***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II-Perry Como’s Some Enchanted Evening …

…he was glad, glad as hell, to be off the troop transports, away from the sinking sweat of men, nothing but men, in close quarters who had been getting on his nerves from about mid-ocean to the portals of New York. Who had been stinking too of too many cigarettes, too many carbohydrate- loaded foods, and too much boozy talk and card-playing bravado. And the naval cadre who were stationed on the ship were worse, taking advantage of their superior status as regulars on the ship to force G.I.s, guy who had seen plenty of action on all the European front where there were fronts, to swab decks and other house-hold chores because those bastards were too lazy to do it. And because they could force the issue if it came down to it.

So once he hit New York, hit landlubber dry land he headed straight for the Diplomat with his pent-up dough and got himself a room with all the trimmings. Of course a guy who has been ship-bound and has spent some serious dough to repair his self-esteem was thinking of nothing so much as heading out, or in this case heading down, to the nearest hot spot and checkout, well, the women what else. And so it was that night in the ballroom of the Diplomat. That night when he from nowhere North Adamsville up in Massachusetts saw more young women dressed to the nines (little did he know that these women were wearing last year’s or from the year before fashions and were not feeling dressed to the nines that night, although they were as thrilled in their own way as he was), swaying hips, or just swaying, to the sounds of the new cooler be-bop sounds that had begun to take hold since he had been away. That night he just danced with every girl who would dance with him, drank an ocean of liquor (and brought many drinks all around as well) and was happy. There would be a next time for finding a gal to share silky sheets with …   

 

*******

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it meant to our parents or not, or frankly, during that hellish growing up absurd teenager time in the 1950s trying to figure out our places, if any, in the cold war red scare world, if there was to be a world, and that was a close thing at times,  or whether we cared, music was as dear a thing to them as to us, their sons and daughters, who were in the throes of finding our own very different musical identities. As well, whether we knew it or not, knew what sacred place the music of the late 1930s and 1940s, swing, be-bop swing, be-bop flat-out, show tunes, you know jitter-bug stuff, and the like held in their youthful hearts that was the music, their getting through the tough times music, that went wafting through the house on the radio, on record player, or for some the television, of many of those of us who constitute the now graying fading generation of ‘68. And some of us will pass to the beyond clueless as to what our forebears were attuned to when they came of age in a world, a very darkly-etched world, which they too had not created, and had no say in creating.

Yes they were crazy for the swing and sway of bespectacled Benny Goodman blowing that clarinet like some angel- herald letting the world know,  if it did know already, that it did not mean a thing, could not possibly matter in the universe, if you did not swing, with and without Miss (Ms.) Peggy Lee, better with, better with, swaying slightly lips moistened, swirling every guy in the place on Why Don’t You Do Right vowing he would do just that for a smile and a chance at those slightly swaying hips. Mr. Harry James with or without the orchestra , better with, blowing Gabriel’s horn, knocking down walls, maybe Jericho, maybe just some Starlight Ballroom in Kansas City blasting the joint with his You Made Me Love You to the top of the charts. Elegant Duke Ellington with or without Mr. Johnny Hodges blowing that sexy sax out into the ocean air night in some Frisco club, blowing out to the Japan seas, on Taking The ‘A’ Train. Tommy Dorsey all banded up if there is such a word making eyes misty with I’ll Never Smile Again.  Jimmy Dorsey too with his own aggregation wailing Tangerine that had every high school girl throwing dreamy nickels and dimes into the jukebox, with or without fanfare, Glenn Miller, with or without those damn glasses, taking that Sentimental Journey before his too soon last journey. Miss (Ms.) Billie Holiday, Lady Day, with or without the blues, personal blues, strung out blues too, singing everybody else’s blues away with that throaty thing she had, that meaningful pause, yeah, Lady Sings The Blues. Miss Lena Horne with or without stormy weather making grown men cry (women too) when she reached that high note fretting about her long gone man, Jesus.  Miss (Ms.) Margaret Whiting going for that Old Black Magic. Mr. Vaughn Monroe with or without goalposts. Mr. Billy Eckstine, too. Mr. Frank Sinatra doing a million songs fronting for the Dorseys and anybody who wanted to rise in that swinging world, with or without a horde of bobbysoxers breaking down his doors, putting everybody else to shame (and later too). The Inkspots, always with that spoken refrain catch that nobody seemed to tire of, doing teary I’ll Get By or If I Didn’tCare. The Mills Brothers with or without those paper dolls. The Andrews Sisters with or without rum in their Coca-Cola, The Dewdrops with or without whatever they were doing with or without. Mr. Cole Porter, with or without the boys, writing the bejesus out of  Tin Pan Alley and Broadway tunes. Mr. Irving Berlin with or without the flag, ditto Mr. Porter. And Mr. George Gershwin with or without his brother, creating Summertime and a thousand other catchy tunes. Yeah, their survival music.  

We the generation of ’68, baby-boomers, decidedly not what Tom Brokaw dubbed rightly or wrongly “ the greatest generation,”  decidedly not your parents’  or grandparents’ (please, please do not say great-grandparents’ even if it is true) generation could not bear to hear that music, could not bear to think anybody in the whole universe would think that stuff was cool. Those of us who came of age, biological, political and social age kicking, screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the time of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot were ready for a jail-break, a jail-break on all fronts and that included from “their song” stuff. Their staid Eisenhower red scare cold war stuff (he their organizer of victory, their gentile father Ike), hell, we knew that the world was scary, knew it every time we were forced to go down into some dank school basement and squat down, heads down too, hoping to high heaven that the Russkies had not decided to go crazy and set off “the bomb,” many bombs. And every righteous teenager had a nightmare that they were trapped in some fashionable family bunker and those loving parents had thoughtfully brought their records down into the abyss to soothe their savage beasts for the duration. Please, please, please if we must die then at least let’s go out to Jerry Lee’s High School Confidential.  

We were moreover, some of us any way and I like to think the best of us, driven by some makeshift dream, ready to cross our own swords with the night-takers of our time, and who, in the words of Camelot brother Bobby, sweet ruthless Bobby of more than one shed tear, quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a new world.” Those who took up the call to action heralded by the new dispensation and slogged through that decade whether it was in the civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came down were kindred. To the disapproval, anger, and fury of more than one parent who had gladly slept through the Eisenhower times. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for, desperately searched for, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone. But enough about us this series is about our immediate forbears (but please, please not great grandparents) their uphill struggles to make their vision of the their newer world, their struggles to  satisfy their hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in their youth  they dreamed by on cold winter nights and hot summer days.

This is emphatically the music, the get by the tough times in the cities, on the farms, out in the wide spaces, of the hard born generation that survived the dust bowl all farms blown away when the winds gathered like some ancient locust curse to cleanse the earth and leave, leave nothing except silt and coughs. All land worthless no crops could stand the beating, the bankers fearful that the croppers would just leave taking whatever was left and the dusted crowd heading west with whatever was movable. They drifted west, west as far as California if the old buggy held up and they had enough gas in the tank, not knowing what some old time professor, from Harvard I think, knew about the frontier that it had been swallowed up, been staked out long ago and too bad. Not knowing as well what some old time Okie balladeer knew that if you did not have the dough California was just another Okie/Arkie bust.

Survived empty bowls, empty plates, wondering where the next meal would come from, many times, too many times from some Sally soup-line, some praise the lord before thy shall eat soup-line. Survived that serious hunger want that deprives a man, a woman, of dignity scratching for roots like some porcine beast in some back alley lot, too weak to go on but too weak to stop as well. Survived, if not west, then no sugar bowl city street urchin corner boy hard times of the 1930s Great Depression, always with that vagrant foot up against some brick-laid wall, killing time, killing some dreams,  sleeping under soot-lined railroad trestles, on splintered park benches newspapers for a pillow’s rest (one eye open for swarming festering jack-rollers and club-wielding sadistic cops), and hard bench bus stations (ditto jack-rollers and cops).  Survive the time of the madness just then beating the tom-toms of war and degradation coming from a hungry want-infested Europe filled with venom, those drums heralding the time of the night-takers casting a shadow over the darkened world, portending the plainsong of the time of the long knives, outlawing dreams for the duration.

Building up a pretty list of those wants on cold nights , name them, food, shelter, sex, two- bits in the pocket, name those hungers, success, dignity, not having to struggle against the want night. Building that phantom list while among tree-lined Hudson River “hobo jungle” riverside fires stoked by fugitives, brethren, the fellahin of the world, upstream from the clogged city, upstream from clogged city prying eyes and prickly cops, cities clogged with broken dreams, or worse of late no dreams, and not enough food to go around, not enough work either and that ate at him, her more that the food hungers. Down in dusty arroyos, parched, no water, no agua aqui senor, lo siento, as they, the bracero brethren, passed the water jug between them and pointed him west, west you cannot stay here gringo, no way. Under forsaken silver-plated bridges, steel beams to rest a weary head, rolled blanket for his pillow, trying to keep the winds at bay.  Survived god knows how by taking the nearest freight west, some smoke and dreams freight, sleeping on some straw-scratched floor, plugging ears with napkins to drown out the rattling rails and deep sleep snores. Taking Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, B&O, Illinois Central, Penn Central, Empire State, Boston and Maine, or one of a million trunk lines to go out, and young as he was, desperate as he was, penniless as he was, search for, well, search for…

Searching for something that was not triple- decker bodies, three to a room sharing some scraggly blanket, an old worn out pillow for rest, the faint smell of oatmeal, twenty days in a row oatmeal, oatmeal with.., being cooked in the next room meaning no Pa work, meaning one jump, maybe not even that, ahead of the sullen dreaded bastard rent- collector (the landlords do not dare come in person so they hire the task out), meaning the sheriff, his damn auction, and the streets are closing in. (What did the Sheriff care that all meager life-times possessions were street-ward bound he was paid by the item tossed.) Bodies, brothers and sisters, enough to lose count, piled high, cold-water flat high, that damn cold water splash signifying how low things have gotten, not even hot water for the weekly bath, with a common commode for the whole floor and brown-stained sink.

Later moving down the scale, down to the lower depths as some Russian writer called them in a book of that name, a rooming house room for the same number of bodies, smudged prison-paned window looking out onto the air- shaft, dark, dark with despair, no air but some fetid foul breeze from the basement furnace, the very, very faint odor of oatmeal, thinned out even further, who knows how many days in a row, from Ma’s make-shift hot plate on its last legs.  Hell, call it what it was a flop house stinking of perspiration and low-shelf whiskeys and wines. Stinking of winos and riffraff in the hallways howling at the moon all night and jack-rollers preying on whoever was witless enough to walk into his lair. All around shadows, moonlight shadows, moonless night shadows the times when the midnight sifters plied their trade and snuck in, snuck in these damn one room hells looking for anything, anything to pawn, anything to feed that junk habit that had them in its grip. Ma, yelling at the kids, jesus, at the kids, milling around the room, that why didn’t they, the jack-rollers, the midnight sifters, the junkies, and the twisted sister street tricks (whores she called them when the kids got older and knew what that word meant) go uptown and bother the Mayfair swells who had dough and leave respectable people alone.        

Others had it worse, tumbled down shack, window pane-less some wax paper taped to hold off the winds and rains coming from the north, tarpaper siding leaving exposed wood to rot and provide homes for fugitive termites and vermin, roof tiles falling leaving poorly patched spots where the spring rains would wash through, wash through to the six buckets which were placed beneath the patches to hold off collapse, a lean-to ready to fall to the first wind, the first red wind, an ill wind, a land wind the old sailors, old tars called it and maybe they were right, coming out of the mountains and swooping down the hills and hollows, ready to fall to the first downpour rain, washed away. Cold water flat, flop house room, tumbled-down shack, leave them behind, get out on the open road, blow the stinks off, get that bindle stick together, a cup, a plate, spoon, a comb just in case you are in a town, some matches, keep dry matches, a pouch of Bull Durham and papers, maybe some change all wrapped in a handkerchief, the worldly possessions of the fellahin, the fugitive, the hobo, the tramp and the bum, grab that slow moving freight before she picks up steam, watch out for the “bulls” and search for the great promised American night that had been tattered by world events, and greed.

Survived the Hoovervilles, the world come down to the great cardboard siding, tin can cartons, discarded boxes, found in some orphan street, dilapidated, to serve as buffer against the hard winter winds, the spring rains and that damn relentless summer heat. Tin can roof thundering sounds at every light rain, slap-dash jerry-built camp explosions along rivers. Mighty rivers like the Missouri and Mississippi and no account ones, trickle down ones, like the Elko and the Dearborn that no longer gushed ramparts. Survived down in hard rock- infested ravines filled with brambles, snakes, gnarly insects ready to do battle once some fugitive arm or leg was exposed. Survived under railroad trestles, the clanking freight trains above, what did Shakespeare call it, yes, murdering sleep, and murdering dreams too. No wonder some guy, some hobo philosopher-king, and don’t laugh there were such fellows, along with broken-down stockbrokers, wreaked high financiers, ex-movie moguls, unemployed cabbies, unemployable union organizers, out-of-work workers of all types, families attached, and habitual malingerers trying to weather another day without working, said that life, his life anyway, and maybe their lives, were nothing but train smoke and wishful thinking. Hell, he didn’t know the half of it, didn’t know that life could get much coarser out on the great Wilderness Road. 

Tossed, hither and yon, cold- water flats, flop-houses, tarpaper shacks, then the great outdoors, what did that guy call it, that writer guy, I forget his name, called it probably from his cozy fireplaced study, fully nourished from the look of his pipe-smoking face on the back jacket of his latest pot-boiler, oh yeah, the romance of the road. Tossed around about six million different ways, name each one instead of counting sheep at night, murdered sleep. But it all came down to this, to the rivers, ravines, trestled-bridges, when the banks, yeah, the banks, the usual suspects, and rightly so from all the evidence, robbed people of their shacks, their cottages, their farm houses, their smokeless back forty dreams, and left them with nothing but the romance of the road. Even that smug pipe-filled writer, Jesus, what was his name, should pause to wonder. Yah, those bastards robbed them, picked them clean, as an old-time balladeer, a free-wheeling, song-writing red, a commie, hell, nothing but a Russkie-loving home-grown Bolshevik in the days when in some quarters, say, Frisco town, Akron, Minneapolis, blessed shut-down Flint, lion Detroit, hog-butcher to the world Chi town, smelter to the world Pittsburgh, sailing under that banner was a badge of honor, or just another fist in the struggle, welcome brother, welcome sister, we need all the hands, no, all the clenched fists we can get, said at the time not with a gun but with a fountain pen, but still robbed them. Cleaned them out, to get lost on that Wilderness Road, that trail of one thousand tears leading west.

Survived the soup kitchens hungers, the gnawing can’t wait in the endless waiting line for scraps, dreaming of some by-gone steak or dish of ice cream, and always that hunger, not the stomach hunger although that was ever present, but the hunger that hurts a man, hurts his pride, hurts a woman’s too, hurts when he, they have to stick their hands out, stick them out and not know why. Not know why a year before the sun was shining, they had dreams of living in that little house, a cottage really, ending their patterned days there, and now had shutter dreams of living in that cold-water flat, the flop-house room, the tar-paper shack forever turning their mouths to ashes. Not knowing why Bill up the street, Jack down the road, Leroy across the way was working, worrying but working, while his two hands were idle, and a million human things still needed to be fixed, to be built, to be created. And she cried a tear on those hands to see how his ignorance of what made the world go round ate at him, ate at his beautiful heart.  

Planning the fruitless day, fruitless since he was born to work, took pride in work, had worked since twelve to help a struggling family even in good times,  planning around dark hour Sally breakfasts don’t be late, six to nine, but with sermon and song attached, mission stuff in heat-soaked rooms, men smelling of unwashed men, and drink (quick drink, an eye-opener they called it in the shelter,    before entry and hence a strong smell of cheap rotgut). Planning around city hall hand-out lunches eaten on park benches or lawns, peanut butter sandwiches, slapped slap-dash together with a pint box of milk and an apple, maybe. Worse, worse by far the nightly Saint Vincent DePaul suppers, soup, bread, some canned vegetable, something they called meat but was in dispute, lukewarm coffee. Such a feast had only, only if you could prove you were truly destitute with a letter from some churchman, a Catholic churchman, like Protestants, Jews, Seventh-Day Adventist, Quakers, Shakers, Devil-worshippers, Jainists, Buddhists, Moslems, and every other kind of fellahin religionists were not hungry just then, and, in addition to the religious test, under some terrible penalty, you had to say that you had searched for work that day. A hard dollar, hard dollar indeed.

Jesus, out of work for another day, another in a long line of days, long line of Sally, City Hall, Saint Vincent DePaul hand-out days,   with three hungry growing kids to feed, boys, wouldn’t you know it,   kids, boys, who, what did they call what kids did then, oh yeah, eat them out of house and home. A wife, a precious wife, sickly, sickly from boys too close together, sickly from her own delicate frame,  sick unto death of the not having, not having for the boys, their boys, he thought. Making, she making, sick or not, their meager savings, their dole hand -out, their occasional relative money gift, stretch beyond endurance with the weekly bill envelopes always shorting some irate collector. Damn, little work waiting for anybody that day, that day when all hell broke loose and the economy tanked again, stocks tumbled, again, and guys were jumping out high buildings left and right, guys were trying to scrape every dime they could gather in order to not go under and face the high building windows, guys were getting tossed out of work, other guys who were thinking about buying guns and taking what they could take, and take it fast at least that is what it said in the Boston Globe he found on the ground and read while he waited once again in the damn soup line (ditto the reportage in  The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner if anybody was asking). They, the newspapers, said that there was too much around, too many cars, houses, too much wheat, cotton, oil, too many record-players, whatever, Jesus, too much, too many, and he with nothing for those kids, those eat them out of house and home boys, nothing and he was too proud just then to ask for some damn letter to give to those Vincent DePaul hard-hearts. 

And that day not him, not him yet, not him with a sickly wife worrying unto death over bill envelopes, not him with three hungry boys conceived too closely together, not him who was without steady work and glad get what he got when he got it and could shake off the damn charity soup-lines for a time, could thumb his nose at those Vincent DePaul hard-hearts, but others. Others who read more that the Boston Globe (and the dittos)  and who were dreaming of that full head of steam day to come, the day to even things up a little for a mess that they had not made, in places like big auto Flint eyeing those lines and thinking how to shut them down from the inside, out in waterfront Frisco town thinking that in order to make the water bosses cry that they might have to shut the whole place down, out in rubber Akron thinking of maybe even bringing the unemployed, guys like him to stop the scabbing, guys, steel-sweated guys out in hog butcher to the world prairie Chicago thinking of one big union, hell, even in boondock small trucker Minneapolis thinking of bringing in the wives, sisters, and sweethearts, the whole sweated, misbegotten fellahin world for one big push,

Yeah, they dreamed a lot, in places like bayside Frisco town,  mid-America Akron, trucker Minneapolis, Chi town name your industry, clanky Flint and motor city Detroit, places like Harlan, Birmingham, Los Angeles too, seemed like half the whole fellahin  was dreaming then, and some guys and gals, some stand-up guys and gals were scheming too, talking it up, were not going quietly into the rubbish can of history, dreaming of that day when the score would get evened, evened a little, and a man (and where I say man I say woman too, women who like they used to say in China hold up half the sky), could hold his head up a little, could at least bring bread, maybe some fruits and vegetables, to those three hungry growing kids, those boys who were eating him out of house and home, who didn’t understand the finer point of world economics, just hunger. Stomach hunger not that hunger that gnawed at him, there would be time enough for that for them. Until then, until he decides to not go quietly into the rubbish can of history though, he is left shifting the scroungings of the trash piles of the urban glut, the discard of the haves, the have- nots throw nothing away. On other horizons, Omaha, Grand Junction, Topeka, Davenport, Neola, Muskogee,  places where the corn and wheat grow tall, taller than a man, the brethren curse the rural fallow fields, curse the jack-robber banks, and curse the weather, but curse most of all having to pack up and head, head anywhere, but the here, and search, search like that brother on that urban glut pile for a way to curb  that gnawing  hungry that cried out in the night-want, want that is all. 

Survived too the look, the look of those, the what did FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the young, or forgetful) call them, oh yeah, the economic royalists, today’s 1%, the rack-renters, the coupon-clippers, the guys, as one of their number from an earlier generation, the openly cutthroat robber barons of unblessed memory, said, who hired one half of the working class to fight the other. Survived the look, if they could have seen that controlled furious look like the maids and manservants who attended to their toilet saw it, especially after a hard night at the club, or soiree. Saw the look of those who in their fortified towers, their Xanadus, their Dearborns, their Lake Shore Drives, their Beacon Hills, their Upper East Sides, their Nob Hills, and a few other spots, tittered that not everybody was built to survive to be the fittest. That crowd, and let’s name names, a few anyway, Ford, General Motors, Firestone, U.S. Steel, the Vanderbilts, The Spragues, the Alexanders, the Morgans, The Goldmans, the Harrimans and their agents (always agents, always a nest full of agents, always a layer to shield them from life’s blows) fought tooth and nail against the little guy trying to break bread. Fought that brother, that little guy, that guy we know was scrounging the refuge piles, out there pounding the mean streets too proud to ask for a letter, Jesus, a letter for some leftover food, before he got “religion” about what was what in the land of “milk and honey.” 

A land where they, the swells, hah, the Mayfair swells of the novels, wreaked havoc on that farmer out in the dust bowl now travelling some road, some road west knowing that the East was barred up, egging him on to some hot dusty bracero labor field picking, maybe “hire” him on as a scab against those uppity city boys. Yes, they fought every guy trying to get out from under that cardboard, tar paper, windowless soup kitchen world along with a hell of a lot of comrades, yes, comrades, not Russkie comrades although reds were thick in those battles, took their lumps in Frisco, Flint, Akron and Minneapolis, hell, any place where a righteous people were rising, kindred in the struggle to put that survival of the fittest noise on the back-burner of human history. To stand up and  take collective action to put things right, hell, made the bosses cry bloody murder when they shut down their factories, shut them down cold until some puny penny justice was eked out. Just so they could lift their fellahin heads a little out of the mire of human existence. And maybe just maybe make that poor unknowingly mean-street walking city brother, the one with the three growing boys eating him out of house and home, scrounging on the urban refuge piles, fretting away his time worrying about the next meal, the next roof, thinking maybe he should take that scab job being offered although every instinct said no, and that sweated farm boy with a parcel of kids heading forlornly west ready to grab even bracero work to keep the wolves at bay although his every instinct said no as well, think twice about helping those Mayfair swells.      

Survived all the hell that betook many in those days but took time out too, maybe not our hero wandering refuge piles in defense of his three boys, but time out if young perhaps. As if such things were embedded in some secret teen coda, some teen coda at least since teen became a separate object of study, more likely befuddlement. To stretch those legs, to flash those legs, to sway those hips. To in a word flash the new moves, the new swing moves, learned from the Saturday afternoon matinee movies or from some visiting cousin from New York hip to the latest scene. Not, I repeat, not the ones learned at sixth grade Miss Prissy’s Saturday dance classes, those proper foxtrots and waltzes like you were going to be invited to some cotillion, but the ones that every mother, every girl mother warned her Susie against, to a new sound coming out of the mist, coming to take the sting out of the want years nights, and the brewing nights of the long knives. And maybe take Janie out into some dark starry night but we will leave that to your imagination and Janie’s mother’s sweats. Coming out of New York, always New York then, Minton’s, Jimmy’s, some other uptown clubs,  Chicago, Chicago of the big horns and that stream, that black stream heading north, following the northern star, again, for jobs and to get the hell away from one Mister James Crow, from Detroit, with blessed Detroit Slim and automobile sounds, and Kansas City, the Missouri K.C. okay, the Bird land hatchery, the Prez’s big sexy sax blow home. Jesus, no wonder that madman Hitler banned it, banned, what did he call it, oh yeah, degenerate music, banned it along with dreams. Heil swing!

The sound of blessed swing, all big horns, big reeds, big, well big band, replacing the dour Brother, Can You Spare a Dime and its brethren , no, banishing such thoughts, casting them out with soup lines (and that awful Friday Saint Vincent DePaul fish stew that even Jesus would have turned down in favor of bread, wine and a listen to Benny’s Buddha Swings) casting that kind of hunger out for a moment, a magical realistic moment, casting out ill-fitting, out of fashion, threadbare (nice, huh) second-hand clothes (passed down from out- the- door  hobo brothers and sisters tramping this good green earth looking for their place, or at least a job of work and money in their newer threadbare [still nice] clothes), and casting aside from hunger looks, that gaunt look of those who have their wanting habits on and no way to do a thing about it.  Banished, except maybe for that tired weary urban pile refuge scroungers just then thinking that for the sake of the three boys he might just have to kneel down and grab some churchman’s letter, yeah things were still that tough. Banished with that exception because after all was said and done it did not mean a thing, could not possibly place you anywhere else but in squareville (my term, not theirs), if you did not have that swing. To be as one with jitter-buggery if there was (is) such a word (together, not buggery by itself, not in those days, not in the public vocabulary anyway). And swing as it lost steam with all the boys, all the swing boys, all oversea boys and the home- fire girls tired of dancing two girl dancing, a fade echo of the cool age be-bop that was a-borning, making everybody reach for that high white note floating out of Minton’s, Big Bill’s, Jimmie’s, hell, even Olde Saco’s Starlight Ballroom before it breezed out in the ocean air night, crashed into the tepid sea. Yeah.       

Survived, as if there was no time to breathe in new fresh airs, new be-bop tunes, new dance moves, to slog from want hungers to the time of the gun in World War II.  A time when the night-takers, those dark forces, those who craved the revenge night of the long knives for some supposed ill, took giant steps in Europe and Asia trying to make that same little guy, Brit, Frenchie, Chinaman, Filipino, God’s American, and half the races and nationalities on this good green earth cry uncle. Even our heroic urban pile dweller with his three boys underfoot now was eager to show what he was made of, was ready to forsake that sickly wife and those beastly kids, to put a couple of things right if they would just make sure the kids were fed. No go, too old, too tired from a decade of hungers. Yeah those night-takers were ready to make the little guy buckle under, take it, take their stuff without a squawk. It took a bit, took a little shock, to get those war juices flowing, to get whole populations to forget about the blood-letting that had gone on before when the flower of Europe, when the older brothers and fathers the generation before, had taken their numbers when they were called and died like dogs in gas-filled trenches, along barbed wire fences, behind random artillery shell, and half the known diseases of the earth.

And so after Pearl, after that other shoe dropped on a candid world,  a now candid world that could no longer afford to look the other way, could not afford to do like they had done in Spain and let the “premature anti-fascists” hang in the wind, could not afford to keep heads firmly in the sand, Johnnie, Jimmie, Paulie, Jesus, even Paulie, Benny too, all the guys from the old neighborhood, the corner boys, the guys who hung out at Jeb’s Pool Hall, Nick’s Variety, Jake’s Diner, The Regent Theater, the guys who hung around the Rexall Drugstore too, hands in their pockets, one knee to the wall just like those who came before and like those who would come after in the alienated teen night of the 1950s, the wild boys, the boys who then would be rebels without a cause, guys trying to rub nickels together to play some jitter-buggery thing, guys who had it tough growing up hard in those bad Depression days, took their numbers and fell in line.

Guys from the wheat fields, Kansas, Iowa, you know places where they grow wheat, guys fresh from some Saturday night dance, some country square thing, all shy and with calloused hands, eyeing, eyeing to perdition some virginal Betty or Sue. Guys too from the coal slags, deep down in hill country, down in the hollows away from public notice, some rumble down shack to rest their heads, full of backwoods home liquor, blackened fingernails, never ever fully clean once the coal got them, Saturday night front porch fiddlings. All mixed together in that citizens’ army carrying an M-1 on the shoulder in Europe or the Pacific. Leaving all those Susies, Lauras, Betties, and dark-haired Rebeccas too waiting at home hoping to high heaven that some wayward gun had not carried off sweetheart Johnnie, Jimmy, Leroy, Manuel, Paulie, or young Benny.  Jesus not young Benny. Not the runt of the corner boy litter, not our Benny. Not Benny whose sax -playing had just started drawing attention when his number was called, more importantly had the girls  swooning and swaying a little bit when he hit that high white note  taking notice, and also probably taking his number too.  Not carried off as well that sweet farm fresh boy with the sly grin who never did get up the courage to ask her to dance or anything else but she swore if he came back in one piece he would get whatever he wanted. Not carried off that coal-dust young man with those jet-black eyes, and fingers, that young kindred of that dusty urban refuge scrounger too old to serve, too young to be out of work with those three strapping boys. Not taken that boy from his mountain winds and some skinny gal, dressed in skimpy calico, waiting before the General Store hoping that the day’s casualty list was empty of his beautiful name.  

Survived the endless lines of boys heading off East and West, heading off to right some wrongs, at least that is what the guys in charge said, put a big dent in the style of the night-takers, the guys who wanted to cut up the world into two or three pieces, and that was that, cutting the little guy, making the little guys like it, making them take it or else. Some of those little guys, after Pearl for sure, although some more astute, political  or footloose guys had become “premature anti-fascists over in blood-drenched Spain beforehand,  could hardly wait to get to the recruiting office, hardly wait to go mano y mano with the night-takers and their illicit dreams. So they, went gladly from the farms, the factories and the mines, many to never look back, never to farm, to run a production line, or to dig from the earth but make new lives in the great urban glut the place our urban refuge scrounger was trying to break out off, or lay down their heads in some god forsaken piece of dirt, or some watery abyss. Others, well, others were hanging back waiting to be drafted by their friends and neighbors at the local draft board, hanging back just a little to think things over, to see if maybe they could be better used on the home front, scared okay (as if the quick-step volunteers were not afraid, or should have been) but who gave a good accounting of themselves when their number came up. They too had large numbers lying their heads down on some crusty island atoll, some washed-up beach, some fallen down bridge. Still others were head over heels they were exempt, 4-F, bad feet, you see. Somebody had to keep the home fires, had to keep Jodie’s womenfolk happy.

All, all except that last crew, the dodgers found in every war,  who got to sit a home with Susie, Laura, Betty and even odd-ball Rebecca were constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for their ships to sail or their planes to fly. Had been hanging in some old time corner boy drugstore, Doc’s, Rexall, name your drugstore name, just like when they were kids (a mere few weeks before), talking the talk like they used to do to kill time, maybe sitting two by two (two uniforms, two girls if anybody was asking) at the soda fountain playing that newly installed jukebox until the nickels ran out. Listened to funny banana boat songs, rum and coca cola songs, sitting under the apple tree songs, songs to forget about the work ahead abroad, and just some flat-out jitter-bugging stuff, frothy stuff in order to get a minute’s reprieve from thoughts of the journey ahead.

Listened too to dreamy, sentimental songs, Always, I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire, Sentimental Journey, songs that spoke of true love, their true love that would out last the ages, would carrying them through that life together if they could ever keep those damn night-takers at bay, songs about faraway places, We’ll Meet Again, Til Then, songs that spoke of future sorrows, future partings, future returnings (always implying though that maybe there would be no return), future sacrifices, future morale-builders, songs about keeping lamp- lights burning, songs to give meeting to that personal sacrifice, to keep the womenfolk, to keep her from fretting her life away waiting for that dreaded other drop, songs about making a better world out of the fire and brimstone sacrifice before them.

Songs to make the best out of the situation about Johnnie, Jimmie and the gang actually returning, returning whole, and putting a big dent in their dreams, that small white house with the white picket fence (maybe needing a little painting, maybe they could do that together), kids, maybe a new car once in a while you know the stuff that keeps average joes alive in sullen foxholes, sea-sick troop transports, freezing cargo planes, keeps them good and alive. Hell, songs, White Cliffs Of Dover songs, about maybe the damn wars would be over sooner rather than later. Listened, drawing closer, getting all, uh, moony-eyed, and as old Doc, or some woe-begotten soda jerk, some high school kid, wet behind the ears, with that white paper service cap at some obscure angle and now smudged white jacket implying that he was in the service too, told them to leave he was closing up they held out for one last tune. Then, well-fortified with swoony feelings they made for the beach, if near a beach, the pond, if near a pond, the back forty, if near the back forty, the hills, you know, or whatever passed for a lovers’ lane in their locale and with the echo of those songs as background, well, do I have draw you a map, what do you think they did, why do you think they call us baby-boomers.              

The music, this survival music, Harry James, Benny, the Dorsey boys, Bing, Frank, the Mills Brothers, the Inkspots, and on and on wafted (nice word, huh) through the air coming from a large console radio, the prized possession centered in the small square living room of my growing up house amid the squalor of falling roof tiles, a broken window or two patched up with cardboard and tape, a front door that would not shut, rooms with second-hand sofas, mattresses, chairs, desks, tables, mildewy towels, corroded sinks, barely serviceable bathtubs, and  woe-begotten stuffed pillows smelling of mothballs. My broken down, needs a new roof, random shingles on the ground as proof, cracked windows stuffed with paper and held with masking tape in need of panes, no proof needed, overgrown lawn in need of cutting of a shack (there is literally no other way to describe it, then or in its current condition) of a too small, much too small for four growing boys and two parents, house. The no room to breathe, no space but shared space, the from hunger look of all the denizens, the stink of my father’s war wounds that would not heal, the stink of too many people in too small a house, excuse me shack. The noise, damn the noise from the nearby railroad, putting paid to wrong side of the tracks-dom worst of all. Jesus.      

That wrong side of the tracks shack of a house surrounded by other houses, shack houses, too small to fit big Irish Catholic- sized families with stony-eyed dreams. Small dreams of Johnny or Jimmy getting on the force (cops, okay), and Lorrie and Pamela getting those secure City Hall jobs in the steno pool until some bright prospect came by and threw a ring at them but in the meantime shack life, and small faded dreams. Funny, no, ironic but these tumbled-down shacks which seemingly would fall with a first serious wind represented in some frankly weird form (but what knew I of such unnamed weirdness then I just cried out in some fit of angst, cried out against that railroad noise, and that sour smell of sweat) the great good desire of those warriors, and almost to a man they had served, and their war brides who had waited, had fretted while waiting, to latch onto a piece of golden age America.

And take their struggle survival music from Doc’s jukebox, from the Starlight Ballroom, from WDJA, with them as if to validate their sweet memory dreams, their youthful innocence before the guys got caught up, caught up close and personal, the ugliness of war, the things they would not speak of unto the grave, and the gals not asking, not asking for all the money in the world but sensing that he, they, had changed, had lost some youthful thing. That radio, that priceless radio console taking pride of place, as if a lifesaver, literally, tuned to local station WDJA in North Adamsville, the memory station for those World War II warriors and their war brides, those who made it back. Some wizard radio station manager knowing his, probably his in those days, demographics, spinned those 1940s platters exclusively, as well as aimed the ubiquitous advertisement at that crowd. Cars, sofas, beds, shaving gear, soap, department store sales, all the basics for the growing families spawned (nice, huh) by those warriors and brides.

My harried mother, harried like all the neighborhood large brood mothers, harried by the bleak wanting prospects of the day with four growing boys and not enough, nor enough food, not enough, well, just not enough and leave it at that. Maybe bewildered is a better expression for her plight, for her wartime young marriage adventure not wanting to be left with only a memory of my father if things went wrong in the Pacific. As so she took to turning the radio on to start her day, hoping that Paper Dolls, I’ll Get By, or dreamy Tangerine would chase her immediate sorrows away. Yea, a quick boost of their songs was called for, their spring youth meeting at some USO dance songs before he shipped out. Those songs   embedded deep in memory, wistful young memory, or so it seemed as she hummed away the day, used the music as background on her appointed household rounds. And whether she won or lost the day’s bout with not enough, with some ill-winded message from some bill due, seemingly always some four boy hurt, some bad father work news, the list of her daily sorrows and trepidations could have stretched to infinity she perked up, swayed even to those tunes.

That stuff, that mother dream stuff, that piano/drum-driven stuff with some torch-singer, Peggy Lee, Helen Morgan, Margaret Whiting, maybe even a sneak Billie thrown in bleeding all over the floor drove me crazy then  Some she bleeding with the pain of  her thwarted loves, her man hurts, her wanderings in search of something in this funny old world, her waitings, waiting for the good times, waiting in line for the rations, waiting, waiting alone mind you, for her man to come home, come home whole from some place whose name she could not pronounce, they should have called it the waiting generation, just flat-out drove me crazy then. Mush stuff at a time when I was craving the big break-out rock and roll sounds I kept hearing every time I went and played the jukebox at Doc’s Drugstore over on Walker Street down near the beach (not the old torn down Doc’s of their generation over on Billings Road if that is what you are thinking). As far as I know Doc (the son of their Doc), knowing his demographics as well as that radio executive at WDJA, did not, I repeat, did not, stock that stuff that, uh, mush for his rock-crazed after school soda fountain crowd, probably stocked nothing, mercifully before about 1955. Funny thing though while I am still a child of rock and roll this so-called mushy stuff sounds pretty good to these ears now long after my parents and those who performed this music have passed on. Go figure. 

********

Some Enchanted Evening 

 

Emile:
Some enchanted evening
You may see a stranger,
you may see a stranger
Across a crowded room
And somehow you know,
You know even then
That somewhere you'll see her
Again and again.

Some enchanted evening
Someone may be laughin',
You may hear her laughin'
Across a crowded room
And night after night,
As strange as it seems
The sound of her laughter
Will sing in your dreams.

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons,
Wise men never try.

Some enchanted evening
When you find your true love,
When you feel her call you
Across a crowded room,
Then fly to her side,
And make her your own
Or all through your life you
May dream all alone.

Once you have found her,
Never let her go.
Once you have found her,
Never let her go!

Read more: South Pacific - Some Enchanted Evening Lyrics | MetroLyrics

From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners And The Partisan Defense Committee’s Holiday Appeal- Imperialism and War

James P.Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website for details about the Annual Holiday Appeal.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.

Markin comment:

I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.

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

Workers Vanguard No. 1029 6 September 2013 TROTSKY LENIN Imperialism and War (Quote of the Week) The looming U.S. attack on neocolonial Syria is but the latest example of the predatory wars through which the imperialist powers maintain their system of brutal exploitation and oppression the world over. The drive for war under imperialism was eloquently explained in 1936 by then-Trotskyist James Burnham (under the pseudonym John West). The truth of the matter is this: In the stage of imperialism, capitalist society is continuously at war. This is of the essence of imperialism. It is not a question of one war starting, then stopping, to be followed in a decade or two by a new war. It is war all the time, changing only in the form it takes, in the degree of violence. Conflict at the “economic level” continues without interruption: economic struggles for sources of raw material, for new markets, for new fields of exploitation; tariff and exchange battles; competition for shipping and loans; exploration to discover new mines, oil wells, land for rubber and coffee and cotton plantations; and all the rest. But the conflict can never remain at the purely economic level. The stakes are too high—failure at the economic level means the destruction of the defeated economic group. Therefore, the finance-capitalists must utilize constantly their political servants—the governments of their respective countries. And the governments are not slow to answer. They build up their military and naval armaments to almost unbelievable heights. They are ever ready to unseat a Central American government, threaten a native prince, wipe out “red bandits,” stop or start a revolution, send a flotilla of warships or a regiment of marines, resent an “insult to the flag,” if necessary set two countries—Bolivia and Paraguay, for example—flying at each other’s throats to settle the dispute of Standard Oil and Shell over rights to an oil field. At the beck and call of finance-capital, the government, with the guns and cruisers and airplanes, snaps quickly to attention. That, indeed, is what the governments are for.... The moral, religious, racial and ideological disguises that war wears must not be allowed to hide the fundamental conflicts which are the true source of modern war. The general conclusion is inescapable: Modern war is neither accidental nor due to the evil of human nature nor decreed by God. War is of the very essence of imperialist-capitalism, as much a part of capitalism as wage labor. To speak of capitalism without war is like speaking of a human being without lungs. The fate of one is inextricably bound to the fate of the other. —“John West” (James Burnham), War and the Workers (1936)

 

***Out In The 2010s Be-Bop Night- A Simple Twist Of Fate

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman, Hullsville High School Class of 1964

As is well-known Peter Paul Markin (just Markin hereafter and not that Mayfair swell three name stuff like he was the Duke Of York or something) is my old friend from the days down at the Starlight Ballroom in Hullsville in 1964. We had met there shortly after graduating from our respective high schools at the weekly rock and roll dances held there every Friday night. Strangely we met and became friends after pursuing the same girl who eventually dumped us both but our friend outlasted that bout of competition (there would be others). Recently he called me with a bizarre story. A story that he knew would intrigue me, and force me to write about it. And he was right although he should have written the thing himself since it involved him, him and his seemingly eternity memory lane longings.

Now you have to know a little bit about Markin, about his attitudes toward things like mysticism, fate, kismet, the unknown and all of that to appreciate that he does not truck with any of that stuff. He fancies himself a man of science, or at least of there being rational explanations for things and this is why the information that he imparted to me baffled him. Me, I am more agnostic about such things but this one did have me scratching my head a little so I might as well get to it. 

The year 2014 will be a milestone for Markin (and me as well) marking the 50^th anniversary of his (our) graduation from high school, in his case  North Adamsville High School about twenty miles up the road from Hullsville. For a whole number of reasons that should not detain us here Markin had been looking forward to that event for a couple of years in the expectation of going to his class reunion (not me though, looking forward to or going ). He had never gone to any before for those whole bunch of reasons. Moreover he had actively attempted to put himself into the mix by setting up a class reunion event on Facebook (thus mercy thanks FB because this story could not have developed, could not have been possible, without that social network outlet). What he was doing at that point was making an ad hoc attempt to enlist fellow classmates to help organize the reunion.  He got the usual early sparse response and then the response that triggers this sketch.

A woman, Jill Gary, a fellow classmate commented that she was interested in helping out but due her professional career commitments would not be able to do much. Also she lived up in Maine and since the reunion would be held in Massachusetts that too would be a barrier. In any case Markin, looking to find some kindred help, began a blizzard of e-mail traffic with her. It seems that this Jill was what they now call “hot” back in the day, a real looker, as a look at her year book picture testified to that Markin had forwarded to me, a fresh dewy girl next door type who wore cashmere sweaters and who by popular opinion (boys’ locker room after sports opinion) was unapproachable. In any case Markin had seen her around school but that was about it.   

Well some things change in this wicked old world, some things are not eternally etched in stone and Jill like all of us from the Generation of ’68  has learned a thing or two had been through her share of ups and downs and survived to tell about it. Naturally Markin was all ears to hear about this life if for no other reason that he could say that he had actually talked to her, even at a fifty year remove, for some such reason which only Markin is privy to. And so the blizzard of e-mails continued (she almost as crazy as him to write, write, write).

One exchange, the one that matters here, involved the question of where they had gone to elementary school she to Adamsville North and he to Adamsville South. That Adamsville South response by Markin brought out the fact that Jill’s mother had been a swimming instructor down at the Adamsville South Beach and had during her career there saved a drowning boy. Jill, nine at the time, had been present at the event.

Markin said he flipped out when he heard that information. See, and I remember him telling me one time about his (our) love of the ocean but fear of it, fear to go too far out when swimming because he had almost drowned when he was nine down at the Adamsville South Beach one summer. Typical boy story: as the ocean was rising he had spied a log, an abandoned telephone pole, and had grabbed onto it. He drifted out for a while and then, as he said sheepishly, he realized he had gone too far but instead of holding onto the log he decided to try and swim for shore. Not a good swimmer and just too far out he started going down. His brother who was on the shore called for help and the swimming instructor came out and saved him in a nick of time.

So what lesson does Markin draw from that today. Anything about fate, karma, or just plain good luck. No. He tells Jill that since they had already “met” maybe they should get together and discuss the matter more fully. And guess what, she agreed. Jesus.               

 

 

 

***The Once And Future King- “The King’s Speech”-A Film Review

The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth, Helen Bonham Carter, directed by Tom Hooper, 2010
No question Mr. Darcy (oops) Colin Firth deserved every accolade, including the coveted Oscar, for his performance as the stammering King George VI (the current monarch’s father). Anyone from king to kid (including this writer) who has had even a passing acquaintance with stammering can relate to the story line here, and the sheer talent necessary for an actor to convincingly produce such a realistic portrayal (especially that climatic pep talk speech to the empire). And hats off to Geoffrey Rush as the unorthodox tutor who sees the king through his travails. However, at the end of the day and as the good king himself was painfully aware, good republican that I am I was left with the gnawing feeling that the monarchy (and the monarch) portrayed add nothing to our accumulated historical experience. Old Oliver Cromwell and his boys had it right in 1649-and it hasn’t been right since 1660.

***A Girl Has Got To Do What A Girl Has Got To Do-19th Century-Style- “Jane Eyre” –A Film Review

DVD Review

Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, 2011.
Okay, okay I will freely confess that as a boy I did not, I steadfastly did not, read a girls’ book, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. And I did not, as we live a confessional age, read her sisters’ books or even, damned to hell, Jane Austen’s stuff. And you would not have either (or at least not have said so publicly) any place near my corner boys society growing up absurd in the 1950s old North Adamsville neighborhood. See you either didn’t read, and made a big virtues out of it preferring chasing cars and girls, or for those like my corner boy, Frankie Larkin, and me, who did we read mad Jack Kerouac, or besotted Scott Fitzgerald, or best of all, the max daddy mad adventurer Ernest Hemingway. Period.

Moreover if we didn’t read guy novelists then we were crazy (and make that I was crazy) for history books. But not girls’ books, no way. Which is a shame in a way because the trials and tribulations of Jane Eyre (and other female characters created by 19th European women writers, and not just women writers either, like the aforementioned Jane Austen) related experiences of class, race and social oppression (intertwined with a little off-hand romance to sell books then, and now, to the female reading public) that resonate with this writer today.

So it is something of a gift from the heavens that over the past couple of decades many of the writers that I did not read, steadfastly did not read in case you forgot, have had their work adapted to the screen. Happily this is true for the film under review. That means that this reviewer gets to, as he has on other occasions, see the story line of the book unfold in order to determine whether he would decide to read this book after viewing the film.

And the judgment? There is now a high bar for British romances set by Ms. Austen, most notably with her Miss Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darby in Pride and Prejudice in the matter of 19th century sensibility. While that standard was not surpassed in this film Ms. Bronte (and the actors here) did give a very decent sense of the oddball (to our eyes), anti-democratic and socially savage way that women, women of no means (or no known means), were shunted off in the backwoods of society.

But spunk is a value we can all appreciate and to use a more modern phrase than would be proper in jolly old England back in the day to describe the evolving plot line- a girl has got tot do what a girl has got to do. On that level this thing is a classic girl (okay woman, Ms. Eyre) meets boy (okay man, Mr. Rochester) story. And, lo and behold, the girl is actually ten times stronger than the boy. And, frankly, twenty times more interesting. Maybe that is why I, steadfastly, did not read Jane Eyre and the others then. But I will now.

***Thoroughly Modern Miss Delysia LaFosse - Reflected

I have spent no little “cyberspace” ink in the recent past swearing off femme fatales in crime noirs, mainly crime noirs from their heyday in the 1940s and 1950s. I had grown tired, very tired, of two-timing dames (to speak nothing of those three, or hell more, timing frails) who saw nothing wrong, nothing in the world wrong, with off-handedly putting a couple of slugs in the likes of a prince valiant like Robert Mitchum as Jane Greer did in Out Of The Past just for trying to help her out of a jam, or seven. And him half-smiling, an ironic smirk really, half-wishing that finally just maybe he would be over her with those sweet embedded slugs. Ya, sure Robert, keep thinking she would ever loosen the claws she had into you. Sweet dreams, and RIP brother.

Or some half-addled, half-smitten, half-snake bitten, free-wheeling, half-mad poet fellow, blood cursed, irish blackie trying to shake off some tainted married woman and getting shook, getting square- framed, framed just for laughs to prove she could do it and slug-filled too. Framed hard right, framed hard left but framed and set up, with an invisible bulls-eye target right in the middle of his head, for the big house and the big tumble jolt without tears, or a look back, by a blond Rita Hayworth to Orson Welles in The Lady From Shang-hai (really not her color, blond, but that is a tale for another day and they don’t have to be blond to get to you in their clutches). And he, even after the mirror glass shattered, and he knew she was dead and gone and good riddance, would still remember, remember into old age remember, that first fragrance, some orchid scent, and that first look, some hidden larcenous look, as he walked along beside her and wonder where he had let her down. Have another shot, irish blackie, have one on me some cold dark night just before dream time.

Or, or, and just one last faint fragrance remembrance, this time maybe some blue dahlia scent or some oriental herbal splash, splashed on stone white-pancake faced killer in skirts who couldn’t play it straight for a minute and who just wanted her damn bird, and gold. And the stuff of dreams. And an off-hand slug in some desire belly on the way and falls, just not her’s. And not averse, not at all, to piling up the corpses high, to high heaven if necessary, to get them, the dreams that is, as Mary Astor did to dear, dear sturdy, worldly Humphrey Bogart, hell she even got to Bogie, in The Maltese Falcon. And he, hard guy, seen it all, done it all, will in fact spend many a long winter evening building a whiskey bottle pyramid to her, or that scent, always wondering if she had only played it straight for one minute what would have happened. But enough.

Fortunately after successful completion of the twelve –step femme fatale withdrawal program I am now cured, cured forever and a day, of those bad femmes. Jane Greer? I don’t believe I know the name. Rita Hayworth? Didn’t she marry some high sheriff over in Africa or something? Mary Astor? Is that some relative of John Jacob Astor? See, cured, fixed, done with all of that.

But what if, just for the sake of argument you understand, I had been on the wrong path, and got waylaid by those bad femmes. What about “good” femme fatales, or wannabes (from Pittsburg no less-pig iron steel provider to a hungry metal-craving world), who maybe are just a little screwy (okay, okay a lot screwy) and don’t even know how to handle a rod, or want to. Just men. And can warble you to tears when called upon. Well then fetchingly, and every other which way desirable, Miss Delysia LaFosse is just the type for you (and for me, especially sans those pistols that my, eh, advisors, have warned me off of ).

Rodded up, or not, Miss LaFosse knew one thing though, and knew it well in her time, in her post jazz- etched time, in her London just before the blitz 1939 time (and would have known it well in 1039 time and would know it well in 3039 time)- a girl has got to do what a girl has got to do. And while she may not have had a devil’s sinister heart she shared that truth with Miss Greer, Miss Hayworth, and Miss Astor. And so more than one man had to pay, pay the freight some way, if not with his life then still some way for that simple truth.

But even smart and wise girls from brawny Pittsburgh trapped in blitz-ready London can’t get things untangled all by their lonesome, especially screwy (if fetchingly so, okay) dames who are trying to work every angle by not working every angle and just letting thing fall where they will. What if all any self-respecting femme fatale, notorious for working the mantrap alone and net-less, really needed to stay away from hard guys, hard liquor, hard grifts, and mean streets was a sort of “fairy godmother” posing as a “social secretary” to work her plans. Especially if that social secretary was a wise and wishful aide, every way wise and wishful way. Then, my friends, you would have the substance of a plot for something of a little romantic comedy/social commentary/ nostalgia piece. And good PR for the femme fatale racket to boot.

And what if that good Miss LaFosse, aided by that help, not only untangled the little romantic triangle she had not worked every angle into with three beautiful young men who came of age after the war, the First World War that is, and who had “designs” on her free-wheeling spirit could sing your blues away. With no off-hand femme fatale gun play to “resolve” her fickle lifestyle dilemmas. Yes, what then. And I would not even be breaking twelve-step. Praise be.

***Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Women Question -Redux- Magical Realism 101

Lindo, lindos Spanish is the loving tongue and has been for a while now against the harsh light of English faux forked loving tongues but that is not what I mean, me a man now well-versed in pocas palabras, okay. And English forked tongues too. But then, the time I am talking about then, 1960 then, holy hell’s fool, muttering a mile a minute as if to stop would break the spell, and break any chance for, well, happiness, kiddish happiness. Muttering that mile a minute for Irish girls don’t go nears (same parish even, Sacred Heart, Christ, no double christ), don’t even think about nears (same parish or not), or half-irish nears either (heathens like me, as my very, very Irish grandfather would say, giving his sonny boy, me, a dispensation for some mother‘s fault, but of that later).

What I mean is this girl sitting next to me, this 1960 eighth- grade girl, Irish or half-Irish (Irish by surname but mix is the name of the game in golden age America, in Jacks’ America being born and to call Irish is the beginning of wisdom and eight hundred year tyrannies by bloody English forebears don’t hurt either the big question though, the dispensating grandfather high on high mass incense question is she “one of us”), sitting next to me in art class. She has to be Irish or half Irish, no question, because in the Little Dublin section of old North Adamsville everybody is one or the other, or else. But that question out of the way (and I thought of several scenarios, several genealogical scenarios to entice her to talk) she disturbs my sleep although to her I do not exist, have not existed, will not exist, ever.

And whatever glory she would go on to, or I, that would always be the case because I came last year, 1959 last year in case you forgot, from over in the Adamsville projects. Or I had not lived in North Adamsville all that long and had not started out with her at North Adamsville Junior High School (like that was a reason, but it was, such are the ways of junior high social pecking disorder learned if at no other place then at the weekly “no dance” school dance, and it smarts). Or guys who were smugly smart-assed (learned from Frankie Larkin, Peter’s brother, who, as it turned out later I found out she loathed because he would not give her a “tumble.” Or I was too catholic church damn blasphemous laughing at splashed holy water, high on high mass incense, and muttered, exhaustively muttered stations of the cross.

Or, refreshed continuing or, she preferred (as it turned out later) football guys and not half-artists, half -bookish nerds, half- mad poets, although I didn’t know it, the half-mad poet blood curse part, and definitely not some bay rum- trumped cowlick- haired be-bop stumble bum flannel-shirted (even in summer), wearing black chinos (handed down from ancient brotherhood brothers in hard family progressions because , because my friends, they were still wearable even in 1950s change your style with your mood America, daily if possible, good aged America touted golden age, America wanted to beat beatnik, faux beatnik, if the real story be told.

Beautiful, beautifuls, beatitude, beat, beat up, beat around (around the bush I guess) beautiful streets walked eternally walked searching beauty, she was not beautiful, not spanish exotic beautiful or at least not later class picture for remembrance looked beautiful but she was, she was, well, siting right there next to me, and she was, well, spunky, and alive and distantly noblesse if anyone, male or female, in our crowded little one-size-fits-all two by four town, Adamsville to name signify it, later working class to social signify it, would name the damn thing but then just project boys and proper across the tracks (right side tracks) girls fond of football players, class leader-ness, and cheerleader jumps would not do.

Disturbed sleep, yes, walked streets, yes, worn-out sneakers (or shoes, forgotten buster brown Thom McAn shoes), yes, fussed dreams yes, endlessly walked streets with head prepared notes just in case the winds passed by and we were caught on the same sidewalk. Things like that happen you know, and did happen, but I averted my eyes, crossed the street, and revised my prepared notes, just in future case. And she passed, passed like the wind, and sweet schoolgirl fragrance, or some scented soap, and no sorrow and no remembrance, and no talk at school about how we just kind of missed each other and what were you doing just then, and such of revised notes.

And without a murmur, without as much as a by your leave (quaint expression), she graduated from eighth grade (see our system was different then and eight led to ninth grade high school crushed invisibleness and misspoken dreams). And I with her. And she to football player reflected glory and me to nerdish road running, mad poet existence, stealing out in the North Adamsville night to hide, hide my flannel face, my black chinos, my eternal be-bop midnight sunglasses in early morning subway trains headed toward Harvard Square and a new day borning, and me, crazy to be there but still longing, although no longer lonely streets wandering (or revising notes either) to see if she was made of anything more than stuffed straw, and spunk.

So I, too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic cheerleader windows. Those lonely glance streets beckoned, I swear they beckoned, even in passé corridors anonymously passed even though in a right world any god child should have been able to call on ancient school memories to nod that simple nod that men nod to each other without qualm or qualification, even in lonely Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford four in the morning beyond desire, or distracted dream night.

Later Spanish-style exotics would line up, line up if you can believe that, with no averted eyes and maybe, hopefully maybe, some exotic-tinged dreams in need of sharing but that is later and so some fluff Irish no nonsense closed streets femme, hankering for her gridiron goliath (nice, right) filled my anguished night. And I too silly to tumble, to tumble to dancing Spanish-eyed senoritas with lust in their hearts and a couple of James Joyce something books on their laps. Jesus, are you crazy.

Such is the new decade a-borning, a-borning but not for me, no jack swagger or reflected glory of jack swagger kick ass cuba , or trying to, kick ass vietnam, kick ass boom-boom soviet union, or bobby goof, sending missiles or dreams to jim crow Mississippi, as they run the table on old tricky dick or some tired imitation of him. Me, I’ll take exotics, or lindos, and grab each and every one as if my life depended on it, and it did, if they every cross my path, my lonely only path. I will sort out the other stuff the remembrance stuff, the right and wrong way stuff, and that faint, ever faint fragrance every woman, including halfback-addled irish (all irish I checked, grandpa proud checked) demons girls sitting next to me in eighth grade art class emits on passing means streets. That last one passed just now on sun-filled forsaken early morning streets will disturb my sleep this night.

***Out In The Film Noir Night- The Library Of America’s Dashiell Hammett

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Dashiell Hammett

Book Review  

Dashiell Hammett: The Crime Novels, Library Of America  

In a recent review of the Library of America’s volume of later crime novels of the other great developer of the modern detective story, Raymond Chandler, I noted that if you wanted to get one thing right in this wicked old world, or the literary segment of the beast, or better, the crime novel sub-segment (okay, okay genre) you know that every detective’s business was mopping up everybody’s trouble, trouble pure and simple. I also noted that while you were getting that right you best put it down that trouble, trouble with a capital T, was Raymond Chandler’s classic hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe’s business. And I would argue that our brother Dashiell Hammett with Sam Spade, Nick Charles and the ubiquitous Continental Op had the same professional problem as witness the collection of crime novels all places under one roof in this Library of America volume of Dashiell Hammett’s major works.     

Our intrepid Hammett private eyes, private dicks, shamuses, gumshoes or whatever you call guys that, privately, and for too little dough scraped off other peoples’ dirt, and did it not badly at that, in your neighborhood. And kept their code of honor intact, well mostly intact, as Sam Spade, for example, tried to do after coming up against a come hither femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon, Nick Charles tried to separate the wheat from the chaff in The Thin Man or as the Continental Op try to almost single-handedly clean up a town that needed some serious cleaning up in The Red Harvest.  And on it went.

Oh yah, about Dashiell Hammett, about the guy who wrote this selection of crime novels with memorable protagonists. Like I said in that review mentioned above he, along with Brother Raymond Chandler turned the dreary gentile drawing-room sleuth by-the-numbers crime novels that dominated the reading market back in the pre-World War II day on its head and gave us tough guy blood and guts detectives we could admire, could get behind, warts and all. Thanks, guys, thanks twice.

[Chandler the author of The Big Sleep and creator of Philip Marlowe, after Sam Spade, maybe the most famous tough guy detective of them all. Marlowe, who come to think of it like Sam, also had a judgment problem when it came to women, women wearing that damn perfume that stops a man, even a hard-boiled detective man cold, although in Marlowe’s case not some femme fatale working out of Frisco town but an assortment of Hollywood women with that same come hither look.]

In Hammett’s case he drew strength from his startling use of language to describe his detectives’ environment much in the way a working detective would use his heightened powers of observation during an investigation, missing nothing. They were able to size up, let’s say, a sizzling blonde, as a statuesque, full-bodied and ravishing dame and then pick her apart as nothing but a low-rent gold-digger. Of course that never stopped them from taking a run at one or two of them himself and then sending them off into the night, or to the clink, to fend for themselves. They also knew how to blow off a small time chiseler, a grifter, as so much flamboyance and hot air not neglecting to notice that said grifter had moisture above his upper lip indicating that he stood in fear of something if only his shadow as he attempted to pull some caper, or tried to pull the wool over their eyes.

The list of such descriptive language goes on and on -sullen bartenders wiping a random whisky glass, flighty chorus girls arm in arm with wrong gee gangsters, femmes fatales wannabes displaying their wares a little too openly, old time geezers, toothless, melting away in some thankless no account job, guys working out of small-time airless no front cheap- jack offices in rundown buildings on the wrong side of town doing, well, doing the best they can. And cops, good cops, bad cops, all with that cop air about them of seen it all, done it all blasé, and by the way spill your guts before the billy- club comes down on your fragile head. (That spill your guts thing, by the way a trait that our detectives seemed organically incapable of doing, except when it suited their purposes. No cop or gangster could force anything out of them, and they tried, believe me they tried. )

At the same time Hammett was a master of setting the details of the space his detectives had to work in- the high hill mansions and the back alley rooming houses (although usually not the burgeoning ranchero middle class locales since apparently that segment of society has not need of his services and therefore no need of a description of their endless sameness and faux gentility). But where Hammett made his mark was in his descriptions of the gentile seedy places, rooming houses with that faint smell of urine, that strong smell of liquor, that loud noise that comes with people living too close together, too close to breath their simple dreams. Or the descriptions of the back alley offices in the rundown buildings that had seen better days populated by the failed dentists, the sly repo men, the penny- ante insurance brokers, the con artists, the flotsam and jetsam of the losers in the great American West night (mainly) just trying to hang on from rent payment to rent payment. Those denizens of these quarters usually had a walk on role, or wound up with two slugs to the head, but Hammett like Chandler knew the type, had the type down solid.

Nor was Chandler above putting a little social commentary in the mouths of his detectives (after all he was very close to various left-wing causes and the American Communist Party and when the red scare night descended in America he paid the price). Reflections on such topics as that very real change after World War I in the kind of swarms that were heading west to populate the American Western shore night. The restless mobsters for broken back east looking to bake out in the southern California sun and other points west while taking over the vast crime markets. The old California money (the gold rush, gold coast, golden era money) befuddled by the all new waves coming in. Above all a strong sense of the rootlessness, the living in the moment, the grabbing while the grabbing was good mentality that offended our old-fashioned detectives’ code of honor.

And while Chandler built his reputation on Marlowe’s fortunes Hammett gives us several all under one roof here to feast on. Enough said.