***In The Time Of The Hard Motorcycle Boys- “The Wild One” A Film Review-And More

DVD Review

The Wild One, Marlon Brando, Lee Marvin, produced by Stanley Kramer, 1954

Okay here is the book of genesis, the motorcycle book of genesis, or at least my motorcycle book of genesis. But, before I get to that let me make about seventy–six disclaimers. First, the whys and wherefores of the motorcycle culture, except on those occasions when they become subject to governmental investigation or impact some cultural phenomena, is outside the purview of the leftist politics that dominate my commentaries. There is no Marxoid political line, as a rule, on such activity, nor should there be. Those exceptions include when motorcyclists, usually under the rubric of “bad actor” motorcycle clubs, like the famous (or infamous) Oakland, California-based Hell’s Angels are generally harassed by the cops and we have to defend their right to be left alone (you know, those "helmet laws", and the never-failing pull-over for "driving while biker") or, like when the Angels were used by the Rolling Stones at Altamont and that ill-advised decision represented a watershed in the 1960s counter-cultural movement. Or, more ominously, from another angle when such lumpen formations form the core hell-raisers of anti-immigrant, anti-communist, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-black liberation fascistic demonstrations and we are compelled, and rightly so, to go toe to toe with them. Scary yes, necessary yes, bikes or no bikes.

Second, in the interest of full disclosure I own no stock, or have any other interest, in Harley-Davidson, or any other motorcycle company. Third, I do not now, or have I ever belonged to a motorcycle club or owned a motorcycle, although I have driven them, or, more often, on back of them on occasion. Fourth, I do not now, knowingly or unknowingly, although I grew up in working class neighborhoods where bikes and bikers were plentiful, hang with such types. Fifth, the damn things and their riders are too noisy, despite the glamour and “freedom” of the road associated with them. Sixth, and here is the“kicker”, I have been, endlessly, fascinated by bikes and bike culture as least since early high school, if not before, and had several friends who “rode”.Well that is not seventy-six but that is enough for disclaimers.

Okay, as to genesis, motorcycle genesis. Let’s connect the dots. A couple of years ago, and maybe more, as part of a trip down memory lane, the details of which do not need detain us here, I did a series of articles on various world-shaking, earth-shattering subjects like high school romances, high school hi-jinx, high school dances, high school Saturday nights, and most importantly of all, high school how to impress the girls( or boys, for girls, or whatever sexual combinations fit these days, but you can speak for yourselves, I am standing on this ground). In short, high school sub-culture, American-style, early 1960s branch, although the emphasis there, as it will be here, is on that social phenomena as filtered through the lenses of a working- class town, a seen better days town at that, my growing up wild-like-the-weeds town.

One of the subjects worked over in that series was the search, the eternal search I might add, for the great working class love song. Not the Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel generic mush that could play in Levittown, Shaker Heights or La Jolla as well as Youngstown or Moline. No, a song that, without blushing, one could call one’s own, our working- class own, one that the middle and upper classes might like but would not put on their dance cards. As my offering to this high-brow debate I offered a song by written by Englishman Richard Thompson (who folkies, and folk rockers, might know from his Fairport Convention days, very good days, by the way), Vincent Black Lightning, 1952. (See lyrics below.) Without belaboring the point the gist of this song is the biker romance, British version, between outlaw biker James and black-leathered, red-headed Molly. Needless to say such a tenuous lumpen existence as James leads to keep himself “biked" cuts short any long term“little white house with picket fence” ending for the pair. And we do not need such a boring finish. For James, after losing the inevitable running battle with the police, on his death bed bequeaths his bike, his precious “Vincent Black Lightning”, to said Molly. His BIKE, man. His BIKE. Is there any greater love story, working class love story, around? No, this makes West Side Story lyrics and a whole bunch of other such songs seem like so much cornball nonsense. His BIKE, man. Wow! Kudos, Brother Thompson.

Needless to say that exploration was not the end, but rather the beginning of thinking through the great American night bike experience. And, of course, for this writer that means going to the books, the films and the memory bank to find every seemingly relevant “biker” experience. Thus, readers were treated to reviews of such classic motorcycle sagas as “gonzo” journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels and other, later Rolling Stonemagazine printed “biker” stories and Tom Wolfe’ Hell Angel’s-sketched Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and other articles about California subset youth culture that drove Wolfe’s work in the old days). And to the hellish Rolling Stones (band) Hell’s Angels “policed” Altamont concert in 1969. And, as fate would have it, with the passing of actor/director Dennis Hooper, the 1960s classic biker/freedom/ seeking the great American night film, Easy Rider. And from Easy Rider to the “max daddy” of them all, tight-jeaned, thick leather-belted, tee-shirted, engineer-booted, leather-jacketed, taxi-driver-capped (hey, that’s what it reminds me of), side-burned, chain-linked wielding, hard-living, alienated, but in the end really just misunderstood, Johnny, aka, Marlon Brando, in The Wild One.

Okay, we will cut to the chase on the plot. Old Johnny and his fellow“outlaw” motorcycle club members are out for some weekend “kicks” after a hard week’s non-work (as far as we can figure out, work was marginal for many reasons, as Hunter Thompson in Hell’s Angels noted, to biker existence, the pursue of jack-rolling, armed robbery or grand theft auto careers probably running a little ahead) out in the sunny California small town hinterlands.(They are still heading out there today, the last time I noticed, in the Southern California high desert, places like Twenty-Nine Palms and Joshua Tree.)

And naturally, when the boys (and they are all boys here, except for couple of “mamas”, one spurned by Johnny, in a break-away club led by jack-in-the-box jokester, Lee Marvin as Chino) hit one small town they, naturally, after sizing up the local law, head for the local café (and bar). And once one mentions cafes in small towns in California (or Larry McMurtry’s West Texas, for that matter), then hard-working, trying to make it through the shift, got to get out of this small town and see the world, dreamy-eyed, naïve (yes, naive) sheriff-daughtered young waitress, Kathy, (yes, and hard-working, it’s tough dealing them off the arm in these kind of joints, or elsewhere) Johnny trap comes into play. Okay, now you know, even alienated, misunderstood, misanthropic, cop-hating (an additional obstacle given said waitress’s kinships) boy Johnny needs, needs cinematically at least, to meet a girl who understands him.

The development of that young hope, although hopeless, boy meets girl romance relationship, hither and yon, drives the plot. Natch. Oh, and along the way the boys, after a few thousand beers, as boys, especially girl-starved biker boys, will, at the drop of a hat start to systematically tear down the town, for fun. Needless to say, staid local burghers (aka “squares”) seeing what amount to them is their worst 1950s “communist” invasion nightmare, complete with murder, mayhem and rapine, (although that “C” word was not used in the film, nor should it have been) are determined to “take back” their little town. A few fights, forages, casualties, fatalities, and forgivenesses later though, still smitten but unquenched and chaste Johnny (and his rowdy crowd) and said waitress part, wistfully. The lesson here, for the kids in the theater audience, is that biker love outside biker-dom is doomed. For the adults, the real audience, the lesson: nip the “terrorists” in the bud (call in the state cops, the national guard, the militia, the 82nd Airborne, The Strategic Air Command, NATO, hell, even the weren't we buddies in the war Red Army , but nip it, fast when they come roaming through Amityville, Archer City, or your small town).

After that summary you can see what we are up against. This is pure fantasy Hollywood cautionary tale on a very real 1950s phenomena, “outlaw” biker clubs, mainly in California, but elsewhere as well. Hunter Thompson did yeoman’s work in his Hell’s Angels to “discover” who these guys were and what drove them, beyond drugs, sex, rock and roll (and, yah, murder and mayhem, the California prison system was a “home away from home”). In a sense the “bikers”were the obverse of the boys (again, mainly) whom Tom Wolfe, in many of his early essays, was writing about and who were (a) forming the core of the surfers on the beaches from Malibu to La Jolla and, (b) driving the custom car/hot rod/drive-in centered (later mall-centered) cool, teenage girl–impressing, car craze night in the immediate post-World War II great American Western sunny skies and pleasant dream drift (physically and culturally). Except those Wolfe guys were the “winners”. The “bikers” were Nelson Algren’s “losers”, the dead-enders who didn’t hit the gold rush, the Dove Linkhorns (aka the Arkies and Okies who in the 1930s populated John Steinbeck’s Joad saga, The Grapes Of Wrath). Not cool, iconic Marlin-Johnny but hell-bend then-Hell Angels leader, Sonny Barger.

And that is why in the end, as beautifully sullen and misunderstood the alienated Johnny was, and as wholesomely rowdy as his gang was before demon rum took over, this was not the real “biker: scene, West or East. Now I lived, as a teenager in a working class, really marginally working poor, neighborhood that I have previously mentioned was the leavings of those who were moving up in post-war society. That neighborhood was no more than a mile from the central headquarters of Boston's local Hell’s Angels (although they were not called that, I think it was Deathheads, or something like that). I got to see these guys up close as they rallied at various spots on our local beach or “ran”through our neighborhood on their way to some crazed action. The leader had all of the charisma of Marlon Brando’s thick leather belt. His face, as did most of the faces, spoke of small-minded cruelties (and old prison pallors) not of misunderstood youth. And their collective prison records (as Hunter Thompson also noted about the Angels) spoke of “high” lumpenism. And that takes us back to the beginning about who, and what, forms one of the core cohorts for a fascist movement in this country, the sons of Sonny Barger. Then we will need to rely on our Marxist politics, and other such weapons.

*************


ARTIST: Richard Thompson
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Lyrics and Chords

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike

A girl could feel special on any such like

Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you

It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952

And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems

Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme

And he pulled her on behind

And down to Box Hill they did ride

/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /

/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand

But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man

I've fought with the law since I was seventeen

I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine

Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22

And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you

And if fate should break my stride

Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae

For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery

Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside

Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside

When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left

He was running out of road, he was running out of breath

But he smiled to see her cry

And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world

Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl

Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do

They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52

He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys

He said I've got no further use for these

I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome

Swooping down from heaven to carry me home

And he gave her one last kiss and died

And he gave her his Vincent to ride

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Motorcycle Days, Circa 1958

Yes, 1958 was a good time to be a motorcycle boy, a de facto, de jure wild boy according to the chattering, clueless, disapproving parents of the time, especially the parents of impressionable teenage girls (and not just teenage girls either if they, the parents, had had a clue what was going on over at State U with the twenty somethings, including their Janie, when the music and liquor got going and the wild boys showed up to get it on). Of course parents didn’t count, count for much anyway, when trends, moods, and what was cool got discussed in front of night time mom and pop variety stores where corner boys of all descriptions and attitudes held forth. Or Doc’s Drugstore, after school, high school, of course, lesser grades need not bother to show up except maybe in early morning to get some candy bar or other sweet to get them through until growing time lunch, where all manner of school boy and girl went for a soda and snack but mainly to hear some latest tune, maybe some hot Jerry Lee wild boy mad man thing, seventeen times in Doc’s amped up super juke box. In those quarters motorcycle wild boys were cool, if maybe just a little dangerous.

And maybe just slightly illegal too as their parents’cops (as part of that parent-police-teacher-priest-politician-hell-maybe even mom and pop variety store owner authority continuum) frowned, no more than frowned, when some local detachment of the Devils’ Disciples’ roared through the Adamsville Beach boulevard night. The sight of flashing blue lights on the boulevard usually meant one thing. Some wild boy had his exhaust system too loud, or he wasn’t wearing a helmet, or he switched lanes without signaling, or maybe for just being ugly, cop’s eyes ugly, or some lame thing like that. Those small civic sins only added to the mystique though. Especially on sultry summer nights when the colors passed turning every guy’s eyes, even mine, to listen to that power and to set every girl, impressionable or not, to thinking, thinking Wild Boy Marlon Brando thinking about what was behind that power.

See before Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson put everybody straight about the seamy side of motorcycle life, life-style motorcycle life with its felonies and mayhem, Marlon and his wild boys (and maybe throw in James Dean and his “chicken run” cars although they were a little too tame to be as revered as the motorcycle boys were) had cleaned up the wild boy scene, made it okay to an easy rider, made it sexy. Not the weekend warrior flip turns and wheelies and then Monday morning back to the bank stuff but real alienated Johnnies just like you and me. Old Marlon had made alienated wild boys cool. Old sexy white tee-shirt, maybe a pack of Luckies rolled up one sleeve, a cap rakishly turn at an angle on his head, but mainly an attitude, an attitude of distain, hell, maybe hatred, toward that ever present authority that told every kid, every boy and girl that you had better take what you can when you can because it won’t be there long. And that slight snarl that accompanied every word. Yah, cool, cool daddy cool.

And the girls, wells, they were doing that wondering, wondering about what was behind that power thrust, as those leather jackets and engineer boots roared by. To the detriment of her date while sitting in the front seat of his father’s borrowed plain vanilla boxed tail fin car that he had had to almost declare a civil war to get for the evening and promise to mow some future lawn as compensation. Jesus. Or worst, infinitely worst, seeing that metal, chrome and fire pass by after her date, her car-less date, had just walked her over to the beach to sit on that cold stony seawall. Her eyes flamed red, as she almost flagged down some local easy rider as he passed by just to get some kicks, and maybe freedom.

It wasn’t always low-down grunges who occupied the flamed night either. Every town probably had it story, many more that one, of some wild boy motorcycle boy who ruled the roost, who took what he needed, or better, wanted and said the hell with civilization. Yah, a real outlaw, an outlaw way outside the system like North Adamsville wild boy James Preston, a guy they still talk about, although not when tender ears are around. Back in 1957, maybe 1958 that was all the talk, all the talk that counted among anguish and alienated teen like I said when Pretty James Preston got his chopper. Damn, I can still hear that explosion when he gunned that pedal even now.

See, Pretty James Preston (and nobody called him, as far as I know, anything else except that exact designation) had Elvis-like looks to go with his outlaw snarl. Dark hair combed back like Elvis (but don’t ever use that comparison, not if you don’t want to fight, fight whip chains fight or cut knives just so you know), black kind of Spanish eyes, long and tall, wiry some would say, but tough as a kid from the wrong side of the tracks could be. Nobody messed with Pretty James Preston (see, hell, even fifty years or more later I still call him that just in case, just in case his chain-wielding ghost is still around). So tough that he, around ordinary citizens, was almost civilized. He could afford to be and because it cost him nothing in his world calculus that was that.

So naturally every high school girl, even women since at that time Pretty James Preston was about twenty-one, had some tough nights up in her lonely room thinking about that wild boy. Now maybe not everyone, okay, North Adamsville was not that small a town but let’s say any girl (or young woman) who thought she had a shot, or maybe half a shot, at his favors was having sweaty summer nights. Even Mimi Murphy, my girlfriend, my faithless girlfriend. Now Mimi was maybe not the dish of the town, with her flaming red hair and her slender, maybe skinny is better, body but she had a certain something, a certain, smile, a certain style about her that made some guys who you would never ever think would give her a second look (like I did to my delight) were intrigued by her. Including one Pretty James Preston.

So one summer night after I walked Mimi, yes, car-less walked, Mimi over to the seawall down at the Seal Rock end of old Adamsville Beach I (we) heard that roar, that roar that meant only one thing- Pretty James Preston was coming down the boulevard full throttle. I turned around and before I knew it there he was stopped in front of us as we sat on the seawall. I swear I don’t remember him saying word one to Mimi (or me). Maybe a nod, maybe they had some secret karmic thing, I don’t know. All I know is that the queen of Sacred Heart Church (Roman Catholic) for number of novenas said in the old days, some white veil aura always present, one of the smartest girl in our class and, also probably the closest thing we had to a quirky girl in our class walked over to Pretty James Preston and his strange and powerful Vincent Black Lighting and straddled her long legs on back saddle of the bike. And into the night they roared.

But see that strange bike, that British-made exotic Vincent Black Lightning (which later proved to have been stolen, not by Pretty James but someone else, and then ferreted over from England to take its place in North Adamsville lore) was the undoing of Pretty James Preston (although not to hold you in suspense not of Mimi Murphy, not officially). Pretty James was leading kind of a double life. Let me explain, or try to, the way I heard it from some sources that I trusted (not Mimi, for I never really saw her to speak to after that fateful roar off into the Pretty James night).

In order to keep up his bike, his chopper Pretty James Preston robbed, robbed persons, places and things if you like. Not around North Adamsville since he was too well known (although after it was all over a few people around town admitted that he had robbed them, robbed them at gun-point and they were too scared to say anything. Maybe true, maybe not.). But around, a gas station here, a mom and pop variety store there, a couple of department stores, a few wealthy homes over in Millsville, maybe jack-roll a drunk if things got desperate. Not much dough but steady.

Then one day we heard that Pretty James Preston had stepped up his act. Banks, or rather a bank, the Granite City National Bank branch over in Braintree. And that was his downfall. Somehow he bungled the job, or some alarm went off, or some rum brave cop got religion and before he could get out the door Pretty James was shot, shot six ways to Sunday. Dead, DOA, done. The only thing left to say is that somebody thought they saw a skinny, long haired, redheaded girl in a leather coat and dungarees standing across the street from the bank and when they turned around after looking away upon hearing the shots the girl were gone. They later found the Vincent Black Lightning over in the Adamsville projects kind of mashed up. The red-headed girl, my Mimi, was not seen around town again. (Rumors, small rumors swirled for a few months about her fate, some reported that she was in a convent up North, others that she was holed up doing tricks in some high –end whorehouse in Boston but I never got very far with the few leads I had and soon gave it up.) Yes, Pretty James Preston was an outlaw from his first to last breath. And you wonder why they still talk about him with hushed breath.

The music too befit the motorcycle wild boy time of end of time times, the times when it seemed every little mishap in some godforsaken corner of this wicked old world turned into a major crisis causing everybody at some invisible authority’s urging to head for the air raid shelters and keep their heads down. And their butts up. Jerry Lee wild man piano stuff, always ready to break out, jail break out ever since he popped the question in high school confidential, Chuck leering at sweet little sixteens and you know what I mean, Eddie Cochran giving us a summer time blues anthem to hang our hopes on, and all kinds of one hit wonders trying to put a dent in our angst, our special teen angst that was ready to boil over, to break out and be free. Free from that invisible hand authority.

No wonder the wild boys had a field day. Those impressionable girls, maybe Mimi too although we never talked about such things, jesus no, worried they would never get to “do it” but were fearful to “do it” nevertheless in that Pill-less world. And guys hoping that the girls were worrying about not “doing it” before the world exploded egged them on although not with as much concern as necessary about consequences. The wild boys, those easy riders, though said “take no prisoners” and that was attractive, that and that promise of power that had many a girl restless late at night.

So no wonder too some young thing in the Jody Reynolds’ song “Endless Sleep” , maybe worried about getting pregnant after she let lover boy go further than she (and he) expected decided to go down to that sunless beach and let old Neptune have his way with her. And he, lover boy, maybe with a wild boy sensibility on the surface but more the weekend warrior when the deal went down, went looking for the dizzy dame, his dizzy dame and left old Neptune in the lurch. And many years later, maybe in some dream remembrance, they would throw the old records on the turntable, amp up the teen angst, the teen alienation, then sit back and listen to maybe the last minute in the 1950s when free-wheeling rock and roll blasted the night away. And the motorcycle boys held forth in the thundering night.

*Today's Burning Question Of The Day- The Search For The Great Working Class Love Song (In English)- "1952 Vincent Black Lightning "

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Richard Thompson performing his "1952 Vincent Black Lightning". I was not able to find Greg Brown's, the first performer I heard do the song, a high-powered guitar playing cover of this classic motorcycle love song.

Markin comment:

No, old Markin has not gone off the deep end. But every once in a while I like to get a little whimsical, especially if I have music on my mind. Let’s face it , communist political realists that we are we cannot (or should not go) 24/7 on the heavy questions of health care, the struggle against the banks and other capitalist institutions, the fight for a working wage and the big fight looming ahead on Afghanistan without a little relief. So, for this moment, I ask this question –what is the great working class love song (in English)?

Now there are plenty of them I am sure but I control the stick today. You have to choose between my two (now three, see today's addition of "James Alley Blues") selections. Richard Thompson’s classic motorcycle love song (which, of course, if you read the lyrics, borders very closely to the lumpen proletarian-but so does working class existence, especially down among the working poor, for that matter). Or, Tom Waits’ version of the classic weekend freedom seeking “Jersey Girl”. And, after that……… Obama, Troops Out Of Afghanistan- Free Quality Health care For All- Down With The Wall Street Bankers. See, I told you I had not gone off the deep end.




ARTIST: Richard Thompson
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Lyrics and Chords

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Box Hill they did ride

/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /
/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I've got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Mimi’s Glance, Circa 1963

Mimi Murphy knew two things, she needed to keep moving, and she was tired, tired as hell of moving, of the need, of the self-impose need, to keep moving ever since that incident five years before, back in 1958, with her seems like an eternity ago sweet long gone motorcycle boy, Pretty James Preston. I knew this information, knew this information practically first hand because the usually polite but loner Mimi Murphy had told me her thoughts and the story that went with it one night after she had finished a tough on the feet night working as a cashier at the Olde Saco Drive-In Theater out on Route One in Olde Saco, Maine.

That night she had passed me with a bottle of high-end Scotch, maybe Haig &Haig, showing its label from a brown bag in her hand while I was going down the stairs in the rooming house we lived in on Water Street in Ocean City, a few miles from Olde Saco. A number of people, including Mimi and me, were camped out there in temporary room quarters after the last of the summer touristas had decamped and headed back to New York, or wherever they came from. The cheap off-season rent and the short stay until the next summer crowd showed up requiring no lease drew us there. Most residents, mostly young and seemingly unattached to any family or work life kept to themselves, private drinkers or druggies, a couple of low profile hustling girls who didn’t bring their work home, guys maybe just out of the service, or between jobs, and so on. I had seen a couple of guys making passes at Mimi but thought nothing of it since they also targeted the hustling girls too.

Since I had never bothered Mimi, meaning made a pass at her (slender, no skinny, Irish red-heads with faraway looks and no, no apparent warm bed desires, that year and in those days not being my type after tumbledown broken-hearted youthful years of trying to coax their favors to no avail over in the old Little Dublin neighborhood around the Acre in Olde Saco), she must have sensed that being contemporaries, she was twenty-one then and I twenty-two, that maybe she could unburden her travails on a fellow wayward traveler. And she was right, and she did as she invited me up into her room with no come hither look but no fear, no apparent fear, anyway. After a couple of drinks, maybe three, of that dreamboat scotch that died easy going down (I had been down on my uppers for a while and was drinking strictly rotgut low shelf liquor store wines and barroom half empty glass left-overs but that is my story and not Mimi’s so I will move on) she loosened up, taking her shoes off before sitting down on the couch across from me. Here is the gist of what she had to say as I remember it that night:

She started out giving her facts of life facts like that she had grown up around this Podunk town outside of Boston, Adamsville Junction, and had come from a pretty pious Roman Catholic Irish family that had hopes that she (or one of her three sisters, but mainly she) might “have the vocation,” meaning be willing, for the Lord, to prison cloister herself up in some nunnery to ease the family’s way into heaven, or some such idea. And she had bought into the idea from about age seven to about fourteen by being the best student, boy or girl, in catechism class on Sunday, queen of the novenas, and pure stuff like that in church and the smartest girl in, successively, Adamsville South Elementary School, Adamsville Central Junior High, and the sophomore class at Adamsville Junction High School.

As she unwound this part of her story I could see where that part was not all that different from what I had encountered in my French-Canadian (mother, nee LeBlanc) Roman Catholic neighborhood over in the Acre in Olde Saco. I could also see, as she loosened up further with an addition drink, that, although she wasn’t beautiful, certain kinds of guys would find her very attractive and would want to get close to her, if she let them. Just the kind of gal I used to go for before I took the pledge.

About age fourteen thought after she had gotten her “friend” (her period for those who may be befuddled by this old time term) and started thinking, thinking hard about boys, or rather seeing that they, some of them, were thinking about her and not novenas and textbooks her either she started to get “the itch.” That itch that is the right of passage for every guy on his way to manhood. And girl on her way to womanhood as it turned out but which in the Irish Roman Catholic Adamsville Junction Murphy family neighborhood was kept as a big, dark secret from boys and girls alike.

Around that time, to the consternation of her nun blessed family, she starting dating Jimmy Clancy, a son of the neighborhood and a guy who was attracted to her because she was, well, pure and smart. She never said whether Jimmy had the itch, or if he did how bad, because what she made a point out of was that being Jimmy’s girl while nice, especially when they would go over Adamsville Beach and do a little off-hand petting and watching the ocean, did not cure her itch, not even close. This went on for a couple of years until she was sixteen and really frustrated, not by Jimmy so much as by the taboos and restrictions that had been placed on her life in her straight jacket household, school and town. No question she was ready to break out, she just didn’t know how.

Then in late 1957 Pretty James Preston came roaring into town. Pretty James, who despite the name, was a tough motorcycle wild boy, man really about twenty-one, who had all, okay most all, of the girls, good girls and bad, wishing and dreaming, maybe having more than a few restless nights, about riding on back of that strange motorcycle he rode (a Vincent Black Lightning stolen, not by Pretty James, from some English guy and transported to America where he got it somehow, the details were very vague) and being Pretty James’ girl. One day, as he passed by on his chopper going full-throttle up Hancock Street, Mimi too got the Pretty James itch.

But see it was not like you could just and throw yourself at Pretty James that was not the way he worked, no way. One girl, one girl from a good family who had her sent away after the episode, tried that and was left about thirty miles away, half-naked, after she thought she had made the right moves and was laughed at by Pretty James as he took off with her expensive blouse and skirt flying off his handle-bars as left her there unmolested but unhinged. That episode went like wildfire through the town, through the Monday morning before school girls’ lav what happened, or didn’t happen, over the weekend talkfest first of all.

No Pretty James’ way was to take, take what he saw, once he saw something worth taking and that was that. Mimi figured she was no dice. Then one night when she and Jimmy Clancy were sitting by the seawall down at the Seal Rock end of the beach starting to do their little “light petting” routine Pretty James came roaring up on his hellish machine and just sat there in front of the pair, saying nothing. But saying everything. Mimi didn’t say a word to Jimmy but just started walking over to the cycle, straddled her legs over back seat saddle and off they went into the night. Later that night her itch was cured, or rather cured for the first time.

Pouring another drink Mimi sighed poor Pretty James and his needs, no his obsessions with that silly motorcycle, that English devil’s machine, that Vincent Black Lightning that caused him more anguish than she did. And she had given him plenty to think about as well before the end. How she tried to get him to settle down a little, just a little, but what was a sixteen old girl, pretty new to the love game, totally new, but not complaining to the sex game, and his little tricks to get her in the mood, and make her forget the settle down thing. Until the next time she thought about it and brought it up.

Maybe, if you were from around Adamsville way, or maybe just Boston, you had heard about Pretty James, Pretty James Preston and his daring exploits back in about 1957 and 1958. Those got a lot of play in the newspapers for months before the end. Before that bank job, the one where as Mimi said Pretty James used to say all the time, he cashed his check. Yes, the big Granite City National Bank branch in Braintree heist that he tried to pull all by himself, with Mimi as stooge look-out. She had set him up for that heist, or so she thought. No, she didn’t ask him to do it but she got him thinking, thinking about settling down just a little and if that was to happen he needed a big score, not the penny ante gas station and mom and pop variety store robberies that kept them in, as he also used to say, coffee and cakes but a big payday and then off to Mexico, maybe down Sonora way, and a buy into the respectable and growing drug trade.

And he almost, almost, got away clean that fatal day, that day when she stood across the street, an extra forty-five in her purse just in case he needed it for a final getaway. But he never made it out the bank door. Some rum brave security guard tried to uphold the honor of his profession and started shooting nicking Pretty James in the shoulder. Pretty James responded with a few quick blasts and felled the copper. That action though slowed down the escape enough for the real coppers to respond and blow Pretty James away. Dead, DOA, done. Her, with a tear, sweet boy Pretty James.

According to the newspapers a tall, slender red-headed girl about sixteen had been seen across the street from the bank just waiting, waiting according to the witness, nervously. The witness had turned her head when she heard the shots from the bank and when she looked back the red-headed girl was gone. And Mimi was gone, maybe an accessory to felony murder or worst charge hanging over her young head, and long gone before the day was out. She grabbed the first bus out of Braintree headed to Boston where eventually she wound up holed up in a high-end whorehouse doing tricks to make some moving on dough. (She mentioned some funny things about that stay, which was not so bad at the time when she needed dough bad, and about strange things guys, young and old, wanted her to do but I will leave that stuff out here.)

And she had been moving ever since, moving and eternally hate moving. Now, for the past few months, she had been working nights as a cashier in the refreshment stand at Olde Saco Drive-In to get another stake to keep moving. She had been tempted, a couple of times, to do a little moon-lighting in a Portland whorehouse that a woman she had worked with at her last job, Fenner’s Department Store where she modeled clothes for the rich ladies, had told her about to get a quick stake but she was almost as eternally tired at that prospect as in moving once again.

And so Mimi Murphy, a few drinks of high-shelf scotch to fortify her told her story, told it true I think, mostly. A couple of days later I saw her through my room’s window with a suitcase in hand looking for all the world like someone getting ready to move on, move on to be a loner again after maybe an indiscrete airing of her linen in public. Thinking back on it now I wish, I truly wish, that I had been more into slender, no skinny, red-headed Irish girls with faraway looks that season and maybe she would not have had to keep moving, eternally moving.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Time Of Motorcycle Bill

 

There was a scourge in the land, in the 1950s American land. No, not the dreaded but fatalistically expected BIG ONE that would send old mother earth back to square one, or worst, coming from the Russkies. Sure that was in the air and every school boy and girl had their giggling tales of having to hide, hide ass up, under some desk or other useless defense in air raid drill preparations for that eventually. Sure, as well, the air stunk of red scare, military build-up cold war “your mommy is a commie turns her in.” But that was not the day to day scare for every self-respecting parent from Portland to the Pacific. That was reserved for the deadly dreaded motorcycle scare that had every father telling his son to beware of falling under the Marlon Brando sway and spiraling down to a life, a low life of crime and debauchery (of course said son not knowing of the word, the meaning of debauchery, until much later just shrugged his innocent shoulders). More importantly every mother, every blessed mother, self-respecting or not (with a gentle nod from Dad) warned off their daughters against this madness and perversity.

Of course that did not stop the sons from mooning over every Harley that rode the ride down Main Street, Olde Saco (really U.S. Route One but everybody called it Main Street and it was) or the daughters from mooning (and maybe more) over the low- riders churning the metal on those bad ass machines. Even prime and proper Lily Dumont, the queen of Saint Brigitte’s Catholic Church rectitude on Sunday and wanna-be “mama” every other waking minute of late. And the object of her desire? One “Motorcycle Bill,” the baddest low- rider in all of Olde Saco.

Now baddest in Olde Saco (that’s up in ocean edge Maine for the heathens and others not in the know) was not exactly baddest in the whole wide world, nowhere as near as bad as say Sonny Barger and his henchmen outlaws- for- real bikers out in Hell’s Angels Oakland as chronicled by Doctor Gonzo (before he was Gonzo), Hunter S. Thompson in his saga of murder and mayhem sociological- literary study Hell’s Angels. But as much is in life one must accept the context. And the context here is that in sleepy dying mill town Olde Saco mere ownership, hell maybe mere desire for ownership, of a bike was prima facie evidence of badness. So every precious daughter was specifically warned away from Motorcycle Bill and his Vincent Black Lightning 1952 (although no mother, and maybe no daughter either, could probably tell the difference between that sleek English bike and a big pig Harley). But Madame Dumont felt no need to do so with her sweet sixteen Lily who, maybe, pretty please maybe was going to be one of god’s women, maybe enter the convent over in Cedars Of Lebanon Springs in a couple of years after she graduated from Olde Saco High along with her Class of 1960.

But that was before, walking home to Olde Saco’s French- Canadian (F-C) quarter, the Acre, on Atlantic Avenue with classmate and best friend Clara Dubois, Lily heard the thunder of Bill’s bike coming up behind them, stopping, Bill giving Lily a bow, and them revving the machine up and doing a couple of circle cuts within a hair’s breathe of the girls. Then just a suddenly he was off, and Lily, well, Lily was hooked, hooked on Motorcycle Bill, although she did not know it, know it for certain until that night in her room when she tossed and turned all night and did not ask god, or any of his associates, to guide her in this matter.

One thing about living in a sleepy old town, a sleepy old dying mill town, is that everybody knows everybody’s business at least as far as any person wants that information out on the public square. Two things are important before we go on. One is that everybody in town that counted which meant every junior and senior class high schooler in Olde Saco knew that Bill had made a “play” for Lily. And the buzz got its start from none other than Clara Dubois who had her own hankerings after the motorcycle man (her source of wonder though was more, well lets’ call it crass than Lily’s, Clara wanted to know if Bill was build, build with sexual power like his motorcycle. She had innocently, perhaps, understood the Marlon mystique). The second was that Bill, other than his bike, was not a low life low- rider but just a guy who liked to ride the roads free and easy. See Bill was a freshman over at Bowdoin and he used the bike as much to get back and forth as to do wheelies in front of impressionable teenage girls from the Acre.

One day, a few days after their Motorcycle Bill “introduction,” when Lily and Clara were over at Seal Rock at the end of Olde Saco Beach (not its real name but given it because it was the local lovers’ lane and many things had been sealed there including a fair share of “doing the do”) Bill came up behind them sans his bike. Now not on his bike, without a helmet, and carrying books, books of all things, he looked like any student except maybe a little bolder and a little less reserved. He started talking to Lily and something in his demeanor attracted her to him. (Clara swore, swore on seven bibles, that Lily was kind of stand-offish at first but Lily says no.) They talked for a while and then Bill asked Lily if she wanted a ride home. She hemmed and hawed but there was just something about him that spoke of mystery (who knows what Clara thought). She agreed and they walked a couple of blocks to where he was parked. And there Lily saw that Vincent Black Lightning 1952 of her dreams. Without a word, without anything done except to tie her hair back she climbed on the back of the bike at Bill’s beckon. And that is how one Lily Dumont became William Kelly’s motorcycle “mama.”

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Motorcycle Days, Circa 1958

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jody Reynolds performing his teen angst classic Endless Sleep.

Yes, 1958 was a good time to be a motorcycle boy, a de facto, de jure wild boy according to the chattering, clueless, disapproving parents of the time, especially the parents of impressionable teenage girls (and not just teenage girls either if they, the parents, had had a clue what was going on over at State U with the twenty somethings, including their Janie, when the music and liquor got going and the wild boys showed up to get it on). Of course parents didn’t count, count for much anyway, when trends, moods, and what was cool got discussed in front of night time mom and pop variety stores where corner boys of all descriptions and attitudes held forth. Or after school, high school of course lesser grades need not bother to show up except maybe in early morning to get some candy bar or other sweet to get them through until growing time lunch, Doc’s Drugstore where all manner of high school boy and girl went for a soda and snack but mainly to hear some latest tune, maybe some hot Jerry Lee wild boy mad man thing, seventeen times in Doc’s amped up super juke box. In those quarters motorcycle wild boys were cool, if maybe just a little dangerous.

And maybe just slightly illegal too as their parents’cops (as part of that parent-police-teacher-priest-politician-hell-maybe even mom and pop variety store owner authority continuum) frowned, no more than frowned, when some local detachment of the Devils’ Disciples’ roared through the Adamsville Beach boulevard night. The sight of flashing blue lights on the boulevard usually meant one thing. Some wild boy had his exhaust system too loud, or he wasn’t wearing a helmet, or he switched lanes without signaling, or maybe for just being ugly, cop’s eyes ugly, or some lame thing like that. Those small civic sins only added to the mystique though. Especially on sultry summer nights when the colors passed turning every guy’s eyes, even mine, to listen to that power and to set every girl, impressionable or not, to thinking, thinking Wild Boy Marlon Brando thinking about what was behind that power.

See before Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson put everybody straight about the seamy side of motorcycle life, life-style motorcycle life with its felonies and mayhem, Marlon and his wild boys (and maybe throw in James Dean and his “chicken run” cars although they were a little too tame to be as revered as the motorcycle boys were) had cleaned up the wild boy scene, made it okay to an easy rider, made it sexy. Not the weekend warrior flip turns and wheelies and then Monday morning back to the bank stuff but real alienated Johnnies just like you and me. Old Marlon had made alienated wild boys cool. Old sexy white tee-shirt, maybe a pack of Luckies rolled up one sleeve, a cap rakishly turn at an angle on his head, but mainly an attitude, an attitude of distain, hell, maybe hatred, toward that ever present authority that told every kid, every boy and girl that you had better take what you can when you can because it won’t be there long. And that slight snarl that accompanied every word. Yah, cool, cool daddy cool.

And the girls, wells, they were doing that wondering, wondering about what was behind that power thrust, as those leather jackets and engineer boots roared by. To the detriment of their date while sitting in the front seat of his father’s borrowed plain vanilla boxed tail fin car that he had had to almost declare a civil war to get for the evening and promise to mow some future lawn as compensation. Jesus. Or worst, infinitely worst, seeing that metal, chrome and fire pass by after her date, her car-less date, had just walked her over to the beach to sit on that cold seawall. Her eyes flamed red, as she almost flagged down some local easy rider as he passed by just to get some kicks, and maybe freedom.

It wasn’t always low-down grunges who occupied the flamed night either. Every town probably had it story, many more that one, of some wild boy motorcycle boy who rules the roost, who took what he needed, or better, wanted and said the hell with civilization. Yah, a real outlaw, an outlaw way outside the system like North Adamsville wild boy James Preston, a guy they still talk about, although not when tender ears are around. Back in 1957, maybe 1958 that was all the talk, all the talk that counted like I said when Pretty James Preston got his chopper. Damn, I can still hear that explosion when he gunned that pedal even now.

See, Pretty James Preston (and nobody called him, as far as I know, anything else except that exact designation) had Elvis-like looks to go with his outlaw snarl. Dark hair combed back like Elvis (but don’t ever use that comparison, not if you don’t want to fight, fight whip chains fight just so you know), black kind of Spanish eyes, long and tall, wiry some would say, but tough as a kid from the wrong side of the tracks could be. Nobody messed with Pretty James Preston (see, hell, even fifty years or more later I still call him that just in case, just in case his chain-wielding ghost is still around). So tough that he, around ordinary citizens, was almost civilized. He could afford to be and because it cost him nothing in his world calculus that was that.

So naturally every high school girl, even women since at that time Pretty James Preston was about twenty-one, had some tough nights up in her lonely room thinking about that wild boy. Now maybe not everyone, okay, North Adamsville was not that small a town but let’s say any girl (or young woman) who thought she had a shot, or maybe half a shot, at his favors was having sweaty summer nights. Even Mimi Murphy, my girlfriend, my faithless girlfriend. Now Mimi was maybe not the dish of the town, with her flaming red hair and her slender, maybe skinny is better, body but she had a certain something, a certain, smile, a certain style about her that made some guys who you would never ever think would give her a second look (like I did to my delight) were intrigued by her. Including one Pretty James Preston.

One summer night after I walked Mimi, yes, car-less walked, Mimi over to the seawall down at the Seal Rock end of old Adamsville Beach I (we) heard that roar, that roar that meant only one thing- Pretty James Preston was coming down the boulevard full throttle. I turned around and before I knew it there he was stopped in front of us as we sat on the seawall. I swear I don’t remember him saying word one to Mimi (or me). Maybe a nod, maybe they had some secret karmic thing, I don’t know. All I know is that the queen of Sacred Heart Church (Roman Catholic) for number of novenas said in the old days, some white veil presence, one of the smartest girl in our class and, probably the closest thing we had to a quirky girl in our class walked over to Pretty James Preston and his strange and powerful Vincent Black Lighting and straddled herself on back of the bike. And into the night they roared.

But see that strange bike, that British-made exotic Vincent Black Lightning (which later proved to have been stolen, not by Pretty James but someone else, and then ferreted over from England to take its place in North Adamsville lore) was the undoing of Pretty James Preston (although not to hold you in suspense not of Mimi Murphy). Pretty James Preston was leading kind of a double life. Let me explain, or try to, the way I heard it from some sources that I trusted (not Mimi, for I never really saw her to speak to after that fateful night).

In order to keep up his bike, his chopper Pretty James Preston robbed, robbed persons, places and things if you like. Not around North Adamsville since he was too well known (although after it was all over a few people around town admitted that he had robbed them, robbed them at gun-point and they were too scared to say anything. Maybe true, maybe not.). But around, a gas station here, a mom and pop variety store there, a couple of department stores, a few wealthy homes over in Millsville. Not much but steady.

Then one day we heard that Pretty James Preston had stepped up his act. Banks, or rather a bank, the Granite City National Bank branch over in Braintree. And that was his downfall. Somehow he bungled the job, or some alarm went off, or some rum brave cop got religion and before he could get out the door Pretty James was shot, shot six ways to Sunday. Dead, DOA, done. The only thing left to say is that somebody thought they saw a skinny, long haired, redheaded girl in a leather coat and dungarees standing across the street from the bank and when they turned around after looking away upon hearing the shots the girl were gone. They later found the Vincent Black Lightning over in the Adamsville projects kind of mashed up. The red-headed girl, my Mimi, was not seen around town again. (Rumors, small rumors swirled for a few months about her fate, some reported that she was in a convent up North, others that she was holed up doing tricks in some high –end whorehouse in Boston but I never got very far with the few leads I had and soon gave it up.) Yes, Pretty James Preston was an outlaw from his first to last breath. And you wonder why they still talk about him with hushed breath.

The music too befit the motorcycle wild boy time of end of time times, the times when it seemed every little mishap in some godforsaken corner of this wicked old world turned into a major crisis causing everybody at some invisible authority’s urging to head for the air raid shelters and keep their heads down. And their butts up. Jerry Lee wild man piano stuff, always ready to break out, jail break out ever since he popped the question in high school confidential, Chuck leering at sweet little sixteens and you know what I mean, Eddie Cochran giving us a summer time blues anthem to hang our hopes on, and all kinds of one hit wonders trying to put a dent in our angst, our special teen angst that was ready to boil over, to break out and be free. Free from that invisible hand authority.

No wonder the wild boys had a field day. Those impressionable girls, maybe Mimi too although we never talked about such things, jesus no, worried they would never get to “do it” but were fearful to “do it” nevertheless in that Pill-less world. And guys hoping that the girls were worrying about not “doing it” before the world exploded egged them on although not with as much concern as necessary about consequences. The wild boys, those easy riders, though said “take no prisoners” and that was attractive, that and that promise of power that had many a girl restless late at night.

So no wonder as well some young thing in the Jody Reynolds’ song Endless Sleep , maybe worried about getting pregnant after she let lover boy go further than she (and he) expected decided to go down to that sunless beach and let old Neptune have his way with her. And he, lover boy, maybe with a wild boy sensibility on the surface but more the weekend warrior when the deal went down, went looking for the dizzy dame, his dizzy dame and left old Neptune in the lurch. And many years later, maybe in some dream remembrance, they would throw the old records on the turntable, amp up the teen angst, the teen alienation, then sit back and listen to maybe the last minute in the 1950s when free-wheeling rock and roll blasted the night away. And the motorcycle boys held forth in the thundering night.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Motorcycle Days, Circa 1958

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jody Reynolds performing his teen angst classic Endless Sleep.

CD Review

The Rock and Roll Era: 1958, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987

Yes, 1958 was a good time to be a motorcycle boy, a de facto, de jure wild boy according to the chattering, clueless, disapproving parents of the time, especially the parents of impressionable teenage girls (and not just teenage girls either if they had a clue what was going on over at State U with the twenty somethings, including their Janie, when the music and liquor got going and the wild boys showed up to get it on). Of course parents didn’t count, count for much anyway, when trends, moods, and what was cool got discussed in front of night time mom and pop variety stores where corner boys of all descriptions and attitudes held forth. Or at after school, high school of course lesser grade need not bother to show up except maybe in early morning to get some candy bar or other sweet to get them through until growing time lunch, Doc’s Drugstore where all manner of high school boy and girl went for a soda and snack but mainly to hear some latest tune, maybe some hot Jerry Lee wild boy mad man thing, seventeen times in Doc’s amped up super juke box. In those quarters motorcycle wild boys were cool, if maybe just a little dangerous.

And maybe just slightly illegal too as their parents’ cops (as part of that parent-police-teacher-priest-politician-hell-maybe even mom and pop variety store owner authority continuum) frowned, no more than frowned, when some local detachment of the Devils’ Disciples’ roared through the Adamsville Beach. The sight of flashing blue lights on the boulevard meant usually one thing. Some wild boy had his motor too loud, or he wasn’t wearing a helmet, or he switched lanes without signaling, or maybe for just being ugly, cop’s eyes ugly, or some lame thing like that. Those small civic sins only added to the mystique though. Especially on sultry summer nights when the colors passed turning every guy’s eyes, even mine, to listen to that power and to set every girl, impressionable or not, to thinking, thinking Wild Boy Marlon Brando thinking about what was behind that power.

See before Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson put everybody straight about the seamy side of motorcycle life, life-style motorcycle life with its felonies and mayhem, Marlon and his wild boys (and maybe throw in James Dean and his “chicken run” cars although they were a little too tame to be as revered as the motorcycle boys were) had cleaned up the wild boy scene, made it okay to an easy rider, made it sexy. Not the weekend warrior flip turns and wheelies and then Monday morning back to the bank stuff but real alienated Johnnies just like you and me. Old Marlon had made alienated wild boys cool. Old sexy white tee-shirt, maybe a pack of Luckies rolled up one sleeve, a cap rakishly turn at a n angle on his head, but mainly an attitude, an attitude of distain, hell, maybe hatred, toward that ever present authority that told every kid, every boy and girl that you had better take what you can when you can because it won’t be there long. And that slight snarl that accompanied every word. Yah, cool, cool daddy cool.

And the girls, wells, they were doing that wondering, wondering about what was behind that power thrust, as those leather jackets and engineer boots roared by. To the detriment of their date while sitting in the front seat of his father’s borrowed plain vanilla box tail fin car that he had to almost declare a civil war to get for the evening and promise to mow some future lawn as compensation. Jesus. Or worst, infinitely worst, having, her date car-less, just been walked over to the beach to sit on that cold seawall. Her eyes flamed red, as she almost flagged down some local easy rider as he passed.

And the music befit the time of end of time times, the times when it seemed every little mishap in some godforsaken corner of this wicked old world turned into a major crisis causing everybody at some invisible authority’s urging to head for the air raid shelters and keep their heads down. And their butts up. Jerry Lee wild man piano stuff, always ready to break out, jail break out ever since he popped the question in high school confidential, Chuck leering at sweet little sixteens and you know what I mean, Eddie Cochran giving us a summer time blues anthem to hang our hopes on, and all kinds of one hit wonders trying to put a dent in our angst, our special teen angst that was ready to boil over, to break out and be free. Free from that invisible hand authority.

No wonder the wild boys had a field day. Those impressionable girls worried they would never get to “do it” but were fearful to “do it” nevertheless in that Pill-less world. And guys hoping that the girls were worrying about not “doing it” before the world exploded egged them on although not with as much concern as necessary about consequences. The wild boys, those easy riders, though said “take no prisoners” and that was attractive, that and that promise of power that had many a girl restless late at night.

So no wonder as well some young thing in the Jody Reynolds’ song Endless Sleep , maybe worried about getting pregnant after she let lover boy go further than she (and he) expected decided to go down to that sunless beach and let old Neptune have his way with her. And he, lover boy, maybe with a wild boy sensibility on the surface but more the weekend warrior when the deal went down, went looking for the dizzy dame, his dizzy dame and left old Neptune in the lurch. And many years later, maybe in some dream remembrance, they would throw the old records on the turntable, amp up the teen angst, the teen alienation, then sit back and listen to maybe the last minute in the 1950s when free-wheeling rock and roll blasted the night away. And the motorcycle boys held forth in the thundering night.

***On The Nature of True Love-In Search Of The Great Working Class Love Song- With Donna Walker, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, In Mind

Click on to the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Richard Thompson performing his classic working class love song, 1952 Vincent Black Lighting.

1952 Vincent Black Lightning-Richard Thompson

This song is on YouTube performed by Thompson, although a stronger version is done on a cover by folk singer Greg Brown.

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Box Hill they did ride

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I've got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

Today's subject, as noted in the headline, the search for the great working class love song is prompted by a question that I have been asked about before from old North Adamsville high school classmates recently- what music were you listening to back in the day? Well, for me at least that subject is totally exhausted. I no longer want to hear about how you fainted over Teen Angel,Johnny Angel,or Earth Angel. Christ there were more angels around then than could fit on the head of a needle or fought it out to the death in John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost.

Moreover, enough of You're Gonna Be Sorry, I'm Sorry, and Who's Sorry Now. What was there to be sorry about, except maybe some minute hurt feelings, some teenage awkward didn’t know how to deal with some such situation or, in tune with today’s theme, some mistake that reflected our working class-derived lacks, mainly lacks of enough time, energy and space to think things over without seven thousand parents and siblings breaking the stream.

And no more of Tell Laura I Love Her, Oh Donna, and I Had A Girl Her Name Was Joanne, or whatever woman's name comes to mind. Old sweet woman Red Molly, all dolled up in her black leather, puts them all to shame, ya, puts them all to shame. So it is time, boys and girls, to move on to other musical influences from our more mature years, say from our post-traumatic stress high school years.

But why, as the headline suggests, the search for the great working class love song? Well, hello! Our old town, our old beloved North Adamsville, was (and is, as far as I can tell from a very recent trip back to the old place) a quintessential beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday working class town (especially before the deindustrialization of America which for North Adamsville meant the closing of the shipyards that has left it now as a basically low-end white collar service-oriented working class town, dotted with ugly, faux-functional white collar office-style parks to boot). The great majority of us came from working class or working poor homes. Most songs, especially popular songs, then and now, reflect a kind of "one size fits all" lyric that could apply to anyone, anywhere. What I was looking for was songs that in some way reflected that working class ethos that is still in our bones, that cause our hunger even now, whether we recognize it or not.

Needless to say, since I posed the question, I have my choice already prepared. As will become obvious, if you have read the lyrics, this song reflects my take on the corner boy, live for today, be free for today, male angst in the age old love problem. However, any woman is more than free to choice songs that reflect her female angst angle (ouch, for that awkward formulation) on the working class hit parade.

And a fellow female classmate did proposing Bruce Springsteen’s version of Jersey Girl and here is my response:

Come on now, after reading these lyrics above is any mere verbal profession of undying love, any taking somebody on a ride at some two-bit carnival going to make the cut. I am thinking here of another working class song suggested to me by a female classmate , Bruce Springsteen's cover version of Tom Waits’ Jersey Girl where they go down to the Jersey seashore to some amusement park to while the night away in good working class style, cotton candy, salt water taffy, win your lady a doll, ride the ferris wheel, tunnel of love, hot dog, then sea breeze love , just like our Paragon Park nights, some buying of a gold ring like every guy on the make is promising to do for his honey if she…, or some chintzy, faded flowers that melt away in the night, or with the morning dew going to mean anything? Hell, the guy here, bravo James, is giving her, his Red Molly, HIS bike, his bike, man. No Wild One, Easy Rider, no women need apply bike night. HIS bike. Case closed.

And you think that is so-so and just a guy trinket love thing, not the stuff of eternity. No way. I KNOW of at least one female, noted above in the dedication, who might relate to this song. I also know at least one male, who shall remain nameless, who snuck out the back door of old North Adamsville High with another classmate, a female classmate, to ride his bike during school hours back in the day. So don't think I have forgotten my medication, or something when I call this a great working class love song. Romeo and Juliet is nothing but down in the ditch straight punk stuff compared to this. And I repeat, for the slow learners here, the guy, my boy, my corner boy James, in the song gave her HIS bike, man. That is love, no question.

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Ain’t Got No Time For Corner Boys-Harry's Variety

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing his song Jersey Girl that formed part of the inspiration for this post.

Markin comment:

Riding down the old neighborhood streets a while back, the old North Adamsville working class streets, streets dotted with triple-deckers housing multiple families along with close-quarter, small cottage-sized single family houses like the one of my own growing to manhood time. Houses, moreover, that reflected, no exclaimed right to their tiny rooftops, that seemingly eternal overweening desire to have, small or not, worth the trouble or not, something of one’s own against the otherwise endless servitude of days. Suddenly, coming to an intersection, I was startled, no, more than that I was forced into a double-take, by the sight of some guys, some teenage guys hanging, hanging hard, one foot on the ground the other bent holding up the infernal brick wall that spoke of practice and marking one’s territory, against the oncoming night in front of an old time variety store, a mom and pop variety from some extinct times before the 7/11 chain store, fast shop, no room for corner boys, police take notice, dark night. Memory called it Kelly’s, today Kim’s. From the look of them, baggy-panted, latest fashion footwear name sneakered, baseball cap-headed, all items marked, marked with the insignia (secretly, and with no hope of outside decoding) signifying their "homeboy" associations (I would say gang, but that word is charged these days and this is not exactly what it looked like, at least to the public eye, my public eye) they could be the grandsons, probably not biological because these kids were almost all Asians speckled with a couple of Irish-lookers, shanty Irish-lookers, of the ghost be-bop night guys that held me in thrall in those misty early 1960s times.

Ya, that tableau, that time-etched scene, got me to thinking of some long lost comrades of the schoolboy night like the hang-around guys in front of Harry’s Variety, although comrades might not be the right word because I was just some punk young kid trying to be a wannabe, or half-wannabe, corner boy and they had no time for punk kids and later when I came of age I had no time for corner boys. Ya, that scene got me to thinking of the old time corner boys who ruled the whole wide North Adamsville night (and day for those who didn’t work or go to school, which was quite a few on certain days, becasue most of theses guys were between sixteen and their early twenties with very jittery school and work histroies better left unspoken, or else). Ya, got me thinking about where the white tee-shirted, blue-jeaned, engineer-booted, cigarette-smoking, unfiltered of course, sneering, soda-swilling, Coke, naturally, pinball wizards held forth daily and nightly, and let me cadge a few odd games when they had more important business, more important girl business, to attend to.

Ya, I got to thinking too about Harry’s, old Harry’s Variety over there near my grandmother’s house, over there in that block on Sagamore Street where the Irish workingman’s whiskey-drinking (with a beer chaser), fist-fighting, sports-betting after a hard day’s work Dublin Grille was. Harry’s was on the corner of that block. Now if you have some image, some quirky, sentimental image, of Harry’s as being run by an up-and-coming just arrived immigrant guy, maybe with a big family, trying to make this neighborhood store thing work so he can take in, take in vicariously anyway, the American dream like you see running such places now forget it. Harry’s was nothing but a “front.” Old Harry, Harry O’Toole, now long gone, was nothing but the neighborhood “bookie” known far and wide to one and all as such. Even the cops would pull up in their squad cars to place their bets, laughingly, with Harry in the days before state became the bookie-of-choice for most bettors. And he had his “book”, his precious penciled-notation book right out on the counter. But see punk kid me, even then just a little too book-unworldly didn’t pick up on that fact until, old grandmother, jesus, grandmother “hipped” me to it.

Until then I didn’t think anything of the fact that Harry had about three dust-laden cans of soup, two dust-laden cans of beans, a couple of loaves of bread (Wonder Bread, if you want to know) on his dust-laden shelves, a few old quarts of milk and an ice chest full of tonic (now called soda, even by New Englanders) and a few other odds and ends that did not, under any theory of economics, capitalist or Marxist, add up to a thriving business ethos. Unless, of course, something else was going on. But what drew me to Harry’s was not that stuff anyway. What drew me to Harry’s was, one, his pin ball machine complete with corner boy players and their corner boy ways, and, two, his huge Coca Cola ice chest (now sold as antique curiosities for much money at big-time flea markets and other venues) filled with ice cold, cold tonics (see above), especially the local Robb’s Root Beer that I was practically addicted to in those days (and that Harry, kind-hearted Harry, stocked for me).

Many an afternoon, a summer’s afternoon for sure, or an occasional early night, I would sip, sip hard on my Robb’s and watch the corner boys play, no sway, sway just right, with that sweet pinball machine, that pin ball machine with the bosomy, lusty-looking, cleavage-showing women pictured on the top glass frame of the machine practically inviting you, and only you the player, on to some secret place if you just put in enough coins. Of course, like many dream-things what those lusty dames really gave you, only you the player, was maybe a few free games. Teasers, right. But I had to just watch at first because I was too young (you had to be sixteen to play) , however, every once in a while, one of the corner boys who didn’t want to just gouge out my eyes for not being a corner boy, would let me cadge a game while Harry was not looking. When you think about it though, now anyway, Harry was so “connected” (and you know what I mean by that) what the hell did he care if some underage kid, punk kid, cadged a few games and looked at those bosomy babes in the frame.

Ya, and thinking about Harry’s automatically got me thinking about Daniel (nobody ever called him that, ever) “Red” Hickey, the boss king of my schoolboy night at Harry’s. Red, the guy who set the rules, set the style, hell, set the breathing, allowed or not and when, of the place. I don’t know if he went to some corner boy school to learn his trade but he was the be-bop daddy (at least all the girls, all the hanging all over him girls, called him that) because he, except for one incident that I will relate below, ruled unchallenged with an iron fist. At least I never saw his regular corner boys Spike, Lenny, Shawn, Ward, Goof (yes, that was his name the only name I knew him by, and he liked it), Bop (real name William) or the Clipper (real name Kenny, the arch-petty Woolworth’s thief of the group hence the name) challenge him, or want to.

Ya, Red, old red-headed Red was tough alright, and has a pretty good-sized built but that was not what kept the others in line. It was a certain look he had, a certain look that if I went into describing it now I would get way overboard into describing it as some stone-cold killer look, some psycho-killer look but that would be wrong because it didn’t show that way. But that was what it was. Maybe I had better put it this way. Tommy Thunder, older brother of my middle school and high school best friend and a corner boy king in his own right, Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, a big bruiser of a legendary North Adamsville football player and human wrecking machine who lived a few doors up from Harry’s went out of his way not to go near the place. Ya, Red was that tough.

See, he was like some general, or colonel or something, an officer at least, and besides being tough, he would “inspect” his troops to see that all and sundry had their “uniform” right. White tee-shirt, full-necked, no vee-neck sissy stuff, no muscle shirt half-naked stuff, straight 100% cotton, American-cottoned, American-textiled, American-produced, ironed, mother-ironed I am sure, crisp. One time Goof (sorry that’s all I knew him by, really) had a wrinkled shirt on and Red marched him up the street to his triple-decker cold-water walk-up flat and berated, berated out loud for all to hear, Goof’s mother for letting him out of the house like that. And Red, old Red like all Irish guys sanctified mothers, at least in public, so you can see he meant business on the keeping the uniform right question.

And like some James Dean or Marlon Brando tough guy photo, some motorcycle disdainful, sneering guy photo, each white tee-shirt, or the right sleeve of each white tee-shirt anyway, was rolled up to provide a place, a safe haven, for the ubiquitous package of cigarettes, matches inserted inside its cellophane outer wrapping, Luckies, Chesterfields, Camels, Pall Malls, all unfiltered in defiance of the then beginning incessant cancer drumbeat warnings, for the day’s show of manliness smoking pleasures.

And blue jeans, tight fit, no this scrub-washed, fake-worn stuff, but worn and then discarded worn. No chinos, no punk kid, maybe faux "beatnik," black chinos, un-cuffed, or cuffed like I wore, and Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, king of the faux beatnik middle school night, including among his devotees this little too bookish writer, who was as tough a general, colonel, or some officer anyway, as corner boy Red was with his guys. Frankie example: no cuffs on those black chinos, stay home, or go elsewhere, if you are cuffed. Same kingly manner, right? Corner boys blue-jeaned and wide black-belted, black always, black-belt used as a handy weapon for that off-hand street fight that might erupt out of nowhere, for no reason, or many. Maybe a heavy-duty watch chain, also war-worthy, dangly down from those jeans. Boots, engineer boots, black and buckled, worn summer or winter, heavy, heavy-heeled, spit-shined, another piece of the modern armor for street fight nights. Inspection completed the night’s work lies ahead.

And most nights work, seemingly glamorous to little too bookish eyes at the time, was holding up some corner of the brick wall in front or on the side of Harry’s Variety with those engineer boots, one firmly on the ground the other bent against the wall, small talk, small low-tone talk between comrades waiting, waiting for… Or just waiting for their turn at that Harry luscious ladies pictured pinball machine. Protocol, strictly observed, required “General Red” to have first coin in the machine. But see old Red was the master swayer with that damn machine and would rack up free games galore so, usually, he was on that thing for a while.

Hey, Red was so good, although this is not strictly part of the story, that he could have one of his several honeys right in front of him on the machine pressing some buttons and he behind pressing some other buttons Red swaying and his Capri-panted honey, usually some blond, real or imagined, swaying, and eyes glazing, but I better let off with that description right now, because like I said it was strictly speaking not part of the story. What is part of the story is that Red, when he was in the mood or just bored, or had some business, some girl business, maybe that blond, real or imagined, just mentioned business would after I had been hanging around a while, and he thought I was okay, give me his leftover free games.

Now that was the “innocent” part of Red, the swaying pinball wizard, girl-swaying, inspector general part. But see if you want to be king of the corner boy night you have to show your metal once in a while, if for no other reason than the corner boys, the old time North Adamsville corner boys might be just a little forgetful of who the king hell corner boy was, or as I will describe, some other corner boy king of some other variety store night might show up to see what was what. Now I must have watched the Harry’s corner boy scene for a couple of years, maybe three, the last part just off and on, but I only remember once when I saw Red show “his colors.” Some guy from Adamsville, some tough-looking guy who, no question, was a corner boy just stopped at Harry’s after tipping a couple, or twenty, at the Dublin Grille. He must have said something to Red, or maybe Red just knew instinctively that he had to show his colors, but all of a sudden these two are chain-whipping each other. No, that’s not quite right, Red is wailing, flailing, nailing, chain-whipping this other guy mercilessly, worst, if that is possible. The guy, after a few minutes, was left in a pool of blood on the street, ambulance ready. And Red just walked way, just kind of sauntering away.

Of course that is not the end of the Red story. Needless to say, no work, no wanna work Red had to have coin, dough, not just for the pinball machine, cigarettes, and soda, hell, that was nothing. But for the up-keep on his Chevy (Chevvies then being the “boss” car, and not just among corner boys either), and that stream of ever-loving blond honeys, real or imagined, he escorted into the seashore night. So said corner boys did their midnight creep around the area grabbing this and that to bring in a little dough. Eventually Red “graduated” to armed robberies when the overhead grew too much for little midnight creeps, and graduated to one of the branches of the state pen, more than once. Strangely, his end came, although I only heard about this second hand, after a shoot-out with the cops down South after he tried to rob some White Hen convenience store. There is some kind of moral there, although I will be damned if I can figure it out. Red, thanks for those free games though.