When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind

When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind 

 By Frank Jackman  

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin in the blogosphere) was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

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“The Unknown Soldier”    

Wait until the war is over
And we're both a little older
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living, dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And it's all over
For the unknown soldier
It's all over
For the unknown soldier
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Comp'nee, halt
Present, arms
Make a grave for the unknown soldier
Nestled in your hollow shoulder
The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And, it's all over
The war is over
It's all over
War is over

Well, all over, baby
All over, baby
Oh, over, yeah
All over, baby

Ooh, ha, ha, all over
All over, baby
Oh, woah, yeah, all over
All over, heh

Songwriters
Robbie Krieger; John Densmore; Jim Morrison;Ray Manzarek

[Under the newly installed regime of site manager Greg Green and the “Young Turks” imposed Editorial Board which guides his actions a new policy of openness has emerged. One aspect of that new policy has been an idea that writers with gripes or other things to say about the internal workings of the site should express themselves, if they like, as introductions to their articles. That in response to the “bottled up” emotions under the old Allan Jackson regime where the idea of expressing such thoughts in the public prints were totally frowned upon even by close and longtime friends like me. Also, and I am not sure I agree with this sentiment, to give the readership, and any potential new readership, an inside look at how a social media site works-or doesn’t work.      

We shall see but today I want to take the opportunity to describe the genesis of this article which the readership might appreciate rather than some screed about how the older writers are feeling that they are shortly to be purged, heads will roll, as one of them said, and other arcane comments which nobody except the parties involved care about.

Several years ago, it must have been around Christmas time I was attending an Arlo Guthrie concert, his daughter Sarah opening for him, a benefit concert for the New England Folk Song Society which like all such folk societies and folksingers outside of a few famous ones like the never-ending Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Tom Rush is always short of cash. During intermission (or maybe before the show started) I was walking by the inevitable CD and other paraphernalia tables when I noticed that the Society was selling calendars. Since there are a half a dozen people I know well enough to give such an item to and no more I checked it out.

Wow! Each month had a photograph detailing some 1960s folk minute like Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band at Newport in 1963, Odetta, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joan’s sister Mimi Farina also at Newport. Great photos including the one I am thinking about as I write this short commentary. A photograph of three good-looking young women, or at least I think they looked good to these old eyes sitting on a couch in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War wearing the hats, short dresses, bare stocking-less legs that their mothers would have frowned upon, in style long hair and such of the time.

In front of them though a medium-sized  handmade sign, a sign important at the time when every young man, including me, had some decision to make about fighting, or not fighting, in the Vietnam War. Of even accepting induction, of resisting the draft of the time. The sign in the language of the time: girls only do it with boys who don’t. Christ if I had had that inducement I too might have thought about draft resistance an option. My girlfriend of the time was rabidly pro-war mainly because her older brother was already over in Vietnam. Not long after I would too be in the Army eventually as a military resister. I wonder if that would have counted had I run into them. Frank Jackman]

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There was no seamless thread that wrapped the 1960s up tightly. A thousand things, or it seemed like a thousand things, came together in pretty rapid succession to draw down in flames, for a while anyway although none of us though it would on be for only a while just as we thought that we would live forever, or at least fast, the dread red scare Cold War freezes of our childhood. But you could traces things a little, make your own “live free” categories of the events that chipped away the ice of those dark nights.

Start in with the mid-1950s if you like with the heat of the black struggle for some semblance of civil liberties down South (and some sense for equality up North), the first break-out of music with the crowning of rock and roll as the wave of the future (black rhythm and blues, scat, rockabilly mixed all stirred up), the “discovery” of teen alienation and angst exemplified by movie star James Dean, who lived fast, and died fast a metaphor that would work its way through youth culture over the next generation. An odd-ball mix right there. Then start to throw in the struggles against the old authority, the old certitudes that had calmed our parents’ lives in places like Frisco town where they practically ran the red-baiters in the HUAC out of town, but of course the biggest event that opened the doors for liberals, radicals, hell even thoughtful conservatives was the sweet breeze coming down the road from Boston with the election of Jack Kennedy.    

That event opened up a new psyche, that it was okay to question authority, whatever the limitations and shortness of the Camelot times with the struggles against some hoary things like segregation, the dead penalty, nuclear proliferation, the unevenness of life which would get propelled later in the decade with fight for women’s liberation, gay liberation, and the fight against the draft, the damn war in Vietnam that drove a nail into the heart of the generation. There were more things, cultural things and experimentations with new lifestyles that all got a fair workout during this period as well.     

Plenty of us in retrospective would weigh the various combinations of events differently in figuring out how the uprising started just as plenty of us have our specific dates for when the tide began to ebb, when the mean-spirited and authoritarian began their successful counter-offensive that we still live with for not taking the omens more seriously.

And then we have the photograph that graces this short screed. This photograph is almost impossible to imagine without some combination of that hell broth mix stirred up in the 1960s. Three self-assured women comfortable with the loose and individualistic fashion statements of the day from floppy hats to bare legs, bare legs that would have shocked a mother. Uncomfortable about the damn Vietnam war that was eating up boyfriends, brothers, just friends at a heavy rate and they unlike their mothers who came through World War II waiting patiently and patriotically for their military heroes to come home, come home in one piece, have a very different sense of the heroic. A sense of the heroic going back to ancient times when one group of women demanded that their men come home on their shields if they had to rather than speak of defeat and others providing a distant echo for these three women pictured here who refused their potential soldier boys any favors if they went off to war. More, much more of the latter, please.                     

The World Gone Amok- Robert Downey, Jr. And Friends- “The Avengers: The Age Of Ultron” (2015)- A Film Review

The World Gone Amok- Robert Downey, Jr. And Friends- “The Avengers: The Age Of Ultron” (2015)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

The Avengers: The Age Of Ultron, starring Robert Downey, Jr. Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johannsson, Marvel Studios, 2015 

[WT…. no I know what you thought was coming next but no we, Greg Green, the impresario of this site and his band of eminent Editorial Board members selected for their independence and acumen, have come to an understanding about my future exploits which may match some of the super-heroes in the film under review The Avengers: The Age Of Ultron. We have unanimously agreed that I will share review duties with the legendary writer and Bogie aficionado Phil Larkin on the upcoming The Maltese Falcon review. The idea, partially mine, but mostly that of the ever creative Mr. Green, was to get the collective takes of a younger writer and an older writer on that world-historic classic film. Otherwise I would have been forced to flee this previously barren planet site and gone to venues which would have appreciated my talents with a big by-line and who knows what else.    

The fuss up, or to use the now retired but still hanging around the water cooler Sam Lowell’s expression “tempest in a teapot,” centered on my demotion to having to grind out yet another one of these admittedly by all concerned dim-witted super-hero mutant reviews which are beneath my skill level, maybe beneath any writer on this site’s skill level. That notion makes me think that perhaps the old regime under the now mostly forgotten and exiled Allan Jackson might have had something on the question of what to review, and more importantly, what not to review. I understand that Jackson would have thrown a fit if anybody had even suggested doing such kiddie comic reviews except maybe as background for the decline in civility, decline in youthful reading in the age of the Internet, social media, and texting habits, and the fake wisdom of the greed-heads (Phil Larkin’s word) who figured out that while the kids won’t read a twenty minute comic book they will sit forever for this cinematic action adventure stuff. Or as long as the popcorn and soda hold out.

Like I said Greg saved the day and I will wrap this beast of s review up in a couple of minutes which maybe is about a minute or so more than it is worth and get ready to do battle with the beloved old master writer Phil Larkin on that new project. Everybody knows Phil’s credentials to do justice to his part in the bargain since he is widely known as a Bogie aficionado of long standing who just posted a lesser Bogie film, Across The Pacific, as a little warm-up. Of course other than as an acknowledged up and coming writer here under the guidance of Greg and the Board my credentials are almost as stellar. I had the privilege, although I did not know it at the time, of being taken when young to many film festival retrospectives by my parents so these old-time black and white classics are kind of in my DNA so to speak. That should speak for itself. Kenny Jacobs]

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One thing that Phil Larkin has right, as many previous disagreements as we have had, is that these super-hero action adventure stories from comic land are mind numbing, are strictly for sleep aids (except for the poor buggers like me who have to earn our keep by reviewing this kickass a minute stuff). Nevertheless the only really good thing about this film as far as I can see is that Tony Stark, aka Ironman, played by the lovely Robert Downey, Jr. finally f—ked up. Let things get out of hand in Avenger Land wherever those guys and gals hang out. Tony went off the deep end because he wanted to test the edges of science in an attempt to bring some little modicum of peace to this wicked old world via his various experiments. Generally not a bad idea although a one man band approach seems kind of goofy even when a cohort of super-heroes and hangers-on to feast on. This time he was trying to create a robotic thing who could chill everybody out. Hey, that is what humankind has been doing since Adam and Eve maybe earlier, trying to get back to the garden. Where Tony f—ked up and it took a whole two hours plus (and an audience refill tub of butter-drenched popcorn and a river of cupped soda with ice) to straighten out was to let this Doctor Banner, aka the Hulk, played by savvy Mark Buffalo, no, Ruffalo, a mutant of extraordinary ugliness and brute strength within a mile of any lab. Jesus, can you believe letting a guy next to the next best thing in world peace and human-hood. Letting a guy who couldn’t control his own simple lab experiments without turning into a raving beast who rightly should be buried about fifty feet underground in concrete for the good of that humankind I have been talking about muck around with A.I or hell simple high school chemistry experiments.        

Guess what. Poor good-hearted Jarvis (if it has a heart)who has done yeoman service by Tony takes a beating by this run amok Ultron who is, get this logic, committed to saving the whole planet by killing all humanity. Some tree-hugger’s crazed fantasy. The Nuremburg trials would be too good for whoever let such savagery loose in the land. Of course in trying to control this monster A.I. which they had unleashed a goodly portion of the planet took some destruction as the Hulk, yes, unleashed Doctor Banner, went on a rampage until Tony as Ironman beat his brains in. They are still counting the dead and wounded as well as insurance-covered property damage on that little tryst. That rampage and other destructive incidents had led them to hiding out for a while before the vigilantes came after them. Fortunately the Avengers were able to declare a truce with a sullen world. But who knows what is next except Hulk will explode if he isn’t put to sleep, doesn’t take the big step-off he deserves since it is obvious he can’t control his rages at all even when some little old lady bumped into him on the subway. In any case enough of the cornball swill and let’s get to real adventure with dizzy dames and blackened birds and private eyes to figure that whole small-sized human mess out. I’m coming Phil.       

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-Pierce Brosnan’s “Goldeneye” (1995) –A Film Review

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up-Pierce Brosnan’s “Goldeneye” (1995) –A Film Review

DVD Review

By former Associate Film Critic Alden Riley  

[I personally do not like the new regime’s,  under Greg Green’s steady guidance, policy of getting rid of  titles which were the hallmark of  the now safely departed and exiled Allan Jackson who used to run the show here. It took many years for me to get it and I resent being thrown on the dung heap and placed with everybody else with just their names on the by-line line. For now I will use my old title in the past tense until we go back to titles or Greg make a big deal out of my moniker and tries to shut it down. Then I will go back to being an Everyman like Sandy Salmon and Si Lannon have mentioned elsewhere. Alden Riley]    

Goldeneye, starring Pierce Brosnan, based on the character created by Ian Fleming although not on any of his novel series plot-lines, 1995

Sometimes writers, especially a coterie of writers of film reviews, will sometimes come up with the screwiest things to argue about in those dark getting to dawn hours when the booze has been flowing generously and the dregs of writing under deadline have passed by without comment. Especially when there are other disputes hanging in the shadows making things tense before the storm like the big blow we just went through at this site which basically came down to a battle royal against the old guard caught in their daydreams of 1960s growing up in turbulent times grandeur by the “Young Turks” whose frame of reference is later times and later connections, Reagan “trickle down” times, post-Soviet monster Clinton times, Bush-Obama boom and bust times, hip-hop, techno, social media explosion times.

That shadow battle got exploded a few months ago when I, ignorant of the hagiology of the 1960s musical scene which all the older guys carry with them like a lodestone, mentioned to then Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon that I did not know who Janis Joplin was. Sandy, to be fair, was willing to forgive me my transgression but Pete Markin, the “boss” got wind of it and “forced” me to do a review of a Joplin bio-pic over Sandy’s head. That was one is a series of grievances we younger non-1960s devotees had built up inside.     

The way these “troubles” hit before getting resolved was the big blow-out Sandy and I did have over reviewing the myriad James Bond, you know, 007, films. Sandy has started reviewing the first four Sean Connery films, I don’t think in order which he usually doesn’t give a fuck about, Doctor No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball and had asked me to continue the series, at least the Sean Connery part which is all he cared about covering since for him Connery was Bond, was James Bond end of discussion.

When I mentioned that I thought Sean Connery was probably a good Bond for the 1960s although I hadn’t seen any of his films except Goldfinger where I thought he was a little over the top Sandy flipped.  I figured I was going to be assigned the litany without any recourse or appeal especially if fellow Sean Connery devotee Peter Markin got wind of my ignorance and would have probably added that I had to review Ian Fleming’s books as well. I finally was able to get Sandy to see reason, to see that a younger man whose frame of Bond reference was not Connery but the man who played 007 in the film under review Goldeneye the beautiful rather than handsome Pierce Brosnan should have an opportunity to compare the two or at least to show that different actors working in different times would have a different sensibility. Once he saw reason he mentioned that he would finish up the Sean Connery films and I could do “pretty boy” Brosnan (Sandy’s term) and we would fight out the battle when the reviews were done. Fair enough.

Now everybody knows that there will be plenty of high tech gadgetry, plenty of physically over-the-top action and plenty of sexy women either chasing or being chased by any actor who plays Bond. That goes with the territory even though this first Pierce Brosnan Bond vehicle was not created out of Fleming’s stockpile. Brosnan brings not only a “pretty boy” as against Connery’s dashingly handsome demeanor but is much more physically agile and adept than Connery ever was. And plays the role with more cheek.

Of course each film has a storyline roughly similar, some criminal operation here the nefarious Janus syndicate which wants to create a meltdown of the London stock exchange and the British economy in general. Reason: the head of the organization who is MI6 turned rogue had Cossack parents in Russia who collaborated with the Nazis against Stalin and the British after the war sent them back to Uncle Joe after falsely promising asylum. WTF. What did the parents, what did the rogue MI6 expect with Uncle Joe an ally then before Winston Churchill pulled the “iron curtain” down.

In any case to create the meltdown Janus steals a super Euro helicopter which he will use to help when he with inside help is able to use a Russian space probe to deflect some action and destroy London for good measure. Come hell or high water he will not get away with such a dastardly deed not if Bond and his fetching Russian super-technician have anything to say about it. And they do- God Save The Queen or something like that. Pierce does it in style. 

Just Before The Sea Change, The Big 1960s Mix And Match-Up - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

Just Before The Sea Change, The Big 1960s Mix And Match-Up - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

By Lance Lawrence  

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin in the blogosphere) was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

[Although I am a much younger writer I today stand in agreement with Bart Webber and Si Lannon, older writers who I admire and whom I have learned a lot from about how to keep it short and sweet but in any case short on these on-line sites. Originally I had agreed with both men as far as Phil Larkin’s, what did Si call them, yes, rantings about heads rolling, about purges and would have what seems like something out of Stalin’s Russia from what I have read about that regime were  dubious at best. Now I am not sure as I have heard other younger writers rather gleefully speaking around the shop water cooler about moving certain unnamed writers out to pasture-“finally” in the words of one of them.

In any case the gripe the former two writers had about the appropriateness of this disclaimer above or whatever it purports to be by the "victorious" new regime headed by Greg Green and his so- called Editorial Board is what I support. As Bart first mentioned, I think, if nothing else this disclaimer has once again pointed told one and all, interested or not, that he, they have been “demoted.”  That I too, as Si pointed out, chafed as an Associate Book Critic and didn’t like it am now just another Everyman and don’t like it. This is the second time I have had the disclaimer above my article so I plead again once should be enough, more than enough.

In the interest of transparency I was among the leaders, among the most vociferous leaders, of what has now started to come down in the shop as urban legend “Young Turks” who fought tooth and nail both while Alan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin as blog moniker for reasons never made clear, at least to me) was in charge and essentially stopped young writers from developing their talents and later when we decided that Allan had to go, had to “retire.” (I am sure Phil Larkin will take those innocent quotation marks as definite proof that Allan was purged although maybe I should reevaluate everything he has said in a new light.) But I agree with Bart and Si’s sentiment that those on the “losing” end in the fierce no-holds barred internal struggle had taken their "beating" and have moved on as far as I can tell. That fact should signal the end of these embarrassing and rather provocative disclaimers. Done. Lance Lawrence]

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There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that fifteen minutes of fame, if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. That is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from North Adamsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. It was not like he was some kind of soothsayer, could read tea leaves or tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair, read that he was made for big events anything like that back then. No way although that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression for a while.

Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear. See his senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music that had passed for rock (and which the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes) was going to be buried under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to bring in the new dispensation. More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air he was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called the folk minute of the early 1960s (which when the tunes, not Dylan and Baez at first but guys like the Kingston Trio started playing on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner after school some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over). So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations. But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.

That fascination with music had occupied Edward’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records and later folk albums, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.

One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat driven by some wild guitar by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Edward became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound. Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and Brenda that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.

So Edward was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught later in high school up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in North Adamsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Eddie would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.”  So Eddie had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they severely disapproved on the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Eddie played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother). Then came 1964 and  Eddie was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.

That is where Eddie had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Eddie knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid.  Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:                   

“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his conference trip, if you know what is good for you.” 

That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like North Adamsville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy, had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by.).

Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.

And not just about hair styles either. But about midnight trips on the clanking subway to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat”  except on silly television shows and “wise” social commentary who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s news).

Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Eddie be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker just then). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word.)     

Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Dawson, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jacks’ Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worst though, worst that worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."

And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:      

“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” 

barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little longer than mid-calf was the flash point) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. 

She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "And that Eddie [“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie], and his new found friends like Peter Dawson taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester.  And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."

Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Dawson were sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when head South this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Dawson. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)

They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and have purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south on a chartered bus. But get this Pete turned to Edward and said, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Yes, we are still just before the sea change after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck though, young travelers, good luck.

When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind

When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind 

By Lance Lawrence  

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin in the blogosphere) was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

[Although I am a much younger writer I today stand in agreement with Bart Webber and Si Lannon, older writers who I admire and whom I have learned a lot from about how to keep it short and sweet but in any case short on these on-line sites. Originally I had agreed with both men as far as Phil Larkin’s, what did Si call them, yes, rantings about heads rolling, about purges and would have what seems like something out of Stalin’s Russia from what I have read about that regime were  dubious at best. Now I am not sure as I have heard other younger writers rather gleefully speaking around the shop water cooler about moving certain unnamed writers out to pasture-“finally” in the words of one of them.

In any case the gripe the former two writers had about the appropriateness of this disclaimer above or whatever it purports to be by the "victorious" new regime headed by Greg Green and his so- called Editorial Board is what I support. As Bart first mentioned, I think, if nothing else this disclaimer has once again pointed told one and all, interested or not, that he, they have been “demoted.”  That I too, as Si pointed out, chafed as an Associate Book Critic and didn’t like it am now just another Everyman and don’t like it. This is the second time I have had the disclaimer above my article so I plead again once should be enough, more than enough.

In the interest of transparency I was among the leaders, among the most vociferous leaders, of what has now started to come down in the shop as urban legend “Young Turks” who fought tooth and nail both while Alan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin as blog moniker for reasons never made clear, at least to me) was in charge and essentially stopping young writers from developing their talents and when we decided that Allan had to go, had to “retire.” (I am sure Phil Larkin will take those innocent quotation marks as definite proof that Allan was purged although maybe I should reevaluate everything he has said in a new light.) But I agree with Bart and Si’s sentiment that those on the “losing” end in the fierce no-holds barred internal struggle had taken their "beating" and have moved on as far as I can tell. That fact should signal the end of these embarrassing and rather provocative disclaimers. Done. Lance Lawrence]

“The Unknown Soldier”    

Wait until the war is over
And we're both a little older
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living, dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And it's all over
For the unknown soldier
It's all over
For the unknown soldier
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Comp'nee, halt
Present, arms
Make a grave for the unknown soldier
Nestled in your hollow shoulder
The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And, it's all over
The war is over
It's all over
War is over

Well, all over, baby
All over, baby
Oh, over, yeah
All over, baby

Ooh, ha, ha, all over
All over, baby
Oh, woah, yeah, all over
All over, heh

Songwriters
Robbie Krieger;John Densmore;Jim Morrison;Ray Manzarek

From The Pen of Frank Jackman

There was no seamless thread that wrapped the 1960s up tightly. A thousand things, or it seemed like a thousand things, came together in pretty rapid succession to draw down in flames, for a while anyway although none of us though it would on be for only a while just as we thought that we would live forever, or at least fast, the dread red scare Cold War freezes of our childhood. But you could traces things a little, make your own “live free” categories of the events that chipped away the ice of those dark nights.

Start in with the mid-1950s if you like with the heat of the black struggle for some semblance of civil liberties down south (and some sense for equality up north), the first break-out of music with the crowning of rock and roll as the wave of the future (black rhythm and blues, scat, rockabilly mixed all stirred up), the “discovery” of teen alienation and angst exemplified by movie star James Dean, who lived fast, and died fast a metaphor that would work its way through youth culture over the next generation. An odd-ball mix right there. Then start to throw in the struggles against the old authority, the old certitudes that had calmed our parents’ lives in places like Frisco town where they practically ran the red-baiters in the HUAC out of town, but of course the biggest event that opened the doors for liberals, radicals, hell even thoughtful conservatives was the sweet breeze coming down the road from Boston with the election of Jack Kennedy.   

That event opened up a new psyche, that it was okay to question authority, whatever the limitations and shortness of the Camelot times with the struggles against some hoary things like segregation, the dead penalty, nuclear proliferation, the unevenness of life which would get propelled later in the decade with fight for women’s liberation, gay liberation, and the fight against the draft, the damn war in Vietnam that drove a nail into the heart of the generation. There were more things, cultural things and experimentations with new lifestyles that all got a fair workout during this period as well.    

Plenty of us in retrospective would weigh the various combinations of events differently in figuring out how the uprising started just as plenty of us have our specific dates for when the tide began to ebb, when the mean-spirited and authoritarian began their successful counter-offensive that we still live with for not taking the omens more seriously.

And then we have the photograph that graces this short screed. This photograph is almost impossible to imagine without some combination of that hell broth mix stirred up in the 1960s. Three self-assured women comfortable with the loose and individualistic fashion statements of the day from floppy hats to bare legs, bare legs that would have shocked a mother. Uncomfortable about the damn Vietnam war that was eating up boyfriends, brothers, just friends at a heavy rate and they unlike their mothers who came through World War II waiting patiently and patriotically for their military heroes to come home, come home in one piece, have a very different sense of the heroic. A sense of the heroic going back to ancient times when one group of women demanded that their men come home on their shields if they had to rather than speak of defeat and others providing a distant echo for these three women pictured here who refused their soldier boys any favors if they went off to war. More, much more of the latter, please.                     

Elegy Upon Hearing Of The Death Of Superman-“With Batman vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice” (2016) In Mind

Elegy Upon Hearing Of The Death Of Superman-“With Batman vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice” (2016) In Mind  

By Seth Garth

[Perhaps only a person, a man in this case, like Seth Garth who can trace his forebears gaggle of poets, bandits, stone-cold junkies, whores, whoremongers, whoremongers’ wives, midwives, witches, odd-ball aficionados, troubadours, minstrel singers, blackguards going back to medieval times in ancient France, going back on his mother’s side it is said and which explains a lot of things to the bandit/troubadour/poet exiled in his own land François Villon. Back to France when it was all cut up into pieces with little castles and moats and the world too. Only a guy like that could write a prosaic elegy without tears for a legendary figure like Superman, a super-hero whose time had passed. Site manager Greg Green]

                                                                               t

Signpost: December 7, 1941 for those who squeaked by the Great Depression hunger and cold that provoked and pervaded the land and who still charged forward slogging through the muddy beaches and forests of World War II, or waited breathlessly at home. Signpost: November 22, 1963 where every schoolboy and schoolgirl knew exactly where he or she was when the news came through the PA systems of a million schools portending I have a dream Martin death and seek a newer world Robert one too to end Camelot children dreams and Summer of Love drugs, sex and rock and roll. Signpost: 9/11 no year needed yet when everybody learned that in this wicked old world that there were people, there were unchecked forces who sought end time, sought the garden without regard. Signpost: March 26, 2016 the day when a candid world first heard that super-hero for the ages, an other-worldly guy, an alien of a different sort, Superman, had finally cashed his check.         

Who knows how it happened, how it could possibly happen when all the world figured he was invincible, was always to be with us. The world became far shorter than by a head when he laid down that beautiful head of his. (Now laid out in white cross National Cemetery to be wreathed at Christmas time, flagged on Memorial Day and Armistice Day after boom-boom salutes). 

Man of steel, man of steel, man of steel, man of maximum steel.

Not born of woman, a stranger in our midst, churning cornfields into flapjacks, odd duckling in a hero-less world in desperate need of heroes. Nameless except silly earthling name horn-rimmed glasses wimpy goof Clark Kent, a dweeb, nerd, and every other foul name tyrant editor Perry White could lay on him when he came up with some of the lamest stories in newspaper history to cover his tracks, running ruses around who he was and who had deposited him pod-like in Middle America corn-fed fields of dreams.       

Mild-mannered, mild mannered, maximum mild-mannered

Caped crusader in a world filling up with vermin, with the dregs, with oceans full of flotsam and jetsam robbers and robber-barons. Filling up too with a crowd of would-bes, would be super-heroes like they could come off the assembly line ready for action. Ready to fight the creeps, the crooks, the fixer men, the gay guys who worshipped him in silent vigil rooms. Junkie-fixer men crying hero, hero worship me unto the end days, unto the return to the garden. Every sullen batman, ironman, wonder woman, black widow, hulk, thor, and a million other hucksters and hustlers, con artists claiming king or queen-ship. Looking for the man chance.      

Able to leap tall buildings, able to leap tall buildings, able to leap maximum tall buildings.

Made young boys weep for their inadequacies, cowering in corners waiting to be saved, to be born again. Made grown women wet with his bulging muscles and his devilish ways. Little did they know that timeless he was winding down, had lost a step or two, told that he was losing some of his brain power by respected John Hopkins doctors and Walter Reed medics like many aliens do when they hit the American shore and try to turn to vanilla.    

Faster than a speeding bullet, faster than a speeding bullet, faster than a speeding maximum bullet. 

I, I who hear the great world moan death attendant, I who speak for the unwashed masses, I who sing the great Whitman America we are your sons song, got caught off guard, didn’t know that he had had more than a few run-ins with the law, was selling high grade ammo to nefarious parties, was getting a few more people angry every time he took to the cape for a caper. Worried and angry since the collateral damage, a new term unfamiliar to him that he told Lois Lane one pillowy night, he didn’t give a damn about as long as he got one bad guy less to the notched world wasn’t over-shadowing the ratio. Was getting so people were calling for his arrest and exile back to Pluto or wherever they thought he was from (so hungry for a savior in a Daily Planet survey inspired by that brute Perry White only one in ten could name his planet of origin-sad)

Kryptonite, kryptonite, maximum kryptonite. 

Had missed in my plainsong that Superman had turned junkie and was selling himself to the highest bidder, toying with a holy goof named Lux Luthor who had more than one screw loose, who had a stable of poor boy super-heroes to unload on an unsuspecting world. Had a guy named batman wound up so tight that he was ready to take the caped crusader on one on one for cheap money and a shot at Lois Lane if Wonder Woman was already spoken for. Beat the bejesus out of Superman on the quiet one night and Clark Kent was AWOL for days around the Daily Planet nobody thinking it odd.

More powerful than a locomotive, more powerful than a locomotive, more powerful than a maximum locomotive.

The way the story went around, went after the coppers fucked around with the truth and the media bought the damn thing hook, line and sinker, was he was an orphan bastard of some Krypton mutant seeking revenge, seeking his death, since his mother shipped him off to joyride Earth. Ceremonial bitch father had a kryptonite-edged blade and rammed the thing straight through the kid, gone in a minute, done, cooked shamrock green from what they told on the 6 o’clock news.      

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, its Superman, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s maximum Superman.  

Yeah, it was a sad world day the day that guy laid down his head, the day we heard Superman had finally cashed his check. 

From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans-By Site Manager Greg Green-First Night Against The Wars In Boston New Years Eve Day-A Ralph Morris-Sam Eaton Story

From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't Your Grandfather's Veterans-By Site Manager Greg Green-First Night Against The Wars In Boston New Years Eve Day-A Ralph Morris-Sam Eaton Story

By Site Manager Greg Green  

“Everybody knows the story about how Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton met and how they got there and how they became VFP stalwarts, right?” asked Don Mack, local Boston chapter coordinator just as the post-“First Night Against The Wars” party was about to begin at his house. The event held each year at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve had become a staple of the yearly activities of the organization since it had been formed by a coalition of peace and social action groups about a dozen years before. After what was usually a cold to bitter cold afternoon’s work the participants and other friends and supporters would meet at Don’s house in Brighton for the annual New Year’s Eve party which would bring in the new year in a somber if not sober way.  

The reason that Don had asked if the people present knew of the Ralph and Sam story is because Frank Jackman, usually pretty knowledgeable about the personal histories of the local members had mentioned to somebody at the anti-war stand-out within Don’s hearing that the pair had grown up together in Carver and had both been in Vietnam, although not together and not at the same times. That got Don to realize that Frank either had forgotten the particulars of their story or had had a senior moment, or both. When Don got a mixed set of answers to his question he realized that perhaps it was the time and place to tell the story, or rather have the pair who were present at the party as usual tell the story as a very good way to show a lifetime of commitment to the anti-war and social justice movements and how that came about. Don had remembered that one night when they were at Jack’s over in Cambridge after an anti-Raytheon weapons-maker stand-out that both Ralph and Sam had declared that if had not been for the Vietnam War and their reactions to what it had done to their respective sensibilities that they would not be sitting in that room ready to bleed out once again their collective story.

Here is what Ralph, then Sam had to say that night to the couple of dozen people gathered around their seats:         

I was strictly a working- class kid growing up in the rough and tumble Tappan Street section of then, as now, run down Troy upstate New York right next to Albany, the state capital. Was the son of a then struggling owner of a small high-end electronics components company which my father had scratched to make a go of. Growing up though we were pretty poor before my father caught a few breaks from the major employer in the area, General Electric, GE, when they were starting to outsource high tech electronics stuff. As you know, when Dad retired, I took over after working many years for him and now that I am retired my son, my youngest son since Ralph III didn’t want to do it finding a career as a senior software engineer has taken over.   

The important part of growing up poor, fairly poor if not as bad as Sam who can tell his own story later was that I shared all the prejudices of my father and the neighborhood’s about things like patriotism, the horrible Russians who were ready to take our bread and freedom away, and especially about race, about keeping black people out of the Tappan Street neighborhood. Maybe those ideas were not just among the poor of Tappan Street and more pervasive in society than we thought but they were definitely a driving force on the social front. I am ashamed to admit it now and it is hard to say but the only word I knew for blacks, for black people, before I went into the Army was the “n” word. It was around the neighborhood like that too. The worse though was that when I was in high school I stood shoulder to shoulder with my father and other neighbors when a black family tried to move into the neighborhood. To keep them out come hell or high water, and we did. Did keep them out.

Given what I just said you can probably guess that it was no big deal for me when it came time to go in the Army, especially as I went in during the early days of the build-up of the damn Vietnam War, the war which would turn me around but which then was just something to do to fight the local commies in Vietnam there who wanted to snatch our bread and freedom. My father and most of the neighborhood fathers had been veterans, proud veterans of World War II and so the idea of serving was seen as a duty. I remember my father refusing a neighborhood guy, my friend Jimmy Snyder’s father Rudy a job at his shop because he had not served in their war. After high school having nothing else going and prodded on by my father to go and learn a trade, learn electronics, then pretty primitive compared to now so I could come work for him after the service. As I just mentioned in a round about way I did that except through the GI bill not through “learning” the trade in the Army. There was never any thought about waiting to be drafted or stuff like that. It just wasn’t done among the guys I grew up with. It was more likely that guys would go into the Army after getting in trouble with the law and taking the Army as the “easy way out” when the judge gave them a choice between the military and jail.       

I signed up, signed up under the gentle guidance of that bastard recruiting sergeant who is probably still laughing at me for believing word one about what he had to say. He had promised me that I would get first crack at electronics school which I mentioned was in its infancy then at least as compared to now. My idea, boosted by my father was that I would “learn a trade,” his trade for after the Army. As you also know and this is no lie just then, just 1967 or so the war in Vietnam was getting ratcheted up by Johnson, McNamara and the gang of hawks who ran the show then and the demand for infantrymen, grunts, cannon fodder as I, we, learned to call it later when we finally figured out what the hell we really were I was sent to AIT after basic training down at Fort Dix, down in New Jersey. AIT meaning Advanced Infantry Training, meaning just enough training to put your ass in trouble, big trouble when Charlie, the name we had for the VC, the Cong, the whole shooting match of soldiers under the authority of the North Vietnamese.        

After AIT, after the inevitable orders to report at Fort Lewis in Washington state for transport to Vietnam, that “inevitable orders” just then since Uncle Sam, a mythical figure who actually got his start out in my part of New York, just then was in desperate need of replacements for the infantrymen who were being chewed up and spit out like crazy when Charlie pulled the hammer down. I had no more thought of not going through with my orders than the man in the moon. Although I was uneasy about what I had been hearing as the war dragged on it kind of went over me. There was no way in my life that I would join the various resistance and refusal movements either civilian or military at the time. If anything I saw things the other way, saw the “hippies” and resisters as cowards and unpatriotic. That was then, that was before the baptism of fire.

I won’t go through my experiences in Vietnam, not for this crowd, and I don’t feel any need to. This is how I have put it for a long time. I did things, saw others do things and most importantly saw my government do things to people I had no quarrel with than even now I cannot live down although working the peace movement for this long time helps some. I was pretty shattered coming back to the “real world,” had a very hard listening to guys like my father who were still red meat hawks, hell, he would support the war even after all was lost. Got by some kind of osmosis into something of a semi-hippie mode when I met a girl who was a wild child in Albany. Overall though outside of the drugs and alcohol things were pretty hazy and loose, I was drifting.      

Then in early 1970 I was walking down the street near Russell Sage College, that wild child girlfriend was going to school there, or pretending to, in those days things were pretty loose then on the campuses when I saw, not heard, a group of guys, mostly guys, some in military garb, some looking the classic hippie look of the time walking silently down the street to some kind of marching cadence.

I saw a huge banner being carried in front by about four guys all in military garb which read “Bring The Troops Home”-signed Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). There were other signs, home-made signs but that one stuck out. As did the only voice you could hear over the megaphone. “Any Vietnam vets who hated the war, hated what they did, join us, fall in.” And without hesitation I did. Right after the march I joined VVAW, learned more about the group, learned about the war I had fought in than I had known before and I had fought there and took part in all the demonstrations and actions they sponsored in Albany or in Washington, the ones I could make since I was taking some classes in electronics through the GI bill. That was why I was in Washington, D.C. during May Day, 1971 when National VVAW called for us to try one desperate attempt to shut down the government if it would not shut down the war. Everybody knows, and if you don’t, I was arrested that May Day and thrown in RFK stadium, the overflow holding area we were put in. That is where I met Sam when he saw my VVAW button and we started talking, talking about how I, and he, had gotten into that jam. Sam can now tell you his story, but let’s take a little break and have some wine and some food.                

And after the break with a couple of people drifting away from the talk Sam gave his story:

Its funny that I am talking about this experience since I thought everybody kind of knew about Ralph and me, thought it was kind of an unspoken legend. But maybe it is good to run this against and maybe since I am the writer of the two of us, although when Ralph gets motivated his can whip my ass writing anti-war stuff sometimes, I will write it up and put it on the website, or in the archives. I really think that one of the things that has held Ralph and me together in this antiwar business is that we came essentially from the same kind of backgrounds, working class, working poor so we knew a few bumps already unlike some of the anti-war activists from other organizations. I grew up south of here, down in Carver, down in what was then called “bog” country, down where they grew cranberries in the bogs used to product the crop.         

They called those who worked the bogs, my family, “boggers” and that was not meant as a compliment, kind of drew what I would later call the class line between us and “them” in town life. It came up in strange ways like I remember liking a girl in high school who also liked me but when she found out I was a “bogger,” or maybe her parents did that was that. Stuff like that.  

The big thing you have to know, the thing that got this whole story business rolling was that while I am a proud member of VFP I am not a veteran, am as you know we have a “supporter” member, an associate. The reason I am not a veteran, although in other circumstances I might have been, was that in 1965 just as the Vietnam War was beginning to take its bite out of a whole generation which can be felt even today my father, my “bogger” father had a massive heart attack and died leaving my mother alone with four sisters and me. I might add that whatever caused the heart attack my father was a drunk, drank away many a dollar in the town bars and elsewhere. Even now I bristle when I say this. In any case I was the sole male supporter of my family and the local draft board of the time exempted me from military service for that reason once I graduated from high school in 1967. The way I supported my mother and sisters was working in Mr. Carey’s print shop on Washington Street during high school and later when I graduated. As some of you know after my “wild days” in the early 1970s I would take over that operation from Mr. Carey when he retired and run it until my son who is much more tech savvy than I could ever be knowing which way the wind was blowing in the printing business took it over a few years ago.         

If you think about it there is nothing in that profile which would lead anybody to believe, to believe today at this far remove, that I would wind up as a long-time peace activist with some arrests for civil disobedience and other things. I, like Ralph, and many others if you heard their stories was as patriotic as the next person, drew in the full propaganda about the red menace and other Cold War bullshit. Believed that we needed to destroy the commies root and branch, go after them to save the world. Believed fully in that domino theory that was touted then as the reason to go to war in Vietnam even if I couldn’t explain the theory then. For me the thing the sole thing that switched me on the war and then on a lot of other things was the death in Vietnam of my best friend from second grade on-Jeff Mullins. Sorry, I still shed a tear every time I say his name, get worse every time I pass the town memorial or I go to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington where his name is etched in black granite with thousands of other names.    

Like I said I had known Jeff from early childhood so I knew him pretty well, knew that when he said something it stuck. He had been gung-ho to go into the service as much for getting the hell out of “bogger” Carver to see the big wide world as he said and away from horrible parents as patriotic fervor but that was serious factor. He also bought into all the myths that I had as I mentioned before. I wish I could talk about him more about his dreams, but you get the idea.  A few months before Jeff was killed down in the Mekong Delta while on patrol, he had sent me a letter, a long letter basically foretelling his doom and his hatred for the lying war. Made me promise that if anything happened to him and he couldn’t get back to tell the real story, his story about the goddam war that I was to do so. Once we got the message that he had been killed I went crazy -and went to work.

Of course I knew there were people against the war, you could not watch the news at least in Boston without seeing somebody demonstrating against the war or resisting the draft which despite my lucky status I still supported or maybe resisting to the thing is what bothered me, but I was clueless how you would contact anybody especially down in Carver where I don’t think anybody was publicly against the war. So I started from scratch a funny scratch when you think about it since what I did was go to Cambridge one Saturday afternoon to see if anybody knew anything about the anti-war struggle. I hear laughing, knowing laughing but like I say I didn’t know anything about what was happening except that something was. I had never been to Cambridge before or at least I wasn’t aware of it so the whole thing was not only an adventure but very informative as well. As it turned out the best way then to find out what was happening was to look at a place like the world-famous kiosk in the Square at the posters that were plastered on poles or anything that would take paper and glue, or wallpaper paste. What I noticed was that there was to be a big SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, meeting later that afternoon to plan something for what was called the Spring Offensive. SDS then pretty notorious and another grouping that I had previously scorned but I figured I was young enough to fit in. 

That was decision was decisive in a lot of ways since at that meeting people were encouraged to speak up about why they were there and what they expected to do for the Spring Offensive. There were probably a hundred people in I think it was Memorial Hall, or a large room off of it and when I stood up and trembling told the crowd my reason, the death of Jeff Mullins I was applauded which I couldn’t understand until later because I thought they would hate the idea that I was doing this to support a fallen soldier. That was one off the great lies of the war that these anti-war people for the most part were hostile to the private solider. Although it would not be until about a year later that there would be any serious attempts to link up to disgruntled and war-weary soldiers. In any case off of that meeting I met Jim Thorn, the big local activist who kind of took me under his wing, taught me plenty about the ins and outs of the war and how it got out of hand and got a lot of young guys who had plenty of other stuff to do with their lives killed for no good reason. Two or three weeks later I went to my first anti-war demonstration in downtown Boston, on the Common, sponsored by SDS and a bunch of other groups, none still around at least in that form. That demo was the first leg of a planned Spring Offensive to stop the war and I was very happy to walk the walk holding a photograph of Jeff with the legend “No More.”        

That is the important part and I would attend many more such events in Boston, New York and Washington. Along the way I got my speaking voice, spoke from the heart about my mission for Jeff, and would sometimes read a few passages of that Jeff letter urging me to fight the good fight if he didn’t make it back. Along the way I got as frustrated as almost every young person and got progressively more radicalized as the Cambridge milieu went further to the left and with more aggressive tactics. That led up to my going to Washington with a Cambridge group called the Red Brigade to stop the government if it would not stop the war. And the fateful meeting with Ralph after seeing his VVAW button. Sometime let Ralph and me tell you about the details of that meeting but tonight we are about how we met. And remember Ralph was the real deal antiwar Vietnam veteran and I was and am a supporter of VFP except not a veteran. Let’s have a drink.       

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Save The Date- First Night Against The Wars Stand-out Copley Square Boston New Year’s Eve Afternoon December 31^st  

The Smedley Butler Brigade, VFP, Chapter 9 has helped sponsor along with other peace and social action groups the annual (this the 13^th year) First Night Against The Wars stand-out at the Boston Public Library entrance across from Copley Square on December 31^st, New Year Eve’s afternoon starting around noon until about five o’clock.

  

Usually the weather is cold on that day so we ask people to volunteer for an hour or two during the day. Dan the Bagel Man has his food for activist operating to keep us in hot drinks. If you are coming and have a flag or a poster please bring whatever you have with you. Hope to see you there.