To Be Young Was Very Heaven-With The 50th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967 In Mind-When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love

To Be Young Was Very Heaven-With The 50^th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967 In Mind-When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love

By Social Commentator Zack James 

[I was about a decade or so too young to have been washed, washed clean to hear guys like Peter Paul Markin, more on him below, tell the tale, by the huge counter-cultural explosion that burst upon the land (and by extension and a million youth culture ties internationally before the bubble burst) in the mid to late 1960s and maybe extending a few year into the 1970s depending on whose ebb tide event you adhere to. (Markin’s for very personal reasons having to do with participating in the events was May Day 1971 when the most radical forces tried to stop the Vietnam War by shutting down the government and got kicked in the teeth for their efforts. Doctor Gonzo, the late writer Hunter Thompson who was knee-deep in the experiences called it 1968 around the Democratic Party convention disaster in Chicago. I, reviewing the material mostly and on the very fringe of what was what back then would argue for 1969 between Altamont and the Days of Rage everything looked bleak after that.)

Over the next fifty years that explosion has been inspected, selected, dissected, inflected, infected and detected by every social science academic who had the stamina to hold up under the pressure and even by politicians, mostly to put the curse of “bad example” and “never again” on the outlier experimentation that went on in those days. Plenty has been written about the sea-change in mores among the young attributed to the breakdown of the Cold War red scare freeze, black civil rights struggles rights early in the decade and the huge anti-Vietnam War movement later. Part too always a factor maybe even just as reaction like in many generations coming of age, just the tweaking of the older generations inured to change by the Cold War red scare psychosis they bought into. The event being celebrated or at least reflected on in this series under the headline “To Be Very Young-With The Summer of Love 1967 In Mind” now turned fifty was by many accounts a pivotal point in that explosion especially among the kids from out in the hinterlands, away from elite colleges and anything goes urban centers.   The kids, who as later analysis would show, were caught up one way or another in the Vietnam War, were scheduled to fight the damn thing, the young men anyway, and were beginning, late beginning, to break hard from the well-established norms from whence they came.

This series came about because my oldest brother, Alex James, had in the spring of 2017 taken a trip to San Francisco on business and noticed on a passing bus that the famed deYoung Museum located in the heart of Golden Gate Park, a central location for the activities of the Summer of Love as it exploded on the scene in that town, was holding an exhibition about that whole experience. That jarred many a half forgotten memory in Alex’s head. Alex and his “corner boys” back in the day from the old Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville, a suburb of Boston where we all came of age, had gotten their immersion into counter-cultural activities by going to San Francisco in the wake of that summer of 1967 to “see what it was all about.”

When Alex got back from his business trip he gathered the few “corner boys” still standing, Frankie Riley, the acknowledged leader of the corner boys, Jimmy Jenkins, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber, Ralph Kelly, and Josh Breslin (not an actual North Adamsville corner boy but a corner boy nevertheless from Olde Sacco up in Maine whom the tribe “adopted” as one of their own) at Jimmy’s Grille in Riverdale, their still favorite drinking hole as they call it, to tell what he had seen in Frisco town and to reminisce. From that first “discussion” they decided to “commission” me as the writer for a small book of reflections by the group to be attached alongside a number of sketches I had done previously based on their experiences in the old neighborhood and in the world related to those times. So I interviewed the crew, wrote or rather compiled the notes used in the sketches below but believe this task was mostly of my doing the physical writing and getting the hell out of the way. This slender book is dedicated to the memory of the guy who got them all on the road west-Peter Paul Markin whom I don’t have to mention more about here for he, his still present “ghost” will be amply discussed below. Zack James]              

In the tribute book the reflections of the North Adamsville corner boys come first and my sketches related to the subjects they mentioned were attached after them. In this on-line series I have reversed the order and am putting my sketches, singly, first and the good stuff, their stuff, last.     

When Prince Love Loved In The 1967 Summer Of Love

“Jesus, I never thought I would get here and here I am in San Francisco all in one piece standing at the foot of Russian Hill where all the “hippies” were hanging out before they went over to Golden Gate Park and “blew” their minds,” Joshua Breslin (a.k.a. Prince Love or Prince, and hereafter so identified), late of Olde (very old to hear him tell it) Saco (Maine) High School Class of 1967, but just now of youth nation, youth nation descending on friendly, friend-sized, go West young man (and woman), go West, heaven said to his boon companion of three days, Benny Buzz (real name Lawrence Stein, Brooklyn High School of Science, Class of 1967), also currently of youth nation. It was Benny Buzz who, having the vast experience of having been in ‘Frisco for a week now, and having “been up the hill,” who guided Prince Love to the foot of Russian Hill in preparation for, well, for his first summer of love experience. No, not the eternal teen summer of love at some beach, camp or vacationland amusement park where boys ogle girls (and they back, maybe) but the long expected jail break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan-every-step world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles.

Yes, Prince Love, could write the book on hassles, hassles followed by man, or not. Just a few week before he, having just graduated from Olde Saco High, had a “job offer,” a job working as a janitor in Shepard’s Textile Mill, ya, the ones who make those “boss” sweaters the girls are all crazy for these days. Crazy for in winter anyway because right now warm suns, California, Denver, hell even Maine suns, require nothing more than some skimpy top, shoulders showing, and a pair of shorts, short shorts depending on the legs or vanity. His father, Prescott, a long time employee of the mills, the lifeblood of Olde Saco just then, “pulled a few wires” to get him the job for the summer before he went off to State U in the fall. Last year, last year when he was nothing but a raw hang-out in front of the Colonial Doughnut Shoppe on Main Street (officially U.S. Route 1) with his boys (and occasionally girls, but only for a few moments while they picked up their orders) he would have jumped with both feet, maybe with both hands and feet, at the job to get some money for college.

But that was then and this is now, as they say. Now, or rather the now just a few weeks or so before he got to the foot of Russian Hill, he had received word through that mysterious youth nation grapevine that parents, squares, cops, and authority guys were frantic to figure out, but who, in the end, were clueless about, of a “great awakening” that was going on in ‘Frisco and that news fed, fed deep, into the wells of the discontent he was feeling, about his own desire to break-out from the squares, from the cradle to grave plan-every-step world, and from the hassles, man, just the hassles mentioned before. The grapevine, by the way, was not all that mysterious. Some young, long-haired, wild-looking guy dressed in a blotted multi-colored shirt (later he found out such things were called tie-dyed) from the West Coast had come east to see his grandparents who lived on Olde Saco Beach a few miles down the road and had run into Prince Love at the doughnut shop when he was looking for some joe and cakes to tide him over before a walk on the beach and told him about what was happening on the West Coast. Simple as that, okay.

That information, those pressing on the brain existential jail-break things, and well, he had just broken up with his girl, his long-time high school honey, Julie Cobb, were what drove him to seek the road west. Simple as that. Well not so simple, really, because, if the truth be known, Julie left him for another guy, an older guy who was already working in the mills (not Shepard’s but Cullen’s, the high society linen-makers), had some dough, had a boss 1964 Mustang and, most importantly, wanted to get married, and pretty soon too. That was the sticking point between the Prince and Julia, the marriage game thing that had been going on in the town since, since, well Prince didn’t know but it was pretty common. Graduate Olde Saco, work in the mills, get a couple of bucks, get married, get a tiny house on Atlantic Avenue, maybe, have two point six children, throw in a dog or two cats, and then finish up whitewashing that picket fence in front of the house with the grandchildren. No sale, not for Prince Love. He was going to college, leave the dust of that old town behind, and make a name for himself at something before he settled down in not-Olde Saco, maybe, maybe on the settle down. And from what he heard on his way west, and since he had arrived in San Fran a lot of people were feeling, wondering, groping for some answers just like him. And, ya, looking to try some dope, listen to some far-out music, grab some cool chick to shack up with, and really leave that hometown dust behind before going back east for the fall semester of school.

Now you are filled in, a little, on the what and the why of Prince (and Benny Buzz who however is right then leaving Prince to go see a man, well, go see a man about something, let’s just leave it at that) being on Russian Hill, that classic San Francisco hill mentioned a while back. A hill not previously known to first time ‘Frisco Prince Love, although maybe to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland, the sea, out in the bay working it way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away.

I just remembered, you know everything, everything except how Prince Love got here which is not a big deal since he took some dough he had originally saved up for college and used it for the Greyhound bus fare to get him here. Not for him the hitchhike road through every back road. Not for him merry prankster buses driven by mad-monk zen masters in the heated western night.

Why? Well, come on now, not everybody got every piece of news, especially in Podunk Maine, about the ways west, VW bus west, stick-out-the-thumb west and that there were people, your kind of people, ready to pick you up and take you down the road a piece. Even backing up on super-highway interstates to pick up a fellow youth nation straggler left on some desolate stretch fair game for hungry police eyes. Besides, after about a two-day bout with his parents about not taking that summer job, using the dough for college for such foolishness (to quote his everywoman mother), and other assorted arguments, family arguments started back in childhood, he had promised them to take the bus west. Let’s just say hassles, man, hassles and be done with it. And now we are done with past.

Right then though, after saying a few things in parting to Benny Buzz about catching up with each other later, as he started walking up the hill toward the entrance to the mini-“people’s park” that was about half way up Russian Hill Prince spied a tall young man, maybe a few years older than him although such things were always hard to tell with older looking beards, drug haggards, and glazed looks. He was, at second glance, tall but not as tall as Prince, lanky, maybe not as lanky as him either and from the look of him his drug stews diet had taken some additional pounds off, and some desire for pounds as well, not really normally lanky. Dressed, always worthy of description in 1967 “Frisco, male or female, in full “hippie” regalia (faded olive drab World War II army jacket, half-faded blue jeans, bright red bandanna headband to keep his head from exploding, striped checkerboard flannel shirt against the cold bay winds, against the cold bay winds even in summer, and nighttime colds too, and now that we are on the West Coast, with roman sandals on his feet). And to draw the eye more fully to the scene he is sitting with two foxy-looking young women. One, the younger one, maybe a high school student, blonde, blue-eyed, slender, short shorts belying West Coast origin, and de rigueur practical road-worthy peasant blouse. A poster child for San Francisco summer of love if he ever saw one, and of his own feverish Maine night teenage desire summer or winter of love now that Julia was past. The other women, whom he found out later called herself Lupe Matin just then although the Prince found out that she had run through several monikers previously, a college student for sure , dark-haired, dark-eyed, slightly voluptuous, seemingly a little out of place, out of figuring place, with her current male companion completed the entourage. (Her real name, Susan Sharp, Vassar College, Class of 1966, and “trying to find herself.”)

Prince cast several glances at that regal company, nodded slightly, a knowing nod, eyes fixed, as was the fashion just then, and then turned around and asked to no one in particular but kind of zeroing in on the blonde (ya, he had a thing for blondes, see Julia was just that same kind of waspy blonde, minus the tan and year-round sunshine, that he fell for, fell for hard and fast), “Got some dope, for a hungry brother?” The male, who Prince would later come to know as Far-Out Phil (Phillip Larkin, North Adamsville, Massachusetts, Class of 1964), looked at him in a bemused manner (nice touch, right). Except for shorter hair, which only meant that this traveler had either not been on the road very long or had just recently caught the “finding himself” bug he could have, thought Far-Out to himself, been Phil’s brother, biological brother.

That line, that single Prince Love line, could have been echoed a thousand, maybe ten thousand times that day along a thousand hills (well maybe not that many in San Fran), aimed at any small clot of like-minded spirits. And Phil sensing that just that one sentence spoke of kindred said, “Sure, a little Columbia Red for the head, okay?” And so started the long, well hippie long, 1960s long anyway, relationship between one Phillip Larkin and one Joshua Breslin. And, maybe, including the women too.

And, of course, as well was that sense that Far-Out had that he and Prince Love were kindred was based on the way that the Prince posed that first question. His accent spoke, spoke hard of New England, not Boston but farther north. And once the pipe had been passed a couple of times and the heat of day started getting everybody a little talkative then Prince spilled out his story. Yes, he was from Olde Saco, Maine, born and bred, a working-class kid whose family had worked the town mills for a couple of generations, maybe more, but times were getting hard, real hard in those northern mill towns now that the mill-owners had got the big idea to head south and get some cheaper labor, real cheap. So Joshua, after he graduated from high school a few weeks before decided, on a whim (not really a whim though), to head west and check out prospects here on the coast for later use after college. Josh, now fully into his Prince Love self finished up his story by saying, “And here I am a few weeks later sitting on Russian Hill smoking righteous dope and sitting with some sweet ladies.”

The Prince was just being a little off-handedly flirtatious as was his style when around women, young or old (old being thirty, tops), aiming his ammunition in general but definitely honing in on the blonde, the blonde now identified for all eternity as Butterfly Swirl (real name, Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School, California, Class of 1968). (Phil, by the way, never ever said what his reaction to that last part of the Prince’s spiel, the flirtatious part, which seemed, the way it was spoken, spoken by Phil in the re-telling, filled with menace. Girl-taking menace. Well, old North Adamsville corner boy Phil would have felt that way but maybe in that hazed-out summer of love it just passed by like so much air.) Naturally Phil, a lordly road warrior now, "on the bus" now, whatever his possible misgivings, invited the Prince to stay with them, seeing as they were practically neighbors back home. Prince Love was “family” now, and Butterfly seemed gladder than the others of that fact.

And of course, family, meant home, and home for Far-Out, Butterfly Swirl, and Lupe Matin meant the now locally famous (West Coast local, okay) yellow brick road bus now known as Captain Crunch’s Crash Pad (after the owner of the bus, and “leader,” whatever that meant, of the expedition). Prince Love, from the first night, not only felt that he had found a home, a home that he never felt he had in Olde Saco but that whatever happened out here he would survive. And as more dope-filled pipes were passed that night, and as the music played louder into the sea-mist bay night, and lights gleamed from all directions the Prince grew stronger in that conviction. Especially when Far Out Phil, acting out of some old testament patriarchal script, came sauntering over to the Prince around midnight and whispered in his ear, “Butterfly Swirl wants to be with you, okay?” And that night the Prince and Butterfly Swirl were “married.”

Archives-To Be Young Was Very Heaven-With The 50th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967 In Mind-Part 2

To Be Young Was Very Heaven-With The 50^th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967 In Mind-Part 2

By Social Commentator Zack James 

[I was about a decade or so too young to have been washed, washed clean to hear guys like Peter Paul Markin, more on him below, tell the tale, by the huge counter-cultural explosion that burst upon the land (and by extension and a million youth culture ties internationally before the bubble burst) in the mid to late 1960s and maybe extending a few year into the 1970s depending on whose ebb tide event you adhere to. (Markin’s for very personal reasons having to do with participating in the events was May Day 1971 when the most radical forces tried to stop the Vietnam War by shutting down the government and got kicked in the teeth for their efforts. Doctor Gonzo, the late writer Hunter Thompson who was knee-deep in the experiences called it 1968 around the Democratic Party convention disaster in Chicago. I, reviewing the material mostly and on the very fringe of what was what back then would argue for 1969 between Altamont and the Days of Rage everything looked bleak after that.)

Over the next fifty years that explosion has been inspected, selected, dissected, inflected, infected and detected by every social science academic who had the stamina to hold up under the pressure and even by politicians, mostly to put the curse of “bad example” and “never again” on the outlier experimentation that went on in those days. Plenty has been written about the sea-change in mores among the young attributed to the breakdown of the Cold War red scare freeze, black civil rights struggles rights early in the decade and the huge anti-Vietnam War movement later. Part too always a factor maybe even just as reaction like in many generations coming of age, just the tweaking of the older generations inured to change by the Cold War red scare psychosis they bought into. The event being celebrated or at least reflected on in this series under the headline “To Be Very Young-With The Summer of Love 1967 In Mind” now turned fifty was by many accounts a pivotal point in that explosion especially among the kids from out in the hinterlands, away from elite colleges and anything goes urban centers.   The kids, who as later analysis would show, were caught up one way or another in the Vietnam War, were scheduled to fight the damn thing, the young men anyway, and were beginning, late beginning, to break hard from the well-established norms from whence they came.

This series came about because my oldest brother, Alex James, had in the spring of 2017 taken a trip to San Francisco on business and noticed on a passing bus that the famed deYoung Museum located in the heart of Golden Gate Park, a central location for the activities of the Summer of Love as it exploded on the scene in that town, was holding an exhibition about that whole experience. That jarred many a half forgotten memory in Alex’s head. Alex and his “corner boys” back in the day from the old Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville, a suburb of Boston where we all came of age, had gotten their immersion into counter-cultural activities by going to San Francisco in the wake of that summer of 1967 to “see what it was all about.”

When Alex got back from his business trip he gathered the few “corner boys” still standing, Frankie Riley, the acknowledged leader of the corner boys, Jimmy Jenkins, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber, Ralph Kelly, and Josh Breslin (not an actual North Adamsville corner boy but a corner boy nevertheless from Olde Sacco up in Maine whom the tribe “adopted” as one of their own) at Jimmy’s Grille in Riverdale, their still favorite drinking hole as they call it, to tell what he had seen in Frisco town and to reminisce. From that first “discussion” they decided to “commission” me as the writer for a small book of reflections by the group to be attached alongside a number of sketches I had done previously based on their experiences in the old neighborhood and in the world related to those times. So I interviewed the crew, wrote or rather compiled the notes used in the sketches below but believe this task was mostly of my doing the physical writing and getting the hell out of the way. This slender book is dedicated to the memory of the guy who got them all on the road west-Peter Paul Markin whom I don’t have to mention more about here for he, his still present “ghost” will be amply discussed below. Zack James]              

In the tribute book the reflections of the North Adamsville corner boys come first and my sketches related to the subjects they mentioned were attached after them. In this on-line series I have reversed the order and am putting my sketches, singly, first and the good stuff, their stuff, last.     

Out In The Be-Bop, Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Great San Francisco 1967 Summer Of Love Explosion

Phil Larkin, just then road-weary “Far-Out” Phil Larkin, for those who want to trace his evolution from North Adamsville early 1960s be-bop night “Foul-Mouth” Phil, the vocal terror of every mother’s daughter from six to sixty to full-fledged merry prankster, sat on a June such-and-such a 1967 be-bop night a nameless San Francisco. [Markin: And, occasionally, secret delight of some girls, secret delight of one Minnie Callahan, damns him, for just one example of such girl classmates with his foul mouth back in that North Adamsville night.] Along side him sat new conquest, not conquered with his old time wicked corner boy devil-inspired charm but with mere patter (and dope), new flame Butterfly Swirl met on a La Jolla beach a month or so back, not entirely by accident. And next to her his old flame, old in that quickly met moment, this merry prankster bus flame met in Ames, Iowa last year, accidentally except to those cosmically inclined, and Phil was not one of them not one bit, Luscious Lois. Lois, however, now transformed into Lilly Rose, transformed at the flip of a switch, as was her way when some whim, or some word in the air, hit her dead center. Along the road west, again by whimsy she had been variously, Lupe Matin, Loretta Nova, Lance (figure that one) Opal, and so on. (Phil just got to calling her honey, or sweet pea, and left it at that)

[Markin: Sometime, but not now, remind me to give you my take on this name-changing epidemic. Not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. Hell, I got caught up in it myself, and was, for a time, Blackie Saint James. Yes, remind me.]

Yes, it had been one long roller coaster year for Foul-Mouth. [Markin: Alright, let’s split the difference since I knew him way back when in that weird early 1960s corner boy night when he didn’t know from nothing about which way the winds were blowin’, could have cared less which way they were blowin’, or if they were, and made fun of me, as did Frankie Riley, and a couple of others, although not Sammy Russo, when I said some big changes were coming that would throw off our school, work, green lawn little white house with picket fence, two point four children, mongrel dog futures, and call him Phil from here on in. Foul-mouthed or far out he was some hell-bound character then.) From the bowels of despair rank and file no serious future retail clerk hustling mens’ apparel up at Raymond’s Department Store in slowing dying (dying from suburban mall-itis, then all the rage) Adamsville Center, harassed beyond endurance at home for lacking some unfathomable ambition from dear mother, with an occasional assist from dad (that ambition entailing pursuing some low-rent, GS-10, government job with security unto the grave, egad), and a late sniffing of that wind that this fellow corner boy had predicted was coming although he, this corner boy, was vague on the contours of that change Phil broke out one night.

Literally late one night, one May 1966 night. Around two in the morning, with his earthy belongings on his back in a old time World War II army knapsack picked up at Bill’s Army &Navy Store Phil lit out like Walt Whitman way back when, 19th century when, to places unknown and Jack Kerouac and his gang just a few years, late 1940s when, before for the coast, although if you had mentioned those names to him then he would have stared blankly back at you. Maybe now too. But here, let’s let Phil tell the story for a while about how he got to ‘Frisco and then we’ll see what is up with him and his “family” (okay, okay, Butterfly Swirl and Lilly Rose, if that is her name by the time we back) on that nameless 1967 San Francisco hill:

“Hey, I am no slave to convention, whatever the conventions are, but in those days I looked like a lot of young guys. Longish hair, a beard, a light beard at the time, blue jeans, an army jacket, sunglasses, a knapsack over my shoulder, and work boots on my feet. Sandals would not come until later when I got off the road and was settled in a “pad” [Markin: house, rented or maybe abandoned, apartment, hovel, back of a “free” church, back of a store, whatever, a place to rest those weary bones, or “crash”] in La Jolla and were, in any case, not the kind of footwear that would carry you through on those back road places you might find yourself in, places like Deadwood, Nevada at three in the morning with a ten mile walk to the nearest town in front of you. I mention all this because that “look” gave me the cache to make it on the road when I headed out of the house that Spring 1966 be-bop night after one final argument with dear mother about where I was going, what was I going to do when I got there, and what was I going to do for money. Standard mother fare then, and now I suppose.

So short on dough, and long on nerve and fearlessness then, I started to hitchhike with the idea of heading west to California like about eight million people, for about that same number of reasons, have been heading there since the Spanish, or one of those old time traveling by boat nations, heard about the place. Of course, nowadays I would not think to do such a thing in such a dangerous world, unless I was armed to the teeth and that would take a little edge off that “seeking the newer world” Markin has been blabbing about since about 1960. But then, no problem, let’s get going. Especially no problem when just a few miles into my journey a Volkswagen mini-bus (or van, neither in the same league as the yellow brick road school bus, no way, that I will tell you about later but okay for a long ride, and definitely okay when you are in some nowhere, nowhere Nebraska maybe, back road, hostile territory dominate by squares, squares with guns and other evil implements and they, the VW-ites, stoned, stoned to the heavens stop to ask you directions because they are “lost” and invite you on board) stopped on Route 128, backed up, and a guy who looked a lot like me, along with two pretty young girls said, “where are you heading?” (Okay, okay, Markin, young women, alright.) West, just west. And then the beatified words, “Hop in.”

Most of the road until the Midwest, Iowa is the Midwest, right, was filled with short little adventures like that. A mini-bus frolic for a few hours, or a few days. Maybe a few short twenty miles non-descript square Chevy rides in between but heading west by hook or by crook. Did I like it? Sure I did although I was pretty much an up-tight working class guy (that was what one of those pretty girls I just mentioned called me when I “passed” on smoking a joint and, hell, she was from next door Clintondale for chrissakes) who liked his booze, a little sex [Markin: Phil, come on now, a little?], and just hanging around the old town waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I could see, after a few drug experiences, no, not LSD, that I was starting to dig the scene. And I felt every day that I was out of North Adamsville that I was finally shaking off the layers of dust that I had acquired from that place.

Then one night, sitting in the front seat of a big old Pontiac (not everybody, not every “hip” everybody had the mini-bus, van, or school bus handy for their “search” for the great American night), Big Bang Jane between us, the Flip-Flop Kid driving like god’s own mad driver, smoking a joint, laughing with the couple in back, Bopper Billy and Sweet Pea, we headed into a pay-as-you go roadside camp near Ames out in Iowa. And at that campsite parked maybe five or six places over from where we planted ourselves was god’s own copy of that day-glo merry prankster bus I mentioned before. I flipped out because while I had hear about, and seen from a distance, such contraptions I hadn’t been up close to one before. Wow!

Markin had it just about right when he described that old bus after I told him about it so let me crib what he said:

“A rickety, ticky-tack, bounce over every bump in the road to high heaven, gear-shrieking school bus. But not just any yellow brick road school bus that you rode to various educationally good for you locations like movie houses, half yawn, science museums, yawn, art museums, yawn, yawn, or wind-swept picnic areas for some fool weenie roast, two yawns there too, when you were a school kid. And certainly not your hour to get home daily grind school bus, complete with surly driver (male or female, although truth to tell the females were worst since they acted just like your mother, and maybe were acting on orders from her) that got you through K-12 in one piece, and you even got to not notice the bounces to high heaven over every bump of burp in the road. No, my friends, my comrades, my brethren this is god’s own bus commandeered to navigate the highways and by-ways of the 1960s, come flame or flash-out. Yes, it is rickety, and all those other descriptive words mentioned above in regard to school day buses. That is the nature of such ill-meant mechanical contraptions after all. But this one is custom-ordered, no, maybe that is the wrong way to put it, this is “karma”-ordered to take a motley crew of free-spirits on the roads to seek a “newer world,” to seek the meaning of what one persistent blogger on the subject has described as the search for the great blue-pink American Western night.”

“Naturally to keep its first purpose intact this heaven-bound vehicle is left with its mustard yellow body surface underneath but over that primer the surface has been transformed by generations (generations here signifying not twenty-year cycles but trips west, and east) of, well, folk art, said folk art being heavily weighted toward graffiti, toward psychedelic day-glo splashes and zodiacally meaningful symbols. And the interior. Most of those hardback seats that captured every bounce of childhood have been ripped out and discarded who knows where and replaced by mattresses, many layers of mattresses for this bus is not merely for travel but for home. To complete the “homey” effect there are stored, helter-skelter, in the back coolers, assorted pots and pans, mismatched dishware and nobody’s idea of the family heirloom china, boxes of dried foods and condiments, duffle bags full of clothes, clean and unclean, blankets, sheets, and pillows, again clean and unclean. Let’s put it this way, if someone wants to make a family hell-broth stew or a made-up bed there is nothing in the way to stop them. But also know this, and know it now, as we start to focus on this journey that food, the preparation of food, and the desire, except in the wee hours when the body craves something inside, is a very distant concern for these “campers.” If food was what you desired in the foreboding 1960s be-bop traveling night you took a cruise ship to nowhere or a train (if you could find one), some southern pacific, great northern, union pacific, and worked out your dilemma in the dining car. Of course, no heaven-send, merry prankster-ish yellow brick road school bus would be complete without a high- grade stereo system to blast the now obligatory “acid rock” coming through the radiator practically.”

After we settled in at our campsite, the Flip-Flop Kid (and the guy really could never make up his mind about anything, anything except don’t go too close to Big Bang Jane, no kidding around on that), Bopper Billy (who really thought he was king of the be-bop night, but, hell in the North Adamsville corner boy night Frankie Riley, hell, maybe even Markin, would have out be-bopped him for lunch and had time for a nap), Big Bang Jane (guess what that referred to, and she gave herself that nickname, but I never tried to make a move on her because she was just a little too wild, a little too I would have to keeping looking over my shoulder for me then, probably later too when things got even looser. And then there was the Flip-Flop Kid’s warning ), and Sweet Pea (and she was a sweet pea, if Bopper Billy, wasn’t around, well we both agreed there was something there but in those 1966 days we were still half tied up with the old conventions of not breaking in between a guy and his girl, well that was the convention anyway and whether it was generally honored or not, I did honor it) we headed over once we heard the vibes from the sound system churning out some weird sounds, something like we had never heard before. (Weird then, little did we know that this was the wave of the future, for a few years anyway).

Naturally, well naturally after the fact, once we learned what the inhabitants of the bus were about, they invited us for supper, or really to have some stew from a big old pot cooking on a fireplace that came with the place. And if you didn’t want the hell-broth stew then you could partake of some rarefied dope. No, again, no on the LSD thing. It was around, it was around on the bus too, among its various denizens, but mainly it was a rumor, and more of a West Coast thing. In the self-proclaimed, tribal self-proclaimed Summer of Love and after that is when the acid hit, and when I tried it, but not on this trip. This trip was strictly weed, hemp, joint, mary jane, marijuana, herb, whatever you wanted to called that stuff that got you high, got you out of yourself, and got you away from what you were in North Adamsville, Mechanicsville or whatever ville you were from, for a while.

So that night was the introduction to the large economy size search for the freedom we all, as it turned out, were looking for. I remember saying to Sweet Pea as we went back to our campsite (and wishing I wasn’t so square about messing with another guy’s girl, and maybe she was too, maybe wishing I wasn’t so square about it) that we had turned a corner that night and that we had best play it out right then for the chance might not come again.

The next day, no, the next night because I had spent the day working up to it, I became “Far-Out” Phil, or the start of that Phil. Frankly, to not bore you with a pipe by pipe description of the quantity of dope that I smoked (herb, hashish, a little cocaine, more exotic and hard to get then than it became later) or ingested (a tab of mescaline) that day, I was “wasted.” Hell I am getting “high” now just thinking about how high I was that day. By nightfall I was ready for almost anything as that weird music that crept up your spine got hold of me. I just, as somebody put a match to the wood to start the cooking of a tonight pot of stew to keep us from malnutrition, started dancing by myself. Phil Larkin, formerly foul-mouthed Phil, a cagey, edgy guy from deep in corner boy, wise guy, hang-out guy, never ask a girl to dance but just kind of mosey up world started dancing by myself. But not for long because then he, me, took that dance to some other level, some level that I can only explain by example. Have you ever seen Oliver Stone’s film, The Doors, the one that traces the max-daddy rocker of the late 1960s night, Jim Morrison’s career from garage band leader to guru? One of the scenes at one of the outdoor concerts, in a canyon somewhere I think, had him, head full of dope, practically transformed into a shaman. Ya, one of those Indian (Markin: Native American, Phil] religious leaders who did a trance-dance. That was me in late May of 1966, if you can believe that.

And see, although I wasn’t conscious of it first I was being joined by one of the women on the bus, Luscious Lois, whom I had met, in passing, the night before. This Lois, not her real name, as you can tell not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. [Markin: Nice point, Phil, although I already ‘stole’ that point from you before.] Her real name was Sandra Sharp, a college girl from Vassar who, taking some time off from school, was “on the bus” trying to find herself. She was like some delicate flower, a dahlia maybe, like I had never encountered before. I won’t bore you with the forever have to tell what she looked like thing because that is not what made her, well, intriguing, maddeningly intriguing, like some femme fatale in a crime noir film that Markin, from what I can gather, is always running on about. She was pretty, no question, maybe even a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty if it came to a fair description in the light of day but what made her fetching, enchanting, if that is a different way to say it, was the changes in her facial expressions as she danced, and danced provocatively, dance half-nakedly, around my desire. And I danced, shedding my shirt although I do not remember doing so, and danced half-naked around her desire. Then, faintly like a buzz from some hovering insects, maybe bees, and then more loudly I kept hearing the on-lookers, half-mad with dope and with desire themselves, yelling far out, far out. And Far-Out Phil was born.

Oh, as for Luscious Lois and her desire, well, you figure it out. I might not have been wise to the ways of the Vassar world in those days when such places were bastions to place the young women of the elite and keep them away from clawing upstarts from the corner boy night as I should have been but the rest of my time on the bus was spend hovering around Lois, and keeping other guys away. I even worked some plebeian “magic” on her one night when I started using certain swear words in her ear that worked for me with every Sunday after Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Millie Callahan, back in the day. Far-Out Phil got a little something extra that night, proper Vassar girl or not.

No offense against Iowa, well only a little offense for not being near an ocean, I think. No offense against the university there, well only a little offense for not being Berkeley, but after about a week of that campsite and its environs I was ready to move on and it did not matter if it was with Flip-Flop and his crowd or with Captain Crunch (the guy who “led” his merry pranksters, real name, Samuel Jackman, Columbia, Class of 1958 who long ago gave up searching, searching for anything, and just hooked into the idea of taking the ride). Captain Crunch, as befitted his dignity (and since it was “his” bus paid for out of some murky deal, probably a youthful drug deal, from what I heard), was merely the “leader” here.

The driving was left to another guy. This driver was not your mother-sent, mother-agent, old Mrs. Henderson, who prattled on about keep in your seats and be quiet while she was driving (maybe that, subconsciously, is why the seats were ripped out long ago on the very first “voyage” west) but a very, very close imitation of the god-like prince-driver of the road, the "on the road” pioneer, Neal Cassady, shifting those gears very gently but also very sure-handedly so no one noticed those bumps (or else was so stoned, drug or music-stoned, that those things passed like so much wind). His name: Cruising Casey (real name, Charles Kendall, Haverford College Class of ’64, but just this minute, Cruising Casey, mad man searching for the great American be-bop night under the extreme influence of one Ken Kesey, the max-daddy mad man of the great search just then). And Cruising was, being just a little older, and about one hundred years more experienced, was also weary, very weary of co-eds, copping dope and, frankly, staying in one place for so long. He also wanted to see his girlfriend or his wife, I am not sure which, in Denver so I knew that was where we were heading. So off we go, let’s get going.

And the passengers. Nobody from the Flip-Flop Express (although Flip-Flop, as usual lived up to his name and hemmed and hawed about it), they were heading back east, back into the dark Mechanicsville night. I tried, tried like hell, to get Sweet Pea to come along just in case the thing with Lois fell apart or she took some other whim into her head. See, re-invented or not, I still had some all-the-angles boyhood rust hanging on me. We knew for sure that Casey was driving, and was still driving effortlessly so the harsh realities of his massive drug intake had not hit yet, or maybe he really was superman. Others whose names I remember: Mustang Sally (Susan Stein, Michigan, Class of 1959, ditto on the searching thing), Captain Crunch’s girl friend, (although not exclusively, not exclusively by her choice, not his, and he was not happy about it for lots of reasons which need not detain us here). Most of the rest of the “passengers” had monikers like Silver City Slim, Penny Pot (guess why), Moon Man, Flash Gordon (from out in space somewhere, literally, as he told it), Denver Dennis (from New York City, go figure), and the like. They also had real names that indicated that they were from somewhere that had nothing to do with public housing projects, ghettos or barrios. They were also, or almost all were, twenty-somethings that had some highly-rated college years after their names, graduated or not. And they were all either searching or, like the Captain, were at a stage where they were just hooked into taking the ride.

As for the rest. Well, no one could be exactly sure, by the time the bus approached the outskirts of Denver, as this was strictly a revolving cast of characters depending on who was hitchhiking on that desolate back road State Route 5 in Iowa, or County Road 16 in Wyoming, and desperately needed to be picked up, or face time, and not nice time with a buzz on, in some small town pokey. Or it might depend on who decided to pull up stakes at some outback campsite and get on the bus for a spell, and decide if they were, or were not, on the bus. After all even all-day highs, all-night sex, and 24/7 just hanging around listening to the music is not for everyone. And while we had plenty of adventures on those strange day roads winding up the crest of the rockies to Denver, thinking back on it now, they all came down to drugs, sex, and rock and roll, with a little food on the side.

Well, except that one time, camping on a primitive clearing, not really a campsite, not a commercial site, no way, near ranch land in some Wyoming Podunk we got the hell scared out of us by some ranchers, some nasty-looking cowboys. Three or four but that was all it took, if you to want to know the truth, who moseyed (and that is exactly the right word because this was THEIR god’s country and moseying was just exactly the way you moved when that hard fact was involved. No city scratching and scrambling to claim your little corner, not for these boys). We could see they were armed, armed to the teeth, not on the off-hand chance they would run into some merry prankster dangers, but carrying that full array of armament was just their normal work conditions, god’s country or not.

This is one time that Captain Crunch really showed his mettle, and acted as an upfront leader. Most of the time he was in a running battle with Mustang Sally over who she was, or was not, sleeping with or he was just controlling the action of the bus indirectly. One maneuver was to always, always, slip off to Cruising any questions about where we were headed or could we stop here or there to see some long lost friend, some scenic view, or any one of a thousand things that come up on a prankster trip, or as I found out later even a square’s kiddies–laden family trip. Straight up Captain, who was not skinny guy and was probably pretty well built before he started his prankster gig although there was some sag now, yelled at the top of his lungs, “You, boys hungry?, We’ve got plenty of stew if you are.” Well, for always lean times, eating from the hip cowboys the idea of having plenty to eat right there in front of you must have been appealing. But the lead cowboy, Joe Bob Buck, was his name, I swear, said in that slow drawl Sam Shepard way, “Nope, but we heard that you guys had some decent dope. Is that straight?” Well, of course that was straight. And in a flash a big pipe of the Captain’s finest was heading Joe Bob’s way. Hey, I guess this was a dope story after all so, ya, I guess it did all come down to just drugs, sex, and rock and roll. But if you want to know what the sixties were about a little if you just think about a clan of hippies sharing a pipe of high-grade Panama with some lonesome cowboys out in Podunk Wyoming and thought nothing of it then you have got the idea.

Oh, sure, we also had our share of “casualties” of war and basket-cases on that trip. It wasn’t all cowboy peace and rockies vistas. I remember, more than once, we had to leave people behind in various emergency rooms suffering from anything from a “bad trip” to normal medical problems or make that call home that spelled the end of the road for some half-dazed kid. Come pick up the wreckage, mom and dad. The worst was some poor bedraggled girl, who probably should not have been allowed to stay because she was a little wacky coming in, who we picked up near some rural bus stop. Captain had a big heart on this “on the bus” question, and unless you proved to be some kind of thief, or something like that you stayed if you wanted to. Anyway this young woman, hardly more than a girl, just started screaming one day, no drugs involved that we knew of , just started creaming and even Captain and Sally couldn’t stop her. We left her in Cheyenne but like a lot of things from that transient time I never did find out what happened to her. Just like some people can’t live in the high altitudes not everybody could survive on the bus. Living out on edge city, and no question we all were, maybe not 24/7 but enough to know that city was our home, is a high wire act and not for the faint of heart.

We, the core of Captain Crunch’s crew anyway, stayed in Denver for a while, for as long as it took Cruising to have his "fill" (his word) of his wife, or girlfriend, or maybe both and was ready to hit the road again. As fall approached the time was the time and we started heading west again, well southwest because Cruising did not want to get catch up in some rockies October whiteout and the rest of us wanted to get the warmth of some desert sun under our skins. Most of us, including me who had never been west of New York City and then just for a moment, had never seen the desert although we all, children of the television 1950s, had ‘seen’ it on the screen in the Westerns. So we were all pumped for desert stones, desert “stones,” and seeking the ghost of the lost tribes, the lost tribes whose shamanic powers has us in thrall. I, personally, was looking forward to investigating some ghost-dancing that I had heard about in Denver and which, as I became more drug-steady, I was dying to “see” a vision of off some wayward canyon wall before some blazing fire evoking dream-trance images.

And so Cruising did his merry prankster bus magic (he really was some zen master with that damn bus, especially for a college guy, and especially when we hit some tough spots where the damn thing would give out and he would “breathe” live back into the thing, like, well, like some zen master). A one time example will suffice. We were heading to Gallup, New Mexico in the heart of Indian country [Markin; Native American, Phil], maybe fifty miles away and not really close to anything like a full-service gas station, when the clutch seized, just seized. Nada, nunca, nada, nothing as we used to say in our corner boy days. Cruising gets out, opens the hood, fools around with this and that and maybe forty-five minutes later we are on the road again. And whatever he did, whatever zen thing he had with that fickle bus, lasted all the way until we hit La Jolla and he had the whole thing worked on. Magic. Captain Crunch mapped out our itinerary and the rest of us got the bus travel-ready, travel-ready being a good cleaning, a re-ordering of the mattresses, and a checking out (and chucking off) of what was necessary and what was not for the trip westward, westward down to New Mexico first.

The desert was all that it was cracked up to be except, being the fall it wasn’t as hot as Cruising said it was when he went through various times in the early or late summer (mid-summer, as I later found out, forget about even in the cooler high desert, low desert, Death Valley desert, forget about you, abandon all ye who enter), the Grand Canyon magnificent, if overused even then, and after that the high desert in California. By then I was getting homesick, no, not homesick for North Adamsville (that would not come until many, many years later), but for my homeland, the sea. I hadn’t been away from an ocean breeze for that long ever and so I missed it. And out in that high desert, high Joshua Tree, Twenty-Nine Palms desert I started to “smell” the ocean. I now had some “rank” on the bus, some say in what we did, or didn’t do, and the Captain liked me, or liked the idea that a working-class kid with some brains and some thoughts (mostly stuff “cribbed” from what Markin use to talk about in those sometimes long, seemingly boring Salducci’s Pizza parlor corner boy nights but it went over, if you can believe that) was traveling along side him. So when I started my “campaign” to head to the ocean, and gained some allies, especially Lois, just then, going under the name Lupe Matin, I think, and Mustang Sally and, most importantly, Cruising didn’t raise an objection I was home free. Come on, let’s get moving.

We wound up in La Jolla, after a few weeks of stopping here and there to see people the Captain (or Sally) wanted to see in Los Angeles ( I never called it LA or La-La Land then just Los Angeles, city of angels) and down in Laguna. Needless to say the Pacific Ocean around La Jolla, and places like that, made our East Coast puddles look sick. La Jolla- English translation, surfers’ paradise, says it all. But the two most important things about La Jolla were that, after months of bus life, we finally were settled in a “pad.” [Markin: house, in this case, or rather something like an ocean view semi-estate owned by some wealthy drug lord known to the Captain, according to the way Phil told it.] Real toilets, real showers, real fireplaces, real everything. Nice, very nice for a poor old working- class boy who a few months earlier was scratching for change to give dear mother some rent for his two by four room. This was to be our winter quarters (and as it turned out spring one as well) and all we had to do was act as caretakers, not real caretakers, like servants, but just make sure nobody stole the family silverware, stole the place, or decided to “squat” there.

This was also where important thing number two came in. Walking along the rock-strewn cove in front of downtown La Jolla, is where I met Butterfly Swirl, my blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel who was just sixteen at the time, a high school student from up in Carlsbad. She was down in La Jolla trying to “find” herself while tagging along with her boyfriend, some eternally blonde, blue-eyed surfer guy from Del Mar, christ. Just then said surfer boy was out looking for the perfect wave, or something, and so I invited Butterfly Swirl (real name, Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968) over to La Grande (the name of the estate, hell, they all had names like that) to smoke a little dope. She brightened at that.

Well, of course, I could see where this was heading, if it was heading anywhere what with my one girl-one guy rule (although I admit, admit now not then, now that I think the statute of limitations is probably over on lying to 1967 girlfriends, I went astray a couple of times in Denver and Joshua Tree but those weren’t really girlfriend-worthy trysts). I brought her home, anyway. We had some dope, and had some sex. Simple. And just when I thought I had her safely out the door (literally and figuratively) Lupe stepped into the room. Instead of exploding though, after checking out Butterfly with a bemused look, she said, “Is she staying?” And before I could get word one out Butterfly chirped out, “Yes.” And Lupe said, “Good” in a kind of distracted way. The new age had dawned, praise be. But that was later. Then I just said out loud to no one in particular, “Damn women, I will never figure them out.” And I never have. [Markin: Brother Phil you are preaching to the choir on that one.] That is why, when we headed north for the rumored summer of love in San Francisco a month or so later, I had my angel-devil girlfriends, my “family” as Captain Crunch called them, with me."

Now you are filled in on the what and the why of Phil’s being on that nameless San Francisco hill mentioned a while back. A nameless hill, nameless to first time ‘Frisco Phil, although maybe not to some ancient Native American shaman delighted to see our homeland, the sea, out in the bay working it way to far-off Japans. Or to some Spanish conquistador, full of gold dreams but longing for the hills of Barcelona half a world away. Right then though a tall young man, well taller than Phil, lanky, maybe not as lanky as Phil with his drug stews diet having taken some pounds off, and some desire for pounds as well, dressed in full “hippie” regalia (army jacket, blue jeans, bandanna headband to keep his head from exploding, striped flannel shirt against the cold bay winds, against the cold bay winds even in summer, and nighttime colds too, and now that we are on the West Coast, roman sandals) walked up the street that paralleled the hill the entourage was then planted on, cast a glance as that company, nodded slightly, and then turned around and asked to no one in particular but kind of zeroing in on Butterfly, “Got some dope, for a hungry brother?” Except for shorter hair, which only meant that this traveler had either not been on the road very long or had just recently caught the “finding himself” bug he could have been Phil’s brother, biological brother.

That line, that single line, could have been echoed a thousand times, maybe ten thousand times, that day along a thousand hills (well maybe not that many in San Fran), aimed at any small clot of like minded spirits. And Phil sensing that just that one sentence spoke of kindred said, “Sure, a little Columbia Red for the head, okay?” And so started the long, well hippie long, 1960s long anyway, relationship between one Phillip Larkin and one Joshua Breslin (a.k.a. Prince Love, although don’t hold it against him now if you know, or have seen, Josh lately). And the women, of course.

And, of course, as well was that sense that Far Out had that he and Prince Love were kindred was based on the way that the prince posed that first question. His accent spoke, spoke hard of New England, not Boston but farther north. And once the pipe had been passed a couple of times and the heat of day started getting everybody a little talkative then Josh spilled out his story. Yes, he was from Olde Saco, Maine, born and bred, a working class kid whose family had worked the town mills for a couple of generations, maybe more, but times were getting hard, real hard in those northern mill towns now that the mill-owners had got the big idea to head south and get some cheaper labor, real cheap. So Joshua, after he graduated from high school a few weeks before decided, on a whim (not really a whim though), to head west and check out prospects here on the coast. Josh finished up his story by saying, “And here I am a few weeks later sitting on Russian Hill smoking righteous dope and sitting with some sweet ladies. (Markin: Phil never said what his reaction to that last part was which seemed, the way it was spoken, spoken by Phil in the re-telling, filled with menace. Girl-taking menace. Well, old corner boy Phil menace, hell Markin menace too, would have felt that way but maybe in that hazed-out summer it just passed by like so much air) Everybody else giggled now that they knew the name of this hill that they had been trying to guess the name of for the last half hour when he blurted that out. Naturally Phil, a kingly road warrior now, whatever his possible misgivings, invited Josh to stay with them, seeing as they were practically neighbors back home. Josh was “family” now, and Butterfly seemed gladder than the others of that fact.

But enough of old-time visions, of old time rites of passage, and of foundling dreams. Phil, and his entourage (nice word, huh, no more girlfriend solo, or as here paired, lovingly paired, to be hung up about, just go with the flow). Phil, Butterfly, hell, even jaded Lilly Rose (formerly known as Luscious Lois in case you forgot, or we not paying attention), and now Prince Love, are a “family,” or rather part of the Captain Crunch extended intentional family of merry pranksters. [Markin: Small case, so as not to be confused with their namesakes and models legendary mad man writer Ken Kesey and his La Honda Merry Pranksters, okay] Just yesterday they hit ‘Frisco and had planted their de rigueur day-glo bus in the environs of Golden Gate Park after many months on the road west, and some sitting down time down south in La Jolla. Hearing the siren call buzzing all spring they have now advanced north to feast on the self-declared Summer of Love that is guaranteed to mend broken hearts, broken spirits, broken rainbows, broken china, and broken, well broken everything. The glue: drug, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll, although not just any old-timey be-bop fifties rock and roll but what everybody now calls “acid” rock. And acid, for the squares out there, is nothing but the tribal name for LSD that has every parent from the New York island to the Redwood forests, every public official from ‘Frisco to France, and every police officer (I am being nice here and will not use the oink word) from the Boston to Bombay and back, well, “freaked out” (and clueless). Yes, our Phil has come a long way from that snarly wise guy corner boy night of that old town he lammed out from (according to his told story) just about a year ago.

Or had he? Well, sure Phil’s hair was quite a bit longer, his beard less wispy and more manly, his tattered work boots and later Chuck Taylor sneakers transformed into sensible (West Coast ocean sensible) roman sandals and his weight, well, his weight was way down from those weekly bouts with three-day drug escape, and fearful barely eaten four-in-the-morning open hearth stews, and not much else. And as he sat on that Russian Hill looking out into that bay with his brood he could not even look forward, as he originally planned, to the expectation of just trying LSD for the hell of it in ‘Frisco, having licked it (off a blotter), or drank it (the famous, or infamous, kool-aid fix), several times down in La Jolla. In those lazy hazy days watching the surf (and surfers) splashing against the Pacific world with blond-haired, blue-eyed, bouncy Butterfly, and the raven-haired, dark as night-eyed Lilly Rose, or both listening to the music fill the night air. Not square music either (anything pre-1964 except maybe some be-bop wild piano man Jerry Lee Lewis, or some Chicago blues guitar fired by Muddy Waters or microphone-eating Howlin’ Wolf), but moog, boog, foog-filled music.

Just that Russian Hill minute though, and to be honest, while in the midst of another acid trip (LSD, for the squares just in case you forgot), Phil sensed that something had crested in the approaching blue-pink Pacific night and that just maybe this scene would not evolve into the “newer world” that everybody, especially Captain Crunch, kept expecting any day. Worst, now that he knew that he couldn’t, no way, go back to some department store clerk’s job, some picket-fenced white house with dog, two point three children, and a wife what was to happen to him when Butterfly, Lilly Rose, Joshua, and even Captain Crunch “find” themselves and go back to school, home, academic careers, or whatever. For now though he will just take it all.
***********
The End Lyrics
The Doors
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken' us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...fuck you

C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
C'mon, yeah

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

Thoroughly Modern Millie-And Then Some-Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works” (2009)-A Film Review Of Sorts

Thoroughly Modern Millie-And Then Some-Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works” (2009)-A Film Review Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

I know exactly why I drew this assignment from current site manager and the guy who hands out the film assignments Greg Green (after having done that task at American Film Gazette for a million years, if you can believe this I worked as a stringer for him there when I was just starting out some thirty or so years ago). The problem with on-line sites is that everything can be easily archived and so Greg just looked up a few pieces I did a few years ago about a growing up hometown friend, Phil Larkin, who also occasionally writes here as well, and his travails with intergenerational sex with some Penn State graduate student whom he “met” on the Internet. Since a theme, a sub-theme as it turns out, of this so-so Woody Allen written and directed Whatever Works is the budding relationship between a twenty-something Southern (Mississippi) “baton twirler” (the main character’s characterization of her on his nice days) and a jaded neurotic older New York guy who has soured on the world after his fair shares of ups and downs that is the main play here.

(According to the blip on this effort it is not autobiographical according to Woody whose own intergeneration sexual encounter with his step-daughter whom he eventually married got him plenty of bad press in the early 1990s. I will take his word that this vehicle was intended for Zero Mostel who died shortly after he had written it and thereafter the script was shelved. Moreover autobiographical or not does not impinge on this whole subject of intergenerational sex which has certain taboos associated with it that I was trying to write about in the Phil Larkin pieces.)      

I don’t want to discuss the cinematic technique that Woody used here to present the main character jaded, neurotic Boris, played by Larry David who is talking to the audience during parts of his monologue/soliloquy to the disbelieve of all his contacts but the interplay, the as it turns out wide range of sexual play only high-lighted by Boris and his baton twirler Melody, played by Evan Rachel Wood. True to New York Jewish intellectual form Woody has Boris world wary and weary in such a way that it had all the zing of very early such Woody productions based in New York settings and made me think that in the earlier 1970s sense the thing would have been played by Woody himself casting away on Annie Hall, Manhattan, and the like.

What makes the whole shebang workable to steal from the idea that generated the writing is the total improbability of the two main characters having the slightest thing in common. Boris already described in a few words which makes the nut takes in essentially a runaway, Melody, the baton-twirler from the South who baffles Boris no end as he tries to get rid of her-for a while- and then she becomes something like a case study in the redneck ethos and non-Jewish, non-intellectual, non-New York world that Boris is clueless about. Except he had his very definite opinions about that outer world. And she, well, she sparkly and bright, bears his malice and bile. Then opposites attract. Wedding bells. Boom                

Attract for a while because intergenerational interplay (ah, sex) winds up being only one of the many ways that human beings can interact. That comes on display when Melody’s horrified mother comes up looking for what she assumed was her runaway daughter. Mother winds up having some cultural talent and she winds up with two lovers-at the same time. Father comes looking for Melody too (after a fling which broke up the marriage). Turns out he was a closet homosexual and if anyplace would be a place to cast your fate looking for a gay partner it was post-Stonewall New York. Bang, gay couple. To complicate matters Mother pulls a dipsy-doodle on Boris and Melody pulling a younger man in her path and Melody falls for him. Poor shmuck Boris-a loser. No. In desperation over losing Melody he decides to commit suicide. But in his weird world he fails hurting somebody whom he landed on who turns out to be his next wife. Heterosexual love. Bang. Makes me wonder if Woody was working his magic these days on this whatever works theme whether the talking-impaired cleaning lady and creature in The Shape of Water would merit a cameo appearance. Funny in spots if you like old-time Woody monologue/dialogue.         

It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review

It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review

CD Review

By Zack James

A Far Cry From Dead, Townes Van Zandt, Arista Records, 1999

Recently in reviewing a bluesy CD by outlaw cowboy singer Willie Nelson, at least that “outlaw cowboy” designation was the basis for my introduction to him back in the early 1980s I mentioned that I was reminded by my old high school friend, Seth Garth, that back in those late 1970s and early 1980s I was drawn to such outlaw cowboy music that had broken sharply with the traditional stuff out of Nashville that I could not abide., always associated with the Grand Ole Opry and stuff like that, redneck hillbilly music. (By the way I did not comment on it at the time but I was not sure the ancient Nelson, he of the Crazy lyrics made famous by Patsy Cline in the 1950s for God’s sake, was still living. A check on Wikipedia confirmed his continued physical existence. Wouldn’t you know though that the next week Willie was involved in a dust-up for playing at a then Congressman Beto O’Rourke campaign rally for Texas United States Senator).          

I also noted that just then, just that late 1970s, early 1980s, rock and roll was taking one of its various detours, a detour like in the late 1950s when the soul went out of rock for a while before the storm of the British invasion and “acid” rock saved it,  That blank Bobby Vee, Sandra Dee, Bobby Darin, Fabian world when rock and roll came under control of our parents essentially left me wilted. I could not follow folk music, the social protest kind anyway that had attracted me in my youth was fading fast even among aficionados as more mundane concerns filled that niche. The blues was losing through old age and death its mostly black performers by the day and the younger crowd, mostly black, was leaving the field to white aficionados like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn and heading to what would become hip-hop tradition. Thus, I was up for listening to something different. Something that might catch my ear for roots-based music, the music of the “big tent” American Songbook beyond Tin Pan Alley.

What Seth hadn’t remembered was the genesis of that outlaw cowboy moment. My finding of an old used record by artist under review Townes Van Zandt at Cheapo’s Records in Cambridge (still there although further down the street) of all places to find such music. Once I get on to a sound I like I tend to look for everything I can find by the artist (film-maker or writer too). Done. But more than in that outlaw moment I actually saw Townes in person at, well, several places over a couple of years, but all of them in the heart of “outlaw country” music, ah, Harvard Square. So in those days I was not alone in looking for a new sound since all the venues were sold out. (Yes, I know I could have listened to the Hillbilly at Harvard on the radio but I am trying to make the point about the unnatural nature of the times that struck me, and not only me and got us heading toward the outlaws, some passed and headed to Cajun music under the same imperatives.)         

What drew me Townes then, and drew me to this CD recently although it had been put out in 1999 a few years after his untimely death in 1996 was he command of lyrics that “spoke” to me, spoke some kind of truth of things that were bothering me just then like lost loves, not understanding why those loves were lost, and about just trying to get through the day. Yeah, that gravelly voice on that first record kind of fit my mood then, and it still sounds good although unlike that first live in Houston album this one is much more a produced product of the studio. Still the searing burning messages and lyrics are there to help you get through those tough days that creep up and pile up on you. Listen up. 

The Class Struggle Will Always Be With Us-The Golden Age Of Comedy Struggle Not-Frank Capra’s Adaptation of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You” (1938) A Film Review

The Class Struggle Will Always Be With Us-The Golden Age Of Comedy Struggle Not-Frank Capra’s Adaptation of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You” (1938) A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

You Can’t Take It With You, starring zany Jean Arthur, wild and wooly James Stewart, Philosopher-King Lionel Barrymore, Wall Street Tycoon typhoon Edward Arnold, directed by Frank Capra and based on the Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, 1938

The class struggle is a mighty beast. The class struggle for those few not in the know is where the rich keep piling on their riches and use every means from simple persuasion and betrayal to the big guns if the plebian masses get uppity and the poor, the rest of us in some degree try to grab a couple of extra scraps for our labors. Ever since a guy, a German guy named Karl Marx and his buddy Freddy something, a German name too invented the class struggle it has had a checkered career. Sometimes as calm as the ocean waters coming tepidly to shore and others like in revolutionary upheaval times with a big roar-and enter big guns to settle the damn thing.

Today you hear plenty from many quarters about income disparity (read: class struggle defeats for working people), about the gap between the richer getting richer by their practical ownership of the government, its courts, cops and the guys with the big guns and the rest of us trying to find money on the ground for rent and such  (read: class struggle defeats for working people). But today is not the only time when the rich wanted, well, wanted more, and took what they wanted. And today is not the only time when the poor, the rest of us are treated to a comedic sent-up of that class struggle nobody wants to call by its right name. Hence this review of the late 1930s film You Can’t Take It With You which shows another way, a way without guns although that seems strange since that age brought us many bloody labor strikes, to conduct the class struggle. Humor and plain common sense.    

Here’s the scoop. Moneybags (draw a picture in your mind of a Wall Street sage and that would be about right), a Wall Street financier played by Edward Arnold who made a career of frowning on everything wanted to control what would later be called the military-industrial complex (MIC) before World War II. He planned to build some humongous weapons factory to produce this material. Problem: he needed to control a certain section of New York City to place his boot on. Problem: people lived and went about their daily lives there including one old curmudgeon who we will call Gramps, played by Lionel Barrymore last seen as a hotelier challenging old-time mobster has-been Johnny Rocco who was trying for a big comeback down in the Keys, who refused to sell for his own reasons. The struggle continues between Gramps who has learned that money, dough, kale and power isn’t everything and Moneybags who only cares like Johnny Rocco for, well, more.  

That battle though would not rate this film as a great comedy of the golden age of such fare except we have a “fifth columnist” in the person of Moneybags son, Tony, played by James Stewart last seen here trying to stave off suicide during the Christmas holidays and finding that his life, maybe life in general was wonderful who could give a fuck, excuse my English about money and power but is head over heels for Gramp’s granddaughter, Alice played by Jean Arthur who I don’t recall reviewing in any previous film review. Of course Mayfair swell Moneybags and his expensive wife and Gramps and his voluntary poverty are like oil and water-don’t mix and so a proposal of marriage gets slapped around for a while. Gets slapped around until Gramps in desperation to save his beloved granddaughter decided to sell that old haunted house to Moneybags and move on.

Another defeat for the poor and straightforward, right. No, a million times no, because we now have another way to resolve that class struggle those two angry 19^th century German political theorists invented. Get this. Tony who Moneybags had planned to have figurehead run the new weapons operation balked, told Moneybags, Dad, no way, He was leading in another direction, including one last ditch effort to marry Alice. The old man filled with remorse at the treatment of his son by him “repents” and forgoes that lucrative deal for a big play in the up-coming MIC action. Nice right, sweet reason, family comes first and no bloodshed. Fair is fair but I still wonder about those big guns Moneybags has behind him. A quirky look at the remnants of the class struggle the last time it reared its head big-time.        

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- The 'Woes' of The British Labor Party

Click on the headline to link to a Leon Trotsky Internet Archives online copy of his Leon Trotsky’s Writings on Britain-Volume 1-The Labour Movement
1906-1924 to give a little historical perspective to this post.


Commentary

Regular readers of this space have long been aware that this writer fights his propaganda war under the banner of struggling in America for a workers party that fights for a workers government. In the course of that propaganda war I have had occasion to use the British Labor Party (today, New Labor) as the whipping boy (oops, person) for all that the slogan does not mean. Over the past few days news has filtered out that in the recent local municipal elections in Britain the Labor Party has taken something of a political beating by the Conservative Party AND, hold onto your hat, the Liberal Party. These are desperate times in Labor Party circles, especially for the party bureaucracy and their remaining toadies in the Trades Union Congress. I will, however, not wake up screaming in the night over this development. I cry no tears that ‘radical’ Ken Livingstone has fallen as Mayor of London. Nevertheless a few remarks about how militants in Britain (and elsewhere) can take advantage of the situation seem in order.

One of the great truisms of British left wing politics for the last century or so (since the split with the above-mentioned seemingly previously moribund liberals and the formation of an independent working class party) is the need to have a strategic orientation toward the Labor Party. Most famously, Lenin in his nice little polemical of 1920 against the ‘wild boys and girls’ of anarcho-communism in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder noted that, at times, militants are forced to support the Labor Party like “a rope supports a dying man”. And on occasion that little advice might be true in the future. But not today.

Every British militant, as an individual, should be a member of the Labor Party, or one of its organizations. The truth of the matter is that the bulk of the working class still owes at least formal allegiance to that party. The problem historically has been, and continues today including by militants who know better, that one needs to know as an organization how to file for divorce. That, my friends, is the fundamental problem with long term entry into a larger labor organization that I have discussed elsewhere in this space. I would argue that this is an excellent time to think about a regroupment of left forces outside the Labor Party. The particular contours of that regroupment are contingent on local conditions and particular prospects. Of course none of that makes sense unless there is programmatic agreement, to my mind that is a given. But it is something to think about.

These recent British elections, and the defeat of Mr. Livingstone as mayor, have also brought in focus a question that has been raised by the International Communist League on the question of revolutionaries running for executive offices in the bourgeois state. The ICL’s argument is that, unlike in the past, including in their own past, where revolutionaries ran with the understanding that they would not take office, it is a matter of principle not to even run for such offices and that we confine ourselves to parliamentary races. I had in the past, not without a few qualms, continued to favor the old policy. I believe that I am now ready to change my position on this question; however, I wish to write on that question separately. So, perhaps, old Ken Livingstone’s defeat serves a purpose after all.

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- From The Bob Feldman Blog- Music To While Away The Class Struggle By-"They Drove Woody Guthrie"

Click on the headline-Bob Feldman Blog- Music To While Away The Class Struggle By-"They Drove Woody Guthrie"
*******

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Chorus (2x)