Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Every hobo, tramp, and bum and there are social distinctions between each cohort recognized among themselves, and subject to fierce dispute including some faux fists, if not quite so definitely by rump sociologists who lump them all together but that is a story for another day has seen starlight on the rails. I probably would have also not drawn the distinctions in my youth, before I hit the hitchhike road heading west at one time in search of the blue-pink great American west out there somewhere and had on one more than one occasion along with the late Peter Paul Markin who led the way among the North Adamsville corner boys on that trail been forced to stop along a railroad trestle “jungle camp,” under a cardboard city bridge, or out in the arroyos if you got far enough west.

The hobos of the “jungle” were princes among men (there was no room for women in such a male-dominated society, not along the jungle although at the missions and Sallys, Salvation Army Harbor-lights, that might be a different story) as long as you did not ask too many damn questions. Shared olio stews, cigarettes, cheap rotgut wine, Thunderbird or Ripple whichever was cheapest after crapping the day’s collective pennies together. Later when my “wanting habits” built up from the edges of that sullen youth got the better of me and my addictions placed me out in that same “jungle” for keeps for a while that distinction got re-enforced.  

But hobo, bum or tramp each had found him or herself (mainly hims though like I said out on the “jungle” roads) flat up against some railroad siding at midnight having exhausted every civilized way to spent the night. Having let their, our, collective wanting habits get the best of them, us. Maybe penniless, maybe thrown out of some flophouse in arrears and found that nobody bothers, or did bother you out along the steel rails when the train lost its luster to the automobile and plane and rusted and abandoned provided safe haven from the vagaries of civilization. So has seen the stars out where the spots are darkest and the brilliance of the sparkle makes one think of heaven for those so inclined, think of the void for the heathen among them. Has dreamed penitent dreams of shelter against life’s storms, had dreamed while living for the moment trying to get washed clean after the failure of the new dispensation to do the job (hell, what did they/he think just because the drugs or alcohol flowed freely once, just because the fixer man fixed, fixed fine, that that was the Garden of Eden, that was Nirvana, hell, those ancient forebears all after they were expelled saw that same starlight as they/he did). 

Okay, Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails

 
 
 
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Every hobo, tramp, and bum and there are social distinctions between each cohort recognized among themselves, and subject to fierce dispute including some faux fists, if not quite so definitely by rump sociologists who lump them all together but that is a story for another day has seen starlight on the rails. I probably would have also not drawn the distinctions in my youth, before I hit the hitchhike road heading west at one time in search of the blue-pink great American west out there somewhere and had on one more than one occasion along with the late Peter Paul Markin who led the way among the North Adamsville corner boys on that trail been forced to stop along a railroad trestle “jungle camp,” under a cardboard city bridge, or out in the arroyos if you got far enough west.

The hobos of the “jungle” were princes among men (there was no room for women in such a male-dominated society, not along the jungle although at the missions and Sallys, Salvation Army Harbor-lights, that might be a different story) as long as you did not ask too many damn questions. Shared olio stews, cigarettes, cheap rotgut wine, Thunderbird or Ripple whichever was cheapest after crapping the day’s collective pennies together. Later when my “wanting habits” built up from the edges of that sullen youth got the better of me and my addictions placed me out in that same “jungle” for keeps for a while that distinction got re-enforced.  

But hobo, bum or tramp each had found him or herself (mainly hims though like I said out on the “jungle” roads) flat up against some railroad siding at midnight having exhausted every civilized way to spent the night. Having let their, our, collective wanting habits get the best of them, us. Maybe penniless, maybe thrown out of some flophouse in arrears and found that nobody bothers, or did bother you out along the steel rails when the train lost its luster to the automobile and plane and rusted and abandoned provided safe haven from the vagaries of civilization. So has seen the stars out where the spots are darkest and the brilliance of the sparkle makes one think of heaven for those so inclined, think of the void for the heathen among them. Has dreamed penitent dreams of shelter against life’s storms, had dreamed while living for the moment trying to get washed clean after the failure of the new dispensation to do the job (hell, what did they/he think just because the drugs or alcohol flowed freely once, just because the fixer man fixed, fixed fine, that that was the Garden of Eden, that was Nirvana, hell, those ancient forebears all after they were expelled saw that same starlight as they/he did). 
 

Maybe this will explain it better. An old man, or at least he has the marks of old age, although among the iterant travelling peoples, the hoboes, tramps, and bum, who have weathered many of life’s storms bottle or needle in hand, panhandled a million quarters now lost, old age, or their marks wear a soul down early, white beard, unkempt, longish hair, also unkempt, a river of lines in his face, deep crow’s feet setting off his vacant eyes, a second-hand soiled hat atop his head, a third-hand miner’s jacket clipped off some other lonesome traveler, shredded at the cuffs chino pants of indeterminate hand, and busted up shoes, soles worn, heels at forty-five degree angles from crooked walks on crooked miles and game legs is getting ready to unroll his bedroll, ground cloth a tablecloth stolen from Jimmy Jack’s Diner’s somewhere, a blanket stolen from a Sally Harbor Light house in salad days, rolled newspapers now for a mattress for the hundredth, hundredth time against the edge of the railroad trestle just outside Gallup, New Mexico. Do not ask him, if you have the nerve to approach him, and that is an iffy proposition just ask a guy going under the moniker of Denver Shorty how he got that deep scar across his face, where he is going or where he has come from because just that moment, having scratched a few coins in the town together for a jug of Thunderbird he is ready to sleep his sleep against the cold-hearted steel of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks just ten yards from where he stands.      

And this night, this starlit brown, about eight colors of brown,   desert night he hopes that he will not dream, not dream of that Phoebe Snow whom he left behind in Toledo when he had no beard, no longish unkempt hair, and no rivers of lines on his misbegotten face. Not dream as he always did about whatever madness made him run from all the things he had created, all the things that drove him west like a million other guys who needed to put space between himself and civilization. Dream too about the days when he could ride the rails in the first-class   cars, and about the lure of the rails once he got unhinged from civilization. About how the train pace had been chastised by fast cars and faster planes when a the speed of a train fitted a man’s movements, about the days when they first built the transcontinental, this line that he was about to lie his head down beside, about the million Chinks, Hunkies, Russkies, Hibernians, hell, Micks, Dagos who sweated to drive the steel in unforgiving ground, many who laid down their heads down to their final rest along these roads, and later guys he knew on he knew on the endless road like Butte Bobby, Silver Jones, Ding-dong Kelly, who did not wake up the next morning.

As he settled in to sleep the wine’s effect settling down too he noticed the bright half- moon out that night reflecting off the trestle, and the arroyos edges, and thought about what a guy, an old wizard like himself told him about the rails one time when he was laid up Salt Lake City, in the days when he tried to sober up. The guy, a guy who had music in his soul or something said to him that it was the starlight on the rails that had driven him, rumble, stumble, tumble him to keep on the road, to keep moving away from himself, to forget who he was. And here he was on a starlit night listening down the line for the rumble of the freight that would come passing by before the night was over. But as he shut his eyes, he began to dream again of Phoebe Snow, always of Phoebe Snow.         

  

But not everybody has the ability to sing to those starlit heavens (or to the void if that is what chances to happen as the universe expands quicker than we can think) about the hard night of starlight on the rails and that is where Rosalie Sorrels, a woman of the American West out in the Idahos, out where, as is said in the introduction to the song by the same name ripping some wisdom from literary man Thomas Wolfe who knew from whence he spoke, the states are square (and at one time the people, travelling west people and so inured to hardship, played it square, or else), sings old crusty Utah Phillips’ song to those hobo, tramp, bum heavens. Did it while old Utah was alive to teach the song (and the story behind the song) to her and later after he passed on in a singular tribute album to his life’s work as singer/songwriter/story-teller/ troubadour.         

Now, for a fact, I do not know if Rosalie in her time, her early struggling time when she was trying to make a living singing and telling Western childhood stories had ever along with her brood of kids been reduced by circumstances to wind up against that endless steel highway but I do know that she had her share of hard times. Know that through her friendship with Utah she wound up bus-ridden to Saratoga Springs up in the un-squared state of New York where she performed and got taken under the wing of Lena from the legendary Café Lena during some trying times. And so she flourished, flourished as well as any folk-singer could once the folk minute burst it bubble and places like Café Lena, Club Passim (formerly Club 47), a few places in the Village in New York City and Frisco town became safe havens to flower and grow some songs, grow songs from the American folk songbooks and from her own expansive political commentator songbook. And some covers too as her rendition of Starlight on the Rails attests to as she worked her way across the continent. Worked her way to a big sold out night at Saunders Theater at Harvard too when she called the road quits a decade or so ago. Sang some nice stuff speaking about the west, about the Brazos, about the great Utah desert which formed Utah a little, formed him like his old friend Ammon Hennessey, the old saint Catholic Worker brother who sobered some guys up, made them take some pledges, made them get off the railroad steel road. Sobered me up to, got me off that railroad track too, but damn if I didn’t see that starlight too. So listen up, okay.           

   

But not everybody has the ability to sing to those starlit heavens (or to the void if that is what chances to happen as the universe expands quicker than we can think) about the hard night of starlight on the rails and that is where Rosalie Sorrels, a woman of the American West out in the Idahos, out where, as is said in the introduction to the song by the same name ripping some wisdom from literary man Thomas Wolfe who knew from whence he spoke, the states are square (and at one time the people, travelling west people and so inured to hardship, played it square, or else), sings old crusty Utah Phillips’ song to those hobo, tramp, bum heavens. Did it while old Utah was alive to teach the song (and the story behind the song) to her and later after he passed on in a singular tribute album to his life’s work as singer/songwriter/story-teller/ troubadour.         

Now, for a fact, I do not know if Rosalie in her time, her early struggling time when she was trying to make a living singing and telling Western childhood stories had ever along with her brood of kids been reduced by circumstances to wind up against that endless steel highway but I do know that she had her share of hard times. Know that through her friendship with Utah she wound up bus-ridden to Saratoga Springs up in the un-squared state of New York where she performed and got taken under the wing of Lena from the legendary Café Lena during some trying times. And so she flourished, flourished as well as any folk-singer could once the folk minute burst it bubble and places like Café Lena, Club Passim (formerly Club 47), a few places in the Village in New York City and Frisco town became safe havens to flower and grow some songs, grow songs from the American folk songbooks and from her own expansive political commentator songbook. And some covers too as her rendition of Starlight on the Rails attests to as she worked her way across the continent. Worked her way to a big sold out night at Saunders Theater at Harvard too when she called the road quits a decade or so ago. Sang some nice stuff speaking about the west, about the Brazos, about the great Utah desert which formed Utah a little, formed him like his old friend Ammon Hennessey, the old saint Catholic Worker brother who sobered some guys up, made them take some pledges, made them get off the railroad steel road. Sobered me up to, got me off that railroad track too, but damn if I didn’t see that starlight too. So listen up, okay.           

In The Twilight Of The Folk Minute- Peter Seeger And Arlo Guthrie In Concert In The Late 1980s

“Jesus, they charged me fourteen dollars each for these tickets to see Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Remember Laura about ten or fifteen years ago when we saw Pete for five bucks each at the Café Nana over in Harvard Square. Oh yeah, and the price of an expresso coffee each for two people and I think maybe we shared a piece of carrot cake. We had been on a cheap date since I was still in law school over at New England, so a cheap date when I didn’t have much cash and at that time, just at the cusp of the women’s liberation movement taking wider hold, a guy was still mostly expected to pay. No “Dutch treat,” no Laura Dutch treat expected anyway especially on a first or second date, and definitely not that one when I had been intrigued by you early on and wanted to continue to see you. Around that same time, that same Spring of 1973, Arlo gave a free concert out on Concord Commons, remember” said Sam Lowell to his date Laura Peters and the couple they were standing in line with, Patrick Darling and Julia James, in front of Symphony Hall in Boston waiting for the doors to open for the Pete-Seeger-Arlo Guthrie concert that evening.

Laura sheepishly nodded that she remembered the Café Nana event since she had been entirely willing, knowing that Sam was in law school and broke and she had already gotten a job as a CPA at John Hancock and was making money, to go “Dutch treat” that night but Sam had insisted he pay and she did not press the issue since she too had been intrigued by him. She failed to mention that she had not gone with him to see Arlo on the Commons since Sam had apparently forgotten that he had taken his ex-wife, Josie David, to that concert at a time when they were trying to reconcile or get divorced but she did not want to bring that up although Julia had looked in her direction when Sam mentioned that Commons concert since she and her date, some guy from Sam’s Law school had gone along and had witnessed reason two hundred and twenty-seven why they eventually got divorced. That tense moment passed with the men both oblivious. This in any case would be the first time Pete and Arlo had appeared together since Newport a number of years back. This also the first time this foursome had seen either of them in a good number of years since Pete Seeger had gone to upstate New York and had been spending more time making the rivers and forests up there green again than performing and Arlo was nursing something out in Stockbridge. “Maybe, Alice,” Patrick said and everybody laughed at that inside joke. 

Sam continued along that line of his about “the back in the days” for a while, with the three who were still also something of folk aficionados well after the heyday of that music in what Sam called the “1960s folk minute” nodding their heads in agreement saying “things sure were cheaper then and people, folkies for sure, did their gigs for the love of it as much as for the money, maybe more so. Did it, what did the grizzled folk historian cum folksinger-songwriter Dave Van Ronk call it then, oh yeah, for the “basket,” for “from hunger” walking around money to keep the wolves from the doors. To piece off the landlord or roommate for another week or month. For a room, a small room usually giving the economics of coffeehouse ownership, to play out whatever saga drove them to places like the Village, Harvard Square, North Beach and their itch to make a niche in the booming folk world where everything seemed possible. Everything seemed possible if you had any kind of voice to the left of Dylan’s and Van Ronk’s own, could play three chords on a guitar, or a la Pete work a banjo, a mando, or some other stringed instrument, and write of love, sorrow, some dastardly death deed, or on some pressing issue of the day.”

After being silent for a moment Sam got a smile on his face and said “On that three chord playing thing I remember Geoff Muldaur from the Kweskin Jug Band, a guy who knew the American folk songbook as well as anybody then, worked at learning it too, as did Kweskin himself, learned even that Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music stuff, all eighty some songs, or the ones customers would listen to, stuff which meant you had to be serious, saying that if you could play three chords you were sure to draw a crowd, a girl crowd around you, if you knew four or five that  meant you were a serious folkie and you could even get a date from among that crowd, and if you knew ten or twelve chord you could have whoever and whatever you wanted. I don’t know if that is true since I never got beyond the three chord thing but no question that was a way to attract women, especially at parties.” Laura, never one to leave something unsaid when Sam left her an opening said in reply “I didn’t even have to play three chords on a guitar, couldn’t then and I can’t now, although as Sam knows I play a mean kazoo, but all I had to do was start singing some Joan Baez or Judie Collins cover and with my long black hair ironing board straight like Joan’s I had all the boys come around and I will leave it to your imaginations about the whatever I wanted part.” They all laughed although Sam’s face reddened a bit at the thought of her crowded up with guys hanging over her although he had not known her back then in the folk minute since she had lived in Manhattan then and he had grown up and lived Carver about thirty miles south of Boston but only later in the early 1970s.                     

Those reference got Julia thinking back the early 1960s when she and Sam went “Dutch treat” to see Dave Van Ronk at the Club Blue. (Sam and Julia were thus by definition not on a heavy date, neither had been intrigued by the other but folk music was their bond and despite persistent Julia BU dorm roommate rumors what with Sam hanging around all the time had never been lovers). She mentioned that to Sam as they waited to see if he remembered and while he thought he remembered he was not sure. He asked Julie, “Was that the night he played that haunting version of Fair and Tender Ladies with Eric Von Schmidt backing him up on the banjo?” Julie had replied yes and that she too had never forgotten that song and how the house which usually had a certain amount of chatter going on even when someone was performing had been dead silent once he started singing like something out of the sea, or like the cry of the banshees.

Club Blue had been located in that same Harvard Square that Sam had mentioned earlier and along with the Café Nana, which was something of a hot spot once Dylan, Baez, Tom Rush and the members of the Kweskin band started hanging out there, and about five or six other coffeehouses all within a few blocks of each other (one down on Arrow Street was down in the sub-basement and Sam swore that Dylan must have written Subterranean Homesick Blues there). Coffeehouses then where you could, for a dollar or two, see Bob, Joan, Eric (Von Schmidt), Tom (Rush), Phil (Ochs) and lots of lean and hungry performers working for that “basket” Sam had mentioned earlier passed among the patrons and be glad, at least according to Van Ronk when Julia had asked him about the “take” during one intermission, to get twenty bucks for your efforts that night.

That was the night during that same intermission Dave also told her that while the folk breeze was driving things his way just then and people were hungry to hear anything that was not what he called “bubble gum” music like you heard on AM radio that had not been the case when he started out in the Village in the 1950s when he had worked “sweeping out” clubs for a couple of dollars. That sweeping out was not with a broom, no way, Dave had said with that sardonic wit of his that such work was beneath the “dignity” of a professional musician but the way folk singers were used to empty the house between shows. In the “beat”1950s with Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg, and their comrades (Dave’s word reflecting his left-wing attachments then) making everybody crazy for poetry, big be-bop poetry backed up by big be-bop jazz the coffeehouses played to that clientele and on weekends or in the summer people would be waiting in fairly long lines to get in. So what Dave (and Happy Traum and a couple of other singers that she could not remember had mentioned) did was after the readings were done and people were still lingering over their expressos he would get up on the makeshift stage and begin singing some old sea chanty, some obscure Child ballad (those ballads later a staple in the folk world because you could cover them as public domain items and frankly because they were usually long and filled up a short playlist if you were not feeling well or were pressed for something to perform), or some slavery day freedom song in that raspy, gravelly voice of his which would sent the customers out the door. And if they didn’t go then he was out the door. Tough times, tough times indeed.             

Coffeehouses too where for the price of a cup of coffee, maybe a pastry, shared, you could wallow in the fluff of the folk minute that swept America, maybe the world, and hear the music that was the leading edge then toward that new breeze that everybody that Julia and Sam knew was bound to come what with all the things going on in the world. Black civil rights, mainly down in the police state South, nuclear disarmament, the Pill to open up sexual possibilities previously too dangerous or forbidden, and music too, not just the folk music that he and she had been addicted to but something coming from England paying tribute to old-time blues with a rock upbeat that was now a standard part of the folk scene ever since they “discovered” blues guys like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Bukka White, and Skip James. All the mix to turn the world upside down. All of which as well was grist to the mill for the budding folk troubadours to write songs about.

Julie made her companions laugh as they stood there starting to get a little impatient since the doors to the concert hall were supposed to open at seven and here it was almost seven fifteen (Sam had fumed, as he always did when he had to wait for anything, a relic of his Army days during the Vietnam War when everything had been “hurry up and wait”). She had mentioned that back then, back in those college days when guys like Sam did not have a lot of money, if worse came to worse and you had no money like happened one time with a guy, a budding folkie poet, Jack Dawson, she had a date with you could always go to the Hayes-Bickford in the Square (the other H-Bs in other locations around Boston were strictly “no-go” places where people actually just went to eat the steamed to death food and drink the weak-kneed coffee). As long as you were not rowdy like the whiskey drunks rambling on and on asking for cigarettes and getting testy if you did not have one for the simple reason that you did not smoke (almost everybody did then including Sam although usually not with her and definitely not in the dorm), winos who smelled like piss and vomit and not having bathed in a while, panhandlers (looking you dead in the eye defying you to not give them something, money or a cigarette but something) and hoboes (the quiet ones of that crowd  who somebody had told her were royalty in the misfit, outcast world and thus would not ask for dough or smokes) who drifted through there you could watch the scene for free. On any given night, maybe around midnight, on weekends later when the bars closed later you could hear some next best thing guy in full flannel shirt, denim jeans, maybe some kind of vest for protection against the cold but with a hungry look on his face or a gal with the de riguer long-ironed hair, some peasant blouse belying her leafy suburban roots, some boots or sandals depending on the weathers singing low some tune they wrote or reciting to their own vocal beat some poem. As Julie finished her thought some dressed in uniform guy who looked like a doorman in some foreign castle opened the concert hall doors and the four aficionados scampered in to find their seats.                 

…as they walked down the step of Symphony Hall having watched Pete work his banjo magic, work the string of his own Woody-inspired songs like Golden Thread and of covers from the big sky American songbook and Arlo wowed with his City of New Orleans and some of his father’s stuff (no Alice’s Restaurant that night he was saving that for Thanksgiving, he said) Sam told his companions, “that fourteen dollars each for tickets was a steal for such performances, especially in that acoustically fantastic hall” and told his three friends that he would stand for coffees at the Blue Parrot over in Harvard Square if they liked. “And maybe share some pastry too.”     

Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart-With Blues Queen Janis Joplin In Mind  

 

It was never stated in so many words by anybody Sam Lowell knew, never given some academic jargon mumbo-jumbo like it was when the sociologist, social historians and cultural anthropologists got their hands on the work long after the high tide of the 1960s had ebbed, had turned into a remnant rear-guard action by the ragged stragglers who would just not let go but they had lived under a certain sign, a certain way to navigate the world and seek out kindred. Perhaps being young and carefree Sam’s “youth nation” could not articulate it that that way, maybe too afraid to speak of it out loud fearing to unleash some demons that they could not control. (Let’s call the phenomenon “youth nation” a term that today’s youth nation generation can relate to better since the advent of the great social media blast has elements of that older camaraderie rather than the more restrictive “hippie” or counter-culture generation since when the deal went down the numbers of hippies, the hip, did not have enough of a critical mass to keep everything going against the counter-offensive by those who were in charge yet many, many more of the young took snippets of what was offered, while not testing the limits of bourgeois society [Sam’s words for what bothering him at the time]).

Those, like Sam who had initially gotten caught up in the doings (dope, politics, life-styles, a new ethos) by the late Peter Paul Markin, one of the corner boys from around Jimmy Jack’s Diner in growing up town Carver and an early Janis Joplin fan having seen her out in Monterrey on one of his hitchhiking trips to Big Sur when that place mattered in the youth nation configuration and who despite his many contradictions had a preternatural bead on what was coming down, who had been washed clean by the fresh new breeze that came through the country in the early 1960s lived under the sign of “live fast, die young and make a good run at it.” Some later cynics, or maybe the too candid made the third part “and make a good corpse” but that was when all hope that the “newer world” was upon us had faded like a tissue in the wind. A time too when the overwrought pile up of corpses from overdoses, crashed cars, suicides, and just plain “from hunger” wanting habits like Markin’s being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the deal went down, went down badly made that part of the mantra more explicable.

Nobody said it all in so many word, although Sam and the surviving corner boys hinted at that very idea, that living fast idea, one night after the definite word had come up from down in Sonora in late 1976 that Markin had cashed his check when they gathered at Jimmy Jack’s to mull things over and Frankie Riley, who had called Markin “the Scribe”in the old days had said some guys are “dead men on leave” and nobody contradicted him. But mostly nobody could articulate it that that way, maybe too afraid to speak of it out loud fearing to unleash some demons that could not be controlled lived under that certain sign in sullen wonder. To be old, old being over thirty to youthful twenty something eyes who saw the getting ahead career, wife and family in some leafy suburb drinking elegant wines writing on the wall, reflecting the phrase of the time taking direct aim at parents “don’t trust anybody over thirty,” meant “square,” a residue expression for the tail end of the “beat” generation which whether Sam and the guys knew it or not was their launching pad as they  came of age in that 1960s red scare Cold War night. That was Markin’s time really, the time of sensing the breeze not the mud of the breeze itself.  Meant too, meant as a signal far greater than Markin’s reach that if one did not imbibe in whatever one desired by the time they did get to thirty it would be too late, way too late.     

So Sam, Markin, Frankie, all the guys who stayed around long enough who had not been inducted into the service or to have married their high school sweethearts pursued their  outrageous appetites moved from the traditional working class neighborhood fashion dress statement , winter flannel /summer plaid shirt, chinos, black winter or summer, loafers or engineer boots (saved for rumbles, or threats of rumbles when turf was an issue way before dope smooth such silliness out and hair (boys’ regular Lenny the barber called it without  a whiff of irony) and liquor addictions (cheap rotgut wines, smoother Southern Comfort once the cheap wines lost allure, low-shelf whiskeys when some town wino would buy for underage them) to the new ones of the era (new at least to young mostly white eyes not familiar with old-time Billie Holiday New York café jazz needles and “beat” Village high tea time) with the emerging hip “drugstore” of every imaginable medication to salve the soul. Tried every kind of living arrangement as long as it drifted toward the communal (even on church-friendly floors and bedraggled Volkwagen bus campsites) and every kind of love, including the love that could not speak its name (this well before GLBTQ times). Tried every way to take dead aim at old bourgeois society and turn it upside down. Wanted to, desperately wanted to, listen to new music that reflected the new drug-induced karma that matched the chemicals spinning in their brains. No more rock and roll music, or any music, from Bobby Vee/Rydell/Darin, Fabian, Brenda Lee, Leslie Gore, Patsy Cline, that our parents might like, might even tolerate. Everything had be acid- etched.          

Sam had pegged it exactly right one night not long ago when he and some of the old gang who went through the 1960s experience were preparing for a Carver High class reunion when he told the gathering that “we sought to ‘live free,’ to break from convention and we expected out musical heroes (actually all of our heroes which in retrospect seemed of a piece with the outrageous appetites of the time) to partake of our newly established ethos, to lead the way. (That bit of wisdom despite the fact, to his occasional regret whenever he thought about what he could have done to “save” Markin,    he had eased out of the “hippie” life-style in the early 1970s and snuck back into law school and that career track while Markin had held out to his visions for much longer.) They had expected their heroes like their slightly older brothers and sisters who went wild over brooding Marlon Brando, sulky James Dean, and moody Elvis to live high off the edge. And so they did, so anyway did what became the holy trinity come concert night, come party time, Jim (Morrison), Jimi (Hendricks), and Janis (Joplin). They lived hard, lived out there on the edge subject to their own doubts, subject like the rest of us to those rat ass things that formed our childhoods and would not let go and they needed release just like us. So Jim twirled the whirling dervish shamanic dance, Jimi fired up his grinding guitar and Janis, little Janis with the big raspy voice sang like some old-time barrelhouse blues mama reincarnate. Sang like the ghost of Big Mama Thornton had her back, like Bessie Smith was holding her place in the devil-is-going-to-get you blues pantheon. Gave us down-hearted blues to fill the heavens, gave us, well, gave us whatever she had to give with every little beat of her heart. Yeah, and they, she lived fast, and died, died way too young not matter what our ethos stated. Markin would have understood that, understood it in aces.      

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Dateline: Friday April 24th, 8:45pm Dear friend, Mumia Abu-Jamal was seen today by his wife and his condition has worsened. He, is gravely ill.  We are asking everyone to call the prison. Right now. It may be late, but call whenever you get this.  Mumia needs 24 hour care and supervision. He can not be in this condition in general population. In this state he may not be able ask for help, he may lose consciousness. He is too weak. (He was released from the infirmary two days ago). His condtiion: He is extremely swollen in his neck, chest, legs, and his skin is worse than ever, with open sores. He was not in a wheelchair, but can only take baby steps. He is very weak. He was nodding off during the visit. He was not able to eat- he was fed with a spoon. These are symptoms that could be associated with hyper glucose levels, diabetic shock, diabetic coma, and with kidney stress and failure.  Please call these numbers, and any other numbers you have for the Prison and the Governor. Demand that Mumia Abu-Jamal see a doctor ASAP. Right Now! Demand that the prison officials call his wife Wadiya Jamal and his lawyer Bret Grote immediately. Demand that he be seen immediately, and the not be left to go into a diabetic coma.     John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy: 570-773-2158 x8102 | 570-783-2008 Fax | 301 Morea Road, Frackville PA 17932 Tom Wolf, PA Gvrnr: 717-787-2500 | governor@PA.gov | 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg PA 17120 John Wetzel, PA DOC: 717-728-4109 | 717-728-4178 Fax | ra-contactdoc@poc.gov | 1920 Technology Pkwy, Mechanicsburg PA 17050 Susan McNaughton, DOC Press secretary 717-728-4025.  PA Doc smcnaughton@pa.gov   We need your help right now.  Please forward this far and wide. We need more phone numbers to call inside SCI Mahanoy. If you have one send them to us info@prisonradio.org. Every call matters.  Every action matters.  We need to be in the streets. Call your friends, your neighbors. Take action. freemumia.com   prisonradio.org   bringmumiahome.com Noelle Hanrahan Prison Radio   Rise For Mumia >>     Share   Tweet   Forward

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Sitting On The Rim Of The World- With The Son Of The Neon Wilderness Nelson Algren In Mind-Take Four

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He wrote of small-voiced people, mostly people who had started out in the world with small voices, small voices which never got louder, never were heard over the rumble of the subway, working stiffs and their women, sometimes their kids, their kids growing up like weeds, who turned out to be disappointments but what could expect more from the progeny of small-voiced people, guys who sat around gin mills all night (maybe all day too I knew a few who inhabited the Dublin Grille in my old hometown of North Adamsville, another town filled with small-voice people). Never wrote, or wrote much, about big-voiced people who tumbled down to the sound of rumble subway stops out their doors, people who fell off the rim of the world from some high place due to their hubris, their addictions, their outrageous wanting habits never sated before the fall (not some edenic fall but just a worldly fall that once it happened the world moved on and ignored). Wrote of the desperately lonely, a man talking to himself on some forsaken park bench the only voice, not a big voice but a voice that had to be reckoned with, of the stuffed cop swaggering his billy club menacingly to him move on, or else, a woman, unhappy in love, hell maybe jilted at the altar, sitting alone like some Apple Annie in that one Ladies Invited tavern on the corner, the one just off Division where she had met that man the first time and meets all men now, all men with the price of a drink, no more. Yeah, a big old world filled with the lonely hearing only their own heartbeats, heard no other heartbeats as they waited out their days. What did Eliot call it, oh yeah, measured out their lives in coffee spoons. Wrote of alienated people too, not the Chicago intellectuals who were forever belly-aching about the de-humanization of man, about how we had built a mechanical world from which we had to run but the common clay, the ones who manned the conveyor belts, ran the damn rumbling subways, shoveled the snow, hell, shoveled shit day and night. Wrote of the night people, of the ones who would show up after midnight in some police precinct line-up, the winos, the jack-rollers, the drifters, the grifters, the midnight sifters, maybe a hooker who had not paid the paddy and thus was subject to the grill. Wrote of the  people who inhabit the Nighthawk Diner (artist Edward Hopper’s all shape angles, all dim lights outside, bright fluorescent no privacy, no hiding lights inside, all the lonely people eating their midnight hamburgers fresh off the greased grill, another grill that forlorn hooker knew well, or Tom Waits’ rummies, bummies, stumblers, street-walkers looking for respect all shadows left behind, take your pick), the restless, the sleepless, the shiftless, those who worked the late shift, those who drew the late shift of life, those who worked better under the cover of night in the dark alleyways and sullen doorways.

He wrote big time, big words, about the small-voiced people, big words for people who spoke in small words, spoke small words about small dreams, or no dreams, spoke only of the moment, the eternal moment. The next fix, how to get it, the next drink, how to get it, the next bet, how to con the barkeeper to put him on the sheet, the next john, how to take him, the next rent due, how to avoid the dun and who after all had time for anything beyond that one moment. Waiting eternally waiting to get well, waiting for the fixer man to walk up the stairs and get you well, well beyond what any doctor could prescript, better than any priest could absolve, to get some kicks. (Needle, whiskey, sex although that was far down the list by the time that needle was needed or that shot of low-shelf whiskey drove you to your need, again.) Waiting for the fixer man, waiting for the fixer man to fix what ailed them. Not for him the small voice pleasant Midwestern farmers providing breadbaskets to the world talking to kindred about prices of wheat and corn, the prosperous small town drugstore owners filling official drug prescriptions and selling the under-aged liquor as medicine or whatever the traffic would bear, or of Miss Millie’s beauty salon where the blue-haired ladies get ready for battle and gossip about how Mister so and so had an affair with Miss so and so from the office and how will Mildred who of course they would never tell do when the whole thing goes public (although one suspects that he could have written that stuff, written and hacked away his talent)who in the pull and push of the writing profession they had (have) their muses. Nor was he inclined to push the air out of the small town banker seeking a bigger voice (calling in checks at a moment’s notice), the newspaper publisher seeking to control the voices or the alderman or his or her equivalent who had their own apparatuses for getting their small voices heard (although again one suspects he could have, if so inclined, shilled for that set). No, he, Nelson Algren, he, to give him a name took dead aim at the refuge of society, the lumpen as he put it in the title of one short story, those sitting on the rim of the world.

And he did good, did good by his art, did good by his honest snarly look at the underside of society, and, damn, by making us think about that quarter turn of fate that separated the prosperous farmer (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not short-weighting the world), the drugstore owner (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not dispensing his wares, his potent drugs, out the back door to a craving market) , Miss Millie (assuming as we must that she, secretly, was not running a call girl service on the side), the banker (assuming as we must that he, maybe secretly maybe not, was not gouging rack rents and usurious interest), the newspaper editor (assuming as we must that he, very publicly, in fact was printing all the news fit to print), and the politician (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not bought and paid for by all of the above, or others) from the denizens of his mean streets. The mean city streets, mainly of Chicago, but that is just detail, just names of streets and sections of town to balance his work where his characters eked out an existence, well, anyway they could, some to turn up face down in some muddy ravine, under some railroad trestle, in some dime flop house, other to sort of amble along in the urban wilderness purgatory.

Brother Algren gave us characters to chew on, plenty of characters, mostly men, mostly desperate (in the very broadest sense of that word), mostly with some jones to work off, mostly with some fixer man in the background to wreak havoc too. He gave us two classics of the seamy side genre, one, the misbegotten Frankie Machine, the man with the golden arm, the man with the chip on his shoulder, the mid-century(20^th century, okay) man ill at ease in his world, ill at ease with the world and looking, looking for some relief, some kicks in that mid-century parlance, and, two, that hungry boy, that denizen of the great white trash night, Dove Linkhorn, who, perhaps more than Frankie spoke to that mid-century angst, spoke to that world gone wrong, for those who had just come up, come up for some place where time stood still to gain succor in the urban swirl, to feast at the table, come up from the back forty lots, the prairie golden harvest wheat fields, the Ozarks, all swamps and ooze, mountain wind hills and hollows, the infested bayous and were ready to howl, howl at the moon to get attention.

I remember reading somewhere, and I have forgotten where now, that someone had noted that Nelson Algren’s writing on Dove Linkhorn’s roots was the most evocative piece on the meaning of the okie–arkie out migration segment of that mid-century America ever written, the tale of the wandering boys, the railroad riders, the jungle camp jumpers, the skid row derelicts. Hell, call it by its right name, the white trash, that lumpen mush. And he or she was right, of course, after I went back and re-read that first section of Walk On The Wild Side where the Linkhorn genealogy back unto the transport ships that brought the first crop of that ilk from thrown out Europe are explored. All the pig thieves, cattle-rustlers, poachers, highwaymen, the -what did some sociologist call them?, oh yeah, “the master-less men,” those who could not or would not be tamed by the on-rushing wheels of free-form capitalism as the system relentlessly picked up steam, the whole damn lot transported. And good riddance.

The population of California after World War II was filled to the brim with such types, the feckless “hot rod” boys, boys mostly too young to have been though the bloodbaths of Europe and Asia building some powerful road machines out of baling wire and not much else, speeding up and down those ocean-flecked highways looking for the heart of Saturday night, looking for kicks just like those Chicago free-flow junkies, those twisted New Orleans whoremasters. Wandering hells angels riding two by two (four by four if they felt like it and who was to stop them) creating havoc for the good citizens of those small towns they descended on, descended on unannounced (and unwelcomed by those same good citizens). In and out of jail, Q, Folsom, not for stealing pigs now, but armed robberies or some egregious felony, but kindred to those lost boys kicked out of Europe long ago. Corner boys, tee-shirted, black leather jacket against cold nights, hanging out with time on their hands and permanent smirks, permanent hurts, permanent hatreds, paid to that Algren observation. All the kindred of the cutthroat world, or better “cut your throat” world, that Dove drifted into was just a microcosm of that small-voiced world.

He spoke of cities, even when his characters came fresh off the farm, abandoned for the bright lights of the city and useless to that short-weighting farmer who now is a prosperous sort, making serious dough as the breadbasket to the world. They, the off-hand hot rod king, the easy hell rider, the shiftless corner boy, had no existence, no outlets for their anger and angst, in small towns and hamlets for their vices, or their virtues, too small, too small for the kicks they were looking for. They needed the anonymous city rooming house, the cold-water flat, the skid- row flop house, the ten- cent beer hall, hell, the railroad jungle, any place where they could just let go with their addictions, their anxieties, and their hunger without having to explain, endlessly explain themselves, always, always a tough task for the small-voiced of this wicked old world. They identified with cities, with city 24/7/365 lights, with Algren’s blessed neon lights, city traffic (of all kinds), squalor, cops on the take, cops not on the take, plebeian entertainments, sweat, a little dried blood, marked veins, reefer madness, swilled drinks, white towers, all night diners (see it always comes back to that lonely, alienated Nighthawk Diner just ask Waits), the early editions (for race results, the number, who got dead that day, the stuff of that world), a true vision of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawk for a candid world.

He spoke of jazz and the blues, as if all the hell in this wicked old world could be held off for a minute while that sound sifted thought the night fog air reaching the rooming house, the flop, the ravine, the beer hall as it drifted out to the river and drowned. Music not upfront but as a backdrop to while the steamy summer nights away, and maybe the frigid lake front winter too. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, he spoke of a small-voiced white world, residents of white slums and pursuers of white- etched dreams and only stick character blacks but his beat, his writing rhythm made no sense without the heat of Trouble In Mind or that cool blast of Charlie Parker, Miles, Dizzie be-bopping, made absolutely no sense, and so it went.

He spoke of love too. Not big flamed love, big heroes taking big falls for some hopeless romance like in olden times but squeezed love, love squeezed out of a spoon, maybe, but love in all its raw places. A guy turning his woman into a whore to feed his endless habit love, and her into a junkie love. A woman taking her man through cold turkey love. A man letting his woman go love, ditto woman her man when the deal went wrong. When the next best thing came by. Not pretty love all wrapped in a bow, but love nevertheless. And sometimes in this perverse old world the love a man has for a woman when, failing cold turkey, he goes to get the fixer man and that fixer man get his woman well, almost saintly and sacramental. Brothers and sisters just read The Last Carousel if you want to know about love. Hard, hard love. Yah, Nelson Algren knew how to give voice, no holds barred, to the small-voiced people.