The Dragon Man Goes Awry-
With The Late Singer-Songwriter Merle Haggard’s “Running Kind” In Mind
By Vince Villon
[As of December 1, 2017
under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought
in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site
administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of
some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the
habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books,
political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of
writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate.
After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer”
seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik
Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The
Editorial Board]
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[I am new to writing for
this site, post-Allan Jackson who used the moniker Peter Paul Markin when he
was in charge before the latest shake-up pushed him out the door to parts
unknown new, so that I have no real comment on what happened or why except
indirectly through my father-in-law Phil Larkin whose daughter Margaret I am
married to. Although I tried several times over the past few year to get some
of my articles published on this site and made as many attempts to be taken on
as staff through Phil’s intercession Allan would not hear of it. Called it his “fight
against nepotism” when Phil asked and was turned down. Here is the funny thing
though Allan was more than happy to have Phil and a slew of other older writers
known to him from their collective growing up in Acre neighborhood of North
Adamsville south of Boston days write whatever came into their heads whenever
it came through those portals. The funny part being that since they were not kin,
not related, Allan’s words to Phil when he cut me off at the knees he believed that
was not nepotism. Yeah, right. V. Villon]
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Peter Scott, ever since
he was a kid known as the Dragon Man, was not in any way, shape or form a
reflective man, hadn’t had a clue as to what made him tick or why he had done
what he had done in his thirty-four almost thirty-five years on the planet.
That reason that I, Jake Jenkins known around the streets as “Five Fingers”
know this, know this guy had not one ounce of reflection on why he had done
what he had done was he had told me many times, too many times when we shared a
cell courtesy of Los Angeles County where he was doing a nickel for his latest
burglary binge and I was doing a deuce for trafficking some shit cocaine on the
Bunker Hill section streets.
Maybe it is not
important in the great scheme of things, the great mandala as another county
jail roommate of my put it when I was doing six months on an assault charge,
but a certain event, a certain strange event occurred while the Dragon man and
I were doing our time together. In stir, the joint whatever you want to call it
for four walls and plenty of bars and nasty bastard guards which turned him
around, turned him around the last I heard although cons, serious felony cons
like me and him usually don’t stay turned around for long either getting back
into the box or being put in a box the usual choices.
Guys in stir are funny,
guys like me don’t say much about ourselves, to other cons figuring the less
anybody knows the less likely they are to use what they know to work out some
kind of deal with the warden to get themselves out from under, to turn stoolie,
to sing with the birdies (and maybe if the guy who they are ratting out finds
out exactly who did the deed “sing with the angel band”). Guys like the Dragon
Man though whatever their reason will, maybe trying to work through an idea
talk unto the wee hours. Yeah, the Dragon Man could talk and maybe that talking
is what kept him going, kept him on the wheel.
Let me give what I know,
what he told me, whether it was bullshit or not you will have to figure out
yourselves. This Pete, this Dragon Man’s real name was not Peter Scott it was
Kim il Soo, something like that. He had been born in Korea, South Korea, to an
American G.I., one of the thirty-something thousand that were still in that
country some fifty years after the big truce was declared in the early 1950s
and a Korean mother who was either a brothel whore, most likely, or some naïve
country girl who believed some bullshit a G.I. promised her to get her in the
sack, talking about taking her home with him to the states. Whatever the case
he was left off as an infant at the International Evangelical Orphanage in
Seoul and that was that. That was that until he was about two and through some
exchange program he was adopted by an Evangelical farm couple out in Neola, out
in Iowa farm country. So here is the set-up as the Dragon Man is growing up he
is an illegitimate half-white, half Asian kid being brought up in the heartland
of America by strict white as rice Christians in a small community which was if
not hostile to foreigners, immigrants, Asians, then uncomfortable around them and
so in a way he had a bunch of strikes against him. Always felt he didn’t
belong, always being carped on by these nutty Christians trying to make him
like them, always being hazed, hassled and haunted by the locals, by the local
kids he went to school with who hung that Dragon Man moniker on him in about
fourth grade he figured. (He said he hated that nickname at first but later
when he turned that wrong fork in the road he embraced it thought it was cool
to leave a Dragon imprint after he completed a job, after he committed some
burglary.)
The day, no, maybe it
was the next day after Dragon Man finished high school he grabbed a couple of
hundred dollars out of the trusting leave the doors open and the cars unlocked
heartland naiveté family cookie jar and split for Los Angeles all by himself
telling no one and leaving nothing. (One time when he was telling the tale he
mentioned that he hated Neola so much that he never finished high school, had
left everything and everybody high and dry at sixteen so you figure it out-he left
the town anyway.) He figured that aside
from losing him as an unpaid farmhand those pious parents probably were
thinking to themselves good riddance since he had already shown signs of being
what his adopted mother called a “sinning man” taking dough from her
pocketbook, stealing, “clipping,” we called it, stuff from the Woolworth’s on
Main Street, ripping off some of his classmates in school. Being pretty good
looking for an Asian guy he left a few girls looking for farmland kicks in the
lurch, didn’t give a fuck he said if they got pregnant or not, didn’t give a
fuck as they used to say if the girls had to leave town for a few months to see
“Aunt Emma” when they got too round in the tummy.
Once he hit LA he got
himself a cheap room in that old-time Bunker Hill section, which I know every inch
of by heart so I know this part is true, the run down section where many crime
stories were hatched by crime novel writers who were using LA as a
backdrop. Short of dough he decided to
head out to Santa Anita racetrack to see if he could make some dough gambling,
maybe make a mob connection so he thought being just naïve enough to think all
that crime stuff on television was for real. That day he made maybe a hundred
bucks and figured he was on easy street now. Met a couple of guys and a couple
of girls too who were from UCLA who were on some kind of “let’s see who the
other half lives” outing looking at the junkies, touts, cons, losing ticket
picker-uppers when he spotted them. Figured they were young and he could hang
with them. And he did as they assumed that he was also some kind of student
(which he said he was once he knew the play). They wound up taking him back to
UCLA and he stayed there a couple of days. (He would spend many “couple of
days” there not drawing any suspicion when asked about his class schedule-or
anything).
After that first day
Dragon Man really did believe that he was “blessed” (using an old religion term
learned from his adopted mother and it stuck), believed he could beat the odds
and make a nice little living out of being a gambling man, a guy who carried no
stones. For a while he was but like most gambling not matter what the betting
scheme he started losing. And started on a serious wave of crime to keep
himself in clover-starting with ripping off those UCLA students who never
suspected until he was caught the first time that they had been ripped off.
Dragon Man was not subtle about his mode of action. He would climb into stores
through any opening he could find and rob the inviting register or cashbox (got
so good he could figure out the easier way just by ad-libbing and being lucky
since nobody including the cops figured that one young guy could be so
audacious). Would do five six places a night leaving his tell-tale dragon
imprint on something soft. Then head to UCLA or some girl’s place, girls who
like those Iowa naiveté girls were into something exotic in their leafy
suburban lives would share their beds with him. (These girls. Co-eds, young
women being a little more sophisticated that their Iowa sisters took the
necessary precautions to avoid pregnancies and Dragon Man was not aware of any
children he might have fathered on the Coast.)
Then one night, one
night when he was particularly stubborn about getting dough he got cocky,
decided to hit a place that he had hit the previous night, a Chinese choy suey
joint. The owner was staying over and when he spied Dragon Man winged him with
a revolver. That was the first time. They could only pin that one robbery on
him and since he had no record he got six months, served four. Prison was hard
for the kid, hard because the older cons tried to make him their “girl” and for
the sheer fact that he had not really lost that gambling addiction. Wouldn’t
lose it until he got in some twelve-step gambling program after more stretches
and figuring out that the percentages were against him. That twelve step stuff,
bogus as far as I am concerned, Dragon Man started while we were cellmates to I
thought make the time more easy passing and maybe get a few months off the
mounting sentences.
But hold on don’t think
that it was those four stretches that got him thinking about going straight. No
way, not a big part anyway. What got him thinking a little differently was the
time that hard-headed ex-con Merle Haggard, the country singer, who made it out
of prison and made a career, although even he said it was a close thing, gave a
concert in the prison cafeteria. Sang one country kind of song that somehow hit
this loner bastard Dragon Man right between the eyes. The song Running Kind. A song whose lyrics (see
below) exactly expressed to him what his whole fouled-up, fucked up life had
been about. About that instinct he had to run and run and not think about
anything except the running. Funny, huh. Like I said the last I heard Dragon
Man was running straight but you never know with the running kind. Enough
said.
Merle Haggard Lyrics
Play "Running Kind"
on Amazon Music
|
"Running Kind"
I was born the running kind
With leaving always on my mind
Home was never home to me at anytime
Every front door found me hopin'
I would find the back door open
There just had to be an exit
For the running kind
Within me there's a prison
Surrounding me alone
As real as any dungeon with walls of stone
I know running's not the answer
But running's been my nature
And a part of me
That keeps me moving on
I was born the running kind
With leaving always on my mind
Home was never home to me at anytime
Every front door found me hopin'
I would find the back door open
There just had to be an exit
For the running kind
With leaving always on my mind
Home was never home to me at anytime
Every front door found me hopin'
I would find the back door open
There just had to be an exit
For the running kind
Within me there's a prison
Surrounding me alone
As real as any dungeon with walls of stone
I know running's not the answer
But running's been my nature
And a part of me
That keeps me moving on
I was born the running kind
With leaving always on my mind
Home was never home to me at anytime
Every front door found me hopin'
I would find the back door open
There just had to be an exit
For the running kind
