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*****President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Updated-September 2015
A while back, maybe a year or so ago, I was asked by a fellow member of Veterans For Peace at a monthly meeting in Cambridge about the status of the case of Chelsea Manning since he knew that I had been seriously involved with publicizing her case and he had not heard much about the case since she had been convicted in August 2013 (on some twenty counts including several Espionage Act counts, the Act itself, as it relates to Chelsea and its constitutionality will be the basis for one of her issues on appeal) and sentenced by Judge Lind to thirty-five years imprisonment to be served at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. (She had already been held for three years before trial, the subject of another appeals issue and as of May 2015 had served five years altogether thus far and will be formally eligible for parole in the not too distant future although usually the first parole decision is negative).
That had also been the time immediately after the sentencing when Private Manning announced to the world her sexual identity and turned from Bradley to Chelsea. The question of her sexual identity was a situation than some of us already had known about while respecting Private Manning’s, Chelsea’s, and those of her ardent supporters at Courage to Resist and elsewhere the subject of her sexual identity was kept in the background so the reasons she was being tried would not be muddled and for which she was savagely fighting in her defense would not be warped by the mainstream media into some kind of identity politics circus.
I had responded to my fellow member that, as usual in such super-charged cases involving political prisoners, and there is no question that Private Manning is one despite the fact that every United States Attorney-General including the one in charge during her trial claims that there are no such prisoners in American jails only law-breakers, once the media glare of the trial and sentencing is over the case usually falls by the wayside into the media vacuum while the appellate process proceed on over the next several years.
At that point I informed him of the details that I did know. Chelsea immediately after sentencing had been put in the normal isolation before being put in with the general population at Fort Leavenworth. She seemed to be adjusting according to her trial defense lawyer to the pall of prison life as best she could. Later she had gone to a Kansas civil court to have her name changed from Bradley to Chelsea Elizabeth which the judge granted although the Army for a period insisted that mail be sent to her under her former male Bradley name. Her request for hormone therapies to help reflect her sexual identity had either been denied or the process stonewalled despite the Army’s own medical and psychiatric personnel stating in court that she was entitled to such measures.
At the beginning of 2014 the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, General Buchanan, who had the authority to grant clemency on the sentence part of the case, despite the unusual severity of the sentence, had denied Chelsea any relief from the onerous sentence imposed by Judge Lind.
Locally on Veterans Day 2013, the first such event after her sentencing we had honored Chelsea at the annual VFP Armistice Day program and in December 2013 held a stand-out celebrating Chelsea’s birthday (as we did in December 2014 and will do again this December of 2015). Most important of the information I gave my fellow VFPer was that Chelsea’s case going forward to the Army appellate process was being handled by nationally renowned lawyer Nancy Hollander and her associate Vincent Ward. Thus the case was in the long drawn out legal phase that does not generally get much coverage except by those interested in the case like well-known Vietnam era Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, various progressive groups which either nominated or rewarded her with their prizes, and the organization that has steadfastly continued to handle her case’s publicity and raising financial aid for her appeal, Courage to Resist (an organization dedicated to publicizing the cases of other military resisters as well).
At our February 2015 monthly meeting that same VFPer asked me if it was true that as he had heard the Army, or the Department of Defense, had ordered Chelsea’s hormone therapy treatments to begin. I informed him after a long battle, including an ACLU suit ordering such relief, that information was true and she had started her treatments a month previously. I also informed him that the Army had thus far refused her request to have an appropriate length woman’s hair-do. On the legal front the case was still being reviewed for issues to be presented which could overturn the lower court decision in the Army Court Of Criminal Appeals by the lawyers and the actual writing of the appeal was upcoming (expected in the Winter, 2016) . A seemingly small but very important victory on that front was that after the seemingly inevitable stonewalling on every issue the Army had agreed to use feminine or neutral pronoun in any documentation concerning Private Manning’s case. The lawyers had in June 2014 also been successful in avoiding the attempt by the Department of Defense to place Chelsea in a civil facility as they tried to foist their “problem” elsewhere.
On the political front Chelsea continued to receive awards, and after a fierce battle in 2013 was finally in 2014 made an honorary grand marshal of the very important GLBTQ Pride Parade in San Francisco (and had a contingent supporting her freedom again in the 2015 parade). Recently she has been given status as a contributor to the Guardian newspaper, a newspaper that was central to the fight by fellow whistle-blower Edward Snowden, where her first contribution was a very appropriate piece on what the fate of the notorious CIA torturers should be, having herself faced such torture down in Quantico adding to the poignancy of that suggestion. More recently she has written articles about the dire situation in the Middle East and the American government’s inability to learn any lessons from history and a call on the military to stop the practice of denying transgender people the right to serve. (Not everybody agrees with her positon in the transgender community or the VFP but she is out there in front with it.)
[Maybe most important of all in this social networking, social media, texting world of the young (mostly) Chelsea has a twitter account-@xychelsea
Locally over the past two year we have marched for Chelsea in the Boston Pride Parade, commemorated her fourth year in prison last May [2014] and the fifth this year with a vigil, honored her again on Armistice Day 2014, celebrated her 27th birthday in December with a rally (as we did this past December for her 28th birthday).
More recently big campaigns by Courage To Resist and the Press Freedom Foundation have almost raised the $200, 000 needed (maybe more by now) to give her legal team adequate resources during her appeals process (first step, after looking over the one hundred plus volumes of her pre-trial and trial hearings, the Army Court Of Criminal Appeal)
Recently although in this case more ominously and more threateningly Chelsea has been charged and convicted of several prison infractions (among them having a copy of the now famous Vanity Fair with Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner’s photograph on the cover) which could affect her parole status and other considerations going forward.
We have continued to urge one and all to sign the on-line Amnesty International petition asking President Obama to grant an immediate pardon as well as asking that those with the means sent financial contributions to Courage To Resist to help with her legal expenses.
After I got home that night of the meeting I began thinking that a lot has happened over the past couple of years in the Chelsea Manning case and that I should made what I know more generally available to more than my local VFPers. I do so here, and gladly. Just one more example of our fervent belief that as we have said all along in Veterans for Peace and elsewhere- we will not leave our sister behind… More later.
****The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-The Cause That Passes Through The Prison Walls-With The Old International Labor Defense in Mind
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Sam Eaton had to laugh when he heard the news, the news live and in person on cable news by the current Attorney-General of the United States (no names needed since this is the position of every one of those guys, and now gals when primed by curious reporters who if they have done their homework already know the answer) that there are “no political prisoners in the United States prison systems, certainly not the federal systems and as far as is known not in the states either.” And on some level, not on the level of candid truth but some level lower than that, the A-G in question (and all previous A-Gs) is right since every prisoner, every political prisoner is behind bars for some “crime” against society’s norms. Take the case of Chelsea Manning (known until her thirty-five year sentencing to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for multiple conviction against military and federal law as Bradley Manning thereafter as Chelsea in case there is any confusion about who we are talking about) which was the case the A-G in question was referring to in that newspeak commentary. Private Manning, is the heroic Army soldier who blew the whistle to Wiki-leaks on the atrocities committed by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan and the duplicity of the Hillary Clinton-run State Department even before Benghazi. The charges against Chelsea were “crimes,” you know “stealing” government files and “committing” acts of espionage but her motivation had nothing to do with crime, at least crimes that working people and leftists need worry about. Her leaks were a breath of fresh air in counter-point to the “slam-dunk’ mentality that has pervaded both the Bush II and Obama administrations. But Chelsea is nevertheless a political prisoner with a capital “P.”
Sam had to laugh again about the nefarious and spurious doing of the American justice machine (thoughts on that “machine” bringing to Sam’s mind the words of sardonic comic Lenny Bruce, a man not unfamiliar with that system and in his own way a political prisoner as well about how “in the hall of justice the only justice is in the halls-nicely said, Brother, nicely said) when a few nights after this newscast he was sitting in Jack’s, the long-time radical hang-out bar in Harvard Square which he frequented, talking to Ralph Morris who had come to town on one of his periodic visits from his home in Troy, New York about what he had heard that other night. And this was not mere idle talk between that pair because the whole Easton-Morris friendship had its start when they were political prisoners of a sort back on May Day 1971 when they had met on the floor of RFK Stadium in Washington for the “crime” of disorderly conduct and creating a public nuisance when they and thousands of others tried to shut down the American government if it did not shut down the Vietnam War which they were desperately for their own reasons trying to stop. So, yes, they were “criminals,” maybe just petty criminals by the standards of the charges but no way in hell had they hitchhiked from Cambridge and Albany, New York respectively (and wherever else those thousands came from and how they got there) to “walk in the streets” of D.C. for the hell of it, to litter the boulevards with leaflets let, to thumb their noses at the government, or the like. Sam and Ralph that day had been political prisoners with a small “P” nevertheless. (They would later do some actions in solidarity with the Black Panthers, with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and with the African National Congress in South Africa which would “win” them their capital “Ps.”)
All of this old-timey bar talk had a purpose though (they by the way were no strangers to strong drink as part of their political camaraderie from early on in their working-class lives but now they drank high-shelf stuff delivered by Jimmy the bartender rather than that rotgut low-shelf, no-shelf Thunderbird wine and Southern Comfort which got them through their no dough youths). Or rather two purposes. First, Ralph had come to town to join Sam in the annual Sacco and Vanzetti commemoration in honor of the two anarchist political prisoners who had been railroaded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to their executions on August 23, 1927. Troy and most other places in the nation and the world paid have paid no particular attention to such events but in Boston the scene of the crimes against the two immigrant anarchists there had been a generally on-going commemoration since the 1920s, although not always on in the streets like the past several years. Over their long and hard fought battles around prisoners’ rights which formed a majority of the work they had done over the years, in good times and bad, Sam and Ralph made sure that they attended this commemoration.
The second event that brought Ralph to town was a conference to be held in Boston to see about reviving the old International Labor Defense (ILD), the 1920s Communist International (CI)-initiated political prisoner defense organization which coincidentally had cut its teeth when founded in 1925 on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Under the circumstances over the past quarter of a century plus for the international working class not so much reviving it exactly as in the old days since the organization had gone out of business in 1946 a few years after Joe Stalin over in Russia had liquidated the Communist International as part of some Soviet foreign policy sop to his allies in World War II (the CI had pretty much gone out of the business of directing international revolution well before than anyway) but reviving the spirit that drove it in its best days around the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the Angelo Herndon case, a bunch of other lesser well known labor cases like that of Tom Mooney and assorted IWWers (Industrial Workers of the World, Wobblies) and most famously the Scottsboro Boys case in the 1930s.
In those days as Sam had mentioned while talking to Ralph at Jack’s since he had been looking up information about the old ILD, what it did and how it was organized (and how much the old American Communist Party/CI controlled the operation in its sunnier days) the ILD had had no problem living up to the idea of a non-sectarian labor defense organization that took on the tough cases, the political cases and tried to garner union and progressive support in America and internationally through the CI to free the class-war prisoners behind the walls. Sam and Ralph had been involved in many cases of political prisoners on the seemingly endlessly dwindling left, especially black liberation fighters and labor organizers but those operations usually concerned a specific political prisoner (like the Manning case) or were run as campaigns by particular organizations which tended to “protect” their turf, protect their unique relationship with their poster child political prisoner.
While both Sam and Ralph had been snake-bitten a few times when somebody called a conference only to find out that the operation was being built to “protect turf” or using the campaign as an organizational recruiting tool (Sam mentioned that someone should tell such organizations and individuals with ideas like that to give pause since the recruitment rate, or better the retention rate of such projects after a while is abysmal) they liked the call for this one which included a bunch of small leftist organizations and some independent labor organizers and unions. Whether absent an international organization with the resources of the old CI a new ILD could catch fire is problematic. There in any case with the downward pressure of social flare-ups likely in the near future certainly is a need for such an organization. Ralph made Sam laugh as they finished their last high-shelf whisky that night by saying –“Hell there aren’t any political prisoners, I have it on the authority of the U.S. A-G.” But just in case those A-Gs were being less than candid they agreed that they would show up bright and early for the meeting the next morning.
Josh Breslin, as he drove in the pitch black night up California Highway 156 to connect with U.S. 101 and the San Francisco Airport back to Boston. On arrival there then from there up to his old hometown of Olde Saco to which he had recently returned after long years of what he called “shaking the dust of the old town” off his shoes like many a guy before him, and after too, thought that it had been a long time since he had gotten up this early to head, well, to head anywhere. He had in an excess of caution decided to leave at three o’clock in the morning from the hotel he had been staying at in downtown Monterrey near famous Cannery Row (romantically and literarily famous as a scene in some of John Steinbeck’s novels from the 1920s and 1930s, as a site of some of the stop-off 1950s “beat” stuff if for no other reason than the bus stopped there before you took a taxi to Big Sur or thumbed depending on your finances and as famed 1960s Pops musical locale where the likes of Jimi Hendricks and Janis Joplin roe to the cream on top although now just another tourist magnet complete with Steinbeck this and that for sullen shoppers and diners who found their way east of Eden) and head up to the airport in order to avoid the traffic jams that he had inevitably encountered on previous trips around farm country Gilroy (the garlic or onion capital of the world, maybe both, but you got that strong smell in any case), and high tech Silicon Valley where the workers are as wedded to their automobiles as any other place in America which he would pass on the way up.
This excess of caution not a mere expression of an old man who is mired in a whole cycle of cautions from doctors to lawyers to ex-wives to current flame (Lana Malloy by name) since his flight was not to leave to fly Boston until about noon and even giving the most unusual hold-ups and delays in processing at the airport he would not need to arrive there to return his rented car until about ten. So getting up some seven hours plus early on a trip of about one hundred miles or so and normally without traffic snarls about a two hour drive did seem an excess of caution.
But something else was going on in Josh’s mind that pitch black night (complete with a period of dense fog about thirty miles up as he hit a seashore belt and the fog just rolled in without warnings) for he had had the opportunity to have avoided both getting up early and getting snarled in hideous California highway traffic by the expedient of heading to the airport the previous day and taken refuge in a motel that was within a short distance of the airport, maybe five miles when he checked on his loyalty program hotel site. Josh though had gone down to Monterey after a writers’ conference in San Francisco which had ended a couple of days before in order travel to Big Sur and some ancient memories there had stirred something in him that he did not want to leave the area until the last possible moment so he had decided to stay in Monterrey and leave early in the morning for the airport.
That scheduled departure plan set Josh then got an idea in his head, an idea that had driven him many times before when he had first gone out to California in the summer of love, 1967 version, that he would dash to San Francisco to see the Golden Gate Bridge as the sun came up and then head to the airport. He had to laugh, as he threw an aspirin down his throat and then some water to wash the tablet down in order to ward off a coming migraine headache that the trip, that this little trip to Big Sur that he had finished the day before, the first time in maybe forty years he had been there had him acting like a young wild kid again.
Funny as well that only a few days before he had been tired, very tired a condition that came on him more often of late as one of the six billion “growing old sucks” symptoms of that process, after the conference. Now he was blazing trails again, at least in his mind. The conference on the fate of post-modern writing in the age of the Internet with the usual crowd of literary critics and other hangers-on in tow to drink the free liquor and eat the free food had been sponsored by a major publishing company, The Globe Group. He had written articles for The Blazing Sun when the original operation had started out as a shoestring alternative magazine in the Village in about 1968, had started out as an alternative to Time, Life, Newsweek, Look, an alternative to all the safe subscription magazines delivered to leafy suburban homes and available at urban newsstands for the nine to fivers of the old world for those who, by choice, had no home, leafy or otherwise, and no serious work history.
Or rather the audience pitched to had no fixed abode, since the brethren were living some vicarious existences out of a knapsack just like Josh and his friends whom he collected along the way had been doing when he joined Captain Crunch’s merry pranksters (small case to distinguish them from the more famous Ken Kesey mad monk Merry Pranksters written about in their time by Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson) the first time he came out and found himself on Russian Hill in Frisco town looking for dope and finding this giant old time yellow brick road converted school bus parked in a small park there and made himself at home, after they made him welcome (including providing some sweet baby James dope that he had been searching for since the minute he hit town).
Still the iterant, the travelling nation hippie itinerants of the time to draw a big distinction from the winos, drunks, hoboes, bums and tramps who populated the “jungle” camps along railroad tracks, arroyos, river beds and under bridges who had no use for magazines or newspapers except as pillows against a hard night’s sleep along a river or on those unfriendly chairs at the Greyhound bus station needed, wanted to know what was going on in other parts of “youth nation,” wanted to know what new madness was up, wanted to know where to get decent dope, and who was performing and where in the acid-rock etched night (groups like the Dead, the Doors, the Airplane leading the pack then). That magazine had long ago turned the corner back to Time/Life/Look/Newsweek land but the publisher Mac McDowell who still sported mutton chop whiskers as he had in the old days although these days he has them trimmed by his stylist, Marcus, at a very steep price at his mansion up in Marin County always invited him out, and paid his expenses, whenever there was a conference about some facet of the 1960s that the younger “post-modernist” writers in his stable (guys like Kenny Johnson the author of the bests-seller Thrillwere asking about. So Mac would bring out wirey, wiley old veterans like Josh to spice up what after all would be just another academic conference and to make Mac look like some kind of hipster rather than the balding “sell-out that he had become (which Josh had mentioned in his conference presentation but which Mac just laughed at, laughed at as long as he can keep that Marin mansion. Still Josh felt he provided some useful background stuff now that you can find lots of information about that 1960s “golden age” (Mac’s term not his) to whet your appetite on Wikipedia or more fruitfully by going on YouTube where almost all the music of the time and other ephemera can be watched with some benefit.
Despite Josh’s tiredness, and a bit of crankiness as well when the young kid writers wanted to neglect the political side, the Vietnam War side, the rebellion against parents side of what the 1960s had been about for the lowdown on the rock festival, summer of love, Golden Gate Park at sunset loaded with dope and lack of hubris side, he decided to take a few days to go down to see Big Sur once again. He figured who knew when he would get another chance and at the age of seventy-two the actuarial tables were calling his number, or wanted to. He would have preferred to have taken the trip down with Lana, a hometown woman, whom he had finally settled in with up in Olde Saco after three, count them, failed marriages, a parcel of kids most of whom turned out okay, plenty of college tuitions and child support after living in Watertown just outside of Boston for many years.
Lana a bit younger than he and not having been “washed clean” as Josh liked to express the matter in the hectic 1960s and not wanting to wait around a hotel room reading a book or walking around Frisco alone while he attended the conference had begged off on the trip, probably wisely although once he determined to go to Big Sur and told her where he was heading she got sort of wistful. She had just recently read with extreme interest about Big Sur through her reading of Jack Kerouac’s 1960s book of the same name and had asked Josh several times before that if they went to California on a vacation other than San Diego they would go there. The long and short of that conversation was a promise by Josh to take her the next time, if there was a next time (although he did not put the proposition in exactly those terms).
Immediately after the conference Josh headed south along U.S. 101 toward Monterrey where he would stay and which would be his final destination that day since he would by then be tired and it would be nighttime coming early as the November days got shorter. He did not want to traverse the Pacific Coast Highway (California 1 for the natives) at night since he had forgotten his distance glasses, another one of those six billion reasons why getting out sucks. Had moreover not liked to do that trip along those hairpin turns which the section heading toward Big Sur entailed riding the guardrails even back in his youth since one time having been completely stoned on some high-grade Panama Red he had almost sent a Volkswagen bus over the top when he missed a second hairpin turn after traversing the first one successfully. So he would head to Monterrey and make the obligatory walk to Cannery Row for dinner and in order to channel John Steinbeck and the later “beats” who would stop there before heading to fallout Big Sur.
The next morning Josh left on the early side not being very hungry after an excellent fish dinner at Morley’s a place that had been nothing but a hash house diner in the old days where you could get serviceable food cheap because the place catered to the shore workers and sardine factory workers who made Cannery Row famous, or infamous, when it was a working Row. He had first gone there after reading about the place in something Jack Kerouac wrote and was surprised that the place actually existed, had liked the food and the prices and so had gone there a number of times when his merry pranksters and other road companions were making the obligatory Frisco-L.A. runs up and down the coast. These days Morley’s still had excellent food but perhaps you should bring a credit card with you to insure you can handle the payment and avoid “diving for pearls” as a dish-washer to pay off your debts.
As Josh started up the engine of his rented Acura, starting up on some of the newer cars these days being a matter of stepping on the brake and then pushing a button where the key used to go in this keyless age, keyless maybe a metaphor of the age as well, he had had to ask the attendant at the airport how to start the thing since his own car was a keyed-up Toyota of ancient age, he began to think back to the old days when he would make this upcoming run almost blind-folded. That term maybe a metaphor for that age. He headed south to catch the Pacific Coast Highway north of Carmel and thought he would stop at Point Lobos, the place he had first encountered the serious beauty of the Pacific Coast rocks and ocean wave splash reminding him of back East in Olde Saco, although more spectacular. Also the place when he had first met Moonbeam Sadie.
He had had to laugh when he thought about that name and that woman since a lot of what the old days, the 1960s had been about were tied up with his relationship to that woman, the first absolutely chemically pure version of a “hippie chick” that he had encountered. At that time Josh had been on the Captain Crunch merry prankster yellow brick road bus for a month or so and a couple of days before they had started heading south from Frisco to Los Angeles to meet up with a couple of other yellow brick road buses where Captain Crunch knew some kindred. As they meandered down the Pacific Coast Highway they would stop at various places to take in the beauty of the ocean since several of the “passengers” had never seen the ocean or like Josh had never seen the Pacific in all its splendor.
In those days, unlike now when the park closes at dusk as Josh found out, you could park your vehicle overnight and take in the sunset and endlessly listen to the surf splashing up to rocky shorelines until you fell asleep. So when their bus pulled into the lot reserved for larger vehicles there were a couple of other clearly “freak” buses already there. One of them had Moonbeam as a “passenger” whom he would meet later that evening when all of “youth nation” in the park decided to have a dope- strewn party. Half of the reason for joining up on bus was for a way to travel, for a place to hang your hat but it was also the easiest way to get on the dope trail since somebody, usually more than one somebody was “holding.” And so that night they partied, partied hard.
About ten o’clock Josh high as a kite from some primo hash saw a young woman, tall, sort of skinny (he would find out later she had not been so slim previously except the vagaries of the road food and a steady diet of “speed” had taken their toll), long, long brown hair, a straw hat on her head, a long “granny” dress and barefooted the very picture of what Time/Life/Look would have used as their female “hippie” poster child to titillate their middle-class audiences coming out of one of the buses. She had apparently just awoken, although that seemed impossible given the noise level from the collective sound systems and the surf, and was looking for some dope to level her off and headed straight to Josh. Josh had at that time long hair tied in a ponytail, at least that night, a full beard, wearing a cowboy hat on his head, a leather jacket against the night’s cold, denim blue jeans and a pair of moccasins not far from what Time/Life/Look would have used as their male “hippie” poster child to titillate their middle-class audiences so Moonbeam’s heading Josh’s way was not so strange. Moreover Josh was holding a nice stash of hashish. Without saying a word Josh passed the hash pipe to Moonbeam and by that mere action started a “hippie” romance that would last for the next several months until Moonbeam decided she was not cut out for the road, couldn’t take the life, and headed back to Lima, Ohio to sort out her life.
But while they were on their “fling” Moonbeam taught “Cowboy Jim,” her new name for him many things. Josh thought it was funny thinking back how wedded to the idea of changing their lives they were back then including taking new names, monikers, as if doing so would create the new world by osmosis or something. He would have several other monikers like the “Prince of Love,” the Be-Bop Kid (for his love of jazz and blues), and Sidewalk Slim (for always writing something in chalk wherever he had sidewalk to do so) before he left the road a few years later and stayed steady with his journalism after that high, wide, wild life lost it allure as the high tide of the 1960s ebbed and people drifted back to their old ways. But Cowboy Jim was what she called Josh and he never minded her saying that.
See Moonbeam really was trying to seek the newer age, trying to find herself as they all were more or less, but also let her better nature come forth. And she did in almost every way from her serious study of Buddhism, her yoga (well before that was fashionable among the young), and her poetry writing. But most of all in the kind, gentle almost Quaker way that she dealt with people, on or off drugs, the way she treated her Cowboy. Josh had never had such a gentle lover, never had such a woman who not only tried to understand herself but to understand him. More than once after she left the bus (she had joined the Captain Crunch when the bus left Point Lobos a few days later now that she was Cowboy’s sweetheart) he had thought about heading to Lima and try to work something out but he was still seeking something out on the Coast that held him back until her memory faded a bit and he lost the thread of her).
Yeah, Point Lobos held some ancient memories and that day the surf was up and Mother Nature was showing one and all who cared to watch just how relentless she could be against the defenseless rocks and shoreline. If he was to get to Big Sur though he could not dally since he did not want to be taking that hairpin stretch at night. So off he went. Nothing untoward happened on the road to Big Sur, naturally he had to stop at the Bixby Bridge to marvel at the vista but also at the man-made marvel of traversing that canyon below with this bridge in 1932. Josh though later that it was not exactly correct that nothing untoward happened on the road to Big Sur but that was not exactly true for he was white-knuckled driving for that several mile stretch where the road goes up mostly and there are many hairpin turns with no guardrail and the ocean is a long way down. He thought he really was becoming an old man in his driving so cautiously that he had veer off to the side of the road to let faster cars pass by. In the old days he would drive the freaking big ass yellow brick road school bus along that same path and think nothing of it except for a time after that Volkswagen almost mishap. Maybe he was dope-brave then but it was disconcerting to think how timid he had become.
Finally in Big Sur territory though nothing really untoward happen as he traversed those hairpin roads until they finally began to straighten out near Molera State Park and thereafter Pfeiffer Beach. Funny in the old days there had been no creek to ford at Molera but the river had done its work over forty years through drought and downpour so in order to get to the ocean about a mile’s walk away Josh had to take off his running shoes and shoes to get across the thirty or forty feet of rocks and pebbles to the other side (and of course the same coming back a pain in the ass which he would have taken in stride back then when he shoe of the day was the sandal easily slipped off and on) but well worth the effort even if annoying since the majestic beauty of that rock-strewn beach was breath-taking a much used word and mostly inappropriate but not this day. Maybe global warming or maybe just the relentless crush of the seas on a timid waiting shoreline but most of the beach was un-walkable across the mountain of stones piled up and so he took the cliff trail part of the way before heading back the mile to his car in the parking lot to get to Pfeiffer Beach before too long.
Pfeiffer Beach is another one of those natural beauties that you have to do some work to get, almost as much work as getting to Todo El Mundo further up the road when he and his corner boys from Olde Saco had stayed for a month after they had come out to join him on the bus once he informed them that they needed to get to the West fast because all the world was changing out there. This work entailed not walking to the beach but by navigating a big car down the narrow one lane rutted dirt road two miles to the bottom of the canyon and the parking lot since now the place had been turned into a park site as well. The road was a white-knuckles experience although not as bad as the hairpins on the Pacific Coast Highway but as with Molera worth the effort, maybe more so since Josh could walk that wind-swept beach although some of the cross-currents were fierce when the ocean tide slammed the defenseless beach and rock formation. A couple of the rocks had been ground down so by the oceans that donut holes had been carved in them.
Here Josh put down a blanket on a rock so that he could think back to the days when he had stayed here, really at Todo el Mundo but there was no beach there just some ancient eroded cliff dwellings where they had camped out and not be botheredso everybody would climb on the bus which they would park by the side of the road on Big Sur Highway and walk down to Pfeiffer Beach those easy then two miles bringing the day’s rations of food, alcohol and drugs (not necessarily in that order) in rucksacks and think thing nothing of the walk and if they were too “wasted” (meaning drunk or high) they would find a cave and sleep there. That was the way the times were, nothing unusual then although the sign at the park entrance like at Point Lobos (and Molera) said overnight parking and camping were prohibited. But that is the way these times are.
Josh had his full share of ancient dreams come back to him that afternoon. The life on the bus, the parties, the literary lights who came by who had known Jack Kerouac , Allan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the remnant of beats who had put the place on the map as a cool stopping point close enough to Frisco to get to in a day but ten thousand miles from city cares and woes, the women whom he had loved and who maybe loved him back although he/they never stayed together long enough to form any close relationship except for Butterfly Swirl and that was a strange scene. Strange because Butterfly was a surfer girl who was “slumming” on the hippie scene for a while and they had connected on the bus except she finally decided that the road was not for her just like Moonbeam, as almost everybody including Josh figured out in the end, and went back to her perfect wave surfer boy down in La Jolla after a few months.
She replied with a wicked smile that her name was Morning Blossom, didn’t he like that name. [Yes.] She had been born and raised in Big Sur and planned to stay there because she couldn’t stand the hassles (her term) of the cities, places like San Francisco where she had gone to school for a while at San Francisco State. Josh thought to himself that he knew what was coming next although he let Morning Blossom have her say. Her parents had moved to Big Sur in 1969 and had started home-steading up in the hills. They have been part of a commune before she was born but that was all over with by the time she was born and so her parents struggled on the land alone. They never left, and never wanted to leave. Seldom left Big Sur and still did not.
Josh said to himself, after saying wow, he had finally found one of the lost tribes that wandered out into the wilderness back in the 1960s and were never heard from again. And here they were still plugging away at whatever dream drove them back then. He and others who had chronicled in some way the 1960s had finally found a clue to what had happened. But as he got up from the counter, paid his bill, and left a hefty tip, he though he still had that trip out here next time with Lana to get through. He was looking forward to it though.
Out In Waldo’s World-Every Man’s World-With The Film Laura In Mind
By Bart Webber
My old friend Sam Lowell, a guy married three times and who has struck out three time and now “single” (meaning he has had a long-time companion and has given up the idea of marriage although not the idea of love after three sets of alimony, child support and college tuitions, that latter category which almost broke him on the wheel) had been watching an old time film noir from the 1940s, Laura, with his own Laura, Laura Perkins, that long-time companion parenthetically mentioned above one night. A few days later after that viewing he called me up for our weekly session at Jack’s Grille and mentioned the film, knowing that I had seen it several times and consider it one of the great noirs along with Gilda, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon and a few others. He said then, and we would get into more at Jack’s, a couple of nights later, that you could never figure what will drive a guy off the deep end but that six, two and even ninety-nine times out of one hundred it would be over a dame. I begged to differ with him figuring the odds more like sixty to forty on the dame reason but that only added fuel to his fire that night (that and a few too many high end scotches since he was not driving that night but staying at my place in Carver, our growing up home town down in Southeastern Massachusetts). The difference in our calculations I figured out later being that I have been with my one wife, the lovely Betsy Binstock, now for almost thirty-seven years.
But Sam was on his high horse that night which meant that I was in for a regular slugfest, a regular barrage of chatter about Waldo, Waldo the guy who went over the edge for this dame, yeah, a dame, nice, pretty, smart, a go-getting but still a dame, this Laura, Laura Hunt in case you needed a last name. Here’s how Sam put the case, see Sam is nothing but a good country lawyer and so he saw the whole thing in terms of a case in a court of law like he was arguing for mercy for Waldo or something. Like maybe he was arguing the case for real like he would plea out Waldo on some diminished capacity foolishness just because the guy was skirt-addled.
As Sam was talking though I was putting my own two and two together about Waldo, Waldo Lydecker if you needed a last name for a skirt-addled guy although they are legion. Thinking back on the plot line that I knew well I found myself trying to figure out how did it figure that a high society guy, a well-known and syndicated newspaper columnist and radio personality, an older guy, an older single guy, an older single guy who seemed “light on his feet” if you asked me, you know seemed kind of “faggy” would tumble to this Laura from nowhere. Let this fresh breeze young thing of which there were about six million in New York City back in the day, break him. Make him do weird (unlawful things as Sam would put it) that would have him winding up facing downward on Laura’s apartment floor pledging his eternal love as the life was bleeding out of him from about six slugs of copper guns.
(Sam, by the way, who works in the court system and has to mind his Ps &Qs on sexual and ethnical stuff doesn’t like that term, those terms, faggy and light on his feet, but the old ways die hard with some of us old-time corner boys who grew up on the rough streets of the Acre in Carver and who used to while idly hanging out in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys fag bait each other just for kicks to enhance our own man-hoods, so faggy.)
But maybe I should start at the beginning while Sam is drawing circles in the air with his hands just like if he was in the courtroom, just like he was trying the case of Waldo Lydecker vs. The State Of New York except not for murder, murder one, which what the bastard would be up for if he wasn’t lying face down in that pool of blood in that dame Laura’s apartment but for being a toy for some perfidious dame. See Waldo was like I said a big time newspaper and radio guy, knew everybody who counted in New York and Washington high society, had “drag” in all the right places as my old Irish grandfather would say. Also knew all the secret vices, and some not so secret, of those in the rarified air, knew that they had to treat him something like a rattlesnake with very proper kid gloves, knew they would be front and center in one of his columns, page one, if they didn’t play ball. Yes so Waldo Lydecker was not one of the world’s noblemen, was a bitch on wheels if anybody was asking around about him of late, not hopefully looking to give him a certified good conduct certificate. It was kind of funny because this guy had more dough than the King of Siam, had come from wealth, good school, good breeding the whole nine yards so you would think that being what really was a gossip columnist, a venomous one to boot would be beneath him. But guys, people are funny about their occupations and in any case the job, such as it was better than him sitting at home in palatial Westchester clipping coupons.
Like I said before this Waldo as he aged, got to middle age, maybe a little older was nothing but a bachelor, hadn’t been seen with a real girlfriend, nothing serious anyway. So the talk around town, very discreetly around town out of his earshot, was that he was either asexual, which was Sam’s take on the matter, some guys are like that, maybe so hung up on their mothers that no young dame could ever be good enough for them. Maybe something got lost in the genes, something about attraction to any human relationship except to hit hard at weak points. So no women, except he obvious mixing at his lavish parties, you know ornaments. You know my take already, my position that he was gay, maybe unconsciously, maybe he was hiding some guy, some fag, out in some apartment far from the high end crowd you never know. Yeah, I liked that take although Sam in one of his more compromising moments wished I would just call him effete and let it go at that. Like effete didn’t mean in high tone language noting but fag. I’ll stick with my old time corner boy expression if you please, an expression that Sam was as likely to use in the old days as I was-if anybody is asking.
So everybody was surprised when Waldo started being seen around the clubs, the swanky clubs like the High Hat where the jazz was be-bop, the drinks expensive and exotic and the smoke thick and the White Note where the younger crowd hung out where the smoke was scented, was dope no question dope, tea, hemp, ganja, to appease this Laura twist. But you could tell he was out of his element there in that latter place, that Jimmy Jones’ be-bop band with Milt Rosen blowing heavenly high white notes off the cuff ruled the night not him. No question this Laura was a looker, a long tall brunette with those bright eyes and sulky lips that guys went big for then and guys while not going big for now looking for thin hipless dames with sneers these day could appreciate, could see even an effete guy taking a run at even if just to have as a trophy, or cover against that so-called discreet talk among the high society types about his sexual habits (like a snoop like Waldo wasn’t “connected” into that talk by a thousand snitches looking to keep their own hijinks out of the front page and off the air).
The story Waldo told about their meeting, their fateful meeting, take it for what it was worth after all that really happened, after he wound up face down and very dead, was that Laura had purposely gone to his table at his favorite lunch place (and daytime watering hole), Matty’s on 54th Street across from the newspaper, and “accosted” him, that was his word, had pestered him about endorsing some product, a pen. See this Laura was nothing but a runt one of thousands, no, what did I say before, millions, of young women trying to get ahead in the advertising racket, any New York City racket, which is why young women, smart young women went to New York City from Buffalo, Cleveland, Eire, hell, maybe the wheat fields of Kansas too, to grab fame and fortune in one of the few serious upward mobile jobs for aspiring college graduates. Or just gals with big dreams and some talents other than hitting the silky sheets.
This is the oddest part. He blew her off, treated less graciously than some six year old brat for disturbing milord’s solo lunch, but something about her got under his skin, some ancient memory of some young woman in that long gone time when he might have thought about an affair, that fatal disease that has taken all the gold of more than one man. The blood too.Get this, get this for a guy who treated her like a wayward child Waldo eventually went to her advertising agency, signed on for the endorsement of that fucking pen. Laura’s career thereafter went through the roof, he had called in plenty of chips to get guys and gals he knew around town to throw business her way, or else.Seeing her as a rough diamond, obviously not from his class, maybe even then as a tramp with big “wanting habits” you never know about the Waldos of the world and what drives them, although the smitten part is easy to explain, he taught her a few things about style and poise, style and poise as interpreted by high society just then. That was the fluff part, the public story.
Who knows what the real deal was. Sam’s lamo theory about mother fixation, or mother dread is okay for okay country lawyers if they have to defend some geek in court but that angle seems to have been worked to death and I wouldn’t want to have to throw that to a jury but since I am merely a retired printer and not a lawyer I don’t have to worry about that. Hell, the obvious is that she was damn good-looking woman and that was that. Maybe it was the long hair that always made every hat she wore in the days when women went in for serious hats for fashion and not utility look just right, maybe it was those sullen lips showing slightly parted pearly white teeth, hell, maybe it, like a for a billion guys since Adam and maybe before, was the sandalwood scent she gave off, that latter would be the downfall of more than one man. But he was hooked on her, hooked as bad as a guy who couldn’t express such thoughts in public could be, it was just not done in high society, could be hooked on a dame (of course a guy like Waldo wouldn’t dream of calling a woman a dame, a frail, a frill, a twist, names we used back in the day but like I said before the old ways die hard with some guys like me).
Here’s the funny thing, here’s where the old guy, young dame problem comes in, or maybe just Waldo’s whole freaking silly upbringing, he never had sex with her, never went under the downy billows with her which is the way Tom Wolfe put how the upper crust likes to call “hitting the satin sheets.” The thing was strictly platonic with the unspoken proviso (Sam’s word not mine) that she was his “property.” Waldo’s alone.
That didn’t play very well with Laura. Didn’t play well with a young lustrous sexy woman like Laura who had big sexual appetites, liked men, and lots of them as any young pretty woman who was grabbing lots of attention from the young bucks would. (All the sex stuff as per usual in 1940s films was either off the film or just implied but even a goof like Sam could read between the lines that Laura was a sexual being. Hell, one night, no, one very early morning, wacko Waldo in a fit “stalked” her apartment on West 56th Street as one young buck, Jack Jacobs the well-known painter came strolling out the front door of the building looking a little the worse for wear.) Waldo was forever shooing guys away and as quickly as Laura, on Waldo’s fatherly, to her, recommendation would ditch one guy another guy would pop up. That went on for a while and Waldo, for his own nefarious reasons, thought he was home free. That Laura was all his.
Then the roof caved in. Laura got caught up with this guy Shelby, a ne’er do well, a guy from decayed Southern stock, meaning he was broke and living off of women, living off of Laura’s aunt who liked the idea of a “kept” man, liked a young stud around and could afford the freight. Problem was Shelby like many another guy wanted to be around some young tail (ass) and so despite his “kept” status with the aging and demanding aunt he made a run at Laura, got her to the stage where marriage might be in the air. Got her to give him a job at her ad agency where he actually flowered, brought some fresh light into the office. Bad move, bad move on Laura’s part even thinking about marriage to a gigolo like Shelby. That is when Waldo’s wheels started coming off, when his better judgment took a back seat to his unspoken lust for Laura. He tried to kill her, shoot her dead with a shotgun in her own apartment, the place which would be his final resting place if he had only been prophetic rather than blood-lustful. Problem though was Laura was not there that night of the murder, had been upstate at a cozy country retreat thinking things through about the possibilities of marriage to Shelby. When everything came out later, much later, the girl who was killed had been one of Laura’s models at the ad agency, a model whom Shelby was playing footsies with. Some guys, guys like Shelby, never change, never get off the wagon even when easy street beckons (and that silly aunt was still ready to move heaven and earth to get his silly ass back in her crib under the principle that birds of a feather flock together-he was a tramp and she was too so comingle their tainted blood.)
Well murder most foul done by gigolos, deadbeats, mass murderers, ”hit” men or the lovelorn has to be investigated, especially in the high rent district. Most especially in the high rent district after all what the hell were they paying the public coppers for anyway. So they put crackerjack homicide detective Mark, Mark McPherson, on the case. Oh yeah a young, good-looking, didn’t miss a trick, knew the means streets as well as the leafy streets to look closely, very closely into the Laura Hunt murder. Naturally he got nothing but the backs of their hands from the Mayfair swells, got nothing but grief and snide remarks from old Waldo who I will say held himself together during the critical hours and days when McPherson was putting the screws to the case, was giving everybody his cool modern scientific detective shifting through all the evidence routine. Stayed cool enough and cagey enough to throw a big shadow over Shelby as the fall guy. And why not he had been playing footsies with that foxy model right in Laura’s apartment. Yeah, I admit I liked him for it, liked him a lot when McPherson turned the screws on. Didn’t like that he was two-three, who knows how many timing Laura, with the poor dead model even the old battle ax aunt and who knows who else. Such guys as Shelby in the old neighborhood as Sam would be the first to tell you would be tailor-made for the big step-off and nobody except some poor old bedraggled mother would shed tear one for such a guy. And that is a fact.
Then to break up the monotony of the run-down murder case getting kind of cold by the minute and to ruin my theory about Shelby as the fall guy who pops back into the picture. Laura. That’s when everybody found out that the dead girl was the model at Laura’s agency (conveniently her face had been blown off by the shotgun blast so the initial identification of Laura as the victim had been based on the very important circumstantial evidence that late at night the woman opening the door to Laura’s apartment would be, well, Laura). Waldo held up even through all of that as Sam will admit if less than gladly for his bogus love-addled insanity bit. Like I said before Laura was upstate thinking stuff through around a possible marriage to Shelby and nobody thought anything of it once she resurfaced. Still there was a murder to be solved now that the true victim was known. McPherson was still on the case, still needed to close out the case even if it now was a run of the mill model that was making the case run and not some darling of the Mayfair swells.
Waldo might have held up pretty well through all of that, might have slide through to old manhood but he flipped out when he sensed that the tramp, Laura of his dreams, what else could you call her in his effete book, was once again falling ofr any young guy in a suit, falling for Mark (and he her). Yeah, Waldo again lost his judgment rather than moving on to the cocktail circuit and forgetting about what could never be. See, and Sam in his more sober moments would have to agree, Laura had gotten deep under his skin, as deep as woman can a man who spent his whole life dishing it out and not taking it. Shelby was a non-starter for Laura and Waldo could have pieced him off easily enough but this Mark McPherson, this guy from the mean streets, from Laura’s mean streets wasn’t going to be easy to dismiss.
Here is where Sam said Waldo made his mistake, the mistake that would have made even a pretty good country lawyer like him have a hard time selling a jury that Waldo was temporarily insane, needed to go to the sicko hospital and not the death house. Waldo tempted fate one time too often (that model murder would have hit the “cold” files soon enough now that Laura was alive). He tried to kill Laura-again. No soap this time for the poor sap-he was wasted in a hail of bullets by New York’s finest. Get this though-the guy is lying face down in a pool of his own corrupted blood and his last words were of undying devotion to Laura. What a sap. Leave it to Sam to get the last word though and even I couldn’t say it better, although he said it more in sorrow than anger. Waldo Lydecker was not the first guy nor will he be the last who got all twisted around by some frail’s sandalwood scent. Maybe Sam’s 99.9 % number was not so far off after all.
From Out In The Maxwell Street Night –With
Blues Label Chess Records In Mind
“I’m going to get me one of those big
old pink Cadillacs just like Muddy, although if someone asked, if truth be told
I’m not sure Muddy had a such car but he could afford one which was the same
thing and it ain’t like they only made one like that so I am going to get me a
big old pink Cadillac, yeah” thought Sidewalk Sam as he entered the front door
of hallowed Chess Records on South Michigan Avenue in that year of our lord
1961 looking to make a name for himself in the recording world, in the music
world, and get the hell out of two-bit Maxwell Street.
[Sidewalk’s birth name Leroy Collins,
Miss Collins’ boy, white and black alike, white up at Mister Jackson’s
rope-making factory where Miss Collins worked six days a week, half a day on
Saturday and black in Negro-town down in the lowlands at the edge of town where
was Leroy was born and had come of age without incurring Mister Jackson’s
wrath, is what they usually called him down around Clarksville in Mississippi, down
in Mister James Crow’s country. That was before he skedaddled north, north
following the North Star just like his forbears in slavery times when black
folk headed to freedom whatever way they could. Leroy, Sidewalk lately now that
he was in north country, knew it was just a matter of time before Mister
Jackson, or worse, Mister Jackson’s Mister James Crow laws snagged him up and
sent him over to the sweated fields of Parchman’s Farm and while he might be
Miss Collin’s boy, might not rightly know who or where his father was, he knew
he had to get out of the Delta and fast once he began to seem a little too
uppity around town. So one night he headed north, headed with a bindle, some
smokes and some dreams.]
“And get myself some fine threads, nice silky
suits, half a dozen if I felt like it in six different colors would about do and
wouldn’t I be a sight, white cotton dress shirts, as if to mock the cotton that
drove Clarksville’s economy, with double
cuffs and links, a drawer full, shoes, finest leathers to die for and hats,
hats for every occasion,” he continued as he shut the door behind him. Just
then he froze, not freeze froze, not can’t do this damn thing froze, not what
am I doing here froze, he had come too far for that, had told too many people
over too many whiskey swooned drinks at Johnny Rabb’s Tavern that he was on the
way to stardom, no stopping him now but to think how far he had come since
those long ago days down in Clarksville.
Seemed like a long time ago although it
had only been five years since he headed north to Chicago to hallowed Maxwell
Street via Memphis up the old Big Muddy after that fist fight, flashing
brandished knife fight at end with Jimmy Jakes, whom he cut pretty badly.
Jimmy, the owner of the juke joint where he made his bones most Saturday
nights, had fired him or threw him out or just told him to get the hell out of
his establishment when he said his customers were saying Sidewalk’s playlist
was getting tired, had too much Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf, too much country three
chords and out stuff when they were looking for, after hearing the Memphis
radio station blast it out on nights they picked up the frequency down in the
Delta,something more upbeat like that
new rock and roll they were hearing guys from around Memphis and Saint Louis
play, white boys too, if they were going to spent their hard-earned money at
Jimmy’s eating his fired-up ribs and swilling his lightning corn liquor.
So Sidewalk fled Clarksville for his
life he thought (at nineteen he was just too young to know that around
Clarksville, around the whole damn state of Mississippi, around the whole of
Mister James Crow’s South nobody cared if one “Negro” cut up another, hell,
murdered each other for that matter. As long as they kept it in Negro-town.
Sidewalk also did not know that no way in hell was Jimmy going to call Sheriff
Blake to complain about his injuries since his place, his fucking place, would
be shut down, pay off or no payoff to keep it open after hours and keep his
customers supplied with the Sheriff’s brother’s high grade corn, no so high
grade once he cut the stuff but nobody complained and so there, and then where
would one Jimmy Jakes be. Probably sucking wind over at Parchman’s working Mister’s
sweated fields.
But Miss Collin’s was probably right
that Leroy’s time was done down South and that his flightwas better than being found out in Mister
Williams’ back forty plantation where they all mostly worked the cotton fields
with some Jimmy Jakes knife in his back, case unsolved, case to the cold files
before he was even cooled out.
So that night, really the next morning
early Sidewalk, small satchel, his road bindle, with all his earthly belongings
mostly some ill-fitting clothing and toiletries and his harmonica inside for he
could not risk taking that old Sears& Roebuck’s catalogue guitar Miss
Collin’s had saved her rope-making money to get him one Christmas when he was
twelve. Had clamored for after he played one at Jimmy’s that a guy had left
behind to pay for his ribs and drinks since the guy was flush faded after
shooting some ill-fated dice. So provisioned Leroy headed north on the early
Greyhound bus. Headed first for Jackson then there to pick up another to
transport him to Memphis where he heard guys who could guitar and sing, play
guitar, sing and play the harmonica even better were the cat’s meow, were
treated like kings once they set up shop at some corner of Beale Street on
Saturday night and got discovered, got to play the legendary blues and jazz
places where they would make their nut.
Yeah, Sidewalk had that stardust bad, just
had to make his nut through his music. Once he got to Memphis he took a cheap
room over a gin mill off of Beale Street with some of the money that his mother
gave him to get on the road (he had made a mental note then to make sure to pay
her back although he never did). The next day Leroy set up at the park across
from Bill Bailey’s where a lot of new guys, according to a guy he met in the
rooming house, took their acts and tried to polish them up for the locals who
might throw a buck or two their way if they had some sound that interested
those passers-by. Sidewalk did not learn until he was leaving town for the
Windy City, for Chi town when he asked the rooming house night clerk for the
whereabouts of that guy with the advice, Mo, in order to ask for the twenty
bucks that he had lent him supposedly to pay his room rent that he had ducked
out since Mo had been black-listed on the strip as a guy with no talent and a
thief to boot.
For the next four years Sidewalk was
stuck in Memphis or so he thought as the days, weeks, years mounted. During
that time in town is when Leroy Collins picked up the name Sidewalk, got his moniker
since he worked, sometimes day and night, on the sidewalk in front of the
famous blues clubs looking for his lucky break and people would have to
practically go around him to get to their destinations. One night some flashy
black brother, probably a number’s runner from the look of his over- the-top
outfit that he was wearing trying to impress his lady, called out “sidewalk,
move over, sidewalk” and the crowd in front of Lenny’s Blues Palace picked it
up. So Sidewalk.
Sidewalk probably busted every door in
the town looking to get in front of a paying crowd, even a few places down at
the Bottoms which was the end of the road for any musician who had the sense to
come out of the rain. Sidewalk didn’t. Didn’t listen when even the few places
that would give him an audition told him this in chorus- “Sidewalk your
playlist is tired, had too much Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf, too much Son House,
Magic Jack, Charley Patton country three chords and out stuff” In chorus they explained as if by agreement
that “their customers, moving up in the world with jobs better than those old
sweaty planation jobs and if white they already had good jobs, were looking
for, after hearing the every Memphis radio station blast it out, something more
upbeat like that new rock and roll they were hearing from Elvis and Chuck Berry
if they were going to spent their hard-earned money at the clubs sucking up
high-priced fine liquors and whatever their ladies wanted.”
One day, one night actually, Sidewalk
having only made three dollars all day, a twelve hour day, working the sidewalk
in front of Bill Bailey’s, stopped into the Old Oak Grille where he drank his
club liquor and got rip roaring drunk and wound up on the sidewalk, literally
(not an unusual occurrence for him of late then) after Billy the bartender
threw him out. Sobered up later he decided that he needed to get to a new town,
get a fresh start. So naturally he headed north to Chi town, the place that he
had expected to be already. Yeah, Chi town with all the places and with famous
Maxwell Street where new talent was discovered every day and where the “max
daddy” of blues labels, where the Wolf, where Muddy and Magic got their cakes
from, Chess Records was always looking for new talent, a new sound to keep the
hungry audiences well-fed.
Skipping out without paying his late
room rent in order to save money for the big show he took yet another early
morning Greyhound, complete with that same small satchel carrying almost the
same clothes that he had left Clarksville with those few years before, and this
time with his guitar which he had purchased at a pawn shop after he made enough
money with his solo harmonica to get the thing (although it was always hellish
to tune since it was a little warped around the frets), to Chicago.
Same routine, always the same routine,
as soon as Sidewalk got into town he got a cheap room off of Maxwell Street to
be close to the action (one sign he was in a big city now was that the rooming
house clerk made him pay a week’s security deposit in advance along with that
week’s rent which almost tapped him out). That afternoon he hit the street
setting up near Jacob’s Clothing Store. He had heard in Memphis that the
merchants, mostly Jewish although he was not sure what Jewish was, liked blues
singers to congregate in front of their stores to draw in customers, black and
white although increasingly black in that section of Maxwell Street, to
purchase their goods.
And so Sidewalk started, started
drawing little crowds too once Two-Foot Davis (the genesis of that moniker
unknown), an old hand on Maxwell took him under his wing. Took him to the
confines of Johnny Rabb’s Tavern where there was an older crowd of blacks from
the South who were nostalgic for the old time three country blues every now and
again. Based on that push from Johnny’s crowd Sidewalk he began to get ideas
about hitting it big, getting a big record contract, complete with pink
Cadillac although he didn’t really care about the color if it came to that.
Pushed on too by Too-Foot who had some secondary connections with Chess
Records. Pushed on too by a little reefer and a lot of low-shelf whiskey
(rotgut if he was low on funds).
Sidewalk unfroze, it was “now or never”
he said to himself. Had kept himself sober three days running in order to do
this gig, to make a record if the Chess’ liked him. (He had sneaked a little
reefer madness from the Be-Bop Kid to keep his nerves steady.) After checking
in with the receptionist about five minutes later Leonard Chess came out and
said to follow him. They went into a recording studio out back where Chess told
him he wanted to hear what he had, wanted to know if he hadn’t been wasting his
time doing Two-Foot a favor. So Sidewalk set up as Chess left to go to the
sound room, took a seat and started playing Wolf’s How Many More Years. About a minute in, even before he got to the
harmonica solo Chess waved his hand in a non-committal way to stop.
Sidewalk had a few seconds of
excitement while Chess made his way to the studio from the sound room. Here is
what Chess, the big record producer had to say-“ Sidewalk’s, that’s your name
right, your sound is tired, had too much Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf, too muchcountry three chords and out stuff when our
customers, moving up in the world with money to spent on music, on records, especially
the kids, white kids or Negro are looking for, after hearing the every Memphis
radio station blast it out for something more upbeat like that rock and roll
they have been hearing and if they were going to spent money one records rather
than go to the drive-in or go grab a burger you had to hit them where they
jump. You don’t, you never will, sorry.”
So Sidewalk walked back to cheap
street, back to Maxwell Street to nurse his act another day and dream about
that big pink Cadillac he almost had within his reach.
The Importance Of Being Earnest-With The Film Adaptation Of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Ernest In Mind
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
The Importance Of Being Ernest, starring Colin Firth, Judi Dench, Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon, from the famous play of the same name by Oscar Wilde, 2002
No question Oscar Wilde was a witty, sardonic, provocative tweaker of late Victorian English mores and morals. In the end his then over-the-top private sex life did him in as the prudish side of English life that we have all come to hate (except those few who dote on the “royal family” and their fundamentally boring pursuits) beat down this talented man in hell-bent Reading Gaol. The 2002 film adaptation, there have been early ones, of Wilde most famous play, The Importance Of Being Ernest, captures on screen part of the reason why he has endured as an astute social critic of the late Victorian pall.
What’s in a name? Well quite a bit if you follow the story line of the film. Rural bound land-owner and guardian Jack (played by Colin Firth) who yearns to escape to London as much as possible and Algy (played by Rupert Everett) who tags along with him in hothouse London are the best of friends, best of male-bonding bachelor friends. But Jack in London is going under the “war name game” of, well, Ernest as he pursues young Gwendolyn, the charge of very upper-crust Lady Bracknell (played by Dame Judi Dench) who we shall find out started out life not with a silver spoon but with a nice ass and used that hard fact to entrench herself into high society via a very convenient marriage to milord, some milord did it matter as long as the title was sound and maybe the property taxes were paid.
Of course marriage and the property settlements associated with marriage among the upper crust was a very serious proposition in those days (still is if you look beneath the “democratic” veneer of the Mayfair swells these days particularly in London) and so an easy target for Wilde’s wit. Marriage, good marriages came at a price. Hence the spoof of marriage by making such a thing as a first name, an earnest ernest first name as a requirement of marriage assent by both the young women Gwendolyn and Cecily (played by Reese Witherspoon) must have had a lively ripple effect on those London audiences who saw how cheeky Wilde was being in putting them on. In the end, naturally, romance, light-hearted romance will win out but the game here is the repartee between and among the parties until we get there. All’s well that end’s well. Nice.
