Once More Around The Good Book Social Doctrine- With Dorothy Day And Peter Marras’ Catholic Worker Movement In Mind

Once More Around The Good Book Social Doctrine- With Dorothy Day And Peter Marras’ Catholic Worker Movement In Mind   

By Si Lannon

The late Peter Paul Markin was a piece of work. So said Frankie Riley, a guy who should know since he was the acknowledged leader of the North Adamsville corner boy of whom Markin was something like the leading intellectual light in the early 1960s but more on that in a minute. So said Frankie one night when a bunch of the old gang still standing (not all are some have laid down their heads of late, a couple forever etched on that black granite wall down in Washington, and some too physically feeble to make the journey, and of course Markin) were at the Black Swan in downtown Adamsville talking over old times, something like a periodic reunion. Frankie, a successful lawyer now winding down his practice and passing the day to day operations to the younger partners while he becomes an odd-ball term “of counsel,” in such gatherings would usually be the one to start on about Markin.

Stop.

In order to avoid confusion let’s use Markin’s old time neighborhood moniker “ Scribe” which Frankie had anointed him with way back in junior high school when he was forever writing something or about to write something in the little notebook complete with pencil that he always carried with him in his off-the-wall out of fashion shirts that his mother, frugal mother from dirt poor land, would select for him (shirts as part of the twice yearly-start of school and Easter time-shopping spree at the Bargain Center for new cheap out of fashion clothing). So Scribe it is.          

At this gathering at the local watering hole, the first such outing since the summer of 2017 when they gathered to put a small memoir book together in honor of Scribe, Frankie mentioned that he had forgotten to say something about Scribe that was important to help understand what he was all about. And why after all these years since the mid-1970s when Scribe was murdered down in Sonora, Mexico after what appeared to be a busted drug, cocaine, deal and he wound up in a dusty dirt back alley with two slugs in his head the old gang still mourned him and were still trying to figure out what the hell made the guy tick.

That summer of 2017 gathering had been prompted by Scribe childhood closest friend Alex James’ return from a business trip out to San Francisco where quite by accident he found out about the 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love which was centered in that town and had gone to a stone crazy exhibition at the de Young Museum in old hang out Golden Gate Park where he freaked out over the music, photographs, clothing and incredible poster art (which was then just advertisement material for concerts and other events but really outstanding works of art in their own right)            

As a result of being immersed in the old days when Alex got back to Boston he corralled the guys with the idea of doing a small presentation book in honor of their fallen comrade. They all, all at the Black Swan anyway, had been out to Frisco in 1967. Guess who had been the motivating force for that see-saw trip been out to see what was happening in the “newer world” he had been talking about since the early 1960. Once they agreed, and agreed to write short sketches, Alex had his youngest brother, Zack who writes here on occasion and was a leader of the revolt of the “Young Turks” which purged the previous site manager, edit and have the book published. It is from an afterthought once the book had been put to bed that Frankie remembered a very important component of Scribe’s persona.        

Frankie, after checking to see if the statute of limitations had run on the various crimes the corner boys had committed in the old neighborhood to grab dough for, what else, girls, cars, dates,   walking around money that Scribe was the mastermind behind. (Frankie said that checking business was a joke but the guys knowing Frankie just rolled their eyes.) He had related how he had been the leader and the operations guy for the various car-jackings, burglaries, con jobs, heists, “clips” but evil genius Scribe was the planner. To this day Frankie can get smiles out of the guys when he mentions one caper that almost got them caught while in a big house up in Adamsville Center. Guess who had been the leader of the almost fateful attack. Ever after by unanimous agreement Frankie was in charge once they project went out the door.  

That was the larcenous side of Scribe, and the rest of them too, the world owned them a living for having grown up dirt-poor in the working poor Acre neighborhood and so they struck out to do a little self-interested redistribution of those worldly goods. So you see there was the fore-seeing new day coming let’s get on board side to Scribe and the larcenous too which Frankie covered in his memoir piece some detail remembering or exposing stuff they had all forgotten. (Frankie not a lawyer for nothing with that skill set). But Scribe was noble man too, a social justice partisan all mixed in except toward the end when according to Josh Breslin who was the last to see Scribe alive north of the border he let his serious cocaine habit get the best of him, Let the dope make him feel better about his Vietnam horror military service, his busted marriages and his deep depression as it became apparent that the “newer world” he sought was slipping away, was getting eaten alive but the night-takers he called them. 

What tipped Frankie to his memory lapse had been triggered by seeing a copy of something called the Catholic Radical when he had gone out to Worchester on some church legal business and subsequently a conference where that copy had been on the table. (It should be mentioned Frankie had been a lapsed Catholic for many years until one day a few years ago he had been a guest at a wedding in a Catholic church and that stirred long ago memories and fears for his “soul.) That paper reminded him about Grandma O’Brian, Scribe’s maternal grandmother who was a serious Catholic Worker devotee going back to the Great Depression when she had actually met Dorothy Day in New York. The Scribe would always be speaking of some social issue from the paper, Catholic Worker, he found lying around Grandma’s house. Grandma O’Brian by all accounts was a “saint” loved by all who knew her and knew too how brave she had been to put up with a lot of crap married to tyrant Daniel O’Brian a real villain whom all the young neighborhood kids would stay away from in order to avoid one of his tirades.

To give an idea of how bad Scribe’s own family household life was like he could be found many days at Grandma’s house seeking shelter from that whirlwind storm. He would read books, take notes in that little squirrely notebook, and discuss issues with Grandma. Like a lot of people, good godly people Grandma had a few blinds spots like her negative attitude toward black people who were getting “uppity” down south in Scribe’s youth (it would take several years before he got straight on his own racial attitudes) but overall she had been on the right side of the angels. Talked about abolishing the death penalty (Grandma had never gotten over the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti by the Commonwealth in 1927 even though they were Italian), war, and nuclear disarmament.

In a lot of ways you can see all of Scribe’s contradictions through that Catholic Worker background. While Frankie was remembering the good parts of Scribe he flashed back to one episode, really two come to think of it, which summed up Scribe’s whole life struggle. Scribe must have been about fourteen, maybe fifteen, in 1960 when he had read in the Catholic Worker  that there would be a demonstration, something like that for nuclear disarmament to be held at the Park Street entrance to the subway, a historic protest site on the Boston Common. This rally was being called by Doctor Spock’s SANE, some Quakers and other peace-type groups and individuals. And Catholic Worker. Scribe was all hopped up to go even though Frankie had tried to talk him out of it, told him that the “Communists,” Stalin’s heirs’ dreaded supporters, told him he might get beaten up by guys hanging around the Common who didn’t like the stinking “commie, red, “peace” word, He couldn’t be deterred. So what did they do? They made as always when the opportunity presented itself a bet, a five dollar bet, big money for poor kids, Scribe wouldn’t go into Boston for the event scheduled on an October afternoon. Scribe won and to this day Frankie can’t get over the fact that he lost, lost to a holy goof like Scribe.                 

Here’s the Scribe contradiction part. All during the lead-up to the demonstration Scribe had been working on a caper, had been casing a house where the owners had been away for a while. The weekend after that demo they “hit” the house and got a big haul. Big enough for dates, gas money, booze, and walking around money for months. Yeah, Frankie was sure he had it right Scribe was a piece of work.