sides including organizations like the international social democracy which had clamored for a decade or more before the guns started firing but who bowed to the nationalist fervor of their respective countries when the first shots rang out. And so Christmas in the trenches, several Christmases as it turned out. So that little soldierly truce story which  Susan would keep bringing to his attention each year when he needed an example of a small break from the madness down at the base, down where the guys fought the “damn” thing (this “damn” Jim’s).

After having completely failed to stop the Iraq war in 2003 Jim started what has now become a long if sporadic investigation of what could have made a difference, what could have stopped the madness in its tracks and that would always bring him back to those soldiers down at the base, down there in the killing fields of France. Not at the base of the Iraq war since there was very little dissension at the time in the ranks of the all-volunteer army and National Guard units sent to do the dirty work, the “walk-over.” Not the small action of the truce in in Christmas in the trenches but a little later, toward 1917 when all hell broke loose in Russia. A Russia whose armies were melting away on the Eastern Front. Melting away, and who knows to what extent before the February Revolution exposed the house of cards, with agitation from the Bolsheviks who Jim had believed in good family anti-communist from believed were the source of all evil in the world to hear his grandfather speak on the subject.   

Ideology aside, as hard as that is to dismiss in this kind of situation, the Bolsheviks had a hard and fast policy that their youth essentially would not volunteer to go in the Czar’s peasant-build Army but if drafted (dragooned really) they were to go and see what they could do in their units when and if a chance came up to break the stalemate. This was a very different policy from the individual acts of resistance, refusal to be drafted, that were epidemic during his father’s war which included many friends of Susan’s parents who were not Quakers but didn’t want to fight in an immoral war. Jim very carefully approached his father about what he thought of those draft resisters. His answer startled Jim when he said for a long time he held a very big grudge against the draft dodgers he called them but more recently he believed that they may have been right after all. Told Jim a story about a couple of guys in his unit in Pleiku who wanted the unit to refuse to go out on some half-baked mission. They quickly wound up in Long Binh Jail, LBJ, as it was called and the unit went out anyway and sustained heavy loses, got him wounded the first time. His father didn’t know what happened to those guys except he hoped they survived but even with them he said they probably were right. Maybe if a couple more guys had stuck with them something could have happened. Yes, Jim thought when he was thinking about it later, but that was music for some future. For now we have that little dust-up one Francis Tolliver Christmas.             

***Out In The American Neon Wilderness Night- At 16 Or 68 It Never Ends- The Romantic Trials and Tribulations Of Sam Lowell-Take Two From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-With "Save The Lat Dance For Me" in Mind

***Out In The American Neon Wilderness Night- At 16 Or 68 It Never Ends- The Romantic Trials and Tribulations Of Sam Lowell-Take Two  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

This is the way Sam Lowell told me his sad story over several meetings at one or another of our favorite watering holes a short while back where he felt he had to get something off his chest about his latest love interest gone sour. Through his activity on our high school 50^th anniversary reunion committee we had communicated and met each other several times recently and he had carried me along with his enthusiasm about the event. Got me interested in the old days, and possibly going to the reunion. And he in turn confided in me about this love problem, wanted me to write something up about it as a form of therapy or something. I am no expert on the issue of love, or maybe better having been married three times and having had numerous affairs and flings I am as clueless as he about how to deal with the subject. In any case here are my recollections of what he had to say on those sad whiskey-filled nights:    

The last time Sam Lowell saw Melinda Loring he was looking back at the headlights of her automobile veering off as dusk approached to go north on Route 133 just south of Amesbury along the New Hampshire border in the early spring of 2014.  He did not know that that glimpse would be the last, the last physical time he saw her, although given the all-out fight they had had earlier that evening including an enraged outburst by him he suspected as much. But like many things in this wicked old world of romantic relationships that would not be the last of it, although that indeed was the last physical time he saw her. There were some final shots, some last metaphysical kiss-offs before the real end. And so as Sam had muttered to himself at some point during the last not so metaphysical dust-up whether 16 or 68 years of age the romance game never gets easier. And so this story, or end of story.    

Let’s take a step back to figure out about the whys of that last headlight glance before we find out what happened after the subsequent fall and the last dust-up. Sam had been thinking about his 50^th class reunion at North Adamsville High School since he had received an invitation to go to his 40^th reunion back in 2004. At that time Sam had dismissed the invitation with so much hubris because then he still thought that the bad luck that had followed him for much of his life had been caused by his growing up on “the wrong side of the tracks” in North Adamsville. He told me, a number of times, that he had spent half a lifetime blaming that bad luck hometown affiliation on everything from acne to wormwood. 

Subsequently through some family-related deaths that took him back to the old town Sam had reconciled himself with his roots and had exhibited the first stirrings of a feeling that he might like to see some of his old classmates. In late 2013, around Thanksgiving he, at least marginally savvy on such user-friendly sites, created a Facebook  event page in order to see if anybody else on the planet knew of plans or was interested in making plans for a 50^th reunion. One day, a few days after setting up the page, he got an inquiry asking what he knew about any upcoming plans.  He answered in a short note his own limited knowledge of any such plans but that his intention in setting up the page had been to seek others to help out with organizing an event if nothing had been established as yet. In that reply he had forgotten to give his name. And that is how the “girl with the pale blue eyes” came into view.  

“Who are you?” asked Melinda Loring returning his message, a name that Sam immediately remembered from his high school days although he did not know the woman personally. He shot back a blushed reply about being sorry for forgetting to include his name, gave it, and casually remarked that he had remembered from somewhere that she was a professor at a local public university in the Boston area. He asked if she was still there. She sent an immediate reply stating that no she was no longer there but that she had been and was still a professor at a state university in an adjacent state, at the University of New Hampshire, and had been for the previous twenty-five years. She also mentioned that, having access to her Magnet, her class of 1964 yearbook, she had looked up his class photo, and said he was “very handsome.”

Naturally any guy from six to sixty would have to seriously consider anybody, any female in Sam’s, who throws that unanticipated, unsolicited comment a man’s way especially since she sent her class photo back as well. That got them started on what would be a blizzard of e-mails over the next several weeks.  

During the early stages of their correspondence Sam told Melinda that his previous knowledge of her had been perked a few years earlier when he had as part of his reconciliation with the old home town looked up and found his old high school running and running around buddy Brad Badger through a school-related Internet site and he had gone over to Brad’s house in Newton to look at his Magnet and talk over old times.

 Sam, having had a few drinks that night and feeling expansive, related the following story to Brad and which he subsequently related in an e-mail to Melinda to her delight if disbelief. It seems that in his junior year at North Adamsville Sam had noticed Melinda around school (they later confirmed they had had no classes together, although having been in the same junior high and high schools for five years or so they agreed that they must have run into each other or been in the same room sometime if only the auditorium, gym or cafeteria) and had an interest in meeting her after seeing her around a few times.

Of course in high school, at least back then, maybe now too, a guy didn’t just go up to a girl and start making his moves. He got “intelligence,” found out if she had a guy already, stuff like that. Usually this information was gathered in the boys “lav” (especially the Monday morning before school session when all the “hot” news of the weekend was discussed) but in this case since Sam was a trackman this happened after school in the boys’ locker room where he inquired of two guys he knew who knew her what she was like. Both agreed instantly that she was a “fox” but told him to forget it because she was “unapproachable.” Meaning low-rent raggedy guys like Sam forget it. Meaning, as well, that Sam as is almost always true with the young just moved on to his fantasy next best thing. And so they did not meet then. Melinda said she laughed when he related that story to her and in their further exchanges related lots of information to Sam about what she was really going through back then with an extraordinary tough family life with an abusive father and passive mother, lots of low self-esteem, and other problems too intimate to detail in an e-mail. 

Frankly, after the first few exchanges Sam had been more than a little intrigued with Melinda, intrigued enough to think about further discovery.  And as it turned out Melinda had been as well. They discovered they both had much in common academically, professionally, politically and personally. I won’t go into the specifics of those “things in common” because in looking over my notes from Sam that would take more time than necessary to make the point.

A point necessary to make though since it contributed to the fall  was Sam’s “relationship” status which he introduced to Melinda after an initial blizzard of e-mails and phone calls:

“Hi Melinda –Well we have been on a roller-coaster so far and we have not even met in person yet. That is what is so surreal about this whole thing that had developed between us. That business from last night about me tracking your record down got me thinking though. Kind of has forced my hand about something that I had intended to bring up tomorrow when we meet in person for the first time as the first order of business to clear the air and give our friendship a proper footing. I was struck by the way you said you have been honest with me and that got me motivated to write this now instead of waiting until tomorrow. I have, unlike you, not always been honest in the past. For example, not to brag or anything like that but to deal with the honesty question, a couple of times way back I have had five girlfriends at one time so there was no way I could be honest and juggle all that. So I was lying to beat the band. I have gotten better and tried to be honest with you and have been doing so. But sometimes you can be honest and still omit things and that is what this e-mail is about. I take it as something that we will work through as we go along and I hope you agree.

You know as well as I do that we both carry a lot of baggage, busted marriages, affairs, and so forth. On the other hand we are both old enough to have whatever level of friendship we want from just friends to an affair because we both as far as I know have no ties that would prohibit that, neither of us is married. And even if we did in this day in age we could still have whatever relationship we wanted. As long as we both have our eyes open and know the score. That “know the score” part is what I want to talk about. It is nothing bad but it is a complication. And even if we decide to be just friends it is part of what is unfolding. I have decided to do the rest of this as a narrative so here goes.

Up until a few weeks ago for the past ten years or so since the end of my last serious relationship I was just rolling along writing, doing legal work, doing politics, playing golf and all the rest. Doing all of that while living in the same house as the woman that was my last serious romantic relationship, Laura, who is still my closest woman friend. I have known her for over twenty- five years and about twenty years ago we bought this modest house in Whelan. As time went on though we had, as couples will, our problems until about ten years ago we decided that it wasn’t working. But we both wanted to keep the house and be friends. I won’t go into all of that now but you can ask me about it. So that is what we did. And nothing wrong with that people make such arrangements all the time. And so time moved on. I did my thing-she did hers and we do things together. For example we still go out to Saratoga to Laura’s family for Thanksgiving and Christmas since I don’t have family that way. Stuff like that. At some level we have deep affection for each other but it is just easier and more comfortable to be friends.         

Then out of the blue you came along. You know how we “met” and all so I don’t need to go into that but what happened is that I was not sure where we were heading (at one point if anywhere) and so I made a point of keeping that information to myself. Remember I made a point about just concentrating on us and not on other baggage stuff. Part of it obviously is that if we were not going anywhere then such information didn’t matter and if we were then that would just be an awkward situation that we would deal with. That is what a lot of my concern about expectations, the way we have met and all of that has been about. I have told Laura about you in general terms (the only way to put it since we still have not met) and since this whole thing has been topsy-turvy that is where things stand right now.

If all of this seems like too much then so be it-but as for me I still say forward- if you don’t that is okay and we can work on some other way to be friends. I think we both strongly want to be friends and should be damn it if that is what we want. Later Sam”         

The tipping point for both of them, the piece of information exchanged that startled, hell, flabbergasted them both, made them think for a moment that destiny’s wings beckoned, made them think their flame thing might be written in the stars was an event that occurred when they were nine. Here is what I wrote at the time when Sam told me the story (after he told me that he was “smitten” with Melinda  and I begged him to be cool, be cool for Laura’s sake although I had always had an abiding interest in her, if she ever fell off of Sam’s wagon. Laura never did, damn, she never did.):

“Now you have to know a little bit about Sam Lowell, about his attitudes toward things like mysticism, fate, kismet, the unknown and all of that to appreciate that he does not truck with any of that stuff. He fancies himself a man of science, or at least of there being rational explanations for things and this is why the information that he imparted to me baffled him. Me, I am more agnostic about such things but this one did have me scratching my head a little so I might as well get to it: 
“The year 2014 will be a milestone for Sam (and the same for me as well) marking the 50^th anniversary of his graduation from high school,  North Adamsville High School. For a whole number of reasons that should not detain us here Sam had been looking forward to that event for a couple of years in the expectation of going to his class reunion. He had never gone to any before for those whole bunch of reasons. Moreover he had actively attempted to put himself into the mix by setting up a class reunion event on Facebook.  What he was doing at that point was making an ad hoc attempt to enlist fellow classmates to help organize the reunion.  He got the usual early sparse response and then the response that triggers this sketch already mentioned.

A woman, Melinda Loring, a fellow classmate commented that she was interested in helping out but due her professional career commitments would not be able to do much. Also she lived up in New Hampshire and since the reunion would be held in Massachusetts that too would be a barrier. In any case Sam, looking to find some kindred help, began a blizzard of e-mail traffic with her. It seems that this Melinda was what they now call “hot” back in the day, a real looker, as a look at her yearbook picture testified to that Sam had forwarded to me, a fresh dewy “girl next door”- type who wore cashmere sweaters and who by popular opinion (boys’ locker room after sports’ practices opinion) was “unapproachable.” In any case Sam had seen her around school but that was about it.   

Well some things change in this wicked old world, some things are not eternally etched in stone and Melinda like all of us from the Generation of ’68  has learned a thing or two, had been through her share of ups and downs and survived to tell about it. Naturally Sam was all ears to hear about this life if for no other reason that he could say that he had actually talked to her, even at a fifty year remove, for some such reason which only Sam is privy to. And so the blizzard of e-mails continued (her almost as crazy as him to write, write, write).

One exchange, the one that matters here, involved the question of where they had gone to elementary school, she to Adamsville North and he to Adamsville South. That Adamsville South response by Sam brought out the fact that Melinda’s mother, Margaret, had been a swimming instructor down at the Adamsville South Beach during the 1950s summers and had during her career there saved a drowning boy. Melinda, nine at the time, had been present at the event.

Sam said he had flipped out when he heard that information. See, and I remember him telling me one time about his love of the ocean but fear of it, fear to go too far out when swimming because he had almost drowned when he was nine down at the Adamsville South Beach one summer. Typical boy story: as the ocean was rising he had spied a log, an abandoned telephone pole, and had grabbed onto it. He drifted out for a while and then, as he said sheepishly, he realized he had gone too far but instead of holding onto the log he decided to try and swim for shore. Not a good swimmer and just too far out he started going down. His brother who was on the shore called for help and the swimming instructor came out and saved him in a nick of time.

So what lesson did Sam draw from that today. Anything about fate, karma, or just plain good luck. No. He told Melinda that since they had already “met” maybe they should get together and discuss the matter more fully. And guess what, she agreed. Jesus.”               

A couple more cell-phone calls and another round of e-mails got this pair to setting up the meeting in person, having a “date” like some hormonally-driven teen-agers. (Sam could not remember who suggested the idea first but neither flinched at that possibility.) They both admitted to nervousness as they planned to meet in Portsmouth up in New Hampshire at a restaurant that she had selected (he was to be at a legal conference in Maine and that locale was the closest convenient city for both of them). Needless to say they hit it off remarkably well.

And Sam, with two divorces under his belt and that also untold number of liaisons, was also in his less lucid moments thinking along some just such lines as an affair with Melinda, maybe more. Except. Oh yeah, except here is where it got tricky, where Sam’s calculations sort of misfired. Sam was, as he learned as they went along, ah, “married,” had been “married” for many years to Laura, although for a number of years past they had been living as “roommates.” Roommate meaning separate beds, mostly separate lives, and most definitely no sex. That hard little fact, that “marriage” fact, a fact that I kept mentioning to him as he got deeper into the human sink of Melinda. Naturally he would not listen at that point.  Although not because, and it can face the light of day now, I secretly, secretly then, wished that Sam would leave Laura, Laura who had disturbed my dreams for years. We later discussed this situation after Sam’s fever over Melinda had broken. Sam said he knew of my feelings for Laura, had known for years and acknowledged that if things had gone differently with Melinda he would have wished me well in my pursuit of Laura.

Naturally, or maybe not so naturally for the senior set, for  people in their sixties, and supposedly beyond sexual desire as they dote on grandchildren, gardening, golfing or whatever, the question of sleeping together, staying overnight together came up after several dates. Sam as part of his professional duties often went to Maine on legal business and so he suggested that they, he and Melinda, meet at a hotel a mutual distance between them and they did one Friday afternoon in frigid January. Melinda, assuming that the offer of meeting at a hotel meant that they would sleep together, had made provisions unbeknownst to Sam to stay that night with him. Sam, perhaps a little more backward in the dating game and its progressions expected them to just have a few drinks, go out for some dinner, come back and have a nightcap, let her go back on her way, and leave it at that. That afternoon Melinda came on strong, almost caught Sam flat-footed with her desire but he was not ready, had not been prepared for Melinda’s desire and so nothing happened that night except an unhappy Melinda who left unfulfilled around midnight.

That event left Sam in a quandary. He knew, just like Melinda knew, that he desired her, wanted to have sex, make love to her. But he also knew that once that happened that a bridge would be crossed, or so that was his thinking at the time. Still Melinda was there, still he wanted her so the next Friday afternoon he called her up out of the blue and told her to meet him at that same hotel. Oh yes, and feed the cats and bring an overnight bag. She was thrilled and arrived a couple of hours later. And that was that. Well not exactly because that night they a great long sex bout like fifty years of unacknowledged, unknown, unknowable desire surfaced. And that was their high point, the acme of their thing. That was also the point where Sam, back-tracking, began to squirm a little both at what he had done, that bridge that he had crossed and that home he had left behind for a minute. The omens thereafter were not good, although he never spoke of those nights to me and I only knew about them from the notes he handed to me.     

Who knows how some relationships turn from spun gold to dross in a short time, in time for a “forever” man to turn into a never man (the first designation an inside joke as it turned out since Melinda had started to call him that in the early days when she was still smitten with him and expected to share her time with him that long, and everything was possible. In the event “forever” turned out to be, ah, significantly shorter).

Maybe the turning point was Sam’s response to that second date, a December Friday a couple of weeks before Christmas date at a Tapas restaurant in Portsmouth. Sam had never been to such a restaurant where they give you small portions of many good things to eat, well-prepared, served at intervals and a place which provided a relaxed atmosphere to while away the time in. They talked up another storm and could barely keep their hands off each other, gathered closer as the evening progressed. After the meal, the weather New England winter cold he escorted her to her car and before she left they exchanged several meaningful hugs (and he might have kissed her on the cheek). They left knowing they both definitely had a thing for each other.

But Melinda was a fretter and a planner, not necessarily in that order so at some point between that Friday and their resumption of e-mail traffic the next day Melinda possessed of some dream future with Sam tried to find out more about Laura, about that “roommate” arrangement and what was to become of her. See Melinda had certain rules as we all more or less do in that she took pride in her serial monogamous relationships. She was with a man, and a man was with her, or no dice. Once she finished with a man that was that. She told Sam that in an e-mail exchange set. He in a little panic over her position kept trying to calm her doubts, kept trying to pass over his longtime relationship as some platonic boy-scout trip, kept trying to keep his head above water with Melinda. That night, that restless Saturday night he tossed and turned trying to mull things over in his head and came up empty. Came up with the only conclusion that made sense-end the flirtation and walk away. He, and this is characteristic of Sam, “wrote” the thing out in his head first and then at the crack of dawn gathered himself from his bed and went to compose the following e-mail which he sent later that morning:

“Dear Melinda

I have to admit that I am all balled up about you but in the cold light of day I have also admit that I am perplexed by the tone of your e-mail last night (the “down the snowy road” one in case you have sent a later one). I am a little confused now about your reasons but from early on you seemed interested in my pursuing you, and encouraging me to that effect. And I certainly have been interested in pursuing you and encouraging you to make me feel that I should. Also I like you am amazed by the fateful number of common things we share but now I am beginning to believe we might be star-crossed. It is with you do not know how much great sorrow I have to write the following, I hope you will respond to my e-mail with an e-mail (seems we are better on such issues this way) and if you don’t I will understand and accept that you agree with my solution. In any case I hope you will think and reflect on what I have to say and not think too badly of your old classmate.

We are cursed you and I, we, the both of us with the three curses, A tendency to intellectualize things, over-analyze them, fret them to death, try to engineer things rather than let them take their natural course. We have also been around the block enough to be wary, defensive about relationships and things having taken and given our bumps and bruises. Of course, as well we carry those long ago created scars  about expectations, acceptance, need to be wanted, praise and the like. A lot to carry for sure.  

I know and I have said it before that you have had a rough time with men and now it looks like with me too. That has to color your perspective and that is not wrong. However your e-mail got me to wondering about why you have kept trying to throw up roadblocks to our blooming romantic relationship (formerly known as our possible “affair”). Not when we are together or on the phone but in your e-mails. I won’t argue the point if I have done the same but let me point out some things that will show what I mean:

Your general early wariness of my intentions and what I was about and lately about my “marital” status.

The criminal report incident where you assumed that in the whole universe I did such a goofball thing

The whole FB/ring thing

The womanizer issue

Now this thing about my true relationship with Laura

    

 I wasn’t going to bring it up but since you asked about it and I have told you more stuff about myself than probably any other woman including Laura we have not been intimate for over fifteen years (part of our problem). Sure on trips and stuff we have shared the same room and even the same bed but that is it.  If that isn’t platonic I don’t know what is.

We share a seven room house she has a room and another room for her singing/mediation/photography- I have a room, a small office (which I am writing this in now) and we share a living room, dining room and kitchen. All modest and kind of small but with room for guests.

The big thing is that all of this in really uncharted because Laura and I have never had to confront a situation like ours. Who knows what would happen. All I know is she is the innocent party here and should be treated like that.

 Of course if our romance had blossomed then I would have no problem bringing you to my house. But I do not think you are thinking outside the box. I/we have resources so if something had bloomed I know (since I have done it before) that other arrangements could have been made. Laura keeps the house and I move out to an apartment. I move in with you and share expenses. We both move some place together. We run away to a cave off of the Pacific Coast Highway-they are plenty of alternatives.

All of this to say I really never would want to hurt you. I am sorry if I have but there are no guarantees. Although I would much rather have you holding my hand right now dear sweet Melinda I think perhaps it is best that we stop right now, accept that our time together has passed. We have been on a roller-coaster so I think just friendship would be hard, although maybe when I calm down and knowing the limitations maybe we could work something out. I hope you will respond but in any case I still hope to see you at the reunion. That after all is what got this whole thing started. Sam”

Sam never gave Melinda a chance to respond since a few hours later, maybe two, he called her up and begged her to forget what he had written and that they should keep on going as best they could but that he planned to do right by her. Of course he sent me this new information and I blew my top but since it cannot do anybody any harm, or minimal harm let me show you an e-mail he posted to Melinda after their “mini-break-up” episode:           

“Melinda -Glad to reach you this morning to make sure things were right between us and thank you for being understanding about me being a little crazy yesterday. Yes, crazy because why would any guy in his right mind walk away from somebody who was certifiable good for him. In any case the time for walking away is past. If I really wanted to do that I could have just done that yesterday. And you could have indirectly done the same by just saying to yourself why should I go forward with a guy who doesn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain when somebody that is good for him walks through the door. So the walking away is done and while we probably still have rough patches ahead we are moving along-along in case anybody asks to the hand-holding stage. So something is up.

I still can’t get over my response when you started tearing up Friday night. I have been accused and rightly so in the past of not showing enough emotion but I almost instinctively reached over to you to comfort you like we had been together for a long time. I won’t forget that.

 Hope you are okay after your dental work-rest and take it easy tonight. Later Sam.”           

Maybe it was San Diego- Sometimes a guy can’t quite figure out what to do, can’t for the life of him, despite his age and the fact, the hard fact that he has been through many mills before what the right thing to do is, or maybe is too callous, too concerned with having his own way, having his kids’ stuff “two women” thing that he gets blindsided by the truth, by the equally hard fact that he cannot burn the candle at both ends. Melinda had screamed at him, raised bloody holy hell about the fact that he was taking Laura to San Diego with him, a few days in the sun he said to give her winter-weary body so Melinda would have to put up with the fact that he would be with “another woman” in the same room in the same hotel. That drove her to rages, to fits, to tantrums which made him cry bloody murder. He made sure that he called her every day but that every day was like a prison as she took aim at his situation. He made the supreme mistake though of one call making a comparison between the hotel room in San Diego and their love-nest in Portsmouth. That caused a burning flame for days after.          

Maybe it was after that Washington, D.C in February which was a trip that solidified, mainly, their desire for each other, but because she was taking a scheduled bus back to New Hampshire and he was grabbing his car from an off-site lot they had a rushed good-bye after furious movement at the airport where she had an odd exchange of luggage problem getting hers’ mixed up with another causing several headaches and problems for Sam at his house when Laura received a telephone call from Jet Blue asking if that mislaid luggage was there.  The next day feeling some ill-wind had crossed their paths Sam had refused Melinda’s request of him to call her when she was confused by an e-mail that he sent because he had written it hastily as he had his hands full with Laura and her furor as fallout over the luggage problem.

Probably though the end started to crumble the month before the end when a few days after coming back from that fateful Washington trip Melinda took a big spill, a serious fall at a pool in Portsmouth where she swam to get exercise, that broke her hip bone requiring surgery and their budding romance came to a crashing halt as she convalesced and Sam took on the unaccustomed role of care-giver- general. Not so much that incident itself since it was an accident but what it did to enforce her idleness which left her too much time to think about how she wanted him with her, wanted him to leave Laura, wanted to make those 208 plans (roughly) that Melinda spent her waking hours doing in order to have him come closer to her. And Sam needed to be in Boston, or wanted to be, and not stuck in some winter wonderland town in Podunk New Hampshire at the beck and call of her highness.

Not a meeting between them in that period went by without some variation of the on-going argument. Although there were some nice times, (one time he drove her to their North Adamsville youth homes and they had many laughs, and some sorrows, over that). Even when he had driven up in order to allow her to teach a seminar at UNH and then drove her the next day over to the Portsmouth General to get her cleared to be able to drive she/he/they argued over that same old, same old material. Now that Sam thought about it he believed that was clearly the case, the place where all hell broke loose, since he just from his end got tired of the arguments that were leading nowhere.             

The few days before the end had not been better (really a few weeks Sam thought since that damn accident put her out of commission placed a damper on their affair as he became a care-giver and she a patient). The inevitable Melinda war cry of when was Sam going to leave his “wife,” when he was going to leave Laura, and what, get this, constructive steps he had taken to break with her had led to a series of arguments starting with the day that she was finally given the okay by the doctor in charge of her case at Portsmouth General to drive.

Melinda, as an act of liberation from her confinement, had driven them to Newburyport and then to Plum Island where when Sam had expressed his concern about the change in their relationship from romantic to care-giving, that the “spark” had gone out somewhere along the line (she took his remark, the way he said it, as his displeasure at her). Melinda had exploded and said that “she wished he had never taken care of her during that month she was laid up if she was such a burden.” They talked but the fires had not been put out. Newburyport was significant for that was where he had brought her a trinket on their first trip there in December when they could hardly keep their hands off each other (and had their first “lean-in” kiss). The next day walking on Hampton Beach the smoldering fires erupted (slightly) again when an issue came up about Melinda doing a favor for her ex-husband. They kissed a statutory kiss and parted company she to Epping and he back to Boston.

Naturally the e-mail and cell-phone traffic (actually the diminished traffic, significantly down from the days when they would sent blizzards of e-mails to each other when he thought about it later) reflected those unresolved tensions. She needed to spent that first week of liberation catching up on work, house, social chores and could only spare that next Thursday evening for them to get together and since she was going to be in the Salem (NH) area they decided to meet in Amesbury for dinner. Before that though Sam made what would be a mistake, a fatal mistake, of putting into writing some of his feelings about where they were at in their relationship. Thus he sent the following e-mail which was the final piece of evidence that things had gone drastically wrong.

“Dearest Melinda -Where have those hands grabbing at each other across the table in delight/need/want at Morry’s (and elsewhere) gone. Where has your hand grabbing my arm while walking outside of Rudi’s (and elsewhere) and me glad to have you do it gone. Where have the little stolen sweet kisses of Portsmouth parking lots gone. Where have those endless phone calls where we hated to sign off talking about great adventures ahead gone. Where have those roundabout hours of blissful silliness gone. Where have those shy but meaningful moments when our feelings for each other blossomed gone. I could go on with a million more examples when were on the same page and were relaxed and confident about our relationship and where it might head but you get the idea.

I sensed from this e-mail that you are beginning to get the feeling like me that you/I/we are not in a good place these days. Think about the first time at Newburyport in precious December and last week. I had already spoken about this last week and now I think you sense that too from your side. Our talk today where we got all theoretical about the future without any sweet talk kind of epitomized that. Frankly, and you can speak for yourself, I am unhappy with the drift of things now. I/you/we spent too much time thinking about the future, future plans, about the relationship itself and not enough about how to get out of the rough patch we are in. How to get the romance back and just relax with each other.  Why don’t we take a step back, maybe two, today and tomorrow and think about things we can say and do when we meet on Thursday to break the impasse. Why don’t we step back and just forget about the future for a little bit and just think we are “dating” for right now with all its sense of mystery in the now with no future goals. Or maybe that we should think about just being friends for a while. I always want to be friends with you that is for sure. These are only suggestions. The main thing is that you/I/we think about this and not rush into a blizzard of e-mails. This rough patch requires thinking not writing-

From a guy who misses those delighted hands across the table, that grabbing hand on my arm, those endless funny phone calls waited for in anticipation and nervousness, those sweet shy stolen kisses, that bubble silliness when the outside world didn’t matter for a bit, those intimate moments when you and I both blushed a teenage-like blush at how close we were, those all night talkfests, those candles flittering in the dark, serious Melinda and Sam just being foolish and off-guard, the kindnesses we did for each other just because we were special to each other, the sense that our thing was written in the wind, and lots of other things you remember as well as I do. Sam”

They had a short acrimonious cell-phone exchange after that e-mail but again agreed to meet in Amesbury the next day to figure things out. That next evening things started well enough, after Melinda had ordered wine with her dinner. The net result of their discussions was that they would go on as friends for a while and see where that led. Of course to go beyond the friend stage Melinda gave no uncertain terms to the proposition that she could not go on, was “ashamed” to go on under the circumstances unless Sam got a place of his own, left Laura.

Melinda ordered another wine, unusual for her, and that must have given her courage to speak again of the e-mail. She said it read like a lawyer’s closing argument, that she had been hurt and that he was basically a bum of the month. He became incensed, yelled at her and threw money on the table for dinner and walked to the men’s room to fume. When he came back he tried to tell her his point of view but he was tired of arguing by then and just said “let it go for now.” They left, she put her hand in his arm as usual and he muttered that “they were in very bad place” as he walked her to her car. He looked at her shoes, the shoes she reminded him that she had worn in sunnier days down in Washington and he commented “that seems like a long time ago” as they arrived at her car. Rather than the usual kiss good-bye he yelled out “I’ll be in touch,” as he walked back to his own car.     

Since Melinda was not good at directions (and the Google maps were helter-skelter on this one) Sam had consented to have her follow him out of Amesbury on Route 27 which she did until they got to the U.S. 495 South entrance. A couple of exits up she veered off onto Route 133 for home. As he shifted gears from fourth to fifth to push on up to speed in the U.S. 495 night after he saw her automobile veer off to the northern route home he breathed a sigh of relief, and of sadness. They never saw each other again.

That is prologue.

Sam was, frankly, heart-broken over the loss of Melinda, had had many sleepless nights and days of forlornness, as he expressed the matter to me on several occasions after that last highway parting when we met over drinks later at one of our old watering holes of late Jacks’ in Cambridge and an old time haunt of mine, Jimmy’s Grille, in Boston (where in the old Irish bar fashion you can still get a beer chaser gratis with your whiskey, high shelf or low).  Of course there were other feelings as well, feelings of rage and outrage after Sam had told Laura he was leaving her and their household arrangement once Melinda forced the issue. All for naught since Melinda had probably been preparing to give Sam his walking papers at exactly the same time that he was deciding in her favor at least that was Sam’s speculation after the fact. Speculation necessary, as will become more apparent as well mull to over the dregs of the situation, since Melinda refused to discuss her reasons in that last cellphone communication beyond what he already knew. He had thought perhaps she was going back to her previous man who was emotionally less high maintenance than Sam, maybe had gotten cold feet, or just did not want the drama associated with trying to work out a kind of long distance relationship since he had balked at spending too much time in the Podunk New Hampshire town where she lived.

That telling he was leaving the household to Laura part had caused more anguish than Sam expected especially since he freely admitted to me that he had not managed that part well. Had hedged his bets on Melinda after that last meeting feeling that she was going to “dump” him (Sam’s corner boy sweet sixteen term, Melinda’s was the adult-like “breaking off the relationship”). Fearing to be left with nobody once the dust settled he had told Laura that he not sure what he was going to do and would need some time to figure things out. Made the fatal error, which would come back to haunt him in his relationship with Laura, that he had “two women” now. But said it in such a way that he implied that he was happy or at least not unhappy about that situation like some errant lust-filled schoolboy. Then when the Melinda other shoe dropped all the mess of back-tracking to try to repair the Sam-Laura relationship. That was a story in itself but since it does not revolve what Sam did later we will let it ride (let it ride as well since I honestly have my own privately-held outrages about what Sam did to Laura and how he maneuvered himself out of harm’s way with a lot of fast-talking).  No things had not gone well, gone well at all. Hence the rage, and sorrow.

Getting back to Melinda though somehow something (something unknown and only half suspected by Sam) had snapped in Melinda about Sam’s commitment to Laura, about the enraged last meeting, about that fateful e-mail, that “closing argument” e-mail as Melinda had called it in an irate moment that had expressed Sam’s apprehensions about their future. As mentioned before what happened upon later investigation by Sam, or what he thought had occurred, was that while he was giving Laura notice of leaving Melinda had independently and unilaterally made her fateful decision. When Sam tried several time to call or e-mail Melinda during that next week under the pretext that Laura had to make plans to leave their household as she was anxious to do to get out of the maelstrom (that leaving would be partially true later but she came back after a few weeks) Melinda stonewalled him finally telling him to wait two weeks for her reply.

That hard-bitten and anxious two weeks over and done Melinda definitely and unceremoniously gave Sam his walking papers. Of course faithful Laura locked into limbo during this period was frantic, was outraged (and rightly so Sam kind of half-heartedly acknowledged to me as I scoured at him when he mentioned to my mind the dirty way he had treated Laura) and had made arrangements to leave when Sam told her that he wished to stay with her, for her to stay. At that level I had some sympathy for Sam and his loss of two women. Somehow though, damn, Laura did stay with Sam in the end but since this is about Sam and Melinda I will let it go.       

A couple of weeks after the Melinda break-up decision Sam sent her an e-mail keeping open the old possibility of being friends, acknowledged that they could not be lovers under the new dispensation. He did not expect and did not receive any answer the way he posed the question in the e-mail since he assumed that Melinda was still in furious mode and so left the that possibility for some vague future. Then he made another fatal mistake. Not as devastating as the previous ones since they had already done their damage and were done with but for the events that would follow. He assumed the “no answer” was really that Melinda was thinking things over about a friendship. Fool’s paradise and prima facie evidence that even a smart guy like Sam can act as silly as a 16 year old. He went along with that idea in the back of his mind leaving Melinda plenty of room to decide. Eventually after several weeks as her birthday approached he sent another short e-mail with a birthday greeting. Still no reply (none was expected, he said, as he presented the thing to me as strictly a greeting like on a birthday card, oh, alright an e-card). Then all hell broke loose.        

As detailed previously Sam and Melinda met up through a fortuitous searching for reunion information. That class’s reunion committee, which included Sam in a secondary role, had set up a website to help organize the reunion events. For a period in the bloom of their affair they had collaborated on messages to the class, memory stuff mostly like lots of such sites. That website gave all who joined their own profile pages to do with as they liked (within reason and with some regard for taste and such). The site had the now standard ways to tell each members’ story though words, photos, and videos and ways, publicly and privately, to communicate with other on the site ( to the exclusion of the rest of the universe since it was a closed site, closed to all but members of the class).

One day a couple of months after the break-up Sam noticed that Melinda had updated her profile on the site. When he clicked on her page he saw a photo (actually two) of her and her high school friend, Donna, at Donna’s place in California. Melinda had gone out there to celebrate her own 68^th birthday. Under normal circumstances no big deal- a couple of good-looking older women in a photo (good-looking to older guys, okay, maybe not to hungry younger guys looking for fast sex and bouncy women). What made the photo a problem for Sam, had him seeing red actually, was that he was originally supposed to have been on that California trip to see Donna. Seeing the photo, and seeing something that was not there (he thought that Melinda had placed the photos there to stir him up or something, another  fatal mistake) he sent Melinda a private e-mail that was available as part of her profile page.

Mainly the message once again sent best wishes for her birthday, congratulated Melinda on her trip, telling her that he had been in California earlier that same month and that he still believed that their thing had been “written in the wind.” No response. A few days later he placed a public message on her profile page stating basically the same information. No response. The day after that he noticed that his comment had been deleted by her (which he or she could do the way the site was set up). A couple of days before this Sam had also placed a rather long remembrance of childhood July 4^th celebrations in the Atlantic section of North Adamsville on the Memories section of the class website. A day later Melinda posted an old photo of her and other North Adamsville classmates on a July 4^th float in the Norfolk section of North Adamsville’s celebration.

The posting of that ancient photo led Sam to write a public response to Melinda, a kind of coded love letter (based on another fatal mistake that he assumed she had placed the photo in response to his post, Jesus, didn’t he see this whole thing as a house of mirrors, the poor love-sick bastard). Here’d what he wrote (with some explanations by me where necessary although even I am not sure what he was trying to get at so don’t shoot the messenger):    

Support The Class-War Prisoners During The Holidays-Support The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- Help Build The Resistance

Support The Class-War Prisoners During The Holidays-Support The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- Help Build The Resistance 

By Josh Breslin 

My yearly comment on behalf of the Holiday Appeal

I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley) and more recently the courageous anti-fascist fighters who have been rounded up for protesting the alt-right, Nazi, KKK, white supremacist bastards.      

Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like the late Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, the Anti-fa anti-fascist street fighters to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Of course a couple of years ago  we lost Hugo Pinell, George Jackson’s comrade-in-arms from the San Quentin Six to a murderous vendetta. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.

Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. One year though, and it now bears repeating each year, after I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner the late Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven,  as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and the late wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. 

The class-war prisoners must not stand alone. 

                                                                                                

PDC    

Box 99 Canal Street Station                        

New York, N.Y. 10013

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