***Tribute Album Potpourri- A Tip Of The Hat To Hank Williams- The Original Honky Tonk Man

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Hank William's Doing "Lovesick Blues".

This Is Part Of A Four Artist Tribute Album Potpourri- A Tip Of The Hat To Hank Williams, Mississippi John Hurt, Bob Dylan and Greg Brown.

CD REVIEW

A musical performer knows that he or she has arrived when they have accumulated enough laurels and created enough songs to be worthy, at least in some record producer's eyes, of a tribute album. When they are also alive to accept the accolades as two out of the four of the artists under review are, which in these cases is only proper, that is all to the good. That said, not all tribute albums are created equally. Some are full of star-studded covers, others are filled with lesser lights who have been influenced by the artist that they are paying tribute to. As a general proposition though I find it a fairly rare occurrence, as I have noted in a review of the “Timeless” tribute album to Hank Williams, that the cover artist outdoes the work of the original recording artist. With that point in mind I will give my “skinny” on the cover artists here.

To The Original Honk-Tonk Man

Timeless; A 50th Anniversary Tribute to Hank Williams, various artists, UMG Recordings, 2001

In a review of a Hank Williams anthology in this space I noted that I have been listening to a local weekend folk, rock and contemporary music interview show here in Boston for years. The format of the show is to interview, in depth, contemporary well-known singers, songwriters and musicians as well as young unknowns looking to make their mark. One of the questions always asked of each interviewee is about formative influences on their musical development. Although I do not believe that I have ever heard what I would consider a country singer interviewed on the show the name Hank Williams has come up many more times than any other from young and old interviewees alike. That tells the tale of the importance of this man's work, beyond the obvious country influence.

Here some of those well-known musicians mentioned above pay tribute to Hank’s influence by covering his songs for a 50th Anniversary of his death edition. A strange occasion for a tribute one might say, although no so for the fast-living, hard-driving, hard drinking Mr. Williams. The likes of Bob Dylan (a subject of many tribute covers himself) on a rocking " Can't Get You Off Of My Mind", Johnnie Cash reciting the tearful "I Dreamed About Mama Last Night" and Beck on the mournful "You're Cheatin' Heart" do his memory honor with their own interpretations. I would note, however that, unlike a number of other artists such as the above-noted Dylan, that cover versions of Hank's songs do not usually measure up to the verve and imprint on the mind of his original renditions. The great exception here is Lucinda Williams (no relation, as far as I know) whose rendition of "Cold, Cold Heart" captured all the pathos, and more, of that tune. So long, one more time, Honky-Tonk Man. Listen on.


COLD COLD HEART Lyrics

I tried so hard my dear to show that you're my every dream.
Yet you're afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme
A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart
Why can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart

Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue
And so my heart is paying now for things I didn't do
In anger unkind words are said that make the teardrops start
Why can't I free your doubtful mind,and melt your cold cold heart

You'll never know how much it hurts to see you sit and cry
You know you need and want my love yet you're afraid to try
Why do you run and hide from life,to try it just ain't smart
Why can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart

There was a time when I believed that you belonged to me
But now I know your heart is shackled to a memory
The more I learn to care for you,the more we drift apart
Why can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart

Cool Water Lyrics


All [C] day I've faced the [G7] bar - ren waste
With [C] out the taste of [G7] wa-ter..... cool, [C] wa-ter.
Ole [F] Dan and I, with [G7] throats burned dry ,
and [C] souls that [F] cry
for [C] wa-ter.... [G7] cool, clear [C] wa-ter.

The [C] nights are cool and [G7] I'm a fool.
Each [C] star's a pool of [G7] wa-ter.... cool, clear [C] wa-ter.
And [F] with the dawn I'll [G7] wake and yawn
and [C] car-ry [F] on
to [C] wa-ter.... [G7] cool, clear [C] wa-ter.

The [C] sha - dows sway and [G7] seem to say
To- [C] night we pray for [G7] wa-ter.... cool, clear [C] wa-ter
And [F] way up there He'll [G7] hear our prayer
and [C] show us [F] where
there's [C] wa-ter.... [G7] cool, clear [C]wa-ter.

[C] Keep a-movin' Dan. Don't you [G7] listen to him Dan.
He's the [C] devil, not a man.
He [G7] spreads the burnin' sand with [C] wa-ter.
Say [F] Dan can't you see that [G7] big green tree,
where the [F] water's runnin' free.
It's [G7] waiting there for you and [C] me
and [G7] wa-ter.... cool, clear [C] wa-ter.

Dan's [C] feet are sore he's [G7] yearnin' for
Just [C] one thing more than [G7] wa-ter.... cool, clear [C] wa-ter.
Like [F] me I guess he'd [G7] like to rest
where [C] there's no [F] quest
for [C] wa-ter.... [G7] cool, clear [C] wa-ter.


HALF AS MUCH Lyrics

Written by Curley Williams 1952
Used by permission of Brent L. Weldon, Curley's grandson

If you love me half as much as I love you
You wouldn't worry me half as much as you do
You're nice to me when there's no one else around
You only build me up to let me down

If you missed me half as much as I miss you
You wouldn't stay away half as much as you do
I know that I would never be this blue
If you only loved me half as much as I love you
repeat both verses

Hey Good Lookin' Lyrics

Say hey good lookin'
whatcha got cookin'
how's about cookin' something up with me
Hey sweet baby
don't you think maybe
we could find us a brand new recepie

I got a hot rod Ford and a two dollar bill
and I know a spot right over the hill
There's soda pop and the dancin's free
so if you wanna have fun come along with me

Say hey good lookin'
whatcha got cookin'
how's about cookin' something up with me

[ steel - fiddle - steel ]

I'm free and ready
so we can go steady
how's about savin' all your time for me
No more lookin'
I know I've been tooken
how's about keepin' steady company

I'm gonna throw my datebook over the fence
and find me one for five or ten cents
I'll keep it till it's covered with age
cause I'm writin' your name down on every page

Hey good lookin,whatcha got cookin
how's about cookin something up
how's about cookin something up
how's about cookin something up with meee




HONKY TONKIN' Lyrics

Words and music by Hank Williams, Sr.

When [G] you are sad and lonely and have no place to go
come to see me baby, and bring along some dough
And we'll go Honky Tonkin', Honky Tonkin'
Honky Tonkin', Honey Baby
We'll go Honky Tonkin' [D7] 'round this [G] town.

When you and your baby have a fallin' out
Just call me up sweet mama and we'll go steppin' out
And we'll go Honky Tonkin', Honky Tonkin'
Honky Tonkin', Honey Baby
We'll go Honky Tonkin' 'round this town.

We're goin' to the city - to the city fair
If you go to the city then you will find me there
And we'll go Honky Tonkin', Honky Tonkin'
Honky Tonkin', Honey Baby
We'll go Honky Tonkin' 'round this town.

Repeat first verse


I'm a Long Gone Daddy Lyrics

All you want to do is sit around and pout
And now I got enough and so I'm getting out

I'm leaving now
I'm leaving now
I'm a long gone daddy I don't need you anyhow

I been in the doghouse so doggone long
That when I get a kiss I think that something's wrong

(chorus)

I'll go find a gal that wants to treat me right
You go get yourself a man that wants to fight

(chorus)

You start your jaws a-wagging and it never stop
You never shut your mouth until I blow my top

(chorus)

I remember back when you were nice and sweet
Things have changed, you'd rather fight than eat

(chorus)

I'm a-gonna do some riding on the midnight train
I'm taking everything except my ball and chain

(chorus)

JAMBALAYA Lyrics

1. [D]Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh [A]my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the [D]bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh [A]my oh
Son of a gun, we'll have good fun on the [D]bayou

CHORUS:
[D]Jambalaya, a-crawfish pie and-a file [A]gumbo
'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher a[D]mio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be [A]gay-oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the [D]bayou.

2. Instrumental Verse (Country Fiddle solo)

3. [D]Thibodeaux, Fontenot, the place is [A]buzzin'
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the [D]dozen
Dress in style, go hog wild, me oh [A]my oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the [D]bayou.

REPEAT CHORUS

4. Instrumental Verse (Country Fiddle solo)

FINAL CHORUS:
[D]Jambalaya, a-crawfish pie and-a file [A]gumbo
'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher a[D]mio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be [A]gay-oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the b[D]ayou.
Son of a [A]gun, we'll have big fun on the b[D]ayou.
Son of a [A]gun, we'll have big [A7]fun on the b[D]ayou.


YOU WIN AGAIN Lyrics

Recorded by Hank Williams, Sr.
Words and music by Hank Williams, Sr.

1st Verse:
[E] The [B7] news is [E] out - all over [A] town
That you've been [E] seen - a-runnin' [B7] 'round
I know that [E] I - should leave, but [A] then
I just can't [E] go - YOU [B7] WIN A- [E] GAIN.

1st Bridge:
This heart of [A] mine - could never [E] see
What ev'rybod - y knew but [B7] me
Just trusting [E] you - was my great [A] sin
What can I [E] do - YOU [B7] WIN A- [E] GAIN.

2nd Verse:
I'm sorry for - your victim now
'Cause soon his head - like mine will bow
He'll give his heart - but all in vain
And someday say - YOU WIN AGAIN.

2nd Bridge:
You have no heart - you have no shame
You take true love - and give the blame
I guess that I - should not complain
I love you still - YOU WIN AGAIN.


YOUR CHEATIN' HEART Lyrics

Your cheatin' heart,
Will make you weep,
You'll cry and cry,
And try to sleep,
But sleep won't come,
The whole night through,
Your cheatin heart, will tell on you...

When tears come down,
Like falling rain,
You'll toss around,
And call my name,
You'll walk the floor,
The way I do,
Your cheatin' heart, will tell on you...

Your cheatin' heart,
Will pine some day,
And crave the love,
You threw away,
The time will come,
When you'll be blue,
Your cheatin' heart, will tell on you...

When tears come down,
Like falling rain,
You'll toss around,
And call my name,
You'll walk the floor,
The way I do,
Your cheatin' heart, will tell on you...

A Guy Has To Do What A Guy Has To Do-With Glenn Ford’s The Big Heat In Mind

A Guy Has To Do What A Guy Has To Do-With Glenn Ford’s The Big Heat In Mind

 

By Zack James

 

Phil Larkin here, Phil Larkin who a lot of you know, and I am not ashamed to admit it like a lot of guy are these days, and gals too, now that they are in the profession, a real hard nose old school private detective. And all that means is, all I mean by that is, that unlike the fluff that you read in the high-priced hard cover so-called crime detection novels and worse on the screen, television or theater take your pick I tell the story straight. Take all the silly romance and intrigue out of what is for real P.Is ordinary to the grindstone work. I’ve told a million stories about my experiences and they are nothing but humdrum; real low-rent missing persons on the lam for some reason; real people trying to hide their assets from banks and loan companies when those institutions come looking for their chattels back, you know the plight of the “repo” man; and real people, real women mostly trying to track down some bum who is behind on his alimony/child support/whatever payments. No sex, drugs and rock and roll, although every seventh year you might get a tumble under the downy billows if some dame is short of cash and pretty please needs some heavy work done. But that is the exception. Yeah stuff that people who live to read crime detection novels and watch such movies for kicks would not believe because it is too much like their own lives but there you have it. I’m off my soap-box now.  

I have never been much for reading, any kind of reading except what I needed to just barely get by in school. Read Dashiell Hammett, Ray Chandler, Mickey Spillane, mostly and re-read them too. More to my liking, more my style ever since I was a kid going Saturday afternoon up to the Strand Theater in Riverdale Square was watching the old time black and white movies, two for matinee, plus a hidden bag of popcorn from Stop & Shop which my mother bought for me to survive those hungry three plus hours (two one and one half films plus intermission to take me to suppertime). Oh sure I like to watch the old time private detective movies too. I never learned much from them about private detection but one, and if you are a film aficionado you will know which I mean and why right off, The Maltese Falcon did teach me something, something I’ve kept with me ever since I first saw the film when I was a kid and then later as a young man, a young cop just starting out (and about five times since then).

I have looked for that lesson in other films that I have watched over the years, one of which I am going to tell you about in a minute but they didn’t come up often. If you know the Maltese Falcon story line bear with me for a minute. If you don’t here is the “skinny” which might just get you hopping to buy it cheap on Amazon or rent it out on Netflix whether you get any “life” lessons out of it or not. This one is about a an average just getting along private dick, Sam Spade, played by Humphrey Bogart who is, or was, every young bud’s idea of a great macho private eye, set the gold standard even if he got twisted up and almost thrown away with the wind before he was done. Sam and his partner, Miles Archer, the late Miles Archer before the film goes too far when he gets knocked off by a party, or parties, unknown got involved with a frail, with this, there is no other way to say it, deadly femme fatale who leads them, leads Sam really on a merry chase for a freaking statue of a bird.

But see the femme, this Briget, played by Mary Astor, was, is nothing but poison from the minute she walked into their low-rent San Francisco seen-better-days office in a then rundown part of town. In the end she was responsible for Mile’s death, big time responsible. And as the bodies kept piling up who knows how many others as the plot thickens and things got desperate. Naturally for a 1940s war-time movie you needed the added attraction of a little off-hand romance, sincere by either party or not. See as much as Sam wanted to let things go for the sake of the romance, let things that he knew straight up in his mind didn’t figure with this dame, even that she might have killed Miles, or had him killed by her actions, had him set-up since he got in the way of her plans and that kind of thing he decided in the end, rightfully so, that as a private detective, as a cop really, he has to send her over, has to avenge his partner’s death, has to look out for the good of the profession. Once he made up his mind-boom she was heading for the big step-off. That was a big lesson for me, a very big one.          

Here’s the funny part it works both ways, works both ways in the detective business, public cops or private. That’s the grift in the film I was watching the other night, this The Big Heat with Glenn Ford who did a lot of cop films like this one and the great “queen of the ‘1940s-1950s B-movies actress Gloria Grahame. I know all about the public cops because like I said once time when I telling another story I started out with the cops after I got out of the Army. I had been an MP where you didn’t learn squat about investigative work but mainly rousting drunk soldiers on Saturday nights and because of that leg-up as a veteran.  I joined the cops in Riverdale, my old hometown.

Now Riverdale isn’t like New York City where the action in The Big Heat takes place, or any  big city but the ethos is the same-actually the same as in the Army-“go along to get along” which is where most cops pick up the song. It also has about the same social structure, the social structure that counts, who is on top and untouchable and who isn’t-everybody else really. I ran into a snag with the public cops when I forget that “lesson number one,” when I wouldn’t look the other way when our Mr. Big in town drunk as a skunk one rainy night went off the highway and killed the woman he was with, a woman not his wife although he had had three of those previously including one just then at home. And Mister Big walked away clean, didn’t have a scratch on him, and walked away from the law clean as a jaybird. Nothing happened to him not a damn thing event though I, as the guy who was the lead investigator on the case wanted to throw the book at him for manslaughter. Upstairs said close it down, close it down tight. The girl’s parents, and she really was just a girl at eighteen just barely out of the local high school and who had tangled up with Mister Big when she thought he could get her places, couldn’t even get a peep of justice on that one. So I walked, walked into private detection and I have been glad as hell I did ever since. Maybe that too was my way of saying for the “good of the profession” like Bogie’s Sam Spade.   

Once in a while a public cop in the films will too. Take Bannion, the role played by Glenn Ford in the film I am talking about. He starts out as a kind of “go along” guy, has a wife and daughter, making payments on a nice leafy neighborhood house he doesn’t see often enough, likes his work enough that he sees thirty years and nice pension from a grateful citizenry while he plays with those grandchildren that he never had time for with his daughter. Nice scene. Except that “goes along” got pulled up short one day when he had to investigate the “suicide” of a fellow officer, a guy he barely knew but knew was on “the take” was in Mister Big’s pocket. Mister Big who doesn’t need to be named any more than that moniker because every town outside some small hamlet in mountainous New Hampshire or out in the desert in old-time Joshua Tree and maybe there too I don’t know for sure as some variation on that “leading citizen” theme. Half the force was in the pocket one way or another and the other half, most of the other half, was looking the other way.    

Bannion decided that he would do his normal full throttle investigation except he knew enough to pull up a shade bit short because it was a “department matter.” But every time Bannion tried to figure out why a cop on “the take” took his own life, why his wife was “blowing smoke” his way he kept getting signals that he should lay off. That only made him dig in his heels. (A public cops brother of Sam Spade for sure). When that dead cop’s bar-fly mistress turned up dead after talking to him he made some mental calculation that for the good of the department he was going to the mats on this one. And he did, except don’t forget Mister Big knows all, sees all, does all. Oh no not him personally for he like milords of old has personal retainers, thugs, to take care of business. How do you think that poor harmless bar-fly wound up face-down in the East River?  Yeah Mister Big’s hatchet man Lenny, let’s call him Lenny but like Mister Big it could be any moniker, took care of business, took care of that poor bar-fly who was slated to get even less justice in this wicked old world that that poor teenage girl back in Riverdale when I walked away.

Of course when you surround yourself with stooges you have to make sure they don’t make matters worse than when you started out. All Mister Big cared about in the beginning was to keep a lid on that “on the take” cop’s death since his widow had a piece of paper in a safety deposit box which would put him in the ditch with all the other geeks and losers. No way was Mister Big going under for that silly rap. Lenny made a cardinal mistake though he sub-contacted the work of getting rid of that bar-fly to out of town talent. The tough guy talent pool must have been getting thin though because this guy was something out of the “gang who could shoot straight” school of hard-knocks. He botched the bar-fly killing, worse, much worse, let’s call it fatal, the hired-help had the bright idea of planting a bomb in Bannion’s car-but Bannion’s wife got to the car first. BOOM. And now you had a man driven, a man driven to eradicate the cockroaches like Mister Big and his henchmen.

The man did it too. Almost single-handedly since most of the police department was still “on the take” or more than happy to keep looking the other way. Got some nifty help from that playgirl, Debby, played by Gloria Grahame, Lenny’s plaything, any man’s plaything as long as he kept playing the bills, kept the booze flowing and kept not asking too many questions about what she was doing in her off time. But guys like Lenny, hard guys when it comes to soft women made his own fatal mistake. Tramp or not Debby didn’t take kindly when in a fit of rage Lenny threw coffee in her face, her money face. Lenny got the big kiss-off. So did Mister Big when he tried to use Bannion’s young daughter as a shield against him. Too bad it wasn’t so easy to get rid of real Mister Bigs. But you know Bannion was right, Bannion had it figured just right because he knew if you could take down a cop like him, a straight and narrow guy, it was bad for the profession bad for every cop, good or bad. Maybe he too had watched Bogie’s Sam Spade go through his paces.            

*****The Latest From The “Veterans For Peace” Facebook Page-Gear Up For The 2016 Anti-War Season

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Late one night in 2014 Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton had been sitting at a bar in Boston, Jack Higgin’s Grille, down a few streets from the financial district toward Quincy Market talking about various experiences, political experiences in their lives as they were wont to do these days since they were both mostly retired. Ralph having turned over the day to day operation of his specialty electronics shop in Troy, New York to his youngest son as he in his turn had taken over from his father Ralph, Sr. when he had retired in 1991 (the eldest son, Ralph III, had opted for a career as a software engineer for General Electric still a force in the local economy although not nearly as powerful as when Ralph was young and it had been the largest private employer in the Tri-City area) and Sam had sold off his small print shop business in Carver down about thirty miles south of Boston to a large copying company when he had finally seen a few years before the writing on the wall that the day of the small specialty print shop specializing in silk-screening and other odd job methods of reproduction was done for in the computerized color world.

So they had time for remembrances back to the days in the early 1970s when they had first met and had caught the tail-end of the big splash 1960s political and social explosion that stirred significant elements of their generation, “the generation of ’68” so-called by Sam’s friend from New York City Fritz Jasper although neither of them had been involved in any of the cataclysmic events that had occurred in America (and the world) that year. Sam had that year fitfully been trying to start his own small printing business after working for a few years for Mr. Snyder the premier printer in town and he was knee-deep in trying to mop up on the silk-screen craze for posters and tee shirts and had even hired his old friend from high school Jack Callahan who had gone to the Massachusetts School of Art as his chief silk-screen designer, and later when he moved off the dime politically his acting manager as well. Ralph’s excuse was simpler, simplicity itself for he was knee-deep in the big muddy in the Central Highlands of Vietnam trying to keep body and soul together against that damn Charlie who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Occasionally over the years Ralph would come to Boston on trips at Sam’s invitation and they almost always would go have a few at Jack Higgin’s during his stay talking mainly family matters before Ralph would head back to Troy and his family but more frequently of late they would go back over the ground of their youth, would go over more that ground more than one time to see if something they could have done, or something they did not do, would have made a difference when the “counter-revolution,” when the conservative push-back reared its head, when the cultural wars began in earnest with the ebbing of that big good night 1960s explosion. Sam would return the favor by going out to Albany, or more frequently to Saratoga Springs where he, they could see who from the old days, Utah Phillips before he passed away, Rosalie Sorrels before she left the road, Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger before they passed but you get the picture, the old folk minute of the early 1960s that Sam had been very interested in when he started to hang around Cambridge later in that decade, were still alive enough to be playing at the famous coffeehouse still going from the 1960s, the Café Lena, although minus founder Lena for quite a while now. Sam had never lost the bug, never lost that longing for the lost folk minute that in his mind connected in with him hanging around the Hayes-Bickford in Harvard Square on lonesome weekends nights seeing what was to be seen. Sam had dragged Ralph, who despite living on about less than an hour away had never heard of the Café Lena since he had been tuned to the AM stations playing the awful stuff that got air time after the classic period of rock went into decline and before rock became acid-tinged, along with him and he had developed a pretty fair appreciation for the music as well.         

The conversation that night in 2014 got going after the usual few whiskey and sodas used to fortify them for the night talkfest had begun to take effect had been pushed in the direction of what ever happened to that socialist vision that had driven some of their early radical political work together (in the old days both of them in these midnight gabfest would have fortified themselves with in succession grass, cocaine, speed and watch the sun come up and still be talking. These days about midnight would be the end point, maybe earlier.). The specific reason for that question coming up that night had been that Sam had asked Ralph a few weeks before to write up a little remembrance of when he had first heard the socialist-anarchist-communist-radical labor militant   international working class anthem, the Internationale, for Fritz Jasper’s blog, American Protest Music.

Sam had noted that Ralph had with a certain sorrow stated that he no longer had occasion to sing the song. Moreover one of the reasons for that absence was that  despite his and Sam’s continued “good old cause” left-wing political activism socialism as a solution to humankind’s impasses was deeply out of favor (that activism as Ralph mentioned to Sam on more than one occasion these days considerably shortened from the old frenzied 24/7 desperate struggles around trying unsuccessfully end the Vietnam War from the American side by getting the government to stop the damn thing although the Vietnamese liberation forces in the end and at great cost had had no trouble doing so).

People, intellectuals and working stiffs alike, no longer for the most part had that socialist vision goal that had driven several generations, or the best parts of those generations, since the mid-19^th century to put their efforts into, did not have that goal on their radar, didn’t see a way out of the malaise through that route. Had moreover backed off considerably from that prospective since the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellites in the early 1990s if not before despite the obvious failure of capitalism to any longer put a dent in the vast inequalities and injustices, their suffered inequalities and injustices, in the world. Sam had had to agree to that sad statement, had had to agree that they, in effect, too had abandoned that goal in their own lives for all practical purposes even though they had been driven by that vision for a while once they got “religion” in the old days in the early 1970s, once they saw that the anti-war struggle that animated their first efforts was not going to get the war-makers to stop making war.

Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was growing older and more reflective, maybe it was that Ralph’s comments had stirred up some sense of guilt for losing the hard edge of their youthful dreams but that night Sam wanted to press the issue of what that socialist prospective meant, what they thought it was all about (both agreed in passing, almost as an afterthought that what had happened, what passed for socialism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere was NOT what they were dreaming of although they gave third world liberation struggles against imperialism like in Vietnam dependent on Soviet aid plenty of wiggle room to make mistakes and still retain their support).        

Both men during the course of their conversation commented on the fact that no way, no way in hell, if it had not been for the explosive events of the 1960s, of the war and later a bunch of social issue questions, mainly third world liberation struggles internationally and the black liberation question at home they would not even be having the conversation they were having (both also chuckling a little at using the old time terms, especially the use of “struggle” and “question,” for example the  black, gay, woman question since lately they had noticed that younger activists no longer spoke in such terms but used more ephemeral “white privilege,” “patriarchy,”  “gender” terms reflecting the identity politics that have been in fashion for a long time, since the ebb flow of the 1960s). 

No, nothing in the sweet young lives of Samuel Eaton to the Carver cranberry bog capital of world in Carver (then) working-class born (his father a “bogger” himself when they needed extra help) and Ralph Morris, Junior to the Troy General Electric plants-dominated working- class born would have in say 1967, maybe later, projected that almost fifty years later they would be fitfully and regretfully speaking about the their visions of socialism and it demise as a world driving force for social change. 

Ralph and Sam had imbibed all the standard identifiable working-class prejudices against reds, some of those prejudices more widespread among the general population of the times, you know, like the big red scare Cold War “your mommy is a commie, turn her in,” “the Russians are coming get under the desk and hold onto your head,” anybody to the left of Grandpa Ike, maybe even him, communist dupes of Joe Stalin and his progeny who pulled the strings from Moscow and made everybody jumpy; against blacks (Ralph had stood there right next to his father, Ralph, Sr., when he led the physical opposition to blacks moving into the Tappan Street section of town and had nothing, along with his corner boys at Van Patten’s Drugstore, but the “n” word to call black people, sometimes to their faces and Sam’s father was not much better, a southerner from hillbilly country down in Appalachia who had been stationed in Hingham at the end of World War II and stayed, who never could until his dying breathe call blacks anything but the “n” word); against gays and lesbians (Ralph and his boys mercilessly fag and dyke baiting them whenever the guys and he went to Saratoga Springs where those creeps spent their summers doing whatever nasty things they did to each other and Sam likewise down in Provincetown with his boys, he helping, beating up some poor guy in a back alley after one of them had made a fake pass at the guy, Jesus; against uppity woman, servile, domestic child-producing women like their good old mothers and sisters and wanna-bes were okay as were “easy” girls ready to toot their whistles, attitudes which they had only gotten beaten out of them when they ran into their respective future wives who had both been influenced by the women’s liberation movement although truth to tell they were not especially political, but rather artistic.  Native Americans didn’t even rate a nod since they were not on the radar, were written off in any case as fodder for cowboys and soldiers in blue. But mainly they had been red, white and blue American patriotic guys who really did have ice picks in their eyes for anybody who thought they would like to tread on old Uncle Sam (who had been “invented” around Ralph’s hometown way).      

See Ralph, Sam too for that matter, had joined the anti-war movement for personal reasons at first which had to do a lot with ending the war in Vietnam and not a lot about “changing the whole freaking world” (Ralph’s term). Certainly not creeping around the fringes of socialism before the 1960s ebbed and they had to look to the long haul to pursue their political dreams. Ralph’s story was a little bit amazing that way, see, he had served in the military, served in the Army, in Vietnam, had been drafted in early 1967 while he was working in his father’s electrical shop and to avoid being “cannon fodder” as anybody could see what was happening to every “drafted as infantry guy” he had enlisted (three years against the draft’s two) with the expectation of getting something in the electrical field as a job, something useful. But in 1967, 1968 what Uncle needed, desperately needed as General Westmoreland called for more troops, was more “grunts” to flush out Charlie and so Ralph wound up with a unit in the Central Highlands, up in the bush trying to kill every commie he could get his hands on just like the General wanted. He had extended his tour to eighteen months to get out a little early from his enlistment not so much that he was gung-ho but because he had become fed up with what the war had done to him, what he had had to do to survive, what his buddies had had to do to survive and what the American government had turned them all into, nothing but animals, nothing more, as he told everybody who would listen. When he was discharged in late 1969 he wound up joining the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the main anti-war veterans group at the time. Such a move by Ralph and thousands of other soldiers who had served in ‘Nam a real indication even today of how unpopular that war was when the guys who had fought the damn thing arms in hand, mostly guys then, rose up against the slaughter, taking part in a lot of their actions around Albany and New York City mainly.

Here is the way Ralph told Sam in 1971 about how he came in contact with VVAW while they had plenty of time to talk when they were being detained in RFK Stadium after being arrested in a May Day demonstration. One day in 1970 Ralph was taking a high compression motor to Albany to a customer and had parked the shop truck on Van Dyke Street near Russell Sage College. Coming down the line, silent, silent as the grave he thought later, were a ragtag bunch of guys in mismatched (on purpose he found out later) military uniforms carrying individual signs but with a big banner in front calling for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and signing the banner with the name of the organization-Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). That was all, and all that was needed. Nobody on those still patriotic, mostly government worker, streets called them commies or anything like that but you could tell some guys in white collars who never came close to a gun, except maybe to kill animals or something defenseless really wanted to. One veteran as they came nearer to Ralph shouted out for any veterans to join them, to tell the world what they knew first-hand about what was going on in Vietnam. Yeah, that shout-out was all Ralph needed he said, all he needed to join his “band of brothers.”                               

Sam as he recalled how he and Ralph had met in Washington had remembered that Ralph had first noticed that he was wearing a VVAW supporter button and Ralph had asked if he had been in ‘Nam. Sam, a little sheepishly, explained that he had been exempted from military duty since he was the sole support for his mother and four younger sisters after his father had passed away of a massive heart attack in 1965. (He had gone to work in Mister Snyder’s print shop where he had learned enough about the printing business to later open his own shop which he kept afloat somehow during the late 1960s with Jack Callahan’s help and which became his career after he settled down when the 1960s ebbed and people started heading back to “normal.”) He then told Ralph the reason that he had joined the anti-war movement after years of relative indifference since he was not involved in the war effort had been that his closest high school friend, Jeff Mullins, had been blown away in the Central Highlands and that had made him question what was going on. Jeff, like them had been as red, white and blue as any guy, had written him when he was in Vietnam that he thought that the place, the situation that he found himself in was more than he bargained for, and that if he didn’t make it back for Sam to tell people, everybody he could what was really going on. Then with just a few months to go Jeff was blown away near some village that Sam could not spell or pronounce correctly even all these many years later. Jeff had not only been Sam’s best friend but was as straight a guy as you could meet, and had gotten Sam out of more than a few scrapes, a few illegal scrapes that could have got him before some judge. So that was how Sam got “religion,” not through some intellectual or rational argument about the theories of war, just wars or “your country right or wrong wars,” but because his friend had been blown away, blown away for no good reason as far as that went.  

At first Sam had worked with Quakers and other pacifist types because he knew they were in Cambridge where he found himself hanging out more and more trying to connect with the happenings that were splitting his generation to hell and back. They got him doing acts of civil disobedience at draft boards, including the Carver Draft Board on Allan Road the place where Jeff had been drafted from (and which created no little turmoil and threats among the Eaton’s neighbors who were still plenty patriotic at that point, his mother and sisters took some of the fire as well), military bases and recruiting stations to try to get the word out to kids who might get hoodwinked in joining up in the slaughter. As the war dragged on though he started going to Cambridge meetings where more radical elements were trying to figure out actions that might stop the damn war cold and that appealed to him more than the “assuming the government was rational and would listen to reason” protest actions of those “gentile little old ladies in tennis sneakers.”

1971 though, May Day 1971 to be exact is, where these two stories, two very different stories with the same theme joined together. Sam at that point in 1971 was like Ralph just trying to get the war ended, maybe help out the Panthers a little but before May Day had no grandiose ideas about changing the “whole freaking world.” Sam had gone down to Washington with a group of Cambridge radicals and “reds” to do what he could to shut down the war under the slogan-“if the government does not shut down the war, we will shut down the government.” Ralph had come down with a contingent of ex-veterans and supporters from Albany for that same purpose. Sam and Ralph had as a result met on the bizarre football field at RFK Stadium which was the main holding area for the thousands of people arrested that day (and throughout the week)

So May Day was a watershed for both men, both men having before May Day sensed that more drastic action was necessary to “tame the American imperial monster” (Sam’s term picked up from The Real Paper, an alternative newspaper he had picked up at a street newsstand in Cambridge) and had come away from that experience, that disaster, with the understanding that even to end the war would take much more, and many more people, than they had previously expected. Ralph, in particular, had been carried away with the notion that what he and his fellow veterans who were going to try to symbolically close down the Pentagon were doing as veterans would cause the government pause, would make them think twice about any retaliation to guys who had served and seen it all. Ralph got “smart” on that one fast when the National Guard which was defending the Pentagon, or part of it that day, treated them like any Chicago cops at the Democratic Party Convention in 1968, treated them like cops did to any SDS-ers anywhere, and like anybody else who raised their voices against governmental policy in the streets.

Ralph told Sam while in captivity that he still worked in his father’s shop for a while but their relationship was icy (and would be for a long time after that although in 1991 when Ralph, Senior retired Ralph took over the business). He would take part in whatever actions he could around the area (and down in New York City a couple of times when they called for re-enforcements to make a big splash).

Ralph has like he said joined with a group of VVAW-ers and supporters for an action down in Washington, D.C. The idea, which would sound kind of strange today in a different time when there is very little overt anti-war activity against the current crop of endless wars but also shows how desperate they were to end that damn war, was to on May Day shut down the government if it did not shut down the war. Their task, as part of the bigger scheme, since they were to form up as a total veterans and supporters contingent was to symbolically shut down the Pentagon. Wild right, but see the figuring was that they, the government, would not dare to arrest vets and they figured (“they” meaning all those who planned the events and went along with the plan) the government would treat it somewhat like the big civilian action at the Pentagon in 1967 which Norman Mailer won a literary prize writing a book about, Armies of the Night. Silly them. 

They after the fall-out from that event were thus searching for a better way to handle things, a better way to make an impact because those few days of detention in D.C. that they had jointly suffered not only started what would be a lifelong personal friendship but an on-going conversation between them over the next several years about how to bring about the greater social change they sensed was needed before one could even think about stopping wars and stuff like that. (The story in short of how they got out of RFK after a few days was pretty straight forward. Since law enforcement was so strapped that week somebody had noticed and passed the word along that some of the side exits in the stadium were not guarded and so they had just walked out and got out of town fast, very fast, hitchhiking back north to Carver, and Ralph later to Troy). Hence the push by Sam toward the study groups led by “red collectives” that were sprouting up then peopled by others who had the same kind of questions which they would join, unjoin and work with, or not work with over the next few years before both men sensed the tide of the rolling 1960s had ebbed. 

Old time high school thoughts even with the cross-fire hells of burned down Vietnam villages melted into the back of his brain crossed his mind when Ralph thought of Marx, Lenin (he, they, were not familiar with Trotsky except he had “bought it” down in Mexico with an icepick from some assassin), Joe Stalin, Red Square, Moscow and commie dupes. Sam had not been far behind in his own youthful prejudices as he told Ralph one night after a class and they were tossing down a few at Jack’s in Cambridge before heading home to the commune where Sam was staying.

Ralph had gone out of his way to note in that blog entry for Fritz that before he got “religion” on the anti-war and later social justice issues he held as many anti-communist prejudices as anybody else in Troy, New York where he hailed from, not excluding his rabidly right-wing father who never really believed until his dying days in 2005 that the United States had lost the war in Vietnam. Ralph had realized that all the propaganda he had been fed was like the wind and his realization of that had made him  a very angry young man when he got out of the Army in late 1969. He tried to talk to his father about it but Ralph, Senior was hung up in a combination “good war, World War II, his war where America saved international civilization from the Nazis and Nips (his father’s term since he fought in the Pacific with the Marines) and “my country, right or wrong.” All Ralph, Senior really wanted Ralph to do was get back to the shop and help him fill those goddam GE defense contract orders. And he did it, for a while.

Ralph had also expressed his feelings of trepidation when after a lot of things went south on the social justice front with damn little to show for all the arrests, deaths, and social cataclysm he and Sam had gotten into a study group in Cambridge run by a “Red October Collective” which focused on studying “Che” Guevara and the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky after an introduction to the Marxist classics. Sam who was living in that commune in Cambridge at the time, the summer of 1972, had invited Ralph to come over from Troy to spent the summer in the study group trying to find out what had gone wrong (and what they had gotten right too, as Sam told him not to forget), why they were spinning their wheels trying to change the world for the better just then and to think about new strategies and tactics for the next big break-out of social activism. At the end of each meeting they would sing the Internationale before the group broke up. At first Ralph had a hard time with the idea of singing a “commie” song (he didn’t put it that way but he might as well have according to Sam) unlike something like John Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance, songs like that. As he, they got immersed in the group Ralph lightened up and would sing along if not with gusto then without a snicker.

That same apprehensive attitude had prevailed when after about three meetings they began to study what the group leader, Jeremy, called classic Marxism, the line from Marx and Engels to Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

At the beginning some of Ralph’s old habits kind of held him back, you know the anti-red stuff, Cold War enemy stuff, just like at first he had had trouble despite all he knew about calling for victory to the Viet Cong (who in-country they called “Charlie” in derision although after  Tet 1968 with much more respect when Charlie came at them and kept coming despite high losses). But Ralph got over it, got in the swing. 

The Marxism did not come easy, the theory part, maybe for Ralph a little more than Sam who had taken junior college night classes to bolster the small print shop he had built from nothing after Mister Snyder moved his operation to Quincy to be nearer his main client, State Street Bank and Trust (although for long periods his old Carver friend, Jack Callahan, managed the place when Sam was off on his campaigns). They got that the working-class, their class, should rule and be done with inequalities of all kinds but the idea of a revolution, or more importantly, a working class party which was on everybody’s mind in those days to lead that revolution seemed, well, utopian. The economic theory behind Marxism, that impossible to read Das Capital and historical materialism as a philosophy were books sealed with seven seals for them both. Nevertheless for a few years, say until 1975, 1976 when the tide really had ebbed for anybody who wanted to see they hung around with the local “reds,” mostly those interested in third world liberation struggles and political prisoner defense work. Those were really the earnest “socialist years” although if you had asked them for a model of what their socialism looked like they probably would have pointed to Cuba which seemed fresher than the stodgy old Soviet Union with their Brezhnev bureaucrats.

After that time while they would periodically read the left press and participate any time somebody, some group needed bodies for a rally, demonstration, some street action they would be there in their respective hometowns that they both eventually filtered back to. Then 2002 came and the endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and seemingly a million other places drove them to drop their “armed truce” (Sam’s term picked up by Ralph) with society and return to the streets , return with an almost youthful vengeance. They would see young people at the rallies hocking their little Marxist papers, maybe buy one to read a home but that flame that had caused them to join study groups, to work with Marxist-oriented “red collectives,” to read books that were hard to fathom had passed, had passed just as socialism as a way to end humankind’s impasses had fallen out of favor once the Soviet Union and its satellites had gone up in a puff of smoke. Sam thought one time that maybe those earnest kids with their wafer-thin newspapers will study the classics and make more sense out of them than Sam and Ralph could. As for Sam and Ralph they would now just keep showing up to support the “good old cause.”              

And a lot of that good old cause for Ralph since about 2010 had been through working with a later manifestation of VVAW – Veterans for Peace (VFP) which as Ralph will describe below is what has enhanced his political profile. Sam had also joined the group after Ralph beat him down about it. (VFP has a category of supporters called associates who have all the rights of membership except a decisive vote on the issues before the body when their votes would determine the outcome. Here is how Ralph “connected” with VFP in Boston of all places on one of his trips to see Sam:   


Back on Veterans Day 2010 I happened to be at the Boston Common heading toward Jack Higgin’s Grille, the one on Charles Street not the one near Quincy Market, to meet Sam in a location just off the downtown section when I came across some white flags, maybe twenty, waving in the distance over near when Charles Street intersects Beacon Street (the main street of the famous Beacon Hill section of Boston). Since I was heading that way I decided to check out what those flags were all about. Upon investigation I found that the white flags also contained in black outline a peace dove symbol and the words Veterans for Peace. Yah, sign me up, my kind of guys and gals. So, to make a long story short,  I marched with the contingent that year in their spot behind, and not part of, the official parade sponsored by the city (the reason for that separation will be described in more detail below) and have marched each year since, including this year. [2014] Previously in promoting and commemorating this peace event I have recycled my sketch from 2010 out of laziness, hubris, or the basic sameness of the yearly event. I have updated that sketch a bit here to reflect on this year’s event.
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Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, and socialist causes in my long political life. Some large, many small but both necessary. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have, like I have, “switched” over to the other side, have gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace and what to do about it, have exposed the better angels of their nature after the long hard thrust of war and preparations for war have lost their allure, and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system in America has embarked upon.

From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days (the days when even guys like the present Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry had to march in the streets to allay their angers and hurts) I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them out of the barracks, off the bases, and into the streets as happened a little as the Vietnam War moved relentlessly onward) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, don’t do a bookish analysis, complete with footnotes, of the imperial system and their cog part in it, but they are kindred spirits.

Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (the infamous “battle of the barstool,” no, battles) and donning the old overstuffed moth-eaten uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened in 2010 (and this year) as well. What also happened in Boston this year as in 2010 (and other years but I had not been involved in prior marches) was that the Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their Armistice Day (“Veterans Day”) program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one, one o’clock in the afternoon in downtown Boston near the Common.

Prior to 2010 there had been a certain amount of trouble, although I am not sure that it came to blows, between the two groups. (I have only heard third-hand reports on previous events so all I know is that there were some heated disputes) You know the "super-patriots" vs. “commie symps” thing that has been going on as long as there have been ex-soldiers (and others), maybe before, who have differed from the bourgeois parties’ pro-war line. In any case the way this impasse had been resolved previously, and the way the parameters were set in 2010 and this year as well, was that the VFP took up the rear of the official parade, and took up the rear in an obvious way. Separated that year, if you can believe this, from the main body of the official parade by a medical emergency truck. This year by a phalanx of Boston Police motorcycle cops. Nice, right? Something of the old "I’ll take my ball and bat and go home" by the "officials" was in the air on that one on every occasion.

In the event this year’s march went off as usual for both parties, as we waited behind the motorcycle cordon for the “officials” to pass by. While waiting I noticed that while the anti-war contingent was about the same size as it has been for the past few years that I have participated, filled out with other peace activists from Quakers and shakers to ranters and chanters and ant-drone folk (strolling along with a mobile replica of a drone to make their point nicely), all angelic, or at least all also on the right side of the angels, the VFP component looked a little smaller. This reflecting the inevitable aging, can’t make the walk, reality that VFP like myriad peace and social justice-oriented organizations are now peopled, alarmingly so, mainly by older activists who cut their teeth in the struggles of the 1960s (or earlier).

Equally as alarming was the sight of more of my Vietnam era veterans using canes, walkers and other aids to either walk the parade or to get around and listen to the program at the end of the march at the Samuel Adams Park at Fanuiel Hall. The hopeful sign though was an increased number of Iraq (Iraq II, 2003) and Afghanistan veterans who have had enough time to reflect on their war experiences and made a decision to come over to the side of the angels.
One such veteran spoke from platform, as did veterans from World War II,  the Korean and Vietnam War eras, as well as a speakers, young speakers and proud from the Iraq and Afghan war zones, who sang, read their poets, or read their prose pieces to flush out the event. And to say that a new generation of anti-war soldiers will take the torch, take it and go forward as the older generations fades away.

But here is where there is a certain amount of rough plebeian justice, a small dose for those on the side of the angels, in this wicked old world. In order to form up, and this was done knowingly by VFP organizers in 2010 and this year well, the official marchers, the bands and battalions that make up such a march, had to “run the gauntlet” of dove emblem-emblazoned VFP banners waving frantically directly in front of their faces as they passed by. Moreover, although we again this year formed the caboose of this thing the crowds along the parade route actually waited for us after the official paraders had marched by and waved, clapped, and flashed the ubiquitous peace sign at our procession from the sidelines. Be still my heart.

That response just provides another example of the "street cred” that ex-soldiers have on the anti-war question. Now, if there is to be any really serious justice in the world, if only these fellow vets would go beyond then “bring the troops home” and pacific vigil tactics and embrace- immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied Troops from everywhere, embrace a more studied response to the nature of war policy “in the belly of the beast” then we could maybe start to get somewhere out on those streets. But today, like at that first white flag sighting in 2010 I was very glad to be fighting for our peaceful more social future among those who know first-hand about the dark side of the American experience. No question.

*From The Pen Of James P. Cannon- The Struggle For The International Labor Defense

Click on title to link to important discussion of the fate of the International Labor Defense (one of the central worker organizations in the Sacco Vanzetti case) by founder James P. Cannon from the Prometheus Research Library's "James P. Cannon and the Early Years Of American Communism"

****From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog-Viva La Quince Brigada

****From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog-Viva La Quince Brigada

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

Jackman comment:

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!  
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From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sam Lowell knew in his blood-stained heart, his Vietnam War blood-stained heart that as much as he had come to hate and oppose that war as a participant, as an unwilling and unwitting tool of forces in the government who were clueless about ‘Nam, about people who had done them, and him no harm, about people with which he had no quarrel he could never go all the way in his opposition to wars. Although after the fact, after his service, he had spent a fair amount of time in the streets with fellow veterans trying to get the word out that a monster was on the loose, the American government, a government that had made him, made his war buddies nothing but savages, trying to work the anti-war veteran point of view which had some “cred” to all who would listen, half-listen anyway, he would never really be able to fully make himself a pacifist. Never make himself a solid almost biblical in the wilderness turning the other cheek man of peace for all seasons. Go the distance on some “Gandhi trip” as he called it talking to his old high school friend Bart Webber one night years later when they were mulling over the question of how far they were willing to go in the search for what the Quakers called the “peace witness.”  Not when in his head he knew there were causes, just causes that could not be resolved short of blood and iron if humankind was to roll the rock of progress up the hill a little, hell, to even get a little justice in this wicked old world. He favored not that “Gandhi trip” but an idea of some long-bearded robe sheet-clothed Jehovah all fire and brimstone come seeking vengeance against the night-takers until the world was gotten rid of night-takers. 

That is why Sam, despite his misgivings about the Vietnam War had never really opposed it personally via some application for conscientious objector status. Never saw himself as the friendly Quaker, Mennonite, Amish man of good cheer and no grudges. Never had been around such people when it counted as he was growing up although he had heard about their gentility and had seen it in action down in Pennsylvania Amish country. Even a serious attempt later after Vietnam had taken so much out of him, had depleted his abstract  hates, to become more Quakerly when he had had a Quaker girlfriend, Susan Rich, failed to his own hubris and sense that fixing even the small woes of the world required more fire that the “inner light.” (They would quarrel endlessly if civilly about such matters to no good end and they eventually kind of drifted apart once each realized that there was no longer enough glue holing them together.)

What Sam came to believe, or maybe believed all along and Vietnam and that lovely quiet Quaker girl just brought his notions to a head, was that his whole blessed life was stacked against such gentility. He asked himself, and asked Bart as well since they came from the same poor as church mice neighborhood although Bart had not faced the ultimate induction crisis since due to a severe childhood injury to his right leg he was declared by his friends and neighbors at the local draft board to be 4-F, unfit for military duty, where in his, their growing up ethos was their room for such thoughts having grown up in working class Carver. Carver a town where guys volunteered for military service in droves if for no other reason than to get out of the hick town, get away from being boggers, cranberry bog workers when Carver was something like the cranberry capital of the world or else accepted quietly and without rancor induction if drafted. He would have received no support, from family, friends, including Bart who held all the same support the government without question at the time and had only come around when their corner boy friend Jeff Mullins was killed in the Central Highlands and after Sam had come back to the “real” world to  give the real story of the murderous assault on human dignity he had taken part in, and neighbors. Neighbors who had, as he recalled to Bart, looked askance at him when in 1966 he had expressed some reservations about the carpet-bombing of Vietnam back to the Stone Age which was the effective policy of the military doctrine of the day. Sam frankly said to Bart that talking night that he would not have known even how to go about doing such a thing as filing an application for CO status. And if he had known under the conditions existing in 1966 to obtain CO status, although not a few years later when though court decisions and changes in draft board policy such applications were not denied out of hand except for historically recognized objectors, he would not have been granted that status since he had been raised a Catholic, a church organization which held to a just war theology rather than an absolute opposition to war like the Quakers and Mennonites, people who held such historic pacifist positions.

Although after Vietnam Sam went through a crisis on the question of war and peace in which he came to err on the “side of the angels” and he abandoned the Catholic Church and its version of the just war theory which seemed to more often, much more often than not, justify all of Caesar’s wars without fail, he still held to a secular version of that just war theory. When thinking about the matter of just wars then in the late 1960s and early 1970s the Spanish Civil War had come to mind since he had been something of a buff about that event as far back as freshman year in high school when he had written a term paper for a history class on the subject. In that desperate 1930s conflict which pre-figured World War III whose struggles enflamed his dreams he saw himself obviously fighting, arms in hand, whatever arms they had which at times were scanty, for the Republican side against the Nazi-backed Franco forces. He had dreamed as well that he would have, if he had been around then, signed up as a volunteer for the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades, the famous Abraham Lincolns who did heroic battle around the Jarama and in other tough spots when it counted.

Sam knew from his readings that those organizations were controlled by the Communists of that age but while in high school he was as fervent an anti-communist as anybody in town he would give them a pass for the duration of the war, would have joined the united front even if he was not sure that he would have supported the “revolution and war” ideas expressed by those to the left of the Communists and Socialists, mostly Trotskyists and anarchists of one stripe or another. He was still bitter, always would be, when the U.S. under the liberal oligarch Roosevelt called for hands-off, for neutrality in the conflict and the British and French sat on their hands while Spain died a thousand deaths. It would not be until later when he had to deal with the American progeny of Joe Stalin in the anti-Vietnam War movement that he would come to curse Uncle Joe’s withdrawal of the International Brigades while there was still some fight left in the Republican forces. No, Sam would not have sat on his hands on that one.      

Later, several years later in the late 1970s when the turmoil which had beset America had settled down and an ebb tide had taken over in the land postponing to the indefinite future the question of whether a 1960s-type “new breeze” was going to come again, a time when he was beginning to make a small name for himself in the legal profession around the South Shore of Boston he developed a strong interest in the American Civil War, a strong interest in the importance of the Union victory and the abolition of slavery. This interest had been kick-started one day as a result of his going into Boston on a legal matter at the Suffolk County Courthouse on Beacon Hill and passing what was then a much neglected frieze of the heroic Colonel Robert Gould Shaw-led Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteers in front of the State House who did themselves proud down before Fort Wagner and later in 1865 would march into the citadel of the Confederacy Charleston, South Carolina singing the John Brown song.     

Sam had in high school based on admittedly sketchy information rather grudgingly admired that Captain John Brown, late of Harper’s Ferry, and the exploits of his small multi-racial band of brothers in trying to break the back of slavery by a military expedition to free the slave and create an insurrection. Once Sam delved into Civil War history, read more in depth about Brown and what history would have looked like if he had had a modicum of success Sam saw Brown as the Calvinist “avenging angel” high Jehovah scourge of the night-takers of his day. In short, that same thought that he had long held in his mind concerning the righteous agents of just wars like his Lincolns in Spain. [Interesting to Sam then the cosmic link of Brown in the 19^th century and the Lincolns in the 20^th as the epitome of American just causes revolving around key Civil War names.] While Sam held such thoughts about Brown and men of action like Brown in ante-bellum times who were not afraid to rankle feathers he admitted to himself that he would, unlike with the Internationals, not have very likely joined such an expedition. 

As Sam studied the military situations, the military strategy and tactics that one must invariable do to catch any idea of why men, brothers and cousins in many cases, would get their blood lusts rising so savagely, he did find himself drawn to the General William Tecumseh Sherman-led march through Georgia to the seas. A relentless organized march to break the will, break the communications, break the supply routes, to deny the Confederacy the capacity to produce much of anything. So in his imagination he could see himself as one of “Billy’s bummers” marching sore-footed through Georgia, making Jeff Davis squeal, making Robert E. Lee reach for the white flag. Make old Captain Brown a man ahead of his times. Yeah, Sam would not have sat on his hands on that freedom fight either.

Still Sam could never quite get that imagine of himself as a Lincoln Battalion rank and filer out of his mind, could never quite forget Pete Seeger’s version of Viva La Quince Brigada  heard long ago when he had listened to a folk radio station out of Boston as after a girl, a folkie girl he called her, recommended that he listen to the station if he wanted to get anywhere with her (which he did, listen to, and did get somewhere with her) and of the plight of the veterans of the Lincoln Battalion when the American government pulled the red scare Cold War hammer down on them as “commies.” Bart, a few years ago knowing of his interest, had asked Sam to write something for his grandson, Sean, who as fate would have it also was interested in the Spanish Civil War and was, in his turn, doing a term paper on it for his history class and wanted Sam to give Sean some personal reflections to aid his own understanding of the conflict as he wrote his paper. Not do the paper, no way, but give a feel for the need for blood and iron, and for men and women to be willing to lay down their heads as “pre-mature anti-fascists” in that conflict. Here is what Sam had to say:

Sean,

Your grandfather and my friend of many, many years going back to high school down there in Carver where we grew up asked me to give you a little leg up, a little flavor of what I thought about the Spanish Civil War since he knew that I was interested in the subject and that you were too. At least enough to decide to use that magnificent struggle as a subject worthy of your first serious term paper (the first of many I hope). A few years ago when I was writing a little something about the 70^th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War I wrote a short review of a book by Leon Trotsky about the possibilities of revolution, of successful revolution in Spain in those days. The book entitled THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39 (LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973) while written from an extreme left-wing position while Trotsky was in exile from the Soviet Union whose revolution of 1917 he was a central participant looks at lots of issues that might interest you as you prepare your paper. I know I got a lot out of it although personally I am not as sure as Trotsky was that a successful revolution could have held its ground given the international situation where Spain would be isolated from the rest of West Europe when the Nazis and Fascists were pulling their respective hammers down and the rest of Europe looked away while Spain died a thousand deaths.



“I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has some continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice.



Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basis for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations.”

I hope this little review gives you a couple of ideas to speculate on although you have to be careful with history in the alternative and only suggest the trends that were most probable not every possible “what if.”

In thinking about the Trotsky review I also came back to some thoughts about the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades of workers and leftist militants who went from many countries to fight, and if necessary die to defend the Spanish Republic under assault from the Nazi-backed Franco forces which as a kid reading about their heroic if doomed exploits in Spain enflamed my imagination. I have added a short review I also did several years ago by Peter Carroll who probably knows more about the battalion than anybody else, anybody else now. The title of the book is THE ODYSSEY OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE: AMERICANS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, (Peter N. Carroll, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994). As happens when a person reviews several books on the same general subject especially in the age of easy cut and paste I have used the introductory paragraph in several Spanish Civil War items I have reviewed and have eliminated them here:   




“…Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917. That calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Mr. Carroll’s book while not directly addressing that issue nevertheless demonstrates through the story of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion how the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and through it the policy of the Communist International in calling for international brigades to fight in Spain aided in the defeat of that promising revolution.

“Mr. Carroll chronicles anecdotally how individual militants were recruited, transported, fought and died as ‘premature anti-fascists’ in that struggle. No militant today, or ever, can deny the heroic qualities of the volunteers and their commitment to defeat fascism- the number one issue for militants of that generation-despite the fatal policy of the the various party leaderships. Such individuals were desperately needed then, as now, if revolutionary struggle is to succeed. However, to truly honor their sacrifice we must learn the lessons of that defeat through mistaken strategy as we fight today. Interestingly, as chronicled here, and elsewhere in the memoirs of some veterans, many of the surviving militants of that struggle continued to believe that it was necessary to defeat Franco first, and then fight for socialism. This was most dramatically evoked by the Lincolns' negative response to the Barcelona uprising of 1937-the last time a flat out fight for leadership of the revolution could have galvanized the demoralized workers and peasants for a desperate struggle against Franco.

“Probably the most important part of Mr. Carroll’s book is tracing the trials and tribulations of the volunteers after their withdrawal from Spain in late 1938. Their organization-the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- was constantly harassed and monitored by the United States government for many years as a Communist 'front' group. Individuals also faced prosecution and discrimination for their past association with the Brigades. He also traces the aging and death of that cadre. In short, this book is a labor of love for the subjects of his treatment. Whatever else this writer certainly does not disagree with that purpose. If you want to read about what a heroic part of the vanguard of the international working class looked like in the 1930’s, look here. Viva la Quince Brigada!!”