From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin –From “The Lonesome Hobo” Series-“Our Homeland The Sea”

Funny, he, call him old man of the sea, although that appellation has been done to literary death in about sixteen different ways not all of them apt, in any case let’s not, definitely not, make it some Hemingway-ish old man, some viejo, some Caribe viejo, fighting some stinking marlin, or some such fish, mano y mano, stinking, man and fish, fighting some life and death literary metaphor struggle, but that name fits as good as any, thought as he watched out over another endlessly enchanted seascape, next stop England or with a wind drift or tide drift homeland, forbear homeland Ireland, how many such scenes he had witnessed in his whitened lifetime. This time the sea-scape, god-brokered, maybe god-forsaken, with furious winds driving white-capped waves thundering to ill-prepared but eagerly waiting to be taken like some overripe maiden beaches (better metaphor that some stinking viejo and fish combine, alright) and already filled with flotsam and jetsam, nature’s jimson, from a million previous rages, nature rages now co-mingled with his own benighted rages, brought another rage (rage against the dying of the light) about how much of his life had revolved around the sea, around trying to get a handles on the sea, trying to see, well, hell at this late date where he fit in, no, where he stood, okay. And after his rant subsided he thought this…

Maybe it was the sheer hard fact, hard to get around fact anyway, of the transcontinental California night calling after too long an absence, the California be-bop, be-bop, be-bop, praise saint be-bop, our lord and king be-bop, late 1960s night, summer of love night and its aftermath when all things were possible and when old Wordsworth had it right, had it poem right, to be young was very heaven.

The afternoon turned back to morning as he headed west, funny, flown, jet-flown these days, no more those old days hitchhike road, waiting alone or with some angel woman by his side on some Route 6, or 66, hailing some lonesome trucker looking for poor boy company, someone to rant to at seventy-five miles an hour to in order to relieve his own desperate life with a road son, waiting too in some forlorn Neola, Winnemucca, Boise, Grand Island, Flagstaff, wherever, waiting a long time. Or on some just hopped flat-bed Denver & Rio Grande, Illinois Central, Southern Pacific train making time with the last of the old time hobos and dreaming his own dreams of some Phoebe Snow left behind in sorrow or anger. Less frequently, strangely, a flat-out car run west riding Route 80, 90 to Frisco town thundering through farmlands, the plains, rockymountain high and down on to the desert before golden-gated blessed land’s end, Frisco .

The eternal California be-bop night after years of Maine solitude, of Maine grey-blue-white washed, white-crested, white-capped, foam-flecked Atlantic ocean-flotsam and jetsam strewn waters. After all not all angel oceans are created the same, just look at the fury-driven pacific ocean in front of him, no friend to man, to beast, or to god, not all oceans speak to one in the same way, speak that siren song whisper, speak hushed tones that no man (and here man means man or woman, okay) dare speak above, nature’s arbitrary law, although they are all old Father (or is it Brother now) Neptune’s thoughtful playgrounds. (Thoughtful for ten thousand thoughtful walks, ten thousand un-thoughtful walks, and eight thousand more or less, indifferent walks, twenty-eight thousand, more or less, chances anyway.

California’s, yes, white-washed, yes, white-crested, yes, white-capped, yes, foam-flecked speak to gentle, warm lapis lazuli blue wealth dreams of the quest, the long buried life long quest for the great blue-pink great American West night, blue-pinked skies of course. Yes maybe it was just that sheer hard fact, hard to get around still, that pushed him, old man of the sea him, out of Eastern white, white to hate the sight of white, snowed-indoors, Eastern gale winds blowing a man against the sand-pebbled seas, and into the endless starless, better, sunless night. Yes, maybe just a change of color, or to color, from the white white whiteness of the sea stretched, white-etched night. Right down to the shoreline white where the waves devoured night and left their mark, their graffiti-etched mark.

Maybe too it was the sheer fact, he would no longer speak of hard to get around facts around since that was enameled into his psyche now, of preparing, against the timetable of that Eastern white night, timetable set and etched by that shoreline outline and that fugitive lover who ravished her shoreline sands and then fled, this and that for the winter California day, and night, the ocean California that set the thoughts of the be-bop night (hell, more than be-bop, be-bop to the nth power) suddenly came brain-storming in waves like that turbulent sea over him not seen or heard from since those first summer of love days, and the quest for the blue-pink skies humming once again in the, admittedly, older-boned voyager, voyeur (some snicker “dirty old man” and save such high society words as voyeur for the professionals) of dreamed once sultry, steamy sex-ridden nights.

And vivid memories of golden Butterfly Swirl (born, Cathy Callahan, corn-fed, no more from hunger okie forbears migration Carlsbad, California, circa 1950) and her sex, her seventeen different little tricks (to match her age in that 1967 summer of love night, if you need a date), learned, learned from who knows where, maybe mother ocean herself or some karma sutra book but certainly not from her former “seeking the perfect wave” surfer boyfriend-where would that fit into his timetable? Such thoughts, such memory thoughts a different proposition, a different proposition altogether, on most days, from preparing to face fierce Maine winter mornings, unaided by the graces, speak freely of the graces please, and forms nature provides its hardier creations. No thoughts today of heavy woolen coats, double-stitched, double-plied, doubled-vested, old nor’ easter worthy, or heavy woolen pants, same chino pants of youth, same black chino pants, no cuffs, except winter weight, not the always summer weight of no knowledge youth (inside sad joke), or heavy boots, heavy clunky rubbery boots mocking against the snow-felt, ocean-edged soft sand streets, or maybe, more in tune with aged-bone recipes heavy-soled, heavy-rubber soled (or was it rubber souled?) running shoes (also known in the wide world of youth as sneakers, better Chuck’s, Chuck Taylor’s). Of scarves, and caps, full-bodied caps, better seaman’s caps, heavy, wool, dark blue, built to stand against the ocean-stormed waves crashing and thrashing against ships hulls, and gloves, gloves to keep one’s hands from frosty immobility he need not speak. Or will not speak. Of this he will speak…

A memory picture too of boyhood friend Jimmy Leclerc, remember that name like you remember the seas, like you remember certain tales, like you remember, well, like you remember as best you can , that which somebody told you about but which you did not experience (although Jimmy experiences filled his soul, filled his sea-watching soul even this day). Blessed, sainted, sanctified, cradled, born under a certain star, lucky maybe if you believe in making your own luck or having it thrust upon you, Jimmy, young, maybe four or five, no, five, definitely five, school ready, school ready come five year old fall, mucking around the summertime shoreline mucks, low tide, shoreline white-etched ravishes well up the beach, fetid smells from seven kinds of tanker-passing oil slicks, rancid chemicals from the cross-bay industrial plant, human mucks mixed in from ten thousand , ten thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge) sources seeping back to shore and mephitic (thanks, Norman Mailer) seeps as well from the close by marshes that guard the approaches to the sea.

Jimmy, a tow-headed, tow-headed kid, five, portending Adonis and ladies, maybe some Butterfly Swirl and her seventeen little tricks when he gets old enough to know of such tricks, know of teaching such tricks just in case he lands a neophyte, knowing from some savior older brother himself sent to sea at fourteen, or some other worthy sea-mate, that day, that picture day, walking toward the ever-present amateur clam diggers(or maybe professional but it was hard to see how they, or anyone, could make a living out of oil- slicked, fetid, human mucked clams),high rubber boots, high almost to the crotch (although Jimmy would not have pointed that hard fact out, no then), buckets, small buckets, portending small payloads, sea-rakes, sea-shovels, sea-backs and working against time before the relentless seas come back to cover their own.

And just that day, that low tide and mucks days, Jimmy learned a valuable lesson from those vagrant gypsy clam-diggers (literally gypsies, Roma now, if you prefer, but just plain ordinary gypsies then, and called so, mostly seen with travelling carnivals and on city sidewalks selling cheap roses for the lady, and maybe their daughters too, selling that is, they used the clams in some special olio broth magic that kept their race alive in hard times) about only believing half (or less, but that was another lesson another time) of what you hear. He had heard a few days before, heard from some older boys who lived up the street (the name of the street not important, not important to the lesson, but maybe, naming will act as an omen, name Taffrail Road evoking long ago wooden ships and sea-farers worthy of the name, sea-ward pirate cousins of that day’s gypsies) and who were interested in girls, as girls, as opposed to childhood boys leave girls for later pickings and moonings, and not like Jimmy, Jimmy even then girls as foils for his child-like schemes, not all evil, not at all, but not in entangling, intertwining ways like they spoke of, that the sea before them contained mythic submarines, enemy submarines out beyond the breakers. He asked one of the gypsy diggers if he had seen any submarines around while he was digging. The digger spoken to by Jimmy called to his gypsy partner repeating Jimmy’s question and they both let out with a low groan laugh, then a heartier one. The first man laughed some more and then said to Jimmy that while there were not many around anymore since the war (World War II for those who are keeping counts on wars, or just trying to keep them straight), since the bloody Germans has been defeated and good riddance (reflecting the decimation of his kindred in Europe who took a serious beating from the bloody bastard Nazis) but he said on certain moonless nights you could see objects that certainly looked like submarines so be watchful, and be careful. So for a couple of months thereafter whenever the moon was low or it was cloudy Jimmy looked out fiercely at the open sea and then after a while went on to other things. Lesson about half of what you hear learned.

Memory fast forward. A moonless June night, circa 1961 Jimmy Leclerc was sitting in his brother borrowed 1957 two-toned (cherry red and white) Chevy (the old man as he mulled the ancient fact knew , he knew said brother should have been shot, or worse , for letting anybody, even a brother, even a brother who spent the whole afternoon turtle-waxing the damn thing in order to borrow his chariot borrow his chariot) down at the far end of Seal Rock (name also not important except that Seal Rock says beach, says mystery and says, far end says, that this is the local lovers’ lane for the free-spirits who don’t mind the crowds of cars that dotted that place on moonless June nights, and other times too, or mind being seen in a spot that means only one thing, that you will be anywhere from point one to point thirty Monday morning in Olde Saco High School (Maine, okay) before school “lav” talk, boys’ or girls’ lav accordingly, about who did, or did not, do what and with whom (or is it who) over the weekend at Seal Rock. And that week, that week just before school let out for the summer and spoiled all those Monday morning discussed points until September’s deluge, Jimmy and Lorraine, Lorraine Dubois, received a number because Jimmy, who had long since learned to believe in making his own luck, has talked his ball and chain sweetie Lorraine into searching for submarines, those mythical gypsy digger submarines. And searching for them very closely, very closely indeed, as it turned out, in the back seat of that brother’s cherry ’57 Chevy.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- New Jack City Blues, Circa 1950, Take Three

 

New York City, 1950s New Jack City for the jack-worthy, not big enough for million- worded jacks (or jills), not in the end. In the end he, they, needed the road, the wide open roads west, the transcontinental riff calling, the Route 6, 66, 666 (the latter a pact with the devil, or the devils’ master, some deal to write that second million words of the legend-in-the- making), the great thruways aborning. Passing (if they could ever get that first hitchhike ride out of the city) dusty dutch red barn farms, steel cities achingly filled with lonesome story bus stops and stinking urinals, dirty , and always too big passengers in the next seat who snored, who spread their mass on fallow shoulders, passing auto cities filled with hungry, great depression hungry workers looking to make their first down payments on a dream, a dream car to quell their restless search, and maybe some little white picket fenced house to anoint their red scare cold war night, to be on the right side of the angels for once. Shoving into hog butcher to the world Chi town, all brawny and beef, all a place to move west, and move fast to avoid Joliet blues like a million Muddys coming from old Parchman’s Farm Mississippi Delta south up highway 61 , down along the silty big muddy and then to the great expanse, the Dakotas with their forlorn look, and their young desperate to head west and become drugstore movie stars, following their okie-arkie brethren further south who made the trek a generation before and were now stranded in some Pomona shopping plaza wondering what the hell it was all about, or roaming those Pacific coast highways in their jalopies, their hot money hot rods looking for the heart of Saturday night, or lucky boys, searching for that perfect wave down in the LaJollas of the world .

Pushing, ever pushing west, on into junction Denver searching for the ghost of the cowboy past in Larimer Street pool halls, barrooms, and chip joints (and maybe an untoward whorehouse), looking for golden all-American Old West cowboy dreams. Onward out of the flame-thrown Rockies and down into dinosaur death Utah and then Nevadas, Winnemucca dry holes a specialty just don’t get caught out there on that hitchhike road. And then land’s end golden gate rust pacific rim of the world Frisco town and flowers and blossoms in the foggy North Beach night. But all this later. For now though life is, life is New Jack City, and the strange neon night rhythms.

Yah, for a while you could hear that old caged bird sing, hear sing some Billie Holliday body and soul lover’s lament, some blues from deep down in the Mother Africa night, some café cabaret ghost of the Cotton Club (filled with hard boys so watch out) swing low, swing misty, swing along nod sway song, maybe a little boy-juiced, but swaying. Something in that phrasing she had, Billie that is, that half pause before she set up the snarling upper lip to speak of endless sorrows, endless sorrows endured in America, unrelieved, unrelieved except through blood-scarred arms. Some Dizzy dizzy salt peanuts tune, maybe a little tea-time dizzy, some high white note stuff every once in a while just to keep things interesting, blowing man blow about two, maybe three, in the morning playing chords, playing progressions most of night to keep the fidgety fickle customers glued to their tables, drinking high- shelf liquor and maybe riffing a little for the regulars at the bar, the hip cats who didn’t even dare show up until one, maybe later, and got ready to blow from his toes you could tell, tell by the hour, tell by how he held the notes on that last song blast. Yah, he was going blow that pure note if it took until dawn and then that note and that sun rising could fight it out. And that note was going to win, if not that night then sometime but in the meantime here he was in his entire be-bop high blown splendor. Or some, well just name your cool as a cucumber jazzman, Lester blowing that big sexy sultry sax at the end, the Prez working that blast for all it was worth, letting the air out and filling up again just like some oxygen mask, blowing pass the audience into his own eden, beautiful, and the hipsters too hip to clap, rude crowd clap, just point their solo index fingers at the max daddy and he just tips his solo index finger back to the brotherhood. On and on in the New York jazz night, on Gerry, on Dave Brubeck, on Charlie angel Gabriel trumpet blowing early in the morning down his own private Birdland , some more experimental guys, Monk, mad monk riff piano riffing monk , on top of the heap. All saints, all angels early morning (when else?) sweaty in a hundred cool as a cucumber midnight cafes, The Swan, The Gaslight, Benny’s, The Hi Hat, and the beloved Red Fez (red to make you sunset dream, red to take away the red scare night straight up in the free-wheeling refuge town, sunset red tea dream to see and long for ancient dreams, fez to make you think Africa calling, Africa finally calling home her children), all drawing, drawing can you believe this, the Mayfair swells like in old Duke Cotton Club high Harlem night Scott Fitzgerald bathtub gin jazz age time.

Time Square, eternal home to every Hoboken hipster forced to flee for non-payment of rent, every Ithaca spinster angel looking for some Boston marriage far from prying eyes, every broken dream okie farm boy useless on the dust bowl farm and itching to get at those women, those easy city women he heard about on the radio or in some forbidden magazine, after a steady diet of dried- out high hell fundamentalist girls aching for the lord and a fistful of kids to take away the empty soul of the black, true black starless prairie nights after a proper marriage, every arkie beauty queen who could not survive the rarified airs of “take it all off sister”or being ass-pinched by hot rod valley boys waiting impatiently for hamburgers and fries in the blossoming Hollywood car hop nights and who couldn’t go home to Helena, every drifter, grafter, grafter and midnight sifter working the flamed never-ending lights of hell. Lit up, neon- lit, gas-lit, 24/7/365-lit, lit to the gills, lit against the jack-rolling crime night (see above for candidates, jack-rollers in waiting, if the occasion arises) back alley big city simplicity itself just some chain, or an off-hand pipe, behind the knees, crumple easy to the ground, grab the dough, up and out to some whore blow, dope blow, whisky blow.

Out in the flamed, never ending lights of hell-lit up, lit against the gang night, Central Park mainly, and some off streets down in Little Italy and up in high Harlem, 125^th Street anyway, lit against the rough trade Genet night sailor boys fresh from the wharves, Hudson wharves, East River wharves, flush with just off the boat pay-off cash, looking for chain-whip kicks, some diva delight, some fresh leather boy too. Lit against the sad sin sexless sex night, some anonymous Lansing, Muncie, Omaha corn-fed young thing, maybe like her older arkie sister a beauty queen who headed east instead of west to get into the theater or some concert hall, shapely, good legs, working hips, tired of light-less farms and farm fields headed to the big city, headed up 42^nd street instead of Broadway or the Village and wound up with big faded dreams calling out “hey mister, want a good time,” or maybe stoned to the gills just nods, stoop nods, symbolically showing a good time just by her uniform, that split pea dress showing plenty of thigh, those long black nylon stockings, and that kewpie doll smile, all yours for the price of a needle, a room, and some pimp’s damn cut or, hell, when the spiral goes down some quickie back alley head and a quick napkin spit wipe, jesus. Watch out for the jack-rollers honey though, especially watch out for those damn jack-rollers you earned your money, earned it hard, and she maybe thinking to herself if old farm boy love Roy could see me now, later to be turned over to some Jersey whorehouse and work by the bell. Go home sister, go home, now. New Jack was just too big for you.

Wall Street, pass, this is not about coupon-clipping, okay. Although on other days some guys might like to kick that can down the road a bit. Madison Avenue, pass, this is not about subliminal desires and tricks, well- meaning Vance Packard to the contrary. Park Avenue, pass, well, maybe half-pass, maybe half pass looking for princesses (WASP, Jewish, does it matter as long as they are looking for down at the end of the road beat brothers, and have the money, not some trust fund tied- up and handed out nickels and dimes stuff but real cash) looking for kicks before they run off to the Hamptons and later the Connecticut shoreline bedroom communities with their soft felt hat train-catching for the city stockbroker lovers. Just kicks though, no stir time stuff, not with daddy warbucks on the warpath, not with his Pinkertons, and not with his pen dripped in ink just that minute re-writing the terms of his will. Or maybe catch some off-hand wild thing, maybe jail bail, pray to god not, looking to break out, like the beat boys and girls, from the bourgeois high society (not beat high, reefer high, benny high, boy high, cousin high) but from same old same old Fifth Avenue parties, some freak-out boarding school and Miss Prissy’s finishing school. Jesus.

Yah, a quick stop to check for those looking for jack night thrills to fill up, fill up like some gas tank, their beat souls, or looking for some golden cowboy, some fast flash wind from the west, fresh from stir, all Paul Newman beautiful, and those blue eyes, those Ladies’ Room tittle blue eyes, and someone will spell it out, bedroom eyes, new to the city, and woman hungry, take no prisoners, or maybe checking for those looking for some poor boy sailor boy just off the ships just got paid Genet boys rough stuff. Down some dark wharf street, down some tavern end of the dock street, and secret dreams, but such rarified tastes are dangerous, dangerous indeed.

Up to Columbia, the university, of course, ivy-covered, respectable for a minute (before the 1960s heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), a minute when some buzz came breezing in, the beat boys and girls came breezing in, came through the portals, hah, the groves of academia. And Jack and Allen and kindred teased the city dry, blew town, went out on the pioneer highways just like the forbears, saw majestic and crude things, did majestic and crude thing, smoked some dope, made some love, drank some cheap Tokay wine, and oh yes, unchained, unhinged Eliot and Wolfe language from it throne moorings, and created some flash beat to be listened to elsewhere, elsewhere in the land’s end rusted golden gate sun.

The Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), the clubs and nooks already mentioned, jazz, folk rearing its head, more jazz, some poetry on an off night, the beat poets reading their beat poems to a famished world (or slender slice of it), the streets of dreams not mentioned, Bleecker, McDougall on up to Canal, the safe harbor, hell, sanctuary for those blown away by the cold war red scare night, not just reds, and pinks, and maybe white pinks, but all mother nature’s odd and damaged, the beat poem listen to hangers-on for sure, the morphine kickers looking for sure connections and some walking daddy to be-bop with when the crash came, the rough trade boys, reading Genet in some tavern back room in translation, tired of hell angels beating up on them without style, plainsong fags tired of dating someone’s sister as a favor and ready to face the cops’ bull if only to have a few nights of boy love without being run out of a Podunk town on a rail, same, same for those weary of those boston marriages and tired of wearing men’s clothing in private Beacon Street Boston rooms, art guys by the biz-illion, Jackson this, Larry that, Motherwell this and that, enough art to paint the world, all abstract and symbolic, all death to sweet Madonna slash dabbed in the night.

Movie houses, movie theaters, all sweet black and white stark, all New Jack city eight million stories stark, and, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking of urine or Thunderbird wines, of endless overflow from Times Square (or run out) drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggers and minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car -beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42^nd Street hurts.

Of Howard Johnson’s franks, mustard, relish, onions, go ahead the works, eaten by the half dozen to curb hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, not sex but fame, fresh off the Port Authority bus, of Joe and Nemo’s two o’clock fatty griddle hamburgers, the works again, please, of fags (bothering guys in public toilets, jesus), and fairies, all dressed up and rouged ready for some gentleman caller, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell, and can write too, write one million words on order, and perform, on cue, stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro crosstown, not to speak of Soho or the Bronx . And of junkies of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules, gringos, poor boy Nuevo York gringos trying to get ahead of the curve, and just looking for kicks, face down in some dusty Sonora town dead, nameless, thankless, dead, failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand Federals- forgotten murders too. Jesus suffering humanity. New Jack City.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- New Jack City Blues, Circa 1950, Take Two

New York City, 1950s New Jack City for the jack-worthy, not big enough for million- worded jacks (or jills), not in the end. In the end he, they, needed the road, the wide open roads west, the transcontinental riff calling, the Route 6, 66, 666 (the latter a pact with the devil, or the devils’ master, some deal to write that second million words of the legend-in-the- making), the great thruways aborning. Passing (if they could ever get that first hitchhike ride out of the city) dusty dutch red barn farms, steel cities achingly filled with lonesome story bus stops and stinking urinals, dirty , and always too big passengers in the next seat who snored, who spread their mass on fallow shoulders, passing auto cities filled with hungry, great depression hungry workers looking to make their first down payments on a dream, a dream car to quell their restless search, and maybe some little white picket fenced house to anoint their red scare cold war night, to be on the right side of the angels for once. Shoving into hog butcher to the world Chi town, all brawny and beef, all a place to move west, and move fast to avoid Joliet blues like a million Muddys coming from old Parchman’s Farm Mississippi Delta south up highway 61 , down along the silty big muddy and then to the great expanse, the Dakotas with their forlorn look, and their young desperate to head west and become drugstore movie stars, following their okie-arkie brethren further south who made the trek a generation before and were now stranded in some Pomona shopping plaza wondering what the hell it was all about, or roaming those Pacific coast highways in their jalopies, their hot money hot rods looking for the heart of Saturday night, or lucky boys, searching for that perfect wave down in the LaJollas of the world .

Pushing, ever pushing west, on into junction Denver searching for the ghost of the cowboy past in Larimer Street pool halls, barrooms, and chip joints (and maybe an untoward whorehouse), looking for golden all-American Old West cowboy dreams. Onward out of the flame-thrown Rockies and down into dinosaur death Utah and then Nevadas, Winnemucca dry holes a specialty just don’t get caught out there on that hitchhike road. And then land’s end golden gate rust pacific rim of the world Frisco town and flowers and blossoms in the foggy North Beach night. But all this later. For now though life is, life is New Jack City, and the strange neon night rhythms.

Yah, for a while you could hear that old caged bird sing, hear sing some Billie Holliday body and soul lover’s lament, some blues from deep down in the Mother Africa night, some café cabaret ghost of the Cotton Club (filled with hard boys so watch out) swing low, swing misty, swing along nod sway song, maybe a little boy-juiced, but swaying. Something in that phrasing she had, Billie that is, that half pause before she set up the snarling upper lip to speak of endless sorrows, endless sorrows endured in America, unrelieved, unrelieved except through blood-scarred arms. Some Dizzy dizzy salt peanuts tune, maybe a little tea-time dizzy, some high white note stuff every once in a while just to keep things interesting, blowing man blow about two, maybe three, in the morning playing chords, playing progressions most of night to keep the fidgety fickle customers glued to their tables, drinking high- shelf liquor and maybe riffing a little for the regulars at the bar, the hip cats who didn’t even dare show up until one, maybe later, and got ready to blow from his toes you could tell, tell by the hour, tell by how he held the notes on that last song blast. Yah, he was going blow that pure note if it took until dawn and then that note and that sun rising could fight it out. And that note was going to win, if not that night then sometime but in the meantime here he was in his entire be-bop high blown splendor. Or some, well just name your cool as a cucumber jazzman, Lester blowing that big sexy sultry sax at the end, the Prez working that blast for all it was worth, letting the air out and filling up again just like some oxygen mask, blowing pass the audience into his own eden, beautiful, and the hipsters too hip to clap, rude crowd clap, just point their solo index fingers at the max daddy and he just tips his solo index finger back to the brotherhood. On and on in the New York jazz night, on Gerry, on Dave Brubeck, on Charlie angel Gabriel trumpet blowing early in the morning down his own private Birdland , some more experimental guys, Monk, mad monk riff piano riffing monk , on top of the heap. All saints, all angels early morning (when else?) sweaty in a hundred cool as a cucumber midnight cafes, The Swan, The Gaslight, Benny’s, The Hi Hat, and the beloved Red Fez (red to make you sunset dream, red to take away the red scare night straight up in the free-wheeling refuge town, sunset red tea dream to see and long for ancient dreams, fez to make you think Africa calling, Africa finally calling home her children), all drawing, drawing can you believe this, the Mayfair swells like in old Duke Cotton Club high Harlem night Scott Fitzgerald bathtub gin jazz age time.

Time Square, eternal home to every Hoboken hipster forced to flee for non-payment of rent, every Ithaca spinster angel looking for some Boston marriage far from prying eyes, every broken dream okie farm boy useless on the dust bowl farm and itching to get at those women, those easy city women he heard about on the radio or in some forbidden magazine, after a steady diet of dried- out high hell fundamentalist girls aching for the lord and a fistful of kids to take away the empty soul of the black, true black starless prairie nights after a proper marriage, every arkie beauty queen who could not survive the rarified airs of “take it all off sister”or being ass-pinched by hot rod valley boys waiting impatiently for hamburgers and fries in the blossoming Hollywood car hop nights and who couldn’t go home to Helena, every drifter, grafter, grafter and midnight sifter working the flamed never-ending lights of hell. Lit up, neon- lit, gas-lit, 24/7/365-lit, lit to the gills, lit against the jack-rolling crime night (see above for candidates, jack-rollers in waiting, if the occasion arises) back alley big city simplicity itself just some chain, or an off-hand pipe, behind the knees, crumple easy to the ground, grab the dough, up and out to some whore blow, dope blow, whisky blow.

Out in the flamed, never ending lights of hell-lit up, lit against the gang night, Central Park mainly, and some off streets down in Little Italy and up in high Harlem, 125^th Street anyway, lit against the rough trade Genet night sailor boys fresh from the wharves, Hudson wharves, East River wharves, flush with just off the boat pay-off cash, looking for chain-whip kicks, some diva delight, some fresh leather boy too. Lit against the sad sin sexless sex night, some anonymous Lansing, Muncie, Omaha corn-fed young thing, maybe like her older arkie sister a beauty queen who headed east instead of west to get into the theater or some concert hall, shapely, good legs, working hips, tired of light-less farms and farm fields headed to the big city, headed up 42^nd street instead of Broadway or the Village and wound up with big faded dreams calling out “hey mister, want a good time,” or maybe stoned to the gills just nods, stoop nods, symbolically showing a good time just by her uniform, that split pea dress showing plenty of thigh, those long black nylon stockings, and that kewpie doll smile, all yours for the price of a needle, a room, and some pimp’s damn cut or, hell, when the spiral goes down some quickie back alley head and a quick napkin spit wipe, jesus. Watch out for the jack-rollers honey though, especially watch out for those damn jack-rollers you earned your money, earned it hard, and she maybe thinking to herself if old farm boy love Roy could see me now, later to be turned over to some Jersey whorehouse and work by the bell. Go home sister, go home, now. New Jack was just too big for you.

Wall Street, pass, this is not about coupon-clipping, okay. Madison Avenue, pass, this is not about subliminal desires and tricks. Park Avenue, pass, well, maybe half-pass, for those looking for jack night thrills to fill up, fill up like some gas tank, their beat souls, or maybe some Genet boys rough stuff. Columbia, the university, of course, ivy-covered, respectable for a minute (before the 1960s heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), a minute when some buzz came in breezing in through the portals. And Jack and Allen and kindred teased the city dry, and created some flash beat to be listened to elsewhere.

The Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), the clubs and nooks already mentioned, jazz, folk rearing its head, more jazz, some poetry on an off night, the beat poets reading their beat poems to a famished world (or slender slice of it), the streets of dreams not mentioned, Bleecker, McDougall on up to Canal, the safe harbor, hell, sanctuary for those blown away by the cold war red scare night, not just reds, and pinks, and maybe white pinks, but all mother nature’s odd and damaged, the beat poem listen hangers for sure, the morphine kickers looking for sure connections and some walking daddy to be-bop with when the crash came, the rough trade boys, reading Genet in some back room in translation, tired of hell angels beating up on them without style, plainsong fags tired of dating someone’s sister as a favor and ready to face the cops’ bull if only to have a few nights of boy love without being run out of a Podunk town on a rail, same, same for those weary of those boston marriages and tired of wearing men’s clothing in private Beacon Street Boston rooms, art guys by the biz-illion, Jackson this, Larry that, Motherwell this and that, enough art to paint the world, all abstract and symbolic, all death to sweet Madonna slash dabbed in the night.

Movie houses, movie theaters, all sweet black and white stark, all New Jack city eight million stories stark, and, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking of urine or Thunderbird wines, of endless overflow from Times Square (or run out) drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggers and minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car -beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42^nd Street hurts.

And Howard Johnson’s frankfurts, mustard, relish, onions, go ahead the works, eaten by the half dozen to curb hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, not sex but fame, fresh off the Port Authority bus, of Joe and Nemo’s two o’clock fatty griddle hamburgers, the works again, please, of fags (bothering guys in public toilets, jesus), and fairies, all dressed up and rouged ready for some gentleman caller, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell, and can write too, write one million words on order, and perform, on cue, stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro crosstown, not to speak of Soho or the Bronx . And of junkies of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules face down in some dusty Sonora town failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand forgotten murders. Jesus suffering humanity. New Jack City.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From “The Lonseome Hobo”Series - New Year’s Eve, 1977

… he looked out from the ancient smudged sooted back window (showing frigid glass crack slivers breakable and some rotten pane wood ) of his fourth floor single room sad sack, no elevator, long gone downhill from prosperous Victorian mayfair swells times brownstone ready for the wrecker’s’ ball, down the street, down Joy Street, down Beacon Hill Boston Joy Street, ironically named , as the late afternoon crowd of government workers clinging to their annual New Year’s holiday early release (at the discretion of their supervisors, although they, the supervisors. were long gone at noontime, if the day’s work was done) strolled by, ditto post-Christmas shoppers who had wisely waited until after black Christmas day to bring back to Jordan’s or Filene’s those unwanted ties, toys, and bric-a-brac that inevitable arrived at that time each year, and watched wistfully as an early returning college student or two, bulging cloth book bags over their shoulders, trying to catch up on some recess-delayed study, headed a few streets over to school as the town prepared for its first First Night, an officially sanctioned chamber of commerce-style city booster event complete with usually reserved for the Fourth of July shout-out fireworks to welcome in the new year, 1977.

Closer at hand he also observed across narrow Joy Street sad-eyed Saco Steve and beat Billy, Billy of no known moniker, two wine-soaked winos, wine-soaked by this hour if he was any judge, across from his smudged sooted brownstone window. He stopped himself, as he began to judge their shabby low-rent existence, their ceaseless nickel and dime pan-handling, soup kitchen, day labor existence (mostly pearl-diving these days, pearl-diving washing dishes and whatnot over at the Park Plaza where the head union guy, the crew picker, was a second cousin of Billy’s who got him on when they had big shot dinners in the big ballrooms and they, Billy and Steve, and the other guys too, mostly fellow winos or guys down on their luck, would take, as a personal bonus, all those half-full before diner wine glasses and empty them in waiting wine bottles before the glasses went into the racks and on to the conveyor belts. Billy, when he had hit bottom and hit joy street had gotten him some work there, and had showed him that trick of the trade.).

Then he smirk chuckled realizing the immense slough of despond hypocrisy of that forming thought, the joy street hard luck thought, and of his own fast lane addictions, drugs, gambling, cigarettes, whores when he was in the clover, held at bay for the moment, as he continued his view of the lads appearing, as always, to be arguing over something from the sound of their voices that could be heard all the way up to his fourth floor digs. That argument would before long wind up on the floor below his where this pair, when not homeless street-bound, or Sally (Salvation Army), or Pine Street worthy, when not too far in rent arrears (like he was at the moment), kept a shabby flop, a flop not unlike his, single bed, mattress sagging from too many years of faithful addicted service (addicted, drugs, gambling, liquor, although not seemingly the new addiction fad, sex, for, as far as he knew and he knew for certain in his own case, no women crossed the brownstone front door threshold, not that he had seen anyway, nor given the single-minded nature of the listed addictions matched to listed tenants was that likely, a woman, a woman’s wanting habits, were too distracting to trump such devotions), a left behind rumbled hard hospital pillow, pillow-cased (by him), probably gathered by some previous tenant from one of the about seventeen local hospitals that started just the other side of Cambridge Street, Joy Street downstream river flow into Cambridge Street, sheets, rumpled and he provided as well, a bureau, a cockroach-friendly cheap bureau until he stamped out every one of the veiled bastards, for his small personal wardrobe, a couple of changes of this and that, maybe three, along with the usual stash of undergarments, a small table for bric-a-brac (which he used for occasional writing) and toilet articles, no cooking facilities (thankfully, thinking about the Saco Steve and Billy voices moving in on him), no frig, nothing personal on the walls, a common bathroom complete with some Victorian-era tub for the four residents of each floor, and done.

As he heard the rough-hewn gravel hoarse voices of Saco Steve and Billy making their way up the stairs he threw on his best short- sleeved shirt (simple logic, and not picked up from some hobo, tramp, bum met on the road like a lot of good and useful information he had picked up over the years, most of those brethren would not have cared, understood, or comprehended one way or the other about such logic, they lived closer to the moment than even he did -usable all seasons, heat or cold), dark green plaid, Bermuda shorts plaid, something like that, like what was fashionable about 1960 and mother –bought for the first day of school (bought, always bought, at the Bargie, new, a hometown cheap jack discount house before those kind of places became world franchised and spread out to serve the fellahin world), fresh second-hand from the Sally (Salvation Army, remember) bin over on Berkeley Street, his mauve sweater (also purchased at Sally’s but earlier in the winter backing up the logic of that short -sleeved shirt decision), his waist-length denim jean jacket, not Sally-bought but bought when he was in the clover after hitting the perfecta at Suffolk a couple of months before and deciding, deciding against all gambler’s reason, that he should buy it against the coming winter colds, threw his keys in his pants’ pocket and headed down the stairs, waving and shouting happy new year to Steve and Billy, who embroiled in some argument about who was to buy the night’s Thunderbird, let his remark pass without comment, and out the door to investigate the first night officially-sanctioned activity. And to figure out how, with eight dollars (and a couple of buck in change which he never counted as money, in the chips or out) in his pocket and the tracks closed for the season until after the new year, he was going to come up with a week’s twenty-two dollar rent due in a couple of days, and a couple of months in arrest, to keep the super from his door for a while.

As he walked up Cambridge Street pass monstrous (monstrous in taking good cheap cold water flat tenement housing for his brethren and monstrous for its low –bidder unfriendly design that looks to his now faux- professional architect’s opinion like a space station platform against the generally Bulfinch décor of the surrounding area) City Hall where it veered into Tremont toward the Common he suddenly had an idea, hell, why hadn’t he thought of it before, constantly studying those racing forms up in that fourth floor cold water flat, hell not even cold water, not in the room anyway, he thought must had finally gotten the better of him. What better night to work the pan-handle, the pan-handle that a few years back he had worked into an art form of sorts before the chilly winds of the 70s, his own hubristic addictions, Susie, and , hell, just some plain bad luck, had forced him into a few years of work, work doing a little of this and a little of that, before he got tired of that little of this and little of that, and focused all his energies on his “system,” his absolutely fool-proof system of beating the ponies, the dogs, or whatever other animal wanted to run like hell for the paying customers, the guys, the guys like him, who all had their own sure-fire beat-down systems and who could live, like him, on easy street on the profits. Just now though he had to work on his approach, his new year’s festive crowd approach since he knew his act would be rusty starting out.

Funny, he thought, as he worked up his approach in his head thinking about the finer points of the art form, most civilians, most people who have never been on the wrong side of the bum, or been just plain down on their luck and thus clueless about how to survive without about seventeen beautiful support systems around them to cushion the landing , think pan-handling is just pan-handling, put out your hat or hand kind of polite, eyes glued down to the ground, maybe taking their and pretending to shake off their dust, kind of “sorry to bother you,” and pitch for spare change, and mainly keep moving along playing the percentages by covering a lot of ground fast, or just staying put, maybe on the ground looking like some third world fellaheen refugee, blanket underneath (smart move against cold night and winter troubles), with all your worldly possessions, rucksack, some desperate towel to occasionally wipe off sweat or drool, your pitiful donut shop coffee cup with “donations” spelled wrong on it, about you. Jesus. Forget all that. That approach was strictly for winos and losers. It might have worked in about 1926 or 27 when people walking by, mayfair swells or just ordinary joes, working stiffs, actually looked at a person, any person, when something was spoken to them, even by a ragamuffin stranger, or actually took the time and looked down at the ground and thought poor guy there but the grace of god go I, or some such thing. Today a guy needed an angle, a reason for a passer-by to stop. And that is where his old friend’s advice, his hobo road friend Black River Whitey, told around a jungle camp fire one night out in Indio, out in the California desert near the old Southern Pacific railroad tracks, about the tricks of the pan-handling trade came in handy.

Black River Whitey simply said this- shout at or do some fake (maybe not fake when you get into it) mental flip out when asking for dough. Nothing over the edge, way over the edge, nothing that they would yell copper over or take a swing at you for just to take a swing at you and impress their friends that they could beat up on a stewball bum ,but firm. See the idea Whitey said was that those couple of dollars (hey, not quarters or chump change like that, not when you are running this scam, this is strictly dollar minimum stuff not that quarter for coffee gag) they practically threw at you to get you out of their faces was far easier for them to do than to guess at what your next move will be, especially a guy with his girl and he thinking of later in the night thoughts and maybe scoring and not wanting to go mano y mano with some half-hobo and, and, losing. Or some lonely girl, thinking who knows what she would be thinking, nothing good for her for sure. Beautiful, Black River Whitey, beautiful. But he thought as he walked toward the Common and geared up to his night’s work past a couple of half-frozen stoop winos spread out down on the ground, cup in front, across from Park Street Station any fool could see where winos and other lamos best stick with that cup in front of them and be glad of the few quarters that trickle their way.

Of course, Whitey also mentioned around that old Indio camp fire, that if you had time and had some dough to get some half-decent clothes, clothes like he had on now (only half-decent you don’t want to pitch hard luck stuff in a Brooks Brothers suit, not on the mean city streets anyway, save that pitch for sunnier days), you could work “the down on your luck” angle, needing an angel angle that worked with private social welfare organizations and single women especially. He knew the score on that one because he had, just young enough, just gentile shabby enough, just“rehab-able ” enough, and just civilized enough to pull it off made many dollars in tough times the last time they came his way a few years back (and a couple of friendly one night stands with some lonely women too, and not bad looking either, as a bonus). But that was day time magic, lunch time, and took precious time and that night with frozen temperatures in the air and distracted fast-moving people going from place to place the shout-out was his strategy of choice by default.

And his night of work, after a few off-hand rusty stumbles and a bunch of brush-offs, worked, worked to the tune of thirty-two dollars, about six packs worth of cigarettes of all kinds (oh yah, Black River Whitey always said if they pleaded no dough ask for cigarettes, or something, but keep asking), a least six belts of high- shelf booze from no dough pleaders with a flask at their hip to keep the chill off, a couple of joints (to be saved for cooler, maybe a stray woman share , times) from lingering 1960s freak-types, and he thought, an offer to stay at some woman’s house for the night, although the booze might have been taking his head over by then. (Besides he was still half-pining for Susie, Susie who had up and left him with her wanting habits intact, her now little white picket fence, kids, and dog dreams, when he decided he would rather do a little of this and that than work the nine to five numbness.) Now if he could only keep that dough ready for the rent and not bet on some foolish new year’s college football game or something before then he might be able to work on that sure-fire betting system of his in the comfort of him room and then really be on easy street.

From The Pen OfJoshua Lawrence Breslin – From "The Lonesome Hobo" Series- Down Sonora Way- The Ghost Of Bill Higgins

Frankie Riley was shocked, well maybe not shocked but stunned when he heard the news of Bill Higgins’ murder. Jesus, he had had just seen Bill in Los Angeles a couple of months before when Bill was passing through on his way south and he and Maria, his live-in mex girlfriend (immigration status fuzzy so Maria, okay), her of the sparkling laughing eyes and dark brown skin, had let Bill stay in their apartment for a couple of weeks while he worked on some plan that he had hatched, some vague plan connected with making a pile down in Mexico, down Sonora way that would put he and Clara on easy street.

Bill Higgins and Frankie Riley had known each other from the hunger days in the old 1960s Olde Saco (Maine, okay) neighborhood, the old just barely working- class neighborhood where the chronically unemployed, under-employed and just plain ne’er-do-wells, mainly Irish and hence locally known as Irishtown (although more generically to outsiders, combined with the French-Canadian streets, as the Acre), mainly third or fourth generation Irish and thus firmly planted by the prior toil of forbears lived, where they had met, beyond Olde Saco Junior High corridor nod (the junior high, and come to think of it, high school nod too, a subject worthy of its own sketch but not here, not now when dope, guns, and girls, ah, women, are central to what is what) met, while hugging the walls (literally according to both sources at the time) at the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent, of course, and other odd-ball feast days like the Feast of the Immaculate Conception which even as ignorant, sex ignorant, flat- out sex ignorant, as these boyos were drew a guffaw) “sock hop” held by the senior parish priest, Monsignor Lally.

Held to, well, “keep an eye, maybe more than one, on the younger portion of his flock,” as the good father expressed it each Sunday when making the announcement for the next hop in the line-up. The real reason, of course, whispered among the young, including wall-huggers Higgins and Riley, was to keep said young angel sheep, away from too much heathen devil’s music (read: ersatz Protestant music probably a Baptist or Unitarian conspiracy, the good priest spouted both theories); that rock and roll music that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying, butt-flaying, making the girls “wet” (wet in the wrong places) praying false god praying Elvis Presley. And by all means to keep them, that unprotected angel flock to a person, but especially those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Olde Saco Beach listening to fogged-up car radios in the back seat and digging the beat while, well, just while and leave it at that or for those without golden automobile access or who were too young, away from the Strand Theater, the exclusive upstairs balcony section of course, for the young set, the car-less healthy young interested in lightless dark night s-x (you know just in case the old bastard is still around).

Frankie still remembered the first song that they had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school time sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop. And the reason he remembered that song so vividly was one sparking blue-eyed, flaming red-haired Clara Murphy, just mentioned Clara, a girl who had given both of them her come hither twelve-year old look that night (and previously at school too) and they had been hooked, hooked as bad as men (okay, boys) could be hooked by a woman (okay, girl). So it was not surprising that they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down. Or maybe not so Solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment, decide whether she liked Bill or Frankie better, or whether she liked either of them, according to Frankie’s intelligence source, his younger sister Amy who was friends with Clara’s sister Bonnie and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles and had turned them both down.

Naturally that denial after those come hither looks inflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks Bill and Frankie made every mad school boy mad attempt to win her favors. Both had recklessly, although determinedly, courted legal danger by “clipping” (five finger discount, oh, you know, petty larceny) onyx rings (Frankie’s had a diamond in the center) for her at Sam’s Jewelry Store in downtown Olde Saco (again intelligence, reliable intelligence, Clara sister Bonnie via Amy, had informed them separately that she liked those kinds of rings). She accepted both as tokens of friendship she called it. Ditto 45 RPM Elvis and Jerry Lee records from Chuck’s Record Shop over on Main Street (an easy “clip” for these adventurers, just place under your undershirt and walk out, or better slide into your underpants, no salesperson, no girl salesperson on duty at the time was going there, no way). Accepted, dispassionately accepted. Not ditto though, not ditto“clipped” flowers and candy (especially when Clara heard how the previous goods were “purchased” although she did not go so far as to give them back). They had each worked, really dragged their butts carrying doubles, as caddies as the local golf course to gather the dough necessary for those expenses. And on it went like that for several weeks.

To no avail for Frankie though because, also exhibiting another aspect of her budding wiles, Clara took up with Bill (and had really, according to other reliable intelligence sources, had her eye on him all along. Girls, ah, women, go figure). Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and, quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing like Frankie, unquote.

Frankie laughed at the recollection, a bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill right out of high school, right out of the Class of 1964, maybe not the wisest thing to do for either of them in a lifetime sense but with war cries, real war cries on every horizon, out in the killing field of Asia (and who knows where else in that red scare cold war good night) it had a certain logic, a way to keep Bill out of harm’s way with any luck. Although at the time it had much more to do with Bill being crazy for Clara, head on his shoulders or not, and since he had no plans to go to college he figured it was just as well to start family life early. Yes, he was that kind of guy then, and was not alone in that sentiment, not by any means. Clara, for her part, had schemed and plotted to get out of her shanty Irish-drunk father-cold mother house from about age fourteen. Whatever she thought about Bill, and Frankie was a little hesitant to take her undying love sentiments at face value (and miffed about his own Clara plight for a long time, every time he caddied up at that damn golf course), she had always had Clara and lace curtain Irish front and center even then.

Frankie remembered just then too that he had been part of their wedding party, that June wedding over at the Starlight Ballroom where the trio had spent many a Saturday night listening as the music changed from silly Danny and the Juniors to serious Beatles and Stones stuff. The wedding the last big event of his youth before he kicked the dust of Olde Saco off his shoes and headed out on the hitchhike highway and his own dreams. Headed out for what became for many years the wandering road turned into the hobo road, and then back, back a little, but this is Bill and Clara’s story, or Bill’s anyway, so let bygones be bygones. But too he remembered that wedding party night when Clara, out of the blue, while they were dancing the obligatory friend dance, dancing very close, very close her leaning into him, she whispered in his ear that just in case Bill didn’t work out she still had some hot flash thoughts of him. That helped, if he needed any help, getting him out of that one-horse town just as fast as he could. Not for Bill’s sake, or Clara’s, but just because he might have taken her up on the offer.

Here is the funny part though, Bill and Clara, just like Frankie at the beginning of the wave got caught up with their generation’s new breeze coming through the land, the music, the drugs, the experimenting with everything under the sun, and maybe more, and had after a couple of years of married life drifted west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the strobe light dreams 1960s with Clara as a Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick –like lead singer and Bill on lead guitar. Yes, playing that no account rock and roll. Frankie, on the coast at the time too, trying to avoid the draft (Bill had turned out to be 4-F, unfit for military duty, due to nearsightedness), had run into to them several times, had stayed at their pad on Fillmore, when they had operated out of Frisco town, for months at a time, had helped console (among others) Clara when Bill ran off for a while with some surfer girl from LaJolla looking for groupie acid rock kicks and she was at wits end. Yes, he had slept with Clara as part of that consolation but by then Frankie’s road addiction had turned him away from any thoughts of Clara lace curtain Irish dreams. As far as he knew Clara never told Bill about the affair, or if she had he never let it interfere with his relationship with Frankie. When Bill got back from his fling with that surfer girl they became closer than at any time since that long ago sock hop night. Then in the late 1960s, he back on the road, out in New Mexico back, they had lost touch. And now in 1973 Bill had been killed, face-down killed, down in some dusty back alley, Sonora, back alley, when that plan, that major drug deal went south on him.

According to the reports, the police reports when he went to check, Mexican police reports, so maybe a little off on the details, but on point on the face-down dead part, Bill and Clara had“muled” many times for one of the budding drug cartels. (Frankie had known this, hell, had taken delivery of some goods himself, and had, once, accompanied Bill and Clara, down there, down there the time he had met Maria, met her down in that Mexicali whorehouse and brought her Norte but that was another story). Bill, while he was working on his plan in L. A. the details of which were unknown to Frankie, had decided to go “independent” trying to take-off with one of his cartel deliveries to be used as seed money for his own operation to Panama (the ideas being to try to get to the Canal Zone and some Estados Unidos protection if things went awry, he obviously never made it) and wound up in a back alley with six slugs in the back for his efforts. End of story, just another number in the broken dreams world, the fast stuff of dreams world.

End of blasé Mexican police report story, as usual, but not quite the end of Bill’s story, some of which Frankie knew a little about other stuff he got when he went full bore to find out what happened (including a low-profile trip, hair cut short, beard shaved, only a mustache left, wearing a light-weight suit down and around, to Sonora, alone). After the 1960s died (when, the date, a million people have written about, with about two millions dates and about three million reasons for their particular date, Frankie had May Day, 1971 as his date when they, he included, tried to shut down D. C. over the Vietnam war and got nothing but eight million busts and a ton of bad hubris for their efforts) Bill and Clara, having ridden the crest, were broke, not just broke but in hock broke to about twenty different guys for various musical, life-style and drug stuff, including a busted flat-out last ill-fated concert in 1972. When the times were good Bill and Clara “walked with the king” but the music scene was changing and so acid rock, the thing that made them a thing, could not sustain a bunch of Airplane-look-a-likes. Familiar story ever since music started. That was when they started “muling.” (Frankie knew the details of the connections but was keeping mum about that).

What Frankie didn’t know, although if he had thought about it for ten seconds he should have known, was that Clara, Clara with her lace curtain turned chandelier Irish dreams, was the driving force behind their new careers, and kept prodding Bill on that plan to step up to the “bigs” and build his own operation. Jesus, girls, ah, women, go figure. See here is what is finally strange though. Clara who had accompanied Bill on that fateful trip (and had been holding that delivery, ten kilos of coke just then becoming the drug of choice for the hipsters, and never cartel recovered) was never heard from again. Just that moment, that reflected moment , Frankie raised his finger to his head and nodded that old schoolboy nod to Bill’ s memory and raised his drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of his youth.