An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- A Real Independence Day (4th of July) Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades

An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- A Real Independence Day (4^th of July) Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades

Greg Green, site manager Introduction 

 [In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way, made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68 partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or graphic novels. I stand humbled.

Not only stand humbled though but in a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love in 1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. One called it a travesty.

Backing off after finding Allan, not an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some attention.      

That was the way things went and not too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.

I once again attempted to make the mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series (after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series. Greg Green]                   

Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction

[As my replacement Greg Green, whom I brought in from American Film Gazette originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’ ethos and fate.        

As I said I will describe that transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime” I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival, about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around” something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The Roots Is The Toots  rock and roll coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket. (Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been present at the creation.               

That would have been the end of it but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found another series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.      

This time though the Editorial Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their opportunity to move up.  

That part I had no problem with, told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend” about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that same town whom I also helped stake to  his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.          

If the reader can bear the weight of this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason, although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.

Tapped out in the East for a lot of reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate. So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat. Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.              

The helping Madame La Rue, real name of no interest or need to mention,  running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly, said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her place for a while until I had to move on. Done

The whole drag queen idea tells me that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East. Done.

But enough about me.  This is about two other working- class guys, Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam and Ralph in future segments.]

Allan Jackson Encore Introduction

Sadly I have nothing to add to Sam Eaton’s great take not only on the 4^th of Julys of his recent experiences except that we must update number of years in Afghanistan and Iraq and add Syria, Yemen and a few other places to the drumroll of the American military around the world, Yes, sad and frustrating still.    

A Real Independence Day Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades

From The Pen Of Sam Eaton

Yeah, the streets of the small towns and big cities of this nation were resplendent with red white and blue bunting, the kids filled to the brim with soda, candy and hot dogs and adults coyly sipping their store bought wines and beers in red plastic containers (or at least that seemed the color of choice from a brief but telling visual unscientific poll) as happens every hot summer July Independence Day, the Fourth to short-haul the name of the event I am talking about. As a nice summer holiday nobody, including me, has any quarrel, especially getting the school-stormed kids out of doors and reddened from their prison pallor earned the previous past nine months.

Well, maybe some out there in the hinterlands have a quarrel with celebrating the Fourth as a freedom day after my reading of an archival piece from a re-tweeted blog that my long-time friend and political activist comrade, Ralph Morris (more about him later), send along to me. He had received it via the Internet from our mutual friend living in New York City, Fritz Jasper, a guy who refused to serve in Vietnam after he had been inducted into the Army and his number was called to do 11 Bravo duty (infantryman, grunt, cannon fodder, take your pick) back in the day and did a serious year or more in an Army stockade for his troubles before some smart and savvy civilian lawyer who knew the military law inside out got him sprung on a habeas corpus petition in federal court or he might still be on in the wheat fields of Kansas at Fort Leavenworth along with the heroic Wiki-leaks whistleblower Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. [Sentenced commuted in 2017 by President Obama before he left office under his pardoning powers.]  

The gist of the article and that is all I want to do is give the gist since this sketch is about other matters, although 4^th of July connected, was penned by a NYU professor who Fritz knows and let’s write on his blog, American Politics Today. The good professor’s argument was that due to the way this country got its freedom from old Mother England as a result of a straight up military victory and the kind of society that was formed afterwards based on the enslavement of black people and later the extermination of Native peoples (although a lot was done well before that “later” to those “collateral damage” peoples) we should be more circumspect about celebrating the event. Unlike say the English, French or Russian revolutions which were hell-bound flat-out social revolutions whatever happened later on to rein them in.

And the good professor from NYU, Jack Kirby I think his name was who has written several books and monograms along that same line, might have a very good point (and Fritz too who agreed with that part of Kirby’s analysis about being circumspect all things considered but disagreed with the “not celebrating” part since he sees it as a legitimate part of the struggle from human freedom even if today we would recoil from what that experience has produced. More on this in a minute when Ralph and I weight in). But what interests today me as an old anti-war campaigner (make that a full-time anti-war campaigner against the now endless wars of the American imperium and other misadventures as well) since the early 1970s after I got “religion” as I like to call it on the issues of war and peace is being able to use the day, and more importantly the thousands of locally organized parades or other commemorations, to get our anti-war message out.

The “got religion” part about war came after some soul-searching when I learned that my best friend, Jeff Mullins, from Carver High was blown away in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1969.  Jeff had sent me a bunch of letters telling me of the horrors of the situation, his desperation in trying to right it, and his total disgust with the ugly abuse that the American government was putting its soldiers, the people of Vietnam (and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as it turns out), and virtually everything it touched a few months before he was killed to tell one and all that the war was totally crazy, totally “off the wall” as he called it. (I was a little sheepish at first since through the vagaries of life I wound up with a military deferment due to being the sole support for my mother and four much younger sisters after my drunken sot of a father passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack in 1965. But I got over that when somebody said the message “from the grave,” Jeff’s grave I had to bring to the table squared things.)

The hard fact is that in the year 2015 despite almost fourteen years of endless war from that first bombing raids on Kabul by Bush II in the aftermath of the horrendous unspeakable criminal actions in New York on 9/11 until the latest (Spring, 2015) announced Obama third wave, or is it fourth,  “creeping troop escalation” in Iraq the streets of America have been abandoned as a way to get our message out by those who previously knew (if only for a minute in the later part of  2002 and early 2003) that you need to get the anti-war message out via the streets, raise hell about the situation, since the media has blocked any coverage out otherwise as yesterday’s news.

So the 4^th of July is an excellent place to bring the message home to a war-weary (and wary) people without an “in your face” confrontation. (How are you going to, on either side, get red-faced angry when soda-hot dog-candy filled kids and ordinary everyday citizens out to get some well-deserved time off and have a few red cup brews are looking your way with not unkindly feelings.)  Now, full disclosure, Ralph Morris as a Vietnam veteran like the fallen Jeff Mullins (and not Vietnam-era either since he served eighteen months “in-country” as he calls it) and I who have worked with him since we “met” at the RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 are both members of an organization dedicated to the principle of peace, Veterans For Peace (VFP), and have been for a number of years (he as a full member and I as an associate since I am not a veteran, a least a war veteran although Ralph always says that I am a “veteran” in his book since being peace veterans is really what is important about what we have, or have not, done with our lives).

VFP likes to, maybe lives to, use any reasonable occasion to get the peace message out. So these days events like 4^th of July parades, Memorial Day Peace remembrances, ditto Veterans Day/Armistice Day (the real and original reason for the holiday going back to end of World War I times), Saint Patrick’s Day in Boston, Gay Pride parades, you name it you are very likely to find the white flags with the black-outlined doves of peace embossed on them fluttering in the wind at some such occasion. And this Fourth of July was no exception. Ralph who lives in Troy, New York when we are not off somewhere spreading as best we can these days the good news of peace came to Boston and joined the local VFP chapter, the Smedley Butler Brigade (named in honor of the famous much decorated Marine Corps general who coined the phrase “war is a racket” in a speech you can read if you Google his name or go to Wikipedia). We marched on the evening of July 3^rd in the annual parade in historic Gloucester (of the famed fishermen going down to the sea, those battling our home land the sea for its bounty) and in the adjacent town of Rockport the next evening.

Late on 4^th of July evening after having walked our legs off the previous two early evenings we headed to Johnny’s Olde Wagon Wheel Diner over on Thornton Street (Rockport) for a meal (Johnny’s providing the best meatloaf dinner around and both Ralph and I in our hitchhiking days in the early 1970s either on our own or through the kindness of friendly truckers know many, many diners to compare the bills of fare on that subject and that accolade is thus deserved) and a few drinks of high-shelf whisky (although our favorite watering hole for that purpose when Ralph is in Boston is Jack’s Grille down by the Financial District in the downtown area but that place that day would be a zoo with the huge crowds that attend the well-known concert on the Esplanade and fireworks after) in order to “evaluate” what our takes on the two events were.

Now you have to know a little something about VFP’s past participation in these Fourth of July parades in Gloucester and Rockport. VFP started about twenty years to participate in the two parades via the efforts of VFP members in both towns to get us in (at the barbeque this year before the Rockport parade that fact was honored with a short speech and, well, a cake). The first few years in the second Clinton administration were rocky since a key component to any of this American spirit holidays are groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Legion posts who put a lock on patriotism of a certain kind, mainly of the unthinking or wrong-thinking “my country, right or wrong” kind, and that is that. Moreover the other key organizers for such events are the town police and fire departments whose memberships overlap with the veterans’ groups many times. Those combinations are used to organizing such events and normally set the agenda. So the first few years were tough with the local organizers taking a stance out of the playbook of the Allied War Council (AWC) in Boston which for five years now has excluded VFP from its Saint Patrick’s Day parade held over in South Boston in March of each year under the rubric, as one AWC-er put it-“we don’t want the words “veterans” and “peace” put together in our (private) parade. Small towns and cities are however under pressure, or if not should be, to see that the whole community is represented and so VFP found a spot in each parade. Of course another hard pressed time was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when even Ralph and I were afraid to go on the streets with the peace message at a time when the average citizen who generally is indifferent to our presence had daggers in their eyes at the sight of peace signs or symbols (although we did, we did go out among the hostile populace, at least in Boston that year, but with the most trepidation that either of us had faced in our long anti-war careers) and then with the war drums beating in the lead-up to the so-called slam-dunk 2003 Iraq War.

But each year since as the endless wars have continued to meander their endless sun-less rivers the patriotic bounce has stopped driving sneers, ugly remarks, old-time out of touch anti-commie slurs and the like that every protestor from neophyte to veteran knows is at least hidden in some quarters when you work “street” politics. Both Ralph and I made that same observation this year (as well as our traditional one about how those old yellow ribbons festooned on the back bumpers of cars and trucks have faded to pale white). That absence of malice rather than the notable increased cheering as the VFP contingent of white flag dove of peace –embossed limply-walking older wars veterans, jauntily-walking younger Afghan and Iraq war veterans and assorted peace group supporters approached their vantage points is the most striking difference over the years. We both noted in Rockport there was plenty of genuine cheering to overthrow any uncivil remarks (although one guy, an old duffer who looked like he might have been a mess sergeant in 1958, told us to “go back to Moscow” and another in that same old duffer category to “just stay at home” apparently to not offend his starry eyes. Jesus, where have these guys been since about 1991.)

Here is our dilemma though, and not just Ralph, mine or VFP’s but for any “peaceniks” working the streets these days. We could palpably see the war-weariness in the remarks headed our way, especially in Gloucester an old working-class town that has provided more than its share of soldiers and sailors as the city memorials, especially the latter, to the fallen of that place readily testifies, those remarks made from many a flatbed working man’s truck that dotted the route of the parade. Trucks, more than either of us thought existed in a town that size (and missing for the most part from the more upscale Rockport parade with its average Audi or BMW) complete with whole families in the bed taking in the sights, having a little something to eat or drink, and probably trying to figure out how to calm down the sugar-laden kids before bedtime after such a hectic day of sights and sounds.

Here is where Ralph and I have racked our brains in sullen frustration-how do you turn that obvious war-weariness into some kind of protest movement beyond the kind words and rousing applause sent our way on parade days. We did not solve that dilemma that night maybe because we were tired, maybe we were too sated from Johnny’s meatloaf, maybe a few too many high-shelf whiskeys or maybe like the kids too many sights and sounds. All I know is that we will be back next year, hopefully with more people joining our efforts to spread the good words of peace around. You can bet on that.                                                            

[Oops, before I forget since whenever I mention how Ralph and I met down in D.C. on May Day 1971 people want to know how that happened in a professional football stadium in May when the football season is long past. Ralph wrote up his version in 2011 and I added a few pithy comments (his term) for that American Politics Today our friend Fritz runs for the fortieth anniversary of the event. I will give a short wrap-up here to show why we have been amigos since that strange day in May. You already know my reasons for turning anti-war but Ralph’s came like Jeff’s from actual hard rock service in that benighted country. In short as Ralph says when he is giving talks- “he grew disenchanted with what he had to do as a soldier (as an 11 Bravo cannon-fodder like Jeff), what his Army buddies getting blown away and mangled had to do, and what the damn American government was making of them-nothing but animals (always said with a sneer). So when he got out in late 1969, early 1970 he wound up working with a predecessor of VFP, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). By 1971 with no end of the war in sight a lot of us, radicals, frustrated liberals, ex-G.I.s upped the ante- decided to as the slogan went-“if the government would not shut down the war, we would shut down the government.”

As thousands descended on Washington including Ralph with New York VVAW and me then living in Cambridge with some radicals I knew we really thought we had enough to change history. For that illusion many of us, Ralph and me among them, wound upon the football field at RFK being used that May as a holding area for those arrested. He noticed I was wearing a VVAW supporter button in honor of Jeff and that started our friendship. If you need more info on that day just check Wikipedia because I have to move on.

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Song Of The Same Name In Mind

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Song Of The Same Name In Mind   

By Fritz Taylor 

[Sam Lowell and I have known each other for a long time, since a time back in the 1970s when our paths met at an anti-war veterans’ conference in New York (a conference which would wind up setting up a Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW] chapter in his hometown area in Boston and mine in my hometown Atlanta, Georgia area. We would see each in places we were protesting one or another egregious acts of the American government, the American military against some poor benighted country that got caught in the cross-hairs of some fool president. Later, after the ebb tide of the anti-war, the Vietnam anti-war had happened we connected in other ways via our veteran connection and I would, at his request, write something veteran-related that he could not put a handle on. Something that Allan Jackson, who was the editor then when this publication was in hard-copy form, would accept and for when I needed some ready cash.

The subject matter of this piece, Sam’s not being at peace with himself is done with his permission since it is such a personal and emotional matter. None of us men from the Vietnam era, soldier or civilian, political activist or not, have been as forthcoming as the younger men who have come after us, our children and now grandchildren (I dare not say great-grandchildren but I know some of us ae in that category). We were all about change and seeking a newer world as a guy named Markin, also a vet, who didn’t make it through used to say but we were more like our World War II fathers when it came to speaking of personal matters. A shame. This piece while not a breakthrough since we have been mulling things over the past few years, is a big step for Sam and me, Sam to narrate and me to write about such matters.

The conversations we had around putting this piece together actually happened a couple of years ago just after, as will be noted below, his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, not wife, for he had had three of those and they both agreed they were better off just living together since she had been married twice had left their house (Sam had made us laugh one time when he mentioned that it was cheaper too between alimony and child support). This piece was, is something of a therapy session for Sam’s angst at Laura’s leaving and his inability to put out the fire in his head. We decided to put it aside for a while until it made sense to publish the results of those conversations. Better Sam and Laura have been talking again since both recognized that the bonds between them were very strong and they both, frankly, my frankly, missed each other’s company. Sam is really sending Laura a bouquet on this one.  And I am glad to play the florist. Fritz Taylor]       

************    

Sam Lowell was, is a queer duck, an odd-ball kind of guy who couldn’t stop keeping his head from exploding with about seventeen ideas at once and the determination to do all seventeen come hell or high water. And not seventeen things like mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish but what he called “projects” which in Sam’s case meant political projects and writings and other things along that line. Yeah, couldn’t put out “the fire in his head” the way he told it to his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, one night at supper after she had confronted him with her observation, and not for the first time, that he was getting more irritable, was more often short with her of late, had seemed distant, had seemed to be drifting into some bad place, a place where he was not at peace with himself. That not “at peace” with himself an expression that Laura had coined that night to express the way that she saw his current demeanor. That would be the expression he would use in his group therapy group to describe his condition when they met later that week. Would almost shout out the words in despair when the moderator-psychologist asked him pointedly whether he felt at peace with himself at that moment and he pointed responded immediately that he was not. Maybe it was at that point, more probably though that night when Laura confronted him with his own mirror-self that told Sam his was one troubled man.  

Yea, it was that seventeen things in order and full steam ahead that got him in trouble on more than on occasion. The need to do so the real villain of the piece. See Sam had just turned seventy and so he should have been trying to slow down, slow down enough to not try to keep doing those seventeen things like he had when he was twenty or thirty but no he was not organically capable of doing so, at least until the other shoe dropped. Dropped hard.      

It was that “other shoe” dropping that made him take stock of his situation, although it had been too little too late. One afternoon a few days after that stormy group therapy session he laid down on his bed to just think through what was driving him to distraction, driving that fury inside him that would not let him be, as he tried to put on the fire in his head. That laying down itself might have been its own breakthrough since he had expected, had fiercely desired to finish up an article that he was writing on behalf a peace walk that was to take place shortly up in Maine, a walk that was dedicated to stopping the wars, mostly of the military-type but also of environmental degradation against Mother Nature. 

Sam, not normally introspective about his past, about the events growing up that had formed him, events that had as he had told Laura on more than one occasion almost destroyed him. So that was where he started, started to try to find out why he could not relax, had to be “doing and making” as Laura called it under happier circumstances, had to be fueling that fire in his head. Realized that afternoon that as kid in order to survive he had learned at a very young age that in order to placate (and avoid) his overweening mother he had to keep his own counsel, had to go deep inside his head to find solace from the storms around his house. For years he had thought the driving force was because he was a middle child and thus had to fend for himself while his parents (and grandparents) doted on respectively his younger and older brothers. But no it had been deeper than that, had been driven by feelings of inadequacy before his mother’s onslaught against his fragile head.        

As Sam traced how at three score and ten he could point to various incidents that had driven him on, had almost made him organically incapable of not ever having an active brain, of going off to some dark places where the devils would not let him relax, that kept him going around and around he realized that he was not able to relax on his own, would need something greater than himself if he was to unwind. Laura had emphatically told him that he would have to take that journey on his own, would have to settle himself down if he was to gain any peace in his whole damn world. Sam suddenly noticed after Laura had expressed her opinion that she had always been the picture of calm, had been his rock when he was in his furies. Funny he had always underestimated, always undervalued that calmness, that solid rock. He, in frustration, at his own situation asked Laura how she had maintained the calm that seemed to follow her around her world.         

Laura, after stating that she too had her inner demons, had to struggle with the same kind of demons that Sam had faced as a child and that she still had difficulties maintaining an inner calm, told Sam that her daily Buddha-like meditations had carried her to a better place. Sam was shocked at her answer. He had always known that Laura was drawn to the spiritual trends around their milieu, the “New Age stuff” he called her interest since it seemed that she had taken tidbits from every new way to salvation outside of formal religion (although she had had bouts with that as well discarding her Methodist high heavens Jehovah you are on your own in this wicked old world upbringing for the communal comfort of the Universalist-Unitarian brethren). He had respected her various attempts to survive in the world the best way she could but those roads were not for him, smacked too much of some new religion, some new road that he could not travel on. But he was also desperate to be at peace, a mantra that he was increasing using to describe his plight.    

Then Laura suggested that they attend a de-stress program that was being held at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of what was billed as HUB-week, a week of medical, therapeutic, technological and social events and programs started by a number of well-known institutions in the Boston area like MGH, Harvard, MIT and others. Sam admitted to being clueless about what a de-stress program would be about and had never heard of a Doctor Benson who a million years before had written a best-selling book about the knot the West had put itself in trying to get ahead and offered mediation as a way out of the impasse. Sam was skeptical but agreed to go.

At the event which lasted about two hours various forms of meditative practice were offered including music and laughter yoga. Sam in his skeptical mind passed on those efforts. The one segment that drew his attention, the first segment headed by this Doctor Benson had been centered on a simple technique to reduce stress, to relax in fact was called the relax response. Best of all the Doctor had invited each member of the audience to sample his wares. Pick a word or short phrase to focus on, close your eyes, put your hands on your lap and consecrate, really try to concentrate, on that picked term for five minutes (the optimum is closer to ten plus minutes in an actual situation).          

Sam admitted candidly to Laura that while attempting fitfully focusing on one thing, in his case the phrase “at peace,” he had suffered many distractions but that he was very interested in pursuing the practice since he had actually felt that he was getting somewhere before time was called. Laura laughed at Sam’s response, so Sam-like expecting to master in five minutes a technique that she had spent years trying to pursue and had not been anywhere near totally focused yet. He asked her to help him to get started and they did until Sam felt he could do the procedure on his own.

We now have to get back to that “other shoe” dropping though. Although Sam had expressed his good intentions, had felt better after a while Laura had felt that he needed to go on his journey without her. She too now felt that she had to seek what she was looking for alone in this wicked world despite how long they had been together. So Laura called it quits, moved out of the house that she and Sam had lived in for years. Sam is alone on his journey now, committed to trying to find some peace inside despite his heartbreak over the loss of Laura. Every once in a while though in a non-meditative moment he curses that fire in his head. Yeah, he wished he could have put out that fire in his head long ago.