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From The “Brothers Under The Bridge” Series- Fritz John Taylor’s –“With Juana From Down Sonora Way In Mind”
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:
In the first installment of this series of sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”
The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.
After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.
The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.
Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from 1979 fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.
Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or as is the case here with Fritz John Taylor, got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Some stuff he told me when he started skidding down the pole after riding high for a while. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Fritz’s sign was that of that dark night Juana rose perfume smell. ******* “United States," answered Fritz Taylor to the burly “la migra” U.S. border guard who was whip-lashing the question of nationality a mile a minute at the steady stream of border-entering people, and giving a cursory nod to all but the very most suspect looking characters, the most illegal Mexican- looking if you want to know. Yes, American, Fritz thought, Fritz John Taylor if they looked at his passport, his real passport, although he had other identification with names like John Fitzgerald, Taylor Fitzgerald, and John Tyler on them, as he passed the huge "la migra” U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at El Paso on the American side across from old-time Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, a city in passing that March, 1972 day that looked very much like something out of Orson Welles’ 1950s Touch of Evil, except the automobiles were smaller and less flashy and the graft now more expensive, and no longer guaranteed to grease the rails, the illegal rails; drugs, women, illegals, gambling, fenced goods, you name it. But just then he didn’t want to think about greasing any rails, or anything else illegal for that matter.
Fritz thought again, this time with easier breathing, whether "la migra” had looked at his passport or not, he was glad, glad as hell, to be saying his nationality, his American, gringo, Estados Unidos, call it what you will citizenship, something he never thought possible, not after Vietnam, not after all the shooting and killing of his thirteen month tour of hell (one month R&R included, a month in Hawaii where he thought he must have set the world record for boozing, mostly scotch, low-shelf scotch to make his dough last, dope-sniffing from opium to cocaine to brother and sister, reefer was the least of it, whoring, some paid, some free what did it matter when a man hadhis wanting habits on, whoring running through the Kama Sutra and a couple of other tricks not listed in that volume that one of the girls, a white girl too from respectable parents back on the mainland who was looking for kicks, odd-ball kicks and found a partner, for a while, willing to indulge her, Angelina her name, ask her how she got that tattoo on her upper inner thigh and why, if you ever run across her in Lima, Ohio) except these last three weeks down south of the border had been almost as bad, and no more profitable, Fritz profitable. Now that he breathed gringo air, American air he could tell his story, or tell parts of it because he was not quite sure that parts might not still be inside the statute of limitations, for him or his former confederates. So some stuff was better left unsaid.
Yah, it started in ‘Nam really, Fritz thought, as he traced his life-sized movements back in time while he started for a bus, a gringo bright yellow and green El Paso Transit bus that would take him to a downtown hotel where he could wash the dust of Mexico, wash that clotting dust of the twenty hour bus ride from Cuernavaca off his body, if not his soul. Hell, he confessed to himself, a thing he would be very reluctant to mention to others, others impressed by his publicly impervious persona, if it hadn’t been 'Nam, it could have been any one of a thousand places, or hundred situation a few years back, back when he first caught the mary jane, ganga, herb, weed, call your name joy stick, delight habit, tea was his favorite term of rite though. And then he graduated to girl, cousin cocaine when that became the drug of choice and then mainly cheaper that high-grade reefer.
Or, maybe, it really started in dead-end Clintondale when he graduated from high school and with nothing particular to do, allowed himself, chuckling a little to hear him call it that way now, allowed himself to be drafted when his number came up. And drafted, 1960s drafted, meant nothing but 'Nam, nothing but 'Nam and grunt-hood, and that thirteen months of hell, minus one, the boozing, doping, whoring one. And maybe, just maybe, it was even earlier than Clintondale high school days, days when he just hung around Sammy’s garage, watching him tool up some old Chevy or Dodge to make all the valley boys twist in the wind when early morning “chicken runs” beckoned down around the far end of Squaw Rock, took more days off from school than he should have and maybe spent too much time in the back seat of one of Sammy’s cars down the other end, the lovers’ end of Squaw Rock with older girls, Sammy’s “cast-offs,” that only made him restless, restless to break out of one-horse Clintonville. Or reaching down deep the hard fact that he grew up, grew up desperately poor, in the Clintondale back alley projects and so had spent those precious few years of his life hungry, hungry for something, something easy, something sweet, and something to take the pain away.
But mainly he was looking for something easy. And that something easy pushed him, pushed him like the hard fates of growing up poor, down Mexico way, down Sonora way, mostly, as his liked to hum from a vaguely remembered song, some old time cowboy song, on any one of his twenty or so trips down sur. Until, that is, this last Cuernavaca madness, this time there was no humming, no sing-song Mexican brass band marching humming. But stop right there, Fritz said to himself, if he was ever going to figure what went wrong, desperately wrong on this last, ill-fated trip, he had to come clean and coming clean meant, you know, not only was it about the get to easy street, not only was it to get some tea (and later cousin cocaine like he said) delight to chase the soul pain away, but it was about a woman, and as every guy, every women-loving guy, even honest women-loving guy, will tell you, in the end it is always about a woman.
Always about a woman from hard-hearted Irish Catholic Cecilias like he knew, kid knew with their novena books in one hand and their red dress come hither flick with the other, yes, knew them backwards and forwards, to kicks-loving Angela. Knew the score since from kid time or some other combinations foxed out later but a woman, no question. Although not always about a woman named Juana, his sweet Juana. Although, maybe the way she left him hanging by his thumbs in Mexico City before the fall, not knowing, or maybe caring, of his danger, he should be a little less forgiving. Yah, that’s easy to say, easy off the hellish now tongue, but this was Juana not just some hop-head floozy out for kicks.
Jesus, he could still smell that sweetness, that exotic Spanish sweetness, that rose something fragrance Juana always wore (and don’t tell her if you run into her down Sonora way, and you will if you are looking for grade A dope for sure, drove him as crazy as a loon), that smell of her freshly-washed black hair which got all wavy, naturally wavy, and big so that she looked like some old-time Goya senorita, all severe front but smoldering underneath. And those big laughing eyes, yah, black eyes you won’t forget, or want to. Yes, his thoughts drifted back to Juana, treacherously warm-blooded Juana. And it seems almost sacrilegious thinking of her, sitting on this stinking, hit every bump, crowded, air-fouling bus filled with “wetbacks,” sorry, braceros, okay, going to work, or wherever they go when they are not on these stinking buses.
Yah, Juana, Juana whom he met in Harvard Square when he first got back to the world and was looking to deep-six the memories of that 'Nam thing, deep-six it with dope, mope, cope, and some woman to chase his blues away. And there she was sitting on a bench in Cambridge Common wearing some wild seventy-two colored ankle-length dress that had him mesmerized, that and that rose something fragrance. But that day, that spring 1970 day, what Juana-bonded him was the dope she was selling, selling right there in the open like it was some fresh produce (and it was). Cops no too far off but not bothering anyone except the raggedy drunks, or some kid who took too much acid and they needed to practically scrape him off the Civil War monument that centered the park and get him some medical attention, quick.
See Juana, daughter of fairly well-to-do Mexican “somebodies,” needed dough to keep her in style. He never did get the whole story straight but what was down in Sonora well-to-do was nada in the states. She needed dough, okay, just like any gringa dame. And all of that was just fine by him but Juana was also“connected,” connected through some cousin, to the good dope, the Acapulco Gold and Colombian Red that was primo stuff. Not the oregano-laced stuff that was making the rounds of the Eastern cities and was strictly for the touristas, for the week-end warrior hippies who flooded Harvard Square come Saturday night. So Juana was to good tea like Owsley was to the acid scene, the maestro.
Fitz thought back, as that rickety old bus moved along heading, twenty-seven-stop heading, downtown trying to be honest, honest through that dope-haze rose smell, that black hair and those laughing eyes (and that hard-loving midnight sex they both craved when they were high as kites) about whether it was all that or just the dope in the beginning. Yah, it was the Columbia Red at first. He was just too shattered, 'Nam and Clintondale shattered, to know when he had a woman for the ages in his grasp. But he got“religion” fast. Like every religion though, godly or womanly, there is a price to pay, paid willingly or not, and that price was to become Juana’s “mule” on the Mexico drug runs.
To keep the good dope in stock you had to be willing to make some runs down south of the border. If not, by the time it got to say some New York City middle man, it had been cut so much you might as well have been smoking tea leaves. He could hear himself laugh when she first said that tea leave thing in her efforts to enlist him. But by then he had religion, Juana religion, and he went off on that first trip eyes wide open. And that was probably the problem because it went off without a hitch. Hell, he brought a kilogram over the border in his little green knapsack acting just like any other tourist buying a cheap serape or something.
And like a lot of things done over and over again the trips turned into a routine, a routine though that did not take into consideration some of the greater not-knowing, maybe not knowable things, although he now had his suspicions, things going on, like the cartelization of the international drug trade, like the squeeze out of the small unaffiliated tea ladies, like Juana, and placing them as mere employees like some regular corporate structure bad trip. But the biggest thing was Juana, Juana wanted more and more dough, and that meant bigger shipments, which meant more Fritz risk, and later Fritz and Tommy risk (Tommy, ah, let’s just leave it at Tommy, rest his soul, face down in some Cuernavaca muddy craven back alley with two slugs in his back from when some cartel guy got jumpy when Tommy moved the wrong way, or maybe just moved when el jefe was present as thing went awry). And on this last trip it mean no more friendly Sonora lazy, hazy, getting high off some free AAA perfecto weed after the deal was made and then leisurely taking a plane (a plane for chrissakes) from some Mexican city to Los Angeles, or Dallas, depending on the connections. And then home.
This time, this time the deal was going down in Cuernavaca, in a church, or rather in some side room of a church, Santa Maria’s Chapel, in downtown Cuernavaca, maybe you know it if you have been there it's kind of famous. He didn’t like the switch, but only because it was out of the routine, a habit he learned in ‘Nam and that saved him more than once. What he didn’t know, and what his connections on the other side should have known (and maybe did, but he was not thinking about that part right that minute) was that the Federales, instead of chasing Pancho Villa’s ghost like they should have been doing, were driving hard (prompted by the gringo DEA) to close down Cuernavaca, just then starting to become the axis of the cartels further south.
And what he also didn’t know, until too late, was that Juana, getting some kind of information from some well-connected source in the states, had fled to Mexico, first Mexico City where he had met her to make connections further south, and then back to her hometown of Sonora he heard later. So when the deal in Cuernavaca went sour, after he learned at the almost the last minute that the deal was “fixed,” he headed Norte on the first bus, first to Mexico City and then to El Paso. And there he was, now alighting from that yellow green bus, ready to walk into that fresh soap. As he got off he though he staggered for a minute, staggered in some kind of fog, as he “smelled,” smelled, that rose fragrance something in the air. He said to himself, yah, I guess it's still like that with Juana. If you read this and are down Sonora way and see her tell her Fritz said hello. ******* Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
I’m all alone in
this world, she said,
Ain’t got nobody to share my bed,
Ain’t got nobody to hold my hand—
The truth of the matter’s
I ain’t got no man.
Big Boy opened his mouth and said,
Trouble with you is
You ain’t got no head!
If you had a head and used your mind
You could have me with you
All the time.
She answered, Babe, what must I do?
He said, Share your bed—
And your money, too.
Langston Hughes
The whole world knew, or at least
the important parts of that world, that summer of 2012 downtown Boston world
(near the Common say from the Public Gardens to Newbury Street but also near
birth place Columbus Avenue), knew that Larry Johnson was Ms. Loretta
Lawrence’s every day man (and it goes without saying her every night man too).
Make no mistake, girls, women, even though they didn’t hold hands in public or
throw public kisses at each other, they were an an “item.” Loretta at five-ten
and rail thin, fashion model day thin and what in the old days was called a
very light “high yella,” mixed blood from some old South Mister’s wanting
habits and some “passing for white” along the way but in any case very highly
sought after just then for coffee table magazine shoots didn’t look like
trouble, but anytime a a woman gave Larry a side glance look Loretta’s eyes
said keep your hands off. And they did, those in the fashion industry, mostly
her fellow models, and maybe a few longing sidewinder guy designers too. But
somebody had Larry’s attention and Loretta was going to get to the bottom of
it.
It had all started back in
February when Larry asked her for a hundred dollars one night, out of the blue.
Now Larry had been on a tough stretch ever since the financial collapse in 2008
(although it only bagged him in early 2010) when the markets went crazy and he
got caught short, and since business was bad he eventually got that old dreaded
pink slip from the big finance company that had hired him straight out of the
Harvard Business School MBA program to diversify their employee mix. (Larry
found out later that one manager, who had publicly said he was crazy to get him
had told a friend of his that he hired Larry to add “color” to his staff). Nobody
was hiring so he had just been kind of living off his old time bonuses, and a
little of this and that.
Funny, funny now, Larry and
Loretta had met at a bar down in the financial district where he had stopped
off for a drink after passing his resume around for about the umpteenth time
and she had just finished a shoot (for a cosmetic company as they were trying
to expand their markets that had keyed on her for her ravishing looks, brown hair,
brown eyes, very light brownish high cheek-boned skin which was a plus since
whatever diversity there was in the fashion market the hard fact was there was
a drop off when dark as Africa black women graced the covers of most magazines
or other advertising venues) down near the water at International Place and her
photographer had offered to buy her a drink. His eyes met hers, her eyes met
his in return and before anyone really knew it he had moved in on her like
something out of one of those old time thriller romance novels that you read
and at the end can’t believe that you spent your good hard-earned rest reading
and cannot believe either that the “she” of the story would be so stupid in the
end to have gotten mixed-up with a wacko like that.
Larry had moved in on her too,
literally, after a few weeks of downy billow talk and his argument (which she
was okay with, she wasn’t saying she wasn’t) that two could live as cheaply as
one (which isn’t true but close enough) and he could cut down on expenses during
his rough patch. And it was nice, nice to have a man around, with man’s things,
a man’s scent, and a man’s silly little vanities that she had not experienced
since Phil (she would not use a last name because Phil was well known, too
well-known) had left her a few years back. Every once in a while though she
would notice a ten here or a twenty there missing from her pocketbook but
figured that either she, spendthrift she, had spent it on some forgotten bobble
or Larry had taken it for some household thing and didn’t report the fact
(although she, they, had insisted on a collective counting of expenses). Then
came the night of Larry’s official request. And she gave it to him, a loan, a
loan was all it was. The first time.
After a few more requests for dough,
and the granting of those requests, Loretta started to try to figure out what
the heck he was doing with the dough (he said it was to help get a job, or he
needed new shirts, or something, something different each time). Then she
thought about Phil, not about the money part (Jesus, he had thrown his dough at
her when he was strong for her, called her his little money-machine and
laughed) but as he started losing interest in her he stopped showering the
money because he was seeing another woman on the side and showering it on her
(that “her” being a friend of hers, and not even beautiful, just smart). And so
she started thinking that Larry, Larry the guy who was sharig her bed every
night (every night so it had to be a daytime dalliance), was having another
affair. She resolved that Larry would get no more money, no more loans, as he
called them and if she found out that he was two-timing her that woman had
better leave town because, two-timer or not, bum-of-the-mouth or not, he was
her man and she had told one and all hands off. And she meant it.
Break With The Two Parties Of Wall Street- A Cautionary Tale In The Age Of Bernie Sanders -New Hampshire Postscript
By Frank Jackman Fall 2012
Bradley Fox had to laugh when he heard the news about Sam Lowell. Sam had told Bradley a few years ago, sometime in the early fall of 2012 amid the hurly-burly of that presidential election year, when they had first met at an anti-war rally on Boston Common after the very first rumblings of going to yet another war, this time in Syria, was uppermost on the Democrat Obama Administration’s mind that he continued to hold the Democratic Party responsible along with the Republicans for their continuing bi-partisan support for every war that comes along, every war opportunity as well it had seemed of late. Sam had said that while the Democrats “talk the talk” about avoiding war, or stopping the onslaught of the military budget as a drag on the possibilities of taking care of some serious domestic social questions when the deal goes down they en masse vote for the war budgets. The big general one, you know the six or seven hundred billion dollar one, AND the supplemental ones for operations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or wherever else they want to throw some mud. In short, they don’t as a party, as a capitalist party the way Sam had put it to Bradley that day “walk the walk.”
That pro-imperial policy by the Democrats meant that under no conditions could Sam support any Democratic Party candidate- at the federal level anyway. Had said to Bradley during the course of their conversation that had been his position at least since the early 1970s when he had gone through hell in the Army in his opposition to the Vietnam War and saw the Democrats as complicit as the Republicans when they did not make motions to cut off the Vietnam War budget requests. Consistent anyway on both side, Sam calling for “no” votes to the war budgets and the Democrats (with few exceptions) giving up the ghost with all arms and feet.
That was then but this was now, now being 2016 and according to Bradley’s sense of things, and what he had supposed was Sam’s, yet another bummer of presidential campaign between Democrats and Republicans in America has begun to unfold. And guess who has since the first of the year been in the thick of the campaigning supporting Bernie Sanders as he makes a bid to be the Democratic Party candidate. Not as an Independent which would have given Sanders a nod for support but as a tried and true candidate right in the heart of the beast. Yes, one Samuel Lowell. So all that business about being anti-war, forcing whoever wanted his vote, or support, having to take the pledge to vote against the war budgets as a minimum step in the right direction was so much hot air when the deal went down.
Sam’s reasoning and the pressures of politics require a little explaining though in order that others who might be thinking of breaking their opposition to the Democrats (the myriad Republicans running helter-skelter are beyond the pale) might take a little pause before leaping into the abyss. That is the idea Bradley had in mind after he had heard the news from Bart Webber when he thought about how a stand-up anti-war guy like Sam could fall down like that. They, remember, had of all things met at an anti-war rally. Bradley, considerably younger than Sam, had only in 2012 begun to feel queasy about where this country was going, queasy too about the endless wars even under an administration of a guy who won the Nobel Peace Prize and when the war cries to get knee-deep into the Syrian Civil War began to be heard he had decided that he needed express public opposition to those efforts. He had heard through the Internet grapevine that a bunch of peace organizations like Peace Action, United for Justice and Peace, the Quakers and others were planning a rally for a Saturday in later September on the Common to express their opposition.
Bradley, not used to public demonstrations of his political views (then), was a little leery as he emerged from the depth of the Park Street subway station where there were about fifty people milling around, carrying signs mostly anti-war signs against the continuing wars in various spots in the Middle East. He had not expected a huge crowd, hadn’t since about 2002 when the war drums for Iraq had started and millions, not including him then, had marched in the streets of the world in a desperate attempt to stop a bloody senseless war there but he had been intimidated by the smallness of the rally a bit. Also by the flotsam and jetsam that pass through that historic protest area on their ways to other business or as with the homeless just hanging out. Then a guy wearing a Veterans For Peace shirt, carrying a VFP dove-emblemed flag swirling in the wind, a Socialist Alternative button on his jacket and a small stack of leaflets came up to him and asked if he was there for the demonstration. He had said “yes.”
That was Bradley’s introduction to one Sam Lowell, although that would not be their last meeting, not by a longshot. That day though Sam had presented some important ideas to Bradley about the nature of American society, about how almost all the establishment power structure went along with the endless wars and that it was the wars among other things inherent in the inequities of the capitalist system that led to the bloodshed and led to not getting lots of more positive things done. Bradley listened with some interest because some of what Sam had to say were things that had been upsetting him of late. The fact that Sam was an actual veteran didn’t hurt either, the voice from those who served carried weight with him (although when he found out the details of Sam’s story later he had more admiration for anti-war veterans who didn’t fold). Then Sam passed Bradley a leaflet (see about) which took him aback for a moment.
The headline-“Break with the two parties of Wall Street” confused him. See Bradley had for the four pervious election cycles since he had come of voting age had voted for the Democratic candidate for President, saw that as his only option and something he had been proud of in 2008 when he cast a vote for the first black President. He had asked Sam what that meant, asked him who he would be voting for. That day Sam gave him a short explanation since he had other responsibilities day around organizing the rally about why he had broken with the two parties. Had mentioned as well why as a small gesture in the right direction he knew he would be voting for the Green Party candidate-Jill Stein. He also told Sam that the organization he supported (although he said he was not yet a member) Socialist Alternative was doing the same thing.
Sam also suggested that if Bradley wanted to know more about why he (and SA) were not voting for the Democrats (for Obama) he would be happy to meet with him and discuss that matter. Bradley gave Sam his e-mail address and Sam a few days later followed up with an e-mail inviting him to meet at his convenience. As for the rally he had been glad that he had gone, glad that he had made that small public anti-war gesture and seriously thought about meeting up with Sam.
In 1969 Sam had been drafted into the Army and that event had changed everything. He had allowed himself to be inducted which he found out after a very few days of basic training was a mistake. All the signs were that he was being trained for nothing else but to kill “commies” in Vietnam. No go. He had no quarrel with Vietnamese peasants among other reasons. Without going into all the details Sam when he had gotten orders for Vietnam after completion of Advanced Infantry Training (and that training signified only one thing because Uncle Sam only needed, desperately needed, grunts, foot soldiers, cannon-fodder in one place that year-Vietnam) decided to refuse to go. He wound up spending the better part of the next two years in the stockade, or waiting to go into the stockade, although he finally got out with an honorable discharge ordered by the federal district court in New Jersey where he was being held in detention at Fort Dix. That critical experience, and the reflection that after all the Democrats, his previously beloved Democrats had been neck-deep in the escalations as well as Nixon, was the initial crack. Further reading, thinking, association with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, associations with various independent socialist types and later in the 1980s Veterans for Peace flushed out the other reasons for breaking with the Democrats (the Republican wing of the two parties of Wall Street was so much hot air since he would then, and now, never consider supporting that group of heartless bastards).
Sam and Bradley went back and forth that day for a couple of hours and Sam suggested that if Bradley was looking for more information that Socialist Alternative had study groups which he could join and learn more about their perspective. Bradley had attended several classes before he decided that while he would continue to be a public anti-war activist (and other issues too like the death penalty, the fight for a higher minimum wage, stopping immigrant deportations and the like) that he preferred not to belong to any organization since with three growing kids he would not have the time necessary to devote whole-heartedly to the cause. He did later run into Sam (and others as well since it is a very small cadre of those who are interested in fighting injustices in the public square these days) at many events and went out of his way to attend VFP-sponsored events.
Bradley also took to heart what Sam had said about the two parties of Wall Street although he never really got used to that way of putting it and did not vote for President in the 2012 election cycle (he could not see the gesture of voting for the Green Party as anything but a futile gesture). He had not planned and continues to plan not to vote for President in the 2016 election cycle, although he sorely wished that Bernie Sanders had decided on an independent candidacy so he could work for him.
As for Sam, Bradley after he had heard that Sam was working for Sanders in New Hampshire canvassing voters in that state (as was Socialist Alternative which was also neck-deep in that campaign), decided to go to Park Street Station where a weekly anti-war rally is held every Saturday (and has been since something like 1998) and where he expected to find Sam standing with his VFP flag. And he was there. When Bradley asked him what in the world had changed about the Democratic Party of Wall Street since the last election cycle he said “that is where the kids are, that is who we who are older have to get to, hell, Bernie is the only game in town, the only one who will stand up to the beasts.” Yeah, Bradley thought “that was then but this is now” as he remembered that final paragraph from that leaflet that he still had in his home office desk drawer.(See above and read and weep.)
Iowa Postscript-Frank Jackman
You already know from the above that Sam Lowell had gone overboard about the supporting the Bernie Sanders Democratic Party Presidential nomination after years, many years, of calling for a break with that party (the Republicans don’t count in this universe, no reason since about 1864 to support them so no reason to call for a break with that organization except for symmetry) and the creation of a labor party to address the pressing issues of the working-class and other oppressed. Immediately after the Iowa caucuses on February 1st he called up his old high school friend Bart Webber whom he is still in contact with and tried to talk him into going up to Manchester, New Hampshire the next day with him and his longtime companion Laura Perkins to canvass for Bernie in that city in front of the upcoming February 9th presidential primary. He told Bart that with the groundswell for Bernie in Iowa that he planned to go all out and stay in Manchester until the primary was over. Bart told him he was starting to think about Bernie a bit with all the hubbub but that he couldn’t take the time off to go when he was not sure that he still didn’t prefer the slogan-break from the Democrats this presidential season when it might do some good. As for Bradley Fox he had not wavered from the “break from the Democrats” slogan that he had learned at the feet of that same Sam Lowell in sunnier days. How the mighty have fallen.
New Hampshire Postscript-Frank Jackman
You already know from the story above the Post-Iowa Postscript that Sam Lowell had gone overboard about the supporting the Bernie Sanders Democratic Party Presidential nomination after years, many years, of calling for a break with that party (the Republicans don’t count in this universe, no reason since about 1864 to support them so no reason to call for a break with that organization except for symmetry) and the creation of a labor party to address the pressing issues of the working-class and other oppressed.
You also know that immediately after the Iowa caucuses on February 1st he had called up his old high school friend Bart Webber whom he is still in contact with and tried to talk him into going up to Manchester, New Hampshire the next day in order to go all out for Bernie (and to beat Hilary since a n increasing part of his agitation was pure Clinton fatigue after over a quarter of a century of hearing that name and ten million lame excuses for whatever evil things they did personally, but more importantly, politically, especially that Hilary 2002 Senate vote for war in Iraq).
In the case he, they did so canvassing the Manchester neighborhoods that he had not been too since his days with the Eugene McCarthy campaign in blessed 1968 seeing these days the dwindling Irish remnant which had because of their poor circumstances unable to leave the city as the new waves of immigrants came pouring in. Seeing too the dwindling French-Canadians who had come down generations ago from benighted Quebec to work in the now long gone mills along the Merrimack River. And added to the mix the Africans from all over that continent and the Caribs from all over that sea (all except the Syrians who desperately need to get out and would be a welcome addition to the town Sam thought). He, they had worked the telephones calling until late in the night those who might head Bernie’s way. They had been surprised how many numbers were cellphone numbers after the callees asked how they had gotten their numbers since there is no cellphone directory. Somebody in the campaign had the thing “wired” alright. They also on primary night were in the ballroom as they returns came in and Bernie had “kicked ass.” A good night although after a week in a Best Western motel both agreed that heading home that night was better than staying another day.
Bart after Iowa had told Sam he was starting to think about Bernie a bit with all the hubbub but that he couldn’t take the time off to go when he was not sure that he still didn’t prefer the slogan-break from the Democrats this presidential season when it might do some good. The pressure from Sam and others, almost everybody he knew from peacenik veterans to left-liberals to hard-core socialists well to the left of anything Bernie was saying had been contacting him to finally get on board before “the train left the station.” He was wavering by the day and would have to make a decision soon in light of the upcoming Massachusetts primary on Super-Tuesday March 1stsince if he was going in he was not going to just vote but volunteer as Sam and Laura ha done. As for Bradley Fox, who has come to this Bernie thing as a flash in the pan when the real deal goes down, he has not wavered from the “break from the Democrats” slogan that he had learned at the feet of that same Sam Lowell in sunnier days. How the mighty have fallen.
Out In The Corner Boy Night- With S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders In Mind
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Outsiders, starring Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise and a billion brat pack guys, from the novel of the same by S.E. Hinton, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 1983
Jack Callahan was not much into films, never had been, had always done the movie bit when he was dating Chrissie McNamara in high school because she had insisted before he had gotten his driver’s license that they could not always go to the seawall at the far end of Adamsville Beach to “make out” and needed the “privacy” of the balcony at the Strand Theater up on Beale Street once in a while (that Chrissie initial match-up whom he eventually married and is still married to is a story in its own right but for another time). Had insisted as well that they occasionally go to the drive-in theater, usually as a double date, to save her, their, reputations by not always being seen at that far end of Adamsville Beach, the local lovers’ lane with the fogged up car windshields and the discarded condoms on the ground, every freaking night. So he might have seen a bunch of films but he really did not pay attention all that much to plot or nuance. So it was odd that recently when Chrissie ordered the DVD of Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s classic tale of teen alienation and angst, corner boy version, The Outsiders, through Netflix for them to watch one Saturday night when they were not minding the grandkids after she had read the blurb of what the film was about that he was totally mesmerized by what he saw from frame number one.
The reason Jack was fascinated was obvious, obvious if you knew Jack, or rather knew Jack back in his coming of age days in the early 1960s when despite his hard-fought status as a wild man running back for the championship Red Raiders high school football team and thus a hero on those lovely granite grey autumn Saturday afternoons at Veterans’ Stadium he was nothing but an in-your-face corner boy under the command of corner boy leader Frankie Riley, a true wild boy in his own right. While today Jack Callahan is Mister Toyota of Eastern Massachusetts (and Chrissie Mrs. Toyota) with his busy car dealership down in Hingham and a respectable and doting grandfather (don’t use that word with his children though they would laugh in your face) back then he was as likely to be doing a midnight creep to burgle some Mayfair swell home as to be running over awestruck on the field football defenders. After they had watched the film Jack, a drink of white wine in his hand (in the old days nothing by low-rent rotgut whiskies when he was poor and high-end Chivas when he started making money), he surprised Chrissie by wanting to unburden himself of what he saw. Chrissie, knowing this was important to Jack as she always did when on those rare occasions he felt like expanding on some subject sat there in smiling silence (and also was ready in listen in silence already knowing of Jack’s corner boy exploits with that damn Frankie Riley whom she never told Jack had made a million passes at her, a couple of those times when she almost took the ride, took Frankie’s ride, before she reined him in Senior year when that State U football scholarship was on the line).
Jack started off waxing philosophical something he was organically incapable of in the old days by saying, “Hey, even corner boys need their fun, need an outlet for all that fury that they have inside them since they came into a world that they had no say in creating. Of course we all come into the world that way with no say but the difference is these guys, my guys if you want to know, came in with the short end of the stick, came in with small voices getting dimmer like that guy you made me read one time because you thought I would like what he had to say, Algren right [Chrissie: right], and that made all the difference. Take Pony Boy, a good looking kid, young, too young to be a corner boy just like I was at twelve when Frankie Riley first took me under his wing but what are you going to do when the deck is stacked against you and everything around you is divided into corner boys and the others. Pony Boy was trying to break out and the only way he had to do that was to write his brains out, putting it down on paper. You know me I could never do that writing stuff so before as you always say “took me in hand” I was putty in Frankie’s hands. No, I really wanted to do what I did because my wanting habits would have filled a stadium, maybe more.”
“Karl Marx was nothing but a creep and a damn red like that mad man Lenin and crazy Trotsky back then now too if anybody still pays the slightest attention to what those guys had to say and I hope they don’tbut he was a great guy for throwing class-based terms around when you think about it called Pony’s people, my people, my poor father going from pillar to post taking any job he could find to keep me and my four younger sisters from the poor house and my mother filling donuts, Jesus, filling donuts at Java Joe’s Coffee Shop to help out, the workers and the others, the capitalists, or their legion of hangers-on like your damn father, the damn bank executive, who hated me from day one because he felt I didn’t have any “prospects” before I rolled over opposing football teams, really the proletariat and the bourgeoisie if you wanted to get pretty about it.”
“This S.E. Hinton who wrote the book and I think I will go to the library and take it out when I take little Johnny and Jasmine there next week or whoever wrote the screenplay really cut it another way, the “greasers” coming hard out of hot rod cars and oil- stained gas stations all slicked up just like we were although they really did wear their hair way too long out in the sticks so maybe they didn’t have barber shops there where they lived and the “socs,” your people really you know from Beech Street like you.The guys with the expensive sweaters and slacks not from Robert Hall or Walmart and the gals with their cashmere sweaters, starched white collar shirts, you know what I mean, and flouncy skirts just like you [Chrissie laughed.], oh yeah, and their no touch church books in hand just when thing got interesting on Friday night. [Chrissie laughs again then silently blushed thinking about that first time she let Jack “do the do,” have sex with her, as they used to call it in North Adamsville under the influence of a Howlin’ Wolf song when it was not clear who was jumping who or whom.] Call it greaser and soc but it was all the same as Marx called it just a younger version waiting to take over. And there the lines still stand whether in our growing up hometown of North Adamsville, down in Carver with Sam Eaton, New York City, Chicago, Baton Rouge or Podunk, Oklahoma where Pony Boy and crowd were trying to breathe.”
“You saw how it played out in Oklahoma but you know as well as I do it really could have been all of the other places mentioned in the hard-ass young and lost early 1960s when the whole world, or at least the whole American world, make that the whole American up-ward mobile middle class world was worried that their sons would wind up as corner boys and, more importantly that their virtuous daughters, you, would wind up in some back seat or down at some forlorn lovers’ lane with one of the refugees.” [Chrissie silently blushed again remembering that scene in Salducci’s Pizza Parlor where Frankie, Jack and the boys hung out on dough-less, girl-less Friday nights when she came clamoring in “no holds barred” and plopped herself on Jack’s lap daring him to kick her off after she got tired of him not responding to her come hither pleas.]
“Yeah, it played out every which way but here is where the whole thing tumbles. Do you remember the first scenes that take place in that nicely democratic Drive-In movie theater? [Chrissie nods.] They aren’t around much anymore except out in Podunk places like Olde Saco, Maine where my old friend Josh Breslin, an old corner boy himself hanging around with working class French-Canadian mill guys where he grew up recently checked out the remnants of that scene in that still operating venue up there although he said a lot like who was there, mostly families with kids, and the fact you had to tune into a radio station to hear the sound rather than the loudspeaker that you put on the side window of your car half the time especially if you were drunk or sleepy you would rip out when you went to drive off had changed, but back in the early 1960s as you know they along with drive-in restaurants were magnets for teens, all teens, earlier really but that was toddler time and I only want to talk about teenage coming of age time now since I am talking about corner boys.”
“Jesus, whoever figured it out either knew the scene personally or had it checked out pretty nicely, had the whole scene pegged, pegged right. Pony Boy, hey we all had monikers, all the guys, back then right, mine if you remember for a while was Running Bear after the song not because of my football prowess, Buzz, the Frankie Riley of the gang, and the ill-fated runt of the litter Johnny snuck under the fence in the back of the drive-in. Automatically that tells you if the “greaser” hair-dos and cut-off tee-shirts don’t that these guys are “from hunger” even if they had the dough for admission. One of the “perks” of being poor is that you don’t worry about the niceties of paying except when John Law is on your back because you figure the world owes you. I know I did when I first started doing the “clip” and later when we were hitting those Mayfair swell houses.
“So they walk in like they own the place, smoking cigarettes anxiously a mile a minute like we used to do. I remember that first time you smoked that Camel I offered you and you choked and almost turned blue. Although that didn’t stop us from lighting up a blade for years after and it took a civil war practically to get you, then me, to quit, quit for good. They go sit in the public seats that every drive-in had back then when the cars got too hot or your date wasn’t. [Chrissie smiles no blush this time.]Along the way a classic drive-in scene developed remember when a bunch of kids popped out of the trunk of a big ass old car like they made back then. Some Ford or Chevy. Every group of kids pulled that trick at least once. You never let me do it when we double-dated though. Remember we used to pay separate admissions until the management got wise so everybody would pile kids in trunks and back seat wells and pay maybe two admissions then split everything later. Frankie Riley one time, this is before you landed on my lap in Salducci’s, drove into the freaking drive-in like he was by himself one time, the drive-in alone if you can believe that. The guy had balls, no question. [Chrissie: severe look.] Paid one admission and the taker didn’t blink. We had five guys and two girls in back that night. Beautiful. [Chrissie puts on her classic scorn look which after forty some years told Jack to move on quickly from that subject.] That was great until the balloon burst and you paid by the carload.”
“So naturally Buzz the leader of the pack just like Frankie started hitting on a couple of “soc” girls, you know the ones with the starched shirts like you then and not the ones with the form-fitting cashmere sweaters who are helping fog up some back seat windows far away from the open air seat crowd. [Chrissie silently blushed again thinking about that night when Jack was away at a college tour and she took up Frankie’s good friend offer to go to the Drive-In, the back end fogged up area, and after a couple of drinks she almost let him have his way with her but jumped out just like Scarlett or whatever her name was in the movie. Frankie could be very smooth when he wanted to be, when he wanted something especially when he knew she and Jack had already been “doing the do.”]
“No go, no go between greaser and soc even in the democratic Drive-In. Why? Because the social order in school would not permit such an outlandish arrangement. Even when Pony Boy, who played it cool, took that good-looking redheaded soc to the inevitable intermission stand with its stale popcorn, fizz-less sodas, cardboard hamburgers and sullen hot dogs [Chrissie laughed a knowing laugh.] he felt uncomfortable staying too long because people might talk, meaning the inevitable teenage “grapevine” would be hot off the wire. You know from just that scene they there are two different worlds working to a bad end.” [Chrissie knew because she had had to endure not only the “no prospects” noise from her parents which was bad enough but also from her soc girlfriends for a while, especially sophomore year when all social relationships are cemented for the life of the class until graduation. Only when Jack started ripping defenses apart on Saturday afternoons and a couple of those girlfriends wondered out loud what he would be like in bed did that noise die down, did Jack get some acceptance from her crowd but she always had to watch her step, watch out that they did not find out about the midnight creeps and the other stuff that let Jack have dough to take her out without snide comment.]
“After that scene you can tell no matter what somebody, some greaser is going to take a fall.That is the screen-writer part to make the story interesting so they build up the tensions between the soc and greaser guys, build it up into a war practically. Along the way ill-fated Johnny trying to save Pony Boy does in a soc, kills him and that part leads away from my experiences but back on the corner we heard about one gang doing in another, having rumbles and stuff but it was corner against corner, greaser against greaser okay, not one class against the other, it just didn’t happen. You know the soc guys at school were creampuffs, were afraid of their own shadows, would walk, hell, run across the street if they saw two corner boys walking their way. I had to laugh at that part. If you hadn’t landed on my lap that night I probably would have found some sexy cashmere sweater greaser girl famous for blowjobs and bitchiness, and that would have been that. I wasn’t looking for soc girls although you know I was looking for you all the times we talked in class and everything.” [Chrissie thought just then or Ellen or Marie, a couple of her more adventurous soc girlfriends, the wonderers, would have jumped on his lap no question.]
“You know though despite the differences in the story line from what you know was happening to me before you stepped in that lead character, that Buzz, really reminded me of Frankie Riley, reminded me of how that bloody son of bitch Irishman’s son tempted the fates, tempted his fates. [Chrissie turned pale. This is the moment she has dreaded all evening since very early on she could tell Jack was working in his mind the very real similarities between Buzz, played by Matt Dillon who looked very much like Frankie, too much.] Frankie early on, hell, in junior high started out to be the king hell corner boy, was the guy who started half the guys in school smoking because it was “cool,” started the “clip,” and was the mastermind behind the Mayfair swells midnight creeps although Peter Markin was the guy who carried the plans out because Frankie was usually too drunk to lead the expeditions.”
“You know how persuasive Frankie could be, how much of a cutting edge charmer he could be if he put his mind to it and it was in his interest. I know he was after you, or thought about it, thought about it for a second until I told him I would cut his heart out and hand it to him on a platter if he did so after that night you landed on my lap.” [Chrissie blushed her seventh blush thinking again about that Drive-In episode senior year when Frankie had half her clothes off and his hand moving up her thigh toward her vagina and if he had made it before she bailed out who knows what would have happened for she believed Jack really would have done murder and mayhem to Frankie no matter what binds tied them together.]
“Yeah, the Buzzes and Frankies of the world always try to go way outside their comfort zones, try to go outside the small pond they rule. Buzz pulled some hare-brained half thought out robbery and wound up very dead in the sullen stinking oil-soaked streets of Podunk, Oklahoma. Frankie, rest his soul, wound up face down in North Carolina, Ashville, after getting a serious cocaine habit a few years out of high school and after pulling a couple of small armed robberies when he “high as a kite” tried to rob a White Hen convenience store unarmed. [Chrissie sighed, yes, rest in peace, Frankie, rest in peace.]
