From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches- The Time Of Laura’s Time

Scene: A smoky sunless nameless, or rather legion, bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe "Cold, Cold Heart" from father's home down in sad-sack Kentucky long gone daddy left years before and gladly times. Order another deadened drink, high- end beer these days, gone are rotgut whiskey (or high blend when in the chips) accompanied by that self-same beer, slightly benny-addled. Then, like some misbegotten scene out of Rick’s Café, in walks a vision. A million times in walks a vision, in a million walk in bars, some frail, naturally, but in white linen this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches searching for meaningful shells, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Yes, that seems about right, right against the inflation -beggared times right, and mean street break-down right. And then this Peter Paul Markin tale, really Laura's tale okay:

Walking down the narrow stairs leading to the admission window booth at Johnny Fleet’s in good old Harvard Square on this cold Columbus Day 1978 night, jesus 1978 is almost gone already, I was suddenly depressed by this thought-how many times lately had I walked down these very stairs looking, looking for what, looking, as Tom Waits says in his song, for the heart of Saturday night, looking recently every night from Monday to Sunday and not just Saturday. Looking, not hard looking, not right now hard looking anyway after my last nitwit affair, but looking for a man who at least has a job, doesn’t have another girlfriend or ten, and who wants to settle down a little, settle down with me a little. Yes, if you really need to know, want to know, I’ve got those late twenties getting just a touch worried old maid blues.

My parents, my straight-arrow, god-fearing, Methodist god-fearing and that is a fierce fearing, hard-working, lost in some 1950s dreamland parents, my mother really, my father just keeps his own counsel between shots of whiskey and trying to read the latest seed catalogues that keep him and his business alive through the haze, keeps badgering me about finding a nice young man. Yes, easy for you to say you don’t know the nitwits who are out there and they ain’t Rickey Nelson dream jukebox guys, Mother. And then she starts on the coming home, coming home to cranky Mechanicsville (that’s in upstate New York, near Albany, if you don’t believe me) and finding some farmer-grown boy from high school and X, Y, and Z, farmer boys all, still asks about me. No thanks, jesus, that is why I fled to Boston right after college in 1972 (and fled to a far-away, and a no living at home college too but don’t tell her that) and not just because I wanted to get my social worker master’s degree like I told them. And so here I am, a few years later, walking down these skinny stairs again, sigh, yet again.

Johnny’s (nobody calls it Johnny Fleet’s except for one-time people or tourists) isn’t a bad place to hang your hat, as my father always likes to say, when he finds that one or two places in the universe outside of the farm where he feels comfortable enough to stay more than ten minutes before getting the “I’ve got to go water the greenhouse plants” or something itch (read: drink itch). Not a bad place for a woman, a twenty–eight year old woman with college degrees and some aims in life beyond some one-night stand every now and again. Or not a bad place for a pair of women, if my friend and roommate, Priscilla, decides she is man-hungry enough to make the trip to Harvard Square from the wilds of Watertown, and can stand the heavy smoke, mainly cigarette smoke as far as I know, but after a few drinks who knows, that fills the air before the night is half over.

Tonight Priscilla is with me because she has a “crush” on Albie St John, the lead singer for the featured local rock group, The Haystraws. And the last time she was here he was giving her that look like he was game for something although he is known around the Square as strictly a “for fun” guy. And that is okay with Priscilla because she has some guy back home some guy from upstate New York where she is from near Utica, some fresh from the farm guy who she has known since about third grade, who will marry her if and when she says the word.

Here is the funny thing though alone, or like tonight with Priscilla, this funky old bar is the only place around where a woman can find a guy who is the least bit presentable to the folks back home, wherever back home is. I’ve met a couple of decent guys in here, although like I said before, things didn’t work out for some reason because they were one-night stand guys or already loaded down with girlfriends and I am in no mood to take a ticket, stuff like that. So you can see what desperate straits I am in still trying to meet that right guy, or something close, without a lot of overhead. My standards may be a little high for the times but I’m chipping away at them by the day.

Moreover, this place, this Johnny’s is the only place around that has the kind of music I like, a little country although not Grand Ole Opry country stuff like my parents go for, you know George Jones or Aunt Bee, or someone. And is a little bit folkie, kind of left-handed folkie, more like local favorite Eric Andersen folk rock, and a little old time let it rip 1950s rock and roll, like The Haystraws cover. You know, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, those guys, that I never knew anything about when I was a kid since I never got past Rickey Nelson and Bobby Darin, darn him, out in the farm field sticks. Upstate New York, like I said, not far out of Albany but it might as well have been a million miles away with me picking my sting beans, tomatoes, and whatever else pa grew to keep us from hunger’s door.

Not for me this trendy disco stuff, not my style at all, no way, although I love to dance and even took belly dancing lessons although I am not voluptuous, more just left of skinny if I say it but really voluptuous Priscilla calls me just skinny. Also my kind of guy would never, never wear an open shirt and some chainy medallion around his neck. Jesus, no way. Plus, a big plus, Johnny’s has a jukebox for intermissions filled with all kinds of odd-ball songs, real country, stuff, late 1950s rock and roll (the Rickey Nelson/Bobby Vee/Bobby Darin stuff) that nobody but me probably ever heard of unless, of course, you were from Mechanicsville, or a place like that.

After going through mandatory license check and admission fee stuff, saying “hi” to the waitresses that I know now by name, and Priscilla does too, and the regular bartenders as we pass by we find our seats, kind of “reserved” seats for us where we can sit and not be hassled by guys, or be hassled if something interesting comes along. I have been in kind of a dry spell, outside the occasional minute affair if one could really call some of the “affairs” even that, for about six months now. Ever since I started to work, work doing social work, my profession, if you need to know. That’s what I am trained to do anyway although when I first came to town a few years ago I was, as one beau back then said, “serving them off the arm” in a spaghetti joint over the other side of Cambridge. Strictly a family fare menu and plenty of college guys including a few who I wound up dating, low on funds doing the cheap Saturday night date circuit. All in all a “no tips” situation anyway you cut it, although plenty of guff, a lot of come-ons, and extra helpings of “get me this and get me that.”

Before that, out in Rochester in college, and later after a short stop at hometown Mechanicsville it was nothing but wanna-be cowboy losers, an occasional low-rent dope dealer, some wanna-be musicians, farmer brown farmers, and married guys looking for a little something on a cold night. Ya, I know, I asked for it but a girl gets cold and lonely too. Not just guys, not these days anyway. But I am still pitching, although very low-key. That is my public style (some say, say right to my face, prim but that’s only to fend off the losers).

“Laura, what are you having, tonight honey?’ asked my “regular” waitress, Lannie, and then asked Priscilla the same. “Two Rusty Nails,” we replied. Tonight, from a quick glance around the room even though it is a Columbus Day holiday night, looks like it is going to be a hard-drinking night from the feel of it. That means on my budget and my capacity about three drinks, max. About the same for Priscilla unless she is real man-hungry. But that is just between us, okay. Lannie, as is her habit, knowing that we are good tippers (the bonds of waitress sisterhood as Priscilla has also “served them off the arm”) brought the drinks right away. And so we settled in get ready to listen to The Haystraws coming up in a while for their first set. Or rather I did the settling in. Priscilla was looking, looking hard at Albie, and he was looking right back. I guess I will be driving home alone tonight.

As I settled in I noticed that some guy was playing the jukebox like crazy. Like crazy for real. He kept playing about three old timey LaVern Baker songs, "Jim Dandy" of course, and "See See Rider" but also about six times in a row her "Tomorrow Night". I was kind of glad when the band, like I said, these really good rockers, The Haystraws, began their first set. And so the evening was off, good, bad, or indifferent.

About half way through the set I noticed this jukebox guy kept kind of looking at me, kind of “checking”me out without being rude about it. You know those little half-looks and then look away kind of like kid hide-and-seek and back again. Now I have around long enough to know that I am not bad to look at even if I am a little skinny and I take time to get ready when I go out, especially lately, and although times have been tough lately I am easy to get to know but this guy kind of put me on my guard a little. He was about thirty, neatly bearded which I like and okay for looks, I have been with worst. But what I couldn’t figure out, and it bothered me a little even when I tried to avoid his peeks (as he “avoided”mine) is why he was in this place.

Johnny’s, despite its locale in the heart of Harvard Square, is kind of an oasis for country girls like me, or half-country girls like Priscilla (from upstate New York too, Utica, in case you forgot) and guys the same way although once in a while a Harvard guy from the sticks comes around (or a guy who says he goes to Harvard. I have met some who made the claim who I don’t think could spell the name of the college, I swear). This guy looked like Harvard Square was his home turf and if he found himself five feet from a well-lighted street, a library, or a bookstore he would freak out big time. He might have been an old folkie, maybe early Dylan or Dave Von Ronk that nasal hard to understand kind of stuff, he had that feel, or maybe a bluesy kind of guy, Muddy Waters maybe, but he was strictly a city boy and was just cruising this joint.

But here is where this jukebox joe story gets interesting. At intermission Priscilla had to run to the ladies’ room and on the way this guy, Allan Jackman, as I found out later when he introduced himself to me, stopped her and said that her brunette friend looked very nice in her white linen pants and blouse. He then said to her that he would like to meet me. Priscilla, a veteran of the Laura wars (and I of hers), had the snappy answer ready, “Go introduce yourself, yourself.” And he did start to come over but I kind of turned away to avoid him just in case he had escaped from somewhere (yah, like I said before my luck has been running a little rough lately so I am a little gun-shy). Still he worked his way over.

And this is the very first thing that Allan ever said to me. “I noticed that you kind of perked up when I played LaVern Baker’s "Tomorrow Night". Have you been disappointed when things didn’t work out after that first night of promise too, like in the song?” Not an original line, but close. I answered almost automatically, “Yes.”Then he introduced himself and just kind of stood there not trying to sit down or anything like that waiting for me to make the next move. Then Priscilla came back and said she had run into Albie St. John and he wanted to “talk” to her before the band came back for a second set (she said with a certain twist like she was doing him this big favor and not like she was practically drooling at the idea. Like I said I am definitely driving home alone today.). She left and Allan was still standing there, a little ill at ease from his look. Befuddled by his soft non-threatening demeanor, and soft manners, I was not sure if I wanted him to sit down or not but then I said what the hell, he seems nice enough and at least he was not drunk.

So he sat down, and gently, actually very gently, shook my hand and said “thank you” for letting me let him sit at the table. In the flush of reaction to that gentle handshake, I swear no man had ever taken my hand in such a manly manner without guile or gimme something before, I relaxed a little and asked him, not an origin question but I was curious, what brought him to Johnny’s. He started to tell me about his country minute, about finding out about the wild boys of country music, about Hank Williams (I winched, that was my father’s music) about this guy Townes Van Zandt and so on.

And then he said he was looking for me. I winched again. Not another crazy. No, not me exactly, but me as a person who he sensed had been kind of beaten down in the love game lately like he had. He said he saw that look in my face, in my eyes, when he kind of half-checked me out at the jukebox. (I made him laugh when I said we were kid-hide-and-seeking earlier). I said I thought he had fully “checked me out”but he would only confess to the half. We both laughed at that one.

And after that opening, strange to say, because being a country girl, and being brought up in a Methodist-etched household to keep my thoughts to myself, or else, or else Dad would have a fit, I started to talk to him about my troubles lately. And he listened and kept asking more questions, not in-your- face questions, but questions like he was really interested in the answers and not as some fiendish experiment to take advantage of a simple girl. And then I asked him a few things and before we knew it the evening’s entertainment was over and Lannie kept telling us that we had to go. I still had some doubts about this guy, this city boy and his city ways, and his fierce piercing blue eyes that could be true or truly devilish.

As we got up to leave he asked, kind of sheepishly with a little stutter, asked, for my telephone number. No “my place or your place, honey,” or “let’s go down the Charles and have some fun,” or “I brought you six drinks (we had each bought our own) and so I expect something more” or any of that usual end of the night stuff that I have become somewhat inured to. He simply, softly, said he wanted it because he wanted to call me up tomorrow night. We kind of laughed at that seeing the way we met, before we met. I hesitated just a minute and he, sensing my dilemma, started to turn to leave. A guy who knows how to take no for an answer, or the possibility of no, without recrimination or fuss. Wait a minute, Laura. Before he took two steps I blurted out my number. And then put it on a cocktail napkin for him. As I passed the glass wet napkin to him he said he would call about seven if that was okay. I said yes. And then he shook my hand, shook it even more gently than when he introduced himself, if that was possible. I flushed again as he headed to the door. Something in that handshake said you had better not let this one get away. Something that said you had better be near the phone at 7:00 PM tomorrow night waiting for his call. And I will be.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches- “Down And Out In America-Part I”

Walking down Route 5 west out of Moline, quarter in his pocket, holes in his shoes, patched up, make due patched until sunnier days, by some cardboard graham cracker package cut-out a while back when he had time, endless time to cut out the moon if he needed to, just outside of Gary, Indiana. Damn that was weeks ago, and heading west to those sunnier days and getting out of north and Midwest winter were not get closer, damn not any closer. Hell, he had only himself to blame, no, get that negative thought  out of  his head because if he dwelt (dwelled ?) on it he could not push forward and get himself straight, get himself clean in some California ocean wash foam-flecked sea baptism.   

Stopping for a moment adjusting that damn two-bit cardboard once again he began to reflect on just how he had gotten here, jesus, he had the time for figuring that out on this lonesome Moline road. A road filled with families, farm families from the look of them, prosperous, farm prosperous just now with farm prices rising (fact known through courtesy of a ride a couple of rides back from some Farmer Brown, at one time up against it to the banks but now flush with that prices rising gloat look), heading to some Jimmy Jack’s Diner for the daily special (meat loaf, pot roast, steak, prime rib, for the really prosperous) and decidedly not interested in picking up any obviously non-Moline, non- Midwestern, hell, maybe for all they knew some illegal wetback bracero. 

He had that look with his leather-beaten skin now tanned beyond golden day tans and more like some tex-mex broiled sun bracero picking farm product (cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, who knows) and in fact he had spent a few back-breaking bracero-like days stooped over some sting bean field to earn enough dough to move west from stalled Ohio a while back. And then had been bracero short-changed by the farm straw boss for half his pay for room and board. A laugh, room, a dormitory for twenty snoring, stinking winos or their brethren, food, some slops not fit for the sty, but he hard-up needed the money, needed to get sanity west, and needed not to be billy-clubbed by no straw boss (or thirty day “vagged” by his friends, the local cops).  And so he took the dough, took his ass out of the broiled fields and headed west from Cincinnati. No, he would get no Moline escape that day from the corn-fed sedan and van traffic that he saw pass him by, pass him by with that sullen, permanent look of scorn, the scorn of those just up the ladder from cardboard-packed  make due shoes.      

Nor would he get, unless he was very lucky get, a worthwhile ride, from the usually friendly cross state (or country) professional truckers, who more times than not, used to like having the company to spill their guts into the wind to. Or explain their latest theory about how the government, the wife, the kids, anybody, was screwing them over, royally, always royally. And, despite his own hard luck just then, self-imposed or not, he always half-nodded in agreement that the room for righteous guys in this wicked old world was getting small, and getting smaller fast.

But see the company lawyers, probably, or maybe the insurance agents, were putting a serious crimp into old blue-eyed good old boy hankering to tell their untold stories to wayward young guys, looking kind of hippie-like or not, ever since the roads got more dangerous for everybody. So unless some local trucker had not heard the news, or some continental trucker was in a fuck-you mood toward his boss, or some trucker was so lonesome that he needed some rider to take his mind off the road  as that trucker headed across state to some forlorn grain silo he was stuck in Moline for a while. Maybe for a while in the pokey too if he stayed here, solo quarter in his pocket, too long. It had happened more than once, although not in Moline. A couple of times in Connecticut and Arizona but he had been forewarned, and, damn, when he thought about it, up in his home state  of Massachusetts, not twenty-five miles from home North Adamsville. Jesus.      

Again stopping to readjust that cardboard square holding the dust and debris of the road from boring a bigger hole in his white (kind of white anyway) socks he really did want to try to think about  how he got on this road, this exact Moline road he had not been on since he had hitchhiked in search of the great blue-pink American West night with fair Angelica, back in, what was it 1969, and they had been forced to shack up in some non-descript motel he thought was located further up the road as he searched for it as he walked along , and memory,  because it had rained for something like five days straight. And fair Angelica, thrilled by the road and jail-break from Muncie, Indiana (via a Steubenville, Ohio truck-stop diner) still was enough of a bedazzled young woman not to see the romance in five day rains.

Maybe that was the start of it, the long road down the slippery-slope of this praying for some relief hunger madness. Not the Angelica part , although that ended with her going back to Muncie after some California time, and a few years later, a return to Hollywood, well, not to stardom but some celebrity. He wondered where she was now out in the American night. And he wondered if she would smile, or cry, if she saw her ex-beau, looking bracero-hungry, out on the road. Cry, cry a million tears, probably, that was the way she was, plain-spoken Midwest girl “what you see is what you get,” and what you got was worth getting, although mist-bedazzled non-bracero hungry ex-beau could quite see that point through the “high purpose” search for the American dream night then.       

If that was not the start of it, then, no question, the break with Joyell, and with civilized society (as she, Joyell, put it) definitely had been. When he, looking for some quick change, fast dough, with no heavy lifting, and plenty of time to think about the next search dream, started dealing a little dope (nothing heavy at first, a little weed, grass, mary jane,  whatever you call it in your neck of the woods, some peyote buttons, in season, in search west season, a little speed for the frantic work ahead, to friends, and their friends, and then their friends, and then somebody’s friends, and then to strangers, and their friends).

And of course when he  got caught up in laying around waiting for the search for the next dream, then he started to short weight, just a little, because well because they were just strangers, and their friends. At first. Then some deal went south, or maybe you juts smoked or snorted it up with some stranger friends, and you owed the patron some dough and he wouldn’t take manana for an answer. And so you “borrow” a C-note until next week when the ship comes in, and when it doesn’t borrow a couple of C-notes to cover that original C-note, and expenses. And so on, and so on.

Just then he got tired of thinking about those busted deals, those busted dreams, and the hard fact that in the end he had to hit the road west one dark night, one dark night midnight creep after taking about eighty dollars from Joyell’s pocketbook, and putting  some distance between him and her. Some no return distance from the look of it. He started to tear up as he thought about that and did not hear the brakes of a fully-loaded Andersen Grain Company hiss as the truck came to a stop and the big burly driver called out, “Hey, I’m Memphis Slim and I’m heading to Denver and if you don’t’ mind me talking your ear off I could use the company.” He put his rucksack over this shoulder and climbed on board. Yes, he could listen, listen to eternity, to some poor snook talk his ear off heading west.  

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-Down On The Mean Streets Detour- A Quick Tour

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-Down On The Mean Streets Detour- A Quick Tour

Endless tramp walked streets, waiting for the next fix. Waiting really for some god miracle, some murmured pray sacrilege and redemption seeking miracle. Waiting for all the accumulated messes of this world, this made world to seep into the gutter. Waiting for all past history, all past memoir better, all past sorrows, given and received, all past two roads taken, wrong road chosen, all personal hurts, given and taken, all past vanities to break down in the means streets, and closure. No, not closure, relief.  Waiting, yah, waiting but to no avail. And so all roads, chosen and unchosen closed, all forward turned back, all value devalued, all this ….

Five AM , dark turning to a shade lighter, after a hard ground under the Eliot Bridge bed night, cold October cold with all newspapers, Herald, Globe, upscale New York Times for a pillow  used for ground cover yelling about some guy named Jimmy Carter and about how he is saved. Running for president too. The guy will need more saving that I need.  Ironic though, just that minute when he needed to be saved. Lord saved, mercy saved, some humble Joyell saved (although he did not know it, know it for a very long time, too long and too late).

Long walk along the Charles, supermarket double brown bag (laughed at Mexican luggage) for all worldly possessions, some seedy Jack Kerouac Merrimack walk, Jack’s river, Jack’s childhood going to manhood river and place of refuge from mother hurts and, Joyell, oops sorry,  Maggie Cassidy hurts too. A tee shirt, maybe two, no wild boy cool 1950s Brando tight against the chest, maybe a pack of Luckies rolled up one sleeve but Sally’s used wear swear stains showing under the armpits, underwear, ditto, socks, ditto, a half rank pair of pants (no childhood concern about cuffed or uncuffed now, or color even), ditto, no, Goodwill bargain, another shirt to match the one he was wearing, Sally’s or Goodwill forgot, comb, and a bar of soap, Dial, bought precious bought to own something, and done. All worldly possessions reduced almost to grave size.

Long walk to safe downtown Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, and five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. And no ocean to wash them clean. His street bathroom, a splash (unlike those ocean wave splashes on ancient dream Pacific nights now faded) of water on the face, some precious soap, precious coaxed bought soap, paper towel for a wash cloth, haphazard combing (hell, he was not entering a beauty contest, jesus, no), some soap under the stained tee shirt for underarms and done. Worldly beauty done. 

Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out under some other Eliot Street Bridge bungalow (switched nightly to avoid cop riffs and fellow tramp rip-offs, real hazards in his new world as he learned quickly, painfully quickly). Walk, stopping for an occasional library break , for a quick nod out, really, and quick read, not some political book though, these days, Genet, Celine, Burroughs, Kerouac (not “On The Road” magic gear master Dean trips but Big Sur traumas), and such self-help books. (Ironic.)   

And minute plan, plan, plan, plain mex paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Waiting for the next fix. Desolation row, no way home.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-The Great Blue-Pink American West Night Ghost Dance

Enough of muddy, rutted, always bum-busting rutted, country back roads, enough of breathless scenic vistas and cows, enough of trees dripping sap, rain, and bugs, strange bugs, not city bugs, that was for sure, but biting frenzy worthy anyway. Enough of all that to last a life-time, thank you. Enough too of Bunsen burners (last seen in some explosive chemical flash-out flame out in high school chemistry class and, maybe, they have rebuilt the damn lab since then, maybe though they have left it “ as is” for an example), Coleman stoves (too small for big pots, stew worthy, simmering pots to feed hungry campers and hard, country hard, to light) wrapped blankets (getting ever mildewed ), second-hand sweated army sleeping bags (in desperate need of washing after a month of night exertions with those ever laughing hands reaching out to his companion Joyell), and minute (small, not speed in throwing up , especially when rains came pouring down and they were caught out without shelter from the storm, a metaphor maybe) pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated eastern mountain stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, and nature in the raw. Cities, please. Large Pacific-splashed roar of ocean cities with life in sheltered caverns and be quick about it.

Quebec City, Montreal, small catholic ile this and sainte that cities, towns really, in between passed in lightning speed, in 1972 lightning speed, deep into westward ho great blue-pink skied American west nights (splashed too). Onward, back to Estados Unidos entrances (studying quick-draw Spanish along the way for the southern Mexican winter and hence use of quick-draw mex words instead of U.S. of A rock landing words). Through fossil-fueled Detroit and radical oasis Ann Arbors of the mind, quickly, and then some Neola cornfields and Aunt Betty breakfasts, non-descript or rather same descript, cornfields that is, breakfasts worthy of the corn-fed. A time to ponder though, cornfield, and more cornfield, and aunt betty wisdom, totally foreign although not alien like they were in some other country, and not estatos unidos (better not say that in corn-fed Neola though you might get an argument, an argument in spades, from the normally give me your hand shake people. Yes, strange people, almost Amish except, of course, the gun-racked pick-up trucks and the odd sign or two about no six-shooters allowed inside breakfast cafes). Then through to white out-eked Denver and Boulder rockymountainhighs and from there down dinosaur roads into the high desert thundering night. And to this dream, this Peter Paul Markin dream:

Damn, already I missed Joyell, road-worthy, road-travel easy, easy on the eyes and easy getting us roadside and campfire friends Joyell as I traveled across Interstate 10 onto the great high desert southwest American hitchhike road after we parted at the Phoenix bus station. She, heading home East, at least New York east, from the road on some pressing family emergency business, some stockholder stuff, and I to the savage search for the blue-pink great American West night. (We are to meet up in some Pacific splash town, probably L.A., and from there head south, tex-mex south.)

I will tell you true, stockbroker yankee father Mafioso don or not I wished to high heaven she had not gone. See she had started to see thing s my way a little about white picket fence commitment once she knew I could be more companionable without such talk, and committed still in my own way. And glad as hell to reach my laughing hands out for her like the first snow-filled New Hampshire high purpose anti-war conference night we met. (And she glad too, the road was our cement and our getting Boston city stinks blown off.) True too I did not relish driving alone, picking up vagrant hitchhikers and other kindred in the hot, arid, high desert sputter.

Right then though I sighted my first connection hitchhike ride heading out of Phoenix and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses, and lost loves names, ex-truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and was talking a blue streak was heading to some motorcycle jamboree, heading to Joshua Tree in California, my next destination (although he did not call it a jamboree and I had better not either unless I want to risk offending the entire Hell’s Angels universe at one stroke. Let’s call it a tumble-rumble-stumble and be done with it. They’ll like that.).

All I wanted was company on the ride that day and unfettered thoughts of Joyell but I knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway, even if ex-trucker, to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such companionship. See, some guys, some trucker guys like Denver Slim, who left me off at some long ago (or it seemed like long ago, really only a couple of years) Steubenville truck stop on my way American south one time wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as I reminded him of his errant (read: hippie –swaying) son. Other guys are happy for the company so they can, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with the “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and their take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Ya, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” will stand you in good stead and you can nod out into your own thoughts. Forlorn Joyell thoughts.

And that is exactly where I wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. Me, I was thinking about what Aunt Betty, sweet Neola cornfields grandmotherly Aunt Betty (everybody called her Aunt Betty, even guys who were older than she was, after the name of her sweet Neola diner), said a month or so back when we pitched our tent for a few days in her backyard, we did some chores in kind, and she fed us, royal Midwest fed us, still rung in my ears. I was good for Joyell. Hell, I know I was. Hell, if I had any sense I would admit what I knew inside. Joyell was good for me too.

But see the times were funny is a way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say, that I would have run into a Joyell. I was strung out, strung out hard, on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, I say), bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. If I said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereal, butterfly breeze “hippie”girls you’d know what I meant. As a kid I was cranked on pale, hell wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and I mean hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and chaste lust in their hearts. So, I swear, when Joyell’s yankee goodheart number turned up, I was clueless how to take just a plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, I can’t explain it now, and I doubt I ever will. Just say I was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and let me listen to old Buck’s drone.

****
I have now put many a mile between me and Phoenix and here I am well clear of that prairie fire dream now into sweet winter high desert night California (still hot during the day, jesus, one hundred at Needles, although not humid, thank Christ) not far from some old now run down, crumbling Native American dwellings on Joshua Tree reservation that keep drawing my attention and I still want to utter that oath, that Joyell fealty oath. Buck has gone, and thanks, over to Twenty-nine Palms. (Marines watch out when Buck and his tribe come through.)

Sitting by this Joshua night camp fire casting weird ghost night-like shadows just makes my Joyell hunger worst. And old now well-traveled soldiers turned “hippies,” Jack (something out of a Pancho Villa recruitment poster and, in another age, the look of a good man to have beside you in a street fight) and Mattie (some Captain America easy rider poster boy brimming with all that old long gone Buck found ugly in his America although Mattie did two hard tours in ‘Nam), playing their new-found (at least to me) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone.

Hey, I just remembered, sitting here wrapped up in Joyell and ancient primal tribal memories out of the whistling black star-filled night that I haven’t filled you in on where I have been, who I have seen (like John and Mattie), and how I got here after depositing Buck at his stop on this star –crossed night. Jesus, and here we are only a few hundred miles from the ocean. I can almost smell, smell that algae sea churned smell, and almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys from another time looking for that perfect wave. Yah, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Joyell plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only makes the Joyell hurt worst as I remember that she had never seen the Pacific Ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that I went on and on about and I was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world. Well, let me get to it, the filling you in part.

After grabbing up and letting off that strange from blue streak talkin’ hard rider old Buck I did tell you about, I got to Joshua Tree in good order. If I didn’t tell you before, and now that I think about it I didn’t, I (we, before Joyell high-tailed it back east), was to hook up with my now traveling companions, Jack and Mattie, here at Joshua for the final trip west to the ocean and serious blue-pink visions. Jack and Mattie are two guys that I picked up on the Massachusetts highways heading south in the days when I had a borrowed car (from sweet pea Joyell) in the early spring. We had some adventures going south, that I will tell you about another time, before I left them off in Washington, D.C. so they could head west from there. We agreed then to meet up in Denver, where they expected to stay for a while, later in the year.

My last contact with them in late summer had them still there but when Joyell and I arrived in late October at the communal farm on the outskirts of Denver where they had been staying we were informed that they had gotten nervous about being stuck in the snow-bound Rockies and wanted to head south as fast as they could. They had left a Joshua Tree (the town) address for us to meet them at. We stayed at the commune for a few days to rest up, doing a little of this and that, mostly that, and then we headed out on what turned to be an uneventful and mercifully short hitchhike road trip to Phoenix on the way to connect with them. And then my Joyell world fell apart, as you know.

And so here we were making that last push to the coast but not before we investigate these Native American lands that, as it turns out, we, Jack Mattie and I (not Joyell though when I asked her about it one hell-bent night much later), all had been interested in ever since our kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know Lone Ranger, Hop-Along Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks’ fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.

Earlier on this day I am talking about we had been over to Black Rock for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely across the west not all that long ago but who are now mere “cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as they pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of our own warrior shaman trances are still in our heads this now blazing camp fire night. I was still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as they drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding“white devil” who had broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but we had scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and the buttons had started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old bong hash pipe (strictly for medicinal purposes as well).

Just then in this dark, abyss dark, darker than I have ever seen the night sky in the citified East even though it is star-filled, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Joyell I was embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if my ears didn’t deceive me, and they didn’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle I hear, and hear plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.

And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, I swear, I swear on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls I saw the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that I had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, we three, we three television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so we were actually out of synch with the wall action, to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya...until we sped up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity we were ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white injustices.

But then just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame went out, or went to ember, the shadow ghost dance warriors were gone and we crumble in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance and revenge. We, after regaining some strength, all decided that we had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, will do us in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment we, or at least I knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-On The Road, Circa 1972-A Detour

For Jack Kerouac

Fidgety. No, not some usual since schoolboy preternatural eternal girl swaying in the mind’s eye breeze, next girl glance, next girl trying to tie old Titan down, next-up girl swaying from some old time film noir fidgety. Fidgety, get out of town, get out of the rut, hit the Jack Kerouac asphalt highway curve- kicking Dean Moriarty as Neal Cassidy American hero daredevil driver with a smirk , magic gear-shifting road warrior (pressing on after a mad midnight to dawn fresh air late 1971 re-reading of “On The Road,” the first time was just 1962 kid’s stuff, schoolboy trying to get out of the house kid’s stuff, and just reading what everybody cool was reading to be cool, to be beat, late faux beat as it turned out), farmer brown get the stink blown off fidgety after wasting away so much breeze on this and that, inconsequential this and that.

And just maybe too, get out of town, get out of the hot humid Boston nights that disturbed his sleep, hit the highway, to rekindle a sagging girl sway relationship (real girl, real girl sway not some white blouse, white shorts femme serving them off the arm in some seashore diner thinking of mayhem and waiting for some Frankie to save her film noir swaying) that was heading to the rocky shores (see I told you that swaying madness goes to the grave, eternal, or close). Name your reason, or maybe no reason but get out, and get out fast before the moment crashes down on you. Yes, a Jack moment and for once he could feel what it meant to be beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday and still come up swinging.

It was that kind of time. Rocky shores, by the way, just then meaning aversion to “commitment,”commitment to white picket fence complete with fully mortgaged white picket fence house, running field dogs, mutts maybe, and flowered gardens (left unspoken those two point three kids to clutter up said house, to pet such dogs and to run amok in the petunias but she, Joyell she, to sagging girl sway name her, at least knew how not to sell her case). Jesus, no, jesus one thousand, no, one million times no, not after he had just escaped, and barely, steel-barred rooms, dram shop de-drunks, and erased sweet bobby kennedy-visioned dreams of forty years, a pension, a gold watch and some minor thefts in the service of the people. No, he roared, let’s just shake the dust of this town and see what happens kind of gentle like. Okay. Ah, okay. Joyell finally seeing the light okay, he thought.

So off into the chili night (no sic, chili, the final southern destination was winter Mexico before the drug cartels blew into mountain breeze Cuernavaca, shooting up red bishops, Mex federales, lefty, the shades of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata and whoever else go in the way. Remind me to tell you sometime about a busted deal back before the serious drug madness when sweet boy Billie Bradley wound up face down in some dusty Mex street just for being, well, greedy) they roamed, or rather prepared to roam. Prepared with Salvation Army’s, Joe’s Army-Navy, Harry’s Cheapo Depot cheap, serviceable camping gear, or rather the bare minimum they could squeeze in that broken down box of a car (a Datsun, a gone automobile name yellow, and far from his (and mine too) boyhood dream ’57 Chevy cherry reds or sweet flame red Camaros or green Mustangs) that he had managed to cadge off some guy, a friend of a friend guy, who had no cash, needed to get west fast (or at least out of town and west was the only way unless he figured on swimming).West fast meaning either girl trouble or some imminent drug crash out, busted no question, knowing whose friend of a friend he was. They, smart they, smart Joyell they, had set aside plenty of funds just in case this rag-a-muffin of a car decided to join its Zen spirit master on some by-road west when they headed north. North, then west, then south in that innocent chili night.

Working funds to see them through thick and thin? Well said white picket fence (complete with house, dog, flowers and creeping one child) dreaming yankee lady had some dough, some father Manhattan NYSE stockbroker (or some such profession he never really did get all the details of his occupation although he acted like a damned proper don in some Mafioso dream sequel and so just in case he or his capo progeny are around let’s stick with stockbroker), which then meant dough, daughter dough. But said princess daughter (WASP daughter, alright) found herself slumming (if dream slumming really, and talking about it too with all her waspish girlfriends like some red badge of courage, but you probably figured that out already) with some half-heathen, half-broken, faux Irishman and while she was not above white picket dreams she still insisted that on this trip they would do frugal, thrifty yankee “dutch treat.” And this fidgety dog-fearing, white paint-hating, and weed-loving (the lawn destroying kind, okay) half-heathen wanted to have his own dough just in case he decided that he had to go to Butte instead of Beverly Hills in a fit of hubris. Oh, freedom, dough freedom.

So our brother, our story brother, Peter Paul just in case you had forgotten his name, worked at this and that and if you asked him (or her, but with scowls) what he did you would receive the usual hobo tramp bum – “a little of this and that.” A little this and that really meaning “the best he could,” just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. And “the best he could” got him that yellow box car, a couple of army sleeping bags(vintage World War II, of course, no Korean War/Vietnam War stuff to revile his dreams, or her dreams of him when she played him a hero, their love was fresh, and they fell fitfully down in first days 1971 New Hampshire snows and kissed gentle kisses just to see what it was like to kiss a hero she later told him and he laughed, and she reddened, and he reached out his laughing hands to her, and, and, but on with our travel story, you can figure out what those laughing hands did, can’t you), a small two-man army surplus tent (excuse me, two person, both to reflect the “new age” of person-hood and that that two part was all that could possibly fit into the damn thing, not even a stray dog could nuzzle his or her nose in), and a “house” worth of utensils. Canteens, Coleman stoves, mess kits, all very travel-worthy stuff as he knew from his minute now expired field army experience. Cheapsville, very cheapsville stuff, got it.

And off, hot August dog days off, heading north to catch a breeze and a dream before it got too cold, or the funds ran out after those first days of spending more than was budgeted because this or that cost more than expected. Backup though- some yankee stockbroker would come through, or some half-heathen would take another stab at “doing this and that.” First stop old time yankee gangway to fresh seas hideout from the Irish and other assorted trash Kennebunkport. (Not Kennebunk, that was for the heathens, she told him without qualification or guile, personal knowledge told him, and he was proud that day she told him, proud of his little smitten waspy conquest and gave just a peep of a thought that maybe a white picket fence might not be so bad with such a find.)

First night sleep out in some yankee farmer’s blueberry late season black fly-bitten field and first crack of setting up camp. Long hours to set “pup” tent (with no room for pup, no way, save that for dream white picket fences and petunias), fix hungry dinner on the big pot averse Coleman stove and wait for eternal, infernal water to boil for fresh day coffees and giggles. They are off, they are finally off, they are free, and they are one day into hard adventure and still in one piece- the morning would tell that same tale. Hey, this is easy, he said, easy before the fidgets could speak.

Heading north bright next morning to yankee Bar Harbors, maybe deeper yankee than Kennebunkport (with no Kennebunk for the heathen refuge, just Ellsworth) and more tents, and more eternal, infernal waits for precious coffees. North more, Campobello, north Calais (callus; don’t call it some French thing though if you don’t want to get into an argument). Then more slowly, more north to New Brunswick, sweet Moncktons and switch off youth hostel indoor one night living (nobody probably every called that dorm hostel sweet before, no reason to, but I will remain discrete and let you just think of laughing hands), north more to Nova Scotia (New Scotland, no question) Neil’s Harbor tents and Peggy’s Cove bed and breakfast inn (figured in the funding, so don’t get nervous). Push until no more norths (or easts) can be seen short of flight or boats and then west, the great blue pink America west night adventure waits and they are both like two intrepid pioneer kids (although now, after a few weeks, old camping hands) hard –faced to the wind.

Still more Canadian lands but island Prince Edward Island lands, sweet Charlottetown, rocked inlet boats, and another bed and breakfast, this time with ocean view and white picket fences but both of them are too rough-hewn now, just now anyway after several weeks on the roads, to care a fig for white picket fences. Or rustic scenes and rolling farm lands, and endless sea-side fishing villages just starting to fog up and rust up with lack of shoals work. Time for the cities, time for Quebec City and Montreal down the mighty Saint Lawrence and ooh, la, la French delights. And lights other than stars, sounds other than night cicadas, and talk other than get firewood, get tent pegs set and hammered, sleeping bags morning dew aired out, and fresh coffee boiling waits, infinity waits. Edge city waits.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-The Road Forward, Damn

He (and his buddy, Friedrich, but let’s just keep it as he and save the parsing out of credits to literary agents, skeptics, revisionists, and sworn enemies, left and right, or to some Freudian psychoanalyst who will put some sexual shape on the thing and will get it all balled up anyway) said struggle. He, when asked by some wooden-headed journalist big city newspaper, maybe the London Times but don’t hold me to the exact paper but do hold me to the accuracy of the quote, looking for some fashionable and titillating quote, “What is?” answered struggle, class struggle (although on the news- printed titillating page it came out as mere struggle to avoid upsetting the Mayfair swells and their hangers-on who were a little skittish about threats to their empire in the making). The town was abuzz, no aflame, over that one, worse than when he connected the dots with those wobbly old greying Chartist boys who had raised holy hell a few decades back and kept king cotton from union with their beloved lion.

So struggle, class struggle it was (and is). He said, from his 19^th century lonely graveside a head sculpture emblazoned hair flowing stern visage above his lot, and a head above his generation’s candor, push back, push back hard against, part one, Vietnam, and those who vouched for that war in somebody’s name, not mine or his. He said part two, the Vietnam push back part connects with that seemingly long time ago push back struggle to break out of “project boy” shames, and stark inequalities of not keeping up with the Joneses, or not fast enough anyway, and father hurts, and mother rages against unfortunate fates, food for tables and clothes for backs worries, and endless mother father hurts. He said, part three, mix the Vietnam push back, the empire push back learned later, painfully learned, the father hurt push backs and the tribune of the people push back (the hard part in no push back America, at least not too much push back) and maybe just maybe history will take a left turn, a sharp left turn. Parting, ghost shades parting, he whispered do not get mixed-message tied up with their politics, that McGovern do-good juggernaut but organize from the base and then strike the match, when it is time for such matters.

He said some other stuff too, stuff said fast, faster than the part one, two, three stuff. He said stay with your people, the wretched of the earth, whom you have abandoned (hell, he didn’t know it was really run away from, run hard away from with Jack Kennedy/Bobby Kennedy, hell, Hubert dreams of forty years, a pension, a gold watch and whatever could be stolen along the way in the “service” of the people). He said it would not be easy. Hell, he didn’t know the half of it. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people, with those gold-flecked dreams of yours. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. Damn, he was right.

He said look for a sign. He said, although he did not put it this way exactly, the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy, again. He said it again and again and would not let it, or me, rest. He said what is struggle. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1871, he said it in 1917, and he was ghost dream saying it in 1972. What a cranky, crazy old guy to disturb Peter Paul’s sleep, huh.

*****
Struggle. But where to start as Peter Paul sat, book in hand, Leon Trotsky’s “History Of The Russian Revolution,” down on a yogurt-spooned 1972 green painted bench on the Charles River near Harvard Square. Having devoured the “Communist Manifesto,” “Class Struggle In France,” “Critique Of The Gotha Programme,” “What Is To Be Done?”,and a few off-hand commentaries on them he was pushing for some sense of how to beat the monster. Beat the monster straight up. For just that Charles River bench seat minute he knew that he had to get beyond books but that books and struggle would be the combination to the golden age. Damn that old guy and his progeny too. Damn them for the heavy task they bequeathed to us ill-prepared descendants.

And for leaving us bends in the road, serious bends, fatal bends. Peter Paul told me how he have done his fair share of kicking one Professor Irving Howe, the late social -democratic editor of the intellectual quarterly magazine "Dissent", around back then and a guy who was supposed to know some stuff about Marxism or socialism when he was trying to figure the road to follow out. [I, on the other hand always appreciated Howe’s literary criticism and thought he had some things to say about politics too before he got indistinguishable from, say right-wing “National Review’s” William Buckley-JLB] But as this is, as is oft-quoted, a confessional age, Peter Paul had a confession, or rather two confessions, to make about his connections to Irving Howe. So for the time that it took to write the comments up he said he would call an armed truce with the shades of the professor. Here is what he had to say:

Confession #1- in the mist of time of my youth I actually used to like to read "Dissent." The articles were interesting, and as we were too poor for the family to afford a subscription, I spent many an hour reading through back issues at the local public library. I make no pretense that I understood all that was in each article and some that I re-read later left me cold but there you have it.

Probably the most impressive article I read was Norman Mailer’s "White Negro." I could relate to the violence and sense of 'hipness' that was hidden just under the surface of the article, especially the violence as it was not that far removed from that in my own poor white working class neighborhood, although I probably would not have articulated it that way at the time. Interestingly, Professor Sorin in his definitive Howe biography noted that Howe thought the article was a mistake for "Dissent" to publish for that very homage to violence implicit in the article. That now says it all.

The funny thing about reading "Dissent," at the time, thinking about it now, was that I was personally nothing more than a Kennedy liberal and thought that the magazine reflected that New Frontier liberalism. I was somewhat shocked when I found out later that it was supposed to be an independent 'socialist' magazine.

Most of my political positions at the time were far to the left of what was being presented there editorially, especially on international issues. I might add that I also had an odd political dichotomy in those days toward those to the left of my own liberalism. I was, not exactly aware then of the basis of the divide between them, very indulgent toward communists but really hated socialists, really social democrats. Go figure. Must have been something in the water, or rather some that said one was closer to solving those project and father hurts than the other.

Confession#2- Irving Howe actually acted, unintentionally, as my recruiting sergeant to the works of Leon Trotsky that eventually led to my embrace of a Marxist world view. But after some 150 plus years of Marxism claiming to be a Marxist is only the beginning of wisdom. One has to find the modern thread that continues in the spirit of the founders. Back in 1972, as part of trying to find a political path to modern Marxism I picked up a collection of socialist works edited by Professor Howe. In that compilation was an excerpt from Trotsky’s "History of the Russian Revolution," a section called "On Dual Power.” I read it, and then re-read it. Next day I went out to scrounge up a copy of the whole work. And the rest is history. So, thanks, Professor Howe- now back to the polemical wars against social-democratic accommodation - the truce is over.

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches- To Joyell Davin In Lieu Of A Letter- With J.E.D. In Mind

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

In the previous sketch, “The New Course,” mention was made that sometime

Peter Paul Markin would tell how he met that semite princess from Manhattan. This sketch, suitably name changed is essentially the story of their meeting and their fire next time.
**********
Freight train, freight train going so fast,

Freight train, freight train going so fast,

Please don’t say what train I’m on,

So they won’t know where I’ve gone.

-Chorus from ancient folk blues artist Elizabeth Cotten’s Freight Train.

As this story unfolds, Elizabeth Cotten’ s Freight Train, in an upbeat Peter, Paul and Mary-style version complete with Bleecker Street reference, is being covered just then near the well firewood- stocked, well-stoked fireplace of the great room in a hard winter, February version, snow-covered rural New Hampshire old time religious order assembly hall by some upstart urban folkie a long way from his home and a long way from that 1960s folk revival minute that then had had even jaded aficionados from the generation of ’68 clamoring for more.

Meanwhile, the front hall entrance adjacent to that great room where that old-time folkie and his old-time tune are being heard by a small early-bird arrival gathering crowd who never tire of the song, and who this night certainly do not tire of being close by the huge well stocked, well-stoked fireplace where the old brother, hell, let’s give him a name, Eric, Eric from Vermont, okay, is holding forth is starting to fill with more arrivals to be checked in and button-holed. The place, for the curious: the Shaker Farms Peace Pavilion (formerly just plain vanilla Shaker Farms Assembly Hall but the “trust fund babies” who bought and donated the site, ah, insisted in their, of course, anonymous way on the added signature) the scene of umpteen peace conferences, anti-war parlays, alternative world vision seminars, non-violent role-playing skits, and personal witness actions worked out. A handy hospice for worn-out ideas, ditto frustrations, and an off-hand small victory or two.

That very last part, that desperate victory last part, is what keeps the place afloat, afloat in this oddball of a hellish anti-war year 1971 when even hardened and steeled old-time peace activists against the Vietnam War are starting to believe they will be entitled to Social Security for their efforts before this bloody war is over. Hence the urgency behind this particular great room fireplace warm, complete with booked-in urban folkie singer, umpteenth anti-war conference. But onward brothers and sisters and let us listen in to the following conversation overheard in that now crowded front hall:

“Hi, Joyell, glad you could make it to the conference. Are you by yourself or did you bring Steve with you?” asked Jim Sweeney, one of the big honchos, one of the big organizational honchos and that is what matters these dog days when all hope appears to have been abandoned, these now fading days of the antiwar movement trying yet again to conference jump start the opposition to Nixon’s bloody escalations and stealthy tricky maneuvers.

“Good to see you too, Jim,”answered Joyell, who said it in such a singsong way that she and Jim Sweeney, obviously, had been in some mystic time, maybe some summer of love time before everything and everybody needed twelve coats of armor, emotional armor, just to move from point A to point B, more than fellows at one of those umpteen peace things. Joyell knew, knew from some serious reflection last summer, that she had put on a few more armor coats herself and, hell, she was just a self-confessed rank and filer. Their “thing” had just faded though for lack of energy, lack of high “ism” politics on Joyell’s part unlike frenetic Jim, and for the cold, hard fact that Jim at the time wanted to devote himself totally to the “movement” and could not “commit” to a personal relationship.

“Jesus, can’t any guy commit to anything for more than ten minutes,” Joyell thought to herself. From the weathered look on his face Jim was still in high thrall to “saving the earth”although rumor had it that Marge Goodwin, ya, that Marge Goodwin, the “mother”of organizers ever since she almost single-handedly called out the national student strike in 1970, almost had her hooks into him, into him bad from all reports.

"No, Steve and I are not together anymore since he split to “find himself” on some freight train heading west, heading west fast away from me, I think. But you don’t want to hear that story, and besides we have to push on against this damn war, Steve or no Steve and his goddamn freight smoke-trailing dreams.” What Joyell didn’t say was that she was half-glad, no quarter-glad, Steve had split since the last couple of months had been hell. A fight a day it seemed, two a day at the end.

Reason: Steve too was not ready to “commit” to a personal relationship what with the whole world going to hell in hand-basket (his expression). Besides they all had plenty of time, a life-time to get “serious” and, forbidden words, “settle down.” Here is where the quarter-glad part comes in. Steve was getting in kind of heavy with some Weathermen-types and while that did not cause an argument a day between them it didn’t help. Joyell half expected to hear that Steve, Steve the meek pacifist, a freaking meek Catholic Worker guy just a couple years before, blew up something, or got blown up. Jesus, she thought, was I that hard to take, hard to get along with.

“I’m sorry to hear that Joyell. Maybe when we get a break later we can talk.” Of course, and maybe for the same Steve smoke-trailing-freight-dream-escape-seeking-the-great-American be-bop night reason, or maybe a heroic end traced out since boyhood redemptions reason, Jim and Joyell never would meet later, as Jim would be tied up, well, tied up in whatever organizational thing he was honcho of these days. Their time too had irrevocably passed. And now, and from here on in, this is Joyell’s time, her story, her voice as she enters the spacious but cold, distant from the well-stoked fireplace cold, conference room to the left of the great room with its rickety elongated table weighted down with timeless banging against ten thousand flickered night dreams, scarecrow chairs that caused more than one modern arched-back to falter helplessly, and unhealthy air, air make rank from too many spent speeches, and spent dreams.

*******
“Who is that guy over in the corner, that green corner coach, the guy with the kind of wispy just starting to fill out brown beard, and those fierce piercing goy blue eyes, that I just passed? I’ve not seen him around before,” Joyell asked herself and then Marge Goodwin, expecting Marge the crackerjack organizer of everything from antiwar marches to save the, and you can fill in the blank, to know all the players. Moreover Marge and Joyell got along well enough for Joyell to ask such a question, “girl talk,” they called it between themselves although to the “men”this was a book sealed with seven seals since the “correct” thing was to put such girlish things back in prehistoric times, four or five years ago okay. Joyell also sensed that since Marge’s “thing” with Jim hadn’t worked out they had something in common, although nothing was ever said. Nor would it be.

“Oh, that’s Frank Jackman, the anti-war GI who just got out of the stockade over at Fort Shaw last week and he is ready to do some work with us,” volunteered Marge. Later that evening Joyell would hear from a reliable source that Marge had gotten, or had tried to get, very familiar with the ex-army soldier resister. Marge had a thing for“heroic” guys. Heroic guys being guys like Jim, Joan Baez’s hubby, David Harris, who had refused draft induction, the Berrigan Brothers who were getting ready to do time for draft board record destruction (although she, Marge, couldn’t get that damn Catholic trick part that drove their actions) and now this Frank Jackman who had done a year, a tough soldier non-soldier year, some of it in solidarity, in the stockade for refusing go to Vietnam (and refusing to wear the military uniform at one point). Joyell also heard from another source that evening that it was no dice between Marge and Frank.

This source thought it was that Marge, always getting what Marge wanted when it came to “movement men,”figured this guy would just cave in and take the ride. Not this guy, no way, not after taking on the “big boys” over at Fort Shaw. No dice, huh. That’s a point in his favor. But that was later fuel.

“Oh, that’s why his beard is so wispy and he is wearing those silly high top polished black boots and that size too big Army jacket with those bell-bottomed jeans. He certainly has the idea of what it takes to fit in here,” Joyell figured out, figured out loud. Marge just nodded, nodded kind of dismissively that she was right. And then left to do some organization business setting up the evening’s work.

And then suddenly, she, Joyell Davin (suitably Americanized, naturally, a couple of generations back), freshly-damaged in love’s unequal battles but apparently not ready to throw in the towel, got very quiet, very quiet like she always did when some guy caught her eye, well, more than her eye tonight, now that Steve was so much train smoke out in the cornfields somewhere. Maybe it was the New York City armor-coated brashness, hell Manhattan grow-up hard and necessary brashness required in a too many people universe, and learned from her very opinionated father, that her quietness tried to rein in at times like this so guys, guys like this Frank, wouldn’t be thrown off. But whatever it was that drove her quietness she was taking her peeks, her quiet half- peeks really, at this guy. With Steve, and a few other guys, it was mostly full steam ahead and let the devil take the hinter- post. This time her clock said take it easy, jesus, take it easy.

And as she found herself catching herself taking more and more of those telltale peeks she noticed, noticed almost by instinct, almost by some mystical sense that he was“checking” her out, although their dueling eyes had not met. Then, after Jim had finished giving the opening address about what the conferees were trying to do, this Frank Jackman stood up quickly without introduction and started talking, in a firm voice, about the need to up the ante, to create havoc in the streets, and in the army camps. And do it now, and with some sense of urgency. But he said it all in such way that everybody in the room, all forty or fifty of them, knew, or should have known, that this was not some ragtag wispy–bearded fly-by-night “days of rage” kid spirit, freshly bell-bottom pants minted, but some kind of revolutionary, some kind of radical anyway, who had thought about things a lot and wasn’t just a flame-thrower like she had seen too many of lately, including Steve, before he went to find himself.

When Frank was done he looked, half-looked really, quickly in her direction like he was seeking her, and just her, approval. And like he needed to know and know right this minute that she approved. She blushed, and hoped it did not show. And hoped that she had read his look in her direction correctly. But before that blush could subside she blushed again when out of nowhere this Frank gave her a another look, a serious checking out look if she knew her “movement” men, not a leer like some drunken barroom guy, or “come on, honey,” like a schoolboy but a let’s talk high “ism”talk later, and see what happens later, later. Maybe this umpteenth conference would work out after all.

So our Joyell was not surprised, not surprised at all, when during the break, the blessed break after two non-stop hours of waiting, Francis Alexander Jackman (that’s what he was called from when he was a kid and it kind of stuck but he preferred simply Frank) came up behind, tapped her gently on the shoulder to get her attention, introduced himself without fanfare or with any heroic poses, and thanked her for her work on his behalf.

“What do you mean, Frank?”she asked, bewildered by the question. “Oh, when your Peace Action committee came up to Fort Shaw and demonstrated for my freedom,” he replied in kind of a whisper voice, very different from his public voice, a voice that had known some tough times recently and maybe long ago too, but that soft whisper was what she needed, needed to hear from a righteous man, just now. The shrill of Steve’s voice, and a couple of others in her string of forgotten luck, still echoed in her brain.

“That was you? I didn’t make the connection. I didn’t know that was you, sorry, that was about a year ago and I have been going non-stop with this antiwar march and that women’s lib things. Were you in the stockade all that time?” she continued.

“Yah,” just a yah, not forlorn or anything like that but just a simple statement of fact, of the fact that he had needed to do what he did and that was that, next question, came that soft reply like this Frank and she were on some same wave-length. She was confused, confused more than a little that he had that strong effect on her after about five minutes of just general conversation.

Just then Marge, super-organizer but, as Joyell had already gathered intelligence on by then, not above having the last say in her little romances with the newest heroes of the movement, or trying to, called to Frank that Stanley Bloom, the big national anti-war organizer, wanted his input into something. But before he left soft -whispering still, calm still, unlike when he talked, talked peace action talk, he mentioned kind of kid-like, bashful kid-like, and maybe they could meet later. Joyell could barely contain herself, and although she usually acted bashfully at these times, kind of a studied bashfulness starting out, even with Steve and some of the movement guys, she just blurted out, “We’d better.” He replied, a little stronger of voice than that previous whisper, “I guess that is a command, right?” And they both laughed, laughed an adventure ahead laugh.

Later came, evening session complete, as they were sitting across from each other in the great room, the great fireplace room where Eric was going through his second rendition of Freight Train to get the room revved up for his big stuff. Frank came over and asked, back to whisper asked, if Joyell would like to go outside for a breath of fresh winter air. Or maybe somewhere else, another room inside perhaps if she didn’t like the cold or snow. No second request was necessary, and no coyness on her part either with this guy, as she quickly went to the coat rack and put on her coat, scarf, and boots. And so it went.

They talked, or rather she talked a blue streak, a soft-spoken blue streak like Frank’s manner was contagious, and maybe it was. Then he would ask a question, and ask it in such a way that he really wanted to know, know her for her answer and not just to ask, polite ask. As they walked, and walked, and as the snow got deeper as they moved away from the pavilion she kind of fell, kind of helpless on purpose fell. On purpose fell expecting that he might kiss her. But all he did was pick her up, gently but firmly, held her in his arms just a fraction of a second, but a fraction of a second enough to let her know, and let her feel, that they had not seen the last of each other. And just for that cold, snow-driven February night, as war raged on in some distance land, and as she gathered in her tangled emotions after many romantic stumbles and man disappointments, that thought was enough.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-From The "Ancient Dreams, Dreamed" Sketches-The New Course

The great Mandela cried, cried to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son had found his way, a strange way but a way. Freed from mental prisons and placed in solitary barred, steel-barred root rooms to wager his personal bet, bet of his life, on freedom. Freed from manacle shackled past get aheads, go aheads, keep your head down to get ahead, eyes straight forward, no lefts or rights, hell, no, meet some nice working-class girl, find some forty years, a pension, and a gold watch, and produce, produce what. And prison freed from now sour bourgeois dreams, bobby (kennedy) dreams, okay, okay but that is what they were and one need not be a Marxist (or marxist) to know that road led to perdition and without even trying.

Yah, and that road, that blessed bobby road, represented the character flaw, that certain tilting to the winds instead of against them like some old baby boy donkey ride Sancho Panza and his pal and all the windmills in Holland or Palm Springs could not change that. Yah, free, prison free and his dream hair grows a little longer each day and his dream beard begins to be bushy like some old time Old Testament archangel avenger of hurts, his own first and the other hurts. And like some righteous John Brown, just to name a name, a Calvinist avenger name, blown out of Kansas prairie fires and set smack daub in Harper’s Ferry hellholes he cultivates that long flow hair and beard, dreamed.

But a dame, pardon me, 1971 women’s consciousness-raising and righteous too, a woman always comes with it, the dream hair and beard. One hard night, one tossed night some apparition out of a Puritan dream, all quakerly and severe, he saw some Croton-on-the-Hudson vision. A woman passed momentarily in fierce struggles, fierce outside the walls struggles, not noticed, not noticed until that night, not pretty, not blonde, not, well, not everywoman, but fierce, fierce in about six difference ways and maybe, just maybe capable of fierce loves.

Another hard night, tossed too, a free-form dream of Chicago, hog butcher to the world, wheat fields and wholesomeness just beyond in now no longer John Brown-like prairies. A daughter, some brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown-skinned semite butcher’s, a kosher butcher, maybe, daughter, who spoke of spirit dreams, and wrote blue-eyed poems and of goyim sillies, and he was happy, happy that she wrote of fierce blue-eyes just when he had been ready to throw in the towel. And then that certain character flaw, that fidget, that endless fidget, neither left or right, came in as he tried to have the whole world. Imagine that, imagine some fierce blue-eyed boy could shake all that, and forget those blue-eyed words in that blue-eyed poem. And shake (and forget) to endless sorrows. Hell, damn, hell.

This last time, the last restless night, came one out of hell Manhattan and one thousand and one anxieties, neuroses, and her own father time hurts. No righteous Hudson puritan or Midwestern semite daughter she. No, princess semite she. What a pair they will be. Remind me to tell you sometime how they met, dream met, in some snowy do-good cabin/assembly hall build to curse the darkness of one thousand wars and one hundred fights against those damn wars. And for a minute she, he, they were happy, happy in each other’s vagrant landless company. Then certain madnesses came forth. And short dope snorts, and peyote dream buttons, all mixed in sometimes blank, sometimes the door of perception but I just cribbed that, not the perceptions the thought, okay.

What a ride, lord, what a ride, and lusts and screams and crazed rants were just a little part of it before that damn fidget, what, redhead, blonde, dirty blonde, path crossed his way.

And fame, local lore fame, built out of impossible combinations of minute fortitude, hour righteousness, and day of reckoning, day of reckoning and passing with flying colors. And a certain swagger came to his feet in the high heaven black Madonna of a night. But no such feeling can (or, truth, should), last too long and in that Black Madonna night he began to fidget, fidget just a little. Some fidget ignited by refused dreams of white picket fences, dogs, and two point three kids (exactly two point three he never tired of saying as she, the Black Madonna, reddened at the thought). And he, he made for great leaps, and straw dogs. Hell it could have been easy, very easy but she couldn’t see it that way, and he didn’t except when he needed her refuge, lovingly or just shelter.

And on those shelter days no cigarette hanging off the lip now (she would not allow it see, not cool and it aggravated her condition, whichever one it was at the time. So no Winston filter-tipped seductions, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that.

Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little. He cursed the darkness on those days, and the light too, for he had made that leap that he only heard about in his head when he had had a few dreams and was feeling warrior king brave to take on all comers, tricky dick, vance packard, spiro agnew, hell even sparring a norman mailer now that they were on the same side (or at least he thought they were on the same side, same side advertising for themselves and their heroics, their armies of the night collective moment). And dreams of being right, ha.

Then one day some news came from above, no, hell no, not that above, the above of mundane chain-of-command drop down and let you know freedom day was near. Anti-climactic, anticlimactic for a man who expected to grow old in stir, and kind of dug it (excuse beat reversion memory of Harvard Square leavings when he thought this world would be some literary break-out and not righteous avenger of hurts, did I said his own first of all. If he didn’t, he lied).

Free at last but with a very, very sneaking feeling that this was a road less traveled for a reason, and no ancient robert frost blasted two roads to guide one… Just look at blooded Kent State, or better, blooded Jackson State. Christ.