This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
The 50th
Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- Botticelli’s 115th Dream-With
Botticelli’s “Venus” In Mind
By Special Guest Alex
James
[Frankly my oldest
brother Alex, who after all is over ten years older than I am, and I have never
been all that close. Maybe that is natural due our age differences and of his
decided and vocally not wanting to have an unruly younger brother tagging along
while he and his vaunted corner boys did their thing. Later the gap widened as his
lawyerly pursues were far removed as a rule from my own social and cultural
concerns. A few weeks ago though, knowing that I write for a number of blogs,
including here at American Left History,
and in various smaller print journals he approached me on behalf of he and his
“corner boys,” at least the ones still standing some fifty years later, to help
organize and write a small tribute booklet in honor of their fallen comrade and
fellow corner boy, Peter Paul Markin, who led them west in the great Summer of
Love, San Francisco, 1967 explosion. I took on the tasks after Alex explained
to me that he had been smitten with a nostalgia bug when he had gone to a legal
conference out there by an exhibit at the deYoung Museum out in Frisco town, The Summer of Love Experience, being
presented to honor the 50th anniversary of the events of that summer.
Fair enough. I was glad
to help out since I only knew the events second-hand and have always been
interested in writing about and have written extensively about that period. As
a result I had thought that the experience of putting out a small publication
where we had to maybe for the first time in our lives work closely together “bonded”
Alex and me somewhat. Fair enough again. Now though the guy is all hopped up,
maybe showing signs of senility for all I know, about an exhibition he had seen
at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where they have Botticelli’s Venus on display. As far as I know Alex
could have given a rat’s ass about art, about the Renaissance back in the day or
anything since not connected with his law practice. But the other day he asked
me for some space here to talk about how that Botticelli painting at the exhibition
reminded him about some love interest he had had during that summer of love
period. What can I say. He is after all my brother. Zack James]
[I had written the
basics of the small piece I wished to present here about a young girl that I
had met out in San Francisco, Jewel Night Star, when I was out there after the
Scribe [Peter Paul Markin] got a bunch of us to head out west in late summer
1967. (I will explain that whole moniker business, that serious need to
“reinvent” ourselves below but just know now that I was always known out there
as Cowboy, or Cowboy Angel, depending on my mood, the day, hell maybe the drug
intake) That was before I read my youngest brother Zack’s introduction. I felt
compelled to add a note here to announce to what he always likes to call a “candid
world” that I am neither senile nor have I been in the past, a past Zack, tied
up with his various writing projects about times that he has only lived through
vicariously totally oblivious to the call of culture, to the call of art and
artifact. What more can I say though as he is my host here. Oh, yes, he is also
after all my brother. Alex James.]
I would be the last
person in the world to deny that memories, good and bad, creep up on a person
sometimes in unusual ways. (Of course in my law practice I have had to pay short
shrift in general to anything to do with memory on behalf of my clients but
that is out of professional necessity to keep the buggers from huge jail time
or cash outlays.) Recently this came home to me in a very odd way. I had been
out in San Francisco to attend a law conference which I do periodically to
confer with other lawyers in my special areas of concern when as I was entering
the BART transit station on Powell Street I noticed on a passing bus an
advertisement for an exhibition called The
Summer of Love Experience being put on at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate
Park to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that wild west
experiment. That set off the first series of memory bells which forced me to
take some time out to go see what they had produced about those long ago times.
See, strange as it may
seem given my subsequent total emergence into my law practice (at times just to
keep afloat with three unhappy ex-wives and a parcel of kids, some happy some
not, to support which almost killed me about ten years ago with a crush of
college tuitions) I had been one of those tens of thousands of young people who
drifted west to see what the whole thing was all about in San Francisco in the
summer of love, 1967. Zack has probably told you that when I came back from this
recent Frisco trip I gathered those of my old hometown corner boys from the
Acre section of North Adamsville who as Zack stated were “still standing” to
put together a small tribute book in honor of the event dedicated to the memory
of the late Peter Paul Markin, the guiding spirit who led us out West like some
latter day prophet.
Mad monk Markin (and he
really was we all called him the Scribe after our leader Frankie Riley gave him
that moniker in junior high school after
Markin once had written some total bullshit homage to him and it hit the school
newspaper and ever after the Scribe was his “flak” writing some stuff that was totally
unbelievable about the real Frankie Riley whom we knew was seven kinds of a
bastard even then) had gone out in the spring of 1967 after dropping out of
Boston University in his sophomore year and had come back in late summer
telling us the “newer world” he was always yakking about (and which we
previously had given a rat’s ass about) was “happening” out there. He conned,
connived, and begged but six of us beside him (and ever after also including
Josh Breslin from up in Olde Sacco, Maine whom the Scribe met out in Frisco who
was not a North Adamsville corner boy but whom we made one since he was clearly
a kindred spirit) went out and stayed
for various lengths of time. I had gone back out with Markin after his
“conversion” plea and stayed for about a year, mostly, as with all of us one
way or another riding Captain Crunch’s “merry prankster” converted yellow brick
road bus (the latter Markin’s term).
While out there I had
many good sexual and social experiences but the best was with a young gal whom
I stuck with most of the time who went by the name Jewel Night Star as I went
by the names Cowboy or Cowboy Angel depending on my mood. I make no pretense to
know all of the psychological and sociological reasons at the time or
thereafter but these monikers we hung on ourselves were an attempt to
“reinvent” ourselves. Break out of the then conventional nine to five, beat the
commies, and buy lots of stuff world our parents tried to drive a nail in our
hearts about. Some people changed their monikers, their personas every other
week but I stuck with my based on the simple love that I had had for Westerns
growing up and since we were in the West it seemed right. Markin’s Be-Bop Kid
was an overlay from his hearty interest in the “beats” who by 1967 were passe,
who were being superseded by what was beginning to be called the “hippies.”
Such were the times. The Jewel Night Star moniker when she told me about it one
night was based on her eyes which in a certain light looked like diamonds, like
twinkling stars. As long as I knew her she stuck with that moniker as well.
Funny when I was out in
Frisco for the conference and went to the museum I didn’t think anything about
her. Had been through a small succession of women after she left the bus and as
I have mentioned have had a whole raft of women since then, married and
unmarried. I just mainly “dug” the scene at the museum and thought about the
great music we heard (when they played White
Bird by It’s a Beautiful Day I freaked out since I had not heard that song
in ages), about the plentiful and mostly safe dope we did (we had an unwritten
pact among the North Adamsville corner boys not to do LSD, “acid” after Markin
explained his “bad trip” on the substance and after we had seen more than a few
people going crazy at concerts and need medical attention), and about how we
could “outrage” bourgeois society by our dress, our free spirits and, well, our
goofiness if it came right down to it. (Tweaking those who were trying to drive
those nails into our hearts.)
Then last week, or the
week before, I got this postcard advertisement from the Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston asking me to join their membership. (I assume somehow that having paid
my admission to the deYoung on-line I had become a prime target for every
museum from Portland East to Portland West). The ‘hook” on the other side of
the postcard was that with a paid up membership I could see Botticelli’s Venus up close and personal. A view of
that image on that postcard lead me directly, I say straight line directly, to
my first memories of Jewel Night Star in maybe the fifty years since that
summer of 1967 time.
In the early fall of
1967 Markin and I had hitchhiked out across the whole country to Frisco. (I can
see every mother grimace at that idea now, or then for that matter.) I won’t go
into the details about how we got out there which I have written about in that
tribute book the guys and I put together and Zack edited. Besides this is about
Jewel not about some Jack Kerouac On The
Road -influenced fling on our parts. Markin had had some contact with this
guy, this wild man, Captain Crunch, who had somehow, most people who knew
anything about it agreed that it was through a dope deal, gotten a yellow brick
road converted school bus which he was travelling on up and down the West Coast
picking up kindred spirits and letting them stay in and around the bus. (The
attrition rate was pretty high most people staying a few weeks and then getting
off or told to find another way to travel by Mustang Sally, the Captain’s sort
of girlfriend, I never did figure out their actual relationship in all the time
I was on the bus, if they stole stuff, didn’t keep fairly decent personal
hygiene or let the drugs make them too weird and in need of some medical help.)
When we got out West the Captain’s bus was stationed in Golden Gate Park and
after the Scribe (then going under the moniker the Be-Bop kid-no more Scribe
okay) introduced us and the Captain thought I was cool (and I thought he was as
well) I was “on the bus.”
A couple of weeks later
the Captain was talking about taking a slow trip south to a place in La Jolla
for the winter where he had a friend. The idea was that we would “house-sit”
what turned out to be a mansion since that friend was one of the first serious
high distribution drug dealers getting his product directly from south of the
border only thirty or forty miles away in Tijuana. We were all for it (me since every place was
a new place for me in California and I was curious). It was on that trip as we
headed toward Big Sur down the Pacific Coast Highway, a place called Todo el
Mundo that I met Gail Harrington, Jewel Night Star.
We had stopped at a campsite
where there was a party that was still going after about the six days before we
got there so everybody was, using a term of art from those days “wasted.” I was
grabbing a joint from somebody when this young woman came up to me and asked
for a hit, for a “toke” for some grass. Her look. Well just check out the
Botticelli Venus above that
accompanies this piece and you get an idea. Tall, thin, hair braided, as was
the style when a lot of young woman were on the road and didn’t want to, or
couldn’t hassle with that daily chore to look beautiful stuff. Just as we guys
grew our hair long and grew beards to avoid having the hassle of shaving. She
had on a diaphanous kind of granny dress that showed her shape in detail. Nice.
The granny dresses also a question of convenience and an expression that a
woman’s shape was not as important as whether she was “cool” or not. But the
best thing about her beyond being a Botticelli vision, a dream, what did I call
it in the title to this piece. Yes, his 115th dream, was that she
was very friendly, and a little flirty, in a nice way unlike all the girls from
North Adamsville that I knew who might be nice but who thought sex was a mortal
sin before marriage, maybe ever.
At first I was a little
disoriented when we hit Frisco and joined up with the bus since the girls were
really without much guile friendly in a way that it was easier talking to them
than the Bible between the knees girls I was used to. By the time we got to
Todo el Mundo I had had a few dalliances, a few what we called back in the
neighborhood, “one night stands” which didn’t go anywhere and nobody worried
about it but I was still unsure about what to expect from the young women who
were travelling that same “road” we were travelling. So I was kind of shy a
little around Jewel at first since she struck me as something out of the
Renaissance, something out a painting by Botticelli who before he “got
religion” later in his life under the influence of Savonarola which I had seen
in an art book when I was taking an art course in high school (and have been
unable to find in recent Internet searches looking for that exact painting). They
were mostly young countesses and merchants’ daughters who had time on their
hands and whom Botticelli was interested in painting for profit and for a
different look than the inevitable Holy Family, Jesus, religious paintings that
were becoming overdone and passe. (I thought it was funny how many of his young
women looked like Northern European women since I had a fixed idea of
dark-eyed, dark haired, dark complexion Italian women who I saw at school or in
the Little Italy neighborhood that started about ten blocks from the
Irish-dominated Acre.)
Well Jewel was not from
Renaissance Italy but from Grand Rapids in Michigan. Had come west when she
finished her first year at Michigan after she had heard one night on a date
what the folk singer at the club she was attending talked about the music
explosion going on out there. She had been out for several months and had
headed south to Todo el Mundo when she thought things had gotten too weird in
San Francisco. She had hitchhiked down with a guy who was heading further south
to Los Angles but she was just then content to stay along the rugged rural
coast for a while. Which she would have done for longer she said except when I
asked to travel south on the bus she agreed. But that was a few weeks
later.
I suppose I have been
somewhat beaten down in the women department because I had forgotten how easy
to be with. Jewel was, I guess, thinking back she was one of those “flower
children” that we kept hearing about. Meaning nothing more than she was
whimsical, was relatively hassle-free and liked nothing better than to roam the
hills around Todo el Mundo and the hardscrabble beaches in the area. With me in
tow. All of this may sound kind of
simple-minded, kind of what is the big deal about his woman. But look at the look
of Venus above, look at that faraway look and that twisting of her braids and
you will get an idea of what Jewel was like. Look at Botticelli’s Venus eyes and you will see the same
night star that I finally saw in Jewel’s.
Like I said we stayed
together more or less for most of that year I was out there until in the spring
of 1968 Jewel said she was getting tired of the road and wanted to either
settle down out in the desert, out in Joshua Tree where several communal groups
were being formed or head back home to school. I didn’t like either idea
although a few months later I would head back east to finish college. We agreed
that our paths were going in different directions and one day she told me that
she had purchased a bus ticket to Joshua Tree (actually when I went out there
many years later Twenty-nine Palms the nearest bus stop then). The next day was
the last day I saw her. Although we had agreed to keep in touch that like a lot
of things in those days it never happened.
I wonder if she is still alive wherever she is if those eyes of hers
still sparkle in a certain angle like a night star. I hope so.
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry on the origins of the American holiday, Memorial Day, directly after the American Civil War.
Markin comment:
As noted in the "Wikipedia" entry one of the places where the day was celebrated in the early days was in Charleston, South Carolina- the intellectual heart of the then defeated Confederacy-in 1865. Not mentioned in the entry was that our own Massachusetts 54th Regiment made up of black volunteers, who had done heroic service before Fort Wagner and elsewhere in the South, took part in those celebrations. By the way, the regiment went marching along the streets of Charleston to the tune of "John Brown's Body". Fitting, very fitting indeed.
John Brown's Body Download Midi File Mark R. Weston Information Lyrics
The tune was originally a camp-meeting hymn Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan's happy shore? It evolved into this tune. In 1861 Julia Ward Howe wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic. The music may be by William Steffe. John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
His soul goes marching on
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled
through and through
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew
His soul is marching on
His soul is marching on
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
But his soul is marching on!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
On the grave of old John Brown
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on
Information and lyrics from
Best Loved Songs of the American People
See Bibliography for full information.
The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Time Of Frankie’s Carnival Time-With The Silhouettes’ Get A Job In Mind
Introduction by Allan Jackson
[Maybe the worse thing about growing up poor, poorer than church mice as my Grandma would have it with a slight sneer since she was referring to my poor father’s inability to adequately provide for his family of four boys and a wife since he was an uneducated man and she thought my mother had married beneath her station, for a kid was always wanting things that couldn’t be bought. Of course a kid doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know, would have not have given a fuck to put it starkly that it was a struggle to just keep a roof over the head and food on the table and only saw and heard that he or she could not have what some other Johnnie or Janie had on the consumer dream television. Of course a kid will still even if he or she becomes aware of the situation later doesn’t want to hear about all the thin air talk about how this or that was not affordable.
That conflict between those freaking wanting habits and the empty envelope come payday reality in the end determined my youthful fate (my mother like many mothers in the neighborhood had weekly envelopes which were usually short on each bill due but enough to keep the wolves from the door. When that was not enough I was send to say the landlord to give the pittance and some story so yes things were close, very close indeed especially in father unemployed times). When it came time to hang with guys, with corner boys I came up with a bunch of guys like the eternally mentioned Scribe and Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader of our crew mainly because he was tight with Tonio the guy who ran the pizza place where we hung out who treated him like a son. That “headquarters,” known or unknown to good guy Tonio who had immigrated from Italy and had a great beauty of an Italian girlfriend whom despite her age we googled, was where Scribe would hatch some weird but workable plan to grab dough from the rich houses in town near the beach at Squaw Rock. After we almost got catch when Scribe led his one and only expedition when Frankie was out of town we swore that he would never lead another no matter how good the plan.
All of this to say the simple truth that living down in nowhere land at the base of society is not conductive to bringing out the better angels of our natures and those wanting habits twisted plenty of ordinary guys for a long time. So running away with the glamorous circus, carnival, sideshow was not some aberration or some far-fetched thing not when the con men, grifters and hustlers were showing all kinds of exciting tricks to kids who were ready to grab dough with every hand. Can you blame them. Allan Jackson]
***********
An old man walked, walked haltingly down a North Adamsville street, maybe Hancock Street, or maybe a street just off of it, maybe a long street like West Main Street, he has forgotten which exactly in the time between his walking and his telling me his story. A street near the high school anyway, North Adamsville High School, where he had graduated from back in the mist of time, the 1960s mist of time. A time when he was known, far and wide, as the king, the king hell king, if the truth be known, of the schoolboy be-bop night. And headquartered himself, properly headquartered himself as generations of schoolboy king hell kings had done previously, at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor as was his due as the reigning schoolboy king of the night. But that schoolboy corner boy king thing is an old story, an old story strictly for cutting up old touches, according to the old man, Frankie, yes, Francis Xavier Riley, as if back from the dead, and not fit, not fit by a long shot for what he had to tell me about his recent “discovery,” and its meaning.
Apparently as Frankie, let us skip the formalities and just call him Frankie, walked down that nameless, maybe unnamable street he was stricken by sight of a sign on a vagrant telephone pole announcing that Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show was coming to town and setting up tent at the Veteran’s Stadium in the first week in June, this past June, for the whole week. And seeing this sign, this vagrant sign on this vagrant telephone pole, set off a stream of memories from when the king hell king of the schoolboy corner boy night was so enthralled with the idea of the “carny” life, of this very Jim Byrd’s Carnival and Traveling Show carnival life, that he had plans, serious plans, to run away, run away with it when it left town.
Under this condition, and of course there was always a condition: if Ma Riley, or Pa Riley if it came to it, although Pa was usually comfortably ensconced in the Dublin Pub over on Sagamore Street and was not a big factor in Frankie’s life when it came time for him to make his mark as king hell king, just bothered him one more time, bothered about what was never specified at least to me. Of course they never did, or Frankie never let on that they did, bother him enough to force the issue, and therefore never forced him on the road. But by then he was into being the corner boy king so that dream must have faded, like a lot of twelve- year old dreams.
In any case rather than running away with the carnival Frankie served his high school corner boy term as king hell king, went to college and then to law school, ran a successful mid-sized law practice, raised plenty of kids and political hell and never looked back. And not until he saw that old-time memory sign did he think of regrets for not having done what he said that “he was born for.” And rather than have the reader left with another in the endless line of cautionary tales, or of two roads, one not taken tales, or any of that, Frankie, Frankie in his own words, wants to expand on his carnival vision reincarnation and so we will let him speak :
“Who knows when a kid first gets the carnival bug, maybe it was down in cradle times hearing the firecrackers in the heated, muggy Fourth Of July night when in old, old time North Adamsville a group of guys, a group of guys called the “Associates,” mainly Dublin Pub guys, and at one time including my father, Joe Riley, Senior, grabbed some money from around the neighborhood. And from the local merchants like Doc over at Doc’s Drug Store, Mario over at Estrella’s Grocery Store, Mac, owner of the Dublin Pub, and always, always, Tonio, owner of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor. What they did with this money was to hire a small time, usually very small time, carnival outfit, something with a name like Joe’s Carny, or the like, maybe with a merry-go-round, some bumping cars, a whip thing, a few one-trick ponies, and ten or twelve win-a-doll-for-your-lady tents. On the side maybe a few fried dough, pizza, sausage and onions kind of eateries, with cotton candy to top it off. And in a center tent acts, clown acts, trapeze acts with pretty girls dangling every which way, jugglers, and the like. Nothing fancy, no three-ring circus, or monster theme amusement park to flip a kid’s head stuff. Like I say small time, but not small time enough to not enflame the imagination of every kid, mainly every boy kid, but a few girls too if I remember right, with visions of setting up their own show.
Or maybe it was when this very same Jim Byrd, a dark-haired, dark-skinned (no, not black, not in 1950s North Adamsville, christ no, but maybe a gypsy or half-gypsy, if that is possible), a friendly guy, slightly wiry, a slightly side-of-his-mouth-talking guy just like a lawyer, who actually showed me some interesting magic tricks when I informed him, aged eight, that I wanted to go “on the road” with him first brought his show to town. Brought it to Veteran’s Stadium then too. That’s when I knew that that old time Associates thing, that frumpy Fourth of July set-up-in-a-minute-thing-and-then-gone was strictly amateur stuff. See Jim’s Carny had a Ferris wheel, Jim had a Mini-Roller Coaster, and he had about twenty-five or thirty win-a-doll, cigarettes, teddy bears, or candy tents. But also shooting galleries, gypsy fortune-telling ladies with daughters with black hair and laughing eyes selling roses, or the idea of roses. And looking very foxy, the daughters that is, although I did not know what foxy was then. Oh yah, sure Jim had the ubiquitous fried dough, sausage and onion, cardboard pizza stuff too. Come on now this was a carnival, big time carnival, big time to an eight-year old carnival. Of course he had that heartburn food. But what set Jim’s operation off was that central tent. Sure, yawn, he had the clowns, tramp clowns, Clarabelle clowns, what have you, and the jugglers, juggling everything but mainly a lot of whatever it was they were juggling , and even the acrobats, bouncing over each other like rubber balls. The big deal, the eight- year old big deal though, was the animals, the real live tigers and lions that performed in a cage in center stage with some blonde safari-weary tamer doing the most incredible tricks with them. Like, well, like having them jump through hoops, and flipping over each other and the trainer too. Wow.
But now that I think about it seriously the real deal of the carny life was neither the Associates or Jim Byrd’s, although after I tell you about this Jim’s would enter into my plans because that was the carnival, the only carnival I knew, to run away with. See what really got me going was down in Huntsville, a town on the hard ocean about twenty miles from North Adamsville, there was what would now be called nothing but an old-time amusement park, a park like you still might see if you went to Seaside Heights down on the Jersey shore. This park, this Wild Willie’s Amusement Park, was the aces although as you will see not a place to run away to since everything stayed there, summer open or winter closed. I was maybe nine or ten when I first went there but the story really hinges on when I was just turning twelve, you know, just getting ready to make my mark on the world, the world being girls. Yes, that kind of turning twelve.
But nine or twelve this Wild Willie’s put even Jim Byrd’s show to shame. Huge roller-coasters (yes, the plural is right, three altogether), a wild mouse, whips, dips, flips and very other kind of ride, covered and uncovered, maybe fifteen or twenty, all based on the idea of trying to make you scared, and want to go on again, and again to“ conquer” that scared thing. And countless win things (yah, cigarettes, dolls, teddy bears, candy, and so on in case you might have forgotten). I won’t even mention that hazardous to your health but merciful, fried dough, cardboard pizza (in about twenty flavors), sausage and onions, cotton candy and salt water taffy because, frankly I am tired of mentioning it and even a flea circus or a flea market today would feel compelled to offer such treats so I will move on.
What it had that really got me going, at first anyway, was about six pavilions worth of pinball machines, all kinds of pinball machines just like today there are a zillion video games at such places. But what these pinball machines had (beside alluring come-hither and spend some slot machine dough on me pictures of busty young women on the faces of the machines) were guys, over sixteen year old teenage guys, mainly, some older, some a lot older at night, who could play those machines like wizards, racking up free games until the cows came home. I was impressed, impressed to high heaven. And watching them, watching them closely were over sixteen- year old girls, some older, some a lot older at night, who I wondered, wondered at when I was nine but not at twelve, might not be interfering with their pinball magic. Little did I know then that the pinball wizardry was for those sixteen year old, some older, some a lot older, girls.
But see, if you didn’t already know, nine or twelve-year old kids were not allowed to play those machines. You had to be sixteen (although I cadged a few free games left on machines as I got a little older, and I think the statute of limitations has run out on this crime so I can say I was not sixteen years or older). So I gravitated toward the skee ball games located in one of those pinball pavilions, games that anybody six to sixty or more could play. You don’t know skees. Hey where have you been? Skee, come on now. Go over to Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore, or Old Orchard up on the Maine coast and you will have all the skees you want, or need. And if you can’t waggle your way to those hallowed spots then I will give a little run-down. It’s kind of like bowling, candle-pin bowling (small bowling balls for you non-New Englanders) with a small ball and it’s kind of like archery or darts because you have to get the balls, usually ten or twelve to a game, into tilted holes.
The idea is to get as high a score as possible, and in amusement park land after your game is over you get coupons depending on how many points you totaled. And if you get enough points you can win, well, a good luck rabbit’s foot, like I won for Karen stick-girl one time (a stick girl was a girl who didn’t yet have a shape, a womanly shape, and maybe that word still is used, okay), one turning twelve-year old time, who thought I was the king of the night because I gave her one from my “winnings,” and maybe still does. Still does think I am king of the hill. But a guy, an old corner boy guy that I knew back then, a kind of screwy guy who hung onto my tail at Salducci’s like I was King Solomon, a guy named Markin who hung around me from middle school on, already wrote that story once.
Although he got one part wrong, the part about how I didn’t know right from left about girls and gave this Karen stick girl the air when, after showering her with that rabbit’s foot, she wanted me to go with her and sit on the old seawall down at Huntsville Beach and according to Markin I said no-go. I went, believe me I went, and we both practically had lockjaw for two weeks after we got done. But you know how stories get twisted when third parties who were not there, had no hope of being there, and had questionable left from right girl knowledge themselves start their slanderous campaigns on you. Yes, you know that scene, I am sure.
So you see, Karen stick and lockjaw aside, I had some skill at skees, and the way skees and the carny life came together was when, well let me call her Gypsy Love, because like the name of that North Adamsville vagrant telephone pole street where I saw the Byrd’s carnival in town sign that I could not remember the name of I swear I can’t, or won’t remember hers. All I remember is that jet-black long hair, shiny dark-skinned glean (no, no again, she was not black, christ, no way, not in 1950s Wild Willie’s, what are you kidding me?), that thirteen-year old winsome smile, half innocent, half-half I don’t know what, that fast-forming girlish womanly shape and those laughing, Spanish gypsy black eyes that would haunt a man’s sleep, or a boy’s. And that is all I need to remember, and you too if you have any imagination. See Gypsy Love was the daughter of Madame La Rue, the fortune-teller in Jim Byrd’s carnival. I met her in turning twelve time when she tried to sell me a rose, a rose for my girlfriend, my non-existent just then girlfriend. Needless to say I was immediately taken with her and told her that although I had no girlfriend I would buy her a rose.
And that, off and on, over the next year is where we bounced around in our “relationship.” One day I was down at Wild Willie’s and I spotted her and asked her why she wasn’t on the road with Jim Byrd’s show. Apparently Madame LaRue had had a falling out with Jim, quit the traveling show and landed a spot at Wild Willie’s. And naturally Gypsy Love followed mother, selling flowers to the rubes at Wild Willie’s. So naturally, naturally to me, I told Gypsy Love to follow me over to the skees and I would win her a proper prize. And I did, I went crazy that day. A big old lamp for her room. And Gypsy Love asked me, asked me very nicely thank you, if I wanted to go down by the seawall and sit for a while. And let’s get this straight, no third party who wasn’t there, no wannabe there talk, please, I followed her, followed her like a lemming to the sea. We had lockjaw for a month afterward to prove it. And you say, you dare to say I was not born for that life, that carnival life. Ha.
When The Thin Man Got
Thinner-With “The Thin Man Goes Home” Film Adaptation Of Dashiell Hammett’s TheThin
Man In Mind
By Film Critic Sam
Lowell
[Take the following as
something of a disclaimer since I have decided to embark of a look at several
of the Thin Man films that came out in the 1940s. These days now that I am,
well, let’s call the situation semi-retired from reviewing films I made no
pretense to viewing film series like the famous 1940s The Thin Man film series under discussion here in chronological
order. Now I go by happenstance. That happenstance got worked out this way on
this series. I happened to see a DVD copy of Shadow Of The Thin Man highlighted at my local library for some
reason. Since I have spent a fair amount of time recently reviewing black and
white films I grabbed this one. I loved to watch such films in my younger days,
my teenage days, when I would go to the
Majestic Theater box of popcorn in hand in Riverdale some distance from Boston where
I would spent many Saturday afternoons watching double features. That is the genesis
of this out of order series of reviews for which I take full responsibility.
S.L.]
Recently in a review of
the fourth in the famous Myrna Loy-William Powell seemingly never-ending The Thin Man series, Shadow Of The Thin Man and again later
commenting on the original film adaptation,
I mentioned that a long time ago, or it now seems a long time ago, I had a
running argument with the late film critic Henry Dowd about the alleged decline
in manly film detectives after the time of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and
Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in the 1940s. By that Henry meant tough guy,
no holds barred, non-filter cigarette smoking, Luckies or Camels, bottom of the
desk drawer hard shell whiskey neat drinking, who didn’t mind taking or giving
a punch, or taking or giving a random slug for the cause detectives.
He had based his opinion strictly on viewing the films of the famous detective
couple Nick and Nora Charles.
Henry Dowd believed that
with the rise of The Thin Man series that previous
characterization of a model detective, his previous characterization Henry was
given to the imperative tone, switched from the hard whiskey drinking guy to a
soft martini swigging suave guy with a soft manner and an aversion to taking
risks, certainly to taking punches or slugs. Hell, in that film under review at
the time not only had Nick been married to Nora but they had a kid, not to
mention that damn dog Asta, nothing but a regular entourage to weigh a guy
down. Back in the day what had surprised Henry in our public prints argument
had been when I told him that the same guy, Dashiell Hammett, who had written
the heroic tough guy detective Sam Spade in the all-time classic The Maltese Falcon had also written the
dapper Nick and charming Nora characters. Henry did not believe me until I
produced my tattered copy of Hammett’s The Thin Man which had
started the whole film series. Thereafter he kept up the same argument except
placing The Thin Man as an aberration
probably do to Hammett’s known heavy drinking or that he, Hammett, was trying
to soften his own Stalinist-etched persona with such an obvious bourgeois
couple. Jesus.
My objection to Henry’s
“decline of the manly” detective theory back then had not been so much about the
social manners or the social class of the couple in the series, a reversion to
the parlor detective genre before Hammett and Chandler brought the genre out of
the closet and onto the streets, as the thinness of the plots as they rolled
out each new product. I continue to tout the original film in series The Thin Man as the one everybody should
view and take in the rest if you have restless hour and one half or so to
whittle away.
I had held my viewing of
Shadow up as a case in point. And the
same is true of the film being reviewed here The Thin Man Goes Home. The story line is basically Nicks’ revenge
for his doctor father’s disapproval of his choice of a career in law
enforcement and private detection rather than the gentile medical profession.
And his drinking-centered urban lifestyle as well. Nick and Nora travel to the
quiet oasis from crime Podunk town where he had grown up for a vacation.
Apparently in Podunk the mere appearance of a famous ex-private detective was
enough to bring local society down with a bang. Make that bang-bang since a
murder of a young factory worker cum artist is what drives Nick to beat
everybody including the public coppers to the punch-to finding the murderer and
the reason for his death and well as ultimately the death of his Apple Annie
mother who was trying to protect him. The usual cast of characters show up with
their own grab bag of motives to do the rotten deed.
In the end the town,
probably like a million other towns had its fair share of the jealous, of the
crooked and those who craved hard cash. Without giving too much of the not too
much to give away the struggle for the hard cash centered on grabbing plans for
a new style propeller from the local defense factory and sell them to the
highest bidder-meaning foreign interests. Naturally such unpatriotic behavior
had to be stopped. And Nick proved his mettle to his father who coughed up a
“good work” comment at the end. (Nora pretty much stood around and looked
beautiful in his one.) So you can see even every ready Hollywood was running
out of serious work for our fair couple to feast on.
Enough said except that
I also mentioned that if one had just one film in the series then you had to
opt for the original one based far more closely on that tattered copy of
Hammett’s crime novel. Those were the days when Nick, still besotted by Nora, but
not knocked over by her could work up the energy to do more than mix martinis.
(Or to revive the old Dowd argument before Hammett let the bottle get to him or
while working under the umbrella of Popular Front days directed from red
Moscow).
On The 50th Anniversary Of The Passing Of The “King Of The Beats” -Ti Jean Kerouac-A Series Of Appreciations-
By Contributing Editor Allan Jackson
For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50th Anniversary Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies"
By Lance Lawrence
[In the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admit that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. I also knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we could see out in the National Mall and later Greenwich Village night.
This piece first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsburg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers, a younger group according to the demographics provided to me by the advertising department when I was trying to figure out where the thing got lost in the fog. Some readers thought because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. Some readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.
There were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of society. Jack Weir because of some West Coast references. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope. All wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him when he went under the ground. Lance Lawrence]
***********
I have seen the best poet of the generation before mine declare that he had seen that the best minds of his generation had turned to mush, turned out in the barren wilderness from which no one returned except for quick stays in safe haven mental asylums. Saw the same Negro streets he saw around Blue Hill Avenue and Dudley Street blank and wasted in the sweated fetid humid Thunderbird-lushed night (and every hobo, vagrant, escapee, drifter and grafter yelling out in unison ‘what is the word-Thunderbird-what is the price forty twice” and ready to jackroll some senior citizen lady for the price-ready to commit mayhem at Park Street subway stations for their “boy,” to be tamped by girl but I will be discrete since the Feds might raid the place sometime looking for the ghost of Trigger Burke who eluded them for a very long time. Thought that those angel-headed hipsters, those hep cats hanging around Times, Lafayette, Dupont, Harvard squares) crying in pools of blood coming out of the wolves-stained sewers around the black corner would never stop bleating for their liquor, stop until they got popular and headed for the sallow lights of Harvard Square where they hustled young college students, young impressionable college students whose parents had had their best minds wasted in the turbid streets of south Long Island (not the West Egg of Gatsby’s dream of conquering everything in sight like any other poor-boy arriviste with too much money and not enough imagination and not East Egg of the fervid elites but anytown, Levitttown of those who would escape to Boston or Wisconsin to face the angel of death up front and say no go, pass, under luminous moons which light up sparks and say to that candid world which could have given a fuck hard times please come again no more.
I have seen frosted lemon trees jammed against the ferrous night, the night of silly foolish childhood dreams and misunderstanding about the world, the world that that poet spoke of in a teenage dream of indefinite duration about who was to have who was to have not once those minds were de-melted and made hip to the tragedies of life, the close call with the mental house that awaits us all.
By Lance Lawrence
Sometimes you just cannot win. Sometimes you just let it pass and other times as now anything less than incarceration or the bastinado will not permit me to say some words on a subject that I care about. Attentive readers of Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s or its sister publication where such material is something like syndicated know that I, and most of the older writers here and for that matter other publications who grew up in the 1950s have some relationship to “the Beats” to Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg above but lesser lights stationed in North Beach, San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York City and other sullen outposts. Know that although we were way too young or too interested in our generation’s salvation-rock and roll music-to be washed clean by the Beats that by some process of osmosis we picked up some of the ideas, words, be-bop, lust, homosexual slang, road terminology. Courtesy of Jack Kerouac and the crowd whether he accepted the honorific “King of the Beats” or like Bob Dylan dubbed by the mass media always looking for a hook “King of the Folkies” for the next generation, the folkie-hippie counterculture abdicated.
Personally, and I have the scars and restless writerly nights to prove it, I was very second-wave influenced by Kerouac and not only by his most famous book, bible really when the time for such things was ripe, On The Road. Maybe less that books like Big Sur which got me to Todo el Mundo just south of Big Sur and some wild escapades and near fatal escapes toked to the gills on weed or whatever came through the very open door. Influences which have made it natural to recount some of those adventures in print of one sort or another. Natural as well this 50th anniversary year since Jack Kerouac’s death in 1969 to make a big deal out of that milestone. To write some fresh material as below or to republish some older material. And not just memories of Kerouac’s influence but what I called in one article the “assistant king of the beats” Allan Ginsburg.
That is where the sometimes you can’t win comes in and the have to “speak to the issue” rears its head as well. Recently both to acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s passing and to honor Allan Ginsburg’s as well I had an article Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall originally published in Poetry Today in 1997 republished in several publications under the title For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50th Anniversary Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies."
In a new introduction to the piece I mentioned that in the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admitted that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. Those were the fast and loose days when everybody wanted to be out somewhere around Big Sur and one day I happened to be in The Lost Way restaurant (now still open under another name serving wholesome food unlike the burgers and fries and beer that sustained us then) and somebody mentioned that Jack’s daughter, unacknowledged daughter as I said, Jan was sitting a few tables away having as I learned later from her had just come from Pfeiffer Beach which played a role in a few of Jacks’ books. One thing led to another and we wound up taking Jan with us to our digs (house) in Todo el Mundo several miles away.
That simple fact has now led in 2019 to some fool, a fool with a name very familiar in the age of the Internet of Anonymous, to assume without proof that Jan and I, or Jan and somebody in the house were having an affair, and most probably me. The only “proof” given, maybe asserted is better was that a guy by the name of Johnny Spain told him that he had been there at our house when Jan came tumbling and that we had a party for about four days when booze, sex, and drugs flowed freely. I knew Johnny Spain back in those days so that part is real. He was on the run from the coppers for either drug possession or for assault I forget which since we had a few such characters some our way and as we were not fond of the coppers then, maybe not now either we gave him shelter. Johnny probably saw many things as he imbibed in whatever was around the place, but he would not have seen me hanging with Jan. Simple reason: one Carol Riley forever known as Butterfly Swirl in those times when many of us, including me the Duke of Earl (yes from the 1950s hit single), were carrying monikers to reflect our new-found freedoms was slumming from her perfect wave boyfriend existence down in Carlsbad in the days before young women took to the surf themselves and had come north to see what was happening. Butterfly was very possessive which I didn’t mind but would have ditched me and/or has it out with Jan if we had been having an affair. End of story, well, not quite the end Butterfly returned to Carol and her perfect wave surfer before long after finding out “what was what.”
This is really where my real ire is hanging though. In that same introduction I mentioned that I also knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days long before he became a professor when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we could see out in the D.C. National Mall and later Greenwich Village night. Like I said that piece which formed the basis for republication first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsburg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers. I gave a few examples of what went awry in the responses. Some readers thought because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. In any case there was no way the staid and high Victorian sensibilities Eliot would know anything about the bohemia of his day except maybe knowing some bonkers Bloomsbury cadre. One would be totally remiss to call him the max daddy of anything as I did in my homage.
Some readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.
There were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of society. The flight from downtrodden home life made worse by plodding square parents whose dreams for their off-spring were life-deadening civil servant jobs although admittedly a step up from the dregs down at the working poor base of society. Jack Weir because of some West Coast references, the usual suspects North Beach, Big Sur, Todo el Mundo (where Allan Ginsburg never went or never went while I was there, Fillmore Street dreams and drugs, the inevitable Golden Gate reference. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope and self-identification with the downtrodden and the caged inmates at the mental hospitals which he frequented more times than he liked to admit.
All wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd readership who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him, for Allan the sad day when he went under the ground.
That all was twenty some years ago and while those readers responses were stone-cold crazy they at least had the virtue of ignorance since I did not mention the name Allan Ginsburg in the title nor in the piece. Frankly I did not think I had to do so. What, however, is to be made of readers in 2019 who I assume had read my introduction and its named poet in bold print who still believe that I am referring to some other poet, some of them pretty obscure and old school which makes me think these readers were maybe college freshman survey course takers. I won’t go through them all since unlike 1997 where one actually had to write and mail with proper postage whatever was on their minds today they can just flail away and done so many more responses showed up at my in-box.
Here are today’s scratching my head entries. What Sam Lowell a fellow writer here has seen it all in his forty plus years as a film critic calls trolls since they are tied to alternate facts and more importantly whatever they have on their minds, if that is what they have. Maybe they just don’t read introductions or are among the dwindling few who still take umbrage that someone would tout the virtuous of long-time known homosexual when everybody else has moved on, has bought into a very sensible idea that it is nobody else’s business who you love-and now wed. So a few of the rabid went along that line but rather than grab onto Ginsburg have assumed that I was writing about Walt Whitman, since I mentioned the grand civil war and the fate of boys and men including a semi-erotic paean to Abe Lincoln. Of course they got that wrong since Whitman’s ode to Lincoln Oh Captain, My Captain is one of the few truly chaste and un-coded poems he wrote. But that is a classic example of this troll contingent’s faking reality to suit some odd-ball political agenda from we should all run like hell.
It only got worse after Greg Green, site manager for the on-line publications here who in the old hard copy days would have been called the editor, started publishing some of the e-mails which only fueled the flames. Declared open season on reason until on advice of wise Sam Lowell mentioned above who chairs the Editorial Board that sits to clamp down on an editor’s more off-the-wall decisions. To continue a vague off-hand reference to the various Eggs off Long Island Sound got one F. Scott Fitzgerald the brass ring mainly so that Jay Gatsby could be extolled as the upwardly mobile paragon of American virtue for a new century (that is exactly what was said if you can believe that since in the unlamented Jazz Age except for the jazz Jay got himself shot and dumped in some coal bin.) A couple more to make my point since I suddenly realized that to even present these holy goofs, an expression learned at the feet of one Jack Kerouac who had I believe more talented types in mind, but the expression just popped out at me. Yeats, Yeats of all poets drew some fan-dom based on talk of Irish girls losing their virtues in sullen Cape Cod gin mills. How that goes with muse Maude Gonne escapes me. Finally, and at least this person had some literary sense he thought because I mentioned Time Square hipsters, drifters and grifters waking up in sullen midnight sweats looking for some savior not the Lord fixer man to get them well and ready to do an occasional soft-core armed robbery or jack-roll (I was impressed with the sue of that term since nobody uses that expression for a very old trick of taking a slender club or maybe a roll of fisted quarters and bopping some drunk or old lady for their ready cash I was speaking of one Gregory Corso the bandit-poet. Sorry I was reaching for the big Howl and Kaddish master and beautiful lumpen dream Corso was a secondary player back in those long-gone daddy days. Enough. Lance Lawrence]
[Back in 2007 and then in 2017 when we commemorated the 50th and 60th anniversaries respectively of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s landmark travel book of a different kind On The Road which ignited a generation maybe two to “hit the road” I was the site manager, then called general editor, a throw-back from the times when American Left History was a hard copy publication. At those times I had been re-reading a series of Ti Jean’s books after senior writer Sam Lowell had pointed out to me that the previous years had been the 50th and 60th anniversaries respectively of fellow Jack “beat” brother Allan Ginsberg’s landmark poem (really screed) Howl which for a while took poetry into a different direction which we had neglected to commemorate (and which we did belatedly). Now Sam has again reminded that we have come to a certain commemoration date, the 50th anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac and we are again in need of evaluation, no, re-evaluating the place of his work, his place as “king of the beats” whether than title fits or not and his place in the sun.
Of course on those prior occasions I could assign whatever I wanted to whomever I wanted since I was the person who was handing out the assignments. Now after a prolonged internal fight in which I was deposed and sent into “exile” I am back but solely as a contributing editor, not as the person handing out assignments. That task is now in the capable hands of one Greg Green whom I knew over at American Film Gazette many years ago and had brought over a couple of years ago to run the day to day operation here. Greg and I have had our ups and downs especially after I was in desperate straits when I was sent into exile and had no current source of income and had to depend “on the kindnesses of strangers.” But that is past and since I was instrumental in the previous commemorations Greg decided that I should as with a couple of other major projects that I have done since my return oversee the Kerouac death watch this year.
Needless to say, since this dark cloud anniversary is upon us I have to do a new introduction, a setting of the tone. One thing that I was not able to do when I was overseeing the previous commemorations was to write about something that has haunted me for a long time-how different Jack’s experiences were from those of my parents, from any Acre neighborhood parents despite some very strong similarities between the way he grew up and the way they did. In short they were near contemporaries having all been born and raised in the 1920s and forward. Nevertheless they could not have been more different in their lifestyles and life dreams. It would take their son, and their son’s generation to at least momentarily connect with the older man and what he brought to the table. Maybe the link between “beat” and “hippie” was tenuous, but it was there, and is there fifty years after his passing to the unsettled grave. That will be the thread that runs through this new series. Adieu, Ti Jean.
*************
Jack fifty tears, fifty years gone in some bastard grave in holy, holy, holy Edson Merrimack River ground busted asunder by holy goofs looking for timely relics, looking for that one word which would spring them into some pantheon, some parity with the king (we will not even mention that other king that animated our dreams for we now speak of parent, parent of class of ’68 dream. Funny non-Catholic ground Lowell given his deep sea dive to right his ship around the beatitudes that the class of ’68 left in the shade if you wished to know. Mere turning in her old Quebec come down to the textile mills from desolate turn of the century farms which gave to the bloody English overlords, another common sticking point against heathen English overrunning the small patch farms with enclosures and encumbered debts devotion grave, with the times out of sorts the young passing before ancient hatreds mother. Not a stranger come the end on Hard Rock Mountain and no place but some stinking trailer benny and that fucking crucifix that never helped anybody that far gone into the haze.
Not strange for assuredly lapsed Catholic cum Buddha swings devotee coming out of Desolation Mountain, Dharma bum frills and assorted other spiritual trips, (won’t even think about that black boy, and he was just a boy, who against some grandmother dreads blew the high white note out to the China Seas, via, well, via Frisco Bay drove the writing, the what, the unvarnished truth until it drove him into the ground. That and those endless whiskeys and cheap Thunderbird wines when dimes were scarce a few times down on his luck cadging wino bottles from buying for underaged kids, with his bottle the kicker and what the hell if he didn’t go it, didn’t get his some sterno junkie would dip into Salvation Army surplus and the thirst was great. Not “his” thirst but “the” thirst and don’t mix the two up buddy as he told that straggly bearded kid, some hippie bastard from Omaha clueless about the decadent night which lie ahead, the compromises too.
Strangely bisected, fuck finally my real point (another luxury of not having to be general editor with parsing and editing to make “nice” for the academic journals which thrive, which throttle on Jack’s sputum and can get down in the mud with the real critics like Artie Shaw and Bugs Malone and not worry about half-ablaze in the head, half fire in the head Patti Griffin called it once), through my own parents too who had no idea of hip, no idea of “beat,” except maybe mother in beatitude but that is a different story, a story about common roots high holy day Catholic stuff. Another common point, emerged in veiled tears, speaking of tears, to rear their ugly heads come feast days. (Wondering if her, their fairy sons would see the light, would submit to the calling that every grandmother hoped without saying leaving it to transient daughters to do their own parsing. Father no hipster born to the hills and hollows which hallowed by memory played no part in big boom beat-beat time coming out of World War II like houses on fire. No speedy cross-country by 1947 Hudson (hell no car a public transportation might as well say welfare crude bum and fuck that is all a guy like that deserved.) With big ideas of shaking things up, making merry with the always with us squares and other geometric forms. Jesus the worst part knowing that they knew not of square or any other geometric dreams. Too bad, too bad when they chance came around and the call went out looking for junkie hipsters, con men and queers hanging around public toilets on Seventh Avenue in New York City.
No Dean Moriarty, hell call a thing by its right name, no Max Fame, no Allan Ginsberg, no Kenneth Rexforth, no Hank James, or his brother William speaking in tongues trying to figure what a guy named Freud meant when he wanted to go where his mother lived, after killing cosmic fathers and brothers, no Gregory Corso, no John three names somebody a throwback to ancient Boston Brahmin bouts with legitimacy speaking of bastards, trace the genealogy back to Mayfair swells days, nothing for the bastard who is bothering one Laura Perkins who I have been sweet on for an eternity but who only has eyes for Sam Lowell about her sexy takes on serious 19th century artist who were as capable of going down into the mud, blowing some high white note out in the Japan seas for a change. Above all no Neal Cassidy, no fake Dean Moriarty to skirt the libel laws with wives and mistresses searching for vagrant unknown fathers in some dusty coal bins but a poor old good old boy and maybe in another time said Dean, Adonis Dean against Father Sheik, would have wandered out in the cowboy West night looking for drunken fathers with hip-ness but that was not the play, not at all. Father Sheik coming like a bat out of hell from those hazardous coal bins looking to break the eternal hills and hollows existence that plagued his fathers since the time the first clan were cast out of England for stealing pigs or consorting with them in any case with not unfamiliar family refrain of “leave, or the gallows,” such were the tempers of the times.
And Father Sheik, hell, Adonis Dean too, with no way out except that passport via some Nippon adventure over Pearl always Pearl nothing else needed and he off to Pacific battles and raiments. Jack to the North Seas and merchant marine bunks with odd-ball seasick sailors (and me wondering whether having looked of late at YouTube should attribute my borrowed words but the hell with it plenty of seasick sailors had nothing to do with YouTube or song lyrics). And forsaken Dean too young to know the face of battles hung up in reformatory secret vices which an earlier generation (and later ones too) would “dare not speak their names” (Catamite, Sodomite, homosexual, pug ugly, suck-head, your call.) How quaint.
Two years and two places do make a different no Bette Davis eyes in the hills and hollows but Jack-induced Merrimack adventures of boys seeking pleasures in riverside woods and hamming it up for all the world to see. If only the old man could have written out his dreams, if he could have written out anything. Jack to the library born to take his fill of whatever classics that river textile town had to offer and whiskey you’re the devil which should have given even a blinded son something to think about with dear Jack fifty years dead and the old man still trembling in his teeth. My God.
But he never made, he the old man never made New York ever as far as I could tell, knew none but obvious landmarks like tall Empire State Building or Lady Liberty. Mother Jacked on some Cape Cod Canal cutaway small steamer to the Big Apple (not Big Apple then but who knows) and Automats, evoking Laura’s Edward Hopper sad-assed dreams of a guy who couldn’t even draw smiling faces and hence the queen of 20th century angst and alienation and five cent ferry rides to Staten Island. The Village, okay for me to call it Village as I was a denizen once for Jack too might as well have been on some planet’s moon for all she knew-him too, too rich for his blood but Jack’s meat, no problem. Even if strangely Times Square hipsters, grifters, drifters and Howard Johnson hot dog eaters were mixed into the new wave, then new wave against Big Band Duke, Artie, Lionel jazz boys coming up with their sullen lipped riffs to spring a new alienated be-bop on the square world. Jack knew square, knew father square, knew mother, Mere, square in large letters of unrequited love but shook it off long enough to cross the great desert America giving Lady Liberty the boot, the un-shod sole, or maybe taking a cue from Jack book lamming it out on Bear Mountain just for the hell of it. But this old mother, not Mere mother, never knew, never had an idea of even in her big Catholic, Irish Catholic dream of meeting the boy next door and finding steady white-collar civil servant heaven. Jesus is that what she was about when the deal went down and Jack split for Ohio with two bucks and six bologna sandwiches stale well before Toledo believe me I know.
Life took a different tact though she never found that clever test-worthy boy next door (he was some greaser with a big hog of a bike which would have inflamed Dean, would have gotten his wanting habits on and maybe a run to the Coast). So she having had her fill of Coney Island dreams and Automat five cent pies took a chance on the Sheik (strange on looking at Jack photographs how sheik-like our boy was and father too like some lost tribe members) found guarding the country’s defense not far from her home but he of Pacific wars, many with manly Marines. Jack flopped the Navy but did dangerous merchant marine runs out in the North Atlantic, out to the Murmansk seas (that makes three China and Japan alongside) not honored even in Washington until much later down in front of Arlington National bravos resting places. And a not so funny twist of sagging fate brought her dish loads of kids and some undefined alienation from which she was excluded, and he too by association. They didn’t prosper far from it but they also didn’t have that run, no, those runs, to the West looking for lost fathers, looking for the Adonis of the West to shake up his love. Could two worlds be any more different and only about say forty miles apart. That not a question but maybe a quiet condemnation for some woe-begotten life of quiet desperation, her mantra for all the good it did her.
It would take a son, some son, some great girth of sons and daughters to jailbreak, to Jack their ways out of that parent, remember their parents’ contemporary, that snare set for those who didn’t get to Times Square, didn’t get to the Village but stuck it out in Hoboken, Elko, Oceanside. It would take some unsettled sense that all was not right with the world, that too many kids were stuck with Modesto hot-rod dreams, Hell’s Angels angers, Louisville thwarts, and many La Jolla searches for perfect waves to jumpstart what Jack, and not just Jack but he is fifty tears, fifty years gone. Oh, what might have been.
