Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon

By Seth Garth

I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7^th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.

Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles  I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)

In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.         

The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.

I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.

For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.  

So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.         

He Could Have Been A Contender, Oops, Champion Of The World-Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Kid Galahad” (1937)- A Film Review

He Could Have Been A Contender, Oops, Champion Of The World-Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Kid Galahad” (1937)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Lance Lawrence

Kid Galahad, starring Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, Warren Morris, Jane Bryan, 1937    

A guy I used to work for when I was a kid, when I was looking for a little spending money to escort whatever flame I was pursuing at the moment was fond of saying “some guys are born to be lovers, some fighters.” That comment directed at me since in those days I was as prone to fight somebody over some now misty and silly slight, maybe someone said something about some gal I was interested before I got wise to the fact that I wasn’t much of a fighter at a skinny 140 pounds taking on guys much bigger and stronger. That guy I worked for had me tagged though as a lover not a fighter if you had to choose between the two. Especially when at sixteen I mixed it up with a guy much bigger than I over a girl and got nothing but the worst of it. This cutting up old touches had resulted from viewing the film under review, Kid Galahad, where the fighter, a guy who would turn professional fighter before the film is half over, was both a lover and a fighter. Some mean feat which would have garnered much respect in the old neighborhood if such a person existed in those days. My growing up time employer would have gladly tipped his hat to that duel prowess. Would probably too note this big exception to the rule, and exception which would not have included me in any shape or form.

     

I can’t say that as a kid I was very interested in pugilism, the art of fighting, fighting in the ring although I never then had qualms about guys who did try for the brass ring. Guys who would start out young at the local police station gym, club fighters, and move up or out, mostly out. These were mostly “from hunger” Irish and Italian guys looking to break out of the heavy labor which would be their fate if they didn’t make it out. They were never a big part of the local scene and I don’t’ remember much talk about anybody but Irish Johnny Mangone (playing the Irish mother, Italian father card) who was some kind of Golden Gloves champion although how far up I don’t remember. I do know, because my father Boyo was a ringleader, that the fathers, uncles, older brothers used to populate the local gin mill, The Tam, every Friday night to watch, and presumably bet on the profession fights on television from maybe the old Madison Square Garden in New York City sponsored by Gillette Razor Company in those beardless days.

But enough of old touches and let’s get to why this Warren Gooseberry, played by Wayne Morris, or whatever his name was from down on the farm and nothing but a blonde hick and rube who would have lasted about two minutes in my neighborhood except he had a deadly right hook before somebody got wise and christened him Kid Galahad to make the women wet as a songwriter wrote about Elvis one time. This kid was trying to make his way, trying to make enough money in the big city to buy a farm and get married. This guy was strictly from nowhere because he believed he could make the nut on tips or whatever as a bellboy in an upscale hotel. Fat chance.       

Fat chance except as part of his duties the Kid (I refuse to further  use his given moniker) winds up serving them off the arm, serving drinks, hard liquor for a boxing promoter, Nick Donati, played by tough guy  gangster type Edward G. Robinson and his significant other (although no way they called such arrangements that back then in the time frame of this film the 1930s but more like mistress or kept woman, whore in some quarters), Fluff played by Bette Davis.

(By the way according to fellow reviewer Seth Garth the last time Robinson was seen in this space was as famous Chi town gangster Johnny Rocco, he of the tough guy racketeers who dominated urban life back then, maybe now too, bleeding like a sieve after a character played by Humphrey Bogart who will be mentioned below popped him full of lead for being ugly. No, for roughing up his flame down in the Keys in Key Largo. Come to think of it that was the last time Bogie made this space as well as a good guy (in the end) who after seeing hard service in the European Theater in World War II at first claimed that “one more Johnny Rocco, more or less, was not worth dying for.” Until Johnny roughed up his honey. To complete the triad the last time Bette Davis was seen in this space according to fellow reviewer Will Bradley she was being stalked by an enraged Pacific islander woman whose paramour had been murdered by an enraged Ms. Davis who thought she was his lover in The Letter.)  

Yeah you read it right Nick Donati, the famous fight manager who had many a contender but never seemed to have guy who could have or wanted to go all the way.  Nick a guy who worked the newspaper scribes like a violin whenever he had a prospect. Of course in those days the fight game, the way out for many a young guy who faced the soup kitchen or hard labor lugging stuff to and fro had many illustrious promoters ready to see what they were made of-contenders or tankers, mostly the latter. Like Nick’s nemesis Turkey Morgan, Bogie’s role, a gangster trying to get his cut in the fight racket who had through fair means or foul, mostly foul the hottest property in the game-the heavyweight champion of the world. The whole thing gathers steam when rube from nowhere Kid takes umbrage when that vaunted heavyweight champion of the world roughs up Fluff. Bang Nick Donati, how he did it nobody knows, had another fighter in his stable. And for playing Sir Galahad Fluff was ready to ditch sullen neglectful Nick for the young stud, for somebody who treated her like a lady. One conquest and the Kid hasn’t even gotten into the ring to make the Garden women audiences get funny thoughts. 

On the basis of knocking the champ for a loop Nick sent the Kid into the ring to get a little bloodied on his way up. Except to the chagrin of Nick and the deadly anger of Turkey the Kid bounces the prelim guy on the floor. The Kid had to blow town for a while so Fluff stashed him upstate at Nick’s mother’s farm. The Kid was right at home too just like he had left before seeking the bright lights of the city. Oh yeah except Ma was not alone for there is a virginal Nick younger sister, Marie, played by Jane Bryan, who winds up being crazy about the Kid-and he her. Problem, big problem, maybe two big problems really. That Fluff hunger for him and Nick’s fervent attempt to keep the mugs, the sawdust bums, the punching bag stiffs away from her. The Fluff part got taken care of by her taking a powder on Nick once she knew the freaking score with the Kid and Nick’s sister. She had been around enough to know things were hopeless especially when the Kid and Marie showed up at the nightclub where she was warbling, and Marie knew how she Fluff felt before all hell broke loose when Turkey and the champ tried to provoke the Kid.

Once Nick caught onto the romance between Marie and the Kid though he went wild, tried to do serious damage to the mug, to the Kid. Pushed the Kid into fighting the champ too soon and with the purposefully wrong strategy. Wrong approach, wrong once Fluff and Marie who were in attendance begged for mercy for the Kid. Bang-bang new strategy and the Kid takes the crown. Unfortunately, Nick, as was not usual for him, left a few loose ends like welshing on the underhanded deal he had made with gangster angry Turkey and as things worked out rather than a post-fight victory party there was a mutual shoot-out where both contestants were mortally wounded. Too bad. But good was the Kid winning the championship-and Marie. My employer would have scratched his head in approval.    

Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet-The Complete Trilogy

Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet-The Complete Trilogy

 “The Scribe Turns The World Upside Down”- “Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings”- “When Butterfly Swirl Swirled”

[The well- known writer and book critic Zack James eventually began to feel that he had signed on to an assignment from hell after spending a fair amount of time this summer of 2017 chronicling the 50^th Anniversary of the San Francisco-centered Summer of Love, 1967. Especially so since he was far too young by about a decade to have any personal affinity to that celebration. His whole involvement had come about after his oldest brother, Alex, had taken a business trip to San Francisco and had noticed an advertisement for an exhibition at the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park entitled The Summer of Love Experience. For Alex it was crucial that he attend that exhibition since he had actually been out there in that decisive summer of 1967 and for about two years afterward before settling down to pursue his current life as a high-end lawyer in Boston. When Alex returned to Boston he gathered together whatever friends were left standing as he called it from his growing up town of North Adamsville and who had also gone out to the Bay area for various amounts of time in 1967.

As a result of that meeting the group of seven agreed with Alex that they should commission Zack to help write, edit, and prepare for publication a small book of memoirs of those times. The book to be dedicated to the late Peter Paul Markin, forever known among that crowd as “Scribe” once Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader of the guys he hung around dubbed him with that title for his blasted tenacity about knowing every possible fact in the universe for any occasion. More importantly the Scribe had always been something of a bell-weather for all kinds of trends like the rise of folk music in the early 1960s, the anti-war movement, and what he called according to Alex who was his closest friend at the time, the “fresh new breeze coming through the land.” The Scribe was the first to head out to San Francisco after quitting college in the spring of 1967. (The consequences of that ill-advised decision will be mentioned below.) He came back a couple of months later and rounded up every “corner boy,” that is what they were called then, to head back by bus, by hitchhiking or whatever means they could get there.

Zack put together the book and saw to its publication thinking that was the end of the matter. Not so. Alex, and then the others, kept asking him to write more stories about the Scribe and those times. That led to some reviews of the music, books, and other social events of the times. Some ten pieces in all. That is when he said enough. Told Alex to tell the “brethren” (Zack’s word) he needed to finish a book on the legendary revolutionary pre-Civil War abolitionist John Brown which was running up against a publication dead-line. That is when he “drafted” me to do some short pieces remaining from that period. Of course I am even younger than Zack so I had only heard about the Summer of Love through books and lately through looking at YouTube videos which are plentiful. Since I owned Zack couple of favors I agreed to finish up for him.

At first the three pieces that I contributed stood by themselves based on some postcards Alex had given Zack as prompts to write up about. But as I looked into more background material especially that Scribe tribute memoir book Zack had carefully put together I came to see that they all were linked together. Linked together by the character of the mad monk Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe. So I have, after re-writing some of the material, put the pieces together as a trilogy. If Alex and his guys want to dedicate this stuff to the Scribe then that is okay by me-Jeffrey Thorne]                    

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The Scribe Turned The World Upside Down

The Scribe said it best one night, one Summer of Love, 1967 night, one cold San Francisco night, a summer night when the Japan currents went awry and reminded one of old Mark Twain’s witty sayings about the coldest winter he had ever spent-August in the city of sweet brethren Saint Francis, when he declared (so like that mad man to use the seventh person imperative, to declare in his world-historic way, for such small letter asterisk events), that the breeze coming through the land would shake society to its foundations. Would make nine to five work-a-day world a bore (and give his poor brethren a chance to partake of the golden age that he, his parents, his Acre neighborhood, and most of the known world had been short-changed of for millennia), make that long suburban tract complete with dishwasher and sanitary garbage disposal obsolete before the last mortgage payment hit the dirt (get people to think differently about space, about community, and give that same and give that poor brethren a chance to partake of the golden age of living space that he, his parents, his Acre neighborhood, and most of the known world had been short-changed of for millennia), would make those three point two kids and that one dog a victim of old-fashioned thinking (well, okay).

Said, get this for a guy who became a non-believer, a non-believer in risen Christ if you can believe that very early in his teens (and went to church, sliding side door church solely to sit a few rows behind some lovely he was pining over just to watch her ass so yes a non-believer) that the new dispensation was at hand-if they could keep it, keep the bastards, and you know who the bastards were then-the night-takers and guys who conned you into nine to five dreams, suburban flats and, what was it three point two kids (we will pass on the not mandatory dog) from barking at the door.  

Sure the Scribe talked the talk and walked the walk, oh boy did he, spouting forth about one love, about the new garden of eden (small case is right remember he was a non-believer, maybe had always been something of an outlaw even when he cruised the books, had his nose in some book, for a sign), about that turning the world upside down and making it stick. Making the night-takers back down (night-takers Zack’s word via the Scribe which I am happy to ‘steal”). Hell, from what the corner boys said in their memories of the guy he sounds like he was always a closet Digger. Not the Diggers who fed the people in down-trodden Haight-Ashbury when the desperate young had wandered to San Francisco with nothing but dreams and knapsacks but the people around Gerrard Winstanley on Saint George’s Hill who, for a while before they were kicked off that spot by Oliver Cromwell’s agents, tried a form of primitive communism based on communal living and common use of land. Check that out sometime if you delve back into the 17^th century English revolution. They appear to have been forbears of what went down in 1967 before the experiment got out of hand through hubris, dope and confusion about how to keep the thing going against the wrath of the night-takers. Of course coming “from hunger” he, the other guys, Zack’s brethren and the Scribe’s corner boys, were not above certain larcenies, scams, cons to keep body and soul together. That contradiction was suppressed for a time, for the time before the night-takers came back with a vengeance. The ebb the Scribe called it as he descended down a slippery slope in the mid-1970s.            

That was the rub, that was the factor that got away from the Scribe as much as he knew that he/they were on tender mercies ground, knew that that little counter attack from out of the blue would come when he thought the world had stopped turning on itself and had gone upside down that eventually would do in even the Scribe. Would turn his mouth to ashes, would turn a sainted brethren (not many out in Frisco in those days knew his full given name began with Francis at a time when everybody was “reinventing” themselves including clustering up new monikers to get washed clean, also a Scribe expression and so only knew the moniker) down the gutter road, float him out to the Japan seas long before he ever heard the Duke blast that high white note. Yeah, blast the times, blast the whole fucking world for taking down a brethren as pure as snow.   

[I was not sure where I should put a bit of information about the Scribe’s fate although I knew that I had to bring some information out in the interest of completeness and to give sense of the Scribe’s contradiction so I am placing it here. I have mentioned above something about “wanting habits” and how they were suppressed for a time. The Scribe’s downfall, as witnessed by all who mentioned him from the old days, started with his quitting college given up a scholarship to “find himself” out in San Francisco in fateful 1967. Such were the times that a lot of people did that. His problem, a big problem, was that left his subject to the draft which came the next year. For reasons I could never understand at this remove he accepted induction and wound up in Vietnam as an infantryman, did his tour and came back to what he called the “real” world where he on the surface thrived for the next few years while the spirit of the communal vision 1960s still held sway. Stayed on the West Coast and did some good journalism around the fate of some returning fellow Vietnam veterans who were “lost” and living out in camps and other places away from the “real” world. But all his guys mention that there was something that Vietnam had taken out of him, had left him internally shattered. When the 1960s faded, when that “newer world” idea faded he lost his mooring. Got more heavily into dope, into cocaine. Started dealing to keep his growing habit intact. Then took a mysterious trip to Mexico to consummate a drug deal. Whatever happened and nobody has much to go on he wound dead in a back street in Sonora with two bullets in his chest. The situation was so fraught with danger that he was buried in a potter’s field down there. Like I said I still am not able to get a handle on all of that but there it is-maybe the contradiction of the times if it came right down to it.]

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“Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings”  

Beat down (not to be mistaken for abuse, child abuse or anything like that against up against it mothers and distant fathers but just poor, bedraggled poor, “wanting habit” as the Scribe would have coming jointly out of their respective Acres).  Beat around (check beat down except just hanging around luckless, shoeless, waiting for somebody else’s shoe to drop). Beat sound (hell easier to figure, listen to the swish of the sticks battling the pots and pans, some out of Africa our mother riff culled into cool be-bop be-bop and all that jazz away from big swing and into the big blast air). Beat to the ground (luckless fellahins stashed away in back room closets, gambling, washing endless dishes, what did some wit call it-diving for pearls, losing always losing, losing worst when blood-lust bullies take the law into their own hands).

Fuck it, fuck explanation since everybody will get it wrong just like the guys back in the Acre could never figure what was bothering the guy, what made him jump. Fuck it Jack just jumped into it, into its sea, into it misty sea, foghorn blasting some jazz-like moan, from his beautified beatified skull, maybe thinking of youthful skull behind some bushes or out on some back road highway jumping the bones of some friend’s one and only, that is pure speculation though. But really and truly Jack man, Jean-bon in old times jumped from some river of life, mill town life like a million guys before him and now in foreign lands a million guys after him, the river flowing to steam up some engine to grind the fabric that will clothe the world. Ha, like we who come naked into this holy coil can take solace from that low catholic trip it took him, and not just him but lots of others who broke the square habit at least for a time, for the youth duration. Damn beatitude in the end when all the shouting was over and Jack in some drunken grave under a pile of suffering dirt (the Buddha in him cried out as it did for that guy down in Sonora before they found him in some hideous back alley unnamed and unloved, maybe un-nameable if there is such a word) Why couldn’t he have listened to that guy out in Frisco town, the guy, a kid really, maybe sixteen set up in a too big older brother 1940s zoot suit, a wisp of beard which could not be shaven so wisp, eyes glazed on dope , on love on the high, on the low, who all nervous on bennie nevertheless blew that high white note that was in his DNA, provided by grandma, mother left for parts unknown, father shiva blew town with some chick who had a stash and gave her gash, to like everything else out to the fucking China seas. But that was at the end. That was when the music was over, when it no longer made sense. At the beginning hell no said Jack.

The world wasn’t big enough to hold all his desperations, keep them in check, keep those wanting habits every poor boy has inside him talk about DNA. Even rama jamma Buddha didn’t have no cure for that except maybe some jimson and jetsam and mystical balm for a shattered world. Like I say that was at the end though. At the beginning our boy took off as fast as he could from that mill town river and never looked back (except to take the dust off his shoes and bow down before our Lady of the River when luck ran out, the booze ran out, hell, the sweet tea sticks ran out and all of beat solace ran to catholic rivers, yeah I know capital C but those were the breaks, the end knotted up in some rat hole, some mother-forgotten rat hole and no more joy, stick either). Took it on the lam, went west east south north (I think on that last direction maybe back to the homeland, back to the stinking big river up north that some earlier Jack, some Jacques, crossed to get to that fucking mill river, Jesus, looking for the holy grail, looking for about six ways to get out of that beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat to the ground bitch stuff. Took up with some fat fast mad secular monk with crazed mom and sweet word poet father, not father William Blake but worldly father, who spouted stuff about negro streets (and angel-headed hipsters like we didn’t know he hung around Time Square Joe and Nemo’s midnight coffees looking for queers, con artists and hustlers, always hustlers, crazies (in and out of the asylums of the mind) and Moloch devouring the land (make no mistake ancient and evil dressed in grey flannel suits and quoting stock prices into those same China seas as that benny-suckled kid blowing that high white Frisco note), the land of milk and honey, rama rama, went to the mat (secret love in more ways than one with that loose bastard who couldn’t keep his mouth shut or cock in his pants -and that was that-for a time). No, not then that street wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with the language and ladies’ pocketbooks or that highbrow junkie hanging around New Orleans looking for quick fixes although they qualified if it came to that.

For a time no question since the pull of fast fat monks could wear off fast under the sun of boze, booze, bennies and grand simon jimson ladies. Took his hat off and let the world slip in-thought maybe the way was the way. Startled guys like desolation angels and dharma bums into thinking they could do what had never been done like some lead pipe cinch. Ran up the mountain (no Prometheus Adonis more likely who was to know) to place incense in the fatted calf body singing, singing, singing some cross between the stations of the cross and plastic nirvana (just to be cute, cute as a nine thieves). Saw Siva run the river gauntlet and leave satiated beyond compare, saw Rama too walking down Post Street in his nightshirt.

Then fame got in his way, somebody bought into his million word notebook thoughts wanderings this is poor boy long time waiting wanting habits Jack we are talking about remember in case you have lost the drift. Make him surly and brazen wondering why the hell if fame was fame didn’t it jump out at him when he started on his Calvary Road road(and it was such a road breaking from deep incense and Adam and Eve free falls so much for free will, started out in dirty sneakers and crusted blue jeans, and when he jumped out of his skull and fled that mountebank river town. Funny no more Harvard hipsters and Columbia ranters and raspers or Denver Adonis. Now fools and jesters following his every move, hiding in bushes and make that fat monk look like some holy fool, like a goof (again remember please not that street-wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with language and ladies’ pocketbooks). Ah, sullen lost planet life.         

How was he to know, how was Jack to blessed know that his illegitimate children, not child, children would abandon their flea-etched sins only a short time later, hang out their own signs, reach for their own suns, reach with thumbs furled, and follow the pied piper. Follow the brethren saint mad man with the wooly beard and the incense announcing his arrival at the table singing, singing, singing and it wasn’t hosannas but some odd unspoken tune which ripped across the land for a while. Defying that man in the grey suit (defying mother and father got to dust and never figured out). Drew magnetic forces around themselves and expected the kingdom to last until end times. Hah, Jack could have given them the word on that little mistake. I am the light Jack thought and then he faded from the scene into utter darkness those unwashed, unloved, unspoken for illegitimate children to lay waste to the desert for forty years. Jesus        

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Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet-When Butterfly Swirl Swirled

By Jeffrey Thorne

The times were out of sort, the times were frankly a mess and in that little window of time, the time of Josh Breslin’s Summer of Love, 1967 time he saw a little chance to jailbreak out of his humdrum existence, to skip the nine to five world that his parents thrived in and expected him to follow like a lemming to the sea and thrive too for a while anyhow. We will skip all his thinking that got him there, got him to act on his jailbreak impulses, he had done enough thinking on lonely desolate roads heading west in placed like Neola, Iowa, Grand Island, Nebraska, Winnemucca, Nevada and a whole slew of nameless Main Street pass-through towns to last a lifetime. Except to say that he was not alone in his jailbreak passions as the decade as it progressed gave ample evidence of and that he was maybe unusually sensitive for a guy who ran in circles that were anything but receptive to jailbreak ideas. Let’s get him to Summer of Love epicenter Frisco and into the whole thing, the passion thing, the thing that happened between Butterfly Swirl and the Prince of Love.

For those who are already confused by the now seemingly strange fetish for  monikers  that somehow were expected to wash one clean that latter one was Josh Breslin’s self-anointed moniker once he hit Russian Hill in that Bagdad of a city (Bagdad not of these times, not humbled bombed-out times, but back when that town was an epicenter of the world and whole civilization flocked to imitate the latest ideas, cultural artifacts and visionary experience and Frisco could stand the comparison without shutter). In those days, in that little window of time when the world was turned upside down(an expression from back in the 17^th to express what was happening in revolutionary England when lots of amazing similar experiences were being attempted as that Cromwellian Puritan-like  brethren tried to in its turn wash itself clean), or a small segment of society, mainly young, when you looked back from a fifty year view, everybody was try to “reinvent” themselves, making a new washed clean beginning and so an epidemic of name-changing rushed the land. (Of course those who were trying to seek the “newer world” a Lord Tennyson phrase but apt assumed that everybody was on board that everybody was into the turmoil but while the media-driven headlines were large the nine to five world went about its nine to five business which encapsulated that great majority of young-don’t be fooled by universal long hair, granny dresses and talk, endless talk of dope and sexual fantasies those were just signposts not the real deal.)  Josh a very good looking guy what with that Sam Shepard father-aided gene and mother- aided Quebec flair, with some ego, a lot of ego for a working class kid from up in ocean-side Maine, Olde Saco to be exact, decided that he was royalty or something and so tagged himself with that moniker. (The Scribe, whom we will get to in a moment, used to kid him that he was really the Prince of Lvov, a Podunk town in Poland just to tweak his ego a bit. By the way after careful research the long-held rumor that the Scribe gave Josh his moniker is erroneous. Josh had been thinking about that moniker almost all the way from that Maine until he reached the Pacific shores).        

So Josh Breslin just out of high school and full of the getting the dust of Podunk Maine off his shoes hit Frisco town, hit first stop Russian Hill after being told by some holy goof, that term no put down but a real live Yippie freak who called attention to himself using that idea, in Golden Gate Park, the epicenter of the epicenter at a certain point, that righteous dope could be had up that hill. (Holy goof as Josh was later to find out from the Scribe a term used to describe certain personages by Scribe hero “beat” writer Jack Kerouac who got it from Buddha himself.) As he walked up the long drawn out hill in a city with a fistful of hills, mostly long and drawn out, he stopped near a park when he saw this amazing sight, amazing to him then but common to the emerging scene as he would find out later, a converted yellow school bus. Converted the operative word. The bus had been transformed on the outside into some fantastic psychedelic moving art show and inside a cheap travelling mobile home of a new sort after the seats had been ripped out and mattresses completely covered the floor and in the back boxes filled with spare clothes, food, and utensils. Topped off by a big sound speaker system just then blaring out some unheard of by him music from he thought maybe India or something (music which turned out to the Jefferson Airplane as they moved into the acid rock music world which took a spin as the rock genre of choice among the dope aficionados of the time like cool jazz had sustained the tea head “beats” a half generation before).

More importantly for our tale as he approached the bus for closer inspection Josh noticed a young guy, a guy who looked a few years older than him but still young with a long beard and long hair (Josh was beardless, would never have much more than stubble whenever he tried to grow a beard, a wisp of a beard really, and had only let his jet  black hair start to grow after he fled staid bi-weekly routine barber shop Olde Saco and got on the road) sitting on the sidewalk beside this monster of a bus. Without hesitating a moment Josh walked up to the guy and asked if he had a joint. The guy, the Scribe, Peter Paul Markin, also without hesitation, reached into his denim jacket pocket and passed Josh a big old joint, a blunt in the dope world language of the day, and said “fire her up brother, fire her up.” (Josh’s first dope experience which is a bit outside what we are trying to get across here was the usual endless and chaotic coughing that seized beginners not used to the harshness of the dried plant once he took a few “hits” and a kind of trance-like feeling in his brain that the cares of the world had been left behind.) That exchange began the Josh-Scribe friendship, a little rocky at times, but a lasting time until the Scribe’s untimely and mysterious early death several years later.      

What that converted yellow school bus was about to give an idea of the times was that the owner, although don’t make a today’s assumption about the owner part, Captain Crunch (real name Jack Shepard, Yale, Class of 1958) had bought it or traded for it that never was clear to Josh as he heard different stories from different sources for a bag of dope in order to roam up and down the West Coast ocean-side highways picking up and letting people off along the way. The Scribe, who had quit college in Boston to head west once he heard about the Summer of Love stuff happening. Stuff which had confirmed for him his long time prediction that a new breeze was about to hit the land, to hit youth nation in particular had met Captain Crunch in Golden Gate Park and had already taken one trip up and down the coast to San Diego and back. It was on that trip back up the coast in Carlsbad about forty miles north of San Diego that Kathy Callahan, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, the Butterfly Swirl of this scenario comes into the picture.    

Kathy, let’s call her Butterfly Swirl to keep with the times and her time, had been nothing but a Southern California surfer girl meaning in those days that she looked beautiful, tanned and curvaceous on the beach while her golden-haired surfer boyfriend went hunting for the perfect wave. It was along the Pacific Coast Highway one late afternoon as it passed through Carlsbad where the yellow brick road bus had stopped to see the breath-taking ocean view that the Scribe spied Butterfly Swirl sunning herself waiting for her by then pruned surfer boy to come ashore for the day. The Scribe used to the more intellectually driven and somewhat neurotic co-ed who he was addicted to in the Boston-Cambridge haunts he frequented was fascinated by Butterfly Swirl fresh new world look. (The Scribe would admit later that he was totally unprepared to see hundreds of such beauties up and down the coast waiting on land for their own golden-haired surfer boys seeking their won perfect waves.) He went up to her and started asking questions about surfers, surfing, a subject he knew nothing about having come from the East where such a sport did not have any cache then. They talked for a while and during that time the Scribe found out that Butterfly, kind of restless going into her senior year of high school about what to do with her life, whether to go to college, whether she should work on her art, was intrigued by what she heard was happening up in youth nation San Francisco. 

Yeah, the times were like that. You would expect a guy like the Scribe to head west once he got the message. Hell he, driven by his faded beat dreams, was built for that experience. Maybe even expect a guy like Josh before heading on to other things, as most of the brethren who formed that small segment of youth nation would eventually do, to head west and see what was what. What was extraordinary was the jail breakout of a gal like Butterfly Swirl who if she was a few years older would have been so totally immersed in the surfer culture that she could have given a damn about some weirdos up north where the weirdos congregated and had done so for a couple of generations. The long and short of it was that a couple of days later Butterfly Swirl after the Scribe’s coaxing was “on the bus” heading north.

One of the things that guys like the Scribe was trying to break out of was the old girl-guy one and only thing although breaking through that barrier had been easier said than done. For a few weeks though as the bus headed to Xanadu, Big Sur, Carmel, and Monterey then up through Pacifica before landing once again in Golden Gate Park the Scribe and Butterfly Swirl were lovers. The Scribe gave Butterfly Swirl her first experiences with dope mostly marijuana, peyote buttons and mescaline, the LSD, the Kool-Aid acid test would come later. And Butterfly being an easy-going young woman began to fit in with the travelling band of gypsies spiritual and intellectual wanderers who populated the bus.       

Then the same day Josh met the Scribe on Russian Hill after he had brought Josh on board the bus Butterfly Swirl who had been out pan-handling to get some provisions for the bus saw him and that was that. Something happened between them from minute one but it was not until later that night that the big switch happened after they were all stoned. The Scribe who had taken a half-lover, half-fatherly interest in Butterfly Swirl once he saw that she was not very intellectually curious beyond her restlessness and her fear of a surfer girl’s fate (although very sexually curious and inventive) saw the writing on the wall and “blessed” the union, became head of that little trio family. Being just a few years older in youth nation made him a logical little father. A couple of weeks later at a Grateful Dead concert at the Fillmore Butterfly Swirl and the Prince of Love had their first Kool-Aid acid test and through the dreams and colors became “one with the universe.” The Scribe, satanic love preacher that night “married” them. Yeah, like I said the times were like that, exactly like that.     

[As mentioned above the Scribe and Josh would be friends until the Scribe’s untimely death in the mid-1970s. As for Butterfly Swirl by summer’s end she had had enough of roaming and cavorting and returned to her golden-haired surfer boy still looking for that perfect wave. Not everybody was built to go the distance even in the Summer of Love. J.T. ]   

When Private Detectives, Shamuses, Gumshoes, Key-Hole Peepers Stepped Up In Class-“The New P.I.” Circa 1950s-Ross MacDonald’s “The Ivory Grin”-A Book Review

When Private Detectives, Shamuses, Gumshoes, Key-Hole Peepers Stepped Up In Class-“The New P.I.” Circa 1950s-Ross MacDonald’s “The Ivory Grin”-A Book Review

Book Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

The Ivory Grin, by Ross MacDonald

Well the battle lines are finally drawn; the dirty underbelly of this cutthroat business can see the light of day. Sam Lowell, who used to be the official senior film critic in the days when Allan Jackson, recently returned as a contributing editor or some such make-shift title pressed upon Greg Green by the Editorial Board conveniently headed by one Sam Lowell, ran the show, was the site manager which meant that he doled out the assignments to friend and foe alike, has laid down the gauntlet or whatever you call it when you are challenged to a no holds barred unto death duel. It seems Sam, as my good friend and mentor Seth Garth, warned me would happen, has finally blown his gasket, has in his words “had enough.” Had enough of being challenged on his “cred,” his term, on the issue of his expertise in the film noir world. Has taken umbrage, my term, on my continual reference to his so-called definitive tome on the genre The Life And Times Of Film Noir:1940-1960 as so much eyewash, so “retro” and out of date and geared to the hoary Dashiell Hammett- Raymond Chandler-Phillip Larkin trio who allegedly took the, Sam’s expression, “parlor pink amateur detective” and made him, and it was solely hims in that world of blood and guts hard-nosed avenging angels with angles seeking rough-edged justice in this wicked old world.

Yawn. Yawn to threadbare theory and yawn, double yawn to a nine hundred, maybe I had better write the number in numerical form so you too can have your eyes boggled 900, paged volume which by my estimation could have been done in say three hundred pages. The use of the word estimation no accident since try as I might I lost interest about the time I got to 1953 when he dribbled on and on about one Mike Hammer and how despite his ardent anti-communism and bull in a china shop manner was a hard-boiled lady’s man of a detective in the mold of  Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Hammett’s Sam Spade (notably absent was his Nick and Nora Charles except by indirection), and Larkin’s Jack Logan.

A reviewer, a conscientious reviewer, can only be expected to take so much, take a volume loaded with plenty of book and film reviews allegedly written by Mr. Lowell in his salad days which formed the bulk of the work so he essentially double-dipped getting paid, I hear, by the word from Jackson and getting whatever royalties from the pricey in those days twenty-five dollars from the book publisher Wainwright Press. (I would be remiss, would be taken to task, and continually chuckle and continue to write every chance I get as well if I didn’t mention Seth Garth’s reaction when I asked him if he had read all 900 plus pages of Sam’s volume. Seth, who has known Sam since Hector was a pup, Seth’s expression, gave me his patented Seth smirk and said are you kidding nobody, not even Sam could read that thing, a real snorer was the way he put. Seth also insinuated what is now common knowledge around here on the question of authorship of his reviews that Sam surely had not written the whole thing himself given his skirt-chasing drunken revels in those days and that Seth had written half of it or at least gave lots of input into the project.]

I have made it clear for a while now, at least since I got my own by-line, thanks Seth, after surviving about six different onslaughts from Sam on noir and young Will Bradley on Marvel Comic so-called heroes, that I intend to be the diva for the 21^st film noir world. Sam balked at that idea when I first presented it in print-and Seth said go for it. What has Sam really in a lather is that after he finished his tome he never updated the damn thing so that all the neo-noir, all the films that came after those based on his work are sealed with seven seals to him. Like any good reviewer I saw my spot, my place in the vacant landscape and I am going to make my mark. I have decided to deal with an expose of Sam’s omissions and neglect (like as I mentioned given short shrift to Nick and Nora Charles despite almost two hundred pages on Hammett’s Spade and fifty alone on his early nameless Continental Op in Red Harvest) by starting with a classic writer, film adapter, who Sam gave short shrift to since his career spanned well past the 1960s benchmark, Ross MacDonald (Ken Millar real name). Sam barely mentions him, barely mentions his central private detective Lew Archer although Lew had all of the balls of Marlowe and Spade and about twenty times more psychological insight in what drove up against the wall “perps” over the edge.       

Properly speaking Lew Archer, at least in this first book, The Ivory Grin, that I picked at random out of the twenty-plus books in the Archer series, despite the his short height, or at least that is what is known about his physical stature moves away from the really bull by the horns, knock heads and let God separate out the guilty from the innocent at his leisure, skirt-chasing of Spade-Marlowe-Logan trio much touted by Sam as the epitome of the post-parlor pink detective world. Those guys except when they actually wrap up a case, beating the public coppers with a gong while they are still scratching their heads, to take down some cruddy criminals best gotten off the streets leave me cold, could have better gone back to key-hole peeping before say Chandler, for example, let them handle cold cases, got them out of the threadbare offices waiting around sucking up low-rent whiskey from the bottom desk drawer. Archer used his wits and deductive powers to bring a little rough justice to the world, what Seth, citing a guy from his youth named the Scribe, called this wicked old world.

I am sure, well maybe not sure but I hope, when Sam, or whoever he has read other’s reviews and write his reviews these days finally realizes that his balloon has been burst he will drag up some escapade of Marlowe’s saving an old dowager with wild daughters some grief or Spade busting up a stuff of dreams con or Logan outwitting the dragon king by stealth to counter my contentions about Mr. Archer. Let him do his best. Meanwhile Lew, short or tall, chain-smoker or dope head, drunk or sober will by guile and indirection solves his mysteries without bang-bang and sucker punches every two pages. Here is how he figured out what happened to Charles Singleton when he went slumming among the plebes and got nothing but that ivory grin in the end for his troubles.

Yes, that is the Charles Singleton of the very, very Singleton family that came over with John and Priscilla on the merry Mayflower who made a name for himself in World War II as a pilot, a lady’s man in full uniform and a guy who after the war knew how to turn a dollar-if he had to. But see Charles, and maybe it was that too much inter-breeding among too close cousins which destroyed many old-line families, had a kinky side, liked to go down in the mud with whores, or as the term was used then maybe now too loose women of no known address. As long as they were Helen of Troy beautiful and willing to succumb to his kinky side, to the wild side. That is what tripped him up in the end, what caused Lew to lose some sleep because Charles picked up some tramp, some round-heeled beauty with no vocabulary but who gave good head (unspoken but assumed in 1950s dime store detective literature) in some gin mill out in California when he was stationed in the Air Force and winning fistfuls of medals.

This woman, let’s give her a name beyond her “profession,” Alicia was nothing but a mantrap, was nowhere but from hunger grabbing onto whatever safe harbor she could grab onto. Problem, very big problem, whatever her feelings for Charles and all was that she had been a second level gangster’s moll back in the Midwest, a nice nest but dangerous especially if somebody else takes something from a gangster-then bang-bang and no questions asked. Oh, another little problem she was married out West, out in the California valley to a Walter Mitty-type doctor who was running a low-rent medical practice which was not giving dear Alicia the kind of life she had expected. The long and short of it was Alicia had three guys on her string.

That would be the undoing of one Charles Singleton, he of mansions and Mayflowers, once her gangster man who was getting a bit screwy came West and found out she was shacking up with a Mayfair swell. Bang-bang poor Charles. That was where Lew came in first as a replacement for a corrupt private detective looking for the main chance by Charles’ blue-haired mother and subsequently by one of those too closely related female cousins who was in love with her flyer boy. Mission: find out where the hell Charles had disappeared to. To pose the question was to give the answer. Along the way a young black woman who was trying to help Alicia got murdered as did that self-serving private eye. In all three murders and a few twists and turns.

Here is where human nature as it has evolved thus far gets a big workout.  Everybody and their sister were trying to cover up the fact that our gangster with a screw loose had shot and killed Charles. The helpful black woman, the gangster’s ill-disposed sister, Alicia who in desperation brought the seemingly mortally wounded Charles to hubby doctor’s clinic to see if he could survive.  He didn’t but not due to that gangster fusillade. Old Walter Mitty doc loved his Alicia, wanted to protect her in his own way. Yeah, Doc blew his Hippocratic Oath and did bleeding from all pores Charles in. Moreover, to cover his tracks he dissected the guy and left him a skeleton in a closet where nobody but Lew could figure out what happened. Nice work Lew and the public coppers are still scratching their heads having been out-classed by a new breed of private eye.