In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-The Lonesome Hobo” Series -“The Bay Street Night”-
As he walked toward the womb bay he could just barely see the fogged-bemused dim spot Alcatraz search lights, eternal search lights against some phantom prison breaks like that search light, or that rock, was what held a man, any man, in thrall to his lesser instincts. His couple of minutes in jail had shaken him up enough to never want to test the outer edge of that theory, or come even close. Spending a few hours, maybe half a day, with stinking winos, pissed over, surly and not just before the judge, begging for a Tokay fix, or Thunderbird if you had it, bumming cigarettes or papers to make their own Bull Durham coffin nails, stinking, earth sweat stinking from some Gilroy onion patch or the fields down south mex braceros picked up for fighting or being mex, who knows, an odd con man or hustler, a street hustler, who worked a wrong john, an unprotected pimp daddy on those occasions when the irate citizens were demanding blood for some foul deed, some tough guy yeggs and assorted armed robbers wised him up to that road. And so the fret walk.
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th
Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for
something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that
had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or
some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a
name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet
Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a
junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in
flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on
every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first
used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane
journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will
crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)
Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax
player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest
brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have
known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat
exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China
seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard
achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on
money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for
the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you
will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at
home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being,
hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid
stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man
caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the
world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings.
Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out
on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North
Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the
fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy
junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs
and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’
coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing
reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling
out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my
brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about
that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at
a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory
two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an
event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well
and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers,
connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to
trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on came calling looking for the “word.” So even
Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave
that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan
Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel
book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel
brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his
crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place
like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).
Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves
generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the
creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally
settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and
anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want
to yell about here).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then
add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories
of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex
and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si,
Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary
corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled
park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a
tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright
event, just mentioned. Markin was the
vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack
call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs, who
got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there
was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of
years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or
dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the
local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural
days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of
Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran
wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major
towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very
different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of
a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book
which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail
since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which
would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking
to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early
1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that
book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and
hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best
part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by
hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going
high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying
unsettled for a while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and
other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that
was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not
always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first
back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into
the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more
years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty
Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from
today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly
bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and
pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex,
Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin
included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung
around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money
fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as
anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s
goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger”
takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not
the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when
the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode nay Friday or
Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack
when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was
what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on
forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor
corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from
the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and
that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was
as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and
poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the
“midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would
have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk
Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense
was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous
lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against
him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would
confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the
social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise.
That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about
ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked
him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy
life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae
for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get
out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to
folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still
doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny
Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and
his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956
which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less
Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that
they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road.
They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about
some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a
mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my
brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown
up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he
had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some
grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the
base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring.
So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure
on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several
times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was
having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping
almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper
scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got
the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the
bug to you.
***********
…walking, always walking , never, at least long time never, just running frantically down some stairs, pulling the keys out of his jeans on the fly, wrestling the front door open and jumping into the front seat of some souped-up, some Stewball Stu zen auto mechanic to the world, year old (broken in, see) 1949 Hudson, but always just walking down Larkin Street to the bay, ‘Frisco bay for the interested, to flush out his brain against the japan currents, against the pacific squalls, against the bay fogs, or whatever was against handy. (Stewball Stu from back in Olde Saco, podunk Maine days, king of the chicken runs and max daddy of the streets ever since he took out some Farmer Brown from Arundel overgrown son’s souped-up Dodge back in 1945. Blew him off the Galway Road in nothing flat and later when he took on all comers when things moved to early morning deserted Seal Rock down at the far end of Olde Saco Beach away from prying cop and irate citizen eyes as well. He had been there that night, and later, riding shotgun, scared shotgun, in the passenger seat so he knew Stu was not blowing smoke about his exploits but that ,those Stu stories, were for another time.)
This night his always walking was to figure out how much longer he was going to have to wait around this damn old ‘Frisco town for some shipping clerk’s job down at the dock at the other end of the Embarcadero to open up so he could make some dough, pay off Carol, Allen, and Bill and blow some transcontinental dough with Stewball Stu on some lesser version of that dream 1949 Hudson and finally blow this now old tired out ‘Frisco town. His ticket was up here after a few mishaps (a couple of small “vag” busts for sleeping over in Golden Gate Park without a permit, some damn tent fee permit , jesus, was that all that they had to do over there. Down on the Embarcadero you could hardly walk late at night without falling over some stumblebum drunk, or guy down on his luck, and no cop ever bothered you. Jesus. More serious, a possession, a weed possession bust, for smoking some righteous mex herb, gold, in public. Thirty days suspended because he had been young, well-spoken, and not regular district court traffic surly before the judge. Jesus. So he needed the dock dough to break his string of bad luck and flee this burg, but he needed that clerk’s job, arranged by Bill through his father’s connections with guys down at the wharves who needed a guy who could do the shipping paper work fast and not steal everything not nailed down on the docks , to come through, needed it bad just then. And so the fret walk. As he walked toward the womb bay he could just barely see the fogged-bemused dim spot Alcatraz search lights, eternal search lights against some phantom prison breaks like that search light, or that rock, was what held a man, any man, in thrall to his lesser instincts. His couple of minutes in jail had shaken him up enough to never want to test the outer edge of that theory, or come even close. Spending a few hours, maybe half a day, with stinking winos, pissed over, surly and not just before the judge, begging for a Tokay fix, or Thunderbird if you had it, bumming cigarettes or papers to make their own Bull Durham coffin nails, stinking, earth sweat stinking from some Gilroy onion patch or the fields down south mex braceros picked up for fighting or being mex, who knows, an odd con man or hustler, a street hustler, who worked a wrong john, an unprotected pimp daddy on those occasions when the irate citizens were demanding blood for some foul deed, some tough guy yeggs and assorted armed robbers wised him up to that road. And so the fret walk.
He laughed as he minute fret pause looked up and saw a couple of kids, really just kids, maybe sixteen, no more, wobbly, walking across Bay Street as he made his own turn onto the street, one with a bottle ready to be handed to the other, and from the look of it Tokay, the winos’ choice, and the“choice” of those too young to buy their own and hence resorting to some wino-snagged bought and that was what they got. He bet that the wino, in exchange for that courtesy, right now was sitting down in some Embarcadero back street, maybe Third, or in some Mission Street flop, room made up of bed, bureau and chair, not much else, no memory pictures on the walls, memory pictures in fact banished, if he was in the chips and not too far behind on his rent, was sipping on his own bottle of nectar Tokay, and that wino too maybe passing it around to his jungle campfire brethren.
He remembered his own virgin voyage down that gofer road. He, and a schoolboy corner boy, Spider, from back up in Olde Saco, had gotten in that corner boy’s souped- up 1939 Plymouth and driven to stardust Boston, down by the Commons, in the early 1940s looking for beat (although he would not have called it that then but that was the only unnamed name for the feeling, that beat down feeling, looking for what they had heard was a new breeze blowing in this wicked old world, hell, mainly looking for beat chicks away from put-off prim and prissy Gallic (French-Canadian forbears from up in Gaspe mostly) Catholic girls that ran amok in that town if the truth was known.
Of course like in Frisco town in those days every hustler, con man (and a few women), and everybody who had sense enough to cash in on the rube explosion was on the Common on any given Friday or Saturday teen break-out night ready to do business, to do wrong gee business. That night he and Spider had been walking through the Common working their way to Charles Street when a young guy, maybe twenty-five, came up to them and asked them if they wanted him to get them some booze to while away the evening (this was the part of the ‘40s before dope, weed, mary jane was the elixir of choice). Sure thing, brother, thanks. A bottle of Southern Comfort, large. This guy, explaining the city rules of the road, said how about a bottle for him. They said whatever was right and anted up the dough. About ten minutes later the guy came back with a brown bag with a bottle sticking out of the top. Thanks brother, as he left. They went over by the Public Gardens under the pond bridge to get a quick swig. Surprise, surprise that bottle was filled with plain old ordinary water. Yah, rubes. Then he remembered his own oath when it came his time to play teen gofer. He would always remember that night and while most times he would do the chore gratis, except when he was down on his luck and needed to pull that scam, he always gave what was asked for. He wished he could say that about some other things but such is life.
He looked back one last time as those boys veered off into their good night as he thought, thought too for just a minute about Sammy, Sid, Andre, and the Spider from back in his own old Southern Comfort days in sitting in front river , sitting in front ocean Olde Saco a few years back, and of some wino pete who got their Friday night booze from LaCroix’s Package Store in order to make them “rum brave,” girl-flirting rum brave, for the dance over at the Starlight Ballroom where, god, Benny, Benny Goodman was playing and of that Benny-blessed night, he had finally twisted old Sheila around his finger, if you know what he meant. Sheila (Capet) who broke the death of sex put-off prim and prissy Gallic Catholic girls that ran amok mode (keep this between us okay) and went, one Friday night, down to Seal Rock, the local lovers’ lane, in the back of Spider’s Plymouth with him and made him smile. And it was that same Sheila who, later, gave him the skinny about what was said on those school day Monday mornings before school girls’ “lav” talks of who did what with whom, and who didn’t. And the dids outnumbered the didn’ts. An earful. Women.
As he walked some more down Bay toward the chocolate smell of Beach he began taking that ancient thought out of his head as he passed the Red Fez for the ninety-ninth time (about ninety of them straight into the front door and low-shelf scotches and scored teas and, on occasion, bindles for the soul) since he hit ‘Frisco a couple of months back with some jack, a sweet girl, Lulu, all blonde, Iowa corn-fed and willing, and some idea that he would write the great American novel, a great American novel, or an American novel (depending on his mood), if he could just get his head in the right place, be in the right place, and have his freaking ‘Frisco golden-gate rust colored muse , his now completely fog-bound muse, working his corner.
Nada, nothing, no go, got it. And then like something from out of some mid-1940s film noir movie where an unnamed band, unnamed until you read the credits to find out why you spent the rest of the film with that sound in your brain, fired up the night in the middle of the movie out of nowhere, he heard a sound, a high white note, blown pure by some unseen sex tenor sax(not a Johnny Hodges, Duke’s’ boy Johnny , all fluffy around the edges pure, all satin and silk with a bow on it pure, mulatto pure, maybe black and tan pure , to keep the lid on for the paying customers, the paying white customers, the uptown mayfair swells out for weekly kicks, a little spindle tea to take the edge off, the cabaret café society crowd, a backing Billie swaying lilt crowd, who would freak out, who would call every variety of hell down on the player’s head, at what was played mex opium dream or tea high back to proud earth mother Africa times after hours) now coming steamed, sweaty jungle-steamed, out toward the bay from deep within the Red Fez (blown, he knew from other nights, from other highs, blown deep in the bowels of the club up against the back bar by angel Cody Reed, black, black as a starless night, black who devoured negro and had not regrets, blasting safe, fashionable negro safe, blasting flash, wide-brimmed white fedora, open shirt, white lapel suit, midnight sunglasses, negro pimp walking daddy and pink Cadillac with one hip-hop note, blasting back to primordial black Africa mother homeland, blasting apart first, middle and last passages in a foreign land, blasting, cool as a cucumber, plantation miseries, plantation lashes, blasting too jim crow, get back in your place, brother , old ‘Frisco Mister James Crow.
A guy on the other corner, dark, brown, brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes, brown soul too, angel mex fellaheen (wearing a kind of out of fashion zoot suit looking a little frayed on the edges, maybe from L.A., maybe a little too much loco weed down south, maybe too some hard-ass bracero up-bringing, father and mother working sweated lettuce, or you name the produce , fields, and then back to some brown shack, and sixteen kids, jesus), maybe a flip, a Filipino, benny high, tea high more likely (but high, high from an expert eye high) was be-bopping words, night, fright, fight, bite, throwing out one after another trying, trying like hell, to match his palabras (some en espanol, some in English a tough task) with that Cody Reed high white note that he was chasing, finally catching some of it, some vicious moloch fight to blast words and notes, some shake the bracero dust off of himself in the fellahin world that he was in his dreams fighting to break out of , making words slowly to match that floating note and passed . In the end he was not successful, reached for something, something for his head, in his pocket, threw it in his mouth and moved along Bay Street.
Nice try brother but it will probably take some gringo fellaheen warrior, some mill-town boy all river torrent bound, all fretting about his place in the sun, fretting about damn some damn woman-child or woman hell (his own F-C or Irish version of that Olde Saco madness, those prissy girls run amok are universal), fretting about his corner boy muses, some improbable combination of hulk hero all muddied from schoolboy playing fields but also library-bound reading Homer, Plato, Jack London, Thomas Wolfe, and the boys, listening to be-bop, endlessly humming some refrain in the river night, be-bop, be-bop, be-bop before be-bop bopped, endlessly searching for the jail breakout night on forsaken frozen wind-swept ships, in midnight veering route 6, 66, 666 cars driven by golden boy cowboy punk desperados, and driving million word exploits. Or it will probably be some street bandito from New Jack City, some prophet gangster risen all in white, all in holy garb, from among the pimps, the whores working those mean streets for nickels and dimes, the seventy-seven varieties of hustlers, the winos stealing dough and wine from each other or from young rubes, con men (and women, okay) hustling constantly hustling and looking out of forlorn drugstore windows from forlorn red vinyl stools, guys in need of fixes, yeggs, second- story men, drifters, grifters, midnight sifters, all the angels of the dark night. Yah, a street bandito risen in the night, beat beatified. Or some fag kid (sorry queer, with queer shoulderings against the storm , fag slang from corner boy Olde Saco hazy nights) from Hoboken, maybe Paterson, some death mill-town anyway, too small for his one million ideas and his two million curiosities in an age that banished curiosity, a slightly off-kilter kid who sang kaddish, or maybe better plainsong, yah, plainsong against the death-brought night, against all the not straight eyes forward, against all the banishments, yah, some fag kid with time on his hands, to capture the words to the high white note. Meanwhile that note then floated down though the jazz-infiltrated streets pass wino jungles and wharf rough trade taverns to the bay and mixed and matched with the foam-flecked waves, the search light of the eternal rock, and his dreams. He had an idea…
