Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King OF The Beats" Jack Kerouac-As Hometown Lowell Celebrates- On The 60th Anniversary Of Allan Ginsberg’s “Howl”* Writer's Corner-The News From Jack Kerouac's Hometown of Lowell Today- Writing Through Those Mean Streets-Professor Richie Farrell's Story

Click on title to link to recent story about today's mean streets of the old worn out textile mill of Lowell, Massachusetts that Jack Kerouac wrote so lovingly about over half a century ago. As I have mentioned before in other, more political contexts-"those streets ain't for dreaming now".

The Tattered, Battered Generation of '68

Commentary

In searching for a couple of old neighbors, whose stories I have related in this space, from the old working class neighborhood where I grew up I, unintentionally, found some other people from my high school class who helped me in my search. In what I, innocently, thought was a simple effort to help out one particular classmate, a former class officer, I agreed to answer some questions for a project that my class, the Class of 1964, was doing in preparation for next year’s 45th (ouch!) class reunion. Apparently, this is to be an endless series of questions that is starting to make my run of the mill entries in this space seem like child’s play by comparison. I am placing here, as I have done in the past, the answer to the question below, as it may be of interest to those who, long of tooth now, come from that time. I cannot complaint too much on this particular question, however, since I motivated it by a comment that I made to a previous question on the class survey.

Today’s Question: Do you consider yourself a member of the Generation of ‘68?

"In that time, twas bliss to be alive, to be young was very heaven"- a line from a poem by William Wordsworth in praise of the early stages of the French Revolution.


I mentioned in the Tell My Story section of my profile that while we were all members of the Class of 1964 some of us were also members of the Generation of ’68. I guess to those of us who considered themselves part of that experience no further explanation is necessary. However, if you are in doubt then let me give my take on what such membership would entail.

This question is actually prompted by an observation made by my old friend, and our classmate, the legendary track and cross-country runner Bill C. Part of my motivation for joining in this work was to find him. I have done so and we have started to keep in touch again. At one of the bull sessions that we have had I asked him whether he had gone to any class reunions. I had not done so and therefore I was interested in his take on the subject. Bill said that the only one that he had gone to was the 5th reunion in 1969. Of course that is the high water mark for the Generation of ’68. A key observation that he related, as least for my purpose here, is that when he went to that reunion and people came up to him to introduce themselves he had trouble identifying people, especially the guys, because of all the beards and long hair that were supreme tribal symbols at the time. So that is one, perhaps superficial, criterion for membership.

Frankly, dear classmates, among the reasons that I turned my back on the old hometown right after high school was that it seemed like a ‘square’ (remember that tribal term from our youth meaning not hip) working class town that did not fit in with my evolving political and cultural, or rather counter-cultural, interests. Thus, Bill’s comments rather startled me. My assumption would have been that the ‘squares’ would have gotten a job after high school (or gone to college and then gotten a job), gotten married, had kids, bought a house and followed that trail, wherever it led. This new knowledge may tell me something different.

Is it possible that there were many other kindred spirits from our class who broke from that pattern, as least for a while? Who not only grew their hair long (male or female) or grew beards (male) but maybe dressed in the symbolic Army/ Navy store fashions of the day (male or female) or burned their bras (female)? Or did some dope (Yes, I know we are all taking the Bill Clinton defense on this one. Now) and made all the rock concerts? Or hitchhiked across the country? Or opposed the damn Vietnam War and got tear gassed for their efforts, supported the black liberation struggle and got tear gassed for their efforts, supported an end to the draft, ROTC on campus, etc. and got......well, you know the rest of the line? Or lived in a commune or any number of other things of like kind that were the signposts of the generation of ’68? In short, tried to 'storm heaven'. We lost that fight but the storm clouds are gathering again in 2008. Your stories, please (and that includes those ‘squares’ who do not now seem quite that way anymore).

*Once Again-Out In The Be-Bop Night- The School Dance Last Chance

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Platters performing their classic last dance number, Only You.

CD Review

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Keep On Rocking, Last Dance, Time-Life, 1989

I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” in this space reviewing the teenage culture of the 1950s, especially the inevitable school dance and the also equally inevitable last dance. That event, the last dance that is, was the last chance for even shy boys like me to prove that we were not wallflowers, or worst. The last chance to rise (or fall) in the torrid and relentless pecking order of the social scene at school. And moreover to prove to that certain she that you were made of some sort of heroic stuff, the stuff of dreams, of her dreams, thank you very much. Moreover, to make use of that social capital you invested in by learning to dance, or the “shadow” of learning to dance.

But all of that social stuff is neither here nor there at last dance time. The real question, the world historic question, is whether that song will be a slow one or a fast one. A slow one means that you have to dance close and hope, hope to high heaven, that you do not ruin your partner’s feet and shoes (shoes, moreover, brought for just this occasion, damn). A fast one brings a sigh of relief as you know; know as sure as you are born, that you can fake that one with a couple of wiggly moves. This compilation has both types of songs for the nostalgically-inclined AARP demographics this item is pitched to. And for the younger set a chance to giggle at what your parents and grandparents got all heated up about and along the way thank someone, some blessed spirit, that as members in good standing of hip-hop nation you avoided all of that.

Stick outs here include: legendary rocker Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller (fast); The Fireflies’ You Were Mine (slow, ouch); Sandy Nelson’s Teen Beat (fast); and The Platter’s classic (the one you prayed they would play) Only You. How is that for dee-jay even-handedness?

*Out In The Be-Bop Night- Fragments On The Ethos Of Working Class Culture – Frankie’s Big Summer’s Day Walk, Circa 1960

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Capris performing their doo-wop classic, There's A Moon Out Tonight. This is sent out by request to Frankie, from the old neighborhood.

Markin comment:

No, this will not be a revival of the controversy in the Bolshevik Party in the post- Civil War Soviet Union of the 1920s. That controversy pitted those who championed a “proletarian culture” bias by the workers state in the cultural field and those who, like Leon Trotsky, argued for a policy of “let one hundred flowers bloom and contend” (although not in those words, and with the proviso that the tendency was not engaged in counter-revolutionary activity) against each other. (See chapters six and seven of Trotsky’s 1924 Literature and Revolution at the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for further information on that dispute.) This is merely a tip of the hat to a small segment of the working class, and its ethos, in a small section of America in the 1950s and 1960s (now dubbed the “golden age” of the American working class).

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This space, as any even casual reader can readily see, is driven by politics, and occasionally, by comment on culture and other ephemera. While I have, liberally, sprinkled my own experiences, political, cultural and personal, in entries throughout the years I have done so mainly in order to round out a “cautionary tale”, or some other devilish thing. On some very rare occasions I have just let the personal story drive the commentary, and force the reader to figure out what the heck was driving the thing, mainly hubris I think. Okay, I will dress that last remark up some to be “politically correct”, mainly “revolutionary” hubris. Egad!

Those occasions of personal reflection, in any case, were most in evidence a couple of years ago when I got caught up in doing some work, Jimmy Higgins work as its turned out, for my high school reunion committee (and, particularly, its hard-driving, relentless, merciless, hubristic, I am being kind , chairperson). That exercise, which churned up lots of evidences of the reasons for my continuing adherence to my working class roots and that also help explain my continuing fight for the historic interest of the class, made me think that once in a while I should, for a change of pace, do some additional pieces. Politics is in command in this space, as the Maoists in the 1960s used to be fond of saying (endlessly) during the period of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, but today I am posting the first of these off-the cuff entries.

As the first such entry will make clear I am approaching this series in a little different manner from the previously straight expository format. The more I thought about it the more I was struck by the pervasive working class ethos of my growing-up home town, even imbibed in by those who qualified for genuine professional middle class status, or other such statuses. That ethos drove, seemingly from cradle to grave, a whole way of life from attitudes toward the various childhood and teenage rites of passage: of gaudy spectacles like the Fourth Of July, where kids would run the gauntlet like the “running of the bulls” at Pamplona for cheapjack sodas and ice cream; of over-the-top Christmas house light displays although in many a house, and, perhaps, especially in those houses, the late hip-hop artist Biggie Smalls’ line “Christmas kinda missed us” had full force; of cheap carnival rides on rickety Ferris wheels, cotton candy sugar-smacked, fried dough mouth’d, three-chance-for a quarters, and other shell games to support local charities and youth programs; and, of those first awkward basement cellar long-faced, off-handedly dressed boys on one side, fresh-scrubbed, shoulder-showing, perky, sun-dressed girls on the other, giggling, suddenly lights out “petting” kid parties, somewhat chaperoned (wink).

And later on, of the hazings and harassments of entering new schools as one got older, graduating from elementary “punk” to middle school “crazy” to high school, well maybe we will survive and “learn a trade” or go with pa on his job; of block parties where the subtle “shanty” and “lace curtain” shadings and their meanings were faithfully observed by babe child and long-toothed grandpa alike: of that bloody, long-abandoned railroad track that literally divided the “right” from the “wrong” side of the tracks (and still does) between the respectable working class and the benighted working poor (my working poor); of cars, and who did and did not have a “boss” one, a ’57 Chevy one at that, kid and dad alike, and what that meant; and, of course, the endless, endless, endless high school struggle, no, not what you think, over the “high theory” issue of girls; of high school dances and of the yeses and noes embedded in the etiquette of such existence, and of Saturday night (Saturday end of night, last dance) that was built for such existences, whatever the etiquette; of the kinds of consumer products one chose, if affordable, from shoes to cars, and what was said about them and you. Whoa!

And on and on, of attitudes toward women, some of them pretty raw and still prevalent even now let us not kid each other, toward the big social issues, toward sorrows, envies and angers, and a whole range of other quirky things that make an ethos, and that are better described in story form than as an academic exercise. But above all about dreams, about the size and scope of dreams in a post-World War II environment where theoretically “the sky was the limit.” It is that dream part, that littleness dream part that is the axis of what I want to highlight. And as I said before, politics is in command, so another idea is to show how changing the society from one where the many are only permitted small dreams, like back in the old home town, to that projected in our communist future where “the red dream sky is the limit” will really be the limit.

Some short comments on Frank, the central character this sketch. Frank and I were bosom buddies all through junior high school. I had changed junior high schools in the seventh grade and, as most of you well know, such a transfer from a familar to an “alien” school is “the kiss of death” at that age. The turf, its parameters and etiquettes, are already etched in stone. The “ins” and “outs”, just vaguely named in elementary school, are now eternally, granitically confirmed. Frank, mad man, mad monk man (seriously considered at the time,the monk part), proto-beatnik that he was got me through those hard times. After some searching I recently found Frank, who already had been informed of what I was up to by that self-same class chairperson and in turn wanted me, no ordered me under maximum penalty, undefined, to write this little story. His way.

Frank’s path and mine diverged long ago. He is now a very high-priced and high-powered lawyer whose idea of pro bono work is to “donate” his time “saving the earth” by acting as an unpaid legal consultant to various Democratic Party political committees, state and national. Well, such is life, the political life any way. But remember this last little fact when you read old Frank's whiny little saga.

An Atlantic Summer's Day, Circa 1960-For Frank, Class Of 1964

This is the way Frank told me the story, mainly, so it’s really a Frank story that I want to tell you about but around the edges it could be my story, or your story for that matter:

Frank, long, winter-weight black-panted, long sleeve plaid flannel-shirted, thick-soled work boot-shod, de rigueur pseudo-beatnik posing attire, summer or winter, that he thought made him “cool”, at least for the be-bop, look-at-me-I'm-a-real-gone daddy, bear-baiting of the public (and not just the public) that he relished anguished over the job ahead the details of which will concern us later, not now. Melted by the late August sun like some Woolworth’s grilled cheese sandwich, he stood almost immobile, on the Sagamore Street side, looking toward the early morning vacant Welcome Young Field in front of him, as he slowly and methodically pulled out, for about the eighteenth time, or maybe about the eighteen thousandth, a now sweat-soaked, salt-stained, red railroad man’s handkerchief (also de rigueur) to wipe off the new wave of venial sin-producing (at least), swear-to-the-high-heavens-inducing sweat that had formed on his brow.

Frank had, after leaving his own house, already crossed the long-abandoned, rusty-steeled, wooden-tie worn Old Colony railroad tracks that separated the almost sociologically proverbial well-worn, well-trodden “good” from “bad” side of our town, his the “bad”, and mind too (that track, now used as part of the Red Line subway extension system, still stands guardian to that dividing line). He faced, and he knew he faced, even this early in the morning, another day in hell, Frank-ish hell, or so it seemed to him like that was where the day was heading, no question. Another one of those endless, furnace-blasting, dirt-kicking, hard-breathing, nerve-fraying, gates of hell, “dogs days”, August days. Worst, worst for old weather-beaten, you might as well say world-beaten Frank, a fiendish, fierce, frantic, frenzied 1960 teenage August day.

And, like I said, it was not just the weather either, although that was bad enough for anybody whose body metabolism cried out, and cried out loud and clear, for temperate climates, for low humidities, or just the cool, sweet hum of an ocean breeze now and again. But also, plain truth, it was just being a befuddled, beleaguered, bewildered, benighted, be-jesused kid that gummed up the works as well. Frank had it bad. I want to say, if memory does not fail me, that there aren’t double “dog days” like that now, heat-driven, sweltering, suffocating, got-to-break-out-or-bust teenage days, not August days anyway.

But, no, now that I think about it, that’s just not right, not at least if you believe, and you should, all the information about climate change and the rip-roaring way we, meaning you and me, and Frank too, have torn up old Mother Earth without thinking twice about it. Or even once, if you really look around. And about the 21st century angst-filled Franks that you see on those heat-swept streets now, except now the Franks are buried beneath some techno-gadgetry or other, and are not worrying about being be-bop, or real gone daddies, or being “beat”, or about bear-baiting the public or anything like that. But that’s a screed for another day; at least I want to put it off until then. Even writing about this day, this Frank-ish day, right now makes me reach for my own sweaty, dampish handkerchief. Let’s just call it a hot, dusty, uncomfortable, and dirty day and leave it at that.

What’s not “not right” though is that, Frank, a by now finely-tuned, professional quality sullen and also an award-worthy, very finely-tuned sulky teenage boy, usually, waited this kind of day out, impatiently, in his book-strewn, airless, sunless room, or what passed for his room if you don’t count his shared room brother’s stuff. And, maybe, the way Frank told it to me, he might have been beyond waiting impatiently, for he was ready, more than ready, for school to go back into session if for no other reason than, almost automatically come the “dog days”, to get cooled-out from this blazing, never-ending inferno of a heat wave that never failed to drain him of any human juices, creative or not.

And nothing, nothing, in this good, green world, seemingly, could get this black chino-panted, plaid flannel-shirted, salty sweat-dabbled, humidity-destroyed teenage boy out of his funk. Or it would, and I think you would have to agree, have to be something real good, almost a miracle, to break such a devilishly-imposed spell. In any case, as we catch up to him, he is not in his stuffy old bookcase of a room now but there he is walking, in defiance of all good, cool, common sense, long-panted, long-shirted, and long-faced, as I said was his fashionista statement to this wicked old world in those days, across Welcome Young Field on to Hancock Street. On a mission, no less. That is as good a place, the field that is, as any to start this saga.

Now come late August this quirky, almost primitively home-made-like softball field (with adjoining, little used asphalt tennis courts, little used in those days, anyway) was a ghost town during the day. The city provided and funded kids recreation programs were over, the balls and bats, paddles and playground things are now put away for another season, probably also, like Frank, just waiting for that first ring of the school bell come merciful September. The dust this day is thick and unsettled, forming atomic bomb-like powder puffs in the air at the slightest disturbance, like when an odd kid or two makes a short-cut across the field leaving a trail of such baby atomic bomb blasts behind them.

At this early hour the usually game-time firm white lines of the base paths are now broken, hither and yon, to hell from last night's combat, the battle for bragging rights at the old Red Feather gin mill, or something. They await some precious manicure from the Parks Department employees, if those public servants can fight their own lassitude in this heat. And while they are at it they should put some time, some serious patchwork time, fixing the ever-sagging, splintered, termited, or so it seemed on close inspection, but in any case rotted out wooden bleachers that served to corral a crowd on a hot summer’s night. Good luck, men. And if the work is not done, not to worry, the guys who play their damned, loud-noised, argue, argue loudly, over every play with the ever blind umpire, softball under the artificial night lights, if I know them and I do just like Frank does, know the grooves and ridges of the surfaces of the base paths like the backs of their hands, so don’t fret about them.

This field, this Welcome Young Field, by the way, is not just any field, but a field overflowing, torrentially overflowing, with all kinds of August memories, and June and July memories too. Maybe other months as well but those months come readily to mind, hot, sticky, sultry summer mind. Need I remind anyone, at least any Atlantic denizen of a certain age, of the annual Fourth of July celebrations that took place center stage there as far back as misty memory recalled. The mad, frenetic, survival-of-the-fittest dashes for ice cream, the crushed-up lines (boys and girls, separately ) for tonic (aka soda, with names like Nehi, grape and orange, and Hires Root Beer for good measure, for those too young to remember that New Englandism and those brand names), the foot races won by the swift and sure-footed (Frank said he almost won one once but “ran out of gas” just before the finish), the baby carriage parade, and the tired old, but much anticipated, ride on a real pony, and other foolery and frolic as we paid homage to those who fought, and bled, for the Republic. Maybe, maybe paid homage that is. A lot of that part gets mixed up with the ice cream and tonic. (Remember: that’s soda, you can look it up, but I’m telling you all the truth.).

Hell, even that little-used, like I said before little-used in those days, usually glass-strewn but now Parks Department cleaned up asphalt-floored tennis court got a workout as a dance/talent show venue, jerrybuilt stage platform and all. Every 1960 local American Idol wanna-be, misty Rosemary Clooney/McGuire Sisters-like 1940s Come On To My House, Paper Dolls torch singer jumped, literally, on stage to grab the mike and "fifteen minutes (or less)of fame." Needless to say every smoky-voiced male crooner who could make that jump got up there as well, fighting, fighting like a demon for that five dollar first prize, or whatever the payoff was. Later as it got dark, tunes, misty tunes of course, some of them already heard from those "rising stars" like some ill-fated encore, wafted in the night time air from some local band when the Fourth of July turned to adult desires come sundown after we kids had gorged, completely gorged, and feverishly exhausted, ourselves. That story, the dark night, stars are out, moony-faced, he looking for she, she looking for he, and the rest of it, (I don’t have to draw you a diagram, do I?), awaits its own chronicler. I’m just here to tell Frank’s story and that ain’t part of it.

This next thing is part of the story, though. In this field, this bedlam field, as Frank just reminded me, later, after Fourth Of July celebrations became just kids stuff for us, and kind of lame kids stuff at that, we had our first, not so serious, crushes on those glamorous-seeming, fresh-faced, shapely-figured, sweetly-smiling and icily-remote college girls, or at least older girls, who were employed by the Parks Department to teach us kids crafts and stuff in those summer programs that I mentioned before. Or had our first serious crushes on the so serious, so very serious, girls, our school classmates no less, determined to show Frank, Frank of all people, up in the craft-creating (spiffy gimp wrist band-making, pot-holder-for-Ma-making, copper-etching, etc.) department when everyone knew, or should have known, Frank was just letting them win for his own “evil” designs. (And maybe me, maybe I let them "win" too, although I will plead amnesia on this one.) Now that I think of it I might have tried that ruse on the girls myself, there was nothing to it then.

But enough of old, old time flights of fancies. I have to get moving, and moving a little more quickly, if I am ever going to accomplish “my mission”, or ever get Frank out of that blessed, memory-blessed, sanctified, dusty old ball field, sweaty flaming red railroad man’s handkerchief and all. I‘ll let you know about the mission, Frank's mission that is, as I go along like I told you I would before but it means, in the first place, that Frank has to go on this “dog day” August day to Norfolk Downs, or the “Downs” as I heard someone call it once and I didn’t know what they were talking about. We always called it just plain, ordinary, vanilla-tinged, one-horse Norfolk Downs. And Frank had to walk. He, hot as he was and as hot as it was, was certainly not going to wait for an eternity, or more, for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus from Fields Corner to meander up Hancock Street. Not that Frank was any stranger to that mode of transportation, to that walking. Frank, as I know for certain and have no need to plead amnesia on, had worn down many a pair of heel-broken, sole-thinned shoes (and maybe sneakers too)on the pavements and pathways of this old planet walking out of some forlorn place (or, for that matter, walking into such places). Just take my word for that, okay.

You can take my word for this too. Frank is now officially (my officially) out of the softball field and walking, walking slowly as befits the day, past the now also long gone little bus shelter hut as you get up onto Hancock Street. You know that old grey, shingled, always needed painting, smelly from some old wino's bottle or something, beat-up, beat-down thing that was suppose to protect you against the weathers while you waited for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus. He, Frank that is, insists that his observation of that hut be put in here despite the fact that he had no intention of taking the bus as I already told you. He is not even going to step into its shade for a minute to cool off. But get this. We have to go through this hut business because, if you can believe this, that lean-to has "symbolic" meaning. Apparently every time this know-it-all pseudo-“beatnik”, long pants, heavy shirt and all, had a beef with his mother (and, you know, let’s not kid each other, when the deal went down, the beef was ALWAYS with Ma in those pre-“parenting-sharing” days) he sought shelter against life’s storms there, before caving into whatever non-negotiable demands Ma insisted on. Sound familiar? But enough, already.

Well, if you get, or rather, if back then if you got on to Hancock Street, (and you actually made it past that historic Eastern Mass. hut, oops, "symbolic" hut) down at the far end of the Welcome Young Field and were heading for Norfolk Downs you have to pass the old high school just a few blocks up on your journey. Just past the old Merit gas station, remember. That gas station had been the scene of memories, Frank memories and mine too. But those are later gas-fumed, oil-drenched, tire-changed, under-the hood-fixated, car-crazy dreams; looking out at the (hopefully) starless be-bop ocean night; looking out for the highway of no return to the same old, same old mean streets of beat town; looking for some "high white note" heart of Saturday night or, better, the dreams accumulated from such a night; and, looking, and looking hard, desperately hard for the cloudless, sun-dried, sun-moaning under the weight of the day, low-slung blue pink Western-driven be-bop, bop-bop, sun-devouring sky and need not detain us here.


Don’t be scared by the thought of approaching the old school though, we all did it and most of us survived, I guess. Frank included. What makes this particular journey on this particular day past the old beige-bricked building “special” is that Frank (and I) had, just a couple of months before, graduated from Atlantic Junior High School (now Atlantic Middle School, as everyone who wants to show how smart and up-to-date they are keeps telling me) and so along with the sweat on his brow from the heat a little bit of anxiety is starting to form in Frank’s head about being a “little fish in a big pond” freshman come September as he passed by. Especially, a pseudo-beatnik “little fish”. See, he had cultivated a certain, well, let’s call it "style" over there at Atlantic. That “style” involved a total disdain for everything, everything except trying to impress girls with his long-panted, flannel-shirted, work boot-shod, thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to humankind. Like that really is the way to impress teenage girls, then or now. In any case he was worried, worried sick at times, that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading. Let’s not even get into that story now, or maybe, ever. Like I said we survived.

Frank nevertheless pulled himself together enough to push on until he came to the old medieval-inspired Sacred Heart Catholic Church further up Hancock Street, the church he went to, his church (and mine) in sunnier times. Frank need have no fear this day as he passed the church quickly, looking furtively to the other side of the street. Whatever demons were to be pushed away that day, or in his life, were looking the other way as well. The boy is on a mission after all, a trusted mission from his grandmother. Fearing some god, fearing some forgotten confession non-confessed venial sin like disobeying your parents, was child’s play compared to facing Gramma’s wrath when things weren’t done, and done right, on the very infrequent special occasions in his clan’s existence. I knew Frank's grandmother and I knew, and everyone else did too, that she was a “saint” but on these matters even god obeyed, or else. This special occasion, by the way, the reason Frank felt compelled to tell me this story, and to have me write it, or else, was the family Labor Day picnic to take place down at Treasure Island. (That’s what we called it in those days; today it is named after a fallen Marine, Cady Park, or something like that.) This occasion required a food order; make that a special food order, from Kennedy’s Deli.

And there it is as Frank makes the turn from Hancock Street to Billings Road. You knew Kennedy’s, right? The one right next to the big A&P grocery store back in those days. As Frank turned on Billings, went down a couple of storefronts and entered that store he had to, literally, walk in through the piled sawdust and occasional peanut shell husks on the gnarled hardwood floor. At once his senses were attacked by the smells of freshly ground coffee, a faint whiff of peanut butter being ground up, and of strong cheeses aging. He noticed a couple of other customers ahead of him and that he will have to wait, impatiently.

He also noticed that the single employee, a friendly clerk, was weighing a tub of butter for a matronly housewife, while a young mother, a couple of kids in tow, was trying, desperately, to keep them away from the cracker barrel or the massive dill pickle jar. The butter weighed and packaged the matronly women spoke out the rest of her order; half pound of cheese, thinly sliced, a pound of bologna, not too thin; a third of a pound of precious ham, very thinly sliced; and, the thing that made our boy pay attention, a pound of the famous house homemade potato salad, Kennedy's potato salad.

Frank winced, hoping that there will be enough of that manna left so that he could fill his order. That, above all else, is why he is a man on a mission on this day. Something about the almost paper thin-sliced, crunchy potatoes, the added vinegar or whatever elixir was put in the mix that made any picnic for him, whatever other treats might surface. Hey, I was crazy over it too. Who do you think got Frank "hip" to it, anyway? Not to worry though, there was plenty left and our boy carried his bundled order triumphantly out of the door, noticing the bigger crowds going in and out of the A&P with their plastic sheathed, pre-packaged deli meats, their tinny-tasting canned goods, their sullen potato salad, probably yesterday’s, and their expressionless fast exit faces. Obviously they had not been on any mission, not any special mission anyway, just another shopping trip. No, thank you, not today to all of that. Today Frank’s got real stuff.

“Wait a minute,” I can hear patient readers, impatiently moaning. This madman of a Frank story-teller has taken us, hither and yon, on some seemingly cryptic mission on behalf of an old friend, under threat or otherwise, through the sweat-drenched heat of summer, through the really best forgotten miseries of teenage-hood, and through the timeless dust and grime of vacant ball fields. He has regaled us with talk of ancient misty Fourth of July celebrations, the sexual longings of male teenagers, the anxieties of fitting in at a new school, and some off-hand remarks about religion. And for what, just to give us some twisted Proustian culinary odyssey about getting a pound of potato salad, famous or not, for grandmother. Well, yes. But hear me out. You don’t know the end. I swear Frank said this to me, shaking off the heat of the day on which he told me the story with a clean white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his light-weight suit jacket. After the purposeful journey the heat of that day didn’t seem so bad after all. That, my friends, made it all worth the telling, right?

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Theres A Moon Out Tonight-The Cparis Lyrics

There's a (moon out tonight) whoa-oh-oh ooh
Let's go strollin'
There's a (girl in my heart) whoa-oh-oh ooh
Whose heart I've stolen
There's a moon out tonight (whoa-oh-oh ooh)
Let's go strollin' through the park (ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh)

There's a (glow in my heart) whoa-oh-oh ooh
I never felt before
There's a (girl at my side) whoa-oh-oh ooh
That I adore
There's a glow in my heart I never felt before (ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh)

Oh darlin'
Where have you been?
I've been longin' for you all my life

Whoa-uh-oh baby I never felt this way before
I guess it's because there's a moon out tonight

There's a (glow in my heart) whoa-oh-oh ooh
I never felt before
There's a (girl at my side) whoa-oh-oh ooh
That I adore
There's glow in my heart
I guess it's because

There's a moon out tonight
Moon out tonight
Moon out tonight
Moon out tonight
There's a moon out tonight

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Tom Waits' "Tom Traubert's Blues"

Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Tom Waits performing "Tom Traubert's Blues".

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

Tom Traubert's Blues
(Tom Waits 1976)

Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did
Got what I paid for now
See ya tomorrow, hey Frank can I borrow
A couple of bucks from you?
To go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go a waltzing Matilda with me

I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
And tired of all these soldiers here
No one speaks English and everything's broken
And my Stacys are soaking wet
To go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go a waltzing Matilda with me

Now the dogs are barking and the taxi cab's parking
A lot they can do for me
I begged you to stab me, you tore my shirt open
And I'm down on my knees tonight
Old Bushmill's I staggered, you buried the dagger
Your silhouette window light
To go waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go a waltzing Matilda with me

Now I lost my Saint Christopher now that I've kissed her
And the one-armed bandit knows
And the maverick Chinaman and the cold-blooded signs
And the girls down by the strip-tease shows
Go, waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go a waltzing Matilda with me

No, I don't want your sympathy
The fugitives say that the streets aren't for dreaming now
Manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories
They want a piece of the action anyhow
Go, waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go a waltzing Matilda with me

And you can ask any sailor and the keys from the jailor
And the old men in wheelchairs know
That Matilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred
And she follows wherever you may go
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
You'll go a waltzing Matilda with me

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on
An old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers
The night watchman flame keepers and goodnight to Matilda too

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Tom Waits' "The Ghost Of Saturday Night"

Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Tom Waits performing "The Ghost Of Saturday Night".

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

"The Ghosts of Saturday Night"

(After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)

A cab combs the snake,
Tryin' to rake in that last night's fare,
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life
like small change on strangers...

Paws his inside P-coat pocket
for a welcome twenty-five cents,
And the last bent butt from a package of Kents,
As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair.

Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, "Irene"
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes

And the Texaco beacon burns on,
The steel-belted attendant with a 'Ring and Valve Special'...
Cryin' "Fill'er up and check that oil"
"You know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil."

The early mornin' final edition's on the stands,
And that town cryer's cryin' there with nickels in his hands.
Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents,
Eggs - roll 'em over and a package of Kents,
Adam and Eve on a log, you can sink 'em damn straight,
Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can't be late.

And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamond
Across a cash crop car lot
filled with twilight Coupe Devilles,
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of Saturday night...

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Tom Waits' "Diamonds On My Windshield"

Click on the title to link a "YouTube" film clip of Tom Waits performing "Diamonds On My Windshield".

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

Tom Waits Diamonds On My Windshield Lyrics

Diamonds on my windshield
Tears from heaven
Pulling into town on the Interstate
Pulling a steel train in the rain
The wind bites my cheek through the wing
Fast flying, freway driving
Always makes me sing

There's a Duster tryin' to change my tune
Pulling up fast on the right
Rolling restlessly, twenty-four hour moon

Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head
Wishing he was home in a Wiscosin bed
Fifteen feet of snow in the East
Colder then a welldigger's ass

Oceanside it ends the ride, San Clemente coming up
Sunday desperadoes slip by, gas station closed,
Cruise with a dry back
Orange drive-in the neon billin'
Theatre's fillin' to the brim
Slave girls and a hot spurn bucket full of sin

Metropolitan area with interchange and connections
Fly-by-nights from Riverside
Black and white plates, out of state,
Running a little bit late

Sailors jockey for the fast lane
101 don't miss it
Rolling hills and concrete fields
The broken line's on your mind

Eights go east and the fives go north
The merging nexus back and forth
You see your sign, cross the line,
Signalling with a blink

The radio's gone off the air
Gives you time to think
You ease it out and you creep across
Intersection light goes out
You hear the rumble
As you fumble for a cigarette
Blazing through this midnight jungle
Remember someone that you met
One more block; the engine talks
And whispers 'home at last'
It whispers, whispers, whispers
'home at last', home at last

*The Great Divide-The Class Struggle in America, Part I- The Studs Terkel Interview Series

Click On Title To Link To Studs Terkel’s Web Page.

Book Review

The Great Divide: Second Thoughts On The American Dream, Studs Terkel, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988

As I have done on other occasions when I am reviewing more than one work by an author I am using some of the same comments, where they are pertinent, here as I did in earlier reviews. In this series the first Studs Terkel book reviewed was that of his "The Good War": an Oral History of World War II.

Strangely, as I found out about the recent death of long time pro-working class journalist and general truth-teller "Studs" Terkel I was just beginning to read his "The Good War", about the lives and experiences of, mainly, ordinary people during World War II in America and elsewhere, for review in this space. As with other authors once I get started I tend to like to review several works that are relevant to see where their work goes. In the present case the review of The Great Divide serves a dual purpose because not only is the book a rather remarkable work of oral history but also serves as political prognosis about the emergence of a trend in the American working class in the late 1980's toward downward mobility and the abandonment of the "American Dream" as a harbinger of things that have come to pass today, twenty years on. In short, with the exception of the then already decimated family farmer who is, sadly, not a factor today and the then rampant deindustrialization of Middle America that continues unabated, many of the interviews could have been done today, twenty years later.

Once again Studs Terkel is the master interviewer but I am still put off by the fact, as I was in "The Good War", of his rather bland and inadequate old New Deal political perspective, as much as a working class partisan as he might have been. Notwithstanding that shortcoming his reportage is, as usual, centered on ordinary working people, or those who came from that milieu. These are my kind of people. This is where I come from. These are people I want to know about, especially the Midwesterners and Chicagoans who dominate this book. Being from the East, although some of their life stories, to use the current favored term, "resonate" with me other values like ardent heartland-derived patriotism, admiration for the late President Ronald Reagan, strong religious values and inordinate respect for law and order do not. Terkel, to his credit, heard the particular musical cadence of their lives and wrote with some verve on the subject, especially that old Chicago melody he has embraced that I also noticed from my reading of "The Good War" (Musically, Robert Johnson's "Sweet Home, Chicago" fits the bill here, right?).

One thing that became apparent to me immediately after reading this book, and as is also true of the majority of Terkel's interview books, is that he is not the dominant presence but is a rather light, if intensely interested, interloper in these stories. For better or worse the interviewees get to tell their stories, unchained. In this age of 24/7 media coverage with every half-baked journalist or wannabe interjecting his or her personality into somebody else's story this was, and is, rather refreshing. Of course this journalistic virtue does not mean that Studs did not have control over who got to tell their stories and who didn't to fit his preoccupations and sense of order. But, so be it.

What were Stud's preoccupations in this book? He clearly wanted to contrast the old Midwestern industrial blue collar values with the then emergence Yuppie values that were eroding that old sense of neighborly social solidarity. Moreover, he wanted to contrast various approaches to, let us call it, the need for spirituality as various religious experiments started to flourish (mainly, but not exclusively, varieties of Protestant fundamentalism) from the mega-mall churches to the lonely vigils of the Central American Sanctuary movement. Terkel gives full expression to the ambiguities of the Reagan years from the lassiz faire governmental deregulation (that we are now forced to cope with) to the various foreign policy initiatives, especially in Central America and against the Soviet Union. Also full expression to the failures of the 1960's to bring about dramatic progressive social change (a problem we still have to live down) leaving many participants bewitched and bewildered.


And what stories are being told here? Well, certainly this book is filled with interviews of the lives, struggles and fate of the rank and file blue collar workers displaced by "globalization" and the deindustrialization of America. A few stories of conflict between pro-union and anti-union forces (most dramatically in a husband and wife interview where they were on opposite sides of the class line in a long labor dispute, the husband being a "scab"). Several stories concern the quest for religious fulfillment in a world that has left more than its fair share of people isolated and bewildered by the rapid advances of technology without a commensurate sense of ownership. Many stories tell of the hard, hard life of the city, especially in "the projects", black and white. A few of the same kind of problems in the countryside, especially concerning the fate of the 'hillbillies', the people that I come from (on my father's side). All in all most stories will not seem alien to those who are struggling today to make sense of a world that they, after a quick look at their assets, surely do not own. Once again kudos to Studs for hitting the mother lode. Thanks, Brother Terkel.

Pie In The Sky?

DVD REVIEW

Waitress, 2007

Readers of this space may have noticed that most of the DVD’s that I have reviewed tend to be from the black and white period of cinema history or, if later, have some overwhelming political significance like the movie Reds. For the record I do watch some current films but that I do not review them is for the most part I do not find them worthy of review in this space. However it is probably a surprise that I am reviewing a 2007 film about a spunky pie-making crazed waitress caught up in a world that is not of her own making and seemingly is a black hole as she attempts to get out.

The plot line of this film is that a young, seemingly wholesome and whimsical working class waitress in a pie café has become unintentionally (on her part, at least) pregnant by her oafish, crude and violent husband out somewhere in small town America. This predicament is exactly the nightmare scenario that this woman does not want. Initially she wants neither the baby nor her husband. What she does really want is to win a big pie bake-off and flee the small burg. The plot meanders around the struggle to reach that goal. Along the way she is romantically involved with her attending physician, begins to get out from under her husband’s thumb (and ultimately of the good doctor's, as well, who just happens to be married) and by a stroke of good fortune (provided by the old pie café owner, played by Andy Griffith) she is able to be independent and raise her now loved child on her own. Well, this is one possible take on the American dream, isn’t it?

But what about the politics? In a funny way the politics are very mixed. Her apparently adamant aversion to the thought of an abortion despite the boorish husband and the crimp it places on her dreams seems counter-intuitive but within the flow of current politics where the emphasis is on keeping abortion legal but rare. Her sex-crazed affair with her doctor while pregnant puts a very different spin on the assumptions about pregnancy and sexuality as previously portrayed on the screen. But in the end our little working class waitress gets her little slice of the American dream, right? She gets her ticket to the middle class dream café and her personal freedom. Nobody says that a commercial film has be politically correct, left or right(and despite all the clamor, most are thankfully not), or be profound but the definitely mixed messages of this film have got this old leftist scratching his head. See the thing and judge for yourselves.