*Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- When Billie Fought To Be Church Hall Dance Champ

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Teen Angels performing Eddie My Love.

Markin comment:

Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word), we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Billie whom I will talk about later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery-operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household was not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Ya right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.

And that pious, quietist, chase the devil and his (or her) devil’s music away, say a million Acts of Contrition, church-bent, Roman Catholic church-bent, part formed a great deal of the backdrop for how we related to that break-out rock music. And why we had to practically form a secret cult to enjoy it. Now you all know, since you all went to elementary school just like I did, although maybe you didn’t attend in the Cold War, red scare, we could-all-be-bombed-dead tomorrow 1950s like I did, that those mandatory elementary school dances where we rough-hewn boys learned, maybe we learned, our first social graces were nothing but cream puff affairs. Lots of red-faced guys and giggling girls. Big deal, right? What you maybe don’t’ know, especially if you were not from a working class neighborhood (or a pubic housing project) made up of mainly Irish and Italian Roman Catholic families like I was is that “cream puff” school stuff was seen by the Church (need I add any more identifying words?) as the devil’s playground. Later, I found out from some Protestant friends that their church leaders felt the same way. No, not those Universalist-Unitarian types who think everything humankind does that is not hurtful is okay but real hard-nosed Protestants, like Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians. So to counter that secular godlessness, at least in our area, the Church sponsored Friday night dances. Chaste, very chaste, or that was the intention, Friday night dances.

Now these dances from the outward look would look just like those devil-sponsored secular school dances. They were, for example, held in the basement of the church (St. whoever, Our Lady of the wherever, The Sacred whatever, or fill in the blank), a basement, given the norms of public architecture, was an almost exact rectangular, windowless, linoleum-floored, folding chairs and tables, raised stage replica of the elementary school auditorium. That church locale, moreover, when dressed up like on those Friday nights with the usual crepe, handmade signs of welcome, and refreshment offerings also looked the same. And just so that you don’t think I am going overboard they played the same damn (oops) music as at school, except the sound system (donated, naturally, by some pious parishioner, looking for good conduct points from the fiery-eyed "fire and brimstone" pastor) was usually barely audible. The real difference then, and maybe now, for all I know, was that rather than a few embarrassed public school teacher-chaperones drafted against their wills, I hope, or like to hope, every stick-in-the-mud person (or so it seemed) over the age of eighteen was drafted into the lord’s army for the evening. Purpose: to make sure there was no untoward, unnatural, unexpected, or unwanted touching of anything, by anyone, for any reason. So, now that I think about it, this was really the Friday night prison dance. But not always.

Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. The Billie who wanted fame and fortune (or at least girls) so bad that he could almost taste it. The Billie who entered a teenage talent show dressed up like Bill Haley and whose mother-made suit jacket arms fell off during the performance and he wound up with all the girls in schools as a consolation prize. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or, maybe, almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music , rock music that is.

During the summer, and here I am speaking of the summer of 1958, these church-held dances started a little earlier and finished a little later. That was fine by us. But part of the reason was that during July (starting after the Fourth Of July, if I recall) and August there was a weekly dance-off elimination contest. Now these things were meant to be to show off partner-type dancing skills so I never even dreamed of participating, although I was now hip to the girl thing (or at least twelve year old hip to it), and gladly. Not so Billie.You know, or if you don’t then I will tell you so you know now, that Billie was a pretty good singer, and a pretty good shaker as a dancer. Needless to say these skills were not on the official papal list of ways to prove you had some Fred Astaire-like talent. What you needed to demonstrate, with a partner, a girl partner, was waltz-like, fox-trot stuff. Stuff you were glad to know when last, slow dance time came around but not before, please, not before.

But see, if you didn’t know before, I will remind you, Billie was a fiend to win a talent contest, a contest that, the way he figured it, was his ticket out of "the projects" and into all the cars he wanted, all the girls, and half of everything else in the world. Ya, I know, but poor boys have dreams too. And I don’t suppose it is too early to remind you, like I did with the lost sleeve teenage talent show, that Billie later spent those pent-up energies less productively, much less productively once he knew the score, his score about life. Today though, this night, this Friday night, at the start of the contest Billie is going for the brass ring. See, Billie, secretly, at least secretly from me, was taking dance lessons, slow dance lessons with Rosalie, Christ Rosalie, the prettiest girl in our class, the girl that if I had known the word then I would have called fetching, very fetching. That was, and is, high praise from me. And, see also, teaching the pair the ropes is none other than Rosalie’s mother who before she became a mother was some kind of dance queen (I don’t know, or don’t remember, if I knew the details of that woman’s prior life before then). It’s almost like the fix was in.

Now you know just as well as I do that I have no story, or at least no story worth telling, if Billie and Rosalie don’t make it out of the box, if they just get eliminated quickly. Sure they made it, and now they are standing there getting ready to do battle against the final pair for the sainted dance championship of the christian world, projects branch. Now my take on the dancing all summer was there wasn’t much difference, at least noticeable difference, between the pairs. I think the judges thought so too, the junior priest, a priest that the pastor threw into this dance thing because he was closer to our ages than the old-timer "fire and brimstone" pastor was, and four ladies from the Ladies' Sodality usually took quite a bit of time before deciding who was eliminated. Rosalie’s mother (and my mother, as well) thought the same thing when we compared notes. See, now with Billie under contract (oh, ya, naturally I was his manager, or something like that) I had developed into an ace dance critic. Mainly though, I was downplaying the opposition to boost my pair's chances, and, incidentally, falling, falling big, for Rosalie. And not just for her dancing.

So here we were at the finals. It was a wickedly hot night in that dungeon basement so the jackets and ties, if wore (and that needed to be worn by the contestant males), were off. Also, by the rules, each finalist couple got to choose its own music and form of dancing. The first couple did this dreamy Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers all hands flailing and quick-movement thing that even impressed me. After than performance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billie talking to Rosalie, talking fast and talking furiously. Something was up, definitely, something was up.

Well, something was up. Billie, old sweet boy Billie, old get out of the projects at any cost Billie, old take no prisoners Billie decided that he was going to stretch the rules and play to his strength by doing a Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock jitterbug thing to show the judges his “moves” and what we would now call going "outside the box." And he had gotten Rosalie, sweet, fetching, deserves better Rosalie, to go along with him on it. See, Rosalie, during all those dance lesson things had fallen for old Billie and his words were like gold. Damn.

I will say that Billie and Rosalie tore the place up, at least I guess Billie did because I was, exclusively, looking at Rosalie who really danced her head off. Who won? Let me put it this way, this time the judges, that priest and his coterie of do-gooders didn’t take much time deciding that the other couple won. Rosalie was crushed. Billie, like always Billie, chalked it up to the "fix" being in for the other couple. Life was against the free spirits, he said, something it took me a lot longer to figure out. Rosalie's family moved away not long after that contest, like a lot of people just keeping time at the projects until their ships to better days came in, and I heard that she was later still furious at Billie for crossing her up. Ya, but, boy, she could twirl that thing.

Fragments Of A Treasure Island (Cady Park) Dream #2- A Family Outing

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Wollaston Beach (called Adamsville Beach in the story). The photo in the entry appears to have been taken from a point not far from Treasure Island (Cady Park).

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:

Do you need to know about all the little family trips over to Treasure Island, a picnic spot down at the Merrymount end of Adamsville Beach that I have threatened to talk about when I mentioned how I “sold out” to my mother for a little Kennedy’s Deli home-style potato salad? Trips, that kind of formed the bookends of my childhood. Jesus, no. A thousand time no, and I say that having lived through them. My childhood memories overall can be best summed up in the words of the now long-departed black rapper extraordinaire, Biggie Smalls. He expressed it best and spoke a truth greater than he might have known, although he was closer to “hip-hop nation” than I ever could be, or could be capable of – “Christmas kind of missed us, birthdays were the worst days.” Ya, that’s the big truth, no question, but not the little Treasure Island truth, wobbly as it might come out. One such episode will give you an idea of what we (meaning me and my two brothers, one a little younger the other a little older than me) were up against but also, in the end, why although there were precious few wonderful childhood memories that are now worth the ink to tell you about, this one serves pretty well. Let me have my say.

******
There was a madness in this country in the 1950s. No, not the Cold War atomic-bomb-is-going-to-get-us-we-are-all-going-to-be-dead-next-week or “better dead than red” kind of madness although there was plenty of that, but a madness for the automobile, the sleeker, the more airplane-like, and more powerfully-engined the better. And, it wasn’t just, deafeningly mad as they were, those guys in the now almost sepia-faded photographic images of tight T-shirt wearing, rolled sleeve cigarette-packed, greased Pompadour-haired, long side-burned, dangling-combed , engineer-booted, chain-wielding, side of the mouth butt-puffing , didn’t care if school kept or not types bent over the hood of some souped-up ’57 Chevy working, sweating pools of sweat, sweating to get even more power out of that ferocious V-8 engine for the Saturday night “ chicken" run.

And it wasn’t even those mad faux James Dean-sneered, "rebel without a cause"-posed, cooled-out, maybe hop-headed guys either. And it was always guys, who you swore you would beat down if they ever even looked at your sister, if you had a sister, and if you liked her enough to beat a guy down to defend her honor, or whatever drove your sense of right. And, of course she, your sister no less, is looking for all she is worth at this “James Dean” soda jerk (hey, what else could he be) because this guy is “cute”. Go figure.

No, and forget all those stereotypes that they like to roll out when they want to bring a little “color” to the desperately color-craving 1950s. This car madness was driven, and driven hard, by your very own stay-at-home-and watch the television, water the lawn, if you have a lawn and it needed watering and sometimes when it didn’t just to get out of the house, have couple of beers and take a nap on Saturday afternoon father (or grandfather, I have to remember who might be in my audience now) who always said “ask your mother” to blow you off. You know him. I know you know him he just has a different name than mine did. And maybe even your very own mother (or grandmother) got caught up in the car thing too, your mother the one who always would say “ask your father. You know her too, don’t say no. I hope by now you knew they were working a team scam on you even if you didn’t have the kind of proof that you could take to court and get a little justice on.

Hell, on this car thing they were just doing a little strutting of their stuff in showcase, show-off, “see what I got and you don’t” time. Come on now, don’t pretend that you don’t know what I am talking about, at least if you too grew up in the 1950s, or heard about it, or even think you heard about it. Hey, it was about dreams of car ownership for the Great Depression-ed , World War II-ed survivors looking to finally cash in, as a symbol that one, and one’s family, has arrived in the great American dream, and all on easy monthly payments, no money down, and the bigger, the sleeker the better and I’ll take the heavy- chromed, aerodynamically-designed, two-toned one, thank you. That was how you knew who counted, and who didn’t. You know what I mean.

Heck, that 50s big old fluffy pure white cloud of a dream even seeped all the way down into “the projects” in Adamsville, and I bet over at the Columbia Point “projects” in Boston too that you could see on a clear day from Adamsville beach, although I don’t know for sure on that, and maybe in the thousand and one other displaced person hole-in-the-walls “projects” they built as an afterthought back then for those families like mine caught on the slow track in “go-go” America. Except down there, down there on the edge of respectability, and maybe even mixed in with a little disrespectability, you didn’t want to have too good of a car, even if you could get that easy credit, because what we you doing with that nice sleek, fin-tailed thing with four doors and plenty of room for the kids in the back in a place like “the projects” and maybe there was something the “authorities” should know about, yes. Better to move on with that old cranky 1940s-style un-hip, un-mourned, un-cool jalopy than face the wrath and clucking of that crowd, the venom-filled, green-eyed neighbors.

Yes, that little intro is all well and good and a truth you can take my word for but this tale is about, if I ever get around to it, those who had the car madness deep in their psyche, but not the wherewithal- this is a cry, if you can believe it today, from the no car families. Jesus, how could you not get the car madness then though, facing it every night stark-naked in front of you on the television set, small as the black and white picture was, of Buicks, and Chevys and Pontiacs and whatever other kind of car they had to sell to you. But what about us Eastern Mass bus dependents? The ones who rode the bus, back or front it didn’t matter, at least here it didn’t matter. Down South they got kind of funny about it.

As you might have figured out by now, and if you didn’t I will tell you, that was our family’s fate, more often than not. It was not that we never had a car back then, but there were plenty of times when we didn’t and I have the crooked heels, peek-a-boo-soles, and worn out shoe leather from walking rather than waiting on that never-coming bus to prove it. And not only that but I got so had no fear of walking, and walking great distances if I had to, all the way to Grandma’s Young Street, “up-town” North Adamsville if I had to. That was easy stuff thinking back on it. I‘ll tell you about walking those later long, lonesome roads out West in places like just before the mountains in Winnemucca, Nevada and 129 degree desert- hot Needles, California switching into 130 degree desert-hot Blythe, Arizona some other time, because it just doesn’t seem right to talk about mere walking, long or short, when the great American automobile is present and rolling by.

It’s kind of funny now but the thing was, when there was enough money to get one, that the cars my poor old, kind of city ways naïve, but fighting Marine-proud father would get, from wherever in this god forsaken earth he got them from would be, to be polite, clunkers and nothing but old time jalopies that even those “hot rod” James Dean guys mentioned above would sneer, and sneer big time, at. It would always be a 1947 something, like a Hudson or Nash Rambler, or who knows the misty, musty names of these long forgotten brands. The long and short it was, and this is what’s really important when you think about it, that they would inevitably break down, and breakdown in just the wrong place, at least the wrong place if you had a wife who couldn’t drive or help in that department and three screaming, bawling tow-headed boys who wanted to get wherever it was we were going, and get there-now.

I swear on those old battered crooked-heeled, peek-a-boo soled shoes that I told you about that this must have happened just about every time we were going on a trip, or getting ready to go on a trip, or thinking about going on a trip. So now you know what I was up against when I was a kid. Like I already told you before, in some other dream fragment, I was an easy target to be “pieced off” with a couple of spoonfuls of Kennedy's potato salad when things like that happened. Or some other easy “bought off” when the “car” joke of the month died again and there wasn’t any money to get it fixed right away and we couldn’t go more than a few miles. I blew my stack plenty and righteously so, don't you think?

So let me tell you about this one time, this one summer time, August I think, maybe in 1956, when we did have a car, some kind of grey Plymouth sedan from about 1947, that year seems to always come up when car year numbers come to mind, like I said before. Or maybe it was a converted tank from the war for all I know, it kind of felt like that sitting in the back seat because as the middle boy I never got to ride “shot gun” up front with Dad so I bore the brunt of the bumps, shakes, blimps, and slips in the back seat. I do know I never felt anything better than being nothing but always queasy back there.

This one, this beauty of a grey Plymouth sedan, I can remember very well, always had some major internal engine-type problem, or telltale oil- spilling on the ground in the morning, or a clutch-not-working right, when real cars had clutches not this automatic stuff, making a grinding sound that you could hear about half way around the world, but you will have to ask some who knows a lot more about cars about than I do for the real mechanical problems. Anyway this is the chariot that is going to get us out of “the projects” and away from that fiery, no breathe “projects” sun for a few hours as we started off on one of our family-famous outings to old Treasure Island down at the Merymount end of Adamsville Beach, about four or five miles from “the projects”, no more. It was hot as blazes that day that’s for sure, with no wind, no air, and it was one of those days, always one of those days, you could smell the sickly sweet fragrant coming from over the Proctor & Gamble soap factory across the channel on the Fore River side.

We got the old heap loaded with all the known supplies necessary for a “poor man’s” barbecue in those days. You know those cheap plastic lawn chairs from Grossman’s or Raymond’s or one of those discount stores before they had real discount stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart, a few old worn-out blankets fresh from night duty on our beds, some resurrected threadbare towels that were already faded in about 1837 from the six thousand washings that kids put even the most resilient towel through in a short time, the obligatory King’s charcoal briquettes, including that fear-provoking, smelly lighter fluid you needed to light them with in those barbaric days before gas-saturated instant-lite charcoal. For food: hot dogs, blanched white-dough rolls, assorted condiments, a cooler with various kinds of tonic (a.k.a. soda, for the younger reader) and ice cream. Ya, and some beach toys, including a pail and shovel because today, of all days, I am bound and determined to harvest some clams across the way from the park on Adamsville Beach at low tide just like I’d seen all kinds of guys doing every time we went there so that we can have a real outing. I can see and hear them boiling in that percolating, turbulent, swirling grey-white water in the big steaming aluminum kettle already.

All of this stuff, of course, is packed helter-skelter in our “designer” Elm Farms grocery store paper shopping bags that we made due with to carry stuff around in, near or far. Hey, don’t laugh you did too, didn’t you? And what about hamburgers you say, right? No, no way, that cut of meat was too pricey. It wasn’t until much later when I was a teenager and invited to someone else’s family-famous barbecue that I knew that those too were a staple, I swear. I already told you I was the “official” procurer of the Kennedy’s potato salad in another dream fragment so I don’t need to tell you about that delicacy again, okay?

And we are off, amazingly, this time for one of the few time in family-recorded history without the inevitable- “who knows where it started or who started it” -incident, one of a whole universe of possible incidents that almost always delayed our start every time our little clan moved from point A to point B. Even a small point A to point B like this venture. So everything was okay, just fine all the way up that single way out of “the projects,” Palmer Street, until we got going on Sea Street, a couple of miles out, then the heap started choking, crackling, burping, sneezing, hiccupping, smoking and croaking and I don’t know what else. We tumbled out of the car, with me already getting ready to do my, by now, finely-tuned “fume act” that like I told you got a work-out ever time one of these misadventures rolled around, and pulled out every thing we could with us.

Ma, then knowingly, said we would have to go back home because even she knew the car was finished. I, revolutionary that I was back then, put my foot down and said no we could walk to Treasure Island, it wasn’t far. I don’t know if I can convey, or if I should convey to you, the holy hell that I raised to get my way that day. And I did a united front with my two brothers, who, usually, ignored me and I ignored them at this point in our family careers. Democracy, of a sort, ruled. Or maybe poor Ma just got worn out from our caterwauling. In any case, we abandoned a few things with my father, including that pail and shovel that was going to provide us with a gourmet’s delight of boiled clams fresh from the now mythical sea, and started our trek with the well-known basics-food and utensils and toys and chairs and, and…

Let me cut to the chase here a little. Of course I have to tell you about our route and about how your humble tour director got the bright idea that we could take a short cut down Chickatawbut Street. (This is a real street, look it up. I used to use it every time I wanted to ride my bike over to Grandma’s on Young Street in North Adamsville.) The idea of said "smart guy" tour director was to get a breeze, a little breeze while we are walking with our now heavy loads by cutting onto Shore Avenue near the Merrymount Yacht Club. The problem is that, in search of breeze or of no breeze, this way is longer, much longer for three young boys and a dragged-out mama. Well, the long and short of it was, have you ever heard of the “Bataan Death March” during World War II? If you haven’t, look it up on “Wikipedia.” Those poor, bedeviled guys had nothing on us by the time, late afternoon, we got to our destination. We were beat, beat up, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday, beat every way a human being can be beat. Did I say beat? Oh ya, I did. But Ma, sensing our three murderous hearts by then, got the charcoals burning in one of the fireplaces they provided back then, and maybe they still do. And we were off to the races.

Hey, do you really need to know about mustard and relish crammed char-broiled hot dogs or my brother’s strange ketchup-filled one on white-breaded, nasty-tasting hot dog rolls that we got cheap from Elm Farms or maybe it was First National, or my beloved Kennedy’s potato salad that kind of got mashed up in the mess up or "Hires" root beer, or "Nehi" grape, or "Nehi" orange or store–bought boxed ice cream, maybe, "Sealtest" harlequin (chocolate, strawberry and vanilla all together, see), except melted. Or those ever- present roasted marshmallow that stuck to the roof of my mouth. You’ve been down that road yourselves so you don’t need me for a guide. And besides I’m starting to get sleepy after a long day. But as tired, dusty, and dirty as I am just telling this story… Ah, Treasure Island.