I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “Sherlock Holmes Faces Death”

I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “Sherlock Holmes Faces Death”

DVD Review

By Danny Moriarty

(In the interest of transparency which has become more of an issue these days when every medium is under scrutiny Danny Moriarty is not my real name. As will be discussed below in my research about the “fake news” legend of Mr. Holmes I have run into a notorious cult-like band of desperadoes known as “The Baker Street Irregulars,” why that name I do not know. This clot of criminals, who I am told have very stylized rituals involving illegal drugs and human blood, the bane of the London bobbies, have been connected with the disappearance of many people who questioned the Sherlock myth, and not a few unsolved murders of people who have washed up on the Thames over the years.)

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, starring Basil Rathbone (if that is his real name which is doubtful), Nigel Bruce (a name which has been confirmed as a British actor in the 1930s and 1940s)  

Today is the day. Today is the day I have been waiting for since I was a kid. Today we tear off the veneer, tear off the mask of the reputation of one Sherlock Holmes as a master detective. Funny how things happen. Greg Green assigned me this film out of the blue, at random he said when I asked him. However this assignment after viewing this film, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (of course he doesn’t face, hadn’t been anywhere near any danger but that can wait until I finish out defanging the legend) set off many bells, many memories of my childhood when I first instinctively discovered this guy was a fraud, a con artist. Back then my grandparents and parents hushed me up about the matter when I told them what I thought of the mighty Sherlock. They went nutty and told me never to speak of it again when I mentioned that a hard-boiled real private detective, a guy who did this kind of work for a living, a guy named Sam Spade who worked out in San Francisco and solved, really solved, the case of the missing black bird which people in the profession still talk about, which is still taught in those correspondence course private detection in ten easy lesson things you used to see advertised on matchbook covers when smoking cigarettes was okay, who could run circles around a parlor so-called detective like Mr. Holmes.          

That was then. Now after some serious research as a result of this film’s impact on my memory I have proof to back up my childhood smothered assertions. Sherlock Holmes (aka Chester Arthur after the American president, Conan after the famous barbarian, Doyle after a famous watering hole in Dublin and a whole raft of other names whose rationale I could not fathom in time for publication) was nothing but a stone-cold junkie, cocaine, morphine, lanadum and other exotic concoctions which is the reason that he had a doctor at his side at all times in case he needed “scripts” written up. A doctor who a guy like Sam Spade would have sat on his ass a long time before. That junkie business would not amount to much if it did not mean that high and mighty Sherlock didn’t have to run his own gang of pimps, hookers, con men, fellow junkies, drag queens, rough trade sailors and the flotsam and jetsam of London, high society and low, to keep him in dough for that nasty set of habits that kept him high as a kite. There are sworn statements (suppressed at the time) by the few felons whom the bobbies were able to pick up that Sherlock was the guy behind half the burglaries, heists and kidnappings in London and out in the boondocks when he expanded his operation and put Doc Watson in charge out there where he could do no harm to the operation.

Of course the bobbies, looking to wrap up a few cold file cases which Sherlock handed them to keep them off the trail, looked the other way and/or took the graft so who really knows how extensive the whole operation was. In a great sleight of hand he gave them Doctor Moriarty who as it turned out dear Sherlock had framed when one wave of police heat was on and who only got out of prison after Holmes died and one of Holmes’ flunkies told the real story about how Holmes needed a “fall guy” and the wily Doctor took the fall.             

This Sherlock Holmes Faces Death cover-up is a classic example of police collision to cover their own dirty tracks. Everybody knows that Sherlock made his name after he beat down some poor mistreated dog who should have been reported as abused to whatever they call the humane animal treatment society in merry old England. So he had no lack of cases, especially from the upper crust whom he was black-mailing and kidnapping their kids to keep the Mayfair swells with dough in line (and to quiet them). That dog case set him up with people who didn’t want stuff solved or who wanted to finger some innocent person like the story here to hide the real culprit.

You don’t have to be one of those correspondence course private detection in ten easy lessons that you used to see on matchbook covers when cigarette smoking was okay like I said before to know that in these high society cases where there is a butler involved he is the guy who did it. And that proved the case here with this guy named Brunton who was an agent working for Doc Watson trying to steal a ton of stuff from the mansion, just the regular course of business. This Brunton fake butler (fake because how hard is it to keep the silverware clean and master’s shoes shined) was trusted by the Musgrave brothers who were running their own land grab dodge before each was subsequently murdered by Brunton once he got wind of what real dough was available.

On this kind of caper you need a fall guy and that turned out at first to be an American fly boy who was built for the frame since he was courting the Mulgrave sister and the Brits haven’t liked the Yanks since about 1776 so no sweat letting him take the big step-off. But the coppers, real coppers found witnesses to clear him since he was at some gin mill getting drunk when each murder occurred. Step up a second fall guy, a Doctor Sexton who was the Mulgrave family doctor and who was looking to grab the sister and grab the land to build a permanent hospital in town. Sherlock, or one of his agents, had the Doc’s fingerprints put all over the conveniently found murder weapons. Done and doomed. He went before the king’s hangman before you could blink an eye. Here’s the really sinister part. Our fake butler Brunton was getting antsy about the coppers closing in so Sherlock had him “killed” which would be pretty clever even for an amateur. The body never found the murder was cold case charged to the good Doctor Sexton. Once Sexton was gone to the gallows Brunton resurfaced and took up his butlering job again since Sherlock was hooked on grabbing the Mulgrave estate land and centering his operations there since London was getting too noisy and crowded.

Yeah, a fake, fake all the way. Unless that Irregular crowd of thugs and blood-stained aficionados get to me this is not the last you will hear about this campaign of mine to dethrone this pompous junked-up imposter. I am just getting the wind in my sails.      

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The 16th and 17th Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the Harvard Art Museums-A reply to a reply

When The Capitalist World Was On The Rise-The 16th and 17th Dutch And Flemish Paintings at the Harvard Art Museums-A reply to a reply

By Frank Jackman

The minute American government shut-down, DACA, North Korea and Iran war clouds, the demise of civility, the heating up of the decades long cold civil war in that same America and what do I wind up having to do today. Jesus, once again respond to this madness about Dutch, and oh no, don’t forget the Flemish art that is always paired with it in the days when that tiny section of the world was the real thing, had the trade routes covered six way to Sunday, and had the general wherewithal to support artists and buy a ton of paintings some good, some pedestrian but all showing very good draftsmanship and fidelity to the subject the hallmark of pre-Impressionist painting no matter the genre. This time to note once more that this young writer William Bradley should give it up. Move on. Since he won’t here I go again and I hope and pray that Greg Green will hear my cry for mercy.    

Apparently there is something like a “fire sale” going on in the 16^th and 17^th Dutch/Flemish painting world. People, well-to-do people as they say, are tossing their various collections to the nearest museums apparently for tax purposes, or to take the stuff as lost-leaders in their more expansive collectives. That bit of news via now “expert” William Bradley’s sail through the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and finding out that a couple of couples, a wealthy couple of couples of course is promising that august  institution their beat up and broken down collections. Now I have to report that a quick swing through the Harvard Art Museums (formerly three separate museums in three spots now all in one but if you haven’t been there for a while it’s the old Fogg Museum section I am referring to) the other day really made me think I should get a few people together and buy a few lesser Dutch pieces at auction where the house is probably almost ready to give the stuff away. Another couple, another wealthy couple it goes without saying, has promised that already richer than Midas institution their collection. You heard it here so grab up every piece you can because soon buying private pieces will be like trying to buy Greek statuary.     

Let’s go by the numbers on this Dutch/Flemish private market painting scare which in the biggest thing to hit that genre since the Tulip mania bubble bust in the 16^th century. Young Bradley already told a candid world despite his lack of knowledge, probably his inability to find the Netherland and Belgium on the map, that the National Gallery down in Washington had a Vermeer and pals exhibit. Fine. Except he went out of his way to cite an article I had done several years ago here (actually in Art Today magazine and then posted here since they were paying the freight on that piece) given the story on why these self-satisfied burghers were crazy to decorate their homes and heaths with high quality art when other countries were trying to figure out what the hell to do with a spoon-and why.      

This is the way young Bradley told it, told it pretty true once I gave him the lead and will do as the end piece for this latest news out of Cambridge about the halcyon days of this type of art:

“After having been given an assignment to view the Vermeer and friends exhibit down at the National Gallery in Washington since I was in that town on another matter I was looking at the archives here to find out if anybody had written about the high tide of Dutch and Flemish Art (you know the time of Rembrandt, Hals, Reubens, Van Dyck and their respective schools, workshops and progeny) and out popped an article by Frank Jackman then the senior political commentator under the old regime. Truly knowing nothing about the subject of Dutch and Flemish art other than liking some of it and being bored by the endless paintings of fruit and killed animals hanging on a kitchen wall perfectly detailed, I figured that I would ask Frank about his take. As it turned out I didn’t know much either about his so-called Marxist perspective combining art and the productive system in a way that seemed odd to me.

I wrote an article about the Vermeer crowd basically on the like/don’t like aspects mentioned a minute ago since it had escaped me about putting the fight by capitalism against feudalism and art together except the Dutch and Flemish painters unlike the Italians weren’t hung up on Christian piety themes and Old Testament sagas. Frank responded that I had a lot to learn about milieu and its effect on artists which he explained in another way when I mentioned in that first article that I liked abstract expressionism and he mentioned back that you could not understand that milieu without knowing about the effect of the 20^th century wars and alienation produced by late capitalism which he called imperialism on the artists.

Greg Green recently asked me since I was going to be in Boston for the holidays to visit my sister to go check out the latest Dutch and Flemish exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts which some collectors had promised to the Museum and which they were going to display. Lance Lawrence when he heard about the assignment dubbed me “Leonard De Bois” whom I did not know by name but who is a big wheel in the Dutch and Flemish academic art field. My only comment was that it seemed in my experience that these museums seem to run into common exhibitionism. Washington and now Boston (and New York I think) are on a Dutch-Flemish jag. Last year half the world seemed to be featuring various stages of Matisse’s career. Japanese art seems to be the new up and coming thing. In any case now that I am an “expert” I can rehash my stuff about Vermeer and his crowd with the stuff in Boston. An honored academic tradition:            

“Frank did a whole series of articles under the title When The Capitalist World Was Young to be found in the archives making the connection between the artistic sensibilities of the rising bourgeoisie and their clamoring for paintings which showed that they were on the rise, that they were the new sheriffs in town and could afford like the nobles and high clergy in the ancient regime to show their new-found prosperity by paying for portraits, collective and singular, and displays of their domestic prosperity. Of course Frank, an old radical from the 1960s … was coming at his view from something that he called a Marxist prospective. A prospective which not knowing much about it except it had a lot to do with the demise of the old Soviet Union now Putin’s Russia and why it had failed I asked him about since I was clueless about how that artwork had anything to do with politics. What he told me, and I don’t want to get into a big discussion about it is that Marxism, Marx saw capitalism as a progressive force against the feudal society and that would get reflected in lots of things like art and social arrangements.      

“Under that set of ideas Frank was able to give a positive spin on a lot of the art from the 16^th and 17^th century, especially Dutch and Flemish art in the days when those grouping were leading the capitalist charge via their position in the shipping, transport and the emerging banking world. In one part of that above mentioned series Frank highlighted the connection between art and economics by referring to a famous painting in the National Gallery down in Washington, D.C. where some very self-satisfied burghers and civil officials were feasting and showing off their new found emergence as trend-setters. I took his point once I saw the painting he was referring to and noted that these guys and it was all guys except the hard-pressed wait staff really were self-satisfied even though I am still not sure that you can draw that close a connection between art and economics.    

“That discussion with Frank was in the back of my mind when I was assigned by Greg Green, since I was down in Washington for another reason, to check out the Vermeer and friend retrospective at the National Gallery (that Frank referred painting of the burghers was nowhere in sight and I wound up viewing it on-line while we were discussing it). I took a different view of what I saw there since I am not very political and certainly would not draw the same line as Frank did. What struck me, and I am willing to bet many others who viewed the exhibit as well, was the extreme attention to detail in almost all the paintings observed. The sense that the artists had to whether it was portraiture, domestic scenes, or landscape, including those famous frozen lakes and canal winter activity scenes, show in extreme detail and shadowing exactly what they were observing. I admit I am more interested in let’s say abstract expressionism that this kind of  imagery but my hat is off to those who were able to do such detailed and exact work. Whether or not they were rising with the high tide of capitalist expansion.”      

  

Frank left me with a few political ideas to think about which I can apply as well to the Boston clot. He told me to look at that self-satisfied burgher business, look at the pot-bellies of the men and the rounded face of the young women which indicated how well-fed they were, look at the very neat way they arranged their domestic lives. Most importantly look at those unadorned halls and churches which a very far away from the medieval overkill of the huge centuries to build cathedrals that kept everybody tied down to looking inward. Like he said these guys were the “elect,” knew they were the elect and they could push forward come hell or high water.”

Let’s hope this end it and maybe we discuss Pop Art or something.  

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Elvis (No Last Name Needed) Made All The Women Sweat-“Are You Lonesome Today”

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Elvis (No Last Name Needed) Made All The Women Sweat-“Are You Lonesome Today”   

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He’s Got It Bad-With Elvis’s Are You Lonesome Tonight -Take Two …he wondered, truly wondered, whether she missed him just then, missed her walking daddy, her walking daddy when they walked  down the street hand-in-hand and later when high as kites they messed up the pillows at her place, got those satin sheets all sweaty and love moist from their exertions when their fling was fresh and bright. Yes, he wondered for the millionth time that night, that seemingly endless sleepless night when he wondered once again whether  she missed him after all the slow meaningless time that had passed these past few months since their over-heated short love affair had gone down in flames almost as quickly as it had started. That walking daddy moniker by the way was a little term of endearment that she had tagged him with after they had, well, done the “do the do” and she though that she had him reined in, reined him in with kisses and a few little special things that he liked, and that she knew he liked even before he told her that he did. That “do the do” sex stuff was the least of their problems, he knew she liked his kisses and a few little special things that she liked, and that he knew she liked even before she told him that she did, although at the end maybe it was the sex stuff too that did them in when he started asking her to do stuff from the Karma Sutra and she who previously had been the aggressor practically pulling his pants down balked at a few of the kinkier positions described in that manual, it could have been everything jumbled together. But if anybody asked him he missed that part, no question.    He did not really believe underneath it all although he kept his doubts open based on a few odd facts about going the other way, that she did, did miss him. She was not built that way, had kind of a steel-trap mind on the subject of men and missing them after she was done with them (and others too, subjects she was steel-trapped about). He knew from the first, and she made the fact abundantly clear in all their conversations, that once she was done with a man that was that and she moved on, maybe to the next man, maybe just off to lick her wounds. She would illustrate the point  with examples citing, chapter and verse, whenever the subject came up ex-husbands and lovers, one husband of whom she said had asked if she needed a blackboard to help lecture him once she got on her high horse about the subject. Still he took a ticket, took a chance that he would be, what she called him at the beginning, oh yeah, her “forever” man and in a chillingly ironic shift a few short months later her “never” man although she did not say that word exactly he just plucked it out of the air one night, one early on sleepless night when he first thought about whether she missed him.  Yeah, so no question he was as sure as a man could be, a man who no longer was on speaking terms with her, that he would not be surprised to find out that she did not miss him. He wondered too whether she was lonesome tonight for her walking daddy, a very different proposition than whether she missed him. He was not sure on that score, although he thought in the far recesses of his brain she might. See as she also explained in detail with those same ex-husbands and major lovers example complete with blackboard remark even if she was through with a man, had moved on to another man, or just went off to lick her wounds the way she put the fact in those same conversations about her way with men, she was as likely to be licking her wounds as looking for another man. As likely to be filled with solitary sadness as out on the town, out with another man. That is where those two marriages and many love affairs came in, came in and softened rather than hardened her to life’s romantic ups and downs. She had mentioned to him one night that she had since childhood and a very savagely cruel upbringing had a   hard time letting go, letting the past fade, and that it took her a long time to get over a man once they were through. How did he say she put it one night, oh yeah, she was fast to love a man when he got under her skin and slow to forget him. That fast love start had been her way with him in their whirlwind love affair smothering him with all kinds of undeserved accolades based on fairly limited knowledge of who he was, what he had been through, and his own spoken appreciations of his worth which added up to a profile of the usual man of clay, nothing more. All of the above smotherings by her not giving him time to breathe, to think things through, before trying to plan   their future unto infinity after about a month into their relationship. Yeah, in the far recesses of her brain might be just the right way to put it about whether she might be lonesome that night he spoke of but let me tell you what he told me one night about that night he was wondering and many other nights before and after while we were sipping white wines at a Boston bar, listening to some old time piped-in jazz music as background (could have been Cry Me A River starting out, in fact I think it was), which started him off to tell me  what exactly had happened the previous few months. Let me give you some of the story and you try to figure the damn thing out:      He had met her sitting at the bar in Cambridge, a rock and roll bar, an “oldies but goodies” bar, a 1950s classic age of rock and roll bar that he frequented when he needed to hear Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee or some Warren Smith rockabilly beat after some hard court case was done or he just needed to blow off steam when some appeals case was slipping away from him for lack of presentable issues that could win. Some nights, like that night, he wound up just slugging quarters in the juke-box, others, mainly weekend nights he would wind up listening to a live band, The Rockin’ Ramrods, covering the classics. He   noticed that from his vantage point a few stools down she looked very familiar in a long ago way. After he slid down the few empty barstools between them to get beside her he had mentioned that fact to her as a come-on and offered and bought her a drink on that basis (a glass of red wine which she loved, loved to perdition as he would find out later) they spent the next several minutes trying to figure where that might have been. Work, no, some godforsaken political conference, no, another long ago bar, no, the Cape, no, College, no, and so on.  Strangely they found out once they discussed where they had grown up (she had told him at first she was from New Hampshire and he said that he lived in Cambridge so the subject of home towns did not come up on the first run) that the link had been  that they had gone to the same high school together, she a couple of years after him, North Adamsville High, located on the South Shore of Boston although they had not known each other, had not had any of the same classes back then (but since they had also gone to the same junior high school they agreed later after they were “smitten” with each other, her term, and wanted to make some symbolic “written in the wind” closeness count they must have been in the same space at some point if only the gym, auditorium or cafeteria). That revelation got them cutting up old touches that night for a while, well, a long while since they closed the bar that night. They agreed that they had some common interests and that they should continue the conversation further via e-mail and cellphone. See, since she lived up in New Hampshire in a town outside of Manchester, was a professor at the state university and had been in Cambridge to attend an education conference at Harvard getting together soon in person with her busy start of semester schedule was problematic. So for a while, a few weeks, they carried on an e-mail/cellphone correspondence. Both were however struck by the number of things they had in common, things from childhood like growing up poor, growing up in hostile and dangerous family environments, growing up insecure and with nothing and nobody to guide them left to their own resources. Moreover they found that they had many similar teenage angst and alienation episodes in high school in common as well as current political and academic interests. Both agreed that they should meet again in person since they had already “met” in high school (somehow in the rush of things they discounted that they had really met in Cambridge in a bar, but such are the ways of love in bloom go figure). And so they met again, met many times in neutral territory since they lived so far apart (they called their romance, the Merrimack romance for all the old mill towns they met in for half way convenient, Lowell, Nashua, Manchester, Haverhill, Amesbury and a couple of others I forgot), had many chatty dinners and did other things together like museums and took long walks along the river. He explained to me the powerful first dinner where they talked for hours and when he escorted her to her car in the parking lot for them to go their separate ways home she got teary-eyed and he caressed her hair to console   her. Yeah, it was like that when it was good.   Before long they agreed to meet at a hotel in New Hampshire to see if they had a spark that way. Well you know they did since otherwise there would be no story to tell. You also know, at least you know what he thought about the matter, that they did very well in bed together.  Yes, they, he and she, were both smitten, both felt very comfortable with each other and were heading forward with eyes open. Along the way she had discussed her two divorce-ended marriages, her serious love affairs and her attitudes toward relationships. Those were the times she would emphasize her take on men, her jealousies, expectations and her limitations. She also early on started her campaign to get him to go to stay with her in New Hampshire and leave Cambridge. He although not as well formed in his take on their relationship as she did likewise explained his two marriages, especially the hard fall of the second marriage which left him very stunned, and major love affairs, although he early on balked when she spoke of leaving the city for the Podunk country up north as he called her place, called the whole state of New Hampshire for that matter. So yes both sets of eyes were open, open wide. She pulled the hammer down, pulled it down early. Within a couple of months she spoke of love, of living together, of sailing out into the sunset together. He, slower on the uptake, slower having been more severely burned in his last marriage than he let on to her or had thought had been the case, was a bit bewildered by her speedy emotional attachments to him. They went on a couple of trips away to New York and Washington together, had some good times, had some rocky times interspersed in between too when she tried to rein him in. He wasn’t afraid to commit exactly (well maybe he was as he confessed to me although not to her when it could have helped, maybe had a little “cold feet” problem but he insisted it was a small blip) as much as he wanted the thing to develop naturally, give him time to breathe although I have already said that air to breathe thing before didn’t I, there always seemed to be an air of suffocation every time she got on her high horse, got her wanting habits on, got the best of him sometimes. Then he made his fatal mistake, or rather series of mistakes, starting with strong words one night at one of their Merrimack River trail dinner when they both had had a bit too much to drink, too much wine, and she was going on and on as she did after her second or third glass depending on how tired she had been after a long day’s work. He admitted he got snappy, told her they needed to slow down and enjoy each other. She responded with a blast that shook him up but they were able to kiss and make up that night. The real mistake though was one time after they had not seen each other for a week or so when he sent her an e-mail speaking in sorrow of the drift of their recent relationship and he wanted the spark back that had go them going. She exploded at that e-mail seeing that as a callous rebuke of her actions rather than as what he thought was a plaintive let’s go forward love letter. What did he say she had called it, oh yeah, a closing argument, a damn lawyer’s closing argument (the “damn” part a result of having been married to a lawyer the first time out and now being with him). They agreed to meet at a neutral restaurant to discuss the matter (on the Merrimack River of course but I will not give the location since there still may be blood on the water). When he thought about it later he could see where she had prepared herself to be confrontational toward him or at least be prepared to force the issue because the first words out of her mouth were an ultimatum-“come live with me or the affair is over.” The exchange got heated as she drank more wine on this night as well (he did not drink that night having learned a lesson from the last session). She said something that when we talked he could not for the life of him remember but they were fighting words. He exploded saying “I don’t need this,” threw money on the table and stormed out. That was the last he saw of her not even looking back to see how she took the matter.  Oh sure the next day he tried frantically to call several times knowing that a decisive turning point had been reached, no answer. Tried some e-mails-same response. Later that day he got a message on his voicemail from her giving her walking daddy his walking papers. She told him not to call, not to write as she would not respond. He never did. As he explained it to me he never did although he spent many a night thinking about whether he should call, about what he would say and thought too of an e-mail but he knew in his bones she would not answer like with his first attempts so he let it go. Knew her steel-trapped policies toward men, toward him in her walking papers summary. So he let it go to spend his time, his free time, fretting about what had happened. Jesus.    What he did do seriously in the few weeks after their break-up, what he was doing this night he spoke to me as well as months earlier  when he first fretted over what had gone wrong, was think through how it could have played out differently. Did that blame game in order to curb his own lonesomeness as he replayed their short affair, as he tried to try to figure out something that had bothered him since that fierce parting night. No, not about the specific details of what had caused his downfall, although he was still perplexed about why his concern about the over-heated pace of their relationship and his anger at that last meeting over her ultimatum should have been the irretrievable cause. He would accept that, had to accept that was the way she perceived the situation and that those were the causes of his downfall pure and simple. He didn’t like it but he has come to see where what she said in her voicemail message that she could never see him in the old way, the way she had in the beginning of their affair when their love flamed, precluded any future romantic relationship.  What he thought about mostly though concerned one point-how could two intelligent, worldly people, who individually had many strong and powerful inner resources gathered through surviving stormy childhoods and life’s hard knocks, not be able to figure a way to avoid letting their fragile relationship blow away in the wind, blow away without a trace after many professions of desire, devotion and fidelity. He fretted over how little energy they had devoted to using some of those personal inner resources in order to build the foundations of a strong relationship. He had been willing to take his fair share of the blame for his “cold feet” which had him, more often than not, attempting to walk away from not toward her. That last marriage had damaged him more than he had thought and it had still colored his worldview on intimacy, on commitment, no question. That walking away from her in fear as they got closer, as she started to get under his skin, always seemed strongest as he left her after some bad days when she was pushing him hard. Or when he thought the whole thing was hopeless since they lived too far away from each other to compromise on a living arrangement. Yeah, he would take his fair share of blame on that. She infuriated him though with her interminable future plans while disregarding the present, although he could not speak for her and whether she believed his house of card blown in the wind idea about what had happened. She had plans for them to go to live in California when they retired, deemed it mandatory that he spent a certain number of days up in New Hampshire even while he had pressing business to take care of in Boston, but best, best as an example, was that she had their next Christmas and New Year plans already mapped out in March. All the time not paying attention to the drift of the tempo of their day to day relationship where he was, frankly, unhappy, very unhappy. In the end he was shocked by how little there had been to hold them together in a serious crisis which he conceded, or would have conceded if she had ever decided to talk to him again, was a serious crisis. Now that he thought about it for a while he told me, now that he had talked it through with me, he decided, no, whether she had a new walking daddy or not (or whatever new moniker she would make up for him) she would not be lonesome for him that night.                         Are You Lonesome Tonight? Lyrics Are you lonesome tonight, Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart? Does your memory stray to a brighter sunny day When I kissed you and called you sweetheart? Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare? Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there? Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? I wonder if you're lonesome tonight You know someone said that the world's a stage And each must play a part. Fate had me playing in love you as my sweet heart. Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance You read your lin so cleverly and never missed a cue Then came act two, you seemed to change and you acted strange And why I'll never know. Honey, you lied when you said you loved me And I had no cause to doubt you. But I'd rather go on hearing your lies Than go on living without you. Now the stage is bare and I'm standing there With emptiness all around And if you won't come back to me Then make them bring the curtain down. Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again? Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight? Songwriters: ROY TURK, LOU HANDMAN Are You Lonesome Tonight? lyrics © BOURNE CO., CROMWELL MUSIC The Teen Scene In Between- With Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 In Mind

The Golden Age Of….The American Family-Suburban Branch-Jimmy Stewart’s “Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation” (1962)- A Film Review

The Golden Age Of….The American Family-Suburban Branch-Jimmy Stewart’s “Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation” (1962)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Mr. Hobbs Takes A Holiday, starring Jimmy Stewart, Maureen O’Hara, Fabian, 1962

My old friend and fellow writer here Sandy Salmon (and film critic formerly with the American Film Gazette but we aren’t supposed to say anything but the designated term writer since we cover all beats so just writer) always told me that the best kind of movie to review for him anyway was one which put the spotlight on some aspect of American life at a certain nodal point in our history. Basically a “slice of life” story told as much, or more about society, or as here in the film under review Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation a certain segment of that society at the time as any academic book or paper.

Within the plotline of this quasi-comic look at suburban America circa the late 1950 and early 1960s Sandy’s comment is spot on even if it’s a very glossy take on the mores of white middle class families in the “golden age” of American prosperity. It is almost a clinically pure example of the inward facing look of that segment during the heart of the Cold War red scare although you would hardly know it from the total lack of outside world reality intervention. I came up on the farm, a hard scrabble working truck farm outside of Albany in Dutch country upstate New York around the time of setting of this film and would have been the youngest daughter in this household, Katey, near contemporary. My world never came close to looking like that including all the alleged teen anagst and alienation traumas she faced.  Didn’t have time for that kind of thing.        

The plot is almost irrelevant here since it is pretty slim but the sociology is something to behold. An older white suburban couple, married, father Roger Hobbs, Jimmy Stewarts’ role, a successful banker, wife, Peggy, of Peg of my heart fame, played by Maureen O’Hara, successful housewife, one troubled boy teen, one very troubled girl teen, and no known dogs at home, along with two older married with children daughters also housewives with husbands who appear to be good providers for the next cookie cutter generation of one provider families already heading toward extinction to be replaced by two working parents also with no known dogs. Perfect sociological cohort of upwardly mobile America in a day when that dream had some realistic possibilities of achievement.

That was the sociology part the other part is the jack of all trades Mr. Fix it dad part. That much put upon Roger Hobbs who followed a long line of such dads from his own role in It’s a Wonderful Life to television’s Ward Cleaver, Fred McMurray, and Ozzie Nelson you get the picture. No child welfare department, no school counselors, no police intervention, no priest, nada. Just Pops, aka here Bumpah to grandchild. Old Hobbs takes the vacation from hell (in the future Chevy Chase would take up those same cudgels) and turns it into a one man’s family triumph. Young son alienated take him sailing. Young daughter ditto alienated and boy hungry no problem. Send a guy around (the guy turns out to be singer  Fabian heartthrob to young white suburban boy hungry white girls in the interest of transparency me too but here whose beard seems to make him cradle robbing). Daughter’s husband out of work get him work. Cook getting uppity no problem woo her back. Machinery out of whack-give the guy a wrench. An A number one Dad. Yeah, count this one if you really must see it as strictly a slice of life from a time which seems like a million years ago. Before rampart divorce, single parenthood, two worker households, and the like. Even the family station wagon has bitten the dust.                       

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Mister Warren Smith Fretted To Perdition Over His Rock ‘n Roll Ruby

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-When Mister Warren Smith Fretted To Perdition Over His Rock ‘n Roll Ruby

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

*********** He and She-With Warren Smith’s Rock and Roll Ruby In Mind  …he knew, knew deep in his bones, knew on the face of it too that he could not keep her, keep her to himself, keep her settled down and so he accepted that she would blow away like the wind on him sometime,   that same wind would take her away as the one on which they had proclaimed, or maybe better he had proclaimed and she went along with, that their love was written on, and it was just a matter of how long he could keep her. It was not that he was perceptive about women and their needs, wants, desires, nothing like that, not women in any case, girls really since he did not know anything at all about women who were older than say twenty, twenty-one except relative women, mothers, aunts, grandmothers and what was there to know about them to help him, help him with a wild side woman they all placid and proper, or about anything like that. And even on the girl thing he was filled with as much mystery and awe as with any real knowledge, his knowledge like everybody else, every guy, in town acquired on the street, in the boys’ sports locker rooms, and on the corner when he hung out with guys, or did before she took up his time but a lot of that was just flat-out wrong, half church-truth, half-just getting it wrong, about what made them tick, and about how to hang onto them. And it was not like he could lay claim to as a wet-behind-the ears high school kid trying to survive in the doldrums 1950s some inside knowledge about what was going to happen when his generation, the generation which would post-war born be called baby boomers and who would not fall into the false security, or at least he did not think that then, that their from hunger parents craved, broke out of the straitjacket but he just knew that she was like the wind and would get caught up in everything that was breezing across the land. He knew in his knotted stomach that what was happening in the cold war red scare night could not be the end of things, the end of the world and that when the time came for the break-out all hell would break loose. She would imbibe, joyfully imbibe the “newer world” was the way she put it to him one night when she wanted to go to a dance and he wanted to just hold hands or something at the movies (they went to the dance and she danced like Fred Astaire going up the walls in some movie they had seen), everything that was coming whether about ways of getting high not just the illicit liquor but some drugs that were beginning to make their way into the neighborhoods among the hipped; ways of dressing, especially ways of dressing sexy without old prudes scolding or guys leering; ways of dancing, dancing free from the old forms; and ways of hearing the music that always seemed to exist in her head just below the surface of what drove her personality.    Him, well, he was what she called when she was angry at him when he would not dance, wanted to square parent hold hands, or got mad when she did dance with other guys or he was smothering her with his forever plans (her take, not his) a “square.” Jesus, a square and with his strict Jehovah upbringing and his “get out of from hunger and get ahead dreams” maybe he was. He knew that he would not be able to go with her when she broke out, knew that for sure. Knew from that one time some guy at a dance at the Surf Ballroom down by the beach gave them a couple of shots of rotgut Southern Comfort which she dug and on which he just threw up, knew that other time in downtown Boston when some college guy was giving her the once over and passed them a “joint” (marijuana for the squares like him) and she got all high and flirty (and he did too except he could not go with the flow of the thing); knew when she started wearing her dresses shorter showing her well-turned legs and challenging guys to look; knew when she got all esoteric in her dancing like she was of the she with the seven veils; knew that when she began to dig electric blues and some helter-skelter hipster jazz, that he would not be able to go with her. No question.       It hadn’t started out that way, at least he did not see it like that at the beginning, see that she was a wayward wind, see that she had the desire to  deeply imbibe the new wave coming across the continent. That wind born of the wild reckless feckless boys sunk knee-deep in alienation and angst, of outlaw motorcycle bikers who played for real and played rough, of surf city guys searching for perfect waves with golden-haired girls waiting patiently on shore for that event, of hot rod Lincoln “chicken run” guys with boffo girls sitting high-breasted wearing cashmere sweaters in that coveted passenger seat turning the radio dial reaction against the staid Great Depression and World War II parents’ generation search for the security blanket in a hostile red scare Cold War world where they, the parents, just wanted their Johnny coming home from the war music, big Cadillac, two car garage with two cars and stardust memories. You know what he meant, don’t you, the undefined but vital mood change that started when Elvis and a bunch of other hungry guys [and a few women like Wanda Jackson and Laverne Baker] ripped it up with a new sound, a new not your parents’ tinny sound, but blessed, no, twice blessed rock and roll. And then other guys, other be-bop guys who had been around but were just then getting noticed called the beat, called the beat down to rise up and play themselves true, no hassles man, no hassles. All under the umbrella of dropping that dragged out, square, red scare cold war night thing the ancients had everybody stirred up about. Yeah and all their old has-been crowd. A little later, in Billy and Jenny time, the he and she here to introduce them but they could have been any of ten thousand kids hooked on the visual bible of the new religion American Bandstand, standing on corners looking be-bop beat, or throwing nickels and dimes at some Doc’s Drugstore jukebox complete with soda fountain to abate hungers in order to hear the latest about twenty times the music changed up again, and square was nowhere to be. Billy sensed it, sensed before Jenny even but he with ten thousand worries in his head blew it off, called it at first a passing fad then got real scared when his Jenny got testy with him more often.       They had met conventionally enough in senior year at old North Adamsville High, although they had seen each other around for ages as most of the kids in town had been at endless school assemblies, rallies, dances together but what of that in teen life had, for as such things go, they had not paid particular attention to kids they knew for ages, or kids that were not in their clique.. Had moreover grown up together on the wrong side of the tracks and wore a few scars to prove it although mostly they just acknowledged the slights from the Brahmins, noticed the no nods, the no look of approval, their slightly under-cool cheap Bargain Center dressing against the latest hip thing from Filene’s or Macy’s and didn’t talk about it thinking it was uncool to talk about roots, about yesterday, about anything but the moment, and Billy all bunched up about the future. Something clicked though in that senior year as they both had responded to each other’s furtive glances in Miss Williams’ study hall,   had furtively danced around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where all the kids hung out after school to listen the latest music, their music juke box, and had finally gone out on a double-date (he without a car at the time and so they had doubled up with her girlfriend Terry in her beau’s car, a “boss” Chevy since that beau was out of school and working as a welder down at the shipyard) at the local drive-in theater where she, sitting in the back seat with him, surprised him with her sexual advances. Stuff that Billy wasn’t all that familiar with but which he liked and which she knew that he liked. He, at least, was embarrassed when Terry and Eddie kept telling them to quiet down a little while Jenny was doing her thing on him. She on the other hand just to show how wild she could be if provoked took that as a signal to make him go   crazier. Terry later told Jenny there would be no more double-dates after she told her that Eddie had asked her to do what he called “doing the Jenny” on him before he left her off at her house. Terry said she did not know how to do that mouth thing and refused him flat when he said he would show her how. Jenny told Billy later after she had taught Terry the technique and Eddie coaxed her into doing it one afternoon after school she would chide Terry with a little “so did you do the Terry” again Saturday night down at the beach when they compared notes on their respective weekends before school on Monday morning. Somehow that “do the Terry” got around school and when Terry dumped Eddie guys would try to coax her into it. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. That is when Billy and Jenny would go back to double-dating with whatever new beau with a car that Terry had. Yeah, Billy liked it, liked it like any guy would, especially since Jenny was one of the prettiest girls in class and had a reputation for being kind of “unapproachable.”  (Billy later found out it was not so much the stuck-up thing as that she had been dating a college guy and at that time was strictly under his sway after they had a few sexual experiences which had kind of loosened her up. Joe College eventually took off with some girl from some college in Michigan once he was done with Jenny.) Yeah, he liked it but also thought to himself that night and the several other nights Jenny and he found themselves in some secluded spot on the beach (the Squaw Rock end not the Seal Rock end where parents and young kids hung out) when she did her thing to him, those times when she got all loud and screamy when he touched her where had she picked up that knowledge of what made a guy moan (and a girl all screamy). When he asked her about it later, not any of the nights when they were alone down the beach but a couple of weeks later, she just said girls knew stuff like that and she had learned it from her first boyfriend (that Joe College) who was older. Said that older guys, older guys who had been out in the world, guys who knew how to turn a woman on, and who expected to be turned on showed girls like her what was what. He let it pass.  So they were an “item” that last year of school and many a Monday morning before school when the other guys were speaking of so-called weekend conquests by the billion he just smiled a knowing silent smile.    Then, a couple, a few years out of high school, Billy working taking a few classes at the local junior college at night, Jenny working a couple or three nights a week as a high end restaurant waitress, the music at Doc’s jukebox changed, got more charged, frankly, got more sassy and sexual far different from their parents’ sappy sentimental stuff that didn’t get anybody’s heart rate up. And Jenny changed, well maybe not so much changed as got caught up in the new dispensation, the new moves. When they went on dates then it wasn’t to the movies or to some restaurant but to Smiley’s Bar & Grille on the outskirts of town where old Smiley had a hot new cover band, the Rocking Rockets, playing all the latest big beat stuff from guys like Warren Smith with his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby that she flipped out on. Not that she, like Warren said, would dance on the tables and stuff like that but that she would dance with lots of guys, would be flirty, tease flirty right before his eyes. When he questioned her on it she just said “don’t be a square, daddy” and refused to discuss it further. And then it began. Some nights when he called her mother answered to say she was not home, had gone out with the girls, or something like that. Yeah, he knew deep in his bones …        ******** …he had changed, Billy had changed too much for her tastes, changed into a “square” just like all the parents in town and all the kids who didn’t want to have fun and just be like them, be like their parents and worry like Billy’s parents’ Jehovah worried about the new devil’s music coming on the scene to replace, square, square Pat Boone and those clowns. Billy, Jesus, Billy worrying and just barely out of high school about some house, kids, dogs and two cars. Funny though he never complained, not one word, when she did her thing, her “doing the Jenny” thing they laughingly called it when they were in that mood, with him down at the beach. Oh, he asked, Jehovah hypocrite asked where she learned how to satisfy a man but he never asked her to stop but just moaned like every other man. She had learned all about sex from a college guy she had been dating before Billy when she was a sophomore in high school but who had ditched her for some college girl from Michigan. Had done a couple of sexy turn on one-night stands with some other college guys before latching onto Billy who she suddenly became attracted to senior year when they shared a study class together and she kept taking furtive glances his way until they began talking to each other after school at Doc’s Drugstore, the one place in town which had an up-to-date jukebox and a soda fountain, and that was that. He was fun at first, fun when she did her thing with him, went down on him, and he got all soft and stuff and she could have gotten anything she wanted from him. Then he started on his ten million plans for them. So she knew, knew sooner or later she was not sure which, she would have to drop him, drop him for somebody who was fun, who liked what she did and didn’t act the hypocrite about it. Hell, in one of her fantasy moments maybe drop him for the first guy who wanted to dance with her close and fast, maybe had some reefer or Scotch and didn’t ask forever how she knew what she knew about sex and just enjoy it (and enjoy her). The problem was that in square old North Adamsville that someone who was fun and the rest had not passed her door, but she had hopes. In the meantime she thought she would have to stick with old gloomy Gus as he fretted his life away.  As long as he kept his mouth shut  when she started swaying when the juke-box played some hot, latest rock and roll tune or the cover band at Smiley’s started her dancing to the beat on something like Warren Smith’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby. Started guys looking through Billy her way too, and licking their chops. Funny, as she thought back to that time a little over a year before when they had eyed each other in Miss Williams’ study hall that she was then attracted to his easy manner, his sly boyish-ness which she thought she could talk him out of with a little coaxing (he had made her laugh when after they became an “item” he said that the eyeing had really been furtive glances-he said funny things like that then). They had not spoken a word until they had spent what seemed like a lifetime dancing around each other at Doc’s Drugstore where he put in endless nickels and dimes in the juke-box and then just sat there dreamy-eyed looking at her until she had said enough and went over to him and stood right in front of him and dared him to ignore her with her look. He had surrendered easily enough and they became an “item” after a subsequent drive-in movie date where she had shown him a few things in the back seat of her friend Terry’s boyfriend’s car. He liked her doing that stuff and she knew he liked her doing that stuff although he was a very shy boy for the first few times. So this was how they had spent their last year of school together in some kind of bliss. Things changed though, changed a couple of years later when a new breeze came through the town, when Doc’s juke-box started to almost jump off the walls what with the latest rock tunes coming one right after another. But Billy did not catch on, wanted to stay mired in his parents’ music and so the frets began-his about marriage and settling down, hers about having fun rocking the night away. The worse times had been when  they went to Smiley’s, the hot-spot bar on the outside of town where there was plenty of booze and bop and guys who eyed her, maybe not  furtively shy like Billy had  but eyed her like they wanted to have a good time, wanted to have fun rather mope around and be square. He would just sit there and be mopey while she danced with a few guys, a couple of whom she had given her telephone number to although they in the end had not worked out. She began telling her mother sometimes that when Billy called to tell him she was out and to tell him that she didn’t know when she would be back.  Even when, like this night, she was just sitting up in her room waiting for a new guy who had danced her off her feet the night before who said he would definitely call and maybe, just maybe, want to have fun …      ***********  "Rock And Roll Ruby" Well I took my Ruby jukin' On the out-skirts of town She took her high heels off And rolled her stockings down She put a quarter in the jukebox To get a little beat Everybody started watchin' All the rhythm in her feet She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul Now Ruby started rockin' 'bout one o'clock And when she started rockin' She just couldn't stop She rocked on the tables And rolled on the floor And Everybody yelled: "Ruby rock some more!" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul It was 'round about four I thought she would stop She looked at me and then She looked at the clock She said: "Wait a minute Daddy Now don't get sour All I want to do Is rock a little bit more" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul One night my Ruby left me all alone I tried to contact her on the telephone I finally found her about twelve o'clock She said: "Leave me alone Daddy 'cause your Ruby wants to rock" She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll Rock, rock, rock'n'roll When Ruby starts a-rockin' Boy it satisfies my soul

From The Marxist Archives- Under the Banner of the “Three L’s”(Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht)

From The Marxist Archives- Under the Banner of the “Three L’s”(Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht) 

Workers Vanguard No. 1125 12 January 2018 TROTSKY LENIN Under the Banner of the “Three L’s” (Quote of the Week) This month, we continue the communist tradition of honoring the “Three L’s”: V.I. Lenin, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. On 15 January 1919, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, founders of the German Spartakusbund and Communist Party, were murdered by counterrevolutionary troops unleashed by the Social Democratic Party-led capitalist government as it crushed a workers uprising. Five years later, on January 21, Lenin, head of the Bolshevik Party and Soviet workers state, died after suffering a series of strokes following an assassination attempt. Liebknecht and Luxemburg’s assassination exemplified “democratic” bourgeois rule, as Lenin noted in a resolution presented to the First Congress of the Communist International. In Germany, the most developed capitalist country of continental Europe, the very first months of full republican freedom, established as a result of imperialist Germany’s defeat [in World War I], have shown the German workers and the whole world the true class substance of the bourgeois-democratic republic. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg is an event of epoch-making significance not only because of the tragic death of these finest people and leaders of the truly proletarian, Communist International, but also because the class nature of an advanced European state—it can be said without exaggeration, of an advanced state on a world-wide scale—has been conclusively exposed. If those arrested, i.e., those placed under state protection, could be assassinated by officers and capitalists with impunity, and this under a government headed by social-patriots, then the democratic republic where such a thing was possible is a bourgeois dictatorship. Those who voice their indignation at the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg but fail to understand this fact are only demonstrating their stupidity, or hypocrisy. “Freedom” in the German republic, one of the freest and advanced republics of the world, is freedom to murder arrested leaders of the proletariat with impunity. Nor can it be otherwise as long as capitalism remains, for the development of democracy sharpens rather than dampens the class struggle which, by virtue of all the results and influences of the war and of its consequences, has been brought to boiling point.... In these circumstances, proletarian dictatorship is not only an absolutely legitimate means of overthrowing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but also absolutely necessary to the entire mass of working people, being their only defence against the bourgeois dictatorship which led to the war and is preparing new wars. —V.I. Lenin, “Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (4 March 1919)

The Ghost Of Tom Joad…Dust-Bowl Broken-With The Boston Museum Of Fine Arts Exhibition On Families Conventional And Unconventional In Mind

The Ghost Of Tom Joad…Dust-Bowl Broken-With The Boston Museum Of Fine Arts Exhibition On Families Conventional And Unconventional In Mind

By Bart Webber

…the ghost of old Tom Joad followed their every footstep, followed their every mile in that broken old excuse for an automobile that sucked the life out of one of his progeny, Prescott Ayers by name, a wheat farmer by trade, huh, by professional except that goddam dust has eaten up that wheat turned it to dust too, turned it so bad Prescott like the Joads before him (and his) from up the road had taken that poor excuse for a car and hightailed it out of the barren Okie hills to head for the promise land wherever that might be and if wasn’t to be then he’d  just not have been buried in that fucking flatland anyhow. Yeah, Tom Joad who would have thought that the winds, the wicked heaven-sent winds, oh lord what did I do to deserve this, would have sent him on the road.

Got a West Coast guy, a guy named Johns Steinbeck, a writer out in the docks of sardine-smacked Monterey thinking about that dust, thinking about fleeing and how to get him the hell out before the whole world turns ash-can grey. Got another guy, an Okie brethren out of the reservation territories, out of the veil of tears, Woody Guthrie, a wild boy no question, to signing and humming about that brother Joad like he knew in his heart that going west was the best. Got another guy, a movie director, an oater by trade, John Ford,   out in mountebank Hollywood, Hollywood before Ed Ruscha, another Okie tramp, immortalized another setoff hill, thinking it might very well do to let the Saturday afternoon at the Bijou movie crowd see what stuff Mister Joad was made of, what Okie dust turned into out west. Unto the seventh generation, if you don’t believe me, making a Jersey guy, a fucking Jersey guy, used to singing about ’57 Chevy’s and the running kind walk the Highway 101 late at night looking across the arroyo skies for a sign of that father he never knew like something out of a Jack Kerouac novel. Jesus.        

…and Prescott Ayers, wheat farmer by professional and owner of a no excuse for a car except he (and his) had to get the hell out before he exploded and wound up in McAlister Prison himself all he got for his sullen efforts was a silly photograph poorly cropped from some Eastern city dame with a high-tail camera by the name of Dorothea Lange who gave his wife Matty a copy (one of the “and his” the others being the boy Lonny, girl Ella, and the girl Martha Jane-Prescott, Junior laid to rest before his second birthday eaten up by wind dust making Prescott damn the day he let Matty conceive him and damning the day he had decided that he wanted a large family to farm that wheat farm and pass on that land, that land that make him cry alone his own veil of tears cry). Matty and that goddam copy which she cherished all the way to Fresno and raisin pining away times as they headed west, headed clunker west in that no excuse for a car. Cherished, unknown to taciturn, no sentiment Prescott, and secretly passed on to Ella upon her death bed long after Prescott laid  his head down in raisin valley soil,  as long as she drew breathe and had a roof over her head.        

The photograph showing Prescott’s Matty all angular and care-worn, slightly slouching, hair not seeing washing or a beautician’s touch for many a mile (couldn’t that photo time since the money all got eaten up buying a new tire when that fixed to perdition tire he was eternally fixing finally gave its last breathe. Wondering, not some 16^th century Dutchman’s wondering (her people’s stock coming into New York Harbor, in the days when all you needed to do was show up on the docks to get into the freaking country and start looking for the streets paved with gold, not able to breath, city breath they from out in edam cheese land and farmers by trade, no, by profession, and heading west first to foreboding Kentucky coalmines and hard-scrabble leavings then across the Mississippi and no turning back into God’s country, Okie life), seeing what did that guy from Minneapolis, that F. Scott Fitzgerald who knew the distinction between rich and poor, call it, yes, the fresh green breast of land heading inland but where Lonny, Ella, Martha food was to be found for that night’s hell-broth stew.             

And that Lonny, Ella, Martha showing that mother angularity, and that haggard look like even a hell-broth stew would be a feast out in those broken down rutted roads not dreaming child dreams, not dreaming about those left behind (even they, even kids, know enough not to dream dust-bowl dreams) and just wishing that tire would hold up some miles and they with fatty meat could get acquainted. No fresh green breast of land to wound their dreams all to hell. Funny, Lonny destined to be an alienated youth in the post-World War II world firing up big hot rod engines out in the deserted desert roads, chicken run roads, east of Fresno and crashing his dreams in a 1949 Hudson all shiny and bright. Funny, star-struck, endlessly star-struck Ella, driving mother Matty crazy would be serving them off the arm in Phil’s Diner, turning part-time tricks for truckers to pull her own brood over the from hunger hump. Funny, Martha a dreary housewife living with husband and two kids in a ranch house (fake-Spanish design all the rage) on converted farm land wondering why the hell the whole tribe had headed west.

….yeah, the ghost of Tom Joad.