On The 50th Anniversary Of The Passing Of The
“King Of The Beats” -Ti Jean Kerouac-A Series Of Appreciations-
By Contributing Editor Allan Jackson
For
Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50th Anniversary Of His Death And The
“Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With
Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies"
By
Lance Lawrence
[In
the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases
covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admit that I knew Jack
Kerouac’s daughter, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever
cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out
in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. I also
knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days when we fired up more than one blunt
(marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the
stick) to see what we could see out in the National Mall and later Greenwich
Village night.
This
piece first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan
Ginsburg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of
confusion among the readers, a younger group according to the demographics
provided to me by the advertising department when I was trying to figure out
where the thing got lost in the fog. Some readers thought because I mentioned
the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in
pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred
to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat
went into high gear not a cat. Some readers, and I really was scratching my
head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for
aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that
because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that
sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan
Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no
question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in
his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the
days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality
England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the
hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming
every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t
personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.
There
were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James
Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but
those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of
society. Jack Weir because of some West Coast references. Jeffery Stein, the
poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope. All wrong. That poet had a name
an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the night at the oddness and
injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be
confused with this bag of bones rough crowd who refused to learn from the silly
bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in
his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him when he
went under the ground. Lance Lawrence]
***********
I
have seen the best poet of the generation before mine declare that he had seen
that the best minds of his generation had turned to mush, turned out in the
barren wilderness from which no one returned except for quick stays in safe
haven mental asylums. Saw the same Negro streets he saw around Blue Hill Avenue
and Dudley Street blank and wasted in the sweated fetid humid
Thunderbird-lushed night (and every hobo, vagrant, escapee, drifter and grafter
yelling out in unison ‘what is the word-Thunderbird-what is the price forty
twice” and ready to jackroll some senior citizen lady for the price-ready to
commit mayhem at Park Street subway stations for their “boy,” to be tamped by
girl but I will be discrete since the Feds might raid the place sometime
looking for the ghost of Trigger Burke who eluded them for a very long time.
Thought that those angel-headed hipsters, those hep cats hanging around Times,
Lafayette, Dupont, Harvard squares) crying in pools of blood coming out of the
wolves-stained sewers around the black corner would never stop bleating for
their liquor, stop until they got popular and headed for the sallow lights of
Harvard Square where they hustled young college students, young impressionable
college students whose parents had had their best minds wasted in the turbid
streets of south Long Island (not the West Egg of Gatsby’s dream of conquering
everything in sight like any other poor-boy arriviste with too much money and
not enough imagination and not East Egg of the fervid elites but anytown,
Levitttown of those who would escape to Boston or Wisconsin to face the angel
of death up front and say no go, pass, under luminous moons which light up
sparks and say to that candid world which could have given a fuck hard times
please come again no more.
Saw
hipsters cadging wine drinks from sullen co-eds staying out too late in the
Harvard Square night who turned out to be slumming from some plebian colleges
across the river maybe good Irish girls from frail Catholic parishes with
rosaries in their fair-skinned hands and a novena book between their knees who
nevertheless has Protestant lusts in their pallid hearts but unrequited (here’s
how-they would arrive at the Café Lana with ten bucks and their virginity and
leave with both and some guy with dreams of salty sucking blowjobs walking out
the backdoor and doing the whack job behind the dumpster –a waste of precious
fluids and according to Norman Mailer world-historic fucks which would product
the best minds of the next generation all dribbled away). Maybe tasty Jewish
girls from the shtetl in not East or West Egg who flocked to the other side of
the river and gave Irish guys who previously had dribbled their spunk behind
dumpsters after losing out to ten bucks and virginity in tack tickey-tack
Catholic girls who refused to give that head that would have brought some of
best mind some freaking relief (better not say fucking relief because that
would be oxymoronic). Maybe some sullen fair-skinned and blonded Protestant
girls who spouted something about one god and no trinities, no god and no
trinities and just feel good stuff. All three varieties and yes there were more
but who knew of Quakers, Mennonites, lusty Amish girls run away from home,
Tantic card-wheelers, and fresh- faced red light district sluts who at least
played the game straight-played the cash nexus for pure pleasure and maybe to
even up some scores. All-Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, yeah, Quakers (fakirs,
fakers and Shakers included), the sluts, Mennonites and yes those lusty
red-faced Amish runaways all coming together after midnight far from the negro
streets but not far from the all night hustlers and dime store hipsters with
their cigar store rings and cheap Irish whiskeys bought on the installment plan
who converged around the Hayes-Bickford just a seven league jump from the old
end of the line dead of night Redline subway stop in order to keep the angel of
death at arms’ length. There to listen until dawn to homosexuality affixed
hungry for the keyhole blast or the running sperm fakir poets and slamming
singsters fresh out of cheapjack coffeehouses where three chords and two- line
rhymes got you all the action you wanted although maybe a little light on the
breadbasket sent around to show that you were appreciated. Yeah, now that I
think about the matter more closely hard times please come again no
more.
Saw
the angel of death make her appearance one night at the Café Lana and then
backstopped the Club Nana to fetch one young thing who warbled like heaven’s
own angel. Hipster turned her on to a little sister and the some boy and she no
longer warbled but did sweet candy cane tricks for high-end businessmen with
homely wives or fruitless ones who had given up that sort of “thing” after the
third junior had been born and who were ready to make her his mistress if she
would just stop singing kumbaya after every fuck like she was still a freaking
warbler, a freaking virgin or something instead of “used” goods or maybe
schoolboys whose older brothers took them to her for their first fling at going
around the world, welcome to the brotherhood or maybe some old fart who just
wanted to relive his dreams before the booze, the three wives and parcel of
kids did him in and then the hustler sent her back to the Club Nana to “score”
from the club owner who was connected with Nick the dream doper man, the Christ
who would get him- and her well –on those mean angel-abandoned death watch
streets but who knew that one night at the Hayes (everybody called it just that
after they had been there one night, one after midnight night where they had
that first cup of weak-kneed coffee replenished to keep a place in the
scoreboarded night where hari-kara poets dreamed toke dreams and some Mister
dreamed of fresh-faced singer girls looking for kicks. So please, please, hard
times come again no more.
I
have seen frosted lemon trees jammed against the ferrous night, the night of
silly foolish childhood dreams and misunderstanding about the world, the world
that that poet spoke of in a teenage dream of indefinite duration about who was
to have who was to have not once those minds were de-melted and made
hip to the tragedies of life, the close call with the mental house
that awaits us all.
By
Lance Lawrence
Sometimes
you just cannot win. Sometimes you just let it pass and other times as now
anything less than incarceration or the bastinado will not permit me to say
some words on a subject that I care about. Attentive readers of Growing
Up Absurd In The 1950s or its sister publication where such material
is something like syndicated know that I, and most of the older writers here
and for that matter other publications who grew up in the 1950s have some
relationship to “the Beats” to Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg above but lesser
lights stationed in North Beach, San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York
City and other sullen outposts. Know that although we were way too young or too
interested in our generation’s salvation-rock and roll music-to be washed clean
by the Beats that by some process of osmosis we picked up some of the ideas,
words, be-bop, lust, homosexual slang, road terminology. Courtesy of Jack
Kerouac and the crowd whether he accepted the honorific “King of the Beats” or
like Bob Dylan dubbed by the mass media always looking for a hook “King of the
Folkies” for the next generation, the folkie-hippie counterculture
abdicated.
Personally,
and I have the scars and restless writerly nights to prove it, I was very
second-wave influenced by Kerouac and not only by his most famous book, bible
really when the time for such things was ripe, On The Road. Maybe
less that books like Big Sur which got me to Todo el Mundo
just south of Big Sur and some wild escapades and near fatal escapes toked to
the gills on weed or whatever came through the very open door. Influences which
have made it natural to recount some of those adventures in print of one sort
or another. Natural as well this 50th anniversary year since
Jack Kerouac’s death in 1969 to make a big deal out of that milestone. To write
some fresh material as below or to republish some older material. And not just
memories of Kerouac’s influence but what I called in one article the “assistant
king of the beats” Allan Ginsburg.
That
is where the sometimes you can’t win comes in and the have to “speak to the
issue” rears its head as well. Recently both to acknowledge the 50th anniversary
of Kerouac’s passing and to honor Allan Ginsburg’s as well I had an
article Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall originally published
in Poetry Today in 1997 republished in several publications
under the title For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50th Anniversary
Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A
Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies."
In a
new introduction to the piece I mentioned that in the interest of today’s
endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with
a few fake pieces of fluff admitted that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, his
now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and
which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo
south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. Those were the fast and
loose days when everybody wanted to be out somewhere around Big Sur and one day
I happened to be in The Lost Way restaurant (now still open under another name
serving wholesome food unlike the burgers and fries and beer that sustained us
then) and somebody mentioned that Jack’s daughter, unacknowledged daughter as I
said, Jan was sitting a few tables away having as I learned later from her had
just come from Pfeiffer Beach which played a role in a few of Jacks’
books. One thing led to another and we wound up taking Jan with us to our digs
(house) in Todo el Mundo several miles away.
That
simple fact has now led in 2019 to some fool, a fool with a name very familiar
in the age of the Internet of Anonymous, to assume without proof that Jan and
I, or Jan and somebody in the house were having an affair, and most probably
me. The only “proof” given, maybe asserted is better was that a guy by the name
of Johnny Spain told him that he had been there at our house when Jan came
tumbling and that we had a party for about four days when booze, sex, and drugs
flowed freely. I knew Johnny Spain back in those days so that part is real. He
was on the run from the coppers for either drug possession or for assault I
forget which since we had a few such characters some our way and as we were not
fond of the coppers then, maybe not now either we gave him shelter. Johnny
probably saw many things as he imbibed in whatever was around the place, but he
would not have seen me hanging with Jan. Simple reason: one Carol Riley forever
known as Butterfly Swirl in those times when many of us, including me the Duke
of Earl (yes from the 1950s hit single), were carrying monikers to reflect our
new-found freedoms was slumming from her perfect wave boyfriend existence down
in Carlsbad in the days before young women took to the surf themselves and had
come north to see what was happening. Butterfly was very possessive which I
didn’t mind but would have ditched me and/or has it out with Jan if we had been
having an affair. End of story, well, not quite the end Butterfly returned to
Carol and her perfect wave surfer before long after finding out “what was
what.”
This
is really where my real ire is hanging though. In that same introduction I
mentioned that I also knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days long before he
became a professor when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette
for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we
could see out in the D.C. National Mall and later Greenwich Village night. Like
I said that piece which formed the basis for republication first appeared
in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsburg’s Father
Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers. I
gave a few examples of what went awry in the responses. Some readers thought
because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally
recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference
actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and
1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. In any case there was no way
the staid and high Victorian sensibilities Eliot would know anything about the
bohemia of his day except maybe knowing some bonkers Bloomsbury cadre. One
would be totally remiss to call him the max daddy of anything as I did in my
homage.
Some
readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was
published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey
freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual”
and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in
the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden.
Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to
America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a
self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in
late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar
Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual
possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he
called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him
anymore once the Beats be-bopped.
There
were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James
Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but
those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of
society. The flight from downtrodden home life made worse by plodding square
parents whose dreams for their off-spring were life-deadening civil servant jobs
although admittedly a step up from the dregs down at the working poor base of
society. Jack Weir because of some West Coast references, the usual
suspects North Beach, Big Sur, Todo el Mundo (where Allan Ginsburg never went
or never went while I was there, Fillmore Street dreams and drugs, the
inevitable Golden Gate reference. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl
because of the dope and self-identification with the downtrodden and the caged
inmates at the mental hospitals which he frequented more times than he liked to
admit.
All
wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the
night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his
mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd
readership who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for
ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he
went under the knife and I for him, for Allan the sad day when he went under
the ground.
That
all was twenty some years ago and while those readers responses were stone-cold
crazy they at least had the virtue of ignorance since I did not mention the
name Allan Ginsburg in the title nor in the piece. Frankly I did not think I
had to do so. What, however, is to be made of readers in 2019 who I assume had
read my introduction and its named poet in bold print who still believe that I
am referring to some other poet, some of them pretty obscure and old school
which makes me think these readers were maybe college freshman survey course
takers. I won’t go through them all since unlike 1997 where one actually had to
write and mail with proper postage whatever was on their minds today they can
just flail away and done so many more responses showed up at my in-box.
Here
are today’s scratching my head entries. What Sam Lowell a fellow writer here
has seen it all in his forty plus years as a film critic calls trolls since
they are tied to alternate facts and more importantly whatever they have on
their minds, if that is what they have. Maybe they just don’t read
introductions or are among the dwindling few who still take umbrage that
someone would tout the virtuous of long-time known homosexual when everybody
else has moved on, has bought into a very sensible idea that it is nobody
else’s business who you love-and now wed. So a few of the rabid went along that
line but rather than grab onto Ginsburg have assumed that I was writing about
Walt Whitman, since I mentioned the grand civil war and the fate of boys and
men including a semi-erotic paean to Abe Lincoln. Of course they got that wrong
since Whitman’s ode to Lincoln Oh Captain, My Captain is one
of the few truly chaste and un-coded poems he wrote. But that is a classic
example of this troll contingent’s faking reality to suit some odd-ball
political agenda from we should all run like hell.
It
only got worse after Greg Green, site manager for the on-line publications here
who in the old hard copy days would have been called the editor, started
publishing some of the e-mails which only fueled the flames. Declared open
season on reason until on advice of wise Sam Lowell mentioned above who chairs
the Editorial Board that sits to clamp down on an editor’s more off-the-wall
decisions. To continue a vague off-hand reference to the various Eggs off Long
Island Sound got one F. Scott Fitzgerald the brass ring mainly so that Jay
Gatsby could be extolled as the upwardly mobile paragon of American virtue for
a new century (that is exactly what was said if you can believe that since in
the unlamented Jazz Age except for the jazz Jay got himself shot and dumped in
some coal bin.) A couple more to make my point since I suddenly realized that
to even present these holy goofs, an expression learned at the feet of one Jack
Kerouac who had I believe more talented types in mind, but the expression just
popped out at me. Yeats, Yeats of all poets drew some fan-dom based on talk of
Irish girls losing their virtues in sullen Cape Cod gin mills. How that goes
with muse Maude Gonne escapes me. Finally, and at least this person had some
literary sense he thought because I mentioned Time Square hipsters, drifters
and grifters waking up in sullen midnight sweats looking for some savior not
the Lord fixer man to get them well and ready to do an occasional soft-core
armed robbery or jack-roll (I was impressed with the sue of that term since
nobody uses that expression for a very old trick of taking a slender club or
maybe a roll of fisted quarters and bopping some drunk or old lady for their
ready cash I was speaking of one Gregory Corso the bandit-poet. Sorry I was
reaching for the big Howl and Kaddish master and beautiful lumpen dream Corso
was a secondary player back in those long-gone daddy days. Enough. Lance
Lawrence]
[Back in 2007 and then in 2017 when we commemorated the 50th and 60th anniversaries respectively of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s landmark travel book of a different kind On The Road which ignited a generation maybe two to “hit the road” I was the site manager, then called general editor, a throw-back from the times when American Left History was a hard copy publication. At those times I had been re-reading a series of Ti Jean’s books after senior writer Sam Lowell had pointed out to me that the previous years had been the 50th and 60th anniversaries respectively of fellow Jack “beat” brother Allan Ginsberg’s landmark poem (really screed) Howl which for a while took poetry into a different direction which we had neglected to commemorate (and which we did belatedly). Now Sam has again reminded that we have come to a certain commemoration date, the 50th anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac and we are again in need of evaluation, no, re-evaluating the place of his work, his place as “king of the beats” whether than title fits or not and his place in the sun.
Of course on those prior occasions I could assign whatever I
wanted to whomever I wanted since I was the person who was handing out the
assignments. Now after a prolonged internal fight in which I was deposed and
sent into “exile” I am back but solely as a contributing editor, not as the
person handing out assignments. That task is now in the capable hands of one
Greg Green whom I knew over at American Film Gazette many
years ago and had brought over a couple of years ago to run the day to day
operation here. Greg and I have had our ups and downs especially after I was in
desperate straits when I was sent into exile and had no current source of
income and had to depend “on the kindnesses of strangers.” But that is past and
since I was instrumental in the previous commemorations Greg decided that I
should as with a couple of other major projects that I have done since my
return oversee the Kerouac death watch this year.
Needless to say, since this dark cloud anniversary is upon us I
have to do a new introduction, a setting of the tone. One thing that I was not
able to do when I was overseeing the previous commemorations was to write about
something that has haunted me for a long time-how different Jack’s experiences
were from those of my parents, from any Acre neighborhood parents despite some
very strong similarities between the way he grew up and the way they did. In
short they were near contemporaries having all been born and raised in the 1920s
and forward. Nevertheless they could not have been more different in their
lifestyles and life dreams. It would take their son, and their son’s generation
to at least momentarily connect with the older man and what he brought to the
table. Maybe the link between “beat” and “hippie” was tenuous, but it was
there, and is there fifty years after his passing to the unsettled grave. That
will be the thread that runs through this new series. Adieu, Ti
Jean.
*************
Jack fifty tears, fifty years gone in some bastard grave in holy,
holy, holy Edson Merrimack River ground busted asunder by holy goofs looking
for timely relics, looking for that one word which would spring them into some
pantheon, some parity with the king (we will not even mention that other king
that animated our dreams for we now speak of parent, parent of class of ’68
dream. Funny non-Catholic ground Lowell given his deep sea dive to right his
ship around the beatitudes that the class of ’68 left in the shade if you
wished to know. Mere turning in her old Quebec come down to the textile mills
from desolate turn of the century farms which gave to the bloody English
overlords, another common sticking point against heathen English overrunning
the small patch farms with enclosures and encumbered debts devotion grave, with
the times out of sorts the young passing before ancient hatreds mother. Not a
stranger come the end on Hard Rock Mountain and no place but some stinking
trailer benny and that fucking crucifix that never helped anybody that far gone
into the haze.
Not strange for assuredly lapsed Catholic cum Buddha swings
devotee coming out of Desolation Mountain, Dharma bum frills and assorted other
spiritual trips, (won’t even think about that black boy, and he was just a boy,
who against some grandmother dreads blew the high white note out to the China
Seas, via, well, via Frisco Bay drove the writing, the what, the unvarnished
truth until it drove him into the ground. That and those endless
whiskeys and cheap Thunderbird wines when dimes were scarce a few times down on
his luck cadging wino bottles from buying for underaged kids, with his bottle
the kicker and what the hell if he didn’t go it, didn’t get his some sterno
junkie would dip into Salvation Army surplus and the thirst was great. Not
“his” thirst but “the” thirst and don’t mix the two up buddy as he told that
straggly bearded kid, some hippie bastard from Omaha clueless about the
decadent night which lie ahead, the compromises too.
Strangely bisected, fuck finally my real point (another luxury of
not having to be general editor with parsing and editing to make “nice” for the
academic journals which thrive, which throttle on Jack’s sputum and
can get down in the mud with the real critics like Artie Shaw and Bugs Malone
and not worry about half-ablaze in the head, half fire in the head Patti
Griffin called it once), through my own parents too who had no idea
of hip, no idea of “beat,” except maybe mother in beatitude but that is a
different story, a story about common roots high holy day Catholic stuff.
Another common point, emerged in veiled tears, speaking of tears, to rear their
ugly heads come feast days. (Wondering if her, their fairy sons would see the
light, would submit to the calling that every grandmother hoped without saying
leaving it to transient daughters to do their own parsing. Father no hipster
born to the hills and hollows which hallowed by memory played no part in big
boom beat-beat time coming out of World War II like houses on fire. No speedy
cross-country by 1947 Hudson (hell no car a public transportation might as well
say welfare crude bum and fuck that is all a guy like that deserved.) With big
ideas of shaking things up, making merry with the always with us squares and
other geometric forms. Jesus the worst part knowing that they knew not of
square or any other geometric dreams. Too bad, too bad when they chance came
around and the call went out looking for junkie hipsters, con men and queers
hanging around public toilets on Seventh Avenue in New York City.
No Dean Moriarty, hell call a thing by its right name, no Max
Fame, no Allan Ginsberg, no Kenneth Rexforth, no Hank James, or his brother
William speaking in tongues trying to figure what a guy named Freud meant when
he wanted to go where his mother lived, after killing cosmic fathers and
brothers, no Gregory Corso, no John three names somebody a throwback to ancient
Boston Brahmin bouts with legitimacy speaking of bastards, trace the genealogy
back to Mayfair swells days, nothing for the bastard who is bothering one Laura
Perkins who I have been sweet on for an eternity but who only has eyes for Sam
Lowell about her sexy takes on serious 19th century artist who
were as capable of going down into the mud, blowing some high white note out in
the Japan seas for a change. Above all no Neal Cassidy, no fake Dean Moriarty
to skirt the libel laws with wives and mistresses searching for vagrant unknown
fathers in some dusty coal bins but a poor old good old boy and maybe in
another time said Dean, Adonis Dean against Father Sheik, would have wandered
out in the cowboy West night looking for drunken fathers with hip-ness but that
was not the play, not at all. Father Sheik coming like a bat out of hell from
those hazardous coal bins looking to break the eternal hills and hollows
existence that plagued his fathers since the time the first clan were cast out
of England for stealing pigs or consorting with them in any case with not
unfamiliar family refrain of “leave, or the gallows,” such were the tempers of
the times.
And Father Sheik, hell, Adonis Dean too, with no way out except
that passport via some Nippon adventure over Pearl always Pearl nothing else
needed and he off to Pacific battles and raiments. Jack to the North Seas and
merchant marine bunks with odd-ball seasick sailors (and me wondering whether
having looked of late at YouTube should attribute my borrowed words but the
hell with it plenty of seasick sailors had nothing to do with YouTube or song
lyrics). And forsaken Dean too young to know the face of battles hung up in
reformatory secret vices which an earlier generation (and later ones too) would
“dare not speak their names” (Catamite, Sodomite, homosexual, pug ugly,
suck-head, your call.) How quaint.
Two years and two places do make a different no Bette Davis eyes
in the hills and hollows but Jack-induced Merrimack adventures of boys seeking
pleasures in riverside woods and hamming it up for all the world to see. If
only the old man could have written out his dreams, if he could have written
out anything. Jack to the library born to take his fill of whatever classics
that river textile town had to offer and whiskey you’re the devil which should
have given even a blinded son something to think about with dear Jack fifty
years dead and the old man still trembling in his teeth. My God.
But he never made, he the old man never made New York ever as far
as I could tell, knew none but obvious landmarks like tall Empire State
Building or Lady Liberty. Mother Jacked on some Cape Cod Canal cutaway small
steamer to the Big Apple (not Big Apple then but who knows) and Automats,
evoking Laura’s Edward Hopper sad-assed dreams of a guy who couldn’t even draw
smiling faces and hence the queen of 20th century angst and
alienation and five cent ferry rides to Staten Island. The Village, okay for me
to call it Village as I was a denizen once for Jack too might as well have been
on some planet’s moon for all she knew-him too, too rich for his blood but
Jack’s meat, no problem. Even if strangely Times Square hipsters, grifters,
drifters and Howard Johnson hot dog eaters were mixed into the new wave, then
new wave against Big Band Duke, Artie, Lionel jazz boys coming up with their
sullen lipped riffs to spring a new alienated be-bop on the square world. Jack
knew square, knew father square, knew mother, Mere, square in large letters of
unrequited love but shook it off long enough to cross the great desert America
giving Lady Liberty the boot, the un-shod sole, or maybe taking a cue from Jack
book lamming it out on Bear Mountain just for the hell of it. But this old
mother, not Mere mother, never knew, never had an idea of even in her big
Catholic, Irish Catholic dream of meeting the boy next door and finding steady
white-collar civil servant heaven. Jesus is that what she was about when the
deal went down and Jack split for Ohio with two bucks and six bologna
sandwiches stale well before Toledo believe me I
know.
Life took a different tact though she never found that clever
test-worthy boy next door (he was some greaser with a big hog of a bike which
would have inflamed Dean, would have gotten his wanting habits on and maybe a
run to the Coast). So she having had her fill of Coney Island dreams and
Automat five cent pies took a chance on the Sheik (strange on looking at Jack
photographs how sheik-like our boy was and father too like some lost tribe
members) found guarding the country’s defense not far from her home but he of
Pacific wars, many with manly Marines. Jack flopped the Navy but did dangerous
merchant marine runs out in the North Atlantic, out to the Murmansk seas (that
makes three China and Japan alongside) not honored even in Washington until
much later down in front of Arlington National bravos resting places. And a not
so funny twist of sagging fate brought her dish loads of kids and some
undefined alienation from which she was excluded, and he too by association.
They didn’t prosper far from it but they also didn’t have that run, no, those
runs, to the West looking for lost fathers, looking for the Adonis of the West
to shake up his love. Could two worlds be any more different and only about say
forty miles apart. That not a question but maybe a quiet condemnation for some
woe-begotten life of quiet desperation, her mantra for all the good it did her.
It would take a son, some son, some great girth of sons and
daughters to jailbreak, to Jack their ways out of that parent, remember their
parents’ contemporary, that snare set for those who didn’t get to Times Square,
didn’t get to the Village but stuck it out in Hoboken, Elko, Oceanside. It
would take some unsettled sense that all was not right with the world, that too
many kids were stuck with Modesto hot-rod dreams, Hell’s Angels angers,
Louisville thwarts, and many La Jolla searches for perfect waves to jumpstart
what Jack, and not just Jack but he is fifty tears, fifty years gone. Oh, what
might have been.
