Monday, May 20, 2019

Wednesday, May 22 - 7PM | Victor Grossman: Book Tour and a Review of the Change in the Condition of Women After the Counter-Revolution in Eastern Germany

Center for Marxist Education<centermarxisteducation@gmail.com>
*The Center for Marxist Education presents...*

*Wednesday, May 22 | 7:00 - 9:00 PM | **550 Mass. Ave., Central Square,
Cambridge*
*Victor Grossman: Book Tour and a Review of The Change in the Condition of
Women After the Counter-Revolution in Eastern Germany *
In 1952, the great journalist and speaker Victor Grossman defected from
Harvard and the US Army to the Soviet region of Germany. He has lived in
eastern Germany ever since. He will review his book, "A Socialist
Defector", just published by Monthly Review. He will also describe changes
in the condition of women since eastern Germany fell to counter-revolution
nearly 30 years ago.

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In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- *Tell Me Utah Phillips- Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?

Click On Title To Link To Utah Phillips Webpage.

Commentary

I have been on a something of a Utah Phillips/Rosalie Sorrels musical tear lately but I want to pay separate attention to one song, Phillips’ “Starlight On The Rails", that hits home on some many levels- the memories of bumming around the country in my youth, riding and living free (or trying to), my on and off love affair with trains as a mode of transportation, and, of course the political struggle to fix what ails this country. And as Utah acknowledges below in introducing the song (from the Utah Phillips Songbook version) we get a little Thomas Wolfe as a literary bonus. Utah and I, in the end, had very different appreciations of what it takes to do this political fixin' mentioned above but we can agree on the sentiments expressed in his commentary and song.

Utah, aside from his love of trains as a form of personal transportation when he was “on the bum”, also was a vocal advocate for their use as mass transportation. He originally argued this proposition at a time when the railroads were losing passengers in droves to the great automobile explosion. Utah wrote a song for one of his sons “Daddy, What’s A Train?” on the demise of this more people-friendly form of getting around. Since then there has been, due to the mercurial economics of oil and some conscious social and environmental policy planning, something of a resurgence of the train as a means of transportation.

Nevertheless the saga of the train in this writer’s imagination remains more of a boyhood memory than an actuality today. I can still see those historic old names: Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, B&O, and Boston & Maine. I can still hear the whistle blow as the train comes into the station. The conductor’s yell of “All, aboard” or the station’s name. Those rattling sounds of wheels hitting the metal of the rails. But, mainly, I think of the slower times, the time to look at the scenery as the train ambles along and to understand the how, if not the why, of the contours of the way America sprouted up as it out moved in all directions from its Eastern shores.

I noted in a review of a PBS American Experience documentary, “Riding The Rails” (see archives, “Starlight On The Rails, Indeed”, November 4, 2008) growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those then abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. I can still picture that scene now trying to hit my stride on each tie. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-country trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel on longer trips.

Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that the one looked at in the American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were usually merely as a paying passenger, although when down on my luck I rolled onto a couple of moving trains. An experience not for the faint-hearted, for sure. But this was mainly slumming. Their experiences were anything but. The only common thread between them and me was the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE. I spent a whole youth running to THERE. But enough of this- let Utah tell his story about the realities, not the romance of the rails.

Guest Commentary

Starlight On The Rails- Utah Phillips

This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song.

I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else.

We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.

Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?

STARLIGHT ON THE RAILS
(Bruce Phillips)


I can hear the whistle blowing
High and lonesome as can be
Outside the rain is softly falling
Tonight its falling just for me

Looking back along the road I've traveled
The miles can tell a million tales
Each year is like some rolling freight train
And cold as starlight on the rails

I think about a wife and family
My home and all the things it means
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams

A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time
A man who spends his life just rambling
Is like a song without a rhyme


Daddy What's A Train

Most everybody who knows me knows that I'm a train nut. In Dayton, Ohio, when I was 12 years old during the Second World War, there was a railroad that went close by Greenmont Village. A bunch of the kids and I built a fort out of old railroad ties, half dug in the ground and half above the ground. We let a bum sleep in there one night - I think he was the first railroad bum I remember meeting - came back the next day and it had been burned down. He'd evidently set it on fire or started it accidentally.

Playing around in that fort we'd see the big steam engines run by. The engineers would wave, and the parlor shack back in the crummy - that's the brakeman who stays in the caboose - would wave, too. Put your ear down on the rail and you could hear the trains coming. We'd play games on the ties and swing ourselves on the rails. Also we'd pick up a lot of coal to take home. I understand that during the Depression a lot of families kept their homes warm by going out along the right of way and picking up coal that had fallen out of the coal tenders.
This song is written for my little boy Duncan. His grandfather, Raymond P. Jensen, was a railroad man for over 40 years on the Union Pacific, working as an inspector. There's a lot of railroading in Duncan's family, but he hasn't ridden trains very much.



(sung to chorus tune)
When I was just a boy living by the track
Us kids'd gather up the coal in a great big gunny sack,
And then we'd hear the warning sound as the train pulled into view
And the engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through;

(spoken)
She blew so loud and clear
That we covered up our ears
And counted cars as high as we could go.
I can almost hear the steam
And the big old drivers scream
With a sound my little boy will never know.

I guess the times have changed and kids are different now;
Some don't even seem to know that milk comes from a cow.
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
And I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars -


The Wabash and TP
Lackawanna and IC
Nickel Plate and the good old Santa Fe;
Names out of the past
And I know they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say.

Well, we climbed into the car and drove down into town
Right up to the depot house but no one was around.
We searched the yard together for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so.

All the things I did
When I was just a kid-
How far away the memories appear,
And it's plain enough to see
They mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer.

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips

50 Years Gone The Father We Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack River Nights-Searching For The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- “The Old Man’s Old Sea”



50 Years Gone The Father We Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack River Nights-Searching For The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- “The Old Man’s Old Sea”

By Seth Garth, known as Charles River Blackie for no other reason that he can remember at least than he slept along those banks, the Cambridge side and some raggedy ass wino who tried to cut him under the Anderson Bridge one night called him that and it stuck. Those wino-zapped bums, piss leaky tramps and poet-king hoboes all gone to some graven spot long ago from drink, drug, or their own hubris which they never understood gone and the moniker too.  

It was dawn, or maybe just those few minutes before the dawn, those dark light minutes when the sun’s battle for the day coming over the ocean’s eastern horizon is set. The waves splashed, although that day not so innocently, against the waiting sand, sand beaten down since time immemorial. This beach, this northern clime beach, the far end of Olde Saco, Maine beach, was filled with empty clam shells waiting sandification (if that is the name for it, that long process of grinding down to dust and fine enough for angel bums, angel beachcomber explorations, angel teen bikini beach blanket bingo boy –girl lolls, if not then close enough), abandoned and mislaid lobster traps (better brush up on the law of the seas, and keep a heavy object handy against those uncivilized enough to demand their washed-up  crates back) occasional oil slicks spilled from the trawlers (also a law of the seas issue but not chargeable except in immense smears) working trawlers nearby (the crew hoping that the pre-dawn coffee holds out until they get to the killing fields), the flotsam and jetsam streamed here of a thousand ships, cargoes, careless throwaways and conscious, very conscious dumpings (law of the seas be damned) , like the sea was just another land-fill wanting filling.

That day though he was ready, ready for the hundredth hundredth time to walk the walk, the ocean walk that has defined more parts of him than heaven will ever know. Walk the walking daddy walk, he called it now (long ago calling it high, benny high, or maybe weed high, walking arm and arm with some sun browned-skinned honey, some ex-surfer’s girl, slumming against the next new thing, testing the waters around the edge of the 1960s summer of love night, down on Malibu or La Jolla oceans, walking with the king, walking then with some sex-driven purpose, whispering that purpose in her ear, or hopes, heard from some mad monk jazz man trying to hit the high white note out in ‘Frisco town). As he buttoned up his slicker against the April winds that came there more often than not he saw, saw faintly in the distance, a figure, a fellow traveler taking his, her or its’ (don’t laugh he had seen horses, unridden horses, trotting these beaches, although no sea monsters except when three day benny high), maybe also hundredth hundredth walk along the ocean sidewalk, and maybe, just maybe, for the same reason.

Today, hundredth, hundredth walk or not, he was in a remembering mood, a high dudgeon remembering mood that always got triggered by proximity, anywhere within fifty- mile proximity if the truth be known, to the ocean. He had just finished up a piece of work, a small journal small paid piece of work, a recollection really, borne of fierce schoolboy night remembrances, that reminded him of seas, sea-sides, sea walks, sea rocks, ocean-side carnival amusement parks placed on jutting piers as if to mock the intrinsic interest that one would have in the sea, our homeland the sea, and he needed to sort this out, this sea-memory desecration also for that now familiar ten-thousandth time. He thought then that maybe he had better begin at the beginning in order to sort things out, or try to, so he would be finished in that hour or so that it would take him to walk this walk, this rambling ocean walk, this no walking daddy walk (although now that he thought about it walking daddy might have some sexual purpose behind it as well reminding of old day ex-surfer’s girl, blankets wrapped around and fondlings in wayward deserted beach corners, but that was for another time, that thought), and about that time he would pass that solitary walker coming the other way and be obliged under some law of the sea to break his train of thought and remark on the nature of the day, the nature of the ocean, and the immense joys of foam-flecked ocean-ness brought forth by old King Neptune to that passing stranger.

Ah, memory, jesus, just the names, Taffrail Road, Yardarm Lane, Captain's Walk, Quarterdeck Road, Sextant Circle, and the Snug Harbor Elementary School tell a story all on their own. Yes, those names, those seemingly misplaced, misbegotten names and places from the old housing project down over in Olde Saco (called Irishtown and Frenchtown by the locals depending on the street but generically known as the Acre to the general public passing by), his old hometown, and where he came of age surely evoked imagines of the sea, of long ago sailing ships, and of desperate, high stakes battles fought off shrouded, mist-covered coasts by those hearty enough to seek fame and fortune. And agile enough to keep it. Almost from his first wobbly, halting baby steps down at “the projects” he had been physically drawn to the sea, a seductive, foam-flecked siren call that had never left him.

Needless to say, with that ocean as a backdrop, ever since he was a toddler his imagination, his sense of imagery, his sense of the nature of the world has been driven by the sea as well. Not so much of pirates and prizes, although those drove his early youth a bit but of the power of nature, for good or evil. And on those long ago days, just like now, he was  dressed against the impending inclement weather with his mustard yellow rain slicker(French’s mustard color not Guiden’s, okay) complete with Gloucester fisherman’s rain floppy rain hat of the same color and rubber boots, black, knee-length boots that went squish, squish and have since before time immemorial.

Of course, anybody with any sense knows that anyone who had even a passing attachment to a place like Olde Saco, tucked in a bay, an Atlantic bay, had to have an almost instinctual love of the sea; and, a fear of its furies when old Mother Nature turned her back on us. Yes, the endless sea, our homeland the sea, the mother we never knew, the sea... But enough of those imaginings. If being determines consciousness, and if you love the ocean, then it does not hurt to have been brought up in Olde Saco with its ready access to the bay and water on three sides. That said, the focal point for any experience with the ocean in Olde Saco centered, naturally, around its longest stretch of beach, Olde Saco Central Beach. Puny by beach far-as-the-eye-can-see standards, Olde Saco puny by Carlsbad (California Carlsbad) farther-than-the-eye-can-see standards say but a place to learn the ropes of how to deal with the sea, with its pitfalls, its mysteries, it lure, and its lore.

For those of a certain age brought forth by the sea, including this writer, one cannot discuss Olde Saco Central Beach properly without reference to such spots such as Aunt Jenny’s famous landmark ice cream stand (now a woe-begotten clam shack of no repute). For those who are clueless as to what he spoke of, or had only heard about it in mythological terms from older relatives, or worst, had written it off as just another ice cream joint you can only dream of such heavens although someone, not him, not him today as he  remembranced with a broad stroke and had no time for pretty descriptions, for literary flourishes, should really do themselves proud and write the history, yah, the child’s view history of that establishment. And make the theme, make the theme if you will, the bond between New England love of ice cream and of the sea (yes, it is true, other parts of the country, other ocean parts of the country as well, are, well, nonplussed by the ice cream idea, and it shows in their product).

Know this for now though: many a hot, muggy, sultry, sweaty summer evening was spent in line impatiently, and perhaps, on occasion, beyond impatience, waiting for one of those 21 (or was it 22?) flavors to cool off with. In those days the prize went to cherry vanilla in a sugar cone (backup: frozen pudding). He would  not bore the reader with superlative terms and “they don’t make them like they used to,” especially for those who only know “Aunt Jenny’s ” from the later, pale imitation franchise days out on some forsaken turnpike highway, but at that moment, that child moment, he was in very heaven.

Nor can one forget those stumbling, fumbling, fierce childish efforts, bare-footed against all motherly caution about the dreaded jellyfish, pail and shovel in hand, to dig for seemingly non-existent clams down toward the Pineville Cove end of the beach at the, in those days, just slightly oil-slicked, sulfuric low tide. Or the smell of charcoal-flavored hot dogs on those occasional family barbecues (when one in a series of old jalopies that his father drove worked well enough to get the family  there) at the then just recently constructed old Treasure Island that were some of the too few times when his family acted as a family. Or the memory of roasted, really burnt, sticky marshmallows sticking to the roof of his mouth.

But those thoughts and smells were not the only ones that interested him that day. No trip down memory lane would be complete without at least a passing reference to high school Olde Saco Central Beach. The sea brings out many emotions: humankind's struggle against nature, some Zen notions of oneness with the universe, the calming effect of the thundering waves, thoughts of mortality, and so on. But it also brings out the primordial longings for companionship. And no one longs for companionship more than teenagers. So the draw of the ocean is not just in its cosmic appeal but hormonal, as well. Mind you, however, he was not thinking here of the nighttime Olde Saco Beach scene (really down at the Seal Rock end away from maddening beach ball families, away from French- Canadian homeland tourists, away from nosey Acre parents), the time of "parking" and the "submarine races". His thoughts were now pure as the driven snow. Hence he thought to confine himself to the daytime beach.

Virtually from the day he and his friends (his corner boy friends from his high school hang-out over at Mama’s Pizza Parlor, the one with the gigantic jukebox with huge beautiful latest rock and roll selections and five for a quarter over on Spruce Street, not the one on Pleasant Street which was for, for, hell, the families looking to have a mom’s night off pizza, Jesus, no) got out of school for the summer vacation they headed for the beach. And not just any section of that beach but the section directly between the Pineville Yacht Club and the Pine Tree Boat Club. Now were those corner boys situating themselves in that spot done so that they could watch all the fine boats at anchor? Or was this the best swimming location on the beach? Hell no, this is where they heard (and here include his old running pal and classmate, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley) all the "babes" were. Information passed down from generation to generation since, he guessed they invented teenage-ness a hundred years or so back.  Those beat teens were, apparently, under the influence of Beach Blanket Bingo or some such teenage beach film. (For those who are again clueless this was a grade B ‘boy meets girl’ saga the plot behind a thousand Hollywood films, except not always on the beach.)

Well, for those who expected a movie-like happy ending to this section of the remembrance piece, you know, where he meets a youthful "Ms. Right" to the strains of the song Sea of Love, forget it. (That is the original Sea of Love, by the way, not the one used in the movie of the same name sung by Tom Waits at the end, and a cover that you should listen to on YouTube.) He will keep the gory details short, though. As fate would have it there may have been "babes" aplenty down there but not for that lad. He was just too socially awkward (read, tongue-tied) to get up the nerve to talk to girls (female readers substitute boys here). And on reflection, if the truth were to be known, he would not have known what to do about such a situation in any case. No job, no money and, most importantly, no car for a date to watch one of those legendary "submarine races."  One can hardly fault the sea for that, right?

But visions of nearly one-half century ago hardly exhaust the lure of the sea. And, speaking of visions, that fellow sea-seeker he  mentioned that he saw a while ago, coming from the other end of the beach was starting to take shape, it was a he, our man could tell by the walk, by the sea walk that men put on when they are alone with their thoughts, although beyond that the sea-seeker  was too far away for him to determine age, class (this is a very democratic beach, in most spots, with few vulgar and almost universally disregarded no-trespassing-private property-keep out-beware-of-dogs-police-take-notice signs), or physical description, as the suppressed light from the cloudy morning day gets a little brighter

Funny, some people he had known, including those he grew up with, grew up with breathing ocean air and who started with a love of the sea much as he did, moved to Kansas, Omaha, Peoria, Winnemucca or some such place, some such distinctly non-ocean place and never looked back. Christ, as was well known by one and all who knew him he got very nervous even then when, as a city boy, he went to the country and did not have the feel of city lights to comfort him.  Not as well- known was the fact, the hard fact that he got nervous, very nervous, when he was not within driving distance of some ocean, say that fifty miles mentioned above. So keep, please keep, your Kansas, your Omaha, your Peoria, and your damn blessed Winnemucca and let him be, be in places like Bar Harbor, Maine, Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, Sanibel Island, Florida, Carlsbad, California (hell no, not the New Mexico one ), Mendocino, ditto California, Seattle, Washington just to name a few places on this continent, and there are many others, and on other continents, or the edges of other continents, as well. And stories, plenty of stories, which he doesn’t have time to tell you now except for one that will stand in as an exemplar for what he meant. By the way that form, that mannish form, coming toward him was looking more like a young man by the speed of his walk, and he too seemed to have on a favored sea dog yellow rain jacket.


Visions of Angelica, Angelica of the homeland sea, January 1970.

I waved good-bye to Angelica, once again, as she drove off from the ocean front campsite that we had been camping out on, the Leo Carrillo State Park near Point Magoo about fifty miles or so north of Los Angeles. She will now drive the road back in her green Ford Hertz unlimited mileage, mid-size rental (paid for, as she explained one night, by her parents whose golden age of the automobile-frenzied minds counted it as a strike against me, a very big strike, that when I had “kidnapped” their daughter on the 1969 blue-pink summer road west down in Steubenville, Ohio I didn’t even have a car). She planned (on my advice) to drive back mostly on the ocean-abutted, white-capped waves smashing against jagged ancient shore rocks, Pacific Coast Highway down through Malibu and Santa Monica to take one last look at the Pacific Ocean as the final point on her first look ocean trip, on the way to LAX to take a flight back to school days Muncie, Indiana.

She will also be driving back to the airport and getting on that miserable plane east knowing as I do since we talked about it incessantly during her stay, that some right things, or at least some maybe right things, like our being together last summer heading free west and for these two January weeks in front of the sea, our homeland the sea, before her classes started again, got caught up in the curious web of the human drama. For no understandable reason. Hey, you already knew this if you have ever had even that one teeny-weeny, tiny, minuscule love affair that just had no place to go, or no time to take root, or just got caught out there in the blue-pink night. Yah, you know that story. But let me take some minutes to tell you this one. If it seems very familiar and you “know” the plot line well then just move on.

To get you up to speed after Angelica and I had been on the heartland hitchhike road (and places like Moline, Neola, and Omaha are nothing but the heartland, good or bad), she, well, she just got tired of it, tired of the lacks, tired of the uncertainties of the road. Hell hell-on-wheels, I was getting tired of it myself except I was a man on a mission. The nature of that mission is contained in the words “search for the blue-pink great American West night” thus the particulars of that mission need not detain us here. So in Neola, Iowa, Neola, Iowa of all places aided by “fairy grandmother” Aunt Betty, who ran the local diner where Angelica worked to help make us some dough to move on, and her own sense of dreams she called it quits back in September. Aunt Betty drove us to Omaha where Angelica took the bus back east, Indiana east from Nebraska, to hometown Muncie and I hit Interstate 80 West headed first to Denver before the snows, or so I hoped.

Honestly, although we exchanged addresses and telephone numbers where messages could be left, or where we could speak to each other (her parents’ house not being one of them), and made big plans to reunite in California in January during her school break, I didn’t really think that once we were off the road together that those plans would pan out.

Now I may not remember all my reasoning at the time this far removed, the now of my telling this story many years later, but I had had enough relationships with women to sense this one was good, very good, while it lasted but it could not survive the parting. Not one of those overused “absence makes the heart grow fonder” things you hear about. And, truth to tell, because I thought that was the way things would play out, I started getting focused back on Boston Joyell more than a little as I walked a lot, stood at the shoulder of the hitchhike road a lot, and fitfully got my rides on the road west.

But see this is where you think you have something figured out just so and then it goes awry. Angelica called, left messages, sent letters, even a telegram, to Denver (to the commune where, Jack and Mattie, my traveling companions on the final leg west whom I had met earlier in the spring on a different trip down to D.C., were staying). She sent more communications in early December saying that she was still coming to Los Angeles as well where we three stayed with a few artistic friends of Jack and Mattie’s. Cinema-crazed artistic friends, including one budding film director who, moreover, had great dope connections right into the heart of Mexico. This is where they would stay while I planned to push the hitchhike road north heading to San Francisco.

I once, in running through one of the scenes in this hitchhike road show, oh yah, it was the Neola scene, mentioned that in Angelica what you saw was what you got, what she said was what she meant, and both those were good things indeed. And so if I had thought about it a minute of course she was coming to California in January and staying with me for her two week break, and maybe longer. So when January came she contacted me though John and Mattie, who like I said were now staying with this very interesting experimental film-maker, David, in the Hollywood hills and canyons. I started back south to L.A. in order to meet her at the airport. From there I had it planned that we would go to Point Magoo and camp out like in the “old days” at an ocean front state park.

Needless to say, when I greeted her at LAX we both were all smiles, I was in more than all smiles mode, because I had been “stag” for a while and she was, well, fetching as always, or almost always. Here though is where I noticed that the road really is not for everyone. In Neola, and later getting on the bus back home in Omaha, poor Angelica looked pretty haggard but at the airport, well like I said, she was fetching.

And, guess what, she brought her sleeping bag that we got for her in a Lexington, Kentucky Army-Navy Store when we first seriously started on the road west. And the first thing she said about it was, referring to a little in-joke between us, “it fits two, in a pinch.” Be still my heart. We gathered up her stuff, did the airport exit stuff (easier in those days) and picked up the outside shuttle to the Hertz car rental terminal. We were jabbering away like crazy, but best of all, we were like, a little, those first days last summer back in that old-time Steubenville truck stop diner and cabin when I first met her.

Of course, part of the trip for her, part of what she went as far as she could with me on the hitchhike road for, was to get to California and see what it was all about, and what the ocean was all about since she was a heartland girl who had never seen the ocean before. When we got to Point Magoo she flipped out, she flipped out mostly at the idea that we would stay, could stay, right on the beach in front of the ocean. And just like a kid, just like I did when I was kid and saw the ocean, when she saw the Pacific, she jumped right in. Hell, she was so excited she almost got caught in a small riptide. I had to go drag her out. I won’t say we had fun every minute of those weeks acting out our ocean nomadic existence, but most minutes, and I could see that she felt the same way.

Naturally, as time drifted away toward her return flight date we talked more and more about what the future, if any, held in store for us. She was adamant about not going back on the road, she was adamant as well that she wanted to finish school and make something of herself. I had no serious defense against that practical wisdom. And, truthfully, I wasn’t, toward the end of her stay, pushing the issue, partially because even I could see that it made sense but also, we had had a “flare-up” over the Boston Joyell question (I am being polite here).

But it was more than that; the flat out, hungry truth was that I really didn’t know how to deal with a Midwestern what you see is what you get woman like Angelica. I was more used to virtuous Irish Catholic girls who drove me crazy as a kid getting me all twisted up about religion, about nice girls, and about duplicity when I found out what the real score was with this type of young girl/ woman later. I was also, and Joyell was the epitome of this type, totally in sync (well, as much as a man can be) with the Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of human relationships 24/7 kind of woman. And fatally attracted to them (and still am). This Angelica looked at things only a couple of ways, let’s work things out easy-like, heavens, let’s not analyze everything to the nth degree flipped me out. Angelica was a breath of fresh air and, maybe, maybe, about ten years later, and two divorces later to boot, I would have had that enough sense god gave geese to hold onto her with both hands, tightly, very tightly. But I was in my blue-pink search phase and not to be detoured.

Of course all this hard work of trying to understand where we stood put a little crack in our reason for being together in the first place. The search for, search for something. Maybe, for her, it was just that life minute at the ocean and then on to regular life minutes out in the thickets of the white picket fences. She never said it then in so many words but that seemed to be the aim. And to be truthful, although I was only just barely thinking about it at the time, as the social turmoil of the times got weird, diffuse, and began to evaporate things started to lose steam I had thoughts like that too, minute thoughts. As we were, seemingly, endlessly taking our one-sided beatings as those in charge started a counter-offensive (a counter-offensive still going on) people, good people, but people made of human clay nevertheless got tired of the this and that existence, even Joyell. Joyell of Harvard Square folksy, intellectual, abstract idealist, let’s-look-at-everything-from-twenty-two different angles, what is the meaning of relationships 24/7 was also weary and wary of what was next and where she fit into “square” society. Christ, enough of that, we know, or knew, that song too well.

A couple of days before Angelica was to leave, and on a day when the sun seemed especially bright, especially bright for then smog-filled Los Angeles January, and warm, not resident warm but Boston and Muncie warm, sat like two seals sunning ourselves in the glow of mother ocean she nudged me and asked me if I had a joint. Now Angelica liked a little vino now and then but I can’t recall her ever doing a joint (grass, marijuana, herb, ganja, whatever you call it in your neck of the woods). So this is new. The problem, although not a big one in ocean-side state park 1970 Southern California, was that I was not “holding.” No problem though, a few spots down the beach was an old well-traveled, kind of beat-up Volkswagen van that I knew, knew just as sure as I was standing on that white sand beach, was “holding.” I went over, asked around, and “bingo” two nice big joints came traveling with me back to our campsite. Oh, daddy, daddy out in the be-bop blue-pink night thank you brother van man. For just a minute, just that 1970 California minute, the righteous did inherit the earth.

Back at our camp site Angelica awaited the outcome of my quest, although she also wanted to wait until later, until the day’s sun started going down a bit more to go into that smoked-filled good night. When that later came Angelica was scared/ thrilled, as she tried to smoke the one I lit up for her and started coughing like crazy, but that was nothing then. Everybody, at least everybody I knew, went through that same baptism. But Jesus, did we get mellow, that stuff, as was most stuff then, was primo, not your ragweed bull stuff that ran the rounds later. And why should it have not been so as we were so close to the then sane Mexican border of those days to get the good stuff.

But all of this build-up over this dope scene is so much filler, filler in those days when if you didn’t at least take a pipe full (inhale or not, like it or not) you were a square “squared.” What the stuff did for Angelica, and through Angelica to me, got her to open up a little. No, not about family, or old boyfriends, or her “this and that” problems. No, but kind of deep, kind of deep somewhere that she maybe didn’t know existed. Deep as I had ever heard her before. She talked about her fate, the fate of the fates, about what was going on in the world, no, not politics; she was organically incapable of that. Mystics stuff, getting in touch with the sea homeland stuff, earth mother stuff too in a way. Dope-edged stuff sure but when she compared the splashing foam-flecked waves to some cosmic force that I forget how she put it (remember I was dope-addled as well) then for just that moment, just that moment when the old red-balled sun started to dip to the horizon on one of those fairly rare days when it met the ocean I swear that Angelica knew, knew in her heart, knew in her soul even, what the blue-pink American West dream stuff I had bombarded her with was all about. That was our moment, and we both knew it.

So when leaving came a couple of days later and we both knew, I think, as we packed up her things, including that well-used sleeping bag, we had come to a parting of the roads. As I put her stuff in the rental car she sweetly blurted out something I was also thinking, “I’ll always remember that night we made the earth under the cabin in Steubenville shake.” And I thought I bet she will, although she forgot the part about the making the roof of the cabin move too. And so there I was, waving as she drove off to her Angelica dreams. And I never saw her again.
*********
But enough of ancient thoughts, of ancient sea thoughts, and ancient sea loves because just now he saw that previously distant figure on the beach was none other than a young boy, a young boy of maybe six or seven, not older he was sure. About fifty yards away he stopped, as boys and girls will when confronted with the endless treasures of the sea, and was intently looking at some sea object although the old geezer could not make it out from his distance. What he could make out, make out very plainly, was that he was wearing a mustard yellow rain slicker (French’s mustard color not Guiden’s) complete with a Gloucester fisherman’s floppy rain hat of the same color and knee-deep rubber boots, black, of course. As they approached each other the old geezer noticed that the lad had that same determined sea walk that he had carried with him since childhood. The old geezer looked at the lad intensely, the young lad looked at the old geezer intensely, and they nodded as they passed each other. No words, no remarks on the nature of the day, the nature of the ocean, and the joys of ocean-ness brought forth by old King Neptune need be spoken between them. The nod, the ocean swell, and the ocean sound as the waves crashed almost to the sand beneath their feet, spoke for them. The torch had been passed.

Sunday, May 19, 2019

50 Years Gone The Father We Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack River Nights-Searching For The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- New Year’s Eve, 1976


50 Years Gone The Father We Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack River Nights-Searching For The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- New Year’s Eve, 1976 


By Seth Garth, known as Charles River Blackie for no other reason that he can remember at least than he slept along those banks, the Cambridge side and some raggedy ass wino who tried to cut him under the Anderson Bridge one night called him that and it stuck. Those wino-zapped bums, piss leaky tramps and poet-king hoboes all gone to some graven spot long ago from drink, drug, or their own hubris which they never understood gone and the moniker too.  

New Year’s Eve, 1977 

… he looked out from the ancient smudged sooted  back window (showing frigid glass crack slivers breakable to the touch and some rotten pane wood ) of his fourth floor single room sad sack, no elevator, long gone downhill from prosperous Victorian mayfair swells times brownstone ready for the wrecker’s’ ball, down the street, down Joy Street, down Beacon Hill Boston Joy Street, ironically named , as the late afternoon crowd of government workers clinging to their annual New Year’s holiday early release (at the discretion of their supervisors, if the day’s work was done, although they, the supervisors. were long gone at noontime) strolled by, ditto post-Christmas shoppers who had wisely waited until well after day after black death Christmas day  to bring back to Jordan’s or Filene’s those unwanted ties, toys, and bric-a-brac that inevitable arrived at that time each year, and watched wistfully as an early returning college student or two, bulging cloth book bags over their shoulders, trying to catch up on some recess-delayed study, headed a few streets over to school  as the town prepared  for its first First Night, an officially sanctioned chamber of commerce-style city booster event complete with usually reserved for the Fourth of  July shout-out fireworks to welcome in the new year, 1977.

Closer at hand he also observed across narrow Joy Street sad-eyed Saco Steve and beat Billy, Billy of no known moniker, moniker an important identifying mark against the million Billy and Bob lost soul combinations and something to give you the hobo, tramp bum good seal of approval  on some lonesome Route 66 road to nowhere, two wine-soaked winos, wine-soaked by this hour if he was any judge, across from his smudged sooted brownstone window. He stopped himself, as he began to judge their shabby low-rent existence, their ceaseless nickel and dime pan-handling, soup kitchen tour veteran, day labor existence mostly pearl-diving these days, pearl-diving washing dishes and whatnot over at the Park Plaza where the head  union guy, the crew picker, was a second cousin of  Billy’s who got him on  when they had big shot dinners in the big ballrooms and they, Billy and Steve, and the other guys too, mostly fellow winos or guys down on their luck, would take, as a personal bonus, all those half- full before diner wine glasses and empty them in waiting wine bottles before the glasses went into the racks and on to the conveyor belts. Billy, when he had hit bottom and hit joyless joy street had gotten him some work there and had showed him that trick of the trade.

Then he smirk chuckled realizing the immense slough of despond hypocrisy of that forming thought, the joy street hard luck thought, and of his own fast lane addictions, drugs, gambling, cigarettes, whores when he was in the clover, held at bay for the moment, as he continued his view of the lads appearing, as always, to be arguing over something from the sound of their voices that could be heard all the way up to his fourth floor digs. That argument would before long wind up on the floor below his where this pair, when not homeless street-bound, or Sally (Salvation Army), or Pine Street worthy, when not too far in rent arrears (like he was at the moment), kept a shabby flop, a flop not unlike his, single bed, mattress sagging from too many years of faithful addicted service (addicted, drugs, gambling, liquor, although not seemingly the new addiction fad, sex, for, as far as he knew and he knew for certain in his own case,  no women crossed the brownstone front door threshold, not that he had seen anyway, nor given the single-minded nature of the listed addictions matched to listed tenants was that likely, a woman, a woman’s wanting habits, were too distracting to trump such devotions), a left behind rumbled hard hospital pillow, pillow-cased (by him), probably gathered by some previous tenant from one of the about seventeen local hospitals that started just the other side of Cambridge Street, Joy Street downstream river flow into Cambridge Street, sheets, rumpled and he provided as well, a bureau, a cockroach-friendly cheap bureau until he stamped out every one of the veiled bastards, for his small personal wardrobe, a couple of changes of this and that, maybe three, along with the usual stash of undergarments, a small table for bric-a-brac (which he used for occasional writing)  and toilet articles, no cooking facilities (thankfully, thinking about the Saco Steve and Billy voices moving in on him), no frig, nothing personal on the walls, a common bathroom complete with some Victorian-era tub for the four residents of each floor, and done.

As he heard the rough-hewn gravel hoarse voices of  Saco Steve and Billy making their way up the stairs he threw on his best short- sleeved shirt (simple logic, and not picked up from some hobo, tramp, bum met on the road like a lot of good and useful information he had picked up over the years, most of those brethren would not have cared, understood, or comprehended one way or the other about such logic, they lived closer to the moment than even he did -usable all seasons, heat or cold), dark green plaid, Bermuda shorts plaid, something like that,  like what was fashionable about 1960 and mother –bought for the first day of school (bought, always bought, at the Bargie, new, a hometown cheap jack discount house before those kind of places became world franchised and spread out to serve the fellahin world), fresh second-hand from the Sally (Salvation Army, remember) bin over on Berkeley Street, his mauve sweater (also purchased at Sally’s  but earlier in the winter backing up the logic of that short -sleeved shirt decision), his waist-length denim jean jacket, not Sally-bought but bought when he was in the clover after hitting the perfecta at Suffolk a couple of months before and deciding,  deciding against all gambler’s reason, that he should buy it against the coming winter colds, threw his keys in his pants’ pocket and  headed down the stairs, waving and shouting happy new year to Steve and Billy, who embroiled in some argument about who was to buy the night’s Thunderbird, let his remark pass without comment, and out the door to investigate the first night officially-sanctioned activity. And to figure out how, with eight dollars (and a couple of buck in change which he never counted as money, in the chips or out) in his pocket and the tracks closed for the season until after the new year, he was going to come up with a week’s twenty-two dollar rent due in a couple of days, and being a couple of months in arrest, to keep the super from his door for a while.                        

As he walked up Cambridge Street pass monstrous (monstrous in taking good cheap cold- water flat tenement housing for his brethren and monstrous for its low –bidder unfriendly design that looked to his now faux- professional architect’s opinion like a space station platform against the generally Bulfinch décor of the surrounding area) City Hall where it veered into Tremont toward the Common he suddenly had an idea. Hell, why hadn’t he thought of it before. Constantly studying those racing forms up in that fourth floor cold- water flat, hell not even cold- water, not in the room anyway, he thought must had finally gotten the better of him. What better night to work the pan-handle, the pan-handle that a few years back he had worked into an art form of sorts before the chilly winds of the 70s, his own hubristic addictions, Susie,  and , hell, just some plain bad luck, had forced him into a few years of work, work doing a little of this and a little of that, before he got tired of that little of this and little of that, and focused all his energies on his “system,” his absolutely fool-proof system  of beating the ponies, the dogs, or whatever other animal wanted to run like hell for the paying customers, the guys, the guys like him, who all had their own sure-fire beat-down systems and who could live, like him, on easy street on the profits. Just now though he had to work on his approach, his new year’s festive crowd approach since he knew his act would be rusty starting out.               

Funny, he thought, as he worked up his approach in his head thinking about the finer points of the art form, most civilians, most people who have never been on the wrong side of the bum, or been just plain down on their luck and thus clueless about how to survive without about seventeen beautiful support systems around them to cushion the landing,  think pan-handling is just pan-handling, put out your hat or hand kind of polite, eyes glued down to the ground, maybe taking their hand and pretending to shake off  their dust, kind of “sorry to bother you,” and pitch for spare change, and mainly keep moving along playing the percentages by covering a lot of ground fast, or just staying put, maybe on the ground looking like some third world fellaheen refugee, blanket underneath (smart move against cold night and winter troubles), with all your worldly possessions, rucksack, some desperate towel to occasionally wipe off sweat or drool, your pitiful donut shop coffee cup with “donations” spelled wrong on it, about you. Jesus. 
Forget all that. That approach was strictly for winos and losers. It might have worked in about 1926 or 27 when people walking by, mayfair swells or just ordinary joes, working stiffs, actually looked at a person, any person, when something was spoken to them, even by a ragamuffin stranger, or actually took the time and looked down at the ground and thought poor guy there but the grace of god go I, or some such thing. Today a guy needed an angle, a reason for a passer-by to stop. And that is where his old friend’s advice, his hobo road friend Black River Whitey, told around a jungle campfire one night out in Indio, out in the California desert near the old Southern Pacific railroad tracks, about the tricks of the pan-handling trade came in handy. 

Black River Whitey simply said this- shout at or do some fake (maybe not fake when you get into it) mental flip out when asking for dough. Nothing over the edge, way over the edge, nothing that they would yell copper over or take a swing at you for just to take a swing at you and impress their friends that they could beat up on a stewball bum but firm. See the idea Whitey said was that those couple of dollars (hey, not quarters or chump change like that, not when you are running this scam, this is strictly dollar minimum stuff not that quarter for coffee gag) they practically threw at you to get you out of their faces was far easier for them to do than to guess at what your next move will be, especially a guy with his girl and he thinking of later in the night thoughts and maybe scoring and not wanting to go mano y mano with some half-hobo and, and, losing. Or some lonely girl, thinking who knows what she would be thinking, nothing good for her for sure, relieved to come out unscathed and just a couple of dollars poorer.  Beautiful, Black River Whitey, beautiful. But he thought as he walked toward the Common and geared up to his night’s work past a couple of half-frozen stoop winos spread out down on the ground, cup in front, across from Park Street Station any fool could see where winos and other lamos best stick with that cup in front of them and be glad of the few quarters that trickle their way.

Of course, Whitey also mentioned around that old Indio camp fire, that if you had time and had some dough to get some half-decent clothes, clothes like he had on now (only half-decent you don’t want to pitch hard luck stuff in a Brooks Brothers suit, not on the mean city streets anyway, save that pitch for sunnier days), you could work “the down on your luck” angle, needing an angel angle that worked with private social welfare organizations and single women especially. He knew the score on that one because he had, just young enough, just gentile shabby enough, just “rehab-able ” enough, and just civilized enough to pull it off made many dollars in tough times the last time they came his way a few years back (and a couple of friendly one night stands with some lonely women too, and not bad looking either, as a bonus).  But that was day-time magic, lunch time, and took precious time and that night with frozen temperatures in the air and distracted fast-moving people going from place to place the shout-out was his strategy of choice by default.                      

And his night of work, after a few off-hand rusty stumbles caused mainly by his not speaking loudly enough, not in your face enough, which he chalked up to his silent room exile over the previous few weeks, his studying the charts far into the night without speaking to others (a couple of nods to Billy and Steve, off- hand talk, mumbles really, when working some day labor shape-up) and a bunch of brush-offs (brush-offs that if he had it to do over again could have been avoided by simply keeping at it, something he forgot to do the first few times, including forget the cigarette or some other thing, maybe a piece of something they were eating,  angle, proving to himself yet again that this pan-handling was as art form and not for amateurs who just messed things up for those who knew how to work the thing),worked

Worked to the tune of thirty-two dollars (he, feeling good after a good night’s work, threw the odd coins, the quarters and dimes mainly, that people tried to feed him to a couple of guys who were ground bound working the cheap jack coffee cup racket), about six packs worth of cigarettes of all kinds ( Black River Whitey always said if they pleaded no dough ask for cigarettes, or something, but keep asking, real good advice he learned again that night), a least six belts of high- shelf booze (Haig & Haig, Chivas from the tastes) from no dough pleaders with a flask at their hip to help keep the chill off, a couple of joints (to be saved for cooler, maybe a stray woman share with, times) from lingering 1960s freak-types still popping up occasionally on the Common rehashing old times , and he thought, an offer to stay at some woman’s house for the night, although the booze might have been taking his head over by then. (Besides he was still half-pining for Susie, Susie who had up and left him with her wanting habits intact, her now little white picket fence, kids, and dog dreams, when he decided he would rather do a little of this and that than work the nine to five numbness.)  Now if he could only keep that dough ready for the rent and not bet on some foolish new year’s college football game or something before then he might be able to work on that sure-fire betting system of his in the comfort of his room and then really be on easy street.          

Obama Fundraisers-Turned-AmbassadorsAre Back to Make It Rain for Biden On the heels of a big-money fundraiser hosted by Comcast’s top government affairs executive, Joe Biden’s recently-made-official presidential campaign has announced another ritzy affair, hosted by former Ambassador James Costos.


Obama Fundraisers-Turned-AmbassadorsAre Back to Make It Rain for Biden
On the heels of a big-money fundraiser hosted by Comcast’s top government affairs executive, Joe Biden’s recently-made-official presidential campaign has announced another ritzy affair, hosted by former Ambassador James Costos. A slew of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fundraisers will now raise money for Obama’s vice president, Biden, at Costos’ Los Angeles home on May 8.  Biden’s campaign announced a huge $6.3 million fundraising haul in the first 24 hours after he announced his campaign on Thursday, topping first-day totals of presidential contenders Beto O’Rourke and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.). The press release only listed the average online donation, $41, but not the average overall donation, which is definitely higher. By some calculations, Biden raised at least $3.3 million offline. It costs $2,800 to enter the May 8 event, and if you raise $10,000, you can become a host. Among the hosts are four major fundraisers for President Obama’s 2012 campaign who were later rewarded with ambassadorships to Denmark, Hungary, Spain, and the United Nations.     More

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME US Illegally Evicts Protectors From Venezuelan Embassy

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

US Illegally Evicts Protectors From Venezuelan Embassy
Today, law enforcement agents broke into the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C., and arrested the four remaining members of the Embassy Protection Collective. “We denounce these arrests, as the people inside were there with our permission, and we consider it a violation of the Vienna Conventions,” Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ron said.  For 36 days, the protectors had lived in the embassy to shield it from a raid by U.S. authorities working in concert with opponents of Venezuela’s lawfully elected president, Nicolás Maduro. Since U.S. officers had refused to allow food into the embassy, only four of the some 50 members of the collective had stayed in order to conserve supplies.   More

Thursday May 23 STANDOUT FOR BLACK LIVES Macintosh HD:Users:emmy:Desktop:IMG_5609.jpg Ashmont T Station Plaza, 5:30-6:30 pm And Every fourth Thursday April-Oct. * Spread the Word * All Are Welcome * Hold BLM banners and signs, Hand out Fliers Dorchester People for Peace https://www.facebook.com/DorchesterPeopleforPeace * www.dotpeace.org Contact: DPP 617-282-3783