From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm

Tom Rush-Eric Von Schmidt Lyrics from an old traditional song

Chorus:
Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning
Say, wasn't that a mighty storm
Blew all the people away

Well, Galveston had a sea wall
Meant to keep the water down
High tide from the ocean
Sent water over Galveston

Chorus

Yeah, year was 1900
Fifty long years ago
Death came walking on the water that day
Death calls, you gotta go

Now the trumpets, they sounded warning
Said it's time to leave this place
But no one thought about leaving town
Til death stared them in the face

Chorus[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/james_taylor/wasnt_that_a_mighty_storm.html ]
Right then the sea started boiling
A thing that no ship could stand
I thought I heard a captain crying out
Somebody save a drowning man

They had two trains loaded
With people trying to leave town
Tracks gave way to the water now
And all of those people drowned

Chorus

I said the year was 1900
Fifty long years ago
Death came walking on the water
Death calls, you gotta go

I said Death, your hands are clammy
You got them on my knee
You came and threw a stone at my mother
And now you're coming after me.

Chorus

Chorus

Funny he, Adam Evans, thought as he laid in his toss and turn early morning Seals Rock Inn, San Francisco bed, as the rain poured down in buckets, literally buckets, at his unprotected door, the winds were howling against that same door, and the nearby sea was lashing up its fury how many times the sea stormy night, the sea fury tempest day, the, well, the mighty storm anytime, had played a part in his life. He was under no circumstances, as he cleared his mind for a think back, a think back, that was occupying his thoughts more and more of late, trying to work himself into a lather over some metaphorical essence between the storms that life had bestowed on him and the raging night storm. No way, too simple. Rather he was just joy searching for all those sea-driven times, times when a storm, a furious storm like this night or maybe just an average ordinary vanilla storm passing through and complete in an hour made him think of his relationship with his homeland the sea and with its time for reflection. And so on that toss and turn bed he thought.

He thought first and mainly about how early the sea came into his life, almost from birth down at those ragged slopes around Germantown where he lived growing up and was tumbled into the sea early. And learned the power of the sea early when one winter storm night Mother Nature played a trick on her seaward brethren and tried to bring them home to her bosom all in one lashed-up swoop as the water came right up to that hovel (really a cottage, maybe slightly bigger) door and the lot of them only reached higher ground in a split second before a big foam-flecked (aren’t they always when they come in that hard, fast and furious) wave crashed that cottage down. And later, childhood later, a few years later anyway, when he, bravo he, decided, yes, decided that the impeding summer storm he could sense coming would be no deterrent to his taking that log on the beach and using it to swim to China , or some such place, on the current. And losing the log in the churning waters almost drowned, except for the screams of his panic beach-bound brother sounding the alarm for help and some Madonna savior swimmer, beach-bound too, came and swooped him up before he went down for the third time. Don’t tell Ma, jesus, don’t tell Ma.

Or that night, that funny night (funny night in retrospect, then and now retrospect) when he, his buddy Will and his girl, and she, she Terry Wallace, sat in Will’s father-bought high school car, a ’59 Dodge, “making out”while the sea churned up around them at old Nippo Beach just up from home Germantown and the police, spotting the car and the fix, came and rescued them rescued them while they were in, ah, compromising positions (you figure it out, he just laughed his thought laugh) because in the throes of love they had not realized that they were in a couple of feet of sea water that had splashed over some poor man-made seawall built against Mother’s angers.

Or that day, that wind- swept day, when his world fell apart, the day when Diana had left him, left him for good, left him for another man, another non-sea driven man, after she called it quits when spending a couple of months up in that storm-ravaged Maine cottage where she, quote, was tired as hell of the sea, of the wind, of the stuff that the wind did to her sensitive skin, and, and, tired of him playing out some old man of the seas, some man against nature thing with her in his train.

Or that time later with Sarah when the winter seas once again bore down on them in Marblehead coming up over a double seawall, damn a double sea walls, and almost touching their front steps. And she too calling it quits, although not over another man, or over his man and nature obsession, or over that breeched double sea-wall but just her calling it Sarah quits. And he sorry, more than Diana sorry, when she left.

Or that Maine time a few years back when a sudden winter storm came up the coast of Maine and he was stranded for a couple of days when Mile Road was cut off and he finally knew what it was like to be totally dependent on happenstance, on others, and, in the end on his own devises.

Or tonight, the winds blasting away, rain splashing down, left to his own devises, his own thoughts, and just then he thought, that no, no he was wrong, he really was searching for that metaphor, that metaphor, that mighty storm metaphor. that would sum up his life.

From The Pen Of Amercian Socialist Leader Eugene V. Debs-The Canton, Ohio Anti-War Speech 1918

Markin comment:

Every presidential candidate worth his or her salt (and vice-presidential candidates as well) should consider it an honor and a requirement to run for high office by being arrested as described below following in the tradition of Socialist party candidate Eugene V. Debs in 1920 when he ran his campaign from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. And why was Brother Debs in prison? For opposition to his generation’s imperial war, World War I. The one, to remind everyone, that was “to make the world safe for democracy.”         

And here is a challenge, post-election challenge, to the candidates of the major bourgeois parties, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney (or is it the other way around?). Why were you not at that demonstration and subject to arrest for a righteous cause?  They are more likely to be subject to arrest for other more heinous crimes.  Barack  Obama for his war crimes against the peoples of the world and Mitt Romney for simple tax evasion and being stupid and greedy in a public place. And tell everybody that is what Debs would say too.

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http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1918/canton.htm

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Time Of Motorcycle Bill

 

There was a scourge in the land, in the 1950s American land. No, not the dreaded but fatalistically expected BIG ONE that would send old mother earth back to square one, or worst, coming from the Russkies. Sure that was in the air and every school boy and girl had their giggling tales of having to hide, hide ass up, under some desk or other useless defense in air raid drill preparations for that eventually. Sure, as well, the air stunk of red scare, military build-up cold war “your mommy is a commie turns her in.” But that was not the day to day scare for every self-respecting parent from Portland to the Pacific. That was reserved for the deadly dreaded motorcycle scare that had every father telling his son to beware of falling under the Marlon Brando sway and spiraling down to a life, a low life of crime and debauchery (of course said son not knowing of the word, the meaning of debauchery, until much later just shrugged his innocent shoulders). More importantly every mother, every blessed mother, self-respecting or not (with a gentle nod from Dad) warned off their daughters against this madness and perversity.

Of course that did not stop the sons from mooning over every Harley that rode the ride down Main Street, Olde Saco (really U.S. Route One but everybody called it Main Street and it was) or the daughters from mooning (and maybe more) over the low- riders churning the metal on those bad ass machines. Even prime and proper Lily Dumont, the queen of Saint Brigitte’s Catholic Church rectitude on Sunday and wanna-be “mama” every other waking minute of late. And the object of her desire? One “Motorcycle Bill,” the baddest low- rider in all of Olde Saco.

Now baddest in Olde Saco (that’s up in ocean edge Maine for the heathens and others not in the know) was not exactly baddest in the whole wide world, nowhere as near as bad as say Sonny Barger and his henchmen outlaws- for- real bikers out in Hell’s Angels Oakland as chronicled by Doctor Gonzo (before he was Gonzo), Hunter S. Thompson in his saga of murder and mayhem sociological- literary study Hell’s Angels. But as much is in life one must accept the context. And the context here is that in sleepy dying mill town Olde Saco mere ownership, hell maybe mere desire for ownership, of a bike was prima facie evidence of badness. So every precious daughter was specifically warned away from Motorcycle Bill and his Vincent Black Lightning 1952 (although no mother, and maybe no daughter either, could probably tell the difference between that sleek English bike and a big pig Harley). But Madame Dumont felt no need to do so with her sweet sixteen Lily who, maybe, pretty please maybe was going to be one of god’s women, maybe enter the convent over in Cedars Of Lebanon Springs in a couple of years after she graduated from Olde Saco High along with her Class of 1960.

But that was before, walking home to Olde Saco’s French- Canadian (F-C) quarter, the Acre, on Atlantic Avenue with classmate and best friend Clara Dubois, Lily heard the thunder of Bill’s bike coming up behind them, stopping, Bill giving Lily a bow, and them revving the machine up and doing a couple of circle cuts within a hair’s breathe of the girls. Then just a suddenly he was off, and Lily, well, Lily was hooked, hooked on Motorcycle Bill, although she did not know it, know it for certain until that night in her room when she tossed and turned all night and did not ask god, or any of his associates, to guide her in this matter.

One thing about living in a sleepy old town, a sleepy old dying mill town, is that everybody knows everybody’s business at least as far as any person wants that information out on the public square. Two things are important before we go on. One is that everybody in town that counted which meant every junior and senior class high schooler in Olde Saco knew that Bill had made a “play” for Lily. And the buzz got its start from none other than Clara Dubois who had her own hankerings after the motorcycle man (her source of wonder though was more, well lets’ call it crass than Lily’s, Clara wanted to know if Bill was build, build with sexual power like his motorcycle. She had innocently, perhaps, understood the Marlon mystique). The second was that Bill, other than his bike, was not a low life low- rider but just a guy who liked to ride the roads free and easy. See Bill was a freshman over at Bowdoin and he used the bike as much to get back and forth as to do wheelies in front of impressionable teenage girls from the Acre.

One day, a few days after their Motorcycle Bill “introduction,” when Lily and Clara were over at Seal Rock at the end of Olde Saco Beach (not its real name but given it because it was the local lovers’ lane and many things had been sealed there including a fair share of “doing the do”) Bill came up behind them sans his bike. Now not on his bike, without a helmet, and carrying books, books of all things, he looked like any student except maybe a little bolder and a little less reserved. He started talking to Lily and something in his demeanor attracted her to him. (Clara swore, swore on seven bibles, that Lily was kind of stand-offish at first but Lily says no.) They talked for a while and then Bill asked Lily if she wanted a ride home. She hemmed and hawed but there was just something about him that spoke of mystery (who knows what Clara thought). She agreed and they walked a couple of blocks to where he was parked. And there Lily saw that Vincent Black Lightning 1952 of her dreams. Without a word, without anything done except to tie her hair back she climbed on the back of the bike at Bill’s beckon. And that is how one Lily Dumont became William Kelly’s motorcycle “mama.”

From Out in the Be-Bop 1950s Song Night- The Falcon’s “You’re So Fine”

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Now many music and social critics have done yeomen’s service giving us the meaning of various folk songs, folk protest songs in particular, from around this period. You know they have essentially beaten us over the head with stuff like the meaning of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind as a clarion call for now aging baby-boomers back then and a warning (not heeded) that a new world was a-bornin’, or trying to be. Or better, The Times They Are A-Changin’with plaintive plea for those in charge to get hip, or stand aside. (They did neither.) And we have been fighting about a forty year rearguard action to this very day trying to live down those experiences, and trying to get new generations to blow their own wind, change their own times, and sing their own plainsong in a similar way.

Like I said the critics have had a field day (and long and prosperous academic and journalistic careers as well) with that kind of stuff, fluff stuff really. The hard stuff, the really hard stuff that fell below their collective radars, was the non-folk, non-protest, non-deep meaning (so they thought) stuff, the daily fare of popular radio back in the day. A song like today’s selection, You’re So Fine. A song that had every red-blooded American (and who knows maybe world teen) wondering their own wondering about the fate of the song’s narrator. About what happened that night (and the next morning) that caused him to pose the comment in that particular way. Yes, that is the hard stuff of social commentary, the stuff of popular dreams, and the stuff that is being tackled head on in this series- Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night. Read on.
********
She stood there, just stood there grinning to herself at the bathroom door going in to freshen up from the night ‘s pillow exertions, and, a little sore, good sore, to do other womanly after sex things. Grinning that womanly grin (although she was barely out of her teens, having turned twenty just the month before that grin moment) that connoted that she had caught herself a man, a good man from the looks of him this first morning, and a man whom she knew, knew deep in her womanly soul, that believed, and perhaps, would believe to infinity, or something like that, that he had bedded her with his line, his oh so fine line the night before at the Carousel Club, the one in Old Town for the college set and the young who were full of energy and looking, frankly, looking for sex, not the one over on Main Street that was reserved, strictly reserved for touritas mainly interested in the next drink, where he, so he thought, had picked her up.

What he did not know, and would not know to infinity or something like that, was at just that 1959 moment, just that turned twenty moment, she had dumped her no good, two-timing (she later found out five-timing so the no good stands two and one half more no good ) boyfriend from State U, the local hush-hush dope dealer on campus (selling to ancient tea heads, not so ancient beats, the curious, and an occasional girl, prodded on by some anxious boyfriend, who needed to loosen herself up before her first bout with the sex pillows), and all-around heel. So she had been on the rebound last night, had purposefully dolled herself up, all tight cashmere sweater to reveal her perky bosom, all skin- tight black shirt to show her curvaceous hips and slender and graceful legs, all ruby red lips stick to highlight her lips and a dab of come hinter, come hither perfume to highlight, to highlight her prowl needs.

Then he came into the club, known, vaguely known from around campus as something of a beat, something of a hipster (although she did not recall him around boyfriend tea times), something of an egghead, and something of a loner, all kind of vaguely known but known. And not known, intelligence gathered in the Ladies’ Room where she cornered Clara White who knew of such things, such campus things, not known to be hard on women, or at least his women. So when he came by her stool seat at the bar, her very friendly seat at the bar, and asked her in a very friendly but civilized manner whether the seat next to her was empty, she was ready, ready to be swept of her feet if that was where things were headed.

And then he started with that you’re so fine line, like from the big hit song, The Falcons’ song, everybody at school was playing and everybody knew the words to. And every guy had as his opening line that month. But it wasn’t what he said but the way he said it, like he was thankful that she, and she alone, was sitting alone at the bar just that minute. That he was thankful too that she let him sit next her. And that she had dolled herself up to look, well, to look so fine. So with that opening, after the troubles of the past few months, and his casual, his non-threatening offer to buy her a drink, she knew Clara’s intelligence was right, and she knew too that she was not going to sleep alone that night in her apartment. And as the evening progressed, without a lot of boring this and that to foul things up, he too knew where he was spending the night.

Just then he awoke, and she asked him, asked him like they would be together for a time whether he wanted some coffee, and what he wanted in it. And he answered like he didn’t want to put her to any bother and just like he too expected they would be together for a time.

FromThe Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- When The Corner Boys Grow Up

I have spilled much ink talking about the corner boy society that I grew up in 1950s Olde Saco (that’s up in Maine, seacoast Maine, not the great forest, farmland, ski mountain Maine but real honest lobsterman, shipbuilder, yawl Maine, all Mainiac Maine though and you cannot buy that entre for those interested) where some hard-ass (and soft-ass too) corner boys ripped up the imaginations of wanna-bes like me and my corner boys who hung around, soft-ass hung around, Mama’s Pizza Parlor over on Atlantic Avenue not far from the beach in case of any luck, girl luck, and car back seat Seal Rock sealed dreams, waiting, well, waiting for some breathe of fresh air, maybe coming in from the nearby ocean to wash over us and take us out of that red scare cold war night. In the meantime we hung out, Jimmy LaCroix, Phil Dubois, Jack (not French-Canadian mother and grandmere Jeanbon but good old American vanilla Jack like Jack Kennedy, our co-religionist) Bleu, his brother Deni, and me (me of the Kentuck Baptist father but F-C mother, nee LeBlanc, and of a long story of that union’s coming about that I will tell you about sometime when I am not corner boy-addled) doing a little of this and a little of that, some stuff legal other stuff well, let’s just leave it as other stuff. And leading us, unquestionably leading us once things got sorted out at about age fifteen, was Big Red Dubonnet, the king hell king of the Mama’s Pizza Parlor corner boys.

So on any given night, mostly weekends but in the summer seemingly every night, from about junior high school on you could find us in those environs, usually sitting on the stoop in front of Mama’s or holding up the brick wall on the parking lot side, one foot on the wall the other firmly on terra firma as was our style when corner boy posing, including white tee-shirt, black chinos and midnight sunglasses. Or playing pinball on Mama’s back room machine, the Madame LaRue busty ladies pictured on the scoreboard begging you to play for their favors, play fiercely although empty-handedly (except those seventeen free games you racked up in your, ah, frenzy to please Madame). Or when rock and roll threw its fresh breathe over us we tossed many quarters in Mama’s jukebox to hear the latest songs like the Chiffon’s He’s So Fine about twelve times straight and hoped that certain shes came in to listen and maybe help make us those selections. Or, on some dark moonless night, heading toward sixteen, seventeen maybe, maybe a little drunk, maybe a little dough hunger, or needing dough girl hungry, we might just be found doing our midnight creep around the neighborhood in order to make ends meet, that little of this and that stuff mentioned early.

As high school turned to work world, or maybe college world as things opened up even for working- class kids in those blessed 1960s times, the old corner boy society, or our generation’s chapter of it, went in several difference directions, some good some not so good, including those like our leader, the by then legendary Big Red Dubonnet who had graduated to armed robberies of gas stations, liquor stores, warehouses and Shawshank. Yah, Big Red was tough (I once saw him chain-whip, mercilessly chain-whip, a guy, an Irish guy from over in the Irishtown section of the Acre, and a guy who was known far and wide as tough as nails, for the simple error of being on the wrong corner, Red’s (and our), while breathing), was pretty smart, in a street smart way, knew a couple of things about the world and, and, be still my heart, let me have some free Madame LaRue games after he had racked up a ton and needed to take care of some ever present girl business. And I too was the beneficiary of Big Red’s (not Red, Big Red, don’t ever make that mistake, remember what I said about that chain-whipping) largess on many occasions because Big Red attracted girls, and not just slutty girls around the Acre like you’d expect, but girls who had their Saint Brigitte’s Church (Roman Catholic in that French-Canadian heavy old mill town) novena book recitals in one part of their brains and lust, bad boy lust, in the other, on more occasions that you would think. And knew more tricks, more please a boy tricks, than some old seacoast sailor’s whore.

And that is where memories of Big Red and the characters, hard-ass grown up corner boys who I ran into, or heard about, stone-killer Irish guys from Southie and Charlestown in Boston who filled up the state pen at Walpole (now called Cedar Junction at the behest of the local citizenry tired of hard-ass grown corner boy reputations ), blackjack armed robbery guys from South Point over in Springfield, general murder and mayhem motorcycle guys from Oakland and up and down the West Coast, and street tough guys hard-bitten by war, mainly Vietnam, from the wharves of Seattle, intersect in my mind. See Big Red, the late Big Red Dubonnet now, never could find anything better in this whole wide world than to be the king hell king of the corner boy night. But that, just like any kingship, takes dough, and so you either work the work-a-day world with the squares or go where the dough is-for Big Red in Podunk gas stations and liquors stores, maybe an off-hand truck or warehouse heist. They were, Big Red and the others, all driven by that same first glance, last chance, imperative though, and by the same need to hone their respective skills on a regular basis before a hostile and unforgiving world.

No question the life held me in thrall, as it now holds me in the thought that for a minute back in the 1950s, hell, more than a minute, I could have been lured to the life, no sweat, no looking back. Jesus I was the “holder” (innocent kid who looked like he could barely tie his shoes, and that task badly, let alone engage in criminal endeavors when cop time came) on more than one occasion when the great (locally Olde Saco and Portland great) “clip artist” Ronny Bleu (older brother of Jack and Deni) had the local merchants in a frenzy anytime he was in the down town area, or maybe even thought about being there. And later in gratitude to Big Red for his favors (no, jesus, no not that lame free pinball game stuff, but when he “gave”me one of his “reject” girls, a college girl he said he couldn’t understand and thought I might be able to) I did a couple of favors for him in return. Just look out stuff on a couple of heists but Big Red always appreciated it and everybody around town knew enough to not hassle me for any reason, any reason at all. I’ll never forget the thrill the first time we saw Big Red pull out his gun, some old .32 automatic I think, or when we heard that the Esso gas station over on Gorham Road in Scarborough was hit one dark night by a guy aiming a .32 at the gas jockey attendant. He got away clean, clean as a whistle, especially when that gas jockey blanked out when thought about that gun later when the cops put Big Red in front of him for identification. The stuff of legends, no question. So you can see the pull was strong, real strong.

Oh yah, sure the life had its downside, the time up at Shawshank, or some two bit county pokey. Stuff like that. But being connected, well, being able to walk around free as a bird because you were connected, that was something, wasn’t it? But get this too. I don’t know how true the code of omerta (silence) still is in Charlestown (or Southie, or about seventeen other places where corner boys, some corner boys anyway, go on to the life) but I am willing to believe that it is honored more in the breech than the observance. At least it was in Podunk. How do you think they (and you know who the they is, the cops from the locals to the feds), got the lead that got Big Red after he knocked over the biggest fur warehouse in Portland that last time before they clipped his wings, clipped them bad? I hope that bastard rots in hell. Big Red- RIP.

In Defense Of The Scientific Method- On Global Warming

DVD REVIEW

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, AL GORE, ET.AL, 2006

Yes, Virginia there is global warming. Yes, it is a human made phenomenon. And, yes, we have to do something about it, pronto. This film lays out the scientific argument for the observations that scientists, and others, have been screaming at us about for the past couple of decades. For that alone it deserved the documentary Oscar that it won this year. However, more, much more needs to be done to spread the word, and do something real about the impending sinkhole. And that is the rub. The ruling classes and their hangers-on have severely downplayed the serious effects on the globe of current trends. There is no will to fundamentally alter the squandering of finite global resources, although there is plenty of talk.

Those who have panned the film have done so on the basis of a political belief that god, technology or just hiding one’s head in the sand will pull us through. Their main argument is that this scare-mongering about major planetary changes has occurred several times in the past and we are still here. That is a recipe for doing nothing and accepting that this capitalist-dominated world economy will find a way out. Of course by that time Kansas will be beachfront property. No, I will stand by the scientific method that underscores this film. Will some of the predictions prove unwarranted? Probably. Are there mistakes in calculations? Probably. But I like that way rather than depending on Exxon’s good graces and explanations. There was a time when the ruling classes also aspired to use the scientific method to solve societal problems at the time of the classic bourgeois revolutions like the English and more so the French. Now apparently astrology charts suffice. If that is the best to be done -move on over and let working people work on this world-historic problem.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay, Circa 1958

Peter Paul Markin and Frankie Riley had known each other from the days in the old 1960s North Adamsville neighborhood, the old just barely working- class neighborhood where the chronically unemployed, under-employed and just plain ne’er-do-wells, mainly Irish, mainly third or fourth generation Irish and thus firmly planted by the prior toil of forbears lived, where they had met, beyond North Adamsville Junior High corridor met, while hugging the walls (literally according to both sources) at the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent, of course, and other odd-ball feast days like the Feast ofthe Immaculate Conception which even as ignorant, flat- out ignorant as these boyos were drew a guffaw) “sock hop” held by the senior parish priest, Monsignor Lally.

Held to, well, “keep an eye, maybe more than one, on the younger portion of his flock,” as he expressed it each Sunday when making the announcement for the next one in the line-up. The real reason, of course, whispered among the young, including wall-huggers Markin and Riley, was to keep said young sheep, away from too much heathen (read: ersatz Protestant music probably a Baptist or Unitarian conspiracy, the good priest spouted both theories) devil’s music; that rock and roll music that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying, butt-flaying, making the girls“wet” (wet in the wrong places) praying false god Elvis Presley. And by all means to keep them, that unprotected flock to a person, but especially those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Adamsville Beach listening to fogged-up car radios in the back seat and digging the beat while, well, just while or for those without golden automobile access or too young, away from the Strand Theater, the exclusive upstairs balcony section of course, for the young set, the car-less healthy young interested in s-x (you know just in case the old bastard is still around).

Although they had known each other for some fifty years and were duly standing against the wall, as in old Sacred Heart day, at Lucy’s the site of their fiftieth anniversary high school class reunion not far from the old high school, North Adamsville High, Peter Paul and Frankie still remembered the first song that had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school time sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop. And the reason they remembered that song so vividly was one sparking blue-eyed, flaming red-haired Clara Murphy, a girl who had given both of them her come hither twelve-years old look that night (and previously at school) and they had been hooked, hooked as bad as men (okay, boys) could be hooked by a woman (okay, girl). So it was not surprising that they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down. Or maybe not so solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment decide whether she liked Peter Paul or Frankie better, or whether she liked either of them, according to Frankie’s intelligence source, his younger sister Amy who was friends with Clara’s sister Bonnie and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles and turned them both down.

Naturally that denial after those come hither looks inflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks Peter Paul and Frankie made every mad school boy attempt to win her favors. Both had recklessly, although determinedly, courted legal danger by “clipping” (five finger discount, oh, you know, petty larceny) onyx rings (Frankie’s had a diamond in the center) for her (again intelligence, reliable intelligence, Clara sister Bonnie via Amy, had informed them separately that she liked those kinds of rings). She accepted both as tokens of friendship she called it. Ditto 45 RPM Elvis and Jerry Lee records (an easy “clip” for these adventurers, just place under your undershirt and walk out, or better slide into your underpants, no salesperson is going there, no way). Accepted, dispassionately accepted. Not ditto though, not ditto “clipped” flowers and candy (especially when Clara heard how the previous goods were “purchased” although she did not go so far as to give them back). They had each worked, really dragged their butts carrying doubles, as caddies as the local golf course to gather the dough necessary for those expenses. And on it went like that for several weeks.

To no avail because, also exhibiting another aspect of budding wiles, Clara took up with Bill Larkin, their friend and fellow classmate Kenny’s older brother (one year older). Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and, quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing, unquote.Both men laughed at the recollection that reunion night, a bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill, they later had drifted west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the strobe light dreams 1960s with Clara as a Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick –like lead singer and Bill on lead guitar, and a few years after that Bill had been killed, face-down killed, down in some dusty town in Mexico, Sonora, they thought, when a major drug deal went south on him.

According to the reports, police reports, Mexican police reports, so maybe a little off on the details, but on point on the face-down dead part, Bill and Clara had “muled” many times for one of the budding drug cartels. Bill had decided to go “independent”trying to take-off with one of his deliveries to be used as seed money for his own operation and wound up in a back alley with six slugs in the back of his head. Clara who had accompanied him on that fateful trip (and had been holding that delivery, ten kilos of coke just then becoming the drug of choice for the hipsters, and not cartel recovered) was never heard from again.

Just then some oldies but goodies aficionado, or someone who had seriously misspent his or her youth, put Roll and Rock Is Here To Stay on, and for the life of the two boyos they couldn’t remember until later that Danny and the Juniors had recorded that song as well. They then raised a drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of their youth.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Blues Is…, Take One

The blues is, praise be… He had just barely gotten done with his work for the day, his sun up to sun down work helping Brother Barnes shoe the plow horses, a job he had held since his older brother, Ben, had gotten back from the war, the Great War, the war to end all wars, the war for so-called democracy, World War I, if anybody was asking and upon returning had decided to move on to Clarksville and later Memphis, on Mister’s cotton boll massive ten thousand acre delta plantation, than his father took him aside and asked him , really ordered, to wash up and get ready to go over to Lancer Lane. The words Lancer Lane made him jump for joy inside, for this night, this very Saturday night he would finally, finally, get to play his new guitar, well not really new for that instrument had been passed down to his father from who knows when, maybe back to pharaoh times when those old pyramid slaves needed something to take their minds off their back-breaking work on their relax minute, in front of a real crowd at the Lancer Lane juke joint and not just before his father, his siblings, and a few stray cats at Mister’s company store over in Lancersville.

No, he was stepping up in the world, the world that mattered, the world of those rough-hewed, hard drinking walking daddies (and their clinking dressed to the nines, dressed to the soft kitten pillow tumble nines, walked- around women, praise be) that populated the Lancer Lane juke joint on Saturday night (and paid penance, serious penance, at nearby Lancer Lane Lord’s Work Baptist on Sunday morning, many times sliding directly from one site to the other, smoothly if stinking a little of sweat, hard, hard Sonny Boy’s golden liquor, and mussed up pillow tumble sex ), who would decide whether he had the stuff his father thought he had. And decide it in the only way such things were decided, by throwing dollars, real dollars, at him if he was good and broken whisky bottles (or, if tight for dough, as was often the case with tough times as just then, and so bought their whisky by the jar, jars) if he panned. He had asked his father repeatedly since he had turned sixteen to let him accompany him on his journeys to Lancer Lane (the latter as performer and as a, ah, imbiber), but his father maybe knowing the wisdom of sheltering the boy from those whisky bottles and jars if things didn’t work out just like his father, bless him, before him had held off until he was sure, or fairly sure of the night’s outcome.

What sonny boy did not know was that father had relented as much because he was in need of an extra pair of hands in case Big Nig Fingers showed up that night as that he was ready to have dollars thrown at his son. The nature of the dispute between Big Nig Fingers and his father was simply enough explained, a woman, a dressed to the nines pillow tumble woman, Sonny Boy’s woman, Lucille, and her roving eyes, roving eyes that landed, allegedly landed, on his father. Alleged by Sonny Boy although denied, vehemently denied by his father, who had secretly a couple of years back had had an affair with Lucille when Big Nig was trying to take over, well take over something, booze, dope, women, numbers, something in Memphis. So yes, yes indeed, his small-framed father most assuredly and vehemently denied those roving eyes.

A couple of hours later, washed up, dressed up in a clean work shirt and pants he and his father having walked the two dusty miles from their Mister’s plantation-provide quarters, arrived at the juke house, really nothing but a cabin, a log cabin, belonging to Sonny Boy Jackson who used the place as a front for his golden liquor sales as well. (Yes, that Sonny Boy in the days before he went to Clarksville and began the road to some local fame as the best harmonica in 1920s delta Mississippi, even getting a record contract from Bee Records when he was “discovered” by one of the agents that they had sent out scouring the country for talent for their race record division after Mame Smith set the world, the black world and a few hip whites on recorded blues fire.) Now, like most cabins in those parts then, maybe now too, who knows, there was no electricity, hell, nobody practically except Mister (and the Captain, that deduction crazy Captain, docking everybody for his version of not a full bale, for sassing back, for breaking tools, hell, one time for some asthmatic picker just breathing ) had electricity, or a reason to use it just a few chairs, tables, a counter to belly up to for whiskey jar orders (bottles were sold out back away from prying eyes, moneyless prying eyes looking for some cadges swigs), and for the occasion Sonny Boy had a small stage jerry-rigged in the back so the entertainment would not get pushed around too much when things got rowdy, as they always did, later in the evening.

That night he had a surprise coming, or rather two. His father, taking no chances, had arranged to have a few members of the Andersonville Sheiks from up the road, who would later in the decade, some of them anyway, go on to form the Huntsville Sheiks and also get that coveted record contract from Bee Records when sheiks replaced harmonica players and barrelhouse mamas as blues fire among blacks and those few hip whites, to back his son up. So he was going to have a real ensemble, a jug player, a harp player (harmonica, okay) and a washboard man, his father to play banjo (if he was sober enough, and while that was in question most of the night he held up, held up well enough to slide over to Lord’s Work Baptist for the eight o’clock service even if stinking of sweat and liquor). Papa had done right by him, Big Nig Fingers and his Lucille (to his father’s dismay) had decided to take a night off so he would need no cut knife help, and he blasted the place with his strange riffs, riffs going back to some homeland Africa time. Proof: twenty- seven dollars as his share of the house. And no whisky bottles (or jars).

Oh, the second surprise. Miss Lucy, Miss Lucy Barnes, Miss Lucy Barnes, a sweet sixteen going on thirty, and no one needed to explain what that meant when a girl, hell, woman had her wanting habits on, a dark- skinned beauty, all cuddles and curves, the daughter of his” boss,” the plantation blacksmith, had taken notice of him and kept sending small jars of Sonny Boy’s golden liquor his way which just made him play more madly, hell, let’s call it by its right name, he played the devil’s music like he was the devil himself. By the end of the night she was sitting, table sitting, just in front of him, waiting for that last encore. Suddenly she jumped up and started to dance, dance to his encore riff blasted version of Mean, Mistreatin’ Mama shaking her head back and forth furiously indicating that one Miss Lucy Barnes’ was not in that category, at least for that night. They too were seen sneaking into that eight o’clock service at Lord’s Work’s Baptist a little sweaty and stinking of liquor, having spent the previous few hours in the back room of Sonny’s joint, just in case you wanted to know.

***************

The blues ain’t nothing, nothing at all but a good woman on your mind, all curves and cuddles, all be my daddy, daddy, be my walking daddy, build for comfort not for speed just like your daddy, your real daddy, not your long gone daddy (met as you came up river from Lancersville via Memphis and he, he returned from another war to end all wars, this time World War II) just now serving a stretch, a nickel’s worth for armed robbery up in Joliet for some Southside (Southside Chicago, natch)heist that went sour, hell, you told long gone daddy that guns didn’t make the play any better but long gone was just a little too long gone on that twinkle dust and so when Danville Slim called the shots, long gone was long gone, told you about when you were knee high and needing instruction about who, and who not, to mess with when you got your wanting habits on.

Hence, stay away from big women, big-legged, big bosomed, big- lusted, hell, just big everything, like the song, the blue blue blue song says, don’t forget, they will wear you out, wear you out for other women, ditto, long thin gals, hungry girls who have learned man trap tricks in lieu of big appetites , with wanderlust eyes, and twinkle dust noses, itching, checking out every daddy, every daddy that came by her eyes, flashing five dollars bills and another twinkle line, ditto, god’s girls, Sunday morning moaners, smelling of gin, washtub gin, and carrying juke joint slashes, some mean mama cut her up when she wrong- eyed mean mama’s daddy, now Sunday looking for, can you believe it, forgiveness, and trick, getting it, stick with curves and cuddles, an easy rider, a low love easy rider, she’ll treat you right and no heavy overhead, and no damn where have you been daddy questions.

She, Miss Lucy she, all cuddles and curves she, an easy rider, yah, a sweet and low easy rider, to make a man, well, to make a man get his own wanting habits on, so far away, so far from uptown downtown Chi town, far down in sweaty delta Mississippi, maybe still in Clarksville like he left her that night, that moonless 1942 night, when he had to break-out from delta sweats, from working sunup to blasted sundown for no pay, for chits, Christ what are you supposed to do with company chits when you had your Miss Lucy wanting habits on, needed, no craved, some of Sonny Boy’s honey liquor, from the Mister on his ten thousand acre cotton boll plantation (selling every last boll too, good or bad, to the U.S. Army, for, for what else, uniforms), and those damn deductions from the Captain, for, for sassing, and grab that bus, that underground bus, out on Highway 61, and head, yah, head north following the north star, following the migrant trail up-river. A quick stop at Memphis to see if any of the guys, B.B. (no, not the one you are thinking of), Harmonica Slim, Delta Dark, Bobby Be-Bop, Big Joe, Muddy (yes, that Muddy slumming down river and on the low from some Chi town wench whose man was looking, knife looking, for the guy who messed with his baby and left her blue, real blue. True Muddy story.) needed a guitar max daddy player.

Then straight to Chi town and work, work in the hog butcher to the world, work in the Casey steel driving hammering foundry to the world , work in the grain elevator to the world, work in the farm machinery equipment factory to the world , good, steady, sweaty work, five day work and done, five day work, maybe overtime, glad-handed overtime on Saturday, and done, no Captain’s noise , except maybe some rough Irish cop night stick but, mainly, just hell work, and then off to bumbling squalid three- decker hovel, overcrowded, over-priced, under heated, damn, nothing but a cold water flat with about six different nationalities chattering on the fetid Maxwell- connected streets.

Home, home long enough to turn overalls, sweated blue overalls, into Saturday be-bop blues master, all silk shirt, about five colors, blue blue, green green sun yellow, deep magenta, some violent purple, all fancy dance pants, all slick city boy now shoes (against that po’ boy Lancersville no shoe night to make daddy, real daddy cry, and mama too), topped by a feathered soft felt hat, de riguer for Saturday prances. For a while singing and playing, he, mainly playing that on fire(electric) guitar first learned from daddy, real daddy, down the delta when he was from hunger and he and daddy Saturday juked for whiskey drinks (for daddy) and sodas and ribs for him, for nickels and dimes with his long gone daddy (gone daddy previously mentioned tired of nickels and thus plugging an ironic nickel’s worth) out behind Maxwell Street, only the prime guys, the guys Chess, or Ace, or Decca, or, some race label were interested in, for a while, got to play the big street, the big attention, the big sweep, everybody else behind for nickels and maybe an off-hand stray piece, a joy girl they called them, hell he called them when he had his wanting habits on, not all black or mixed either, a few white joys looking for negro kicks, looking for kicks before Forest Lawn stockbrokers, or futures traders made their claims, looking over the new boys in order to say that they had that, had that before they headed out to Maxwell Street glare or sweet home, yah, sweet home Joliet. And Miss Lucy waited, waited down in some lonesome Clarksville crossroad, dust rolling in, sun beginning to rest, watching the daily underground bus heading north, north to her Johnny Blaze, Johnny quick on that amped up guitar and the stuff of dreams.

The blues ain’t nothing, nothing at all but a bad woman on your mind, a woman walking in your place of work, your stage, your Carousel Club, you just trying to get that damn guitar weapon, baby, mama, sugar, main squeeze, in tune, the one just off of Maxwell Street, mecca, with her walking daddy, eyeing you that first minute, big blond blue eyes, and even walking daddy can feel the heat coming off her, animal heat mixed up with some Fifth Avenue perfume bought by the ounce , feel that he was going to spend the night on a knife’s edge. The Carousel Club got a mix, got a mix on Friday nights when the be-bop crazy white girls, not all big blond blue eyes but also mixed, decided that be-bop jazz, their natural stomping grounds, over at places like the Kit Kat Club was just too tame for their flaming 1950s appetites and so they went slumming, slumming with a walking daddy, a black as night walking daddy, make no mistake, in tow just in case, in case knives came into play.

She had her fix on him, her and that damn perfume that he could smell across the room, that and that animal thing that some woman have, have too damn much of like his daddy, his real daddy, told him to watch out for back when he was knee-high and working the jukes for cakes and candies (and daddy for Sonny Boy’s honey liquor). Just what he needed, needed now that he had worked his way up from cheap street playing for nickels and dimes (and, okay, an off-hand piece once the joy girls, some of them white like this girl, looking for negro kicks, badass negro kicks and then back to wherever white town, heard him roar up to heaven on that fret board) to backing up Big Slim, yah, that Big Slim who just signed with Chess and was getting ready to bring the blues back to its proper place now that it looked like that damn rock and roll, that damn Elvis who took all the air out of any other kind of music had run its course. Then it started, she sent a drink his way, a compliment to his superb playing on Look Yonder Wall according to Millie the waitress who played the messenger, then another, ditto on The Sky Is Crying and a Millie watch out remark. Walking daddy was not pleased and she looked like she was getting just drunk enough to make her move (hell, he had seen that enough, and not just with these easy white girls). No sale tonight girlie that bad ass negro really does look bad ass, bad ass like long gone daddy whom he started on these mean streets with and was still finishing up another nickel at Joliet. She made her way to the stage as the first set ended. Pleasant, hell they are all pleasant, in that polite way they have been brought up in for about four or five generations, but still with that come hither perfume and that damn hungry look. No sale, no sale girlie, not with bad ass looking daggers in his eyes. And that night there wasn’t. Next Friday night she came in alone, came in and sat right in front of him. Didn’t say a word at intermission, just sent over a drink for a superb rendition of Mean Mistreatin’Mama , and left it at that.

After work she was waiting for him out in back, he nodded at her, and she pointed at her car, a late model, and they were off. They didn’t surface again for a week.

**************

The blues ain’t nothing but…He, Daddy Fingers (strictly a stage front name, with a no will power Clarence Mark Smith real name needing, desperately needing, cover just like a million other guys trying to reach for the big lights, trying to reach heyday early 1950s Maxwell Street, hell, maybe trying get a record contract, a valued Chess contract, and that first sweet easy credit, no down payment, low monthly payments Cadillac, pink or yellow, with all the trimming and some sweet mama sitting high tit proud in front), had to laugh, laugh out loud sometimes when these white hipsters asked him what the blues were.

He, well behind the white bread fad times, having spent the last twenty years mostly hidden down South, the chittlin’ circuit down South, from Biloxi to Beaumont, working bowling alleys, barbecue joints (the best places where even if the money was short you had your ribs and beer, a few whisky shots maybe, some young brown skin with lonely eyes woman lookin’ for a high-flying brown skin man in need of a woman’s cooking , or at least a friendly bed for a few nights), an odd juke house now electrified, some back road road-side diner converted for an evening into a house of entertainment, hell even a church basement when the good lord wasn’t looking or was out on an off Saturday night had not noticed that these kids asking that august question were not his old Chi town, New Jack City, ‘Frisco Bay hipsters but mostly fresh-faced kids in guy plaid short shirts and chinos and girl cashmere sweaters and floppy skirts were not hip, not black-hearted, black dressed devil’s music hip. For one thing no hipster, and hell certainly no wanna-be hipster, would even pose the question but just dig on the beat, dig on the phantom guitar work as he worked the fret board raw, dig on being one with the note progression. Being, well, beat.).

Plaid and cashmere sweater crowding around some makeshift juke stage, some old corner barroom flop spot or like tonight here on this elegant stage with all the glitter lights at Smokin’ Joe’s Place, Cambridge’s now the home of the blues, the 1970s reincarnation of homeland Africa, sweated pharaoh slave plantations, Mister and Captain’s jim crow plantations, juke joints, sweet home Chicago, for all who were interested in the genealogy of such things came around looking, searching for some explanation like it was some lost code recently discovered like that Rosetta Stone they found a while back to figure out what old pharaoh and his kind said (hell, he could have deciphered that easy enough for those interested- work the black bastards to death and if they slack up, whip them, whip them bad, whip them white, and ain’t it always been so).

So he told them, plaid guy and cashmere bump sweater girl, told them straight lie, or straight amusing thing, that like his daddy, his real daddy who had passed down the blues to him, and who got it from his daddy, and so on back, hell, maybe back to pharaoh times when those slave needed something to keep them working at a steady death-defying pace, that the blues wasn’t nothing but a good woman on your mind. And if some un-cool, or maybe dope addled wanna-be Chi town hipster, or some white bread all glimmering girl from Forest Hills out for negro kicks, had been naïve enough to ask the question that would have been enough but plaid and cashmere wanted more.

Wanted to know why the three chord progression thing was done this way instead of that, or whether the whole blues thing came from the Georgia Sea Islands (by way of ancient homeland Africa) like they had never heard of Mister’s Mississippi cotton boll plantation, Captain’s lashes, broiling suns, their great grandfathers marching through broken down Vicksburg, about Brother Jim Crow, or about trying to scratch two dollars out of one dollar land. Wanted to know if in Daddy Finger’s exalted opinion Mister Charley Patton was the sweet daddy daddy of the blues, wanted to know if Mister Robert Johnson did in fact sell his soul to the devil out on Highway 61, 51, 49 take a number that 1930 take a number night, wanted to know if Mister Mississippi John Hurt was a sweet daddy of an old man (also“discovered” of late) like he seemed to be down in Newport, wanted to know if black-hearted Mister Muddy really was a man-child with man-child young girl appetites, wanted to know if Mister Howlin’ Wolf ever swallowed that harmonica when he did that heated version they had heard about of How Many More Years (not knowing that Wolf was drunk as a skunk, high- shelf whisky not some Sonny Boy’s home brew, when he did that one or that, he Daddy Fingers, had backed Wolf up many a night when Mister Hubert Sumlin was in his cups or was on the outs with the big man). Wanted to know, laugh, if Mister Woody Guthrie spoke a better talking blues that Mister Lead Belly, or Mister Pete Seeger was truer to the blues tradition that Mister Bob Dylan (like he, Daddy Fingers, spent his time thinking about such things rather than trying to keep body and soul together from one back of the bus Mister James Crow bus station to the next in order to get to some godforsaken hidden juke joint to make a couple of bucks, have some of Sonny Boy’s son’s golden liquor, and maybe catch a stray lonesome Saturday woman without a man, or if with a man, a man without the look of a guy who settled his disputes, his woman disputes, at the sharp end of a knife, wanted to know, wanted to know, wanted to know more than the cold hard fact that, truth or lie, the blues wasn’t nothing but a good girl on your mind. Nothing but having your wanting habits on. But that never was good enough for them, and thus the fool questions. And always, tonight included, the fool Hey Daddy Fingers what are the blues. Okay, baby boy, baby girl, the blues is …

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- When Beat Was Neat-A Film Clip From The B-Film Classic “High School Confidential” -TakeTwo

I ain’t saying that this low budget be-bop B-film’s (although with a solid A on the rock and roll intro with Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano in back of a flat-bed truck flailing, yes, flailing away on his classic rock and roll song, teen angst-busting , teen alienation-busting song, High School Confidential, heralding the hint, just the hint, of a possibility that we of the generation of ’68 might be getting ready for that big jail break we were sitting under some atomic bomb air raid school desk looking for a sign of) “beat” poetess will make you throw away your personally autographed first edition City Lights copy of mad monk om om man Allen Ginsberg’s Howl or even some torn-up paperback copy of Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues or even some shotgun version of street gunsel mad poet Gregory Corso’s machine gun sonnets but she was a sister, a sister in the struggle to break out of squaresville, to break out of the void, to break from nine to five, to break from soda fountain giggle girl dreams, to break from seventy-six, count ‘em, forms of teen angst and sixty-six, count ‘em again, forms of teen alienation, to break from same old, same old, to, ah hell, just to break as portrayed by know nothing Hollywood with its angst-less dreams and its alienation-less non-sorrows. So be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.

I ain’t, furthermore, saying that everything the sultry sister (1950s sultry don’t touch me just listen tea-head, but what were we to know of that kind of sultry out in Podunk teen land, cashmere sweater, black skirt, maybe devil black stockings not shown, teen boy dreams sultry whatever her message, or even no message but bop) had to say had its head on straight. Or that if we, we meaning those fledgling angst-filled, alienation sorrowed ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teenage night club (no liquor allowed, no petting allowed, no, no allowed enforced by burly guys with direct access to parents/priests/teachers/cops/authorities and hence to some mischievous god), a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas, sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals, against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, that we would have understood half, hell, a quarter of what she said but like some mad dash shaman, oops, shaman-ess, it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.

And I definitely ain’t saying that even if all she said did have its head on straight that we, we meaning those fledgling ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teenage night club, a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas, sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals, against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, would have dug, yes, dug, in dig beat language dug, exactly what she had to say any more than when our time did come (when we shed teen know nothing-ness, Hollywood know nothing-ness, parent know nothing-ness, cop know nothing-ness, priest know nothing-ness, authorities know nothing-ness), the time when we got our bloody jail break time signal, that we more than echo- listened to om om-antic New Jersey mad monk Allen Ginsberg (tea head, acid head, Buddha head) howl against that evil night, or to Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac, sweet Lowell mill boy gone sour, sitting in some hell-hole mere florida trailer park (or bungalow, maybe) sweating whiskey and hubris against his children, or to New Jack City Gregory Corso playing the lone ranger against the death night, but it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.

Workers Vanguard No. 1012	9 November 2012

Free the Class-War Prisoners!

27th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

This year marks the 27th Holiday Appeal for class-war prisoners, those thrown behind bars for their opposition to racist capitalist oppression. The Partisan Defense Committee provides monthly stipends to 16 of these prisoners as well as holiday gifts for them and their families. This is a revival of the tradition of the early International Labor Defense (ILD) under its secretary and founder James P. Cannon. The stipends are a necessary expression of solidarity with the prisoners—a message that they are not forgotten.

Launching the ILD’s appeal for the prisoners, Cannon wrote, “The men in prison are still part of the living class movement” (“A Christmas Fund of our Own,” Daily Worker, 17 October 1927). Cannon noted that the stipends program “is a means of informing them that the workers of America have not forgotten their duty toward the men to whom we are all linked by bonds of solidarity.” This motivation inspires our program today. The PDC also continues to publicize the causes of the prisoners in the pages of Workers Vanguard, the PDC newsletter, Class-Struggle Defense Notes, and our Web site partisandefense.org. We provide subscriptions to WV and accompany the stipends with reports on the PDC’s work. In a recent letter, MOVE prisoner Eddie Africa wrote, “I received the letters and the money, thank you for both, it’s a good feeling to have friends remembering you with affection!”

The Holiday Appeal raises the funds for this vital program. The PDC provides $25 per month to the prisoners, and extra for their birthdays and during the holiday season. We would like to provide more. The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities: supplementing the inadequate prison diet, purchasing stamps and writing materials needed to maintain contact with family and comrades, and pursuing literary, artistic, musical and other pursuits to mollify a bit the living hell of prison. The costs of these have obviously grown, including the exponential growth in prison phone charges.

The capitalist rulers have made clear their continuing determination to slam the prison doors on those who stand in the way of brutal exploitation, imperialist depredations and racist oppression. We encourage WV readers, trade-union activists and fighters against racist oppression to dig deep for the class-war prisoners. The 16 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below:

*   *   *

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Last December the Philadelphia district attorney’s office announced it was dropping its longstanding efforts to execute America’s foremost class-war prisoner. While this brings to an end the legal lynching campaign, Mumia remains condemned to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.

Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and was initially sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of documentation proving his innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But from top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear the exculpatory evidence.

The state authorities hope that with the transfer of Mumia from death row his cause will be forgotten and that he will rot in prison until he dies. This must not be Mumia’s fate. Fighters for Mumia’s freedom must link his cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. Trade unionists, opponents of the racist death penalty and fighters for black rights must continue the fight to free Mumia from “slow death” row in the racist dungeons of Pennsylvania.

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier’s frame-up for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 68-year-old Peltier is still locked away. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family. He is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another 12 years!

Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 35th year of prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.

Lynne Stewart is a radical lawyer sentenced to ten years for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. For this advocate known for defense of Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state, her sentence may well amount to a death sentence as she is 73 years old and suffers from breast cancer. Originally sentenced to 28 months, her resentencing more than quadrupled her prison time in a loud affirmation by the Obama administration that there will be no letup in the massive attack on democratic rights under the “war on terror.” This year her appeal of the onerous sentence was turned down.

Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.

The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.

Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long-suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.

Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber, Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesquely inhuman conditions.

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