***From The Brothers Under The Bridge Series- Ramblin’ Jack’s Ramble

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:

In the first installment of this series of sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and another down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from 1979 fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.

Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Ramblin’ Jack’s’ (John Higgins) story fit that description, the couldn’t handle part. He just kind of drifted around the West Coast (after spending a minute back home in the East, back in Hullsville near Boston) after he got out of the service, got caught up with some wrong gees, drank too much liquor, and did a little time and landed in the“jungle,” the one they set up in Westminster after being herded out of Compton by the cops. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Ramblin’s Jack’s sign was rambling, scrambling.
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Ramblin’Jack woke up with a splitting headache, a desert dry mouth and no dough in his pocket from his three day toot, no, his third three day toot so make it nine days, maybe ten as he was only counting toots in threes. (For the gentile drinker, for the after five drinker, the martini cocktail and then something else to go on to drinker, play with the kids maybe, or heaven forbid the non-drinker, the non- alcoholic drinker, a toot was strictly drinking from, say when the bars opened, workingmen’s bars, until three days later, or whenever you or she ran out of money, and then maybe cadge a fresh bottle somehow and room sip some more, okay). Ramblin’Jack, Jack, hell, John Higgins, had had more than his share of toots since he got back to the “real” world, back from “Nam the year before, that 1971 year before and had decided, or maybe drifted into deciding was better, that he would “hang loose” for a while as he gathered himself together to face the rest of his life. And so the toots, the toots between bouts of work down at the docks, down at the Oakland docks, down at the warehouses, where a friend, a ‘Nam friend, Bill Henry, through his father, some middle level union official, got him work as a B man (no need to discuss what that is here since Jack was officially only slumming until he found himself), were how he amused himself. But it was taking its toll.

Toll-taking number one was that whether the docks were Jack’s life ambition or merely a way to pass the time while he adjusted to the real world he had taken too many days off and was very close (that ‘Nam friend’s father constantly defending him before the bosses close) to being put on indefinite suspension. Naturally dockworkers, fathers and sons, bent over backwards to help a veteran, more so when alcohol was involved since more than a few, fathers and sons, had had their own toot manias, their own toot dreams. But a new contract was coming up, the dock bosses were looking to unload as many B men as they could and were looking for any reason to cut down the manning crews, especially since cargo holds could be emptied a lot faster those days with fewer men and that was a simple fact of economic life on the West Coast docks (East Coast too but that was a different tradition). And see Jack had no other plan of action to fall back on so if he lost the job it was a big thing although he barely shrugged his shoulders when he was called on the carpet. (In fact immediately after the hearing he had gone out and gotten drunk although he did show up for work the next day but such things were, are dicey, dicey indeed).

Toll-taking number two was Leah, Leah Morris, his honey, his paramour, his, well, his woman, if anybody was asking. He had met her at a party one night over in Berkeley a couple of months after he had gotten back when he and some friends were asked by some anti-war activists interested in doing “G.I. anti-war work” to come over and relate their war experiences. He didn’t want to do it, wasn’t that keen about relating some of the horrific things that he had seen happen over there, and was not sure what was motivating these people to in 1971 suddenly become interested in guys that they didn’t pay too much attention to before (at least that is what he thought, although he never heard of, or believed, that they had spit on vets, or stuff like that, calling them “baby killers,” but were rather just indifferent to a soldier’s fate as long as they didn’t have to go) but one guy said that there was plenty of booze (he found out later when he got more involved that the booze angle was a calculated action by the activists assuming that dangling plentiful booze in front of ex-G.I.s would roll them over) and girls, friendly girls, so he went. He didn’t actually speak that night (although he did later) since the minute (well maybe not the minute) their eyes, his and Leah’s, met something happened. Not a spark or anything like that but something .

Funny too since Leah was then a graduate student in some arcane branch of mathematics, who had previously “dropped out” in various “summer of love” drug, sex and rock and roll experiments a few years before , got tired of the yellow bus road, and was looking to add a stable political commitment to her new found academic resume. He wasn’t. She, moreover, after they introduced themselves to each other asked if he cared for a joint. Ramblin’ Jack, ah, John Higgins, was strictly a drinking man, had been since his youth in Hullsville back East (outside of Boston, about twenty miles away) and had previously had very strong opinions about dope-heads and hippies although ‘Nam, or really post ‘Nam in California had mellowed that a bit (he would try drugs later with Leah but if pressed he would still call himself a drinking man, a rambling , gambling, ambling drinking man, okay). And that was the rub with Leah. No, not the dope versus drinking thing, or maybe just a little but those damn toots when he would be gone for three days and then show up at her door looking like hell (and smelling of another woman although he always denied that, and she having had her share of affairs, had cheated on previous lovers, did not press that issue) and in need of fumigation, or something.

See Leah, now that the crest of the 1960s wave was passed (when it actually crested was, and is, the subject of reams of doctoral dissertations and other comments which has snow-balled into a veritable cottage industry by baby-boomers with time on their hands and their acolytes) wanted to settle down, wanted to get married, wanted to have that nine to five thing that she never wanted before. And Jack, although he never put it in so many words just wanted to drink, or whatever a drink meant to him.

And that brings us to toll-taking number three, the real story behind those desert dry mouth mornings, those don’t care blues, that Leah fear (or better fear of Leah). Jack never said it, never said it out loud to anybody, not Leah, not‘Nam buddies (they had their own nightmare survivals to worry about), not the doctors over at the VA in Frisco that time but he had killed an innocent family, a family he knew was innocent, over in ’Nam one afternoon when Charlie Company was making a sweep through the villages up around Pleiku. And the reason that he knew they were innocent is because they were just sitting in their hooch having their noontime meal when his company came through. Jack heard something (anything, they were always hearing something) and he freaked, freaked thinking of another ambush and with an animal fear just started firing at that peaceful family. Sure he covered it up, said he saw half the North Vietnamese Army coming at him (as it turned out they were not within twenty miles of the place then and were in any case moving eastward away from the area ), and “thought” this crew was Charlie. The chain covered it up, case closed, sealed with seven seals. Except for one Ramblin’ Jack, John Higgins, every few nights he would dream, dream vividly about that afternoon, and when he did he needed, really needed, that booze, needed it bad.

One day Ramblin’ Jack woke up, woke up in Leah’s bed, woke up after a bad dream, had a quick shot of whiskey, showered and walked out the door. Walked out leaving a short note telling Leah he was heading down to the high desert, was heading down Joshua Tree way to find himself…