An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- For The Fallen-In Honor Of The Anti-War Soldier Timothy Kerrigan (1940-2015), Vietnam 1964-1966-RIP

An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- For The Fallen-In Honor Of The Anti-War Soldier Timothy Kerrigan (1940-2015), Vietnam 1964-1966-RIP

Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction

[As my replacement Greg Green, whom I brought in from American Film Gazette originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’ ethos and fate.        

As I said I will describe that transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime” I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival, about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around” something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The Roots Is The Toots  rock and roll coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket. (Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been present at the creation.               

That would have been the end of it but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found another series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.      

This time though the Editorial Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their opportunity to move up.  

That part I had no problem with, told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend” about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that same town whom I also helped stake to  his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.          

If the reader can bear the weight of this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason, although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.

Tapped out in the East for a lot of reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate. So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat. Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.              

The helping Madame La Rue, real name of no interest or need to mention,  running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly, said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her place for a while until I had to move on. Done

The whole drag queen idea tells me that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East. Done.

But enough about me.  This is about two other working- class guys, Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam and Ralph in future segments.]

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Allan Jackson Encore Introduction

All of us who were wounded in Vietnam, in the war, mentally, spiritually, physically, which I include myself in the mix had various ways to live our service down. As I have mentioned before I would estimate that the vast majority of the couple of million Americans who served in that conflict starting from serious America escalation in 1964 to the bitter end with the famous helicopter scene of people being airlifted off the U.S. Embassy rooftop in April, 1975 did so without rancor or without the damn war putting them in a very bad place like happened with Peter Paul Markin’s “brothers under the bridges” in Southern California and continues to happen with suicides, drug dependency and all the other pathologies of the post-traumatic stress of their service. Some like Markin fell down to drugs, hubris, exhaustion with life in the “real” world. Others, and I am in this cohort as well “got religion” about the issues of war and peace which they, we would never had experienced outside having to fight the monsters, the monstrous American war machine. That is what Ralph and Sam, who wrote this piece, admired about their, our friend Timmy Kerrigan when he passed away a few years ago of cancer.

In a way Timmy’s death which I did not hear about until a few weeks after he passed so I was not at his memorial service revived something in me, something about “revisiting” the why of how the Vietnam War twisted me in a direction that, given my up-bringing, never would have happened, would never have prompted me to spent the rest of my life trying to get “on the good side of the angels.” That at least in part is the genesis on the “why” of this series when the idea was first broached. The other bigger part to the why, the why beyond Timmy, which was recently re-enforced by Lynn Novack and Ken Burns’s PBS Vietnam War series was the need to “shout out over the rooftops” to the younger generations the need to oppose the war policies of the American government, to use our “street cred” as veterans to say no to war.

Unlike say the World War II veterans, Sam, Ralph, Timmy, my father’s war while they were as silent as we were about what went on in combat had a certain pride that came with victory over fascism which is what drove many of them into the ranks, that and patriotism after December 7, 1941, after Japan blew the hell out of the fleet at Pearl Harbor we had nothing to feel good about. Nothing. I remember while I was deciding on whether to go ahead with the project running into Fritz Taylor, a Vietnam veteran from down in Fulton County, Georgia who has occasionally written for this publication, told me that except for about a week at home he had never returned to his hometown he was so ashamed of what he had done, and could not tolerate the fake patriotism that still drove his parents, his fellow townsman at the time. Had stopped mentioning at all for many years that he was a Vietnam veteran and kept whatever was inside him inside. This from a guy who won a fistful of medals for his service (medals which wound up heaved over the fence at the Supreme Court building in down in Washington, D.C in 1971). Another driving wedge at the time was my meeting a veteran of two tours, two tough Mekong Delta tours, which meant really tough tours, up in Maine when I was visiting Josh Breslin’s hometown of Olde Saco who had been married twice (and divorced twice) and had never mentioned that he had been in Vietnam to either one of his wives. That sentiment was only re-enforced by the PBS series where the wives of two ex-Marines had known each other for a dozen years, the men were friends, and yet neither knew the other had served in Vietnam. Amazing. That only contributed to my sense of urgency in doing an encore presentation. As for beautiful Timmy Kerrigan Sam and Ralph can speak on that matter far better than I could.                         

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For The Fallen-In Honor Of The Anti-War Soldier Timothy Kerrigan (1940-2015), Vietnam 1964-1966-RIP

From The Pen Of Sam Eaton

Ralph Morris is a man of few words. Don’t get the idea though that he is not capable or if in the mood or if provoked of coming up with some pithy word or phrase but he is a not a writer in the senses that I am, that I like to write. But he is a man of few words nevertheless. Strangely he has made his living off of words, not writing them but printing them up being a printer by trade. That is a trade that he has pursued ever since in about third grade he read that one of his heroes, Benjamin Franklin of American Revolution fame, had been a printer. So he took that course up in high school, apprenticed with Joe Pringle who at the time had the only print shop in Carver, in Massachusetts the town that he grew up in, and eventually set up a shop there. A successful shop until the past few years when he realized that print technology had changed so much and that he was behind the times in the copying business (after having back in the late 1960s early 1970s been in the vanguard of the silk-screening end of the business when everybody wanted that kind of work done on posters and tee-shirts) and turned the business last year over to his oldest son, Jeff, who is more savvy in the new hi-tech world.

But enough of Ralph’s history for today Ralph has other troubles on his mind, troubles about having to say a few words, really more than a few words about the late Timothy Kerrigan at his memorial service, a few words about what Timmy meant to the organization they both (me too) belonged to, Veterans for Peace, and to Ralph personally. See Timmy was something like Ralph’s mentor way back when Ralph came back to the “real” world after eighteen month of service in Vietnam in late 1969 and was something of a basket case (Ralph’s term). Timmy had eased him along, eased him along about drawing some conclusions on the hellish war that Ralph had come to hate, hate for the savage things he had done to people with whom he had no quarrel, hate for the savage things his Army buddies had done to people they had no quarrel with, and most of all the unfeeling American government which had without the slightest hesitation turned him, them into vicious animals, nothing more. Yeah, Ralph had had plenty of troubles in his doped-up head when he got back, and was not sure what to do about it when his old friends, neighbors and working-class community were still gung-ho about stuff in a war they were clueless about, knowingly clueless.

Timmy, a half dozen years older than Ralph, had served in that same war earlier, very early on from 1964 to 1966 when ninety-five percent of the country could not show you on a map where Vietnam was if you gave them ten chances and had gone through his own adjusting to the “real” world problems. He got Ralph through the tough parts back in 1970 after he had been discharged. Moreover Timmy lived in Albany, the next town over and another working-class town which did not understand the murderous assault on the sensibilities of American soldiers who served in that theater of combat.

So Timmy and Ralph in a sea of benighted patriotism helped each other out when things got dicey. See Timmy, he and it seemed then every such soldier got “religion” on the issues of war and peace and turned against the war that they had fought honorably if erroneously in decided to do something more than hang out in ill-lighted barroom sulking or “shooting up” in some backroom dope den and joined an anti-war organization. Join in his case with a bunch of other guys, a “band of brothers,” some officers, some enlisted men, some who had seen combat and some on the edges of the military machine, some grievously physically wounded, some wounded in the head, who had formed Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the famous organization which did a lot to turn public sentiment against the war. After all if the guys who fought the war called it by its right name, murder, had thrown their medals away, had walked in silent bedraggled cadence in the streets of major cities crying out to the heavens to stop the slaughter then most everybody had to at least give them a respectful hearing.

As everybody, or at least everybody from that generation knows, the generation of ‘68 Timmy called it from the year that the Viet Cong decided to try and take back the day, take back his and her country and not just the night which every savvy American private soldier if not every general knew belonged to him and her during the Tet offensive the American forces were ultimately forced to “skedaddle” in a hurry in 1975 and effectively ended the decade plus long American involvement in Vietnam. And that effectively ended plenty of political opposition to American war policy as the great majority of people, protestors and patriots alike, went back to “normalcy.” Ended too the big public face of VVAW.  

But see Timmy and Ralph (and I will add myself but under different circumstances explained later) were hard-headed if big-hearted guys. They took that “religious conversion” to fight against the seemingly endless wars the American (and other, believe me, other governments as well) government was determined to pursue as the greatest military power by far the world has ever known seriously and determined at some point that they would fight the “monster” until the end. So you could see them, mostly in Boston, occasionally in New York and whenever some national call came out in Washington, D.C. all through the years, some lean years when they were voices in the wilderness, some years like in the late fall of 2002 and early winter of 2003 when they were swallowed up in mass movements opposed to the impending war in Iraq. Timmy would be the rock, would steady Ralph when he got seriously depressed that their efforts were for not. Would remind Ralph that they, both Catholics so Ralph would see the point more readily, had plenty of penance to do for torching up half of Vietnam, gunning down half the poor benighted peasants who got caught in the cross-fire for no purpose. The both would be early members of a new organization of anti-war veterans that was formed in the mid-1980s to do that oppositional work in a more systematic and forceful way, Veteran For Peace (VFP) once the crowds thinned out. Yeah, Timmy was like that, was the rock as I too found out.   

I might as well explain how I met Ralph and through him Timmy and then I’ll finish up about the why of the few words Ralph was having trouble gathering his thoughts about his, our, fallen comrade. (I should point out my organizational connection. I am an associate member of VFP not having had to serve in the military due to the fact that I was the sole surviving son after my father died suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1965 leaving me as the sole support for my mother and four much younger sisters. That VFP associate status except for a few organization items which are restricted to veterans is the same as veteran membership.) It all goes back to the spring of 1971 when I, along with a bunch of radicals and “reds” that I hung with in Saratoga Springs, New York from Skidmore College and other campuses around Albany and Troy, the town Ralph grew up in, were totally frustrated with the endless Vietnam War. Maybe not as frustrated as the Vietnamese who had plenty of reason to be in that condition, and more so than us but we were still desperately committed to ending the war. Ending the war by building a “second front” as some “movement” theoretician called it at the time and most of us bought into that designation as an act of solidarity with the Vietnamese (expressed in slogans like “Victory to the NLF (National Liberation Front)”and waving the tri-color NLF flag on the American streets.

The idea was simple, or so we thought, and the working slogan we used to organize the efforts kind of puts it in clear enough language-“If the government will not shut down the war, we will shut down the government.” Simple, right. Waltz into Washington on May Day (the international workers holiday although we linked it more to the socialist-tinged point of the day) like some Calvinist avenging angels and be done with it. Well, to cut to the chase, all we got was tear gas, police billy-clubs and the bastinado for our efforts as you could probably have figured out.   

Thousands of us were herded (which is exactly the right word) into the Robert F. Kennedy football stadium which was the main holding area (until that got too crowded and other locations were used) as the police and every other military and law enforcement unit in the D.C. area swooped down on us. Ralph and I met while in detention in RFK when Ralph noticed my VVAW button and asked if I belonged.  I said no that I had not served in the military but that my closest friend, my corner boy from high school in front of Mia’s Pizza Parlor in the Ocean  Street section of Carver, Jeff Mullins, had been senselessly killed in action in the Central Highlands and had written me letters a few months before he was blown away telling me how brutal things were there, how bad the things he and his buddies had to do there were and that if he did not make it back to make sure that I spread the word. So I did (and do) and so I wore the button in honor of him. Since Ralph and I were in detention for a few days (we eventually walked out of the place when we found out that there were exits in the place which the over-stretched law enforcement forces had left unguarded) something about my story, something about my life story and his kept us talking like two jaybirds (a little passed stashed dope and a ton of donated coffee helped with what I would find out later was actually “few words” Ralph).

Ralph explained that he had gone to D.C. on Timmy’s urging as part of the VVAW contingent that also was committed to the same action I was involved in but they wanted to have their own veterans’ brigade. See Timmy was a known activist/agitator for civil disobedience from early on in VVAW (as opposed to those like John Kerry who wanted to go the legislative or electoral route) and had been one of the steering committee organizers for the overall action such as it was. Timmy in later years, in VFP years as well would be a vocal and sometimes overbearing advocate for civil disobedience when the occasion called for it (and a couple of times when it seemed foolhardy but we went along carried by the force of his argument). That was strong Timmy (who was personally one of the gentlest people on the planet).

But here was the beauty of Timmy. He walked the walk. That May Day of 1971 VVAW wanted to surround the Pentagon and “shut it down,” symbolically somewhat like the anti-war forces had done in 1967 trying to “levitate” the building as described in Norman Mailer’s award-winning novel Armies of the Night. For his part in the attempt (they never got close just as we never got close when we tried to “capture” the White House). If all of this seems a little foolhardy now remember we were desperate to end the war and our governmental opponents and their hangers-on would have been just as happy to see our bodies floating on in the Potomac River as have their authority challenged. However Timmy, as a “ring-leader” had a special single cell provided for his efforts which he occupied for a week, including a few days on a hunger strike. Yes, Timmy always walked the walk. You could depend on that.                

I would meet Timmy some weeks later when I wound up going to Ralph’s house in Troy after I had decided to move for the year to Cambridge to join the radicals and “reds” there. We three talked for many hours then (and later) and I learned a lot from him, learned how to stay the course when times were not too good for the messages we were trying to get across. Learned too that one well-planned public campaign at the right time and with the right media exposure could push the movement along much further than the endless vigils of Quakers and pacifists, bless their souls.(My sisters by the way by then were all grown and were providing the main support for my mother since they were working and living at home-they also were as apolitical and/or as hostile as any anonymous pro-war sympathizers, especially my mother who I had many difficulties with then but that is for another day.)    

And that brings us to Ralph’s dilemma. Timothy Francis Kerrigan passed away after a long bout with cancer on July 10, 2015. Timmy, not a religious man, although he continued to unlike Ralph profess his Catholic faith, wanted not such ceremony but rather a simple service in which his VFP buddies, particularly Ralph, would say a few words (he had in the hospice before he passed away expressed a desire that they be kind words if possible but words of some sort nevertheless). See here was Ralph’s real dilemma though he wanted no “help” from me who usually would put his many times insightful thoughts into words. Well on July 15, 2015 the service in memory of Timmy took place. Here is what Ralph had to say:

“Some people are leaders by holding the mere mantle of official authority. Some people are leaders by the force of their arguments. Some people are leaders by example. Timothy Francis Kerrigan, my brother anti-war veteran, led by the latter two. Timmy was the conscience of VFP, Timmy walked the walk which needs no further explanation to this audience. He will be missed. Timothy Francis Kerrigan, Presente. Ralph Morris says good voyage-RIP, brother, RIP.’’   

Enough said.

Love, Oh Careless, Love-With Diane Keaton and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” In Mind

Love, Oh Careless, Love-With Diane Keaton and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” In Mind  

DVD Review

By Associate Editor Alden Riley 

Annie Hall, starring Diane Keaton, Woody Allen,

It is funny how some film assignments I get from my boss,

Sandy Salmon, come into being. I mentioned in a recent review of the classic female vs. male clash of wills and style George Cukor’s Adam’s Rib starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that he wished me to watch such strong independent lead women’s roles from the 1930s and 1940s to prove out his thesis that female actors such as Hepburn were able to turn in great performances with style and panache without appearing to be man-eaters. Or not too much anyway in contrast to many female-driven leads today where to avoid such designations the     

story-line has to bend over backwards cutting the heart out of such efforts. I had mentioned that in my review of the current Wonder Woman as an example and that one phrase started Sandy’s wheels rolling. 

The genesis of the film under review, Woody Allen’s masterly romantic comedy Annie Hall is very different. It is based on two factors, the first stemming from a BBC radio news broadcast that Sandy heard on his way to work one day about a survey that had been done naming the 150 greatest comedy films of all times. Annie Hall had been named number three on that list. The second my answer that I had never seen the film, had no particular interest in Woody Allen’s logjam of films after having seen a few from his early 2000s production (except Blue Jasmine but that was carried by the performance of Cate Blanchett more than Woody’s plotline and dialogue), and tended away from reviewing romantic comedies. Naturally that put fury red in Allen devotee Sandy’s eyes (that “devotee” status which in turn he had gotten from his film critic friend Sam Lowell, former film editor here, when they were both at the American Film Gazette).        

So here I am grinding it out on this one. Pleasantly grinding it out on a film that still seems fresh today some thirty plus years after its premier. As my companion who was watching the film with me said “it has aged well.” Agreed. I am not sure where I would put it in the pantheon of cinematic great comedies but it certainly belongs among the low numbers, no question about that.   

Of course as with many Woody Allen vehicles the art is in the dialogue and wit and not so much the plotline. At the time of production Woody was well known for his New York Jewish kid comic routine in many such film efforts. Annie Hall is in line with that persona from the neurotic self-effacing guy who can’t seem to “get it” about romance after two failed marriages to two bright star Jewish women and starts out once again on the roady road to love-to romance. Although this time with a classic WASP woman from Wisconsin Annie Hall of the title played by then paramour Diane Keaton as an aspiring nightclub performer (check out her stand-up performance of It Seems Like Old Times which brought a tear to the eye of my viewing companion). Still Woody can’t seem to get the hang of modern romance and he loses Annie not only to another man but to another coast-the dreaded enemy Left Coast-LA. The film is rounded out with every important New York intellectual referential tidbit from the period. Sandy said he howled when Woody made a cutting comment to his second wife about two New York-based high-end intellectual publications of the day- Commentary and Dissent saying they had merged into a new magazine Dysentery. Sandy said “ouch” but I was, maybe not being from New York or old enough to remember those publication was non-plussed by that one although many of the other references were very funny.

Like I said I can for once agree with Sandy and also can truthfully say I was not be put off by yet another “have to do” Sandy assignment this time. This film deserves its low number on the greatest comedy list.

An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- A Real Independence Day (4th of July) Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades

An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- A Real Independence Day (4^th of July) Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades

Greg Green, site manager Introduction 

 [In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way, made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68 partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or graphic novels. I stand humbled.

Not only stand humbled though but in a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love in 1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. One called it a travesty.

Backing off after finding Allan, not an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some attention.      

That was the way things went and not too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.

I once again attempted to make the mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series (after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series. Greg Green]                   

Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction

[As my replacement Greg Green, whom I brought in from American Film Gazette originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’ ethos and fate.        

As I said I will describe that transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime” I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival, about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around” something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The Roots Is The Toots  rock and roll coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket. (Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been present at the creation.               

That would have been the end of it but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found another series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.      

This time though the Editorial Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their opportunity to move up.  

That part I had no problem with, told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend” about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that same town whom I also helped stake to  his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.          

If the reader can bear the weight of this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason, although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.

Tapped out in the East for a lot of reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate. So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat. Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.              

The helping Madame La Rue, real name of no interest or need to mention,  running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly, said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her place for a while until I had to move on. Done

The whole drag queen idea tells me that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East. Done.

But enough about me.  This is about two other working- class guys, Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam and Ralph in future segments.]

Allan Jackson Encore Introduction

Sadly I have nothing to add to Sam Eaton’s great take not only on the 4^th of Julys of his recent experiences except that we must update number of years in Afghanistan and Iraq and add Syria, Yemen and a few other places to the drumroll of the American military around the world, Yes, sad and frustrating still.    

A Real Independence Day Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades

From The Pen Of Sam Eaton

Yeah, the streets of the small towns and big cities of this nation were resplendent with red white and blue bunting, the kids filled to the brim with soda, candy and hot dogs and adults coyly sipping their store bought wines and beers in red plastic containers (or at least that seemed the color of choice from a brief but telling visual unscientific poll) as happens every hot summer July Independence Day, the Fourth to short-haul the name of the event I am talking about. As a nice summer holiday nobody, including me, has any quarrel, especially getting the school-stormed kids out of doors and reddened from their prison pallor earned the previous past nine months.

Well, maybe some out there in the hinterlands have a quarrel with celebrating the Fourth as a freedom day after my reading of an archival piece from a re-tweeted blog that my long-time friend and political activist comrade, Ralph Morris (more about him later), send along to me. He had received it via the Internet from our mutual friend living in New York City, Fritz Jasper, a guy who refused to serve in Vietnam after he had been inducted into the Army and his number was called to do 11 Bravo duty (infantryman, grunt, cannon fodder, take your pick) back in the day and did a serious year or more in an Army stockade for his troubles before some smart and savvy civilian lawyer who knew the military law inside out got him sprung on a habeas corpus petition in federal court or he might still be on in the wheat fields of Kansas at Fort Leavenworth along with the heroic Wiki-leaks whistleblower Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. [Sentenced commuted in 2017 by President Obama before he left office under his pardoning powers.]  

The gist of the article and that is all I want to do is give the gist since this sketch is about other matters, although 4^th of July connected, was penned by a NYU professor who Fritz knows and let’s write on his blog, American Politics Today. The good professor’s argument was that due to the way this country got its freedom from old Mother England as a result of a straight up military victory and the kind of society that was formed afterwards based on the enslavement of black people and later the extermination of Native peoples (although a lot was done well before that “later” to those “collateral damage” peoples) we should be more circumspect about celebrating the event. Unlike say the English, French or Russian revolutions which were hell-bound flat-out social revolutions whatever happened later on to rein them in.

And the good professor from NYU, Jack Kirby I think his name was who has written several books and monograms along that same line, might have a very good point (and Fritz too who agreed with that part of Kirby’s analysis about being circumspect all things considered but disagreed with the “not celebrating” part since he sees it as a legitimate part of the struggle from human freedom even if today we would recoil from what that experience has produced. More on this in a minute when Ralph and I weight in). But what interests today me as an old anti-war campaigner (make that a full-time anti-war campaigner against the now endless wars of the American imperium and other misadventures as well) since the early 1970s after I got “religion” as I like to call it on the issues of war and peace is being able to use the day, and more importantly the thousands of locally organized parades or other commemorations, to get our anti-war message out.

The “got religion” part about war came after some soul-searching when I learned that my best friend, Jeff Mullins, from Carver High was blown away in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1969.  Jeff had sent me a bunch of letters telling me of the horrors of the situation, his desperation in trying to right it, and his total disgust with the ugly abuse that the American government was putting its soldiers, the people of Vietnam (and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as it turns out), and virtually everything it touched a few months before he was killed to tell one and all that the war was totally crazy, totally “off the wall” as he called it. (I was a little sheepish at first since through the vagaries of life I wound up with a military deferment due to being the sole support for my mother and four much younger sisters after my drunken sot of a father passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack in 1965. But I got over that when somebody said the message “from the grave,” Jeff’s grave I had to bring to the table squared things.)

The hard fact is that in the year 2015 despite almost fourteen years of endless war from that first bombing raids on Kabul by Bush II in the aftermath of the horrendous unspeakable criminal actions in New York on 9/11 until the latest (Spring, 2015) announced Obama third wave, or is it fourth,  “creeping troop escalation” in Iraq the streets of America have been abandoned as a way to get our message out by those who previously knew (if only for a minute in the later part of  2002 and early 2003) that you need to get the anti-war message out via the streets, raise hell about the situation, since the media has blocked any coverage out otherwise as yesterday’s news.

So the 4^th of July is an excellent place to bring the message home to a war-weary (and wary) people without an “in your face” confrontation. (How are you going to, on either side, get red-faced angry when soda-hot dog-candy filled kids and ordinary everyday citizens out to get some well-deserved time off and have a few red cup brews are looking your way with not unkindly feelings.)  Now, full disclosure, Ralph Morris as a Vietnam veteran like the fallen Jeff Mullins (and not Vietnam-era either since he served eighteen months “in-country” as he calls it) and I who have worked with him since we “met” at the RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 are both members of an organization dedicated to the principle of peace, Veterans For Peace (VFP), and have been for a number of years (he as a full member and I as an associate since I am not a veteran, a least a war veteran although Ralph always says that I am a “veteran” in his book since being peace veterans is really what is important about what we have, or have not, done with our lives).

VFP likes to, maybe lives to, use any reasonable occasion to get the peace message out. So these days events like 4^th of July parades, Memorial Day Peace remembrances, ditto Veterans Day/Armistice Day (the real and original reason for the holiday going back to end of World War I times), Saint Patrick’s Day in Boston, Gay Pride parades, you name it you are very likely to find the white flags with the black-outlined doves of peace embossed on them fluttering in the wind at some such occasion. And this Fourth of July was no exception. Ralph who lives in Troy, New York when we are not off somewhere spreading as best we can these days the good news of peace came to Boston and joined the local VFP chapter, the Smedley Butler Brigade (named in honor of the famous much decorated Marine Corps general who coined the phrase “war is a racket” in a speech you can read if you Google his name or go to Wikipedia). We marched on the evening of July 3^rd in the annual parade in historic Gloucester (of the famed fishermen going down to the sea, those battling our home land the sea for its bounty) and in the adjacent town of Rockport the next evening.

Late on 4^th of July evening after having walked our legs off the previous two early evenings we headed to Johnny’s Olde Wagon Wheel Diner over on Thornton Street (Rockport) for a meal (Johnny’s providing the best meatloaf dinner around and both Ralph and I in our hitchhiking days in the early 1970s either on our own or through the kindness of friendly truckers know many, many diners to compare the bills of fare on that subject and that accolade is thus deserved) and a few drinks of high-shelf whisky (although our favorite watering hole for that purpose when Ralph is in Boston is Jack’s Grille down by the Financial District in the downtown area but that place that day would be a zoo with the huge crowds that attend the well-known concert on the Esplanade and fireworks after) in order to “evaluate” what our takes on the two events were.

Now you have to know a little something about VFP’s past participation in these Fourth of July parades in Gloucester and Rockport. VFP started about twenty years to participate in the two parades via the efforts of VFP members in both towns to get us in (at the barbeque this year before the Rockport parade that fact was honored with a short speech and, well, a cake). The first few years in the second Clinton administration were rocky since a key component to any of this American spirit holidays are groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Legion posts who put a lock on patriotism of a certain kind, mainly of the unthinking or wrong-thinking “my country, right or wrong” kind, and that is that. Moreover the other key organizers for such events are the town police and fire departments whose memberships overlap with the veterans’ groups many times. Those combinations are used to organizing such events and normally set the agenda. So the first few years were tough with the local organizers taking a stance out of the playbook of the Allied War Council (AWC) in Boston which for five years now has excluded VFP from its Saint Patrick’s Day parade held over in South Boston in March of each year under the rubric, as one AWC-er put it-“we don’t want the words “veterans” and “peace” put together in our (private) parade. Small towns and cities are however under pressure, or if not should be, to see that the whole community is represented and so VFP found a spot in each parade. Of course another hard pressed time was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when even Ralph and I were afraid to go on the streets with the peace message at a time when the average citizen who generally is indifferent to our presence had daggers in their eyes at the sight of peace signs or symbols (although we did, we did go out among the hostile populace, at least in Boston that year, but with the most trepidation that either of us had faced in our long anti-war careers) and then with the war drums beating in the lead-up to the so-called slam-dunk 2003 Iraq War.

But each year since as the endless wars have continued to meander their endless sun-less rivers the patriotic bounce has stopped driving sneers, ugly remarks, old-time out of touch anti-commie slurs and the like that every protestor from neophyte to veteran knows is at least hidden in some quarters when you work “street” politics. Both Ralph and I made that same observation this year (as well as our traditional one about how those old yellow ribbons festooned on the back bumpers of cars and trucks have faded to pale white). That absence of malice rather than the notable increased cheering as the VFP contingent of white flag dove of peace –embossed limply-walking older wars veterans, jauntily-walking younger Afghan and Iraq war veterans and assorted peace group supporters approached their vantage points is the most striking difference over the years. We both noted in Rockport there was plenty of genuine cheering to overthrow any uncivil remarks (although one guy, an old duffer who looked like he might have been a mess sergeant in 1958, told us to “go back to Moscow” and another in that same old duffer category to “just stay at home” apparently to not offend his starry eyes. Jesus, where have these guys been since about 1991.)

Here is our dilemma though, and not just Ralph, mine or VFP’s but for any “peaceniks” working the streets these days. We could palpably see the war-weariness in the remarks headed our way, especially in Gloucester an old working-class town that has provided more than its share of soldiers and sailors as the city memorials, especially the latter, to the fallen of that place readily testifies, those remarks made from many a flatbed working man’s truck that dotted the route of the parade. Trucks, more than either of us thought existed in a town that size (and missing for the most part from the more upscale Rockport parade with its average Audi or BMW) complete with whole families in the bed taking in the sights, having a little something to eat or drink, and probably trying to figure out how to calm down the sugar-laden kids before bedtime after such a hectic day of sights and sounds.

Here is where Ralph and I have racked our brains in sullen frustration-how do you turn that obvious war-weariness into some kind of protest movement beyond the kind words and rousing applause sent our way on parade days. We did not solve that dilemma that night maybe because we were tired, maybe we were too sated from Johnny’s meatloaf, maybe a few too many high-shelf whiskeys or maybe like the kids too many sights and sounds. All I know is that we will be back next year, hopefully with more people joining our efforts to spread the good words of peace around. You can bet on that.                                                            

[Oops, before I forget since whenever I mention how Ralph and I met down in D.C. on May Day 1971 people want to know how that happened in a professional football stadium in May when the football season is long past. Ralph wrote up his version in 2011 and I added a few pithy comments (his term) for that American Politics Today our friend Fritz runs for the fortieth anniversary of the event. I will give a short wrap-up here to show why we have been amigos since that strange day in May. You already know my reasons for turning anti-war but Ralph’s came like Jeff’s from actual hard rock service in that benighted country. In short as Ralph says when he is giving talks- “he grew disenchanted with what he had to do as a soldier (as an 11 Bravo cannon-fodder like Jeff), what his Army buddies getting blown away and mangled had to do, and what the damn American government was making of them-nothing but animals (always said with a sneer). So when he got out in late 1969, early 1970 he wound up working with a predecessor of VFP, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). By 1971 with no end of the war in sight a lot of us, radicals, frustrated liberals, ex-G.I.s upped the ante- decided to as the slogan went-“if the government would not shut down the war, we would shut down the government.”

As thousands descended on Washington including Ralph with New York VVAW and me then living in Cambridge with some radicals I knew we really thought we had enough to change history. For that illusion many of us, Ralph and me among them, wound upon the football field at RFK being used that May as a holding area for those arrested. He noticed I was wearing a VVAW supporter button in honor of Jeff and that started our friendship. If you need more info on that day just check Wikipedia because I have to move on.