Once Again On The Dog Soldiers Of The Vietnam War Class Of 1969-When Frank Jackman Went Down In The Mud Refusing To Go To Vietnam-And Survived To Tell The Tale

Once Again On The Dog Soldiers Of The Vietnam War Class Of 1969-When Frank Jackman Went Down In The Mud Refusing To Go To Vietnam-And Survived To Tell The Tale

By Frank Jackman  

[As some readers know Frank Jackman the subject of this sketch is a writer at this publication. Full disclosure taken care of on that score I was in a quandary about who should write the piece which concerns Frank’s actions in the military back in the 1960s during the height of the Vietnam War. The natural selection would have been Sam Lowell or Si Lannon both men who knew the details of the story intimately once Frank, a few years after the experience in maybe 1976 they say, felt he could tell the story to guys he had grown up with. They were, having also served in Vietnam, as perplexed as Scribe who had just passed away down in Mexico had been when he was in Vietnam and had heard what Frank been up to back home.

Moreover Frank, after years, decades really of being quite about his story just like a lot of his fellow veterans who did go to Vietnam taking a page from the way their fathers had dealt with their World War II experiences, had when he “came out of the closet” for his own reasons retold them the story one night a few months ago when they were having a few drinks after a movie. This all led me to think that somebody else had to do the job, had to tell the story from a fresh perspective but who knew enough about the military from his own experience to not have to run to Sam or Si every minute to see what this or that meant. As it turned out the dime turned to one Francis James Jackman to tell the tale, to get the nod. Greg Green]  

On Vietnam War Class Of 1969

Funny these days, this year every other day it seems we are being inundated with 50^th anniversary commemorations of a hell of a lot of events. A lot of events in rapid succession for those of us who are of the Generation of ’68 who won our spurs that year. Starting almost as a portent of things to come the year started out with the anniversary of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam with a combination of North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese National Liberation Front fighters trying to decisively kick ass, kick the foreign presence out of their beloved country. Not succeeding in a direct sense, the war would drag on one way or another for another seven years but making it clear that there was no “light at the end of the tunnel” for the cocky American military commanders and politicians to crow about. Almost as an afterthought it forced the humiliating resignation of one Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States (POSTUS in twitter-speak), and war-monger in chief. Then the other shoe seemingly dropped on all our best dreams for a newer world. First Martin, then Bobby. The horror of the Chicago Democratic National Convention which made the whole world watch while the country turned in on itself. Picked sides, a process which still not has abated as we step into a cold civil war which on a dime under the current regime could turn hot in an instant, and then the final humiliation of Richard Milhous Nixon, a confirmed Cold War warrior as POSTUS.      

So yes, plenty for the Generation of ’68, those still standing and those who still give a damn about those bloated youthful dreams to think about but today I want to speak of another generation. The Vietnam War Class of 1969 which I am a proud member of although not the way you might think. This remembrance comes by virtue of running into an extraordinary number of fellow veterans, not all Veterans for Peace or others who still adamantly keep their anti-war credentials out front and in public, whose time of service in Vietnam was somehow related to the year 1969. There must have been something in that period, there was in the aftermath of Tet and no victory, which clicked with me since it coincided with my time as well. I have until the last few years never spoken much about my trials and tribulations about my service during the Vietnam War period.

Kind of had done my own version of what got me to write this piece. The direct impetus has been a remark made by a couple of Marine Vietnam veterans who had known each through their wives for a dozen years yet never mentioned that they had both been in Vietnam. Another is a remark made by a fellow peace walker on the Maine Peace Walk in 2017 who had gone through two marriages without his now ex-wives knowing that he had been in Vietnam. It was that kind of war. Even for those who resisted.

Hell, it was only few years ago and only when she asked that my wife, Cindy, found out about the details of my own struggles with the war although she knew I had been in the Army, and that I had been a military resister. Yes, my class of 1969 story involves my going to the stockade for over a year (not including times during the actual year and one half of the struggle when I was confined to base, barracks, orderly room) for what amounted to refusing to go to Vietnam as an 11 Bravo, as an infantryman, as what we called “cannon fodder” after I had been given orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transit to Vietnam.  I won’t go into the details of that experience for this sketch is about the class and not my personal travails other than this. I was never proud of anything more in my life than what I did with my “fifteen minutes” of fame and still feel that way as I hope the reader understands.  

Maybe I was quiet about my experiences since afterwards, and still somewhat today I think I made a mistake despite my personal pride in what I did, a political mistake in not going to Vietnam. Among other things 1969, maybe before but certainly post-Tet 1968 when even guys in the White House and Pentagon knew the game was up (they just dragged it out not wanting to be the guys who “lost” Vietnam a not unimportant consideration among that crowd), was a time when the American Army at home and in Vietnam started to see some serious blow-back from the ranks about what the hell they were fighting and dying for and getting kind of surly about it too. The more anecdotal evidence from guys who were there after they got back to the real world with everything from FTA on their helmets to not saluting officers( worse , worse for the officers, of fragging officers) to not going far when called to go on patrol to going AWOL in county to doing bags of dope to all kinds of individual acts of subordination putting them in jail harm’s way in infamous Long Binh Jail (LBJ after the POTUS), especially from that cohort that I have honed in on, guys from the post-Tet era the more I think I could have raised more than individual heartburn among the brass. Although half the brass at Fort Devens wanted to chew my ass in a grinder and tried to ship me out under armed guard but were folded by a judge in the Federal Court in Boston who granted a Temporary Restraining Order just as they were about to come after me. Even stateside I ran into guys who having done their tour in Vietnam were so angry about the deal they had been dealt they wound up in the Special Detachment Unit where I spent my non-stockade time for discipline.  So, yes, over the years I think I got a little quiet about the matter.   

Maybe ten, twelve years ago I started coming around Veterans for Peace, around after the second Iraq War when I had seen them on Armistice Day parading with their patented white on black dove embroidered flags flying in the wind going up Tremont Street in Boston and asked about why they were being separated from the main body of the parade by police motorcyclists, you know the average American Legion, VFW crowd that at least then formed the core of the march. The guy I talked said that the reason they couldn’t march with the main body of the parade was those guys didn’t want peace flags and “peaceniks” in their parade. Okay, my kind of people, sign me, well let me talk a while and then sign me up. The rest is history.

Well not quite because remember I am talking about the military class of 1969 which I am a part of. Over the years I found that despite my different Army experience that the guys who joined VFP were not all that different from me, from my growing up experiences and from my reluctance to resist the draft which I had thought about (although not Canada, not exile, I loved, love this country it is the damn governments I hate). Take Drew from Ohio who never told his two wives that he had been in Vietnam in 1969. Take David from out in Washington state, out in the Eastern Washington farm country part, apple country, who went into the Army in 1969 because that was the only way he was going to get to college. Take Peter from the corner boys down outside Philly who dropped out of college in 1968 and decided to join in 1969 to avoid the draft. Take Donald from Omaha who had never seen a black guy in person until the Army but who in ‘Nam, that is what they are entitled to call it not me, was as tight as tight could be with Tiny from South Side, Chicago until he got blown away saving Donald’s ass and whose name now is forever etched on a black granite down in Washington and forever in Donald’s heart. Take ‘Doc’ who in order to get his medical school bills paid got hoodwinked into going Army and wound up in a field hospital for the casualty-heavy 101^st Airborne Brigade. Sure, a ton of guys did what they did and came home and forgot it or tried to. Sure, a bunch of guys were proud of what they did and will let you know about it. But know this there were a bunch of  guys in that Class of 1969 who got “religion” on the questions of war and peace-and haven’t forgotten about that hard learned lesson.      

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Larry Hoover

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Larry Hoover



http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html



A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month 

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

HOOVER, LARRY

The Bolshevik Revolution and Women’s Liberation

Workers Vanguard No. 1107	10 March 2017

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Bolshevik Revolution and Women’s Liberation

(Quote of the Week)

On International Women’s Day in Petrograd in March 1917, a mass outpouring of working women sparked the revolutionary upheaval that culminated in the Russian October Revolution. The smashing of capitalist class rule brought unheard-of gains for women in all areas of public and private life. Despite economic backwardness and poverty, the young Soviet workers government sought to undermine the material foundations of women’s oppression, which is rooted in the institution of the family. The Bolsheviks understood that complete social equality could only be attained with the abolition of classes in a world socialist society. In a 1920 commemoration of International Working Women’s Day, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin underscored the fact that the fight for women’s liberation is inseparable from the fight for international socialist revolution.

Capitalism combines formal equality with economic and, consequently, social inequality. That is one of the principal features of capitalism, one that is deliberately obscured by the supporters of the bourgeoisie, the liberals, and is not understood by petty-bourgeois democrats. This feature of capitalism, incidentally, renders it necessary for us in our resolute fight for economic equality openly to admit capitalist inequality, and even, under certain conditions, to make this open admission of inequality the basis of the proletarian statehood (the Soviet Constitution).

But even in the matter of formal equality (equality before the law, the “equality” of the well-fed and the hungry, of the man of property and the propertyless), capitalism cannot be consistent. And one of the most glaring manifestations of this inconsistency is the inequality of women. Complete equality has not been granted even by the most progressive republican, and democratic bourgeois states.

The Soviet Republic of Russia, on the other hand, at once swept away all legislative traces of the inequality of women without exception, and immediately ensured their complete equality before the law.

It is said that the best criterion of the cultural level is the legal status of women. This aphorism contains a grain of profound truth. From this standpoint only the dictatorship of the proletariat, only the socialist state could attain, as it has attained, the highest cultural level. The new, mighty and unparalleled stimulus given to the working women’s movement is therefore inevitably associated with the foundation (and consolidation) of the first Soviet Republic—and, in addition to and in connection with this, with the Communist International.

Since mention has been made of those who were oppressed by capitalism, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, it must be said that the Soviet system, and only the Soviet system, guarantees democracy. This is clearly shown by the position of the working class and the poor peasants. It is clearly shown by the position of women.

But the Soviet system is the last decisive struggle for the abolition of classes, for economic and social equality. Democracy, even democracy for those who were oppressed by capitalism, including the oppressed sex, is not enough for us.

It is the chief task of the working women’s movement to fight for economic and social equality, and not only formal equality, for women. The chief thing is to get women to take part in socially productive labour, to liberate them from “domestic slavery,” to free them from their stupefying and humiliating subjugation to the eternal drudgery of the kitchen and the nursery.

This struggle will be a long one, and it demands a radical reconstruction both of social technique and of morals. But it will end in the complete triumph of communism.

—V.I. Lenin, “International Working Women’s Day” (4 March 1920)

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Abdullah Ka'bah, (aka Jeff Fort)

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Abdullah Ka'bah, (aka Jeff Fort)
 
 
http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html
 
A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month 

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now! 

KA'BAH, ABDULLAH MALIK (AKA JEFF FORT)

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Peggy Seeger's "Sing About These Hard Times"

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Peggy Seeger's "Sing About These Hard Times"

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.



SING ABOUT THESE HARD TIMES
words and music and © 2003 Peggy Seeger
administered by harmony music, ltd.

Chorus: Sing about these hard times,
Sing all about these hard old times,
Sing about these hard times
When will the good times roll?

I worked hard, I played my part
That's what I did right from the start
But these hard times are gonna break my heart
When will the good times roll? (chorus)

Life gets harder every year
Those with the least have the most to fear
Those with the most just don't care
When will the good times roll? (chorus)

The big corporations got no home
And the men on the Hill got hearts of stone
They worry my life like a dog with a bone
When will the good times roll? (chorus)

They moved my job to Mexico
Where the children slave and the pay is low
How I'm gonna live I just don't know
When will the good times roll? (chorus)

O, the world is ill divided
Those who work most are the least provided
& When they got a war they want US to fight it
When will the good times roll? (chorus)

Created for an event at the Asheville Arts Museum on March 23, 2003, this song was originally entitled 'Sing about Those Hard Times'. That version dealt with the late 1920s and the Depression because the occasion was a celebration of the work of the great North American artist Ben Shahn (1898-1969). There were rooms and rooms of his paintings, drawing and photographs. I updated the song to the hard times we are going through now and changed Those to These. If you are interested in using folksong tunes as a resource for writing new songs you might take a peek at the song "Down to the River to Pray", popularised in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? There are most definitely resonances between that tune and mine.

The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support G.I. Voice

The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support G.I. Voice    

By Frank Jackman

The late Peter Paul Markin had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace the hard way. Had before that baptism accepted half-knowingly (his term) against his better judgment induction into the Army when his “friends and neighbors” at his local draft board in North Adamsville called him up for military service back in hard-shell hell-hole Vietnam War days when the country was coming asunder, was bleeding from all pores around 1968. Markin had had some qualms about going into the service not only because the reasoning given by the government and its civilian hangers-on for the tremendous waste of human and material resources had long seemed preposterous but because he had an abstract idea that war was bad, bad for individuals, bad for countries, bad for civilization in the late 20^th century. Was a half-assed pacifist if he had though deeply about the question, which he had not.

But everything in his blessed forsaken scatter-shot life pushed and pushed hard against his joining the ranks of the draft resisters at the Boston sanctuary for that cohort, the Arlington Street Church, whom he would hear about and see every day then as he passed on his truck route which allowed him to pay his way through college. Markin had assumed that since he was not a Quaker, Shaker, Mennonite, Brethren of the Common Life adherent but rather a bloody high-nosed Roman Catholic with their slimy “just war” theory that seemed to justify every American war courtesy of their leading American Cardinal, France Spellman, that he could not qualify for conscientious objector status on that basis. And at the time that he entered the Army that was probably true even if he had attempted to do so. Later, as happened with his friend, Jack Callahan, he could at least made the case based on the common Catholic upbringing.  Right then though he was not a total objector to war but only of what he saw in front of him, the unjustness of the Vietnam War.

That was not the least of his situation though. That half-knowingly mentioned above had been overridden by his whole college Joe lifestyle where he was more interested in sex, drink, and rock and roll (the drugs would not come until later), more interested in bedding women than thinking through what he half-knew would be his fate once he graduated from college as the war slowly dragged on and his number was coming up. Moreover there was not one damn thing in his background that would have given pause about his future course. A son of the working-class, really even lower than that the working poor a notch below, there was nobody if he had bothered to seek some support for resistance who would have done so. Certainly not his quiet but proud ex-World War II Marine father, not his mother whose brother was a rising career Army senior NCO, not his older brothers who had signed up as a way to get out of hell-hole North Adamsville, and certainly not his friends from high school half of whom had enlisted and a couple from his street who had been killed in action over there. So no way was an Acre boy with the years of Acre mentality cast like iron in his head about servicing if called going to tip the cart that way toward straight out resistance.         

Maybe he should have, at least according to guys he met in college like Brad Fox and Fritz Taylor, or guys who he met on the hitchhike road going west like Josh Breslin and Captain Crunch (his moniker not real name which Josh could not remember). The way they heard the story from Markin after he got out of the Army, after he had done his hell-hole thirteen months in Vietnam as an infantryman, twice wounded, and after he had come back to the “real” world was that on about the third day in basis training down in Fort Jackson in South Carolina he knew that he had made a mistake by accepting induction. But maybe there was some fate-driven reason, maybe as he received training as an infantryman and he and a group of other trainees talked about but did not refuse to take machine-gun training, maybe once he received orders for Vietnam and maybe once he got “in-country” he sensed that something had gone wrong in his short, sweet life but he never attempted to get any help, put in any applications, sought any relief from what was to finally crack him. That, despite tons of barracks anti-war blather on his part from Fort Jackson to Danang.     

Here’s the reason though why the late Peter Paul Markin’s story accompanies this information about G.I. rights even for those who nowadays enter the military voluntarily, as voluntarily as any such decision can be without direct governmental coercion. Markin, and this part is from Josh Breslin the guy he was closest to toward the end, the guy who had last seen him in the States before that fateful trip to Mexico, to Sonora when it all fell apart one day, had a very difficult time coming back to what all the returnees called the “real” world after Vietnam service. Had drifted to drug, sex and rock and roll out on the West Coast where Josh had first met him in San Francisco until he tired of that, had started to have some bad nights.

Despite the bad nights though he did have a real talent for writing, for journalism. Got caught up in writing a series about what would be later called the “brothers under the bridge” about guys like him down in Southern California who could not adjust to the real world after ‘Nam and had tried to keep body and soul together by banding together in the arroyos, along the railroad tracks and under the bridges and creating what would today be called a “safe space.”

Markin’s demons though were never far from the surface. Got worse when he sensed that the great wash that had come over the land during the counter-cultural 1960s that he had just caught the tail-end had run its course, had hit ebb tide. Then in the mid-1970s to relieve whatever inner pains were disturbing him he immersed himself in the cocaine culture that was just rearing its head in the States. That addiction would lead him into the drug trade, would eventually lead him as if by the fateful numbers to sunny Mexico, to lovely Sonora way where he met his end. Josh never found out all the details about Markin’s end although a few friends had raised money to send a detective down to investigate. Apparently Markin got mixed up with some local bad boys in the drug trade. Tried to cut corners, or cut into their market. One day he was found in a dusty back street with two slugs in his head. He lies down there in some unknown potter’s field mourned, moaned and missed until this very day.  

Oh what might have been if he had sought out help in attempting to work out the better angels of his nature before all hell broke loose around his too futile head.  

Bernie’s Revenge- With Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” In Mind

Bernie’s Revenge- With Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep” In Mind  

By Seth Garth 

[Bernie, O., we will avoid his last name since he has recently retired from the force and we will let him enjoy his peace, after twenty-five of decent and honorable service. The “force” for those who are clueless any police department but here the Bay City Police Department a comfortable California seaside town as its name would indicate, although not as sleepy a town as the seaside designation would connote, That last phrase about Bernie, we can skip the “O” now that we can without rancor leave him to his peace was at one time up for grabs. Had been challenged back when he had been on the force maybe five years in the days before the war (World War II) when anything went in the fair city from gambling, dope, un-bonded booze and women, women who would take you around the world or around the block where a male confederate with a handy blackjack waited in earnest for any unsuspecting goof, not Kerouac’s unsuspecting holy saintly beaten down by the grind of modern society and left to rust along the empty roadside goof either but just some drunken wayward tourist who thought he still had that old sex appeal that his Martha used to brag to her friends about.

And that anything goes, the dope to girls action, especially that latter category since he had started out as a hustling jack-roller grabbing marks some whore he was working with was steering his way was strictly the bought and paid for territory of one Eddie Miles, Mister Edward Raymond Miles when they let him into the swanky Bay City Golf Club-or else- but plain run of the mill gangster Eddie now. We can use his last name since he is finishing up the last five years of a twenty-five year gaff at the Q for plenty of stuff-extortion, pandering, armed this and that,  everything except the one the jury couldn’t pin on him-murder one, murder for hire if you want the full kick. They had a raw assistant D.A. assigned to the case since everybody had the case down to a shoo-in for sure and the D.A. had his own set of problems having let a few Eddy non-murder crimes go under the sea (and “sponsoring” Eddie in that swanky club where he was ostracized after the rap sheet on Eddie became public- probably would have been worse except it is always good to have a D.A. sweating and forgetting stuff-criminal or country club).   

Bernie, Bernie O. when you think back about those days was the straightest rightest cop that ever put on shoe leather in Bay City. The problem back those twenty some years ago was that every other freaking cop on the force was “on the take” to Eddie, or knew guys on the take to Eddie which was the same thing. Somebody, without a shred of evidence had fingered Bernie as a bad cop in Eddie Miles hip pocket. Bought and paid for- a tough charge to defend against when everybody was on the take and wanted to cover their asses. Of course in those days a cop, a five year cop anyway, couldn’t pursuit a case on his own where he had been accused of corruption. Against Department policy. A great set-up for a set-up. So he clamped Phil Marlin, a guy who had been on the force with him, had gone through the academy with Bernie but had been fired for insubordination, fired good, when he wouldn’t tumble to looking the other way when one of Eddie’s boy took some underage girl into a backseat out on the back roads of the Pacific Coast Highway for a blow job and whatever else she was offering-or he was taking. Phil had turned private investigator, private dick, keyhole peeper to most cops. Took the case strictly as a favor to Bernie, no charge, you see, that was how tight they had been back when they had each other’s back in the days they were flat-footing beat cops down in the tough Five Points neighborhood.

Bernie had been in on the bust of Eddie Miles, after the Staties had taken over based on what Marlin had dug up from the sewer and they insisted that Bernie be in on the nab so he had some satisfaction that he was cleared by his own actions. The problem for Bernie and for Marlin came later when Marlin decided he wanted to tell the story to the general public-maybe as a cautionary tale, maybe to show how fragile a grip every human has on life, or maybe he just wanted his name up in lights in some fake private dick’s hall of fame. What Marlin did was get this writer, kind of well- known for writing racy pulp fiction crime detection novels, a guy named Raymond Chandler, to “ghost” the story for him. Between Marlin’s vivid imagination and Chandler’s excessive literary license they balled the whole story up, balled it up pretty bad. So Bernie with his own leisure time, his peace time, hired me to “ghost” his true version of the case-the Eddie Miles bust. The only thing that Bernie and Marlin, the late Phillip Marlin who had his check cashed down in sunny Mexico one back alley night when he was looking for a fugitive named Terry Manning, agreed on was that Bernie had handed him a private job for General Guy Sternwood. Yeah, Sternwood the guy who turned the La Brea tar pits into gold-for himself and his. He was having trouble with one of his wild daughters and needed a guy who could handle the fix he had been put in by her posing for raw, today they would say kinky, nude photographs and guys were looking for dough, serious dough for the negatives-or else. Here is how it really played out from that agreed point on.             

****

Marlin had shown up at the General’s mansion one sunny summer afternoon up in the hills of Bay City far from the humidity and dust and far from the sight of those still-producing oil pumps that got him the place on the hill. Before he could be invited into the General’s bedroom (the General would enumerate more health issues than seemed possible for a breathing human being and he had been under doctor’s to keep to his bed, his now bed-office) he was confronted by one of the wild daughters, the younger one Carol. She had asked him, once she had looked him up and down in a way usually reserved for guys and figured him for a tumbler, if once he had finished talking to her father he wanted a good time in her room. She also told him that she did not care what her father wanted she wanted those nude photos circulated, wanted to be a Hollywood starlet just like Eddie Miles had promised. Wanted all the boys to get big in the pants when they snuck a peak at her luscious body doing nasty little things (and it was luscious according to Marlin-Bernie rated her as a good afternoon fuck and then get the hell out of town).

Phil had told Bernie, and more importantly had told Chandler who retailed the story, that he never had gone into her room after speaking with the General with whom he had accepted the assignment to act as go-between to Eddie in order to get the freaking photos and negatives back to be burned. According to Norris, the trusty butler, a guy who had no ax to grind then, was the General’s eyes and ears in those days (and was stealing him blind since he had control of household checking accounts-like manna from heaven if a guy knew how to fudge the books just so and old Norris had the game down pat) told him that he had seen Marlin coming out of Carol’s room disheveled and glassy-eyed like she had taken him around the world.

That is the real reason Marlin never got anywhere trying to get those photographs back. He would always argue that the General was maybe hot to trot to get the pictures after all he could hardly face his social equals when his daughter was front and center in some low-rent “girlie” magazine (where in the end they would wind up courtesy of Carol sending an agent to one of those publications begging them to put them in the magazine). But the real reason he hired Marlin was he was looking to find out what had happened to his trusted confidante, Rex Randall, who had apparently run off with Eddie Miles’ girlfriend to parts unknown. (Phil had dismissed the run away and elope story as so much eyewash but Bernie knew, had reason to know that Eddie was carrying a big torch for the broad and who knows what he might have done with Rex). Rex a guy Phil knew from the days when Rex was managing a guy in Half Moon Bay dope operations and grapping all the ass he could from young things who were ready to do anything to get something for the head-anything. Bernie knew of him but even then knowing about Eddie’s big torch figured that Rex was sleeping out in the bay somewhere with a sack of rocks tied to him.                

So Phil went through the paces, went through the motions of trying to earn his big bonus-attached (not for the Rex part-for the fucking nude pics), and had met Laura the older daughter as he was leaving his sister’s room. He always claimed he never met her then but had been in the General’s bed-side office after having swigged a couple of high-shelf brandies to seal the deal and then left to pursue justice some such bullshit. Although she wasn’t as photograph pretty as her younger sister Carol she was just as wild, her lovely vices gambling and cases of scotched devoured. Needless to say the story gets jumbled up again when Marlin later denied that he tumbled to her bedroom eyes proposition but Norris once again put paid to that lie since early the next morning he had seen Marlin, disheveled, glassy-eyed and looking sexually-sated (how Norris knew that was the case in England where he had learned the butler trade he had had his fill of such meanderings from the nobility that he had been in service  to-said they had the morals of a great white shark-none). The worse part of that tryst with Laura was that he had spilled the beans about the General’s desire to see what had happened to Rex to Eddie Miles whom she was in hock to for gambling debts at his off-shore casino (and as it turned out had been trying to get out from under by fucking Eddie and a couple of his boys to death-yeah, the morals of a shark- a resourceful girl no question).

Marlin after having his fill of the Sternwood young women then “got to work,” hit the library to see about old rare books and their provences since he assumed that the photos of Carol would wind up in some high-end antique bookstore used as a front for select clientele to “borrow” such fare (some of them when the lists became public later friends of the General who must have gloated and a veritable who’s who at the Bay City Golf Club-yeah, the morals of a shark all the way around). (It was only later that Carol got that agent to hustle his photo-ass to the “girlies” once they had been used at Eddie’s trial since they “belonged” to her). Phil did a perfunctory search of all the old-timey bookstores in town, got nowhere and laid low for a few days before telling the General he was hot on the case and told him that he needed some walking around money to go to Eddies’ casino off-shore. Norris set him up with a cool thou-not bad for walking around money-then anyway. 

One night, the first night he ran into one Eddie Miles, he also ran into Laura losing a load at the tables but smiling about it as she gave him a come hither look that would snow (later when they were in closer proximity she offered to take him out to her car for a little off-hand tryst-which after he had finished up with Eddie he gladly took her up on funny how that time appeared on his bill when it came time to close up accounts with Norris. Services rendered. So another glassy-eyed night with a Sternwood sister. He had gotten nowhere asking Eddie Miles where his wife was and about the rumor that she had taken a powder with Rex-the General’s confidante.  Getting nowhere fast on this case. Getting nothing on Eddie either. 

Then the great break-through although it was really only Marlin falling into something after another guy, a guy he could have saved by all the evidence but he had gotten “cold feet” when the deal went down. It seems that one of the clerks, Iris, a comely female clerk that he had taken into the stockroom one rainy afternoon, at Ye Olde Bookstore had had a boyfriend who had been acting as an agent for Eddie Miles in trying to unload Carol’s sulky nude photos. Somehow he had had trouble moving the merchandise and Eddie dumped him-dumped him literally in the bay for some purpose-or np purpose. Oh, not Eddie personally-Edward Miles did not do his own dirty work but had his number one boy, The Camino Kid, a bad-ass no question throw a sack over the boyfriend’s head and put a few stones in the mix and let him sink and sleep with the fishes off the bow of  Eddie’s casino liner. Nice boy. The girlfriend after getting friendly with Phil that afternoon loosened up by a few drinks had spilled the beans about the boyfriend number one after she had got herself another beau. To even the score with Eddie though she was ready to tell Marlin where Eddie’s wife was-for a couple of hundred bucks to blow town with. Marlin agreed and was to meet the new beau, a square little guy who probably was too short for that ravishing clerk.        

                 

That boyfriend number two, Harry, wasn’t any luckier than number one since he was acting as go-between for Iris with Marlin (Iris a girl who had her charms apparently but who always left standing unlike her beaus). They were supposed to meet at Harry’s office but the Camino Kid got there first while Phil was hiding in an anteroom. The Kid’s chore that day to get Harry to clam up about Eddie’s wife’s whereabouts. The little guy held out though-Iris must have had something he had not noticed that afternoon in the stockroom. Yeah, paid with his life for protecting his honey while Marlin stood breathless in the next fucking room. Here is where the wheels turned though. The cops, Bernie and his partner, were tailing the Camino Kid since the Iris’ boyfriend number one washed up on shore tied up in a sack just the way the Camino Kid liked to finish up his handiwork. They were able to follow him to the backroads of Ocean City the next town over where he stopped at an old house set back from the road. Waiting at the door was Eddie Miles’ wife. No sign of Rex though.         

Earlier back at Harry’s office Marlin had gotten out of his deep freeze long enough to follow Bernie’s police vehicle to that lonely country road. That is why Marlin claimed he took the Camino Kid out. That the fire -power that did the Kid in when he resisted arrest and started ban-banging had come from his weapon. Claimed he “saved” Bernie’s partner who was a dead man if he hadn’t shot the Kid first. Since he was using a police special (he had never turned in his gun when he was fired from the cops figuring he would need a weapon as a private dick) who the hell would have known. Bernie knew for a fact that he had winged the Kid and then doubled-down on him. He had heard no additional shots. Chalk one bad guy gone up for Bernie if you are keeping score. That action is what got him in on the deal when the Staties went after Eddie Miles and his henchmen.

As for Rex, well, here is where things get weird, where what the rich or do not do gets sealed with seven seals. Carol, and Marlin should have seen this coming given his own experiences with the girls, had killed Rex one afternoon when he would not give her a tumble. Carol did not like not being obeyed when she had her wanting habits on. That is why Marlin got taken around the world that day he went into the General’s hire. Laura had covered up for her sister-also why he gotten taken around the world by her. They had him figured as a sex-addled guy and they knew their mark. Marlin out of respect for the old man and his troubles with those wild sisters let it ride. Let the old man fade into his endless sleep not knowing he had sired two monsters. Before he left that hillside mansion though he made sure he got his full rate and expenses. That’s the real “skinny” forget all that other self-serving stuff.          

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-The “Blues Mama” Of “The Generation Of ‘68”- The Music Of Janis Joplin

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-The “Blues Mama” Of “The Generation Of ‘68”- The Music Of Janis Joplin

Zack James’ comment June, 2017:

Sometimes you just have to follow the bouncing ball like in those old time sing along cartoons they used to have back in say the 1950s,the time I remember them from, on Saturday afternoon matinees at the old now long gone Stand Theater in my growing up town of North Adamsville. Follow me for a minute here I won’t be long. Earlier this spring my oldest brother, Alex, took attended a conference in San Francisco which he has done periodically for years. While there he noticed an advertisement on a bus for something called the Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. That ad immediately caught his attention he had been out there that year and had participated in those events at the urging of his friend Peter Paul Markin who was something of a holy goof (a Jack Kerouac term of art), a low rent prophet, and a street criminal all in one. When Alex got back to the East after having attended the exhibition he got in contact with me to help him, and the still standing corner boys who also had gone out West at Markin’s urging to put together a tribute booklet honoring Markin and the whole experience.

After completing that project, or maybe while completing it I kept on thinking about the late Hunter S. Thompson who at one time was the driving force behind gonzo journalism and had before his suicide about a decade ago been something of a muse to me. At first my thoughts were about how Thompson would have taken the exhibition at the de Young since a lot of what he wrote about in the 1960s and 1970s was where the various counter-cultural trends were, or were not, going. But then as the current national political situation in America in the Trump Age has turned to crap, to craziness and straight out weirdness I began to think about how Thompson would have handled the 24/7/365 craziness these days since he had been an unremitting searing critic of another President of the United States who also had low-life instincts, one Richard Milhous Nixon.

The intertwining of the two stands came to head recently over the fired FBI director James Comey hearings where he essentially said that the emperor had no clothes. So I have been inserting various Thompson-like comments in an occasional series I am running in various on-line publications-Even The President Of The United States Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked-Tales From The White House Bunker. And will continue to overlap the two-Summer of Love and Age of Trump for as long as it seems relevant. So there you are caught up. Ifs not then I have included hopefully for the last time the latest cross-over Thompson idea.           

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Zack James comment, Summer of 2017                

Maybe it says something about the times we live in, or maybe in this instance happenstance or, hell maybe something in the water but certain things sort of dovetail every now and again. I initially started this commentary segment after having written a longest piece for my brother and his friends as part of a small tribute booklet they were putting together about my and their takes on the Summer of Love, 1967. That event that my brother, Alex, had been knee deep in had always interested me from afar since I was way too young to have appreciated what was happening in San Francisco in those Wild West days. What got him motivated to do the booklet had been an exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park where they were celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the events of that summer with a look at the music, fashion, photography and exquisite poster art which was created then just as vivid advertising for concerts and “happenings” but which now is legitimate artful expression.

That project subsequently got me started thinking about the late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, the driving force behind a new way of looking at and presenting journalism which was really much closer to the nub of what real reporting was about. Initially I was interested in some of Thompson’s reportage on what was what in San Francisco as he touched the elbows of those times having spent a fair amount of time working on his seminal book on the Hell’s Angels while all hell was breaking out in Frisco town. Delved into with all hands and legs the high points and the low, the ebb which he located somewhere between the Chicago Democratic Convention fiasco of the summer of 1968 and the hellish Rollins Stones Altamont concert of 1969.     

Here is what is important today though, about how the dots get connected out of seemingly random occurrences. Hunter Thompson also made his mark as a searing no holds barred mano y mano reporter of the rise and fall, of the worthy demise of one Richard Milhous Nixon at one time President of the United States and a common low-life criminal of ill-repute. Needless to say today, the summer of 2107, in the age of one Donald Trump, another President of the United States and common low-life criminal begs the obvious question of what the sorely missed Doctor Gonzo would have made of the whole process of the self-destruction of another American presidency, or a damn good run at self-destruction. So today and maybe occasionally in the future there will be some intertwining of commentary about events fifty years ago and today. Below to catch readers up to speed is the most recent “homage” to Hunter Thompson. And you too I hope will ask the pertinent question. Hunter where are you when we need, desperately need, you.       

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Zack James comment, Summer of 2017 

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. (Walking with the king not about walking with any king or Doctor King but being so high on drugs, your choice, that commin clay experiences fall by the way side. In the times of this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place, where many walked with the king, if you prefer, and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society, in high art society these days) at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20^th of this year.   

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol Hill and saying out loud the emperor has no clothes and would not know the truth if it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other bullshit would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs who like their forbears would stop at nothing he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now 

CD REVIEW

Janis Joplin: 18 Essential Songs, Janis Joplin with Big Brother and The Holding Company, Columbia Records, 1995

It is virtually a truism that every generation has its own cultural icons, for better or worst. The 1960’s, the time of this reviewer’s “Generation of ‘68”, was no exception. Although there were no official creeds in the matter, in fact we scorned such thinking, a rough translation of what we thought we were about then could be summed up as follows- live fast, live young and live forever. Other, later generations have put their own imprint on that theme although I sense without our basically naïve and hopeful expectations of that phrase. All this is by way of saying that the artist under review, urban white blues and soul singer Janis Joplin, was one of our icons. That she crashed and burned well before her time, and well before forever, only adds poignancy to her fate.

The role of “blues mama” for a generation is certainly no task for the faint-hearted, as Janis’s life, life style, and fame attest to. That she was able to translate the black blues idiom and style of the likes of her idol “Big Mama” Thornton, of necessity, had to take its toll on that tiny hard scrabble Texas-raised body. But that is the fundamental tragedy (and beauty) of the blues. Not only must you ‘pay your dues’ but this genre cannot be faked. If you have not lived a hard scrabble existence, faced the depths of what society has to offer and come out swinging you flat-out cannot convey that message the way it is suppose to be done. Janis could. Other white women blues singers as fine performers as they are, like Tracey Nelson and Rory Block, approximate that sound but there is just a little too much “refinement” in the voice to pass this test.

So what did Janis (and her fellow musicians of Big Brother and The Holding Company who generally rose to the occasion and created great sounds to go with that Joplin voice) leave us? Well, as contained in this above average CD compilation of her work, most of the essential woman’s blues numbers of the 1960’s that will stand the test of time. Not bad, right? Start off, as always, with ‘Big Mama’s” “Ball and Chain” (that blew them away at the Monterrey Pops Festival). Move on to the classic Gershwin tune “Summertime”. Feast on her own “I Need A Man To Love” and “Kozmic Blues”. And close out with Kris Kristofferson’s 1960’s traveling anthem “Me And Booby McGee”. And in between a dozen more memorable tunes. I defy anyone to find a song in this compilation that is less than above average. And that kind of says it all. Janis Joplin’s star burned out far too quickly and those of us from her generation are now coming to terms with the fact that, despite our youthful beliefs, we will not live forever. Her music, however, will.

Ball And Chain lyrics

Sittin’ down by my window,
Honey, lookin’ out at the rain.
Oh, Lord, Lord, sittin’ down by my window,
Baby, lookin’ out at the rain.
Somethin’ came along, grabbed a hold of me, honey,
And it felt just like a ball and chain.
Honey, that’s exactly what it felt like,
Honey, just dragging me down.

And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, now hon’, tell me why,
Why does every single little tiny thing I hold on to go wrong ?
Yeah it goes wrong, yeah.
And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, now babe, tell me why,
Does every thing, every thing.
Hey, here you gone today, I wanted to love you,
I just wanted to hold you, I said, for so long,
Yeah! Alright! Hey!

Love’s got a hold on me, baby,
Feels like a ball and chain.
Now, love’s just draggin’ me down, baby,
Feels like a ball and chain.
I hope there’s someone out there who could tell me
Why the man I love wanna leave me in so much pain.
Yeah, maybe, maybe you could help me, come on, help me!

And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, now hon’, tell me why,
Now tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me why, yeah.
And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, when I ask you,
When I need to know why, c’mon tell me why, hey hey hey,
Here you’ve gone today,
I wanted to love you and hold you
Till the day I die.
I said whoa, whoa, whoa!!

And I say oh, whoa, whoa, no honey
It ain’t fair, daddy it ain’t fair what you do,
I see what you’re doin’ to me and you know it ain’t fair.
And I say oh, whoa whoa now baby
It ain’t fair, now, now, now, what you do
I said hon’ it ain’t fair what, hon’ it ain’t fair what you do.
Oh, here you gone today and all I ever wanted to do
Was to love you
Honey you can still hear me rock and roll the best,
Only it ain’t roll, no, no, no, no, no.

Sittin’ down by my window,
Lookin’ out at the rain.
Lord, Lord, Lord, sittin’ down by my window,
Lookin’ out at the rain, see the rain.
Somethin’ came along, grabbed a hold of me,
And it felt like a ball and chain.
Oh this can’t be in vain
And I’m gonna tell you one more time, yeah, yeah!

And I say oh, whoa whoa, now baby
This can’t be, no this can’t be in vain,
And I say no no no no no no no no, whoa,
And I say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Now now now now now now now now now no no not in vain
Hey, hope there is someone that could tell me
Hon’, tell me why love is like
Just like a ball
Just like a ball
Baaaaaaalllll
Oh daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy
And a chain.
Yeah.

Call On Me lyrics

Well, baby, when times are bad,
Now call on me, darling, and I’ll come to you.
When you’re in trouble and feel so sad,
Well, call on me, darling, come on call on me, and I’ll help you.
Yeah!

A man and a woman have each other, baby,
To find their way in this world.
I need you, darling, like the fish needs the sea,
Don’t take your sweet, your sweet love from me.

Baby, when you’re down and feel so blue,
Well, no, you won’t drown, darling, I’ll be there too.
You’re not alone, I’m there too,
Whatever your troubles, honey, I don’t care.

A man and a woman have each other, baby,
To find their way in this world.
I need you, darling, like the fish needs the sea,
Don’t take your sweet, sweet love from me!

Please! So baby, when times are bad,
Call on me, darling, just call on me.

I Need A Man To Love lyrics

Whoa, I need a man to love me.
Don’t you understand me, baby ?
Why, I need a man to love.
I gotta find him, I gotta have him like the air I breathe.
One lovin’ man to understand can’t be too much to need.

You know it
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be this loneliness
Baby, surrounding me.

No, no, know it just can’t be
No it just can’t be
There’s got to be some kind of answer.
No it just can’t be
And everywhere I look, there’s none around
No it just can’t be
Whoa, it can’t be
No it just can’t be, oh no!
Whoa, hear me now.

Whoa, won’t you let me hold you ?
Honey, just close your eyes.
Whoa, won’t you let me hold you, dear ?
I want to just put my arms around ya, like the circles going ‘round the sun.
Let me hold you daddy, at least until the morning comes.

Because it
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be now
Oh no
Can’t be this loneliness
Baby, surrounding me.
No, no, no it just can’t be.
No it just can’t be
Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby, just can’t be.
No, no, no
No it just can’t be

And why can’t anyone ever tell me, now ?
No it just can’t be
I wake up one morning, I realize
No it just can’t be
Whoa, it can’t be.
No it just can’t be
Now go!

Whoa, I need a man to love me
Oh, maybe you can help me, please.
Why, I need a man to love.
But I believe that someday and somehow it’s bound to come along
Because when all my dreams and all my plans just cannot turn out wrong.

You know it
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be now Oh no
Can’t be just loneliness
Baby, surrounding me

No, no, no, it just can’t be
No it just can’t be
Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby, it just can’t be
No it just can’t be
And who could be foolin’ me ?
No it just can’t be
I’ve got all this happiness
No it just can’t be
Come, come, come on, come on, come on, and help me now.
No it just can’t be
Please, can’t you hear my cry ?
No it just can’t be
Whoa, help ...