As
March 17th Approaches-Remembrances Of Boston Saint Patrick’s Peace
Parade 2012
From
The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin
[Saint Patrick’s Day 2012 represented something of a high
point in the efforts of Veterans for Peace, their peace and social justice activist
allies, their gay LGBTQ community allies, to either gain entrance in the “official
parade” which should have been opened to all or to be given a reasonable start
time either immediately before or after the “official” parade. In 2013 and 2014
they wound up finishing their peace parade almost in the dark to half empty
streets filled party-going drunks and assorted misfits. In 2015 after some very
sour and self-serving maneuvers by City Hall and the official parade committee
the peace parade had to be cancelled again as it was this year. Damn.]
“Hey, just follow the Veterans For Peace (VFP) white and
black dove-emblazoned flags down to D Street and you’ll run right into the Saint
Patricks’ Peace Parade staging area,” a grizzled veteran, looking like a man
who had seen his share of battles in war and peace, bellowed to one and all as
Frank Jackman and his veteran and peace activist companions exited the Broadway
Redline MBTA station on that overheated March 17th 2012 Sunday late morning
in order to form up in that parade the old vet had informed them about. Headed
out into the South Boston (Southie) day.
[As it turned out, by the way, when Frank “interviewed” him
later while they were waiting in that flag-festooned staging area, the grizzled
veteran, Bob Ballad, had indeed seen his share of battles, having done two
tours in ‘Nam, two tours as a “grunt,” an infantry man, “cannon fodder,” during
hell time, 1966-68, and also of peace time battles against drugs and liquor, a
couple of bouts of homelessness, a couple of divorces, and a few other of the
now well-known pathologies of those who had had trouble coming back to the “real
world “ after Vietnam that Frank had witnessed in his own family, in his own
old time Hullsville neighborhood, and
among his fellow VFPers. Moreover , unlike Frank, who was also a Vietnam
veteran and had turned anti-war while in
the military, that grizzled vet had not turned against war, the rumors of war,
and all that war entails until his own son started clamoring for permission to
go in the service when Iraq exploded in 1991. That is when he put his foot
down, kept his son out, and had been a stalwart anti-warrior ever since. Talk
about a guy with street “cred” on war issue. Welcome aboard, brother, welcome
aboard]
Frank had to chuckle
to himself a little as he and his companions headed up Broadway among the
throngs who were forming up for the official parade that although he had grown
up in the Irishtown section of Hullsville (you could hardly walk down a street
of that town at this time of year and not be confronted with more green than
you would ever see short of maybe Dublin
, and that was true even these days when the town itself, reflecting a couple of
generations more moving south out of
Boston had lost it dominate Irish feel) and had lived in Boston on and
off for most of his adult life he had never gone to the official parade. Well
except that one time in high school junior year when he and “flame” Kathy
Flanagan (she of the long wild red hair, light freckled face and green eyes,
and thin athletic body who disturbed his sleep more than one night in those
days) had “skipped” school (unlike in Boston which was in a different county
from Hullsville they did not have the day off from school in the days when the
holiday was celebrated on the actual day not only on Sunday) and headed via the
long haul Eastern Mass bus armed with a pint of
Southern Comfort, the drink of choice and cheap, over to the parade. They
never got there, to the parade anyway. They had stopped off at Carson Beach and
started drinking that ambrosia and well, one thing led to another and who gave a damn about some silly shamrock
drunken parade anyway when a guy had a wild, green-eyed, red-headed girl next
to him on the seawall. So, although he had many close connections with old
“Southie,” the first stop for many of the famine-borne (famine of one kind or
another, not just the food kind although that was writ large on that benighted
country’s history) Irish, including his family, this was to be the first time
that he showed up in Southie for a parade on Saint Patty’s Day. And of course
while he might be on those same hallowed official parade streets his purpose
that day was to march with the VFP contingent in their alternative peace parade.
Frank was not sure of all the details then about why there
was a need for a separate parade, although later after the event he dug out
some of the details from some guys who were closely involved in organizing the
alternative event, but the gist of it centered on exclusion. Everybody in town,
everybody who cared anyway, knew that back in the 1990s the official parade
organizers had gone to court, hell, had gone all the way to the Supremes, over
excluding gays and lesbians (even Irish gays and lesbians like somehow such
human categories could not exist in Catholic-heavy Irishtown and was a
dastardly thing, a mortal sin maybe, so if there were then they did want any part
of it publicly). And won, won the right to exclude whomever they wanted from
their “private” parade, as the Supremes in one of their more arcane legal
decisions that made no sense when he read it backed them up.
See though, when you have a “right” to exclude that can take
you into some strange places so when the VFP decided they wanted march in the
official parade to protest various war actions of the American government, or
just to send out a peace message to a large crowd they too were excluded by the
official parade organizers. The “reason”-short and simple reason, they, the
officials, didn’t want the words “veterans” and “peace” put together in their
parade. Hence the march of the excluded
that VFP had first organized the previous year. And hence too Frank Jackman had
that year responded to their call and was approaching the staging area with
that sense of solidarity in mind.
As Frank waited, seemingly endlessly waited for the peace
parade to step off (the officials had,
as part of their victory, been able to legally keep any other formations at
least one mile behind their procession) he began to think of the many
connections he had with this old section of town, this section that he had
heard had changed demographically and in other ways as the Irish moved south
and the younger more diverse set moved in and rehabilitated the old cold- water
triple-deckers that lined all the lettered and numbered streets of the section
(at least showing some sense of order since the real of the town was identified
by a miasma of odd-ball combinations). He remembered ancient first murky visits
to those old cold- water flats where some great aunts and their huge broods
lived in splendid squalor and of cheap ribbon candy offered at Christmas time
and not much else. Or funny things like the few times that he had been
“privileged” to drive his material grandmother Riley (nee O’Brian) over to Southie so that the
sisters (some of those grand-aunts) could go to one of the “ladies invited”
taverns and get drunk since Grandpa Riley refused, absolutely refused, to have
liquor in the house (or cigarettes either). He wished he could remember the
exact gin mill but he couldn’t except that it was near the Starlight
Ballroom.
Or when he was older and his uncle on his mother’s side had
taken him to Jim and Joe’s farther up Broadway, up toward M Street, and
“baptized” him with his first drink of whiskey straight up (no beer chasers
then, that would could later). Or later still when he became something of a regular
at Jim and Joe’s while he was working his way through college servicing vending
machines for York Vending just around the corner from the D Street staging area
and the guys, the mainly Southie guys that he worked with, “forced” him to
drink with them after work, drink straight shot whiskey (and hence the genesis
of beer chasers). Beyond those episodes though, except an occasion walk on
Carson Beach (with and without female companionship) he had not been around
Southie much since then.
After a while, a long hot while, since the weather was
unseasonably warm for March in Boston, the peace parade stepped off, stepped
off with VFP black and white dove-emblazoned flags flying in the lead paced by
several cars for those really old (so he thought) World War II veterans, veterans from Frank’s late father’s
time sitting on board. As he looked back he noticed a huge banner calling for No War On Iran and another calling for Freedom For Private Bradley Manning [now
Chelsea], another worthy cause, and behind that contingents of LGBT in
various combinations, and behind them broken up at intervals by marching bands other
progressive and social groups wishing to express solidarity with the excluded
here, and throughout the world. Frank felt good, felt he had made the right
decision to come this day despite some medical problems recently.
As the parade turned onto Broadway, old Broadway, of a
thousand drinks and other assorted goings on, he again thought about the old
days as he passed various landmarks, or the spots where the landmarks had been
once. Artie’s where his first serious serious “flame” Sheila Shea had left him,
left him for good, Jim and Joe’s now called the Green Tavern, where he had had
more cheap whiskeys than he cared to recall, a couple of places farther up
where ladies were invited back then (quaint notion, right),and he had been
invited by a couple of ladies and then up where another small “flame” Minnie Kiley had lived, then up
and over to cavernous East Broadway where the triple-deckers of his early
youth still stood thick as thieves.
Then he started to notice that those self-same triple-
deckers had been upgraded and that those who stood on the sidewalks clapping as
the parade went by were not the “from hunger” Irish second and third cousins of
his youth but looked, well, wed-fed and well-cared for. And as they marched toward
the end of the parade route at Andrew Square he also noticed, very distinctly
noticed, a small section of streets where gay men were standing with a sign and
cheering. Frank then flashed back to an earlier time when the deep dark secret
in Aunt Bernice’s brood, the one from K Street, was that one of the boys, Harry,
was “different” and had been banished from the house. Yes, things had certainly
changed but he wished that those idiots who were so keen on exclusion had moved
away from those whiskey and beer chaser bar stools and come into the
sunlight…
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