This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
How the West Was Won-Well
The Part Down South Of The Border, Down Mexico Way, Anyway-Burt Lancaster and
Gary Cooper’s “Vera Cruz” (1954)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Renan Saint John
Vera Cruz, starring Burt
Lancaster, Gary Cooper and usual ensemble of cowpokes and Mexican nationals who
populated Tex-Mex films south of border, the post-Mexican War, post Gadsden’s
Purchase border if anybody is asking, directed by Robert Aldrich, 1954
********
Don’t ever get Lance Lawrence
started on the Wild West, the American West of the 19th century not
today’s modern cowboy silliness gone awry where they rudely ride in Piper Clubs
and swill their booze in exclusive country clubs where no braceros, you know
Mexicans, or injuns, ah, Native American need apply, need to know anything but where
the servant’s entrance is, down in Sun Belt land where the only vestiges of the
by-gone days are tourista ghost towns and abandoned Hollywood locales. For one
thing if you start up with Lance about any ancient West you will never get out
of the barroom and not any exclusive country club watering hole by some publican’s
pub, away from the water cooler or out of your “take him home to his house after
he has had a few too many” car alive. And for that one very simply reason I am
the one who has been assigned by site manager Greg Green to do this review of
the 1950s Vera Cruz version of part
of the Western saga since even infinitely patient Greg does not want to hear
everything from the first trail west by Daniel Boone and others coming out of
Appalachia when a man, and his womenfolk, could not breath in the shuffling Eastern
seaboard cities until the last cowboy round-up about 1910 and maybe a smidgen
later if you decide you want to add guys like Gay and his misfit brethren from
Arthur Miller’s The Misfits to the
list. I have heard Lance go either way on that possibility depending on who was
buying the drinks. Smart man, that Greg, very smart.
Of course, if you really
wanted to know in depth the background to the plot of this film then Lance
would be your man since this story does not take place directly in the Old West
that we of a couple of generations back “learned” about through lying television
and dime store novels which only made the publishers rich. So we are not
talking about the previously unexplored parts out in the places where the
states are square and you had better have been as well or you might find the town
name of Tombstone a little too close for comfort me Rn the part stolen from
Mexico in various land grab wars and skirmishes like Jimmy Polk’s folly that
guys like Henry David Thoreau and young Congressman Abraham Lincoln got in a
snit about and a so-called negotiation called the Gadsden Purchase. Information
which should give one pause desperate Mexican immigrant are coming over the
border to, well, to their homeland if you think about it.
This oater, a term
cribbed from a crossword puzzle answer once, centers on the port of Vera Cruz
and on the short not so sweet reign of one Maximillian who declared himself in
as emperor of Mexico for no other reason that his boss, Napoleon III of France,
a tin despot in his own right who a guy named Karl Marx, you might have heard
of him if you are not too young skewered in a couple of pamphlets he wrote about
France in the Napoleonic second-coming, the farce part not the tragedy coming.
This throne grab happened, as a lot of things did when guys wanted stuff, wanted
influence in the whole wide world back right during the American Civil when
everybody was looking elsewhere. This new land grab by experienced European
thug rulers was nothing new but did run afoul of the vaunted Monroe Doctrine
that Jimmy M, he of the one-time Era of Good Feeling as the history books had
it, before all hell broke loose over slavery, over white supremacy, which is still
with us today, put together to keep the damn Europeans out of America’s sphere
of influence, out of the Americas. Apparently from the historic record old Max,
Max I if anybody insists since he was the first Max to hold the title, in Mexico
anyway, didn’t have to be asked twice whether he wanted the keys to the
kingdom.
Naturally there was a
little problem, no, a big problem since Mexico, having shed the bastard fetid, nice
word, right, rotting Spanish interlopers a few decades before had it own set of
rulers, duly elected or not and if so maybe on to short a franchise, and so
there was bound to be a showdown, an all out fight really one the national
feeling got aroused and Benny Juarez took umbrage and built up an army of
national liberation. With that background we are set to tell the tale here, the
Old West tale inside the controversy going on south of the border.
After the death and
destruction of the American Civil War a lot of ex-soldiers on either side were
out of sorts, could not like happened in later wars, maybe all wars go back to
whatever nine to five routine they had been doing before the war. Some guys in
a later war, in the Vietnam War which a number of older writers at this publication
had participated in or had known people who had fought the war, wound up in
alternative universe encampments like the one Frank Jackman and Allan Jackson
have described in these pages under the title Brothers Under The Bridges over the years. Some guys though got
their blood up permanently and that is where the connection between later wars
and that Civil War comes in. Some guys and lead character here Ben Tranes, an
ex-rebel, played by Gary Cooper, turned mercenary. Would go where they could
get serious pay for their services, their killing fields services. Others,
civilians, would show up who were “from
hunger” having gotten tossed out of respectable society and wandered to
whatever kept them in cash by any mean, not all legal. Were outlaws, bad guys
in the terms used in pre-1960s Westerns dragged out from the Hollywood bushes.
The king hell king here to use a term learned from old friend Bart Webber was
nasty Joe Erin, a mercenary of no known character except shoot first and fast
if you want something, played by ruggedly handsome Burt Lancaster.
All these forces come
together in one place for one purpose-to get rich off the poor Mexican
braceros’ hard scrabble gold. Three million in 1860s money and many times more by
today’s standards so nothing to sneeze at. This is the way things played as
everybody lusted after gold, after what ace private detective Sam Spade would later
under different circumstances call “the stuff that dreams are made of,” or with many twists and turns played out. Which
in the end would make old Max I nothing but a subject for one of the French
painter Manet’s (not Monet okay) mural-sized paintings about his sad ass end before
a Mexican firing squad who would give no quarter (a copy of which is on display
at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts if I recall). So nothing but the subject of an
execution Mexican-style. Neither Ben nor Joe, nor their confederates and for
the moment allies could give a fuck about who paid them, Benny or Max, but
everything pointed to them shilling for Max. For cash.
The gag at first was to
escort some French countess with greedy eyes and a taste for intrigue to port
of call Vera Cruz so she could go back to Paris and buy dresses or something.
Don’t believe that for a minute for she might have been nobility, but she had
the hard-heart of a tramp. Had turned more than one man’s head the wrong way
with that exotic perfume and that sweet smell of bath soap to guys who had been
out on the trail too long. Had been playing footsie at first with Max’s right
hand military man who had plans of his own which may have, or may not have,
included her but definitely didn’t once he found out she had the morals of some
cheap whore who could use any man to further her schemes.
This countess was a
piece of work though playing Ben and Joe off each other for a while and
dangling that marquis if that is what he was, that was his title, who knows
half of Europe claimed some link to nobility or royalty, at the same time.
Meanwhile Ben and Joe were planning their own respective parties, plans which excluded
the other-excluded too that countess once Joe got his dander up when he sensed
she was playing him as the strong silent type who could get her what she wanted
and where she wanted to go. Old Ben, having been an honorable fighting for a
cause kind of guy begins to crumble when he takes up with a fetching senorita
who also happens to be a partisan of the Juaritas, the Benny’s boys, Mexican
national who want their government back and their dough staying in Mexico.
That was the wild card
all along which Joe never figured and which Ben saw was the only right thing to
do. In the end one or the other after a million small skirmishes between them
and between them and the Juarez forces had to go down. And it wasn’t High Noon good guy survivor Gary Cooper
who was stretched out in some dirty back street facing a pauper’s grave. Joe, a
real psycho who killed just to see a man die like that guy Johnny Cash sang
about, bought the slug and good riddance. In the end the whole French caper,
the whole Max deal was a joke, except to Max who like I said got nothing but a
strong Academy-approved painting of his
demise for his efforts. See Lance Lawrence could never have told the tale this
way-he would just be starting to warm up to the subject of Max I and the treacherous
dandies of Europe at this point.
The First Black President, President Of Rock And Rock- Chuck
Berry: The Great Twenty-Eight- A CD Review
CD Review
By Associate Music Critic Lance Lawrence
The Great Twenty-Eight: Chuck Berry, Chess Records
Today I want to talk about presidential politics. No, not
that lame excuse for an election process that occurred in 2016. That Hillary
and Donald battle royal for who is in charge of being in charge. Forget that
stuff. I want to talk today about is who was, who is, the person who has
qualified to be the leading candidate for the title of the president of rock
and roll (small letter ‘p” signifying the truly democratic process of selection
in this important matter). Of course when you talk about who was who in rock
and roll you have to go back to what is now called in the promos and ads, the
demographically targeted promos and ads, the “classic age” of rock. The period
roughly from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. That said, the passing earlier in
2017 year of the legendary rocker Chuck Berry has placed this question once
again on the front burner, at least in my circles.
Naturally when names are named in culturati circles,
especially academic circles, somebody is always ready almost by reflex or by
some overweening desire to make a name for his or her self at the expense of
some tribal bigwig to throw mud at your finely tuned and reasoned premises.
Needless to say that happened here in discussing the influence of Chuck Berry
as well except from an unexpected source. Zack James, a fellow music critic in
this space and at the American Music
Gazette, decided he could hold his tongue no longer and sent me an e-mail
basically challenging my sanity for believing that anybody but Elvis, and I do
not believe that I need to add a last name for everybody to know of whom I
speak, was the leading figure in that magical moment called 1950s rock. Of
course I could have dismissed Zack’s idea out of hand since he got his
knowledge about rock and roll second-hand, hell for all I know third-hand or
from reading the liner notes, from listening to his older brother Alex’s
records in the mid-1960s well after the heyday of the movement I am talking
about. I decided though that I couldn’t let that notion about who was who stand
without a response.
I am one who, belatedly, has come to recognize that Elvis
(again I don’t think I need to mention a last name but if you need one just ask
your parents or grandparents and you will get your answer in two seconds flat)
was indeed the “king” of rock and roll. He took, as Sam Phillips the legendary
founder of Sun Records and first finder of Elvis in old Memphis town who has
been quoted many, many times as saying, the old black rhythm and blues songs
and put a white, a white rockabilly, face on the genre and made the crossover
in a big way. So I will not argue that point with Zack. Will not argue either
that his act, those swirling rotating off their axis hips make all the girls,
hell, all the women sweat. Point Zack.
But see I am a good republican (with a very purposeful small
‘r”) and as such I believe that the “divine right of kings,” the theory that
Zack is apparently working under was discredited a few hundred years ago when
Oliver Cromwell and his crowd took old Charles I’s head off his shoulders. And
while I would have wished no such fate for the “king” his influence other than
for purely sentimental reasons these days is pretty limited.
A look at this CD selection will tell a more persuasive
tale. Sure early Elvis, Good Rockin’
Tonight, Jailhouse Rock, It Alright, Mama spoke to 1950s teenage angst and
alienation read: lovesickness, but beyond that he kind of missed the boat of
what teenagers, teenagers around my way and around Zack’s older brother’s way, wanted
to hear about. Guys wanted to hear about anyway. Cars, getting girls in cars,
and hanging out at places like drive-in theaters and drive-in restaurants
looking for girls. In short thoughts of sex and sexual adventure. This may seem
kind of strange today. Not the sex and sexual adventure part but the car and
drive-ins part.
Those were the days of the “golden age” of the automobile
when every guy, girls too, wanted to learn how to drive and get a car, or at
least use the family car for those Friday and Saturday night cruising
expeditions for which we lived. (I hear anecdotally all the time about 20
somethings who don’t have their driver’s license and are not worried by that
horrendous fact. Could care less about car ownership in the age of Uber and
Lift. Madness, sheer madness). Cars for
running to the drive-in to check out who was at the refreshment stand, cars for
hitting “lovers’ lane if you got lucky. For that kind of adventure you needed
something more than safe Elvis, safe Elvis who made your own mother secretly
sweat so you know where he was at. Say you found some sweet sixteen, found some
sweet little rock and roller, say you found that your parents’ music that was
driving you out of the house in search of, say you were in search of something
and you really did want to tell Mister Beethoven to hit the road. Needed some
help to figure out why that ever-loving gal was driving you crazy when all you
really wanted to worry about was filling the gas tank and making sure that heap
of your was running without major repairs to cramp your style.
Take a look at the lyrics in the selections in this CD: Maybelline, Sweet Little Sixteen, Sweet
Little Rock and Roller, Nadine, Johnny B. Goode, Roll over Beethoven. Then
try to tell me that the man with the duck walk, the man with the guitar from
hell, the man who dared to mess with Mister’s women (hell we have all been
beaten down on that one since Adam’s time, maybe before) one Chuck Berry didn’t
speak to us from the depth of the 1950s. Hail to the Chief.
Vietnam Veteran Fritz Taylor’s Rockport Fourth Of July-2017
By Associate Moderator Jonathan Prince
[Those who are familiar with this site and a number of on-line media platforms with which he is associated may have noted that Peter Paul Markin has been for the past decade or so the moderator of this site. Some may also know the background story about the original of his on-line moniker which honors his long lost friend of the same name, the real life Markin, who taught him many things before he fell down to his own hubris, maybe his whole genetic infrastructure, in Mexico in a hail of gunfire over a busted drug deal in the mid-1970s. As one can assume by the time frame of many of his stories of his youth (and of course of the real Markin as well) the moderator is getting up there in age and as with the case of film critic Sam Lowell is ready to give up the day to day chores associated with moderating this busy site. Jonathan Prince, the son of an old college friend Leonard, and a recent college graduate himself, has volunteered to help out with the moderator and reporting roles as things move into transition.
This assignment, an assignment which is basically a job of reportage about Fritz Taylor’s take on the Fourth of July celebration in the old time fishing town and now something of a tourist Mecca Rockport out on ocean edge Cape Ann in Massachusetts , is his first attempt at getting his feet wet on the job. It is rather fitting that Jonathan has had Fritz Taylor’s current story as his first assignment since Fritz was the first subject of the real Peter Paul Markin’s series of articles in the early 1970s for the now long gone East Bay Other out in Oakland. That series detailed how a bunch of Vietnam veterans from all over and for all kinds of personal reasons who could not deal with coming back to the “real” world after Vietnam came together down in Southern California and formed what they would now call an alternate community among the arroyos, under the bridges and along the railroad tracks. Bruce Springsteen later titled one of his songs Brothers Under The Bridge about that same experience and that seems to fit as well as any other for what went on back then. Not a bad way to cut your reporting teeth. Peter Paul Markin]
Fritz Taylor is a marching mad man. A marching mad man with a purpose. Funny it had not always been that way. He had not always been that way. Back home as a youth in Fulton County, Georgia he would moan and groan if had to walk the half mile to the nearest grocery store to get provisions for his large family’s meals. Later, when he came of age and could not justify staying around the house and enlisted in the Army just as the war in Vietnam was coming to a boiling point, he would gripe, piss and moan he called it, about having to walk all over half that benighted country for most of his tour of duty.
That war, that Vietnam experience which would change him forever when he got back to the “real” world, also changed his attitude toward walking, walking “with the king” he calls it now since he has gotten on the right side of the angels about the issues of war and peace. Of course as with a lot of guys back then, guys who fought and suffered every kind of stress and disorder, that wisdom did not come easy, and it was a close thing that it came at all. The dope he craved to take the pain away, the pain of living, almost did him in a few times. Like a lot of guys too he gave up to dope and to whatever other stuff was ailing his mind his wife and kids, his good paying job as a trucker, and his cozy place just waiting for him in society as a veteran. He had been one of the first guys to head to Southern California to be what he now calls “a brother under the bridge” after he ran into a friend who had served with him in the Forth Infantry up in the Central Highlands. It was down in the camp along the railroad track outside Westminster where Peter Paul Markin [the real Markin] first ran into Fritz and he had agreed to be interviewed for a story to run in an alternative newspaper in Oakland [the East Bay Other] where Markin was working at the time.
That was the early 1970s and while he wished that getting to know Markin, a fellow veteran, through that interview Fritz fell down, his term, many times to the lure of various drugs, in the end cocaine, before he got clean. He confessed to me that before then he could have “given a fuck” about thinking about wars, or peace for that matter. Getting clean helped him to be able to see that whatever was bothering him about what he had done in Vietnam and later to his social circle was the root of what bothered him. (He got what he called great help from the VA, from a therapist they provided which helped him work out some of what had enraged him for so many years). From there he, slowly, came to believe that if he was to have peace within himself that he would need to “spread the word,” again his term. Then Fritz began in the early 1980s to look around for groups that were doing peace work.
By this time he had settled in Baltimore, gone to community college and had become a computer technician (paid for by the GI Bill), met a nice woman with a couple of kids and they were living together. This woman, Heather, now Heather Taylor, knew a few Quakers from a literacy campaign she had worked on with them and she got Fritz in touch with them. That had not really worked out because Fritz did not feel himself to be a pacifist nor did he feel comfortable with the plainness of the sect and its ways of living in this wicked old world.
In 1987, or 1988, Fritz was not sure which, while living in a town just outside of Boston where he and Heather relocated so he could get a better job in what he had heard was the booming Hi Tech industry he ran into a guy with a Veterans for Peace tee shirt on in Harvard Square. This guy, Lenny Block, was headed to a Central America solidarity rally on Cambridge Common and he invited Fritz along. As it turned out that was to be his first serious peace march where he “walked with the king” since after the rally the participants were heading to the State House in Boston several miles away to publicize the situation in Central America and the United States government’s nefarious involvement in that troubled area of the world.
And that, fast forward, had been how almost twenty years and plenty of worn shoe leather later one Fritz Taylor was spending the ebbing Fourth of July day in Rockport, Massachusetts as part of a combined VFP and affiliated peace group contingent in the annual town parade. This had not been Fritz’s first Rockport march, he reckoned it was his fourth or fifth so he knew what to expect (not Heather’s either who while not very “political” stood on the right side of the angels on the peace issue and marched with him in this parade). The crowds as usual were both respectful of the veterans as veterans and generally receptive to the peace message they were bringing to the fore with their array of dove-centered white flags flapping in the ocean breeze creating quite a stirring sight.
That former part of the sentence about the crowd response is what bothered Fritz, had for a while in many locations, the part about respecting veterans as veterans. That respect was in Rockport that day, in the past and in other locations, signified most graphically by one expression-“Thank for your service.” While on march it was hardly appropriate to single out those who expressed themselves that way and ask what they meant. So Fritz suffered in silence about what the crowds were really responding to, a patriotic or peace strain. Fritz had been through a lot in Vietnam and what it had done to his psyche, been down in the ditch in Southern California with other lost souls from that war, had gone to the depths in drug addiction before being washed clean so he was more than usually bothered by the thought that those who used the thank you expression were honoring his tour of duty in Vietnam.
This year Fritz decided that he would ask a few of the spectators once the parade was over what they meant since he would still get through the VFP tee shirt he was wearing those thanks. He stopped one older person and asked frankly what she meant by her compliment. She said for his service to his country and the peace aspect was just so much frosting. Another spectator agreed. A few others thought it “cool” that veterans were marching for peace. A mixed bag. The final response from a person he asked gave an unequivocal response that he believed for service to the country and not anything to do with peace. This gave Fritz an idea, an idea he tested out that very nice. Anytime somebody threw the expression of thanks for his service at him he would reply-“Yes, for my service now.” Fritz chuckled as he thought about how many more marches this new-found expression would get him through. A lot he hoped.
July 4: CELEBRATING A “SLAVEHOLDER’S REPUBLIC”-“WHAT TO THE AMERICAN SLAVE IS YOUR 4TH OF JULY?” James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech (July 5, 1852)
July 4: CELEBRATING A “SLAVEHOLDER’S REPUBLIC”
Modern histories of the American Revolution rightly emphasize the interests of slaveholders and land speculators hungry to overthrow Britain’s limits to westward expansion into Native lands. The colonial leaders debated publicly what sort or government they wanted, but they were unanimous in rejecting “Democracy,” a word which appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution.
“WHAT TO THE AMERICAN SLAVE IS YOUR 4TH OF JULY?”
James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech (July 5, 1852)
Click on the image above to watch and listen!
* * * *
RENAMING FANEUIL HALL WOULD NOT ERASE HISTORY
We must face some sobering facts: Peter Faneuil — for whom Faneuil Hall is named — was a slave trader, a purveyor of human flesh, an international trafficker of people whose lives he left in ruins… In defense of retaining the name of Faneuil Hall, many say we should “not change history.” Here we misunderstand that history is always changing in light of new discovery, which is the product of tireless effort to verify truth claims. Without such an approach, we would have held steadfastly to wrong-headed conceptions of the galaxy when new methods, facts, and revelation compel us all otherwise. In a similar vein, many reject renaming Faneuil Hall because it would “erase” the history of Peter Faneuil a great Bostonian, a “scion of the French Huguenots… fleeing oppression” themselves. But what about Peter Faneuil’s complicity with the slave trade and ownership of other humans? And what about the long and obscured history of blacks in Boston, which we willingly ignore, suppress and reject? In other words, is the historical narrative of black slaves in Boston as important as the stories of whites in our city? Yes, of course. The move to rename Faneuil Hall should not be viewed as an attempt to “erase history” or change the past. Logic dictates that this is impossible. But remembering history is possible and necessary should we desire to embrace our democratic birthright. More
Honor Samuel Adams And James Otis- American Revolutionaries- An Encore Commentary
Markin comment:
This commentary, an encore from 2006, offers a shade bit difference perspective about the American revolution from that if today's guest commentary
COMMENTARY
ON THE 4TH OF JULY -HONOR SAMUEL ADAMS, JAMES OTIS, THOMAS PAINE, THE SONS OF LIBERTY AND THE WINTER SOLDIERS OF VALLEY FORGE.
REMEMBER THE LESSONS OF THIS EARLY STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION- YOU CANNOT WIN IF YOU DO NOT FIGHT.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
As we approach the 230th Anniversary of the American Revolution militants should honor the valiant fighters for freedom, many not prominently remembered today, such as Samuel Adams, James Otis and Tom Paine who kept the pressure on those other more moderate revolutionary politicians such as Washington and John Adams who at times were willing to compromise with the British Empire short of victory. We should also remember the valiant but mainly nameless Sons of Liberty who lit the spark of rebellion. And the later Winter Soldiers of Valley Forge who held out under extreme duress in order to insure eventual victory. Anyone can be a sunshine patriot; we desperately need militants in the tradition of the winter soldiers. No revolution can succeed without such fighters.
The 4th of July today is covered with so much banal ceremony, flag- waving, unthinking sunshine patriotism and hubris it is hard to see the forest for the trees to the days when, as Lincoln stated, during that other great progressive action of this country’s history- the Great Civil War of 1861-65- that this country was the last, best hope for civilization. Note this well- those men and women who rebelled against the king from Washington on down were big men and women out to do a big job. And they did it. A quick look at the political landscape today makes one thing clear. This country has no such men or women among its leaders today-not even close.
Rereading the Declaration of Independence today, a classic statement of Enlightenment values, and such documents as the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution demonstrates that these men and women were, hesitantly and in a fumbling manner to be sure, taking on some big issues in the scheme of human development. Today what do we see- half-hearted withdrawal programs to end the quagmire borne of hubris in Iraq, amendments against same sex marriage, amendments against flag-burning, the race to the bottom of the international wage scale bringing misery to working people, serious attempts to create a theocracy based on Christian fundamentalism, creation of a fortress against immigration in a nation of immigrants, among other things. In short, the negation of that spirit that Lincoln talked about. Today, the militants who fought the American Revolution would probably be in some Guantanamo-like cages. DEFEND THE ENLIGHTENMENT!
Note- To learn more about the history of the American Revolution and the foundation of the Republic any books by Gordon S. Wood on the subject are a good place to start. Garry Wills in his book Inventing America also has some insights worth reading. Check Amazon.com
An Encore -Eddie Daley’s Big Score –With Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting In Mind
A Sketch From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Eddie Daley, Edward James Daley, to the 1940s slapdash Dorchester triple-decker tenements within earshot of the rattling Redline subway born, dreamed, dreamed big dreams, ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper as the old time used-up now corny expression had it, of making the big score, making easy street, and in the process leaving behind a legend that guys, corner boy guys and grifters would talk about long after he was gone. Talk about in reverent hushed whispers about the guy, Eddie Daley, thereafter to be dubbed the “king of the grifters” who pulled the biggest con that there ever was, and walked away from it free as a bird. Not all big scores, cons, even if consummated, had that final part, that walk away free part, just ask the shade of Frankie Finn who pulled the big Shiloh Fur scam worth two million easy (a lot of money back in the 1950s even when split four ways and a fifth cut for the fence plus his expenses although that sum just walking around money today), pulled it off with just four guys, a good number for the haul, but who “forgot” that he was dealing with one “Rocket Kid,” Johnny Silver, in his entourage who after the heist put two between the eyes of his three confederates, figuring one is easier to count than four no matter than two of the guys were his long time corner boys. The Rocket Kid, Johnny, was subsequently “hit” by one of Buddy Boyle’s boys, everybody though Rolling Rex Buddy’s main contract man did the deed since he had not been seen around for a while, when he tried to fence the stuff since Buddy was the front money man on that caper and Frankie Finn’s cousin to boot. Buddy already rolling in dough had his own way of figuring one is easier to count when he was the one. So that walking away free part was no small part of the leaving a legend behind scenario.
Eddie’s dream might seem strange to the squares, to those who live life on the square, wake up and do the nine to five bit, or whatever the time bit these days with flexible hours, take two weeks’ vacation in Maine in the summer, raise and put three kids through college at great expense and get a gold watch or a pat on the back when they are turned out to pasture. Yeah, that dream definitely might seem odd to those who have never been from hunger, not just “wants” hunger like a million guys have, maybe more, but no food on the table hunger when the old man drank away the week’s paycheck at the Dublin Grille or hand-me-down clothes from older brothers in style or not hunger that ate deeply into every way that Eddie thought about things from very early on. Those who never worried about big scores, or cons since they had it coming in whatever they had to put out in expenses would never figure Eddie’s dreams out.
See Eddie was a what they called, called back in the old days, back in the 1930s, and still called them back in Eddie’s coming of age time in the 1960s when he came of age in that Dorchester section of Boston where he triple decker tenement grew up a natural-born grifter. When Eddie first heard that word used, strangely after he had already done his first con and somebody on the corner, that hang out corner being Mel’s Variety on Neponset Avenue near the Fields Corner subway stop, called him a born “grifter” he faked it and said yeah and then next day went to the library and looked it up in the dictionary and came up with this-“A grifter is someone who swindles you through deception or fraud. Synonyms include fraudster, con artist, cheater, confidence man, scammer, hustler, swindler, etc.”
Eddie smiled the smile of the just on that one. Yeah, a grifter, is a guy like him who figured some angles, any angles, a guy who did this and that, did the best he could without working some nine to five hump job. [Here is a practical corner boy, not Mel’s but Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner down in Carver about thirty miles south of Dorchester but still in “from hunger” land definition- “A grifter to fill in the gaps for the unknowing and clueless was a guy, sometimes a dame, although usually where there was a dame involved she was a roper especially if the mark was hopped up on some sex thing, who spent his eternal life figuring how to go from point A to point B, and point A was wanting dough and point B was getting it by any means necessary but mainly by stealth. By the way do not discount women in the grifter society one of the best who ever lived was a gal who went by the name Delores Del Rio, named herself after the 1940s movie star, who took some duke over in Europe for a cool two million in jewelry after she got him all jammed up and picked him clean leaving him with some fake jewels worth about six dollars in Woolworth’s, beautiful.]
So Eddie started figuring the angles very early on, very early on indeed and would regale, if that is the right word for it, the corner boys in front of Mel’s Variety Store on Neponset Avenue with tales of his daring do once he started hanging out there when he began high school at Dot High. Of course that was all kids’ stuff, baubles and beads stuff, since nobody expected a kid to have the talents for grifting right out of the box (having the heart, the “from hunger” wanting habits heart was a separate and maybe more pressing question) but there are certain guys, certain Eddie guys, who cling to those dreams pretty hard and give themselves a workout getting in shape.
From what one guy, Southie Slim, one of the Mel’s corner boys before he moved on to other stuff told me Eddie started pretty early, started simply conning other kids out of their milk money in elementary school over at the Monroe Trotter School. Here is the skinny on that first round according to Slim who got caught out himself before he picked up the grifter life for a while until he found out dealing high-grade dope to the Beacon Hill crowd was a great deal more profitable, and socially smart too once you added in willing women. Eddie somehow had picked up some dice, yeah, a pair and he would bet other kids, boys or girls it did not matter, their milk money on the results. Of course he somehow had “loaded” them so he would win. Now that was a fairly easy thing but here is where Eddie learned his craft. To keep play going he would let the other kids win occasionally, just enough to keep them interested rather than be a greed-head like big bully Matty Dugan down at my elementary school, Myles Standish, down in Carver who just strong-armed a kid a day for his (or her, it did not matter) milk money. But the real tip he picked up young as he was that as long as kids, people, think they can“pick you clean” you will always have a willing pool of suckers, of people to swindle, small or large but think large.
One night, one slow Friday night years later after he had settled deeply into the routine of the life, Eddie was cutting up touches about his old days while smoothing down high-shelf scotch (a no-no when you are on the hustle by the way save that for slow Friday nights when you are cutting up old touches Eddie said), about how he moved up after that dice thing ran its course as all such scams do if for no other reason that the grifter gets tired of the play, and he related what happened after that first scam when he got to the Curley Junior High School. Here is how it went, the basic outline since Eddie was kind of cagey about some of the details like the guys he was talking to that night were going to run right out and pull the scam themselves. Eddie basically ran a pyramid scheme on his fellow students. He conned the kids into giving him their money by saying he knew a guy, a friend of his older brother, Lawrence, who worked as a stable boy at the track and who knew when the fix was on in a race and who could place bets for him and get some bucks fast. Eddie convinced a couple of guys that if they put all their dough together they could buy a ticket and make some easy dough. And it worked for a while since Eddie in his devilish way paid off the guys with his own dough. Each guy getting maybe a buck which to a “from hunger” kid was a big deal. Word got out and soon plenty of kids, even girls were looking to get in on easy street. And so he would dole out some more dough. Then he pulled the plug, told everybody that he was going in for a big score that he was going to put twenty dollars on a sure thing that the stable boy had tipped him to. In the event he actually got about thirty five dollars collected altogether. Of course the horse ran out, never came close so all was lost. Hey, wait a minute have you been listening? Eddie didn’t know any stable boy, didn’t make any bet, so minus his seed money expenses he cleared twenty-five bucks. Here is what Eddie learned though know the “clients” (Eddie’s word) who you are dealing with and don’t be too greedy. He did that same small con for a couple of years and it worked like magic, got him his money for the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner on Gallivan Boulevard and movie money too. Small con wisdom but still wisdom.
Eddie as he got older, got into high school, got hanging around with his corner boys at Mel’s, got restless, always had that idea in back of his mind that he would pull a big score if he learned all the tricks of the trade, if he could get onto something big. For a while in high school it looked like he was on the fast track, he learned how to work the charity circuit for walking daddy (his term) walking around money using the old homeless but proud gag that those private charity donors love that he picked up one day when he was playing hooky from school and ran into an old con man, Railroad Bill, on a bench at Boston Common near the Park Street Station who gave him the tip. Eddie would laugh at how easy it was to pull off walking into let’s say the United Methodist Church Social Services office up on Beacon Street dressed in his very real hand-me- downs and unshaven making him look older but not too old (meaning the old telltale sign that the guy had been “on the bum” too long to be proud and work his way out of his current jam) going through his rough things but wanting to get back on track if he only had a the price of a week’s rent in one of the rooming houses that dotted the other side of the hill then (a few still there even today, significantly fewer though). That was good for ten or twenty at a time although the down side of that caper was that you could only use it once, maybe twice. The upside was that there were numerous private social service agencies like that looking for somebody “worthy” to give the dough to.
With that walking around money Eddie would work a variation of his kids’ stuff milk money run, he would sell lottery tickets (in the days before the state got its greasy hands into that racket), for different charities, say he was raising it for blind kids or to send kids to summer camp. Offer as prizes radios, televisions, maybe a record player, stuff like that which people wouldn’t mind spending a dollar or “three for five dollars” on to help some crippled-up kids, give them fresh air, or some other small break or something. So he would grab the dough and then have one or more of his corner boys rip off what was needed over at Lechmere Sales or someplace like that (usually using at first “Five Fingers” Riley or “Rat” Malone who started that racket early once they figured out that if you were fearless in grabbing stuff nobody was going to catch you, and that worked for a long time until they “graduated” to armed robberies and did consecutive nickels, dimes and quarters in various Massachusetts state pens).
See nobody gave a good damn if the charity he was hustling for ever got the dough all they knew was that for a buck, or three for five, they had a chance for their own television, radio, or record player important to hard-pressed high school kids who would not have those items otherwise. Needless to say the corner boys he used were good and he paid them off well like he should to keep them in line, another lesson learned, and so he honed his skills.
When Eddie graduated from high school and was to face the workaday world though he panicked a bit, decided that he needed to move up a step if he was going to avoid the fate of his belabored father, belabored by drink, yes, but also hard work on the docks, not always steady and with a brood of kids and a nagging wife to contend with. If the nine-to-five was not for Eddie neither was staying down in the depths either. (A history teacher had mentioned one time in class that all of her charges should seek to move up the latter of society at least one jump ahead of their parents and that kind of stuck with him.) So he started going into downtown Boston, started hanging around the Commons regularly unlike in high school where he would go just when playing hooky but really to blow off steam when something exploded at home in that damn crowded apartment, started to listen to guys to see if they had any ideas like that time “Railroad Bill” gave him the scoop on the private charity gag, had been on easy street at one time. He didn’t bother with the eternal winos and junkies for they had nothing to say that he could use but to guys and there always were guys who maybe had been on the hustle and got waylaid, or just got old in a young man’s racket and so maybe had some words to share. And before he knew it he met Sidewalk Sam and Bright Boy Benny a couple of guys who told him about old time scams, about how guys survived by their wits in the hard-ass Depression days. And come some old Friday night, a slow girl-less Friday usually, Eddie would hold forth about what he had learned in the world, learned from Sidewalk and Bright Boy.
Here, for example, is what he told the boys one Friday night, one “Five-Fingers” Malone-less Friday night marking the first time he got bagged for doing a robbery, unarmed that time, of a gas station and was doing a six month stretch at Deer Island, which will give you an idea of where Eddie was heading, a story of a scam that seemed impossible to pull off given what they were trying to do. Unless you knew how very greedy some guys, even smart guys were. Let’s call it the wallet switch, an old scam that Eddie would perform a couple of times later, successfully. You need two guys for this, at least. In this case two used to be “from hunger” Great Depression grifters Denver Slim and Gash Lavin. And you must know your mark’s movements pretty well and whether they have dough on them, a more usual circumstance than you might think back then than now that we are in this age of the ATM and cashable credit cards among those a shade to the left of the law (and a whole new Eddie-less generation tech- savvy grifters with their dreams, and stories they are telling their confederates on slow Friday nights). I won’t go into the preliminaries about setting the mark up, but they knew their guy, knew his movements and knew what he was carrying, so just rest assured that Denver and Gash had seeded their mark. Well actually Denver had seeded the mark, one Ricardo “Slice” Russo (you figure out the why of that moniker, okay), who was the bag man for Lou Thorpe’s numbers racket in New York City, yes the Lou Thorpe who ran wild back in the day and made a splash in Vegas to top off his career but this is earlier when he was greedier than Midas and so was particularly susceptible to any scheme that put money in his waiting hands.
Once a week Slice headed for Chicago on the midnight train to pay off Lou’s confederates there (at the high end of the rackets there are always confederates to pay off, cops too so it is just part of the overhead to keep on the streets. Guys down the bottom of the food chain don’t have such financial worries they are too busy keeping one eye out for looming John Law.)
Now bag men are pretty low in the food chain of any criminal enterprise but are like Eddie and every other Eddie-like dreamer also groomed on the con, on easy street dreams. What Denver did was to ask Slice, whom he cornered by evoking “Shark” Mahoney’s name, a mutual acquaintance, as he was heading to the station on the way to Chicago to drop off three thousand to a guy, “Bones” Kelly, also known to both men, on Division Street in that city for him. That money had been placed in a wallet, a black leather wallet similar to the one Slice was carrying the twenty thousand pay-off in, and when Slice got to Chi town he gave the wallet to the Division Street guy, to Kelly, the one with three thousand in it, three thousand in counterfeit money as Kelly later found out. See Slice had figured that doing Denver’s delivery was like finding money on the ground especially when he thought up the fake dough angle. So tough luck, Denver. Worse though, worse for Slice anyway, the mob’s wallet also had twenty thousand in counterfeit money when he delivered the wallet to an office in the Loop.
What had happened was that Gash had been on that train, had in the course of bumping into Slice switched wallets and got off in Cleveland leaving Slice to his troubles. But here is what you have to know, know about the mob. They thought Slice, a troublesome bag man and so an easy fall guy was pulling a fast one on them when he explained what he thought had happened and he wound up in the Illinois River face down before anybody investigated anything. Beautiful work by Denver and Gash who headed out West for a while just to be on the safe side but also know this-if you are running on the high side expect some blow-back, nasty blow-back if you don’t walk away clean. Just ask Slice
One night, another of those aimless nights when there was no action, or maybe Eddie was cooling out from a con, a wise move since overdoing the con scene leads inevitably to trouble, usually fist, gun or John Law trouble, he told the guys a story, a story about the granddaddy of all the scores, a haul of almost half a million back in the 1930s when half a million was not just walking around money like it is today. A story that Nutsy Callahan, another one of the Great Depression guys he would listen to over on the Commons told him about one afternoon after he had played out some luscious honey over on Tremont Street who had “curled his toes” and he was a bit too restless to head home (Eddie wasn’t much for girlfriends or serious female company on his way up and maybe it was better for him to just catch a quick “curl the toes” on an off-afternoon with some passing fancy because no question women are far tougher to deal with that the hardest scam). The way Nutsy told the story implied that he might have been in on the caper, although like all good grifters, grafters, percentage guys, and midnight sifters, he would put the account in the third person just in case the statute of limitations had not run out on whatever the offenses were, or, more likely, some pissed off Capo or his descendants were still looking to take some shots at guys who pulled such scams.
Nutsy had told Eddie a few lesser scams that he had been involved in and Eddie told a few lies of his own but the important thing for Eddie, or rather Eddie’s future was that he was looking to break out of the penny-ante grifts and ride easy street so he was looking for ideas, long ago ideas really because just maybe with a duke here and a juke there the thing could be played again. Eddie didn’t bother to tell Nutsy that for Nutsy would probably not have told the story or as likely dismiss Eddie’s chances out of hand. So Nutsy told the story and Eddie’s eyes went bonkers over the whole set-up.
This one involved “Top Hat” Hogan so named for the simple fact that as long as anybody had known him, or could remember, he always wore a fancy day top hat although rarely, very rarely, with any accompanying evening clothes. Some of his girl friends said he wore the damn thing when he was in bed with them and that was just fine because Top Hat was a walking daddy when it came to loving his women. Top Hat had been widely assumed to have been the brains behind the Silver Smith Fur scam, the Morgan Bank scam and the Golden Gate Mine dust-up which people talked about almost until the war (World War II if you are counting). So Top Hat under any circumstances was a number one grifter who any guy with any dough, any serious dough, had better check up on to see if Top Hat had been in the vicinity if he wanted to keep said cash. The other key guy, and the reason Top Hat, who had been semi-retired at the time of this caper and rightfully so having run the rack already, was a raw kid, a kid with promise but not much else then, was “Jet” Jenkins. And the reason that Top Hat even considered teaming up with a raw kid like Jet, was that he was the son of Happy Heddy Jenkins, a fancy woman who had “curled his toes” back in his younger days. Heddy had had some good days and bad days but one of the bad days had been meeting up with the famous gambler, Black Bart Benson, one of the great flim-flam, flim-flam meaning simply a cheater without mercy and guys, leg-breakers if anybody had a problem with that, poker players of the day.
Old Bart had nevertheless had run into a streak of bad luck at cards which even cheaters face at times, had borrowed and lost almost a one hundred thousand dollars from Heddy (who ran on the best, friendliest, and easiest to enter if you had the money whorehouses in Chicago). Somehow things had taken a turn for the worst after Black Bart left Heddy high and dry and she was back on cheap street trying to raise a helter-skelter growing boy with short funds. Not so Black Bart who had cheated his way to a million dollar bonanza when his luck changed. (That cheating not known, obviously, to the guys taking the beating at the card table but Heddy knew her Bart and imparted that wisdom onto her son.) When Heddy sent Jet to see if Bart would ante up the cash he had borrowed from her he dismissed Jet with a flick of his hand, and after a serious beating by one of his leg-breakers had him dumped him in some back alley in Altoona one night. Bart had, with a laugh, as his boys administered that beating, told Jet that he should sue him in court to get his money back as he wasn’t in the mood to give some bent whore dough that she had gotten from her whorehouse dollies. So Heddy, so Jet, and after hearing about what Bart had called Heddy, so Top Hat were primed for revenge. But more than revenge because that is easy, kids’ stuff, but to send Bart back to cheap street hustling winos with three-card Monte tricks or stuff like that.
The key to understanding Black Bart was that like a lot of con artists, no, most con artists, no, make that all con artists, is that beside being easy prey to any scam especially a scam that plays to their greed they always assume that they are smarter than whoever is making the proposition and can double-back on it to their profit. Top Hat had easy pickings when he ran across guys like Bart. Here is the way that Top Hat worked his magic, although when Nutsy finished telling Eddie the lay Eddie thought the venture had too many moving parts, too many guys in on the score once Black Bart was brought down.
It went like this. “Buggy” Bannon knew Black Bart, knew he was always interested in an easy score so Buggy put the word in Bart’s ear about some silver and gold mining stock that was about to go through the roof once the worst parts of the Depression were over. So Buggy, who had worked with Top Hat on the Silver Smith scam and so was trustworthy, or as trustworthy as any guy working on a scam can be introduced Top Hat to Bart as a chief stockbroker for Merrill Lynch. Then Top Hat went through the traces, got Bart hooked in with the knowledge about the gold and silver stock. Of course Top Hat had had “Horseless” Harry sent up a nice brochure in color all about the various possibilities of the mining stock and Bart got interested, saw quick dollar signs. Of course even an over-the-top greedy guy like Bart had to see some real stuff, some real stockbroker operation, so Top Hat had rented out space in a building in the financial district and created out of sheer nothing a stock market room complete with ticker-tape, running around employees (all grifters from out west so that Bart would not recognize them) or and investors milling around.
That was the part that Eddie thought was over the top, the too many moving parts aspect, but in any case it all looked good to Bart. Here is the carrot Top Hat told Bart to invest a few thousand to see how it went. And so Bart did, bringing to the stock room five thousand in cash as all con artists did then in the days before working kited checks and credit cards and stuff like that opened out new ways to bilk people, including smart guys. A few days later Top Hat delivers ten thousand to Bart, all fresh dough, and so they are off to the races because now he sees that this thing could make him really rich. Of course Top Hat knowing that you have to bring a guy, a sucker along, knowing you needed to whet his appetite had just added five of his own money to Bart’s to bring in the bonanza (writing it off as overhead just like any other legal or illegal operation).
Bart, although no fool and who still had some suspicions, was no question hooked though as Top Hat fed him another stock tip and told him he should let the ten thousand ride, which he did. About a week later Top Hat delivers twenty-two thousand to Bart and he was really hooked, really wants to put more money down. Especially when that twenty-two went to fifty grand a few weeks later. Bart said to Top Hat that it was like finding money on the street. Then Top Hat really got to him, let him know that in South Africa, a known gold, silver and diamond mother lode to everybody in those days that a new field was within days of being explored and discovered and that Bart should be ready to go big and get in on the ground floor. Here is the beauty of the thing though. The financial pages were almost in a conspiracy with Top Hat because they were also projecting some speculation about new minefields. One day Top Hat told Bart to get all the cash he could gather because that South African stock, low, very low at the time would be going through the roof once the discovery was confirmed. So a few days later Bart brought a suitcase filled with cash, about a million maybe a little less, and pushed it over to Top Hat. Top Hat went to the cashier (“Hangman” Henry of all people) and brought back a receipt to Bart.
Now you can figure out the rest. A few days later news of that new minefield did come in and that stock did rise although in a world filled with gold and silver with nobody to buy stuff yet not as much as you would have expected but still a good take. Bart then called Top Hat to tell him to cash in. No answer at Top Hat’s number. Bart then went to the stock exchange room to find nothing but a “for rent” sign on the doors. As for Top Hat and Jet well they were on the train back to New York with that one hundred grand for Heddy and a twinkle came into Top Hat’s eyes about those old days when she “curled his toes,” and might again. Beautiful.
That story etched in his brain Eddie Daley started putting together a few ideas in his head, getting on the phone to a few guys (fewer than Top Hat had in his operation), and started making some dough connections for financing. Out in the grifter night they still talk about Eddie Daley, whereabouts unknown, “king of the grifters” after he took Vince Edwards the big book operator for about a million and a quarter in cold hard cash. You now know the back story on that one.
