***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- With The Dubs Could This Be Magic In Mind- Jenny Dolan Speaks Her Mind, Circa 1962

THE DUBS

"Could This Be Magic"


Could this be magic

My dear

My heart's all aglow

Could this be magic

Loving you so



Could this be magic

My dear

Having your love

My prayers were answered

So far from above



I thought it would be

Just a memory

To linger my heart in pain

But too much pride

I opened up my eyes

And I'm with you dear once again



Could this be magic

My dear

Having your love

If this is magic

Then magic is mine

Could this be magic

Then magic is mine


Jenny Dolan speaks from out of the 1960s night:

I suppose everybody in America knows, knows by heart now, that John O’Connor and I, Jenny Dolan, are an “item.” The poster boy and girl sweethearts of North Adamsville High according to one piece of gossip that I heard, or overheard, Joanne Doyle saying sarcastically in the girls’ lav at school one Monday morning when she was giving her weekend round-up report to all who would listen. What I couldn’t spread around about her and her lover boy, Frankie, but that was old Jenny, old miserable Jennie, before I got my John, and got him good. Of course Joanne only retells what the pizza pie in your eye corner boy king, so-called, Frankie, Frankie Riley if your one of the about three people in the Class of 1964 who doesn’t know him, has already started spreading around. The gist of tale is that he has lost his ace-in-the-hole (really just his bodyguard for when he makes the wrong move, Joanne Doyle not around wrong move, on some real tough guy's girl), Jumping John O’Connor (although I am putting a stop to calling him that name, and fast) to a frill (that’s me, or that’s me when Frankie does his 28 flavors of disrespect to girls thing, except to no-nonsense mistress Joanne, by calling them frills, molls, frails and everything else that he has picked up from watching too many 1930s gangster films, and reading too many Raymond Chandler crime novels). See John and Frankie go back to first grade together over at North Adamsville Elementary and somehow Frankie thought that was enough to keep the “twists” (girls again) at a distance so John could be his full-time“body-guard.”

And if Frankie hasn’t spread the news around about John and me then Peter Paul Markin, clueless Peter Paul when it comes to knowing anything about girls (and girls and guys who get together for more fun, Saturday night fun, than just some silly reading books at the library, or going to a debate about whether Red China should, or shouldn’t be admitted to the United Nations, or stuff like that) will, once Frankie unleashes him to spread it around. Now everybody respects Peter Paul for his knowledge, for his devotion to learning more about stuff, and for sticking up for the, as he calls them, the “fellow down-trodden” of the earth but he has been strictly blind-sided by Frankie ever since he came to North Adamsville. When I was lonely (lonely for my John, if you want to know) I went out with Peter Paul, once, but no thanks. So between Joanne (really Frankie), Frankie (really Joanne) and Peter Paul (really Frankie, and maybe Joanne) you’ve probably got the story all wrong. Like the why behind why John and I did not get together until just now, although we were made for each other and that’s the truth, and has been the truth for a long time.

Let me tell the story, my side, and see if it is anything like you heard from Frankie, or Peter Paul. Although now that I think about it if you got it from Peter Paul then you haven’t finished reading the treatise on the subject of John O’Connor and Jennifer Dolan yet and I can save you some time, and save your eyes too. See back in sixth grade when I was just starting to get a little shape but was still really just a stick I went to Chrissie McNamara’s twelfth birthday party. Now Chrissie and I had been friends for ages so I expected to be at the party but what really got my girl temperature up was that John was going to be there.

Now John was good-looking even then, kind of quiet, a good all-around athlete (a great football player-in-the-making even then, even then in little Pop Warner League), and, I think, shy around girls but I had eyes for him. Big eyes, and not just twelve- year old big eyes, but going way back to first communion at Sacred Heart where we were boy white suit and girl white dress paired together to walk down to the communion rail and I had to calm him down because he was scared of the idea of eating the wafer, the body and blood of Christ. No, I was not every day in every way crushed up on him, but crushed up somewhere deep inside since then. In sixth grade time though when I started getting my shape a little, you know, I couldn’t keep from thinking of him. So at Chrissie’s party I was flying high in expectation. I had my best dress on, had taken a long soapy bath, and worn some of my mother’s perfume (don’t tell her, okay). And I wasn’t disappointed because he asked me to dance, dance close, dance airless close. I almost kissed him then but I waited until the lights went out that signaled the time for some “petting”games to start and then ran over to the sofa and planted the biggest, hardest kiss I could on him. Boy, did I have my signals crossed because he pushed me aside (not hard but definitely aside) and ran out of the house. That’s how he got the name Jumping John O’Connor once Frankie got the story out. He hated the name, and I did too.

After that I didn’t run into him enough to get nervous because at school we were in different classes and, obviously, I wasn’t hanging around shabby, two-bit, greasy pizza parlors wasting my good time and energy listening to Frankie (and his lap dog, Peter Paul) play his lordship and chamberlain. Besides Joanne, Joanne Doyle, Frankie’s plain jane, so-called girlfriend, and I never got along ever since I told her that Frankie was calling me up on the telephone any time they had a “misunderstanding.” She flat-out didn’t believe me but ask Peter Paul, he knows, he knows everything about Frankie Riley and his “love” life.

This year though, sophomore year, John and I have our daily last period study class together and a couple weeks into the class I noticed that he kept looking (for a second anyway) in my direction. More than once. And I started looking in his direction (for a second anyway, and more than once). As we found out later everybody in the class, including the study class monitor, Miss Wilmot, the old dyke, knew we were “making eyes” at each other. Except, of course, maybe Peter Paul who was also in the study hall down front and reading. Still, naturally, that will not stop him from claiming in his treatise that he was the key to introducing John and me.

Believe me I didn’t know what to do at first. I was “gun-shy” from that sixth grade fiasco party so I was afraid to think that he might be interested in me. But, and I admit it, I was miserable, and had been pretty miserable since John’s rebuff that Chrissie’s party night, even though I went out with lots of boys. Then one day I figured out (and talked to Chrissie about it, and she agreed) that John, shy, quiet John wasn’t going to do anything about me unless I started the ball rolling. And here is what I figured out to do (on my own, no Chrissie help). I was going to go into the lion’s den, the holy of holies, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor where Frankie and his boys, including John, hung out a lot and just flop myself in John’s lap and dare him, no double- dare him, to throw me off in a public place. And I was going to do it too, once I got my courage up, or was miserable enough to try anything.

Well, one Friday night, one October Friday night, a few weeks ago I got so miserable at home that I decided to go for broke. I walked up the Downs and entered Salducci’s, fearful, very fearful, but then I saw John sitting on the outside of the booth with the boys (Frankie, Peter Paul, Fingers Kelly, John and a couple of other denizens) and saw my chance. I quickly walked over and flopped myself on John lap. And you know what he said. “I’m sorry” as he gently, very gently, broke my fall with his strong arms. My heart went crazy with fear. I thought that I had once again misinterpreted his looks at me in study class just like at the party and started to get up. But as I started to get up John held me close, held me close like maybe it was going to take the whole football team, both offense and defense, and scrubs and water boys thrown in, to get me off his lap before he finished his red-faced say.

And this is what he said, and said in a way that he had been thinking about it for a while. “I’m sorry, real sorry, that I pushed you away at Chrissie’s birthday party and ran out and never apologized. I just didn’t know what to do then.” And he added, “Will you forgive me?” Frankie and the boys were flabbergasted but John, red-faced and all, maybe more so after saying his piece, held his ground. I wanted to say all kinds of witty, smart things but all I could blurt out was, “yes.” I started to get up but he would not let me up (and truthfully I wasn’t trying very hard anyway) until he asked to walk me home. You know the answer so I will not be coy. As we walked and talked it seemed like an instant until we got to my house. The lights were out but John said he wanted to talk a little, and we did, boy and girl things that you don’t need to know about. And while we were talking he reached out and held my hand. And I got all red-faced, especially when every once in a while he would loosen up his grip and then gently squeeze my hand again like he was afraid to let go. And I was afraid to let him let it go. I will tell you that night, I swear, John could have done anything he wanted with me, anything, but we just held hands, tight hands. Okay, you have the story straight now.

From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky - PORTRAITS-POLITCAL AND PERSONAL

PORTRAITS-POLITCAL AND PERSONAL, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1977
BOOK REVIEW
Is this an indispensable work of Leon Trotsky that no militant leftist can afford not to read? No. Is it nevertheless a supreme example of the kind of political and psychological insight that Trotsky was able to call forth concerning the political actors, great and small, of his day in the tradition of his monumental History of the Russian Revolution? Most definitely, yes. This why we can benefit from reading such personal and political sketches today.

The range of articles presented here is impressive from the martyred Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg through various political associates of his revolutionary career- Lenin and his wife Krupskaya, Zinoviev, Kamenev, his own wife Natalia Sedova, his son Leon Sedov through to Stalin. And additionally, various European writers and politicians of his time. The quality of the insights and the purpose for the writing of the sketch is a little uneven as is inevitable when dealing with this many personalities, however, two sketches stick out in this reviewer’s estimation. The two- one a political obituary for a fellow Left Oppositionist, Kote Tsintsadze (hereafter, Kote) and the other, also a political obituary, for a wavering Stalinist functionary, Abel Yenukidze (hereafter, Abel) give personal expression to what the great internal struggle in the Soviet Communist Party (and, by extension, to the Communist International) in the 1920’s and 30’s was all about.

Whatever else one can say about the fight for the Russian October Revolution the most striking aspect is how consciously planned it was both theoretically and in practice. Thus, one has to seriously look to how the cadre of the revolution developed. Trotsky, himself, presents a clear example of such development. But a few leaders do not a revolution make. Otherwise they would occur much more often than they do. What Trotsky and Lenin epitomized was the development of whole layers of like-minded cadre in turn of the 20^th century Eastern Europe. Not at their level but more than adequate to carry out the revolution. Kote, as Trotsky notes in his obituary represents just such a cadre, particularly those who did not emigrate before the October revolution. Kote fought through three revolutions, underground when necessary, above ground when possible. He fought to defend the revolution throughout the civil war. When the revolution showed signs of degeneration he joined the opposition. In short, the consummate revolutionary. Such men are dangerous. Particularly to those who want to rein in the revolutionary struggle. Trotsky posed this question concerning the life and death of Kote-Where are the revolutionaries in the West who could measure up to the tasks of the revolution like Kote? That question says all that needs to be said about the plight of the Western socialist movement. We must do better.

Trotsky wrote reams of material about the effects of Stalinization on the Soviet political system. He spent the last part of his life politically fighting that process. Yet this writer believes that Trotsky never got a full handle on Stalin’s personality. For that matter this writer is still befuddled by that personality. Why? After analyzing all the social forces that contributed to the victory of Stalinism one is still left with the problem of how Stalin, given his personal style, was able to organize his victory. The case of Abel Yenukidze provides a window in that process. If Kote represented the vanguard of the internationalist fighters, the historically-motivated then Abel represented the ex-revolutionary turned bureaucrat- with this caveat. He truly believed Stalin represented the best course for Russian socialism even though he had some sympathies for the Left Opposition. And he paid with his life for that belief in Stalin. One cannot understand the 1930’s culminating in the Great Purges without understanding this. The greatest numbers of victims were Stalinists of an earlier period- the true believers or at least those who went along. All that survived later were those who knew how to survive under any political regime- toadies. Sometimes in history there is no middle ground. This was one of those times. Read this book and draw your own conclusions on this political question.

THE HEROIC DAYS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL- THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, VOLUME I and II

BOOK REVIEW

THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, VOLUME I and II

World War I was a watershed for modern history in many ways. For the purposes of this review the following point is a predicate for understanding the revolutionary socialist response to that war during and immediately after it. The failure of the bulk of the European social democracy organized in the Socialist International - representing the masses of their respective working classes- to not only not oppose their own ruling classes’plunges into war, which would be a minimal practical expectation, but to go over and directly support their own respective ruling classes in that war indicated that sometime had gone very wrong in the European labor movement in the previous period. This failure was most famously demonstrated when the entire parliamentary fraction of the German Social Democratic party voted for the war credits for the Kaiser on August 4, 1914. This action initially left the anti-war elements of international social democracy, including Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht almost totally isolated. As the carnage of that war mounted in endless and senseless slaughter on both sides it became clear that a new political alignment in the labor movement was necessary. The old, basically useless Socialist International (also known as the Second International), which in its time held some promise of bringing in the new socialist order, needed to give way to a new revolutionary International. That eventually occurred in 1919 in the wake of the October 1917 Revolution in Russia with the foundation of the Communist International (also known as the Third International). Horror of horrors, particularly for reformists of all stripes, this meant that the international labor movement, one way or another, had to split into its reformist and revolutionary components.

It was during the war that Trotsky’s and Lenin’s political positions coalesced, although not without some lingering differences, and as a result they drew closer and began the process of several years, only ended by Lenin’s death, of close political collaboration. This is also the period of their close collaboration around the central questions facing the new International: who should (and who should not) be allowed in it; what strategic and tactical positions should be taken; and, what types of organizational forms should be the norm. These volumes contain many of Trotsky’s personal contributions to the debates in the International in the form of reports to its first four Congresses, manifestos, and additional polemics concerning the work of various national sections of the Comintern. Much of the public writing of the early period of the Comintern was Trotsky’s work and therefore it is doubly important to read to get a flavor of what the beleaguered Soviet leadership was thinking at the time.

Of particular interest the reader should note Trotsky speeches and summaries surrounding the Third World Congress. That is a time, 1921, when the signals were clear that the immediate post-war revolutionary upsurge was, at least temporarily and not necessarily everywhere, ebbing and therefore the tasks of the young Communist Parties was to go to the masses which were for the most part still under the influence of the Social Democratic Parties. However, the aim was not to just to go to those masses in a bid to outdo the socialists at their parliamentary game but to win the masses for the struggle for state power, for a workers government. This is the heyday of Lenin’s tactic of the united front, an idea that has been misused more than once, many times willfully, by communist to gain influence.

Another aspect of the Third Congress worth mentioning was the fight over the way to analyze the apparently ultra-left March 1921 actions of the young, inexperienced and poorly led German Communist party. That is, in essence, the question of the unlamented party leader of the time Paul Levi whose ‘plight’ later generations of reformist socialists have latched on in order to chart the point of the definitive degeneration of the Comintern. That action and Levi’s fate, however, are more properly a question which I will address as part of a review of the aborted German Revolution of 1923 in a later review.

I have headlined this review with the title the Heroic Age of the Communist International. Why? One can clearly see a dividing line in the history of the organization as a vehicle for revolution. The activities of the first Four Congresses represented the accumulated wisdom of the experiences of the Russian Revolution and the failure of the other efforts in Europe to pull off a socialist revolution, centrally in Germany from 1918-23. In that period the mistakes, egregious as some of them were, were mistakes due to political immaturity, carelessness, or a misunderstanding of the situation on the ground. But it was, however, still an organization committed to making an international revolution. Later after the death of Lenin, the defeat of the Left Opposition and its international allies in the Soviet Communist Party and the International, and as the process of Stalinization in both the Soviet Union and the Communist International set in this dramatically changed. The Communist International became, for all intents and purposes, merely an adjunct for Soviet foreign policy. In short, it consciously became anti-revolutionary, and as the case of Spain in the 1930’s demonstrated, at times counter-revolutionary. However, that is the wave of the future. Here read what the Communist International was like, warts and all, in its glory days.

Isaac Deutscher’s three-volume biography of the great Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky

THIS YEAR MARKS THE 73rd ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF LEON TROTSKY-ONE OF HISTORY’S GREAT REVOLUTIONARIES. IT IS THEREFORE FITTING TO REVIEW THE THREE VOLUME WORK OF HIS DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHER, THE PROPHET ARMED, THE PROPHET UNARMED, THE OUTCAST.

Isaac Deutscher’s three-volume biography of the great Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky although written over one half century ago remains the standard biography of the man. Although this writer disagrees , as I believe that Trotsky himself would have, about the appropriateness of the title of prophet and its underlying premise that a tragic hero had fallen defeated in a worthy cause, the vast sum of work produced and researched makes up for those basically literary differences. Deutscher, himself, became in the end an adversary of Trotsky’s politics around his differing interpretation of the historic role of Stalinism and the fate of the Fourth International but he makes those differences clear and in general they does not mar the work. I do not believe even with the eventual full opening of all the old Soviet-era files any future biographer will dramatically increase our knowledge about Trotsky and his revolutionary struggles. Moreover, as I have mentioned elsewhere in other reviews while he has not been historically fully vindicated he is in no need of any certificate of revolutionary good conduct.
At the beginning of the 21^stcentury when the validity of socialist political programs as tools for change is in apparent decline or disregarded as utopian it may be hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20^th century he represented only the one of the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of mainly Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20^thcentury. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky noted elsewhere this element was missing, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Deutscher using Trotsky’s own experiences tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions. Here are some highlights militant leftists should think about.

On the face of it Trotsky’s personal profile does not stand out as that of a born revolutionary. Born of a hard working, eventually prosperous Jewish farming family in the Ukraine(of all places) there is something anomalous about his eventual political occupation. Always a vociferous reader, good writer and top student under other circumstances he would have found easy success, as others did, in the bourgeois academy, if not in Russia then in Western Europe. But there is the rub; it was the intolerable and personally repellant political and cultural conditions of Czarist Russia in the late 19^th century that eventually drove Trotsky to the revolutionary movement- first as a ‘ragtag’ populist and then to his life long dedication to orthodox Marxism. As noted above, a glance at the biographies of Eastern European revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Martov, Christian Rakovsky, Bukharin and others shows that Trotsky was hardly alone in his anger at the status quo. And the determination to something about it.

For those who argue, as many did in the New Left in the 1960’s, that the most oppressed are the most revolutionary the lives of the Russian and Eastern European revolutionaries provide a cautionary note. The most oppressed, those most in need of the benefits of socialist revolution, are mainly wrapped up in the sheer struggle for survival and do not enter the political arena until late, if at all. Even a quick glance at the biographies of the secondary leadership of various revolutionary movements, actual revolutionary workers who formed the links to the working class , generally show skilled or semi-skilled workers striving to better themselves rather than the most downtrodden lumpenproletarian elements. The sailors of Kronstadt and the Putilov workers inSaint Petersburgcome to mind. The point is that ‘the wild boys and girls’ of the street do not lead revolutions; they simply do not have the staying power. On this point, militants can also take Trotsky’s biography as a case study of what it takes to stay the course in the difficult struggle to create a new social order. While the Russian revolutionary movement, like the later New Left mentioned above, had more than its share of dropouts, especially after the failure of the 1905 revolution, it is notably how many stayed with the movement under much more difficult circumstances than we ever faced. For better or worst, and I think for the better, that is how revolutions are made.

Once Trotsky made the transition to Marxism he became embroiled in the struggles to create a unity Russian Social Democratic Party, a party of the whole class, or at least a party representing the historic interests of that class. This led him to participate in the famous Bolshevik/Menshevik struggle in 1903 which defined what the party would be, its program, its methods of work and who would qualify for membership. The shorthand for this fight can be stated as the battle between the ‘hards’ (Bolsheviks, who stood for a party of professional revolutionaries) and the ‘softs’ (Mensheviks, who stood for a looser conception of party membership) although those terms do not do full justice to these fights. Strangely, given his later attitudes, Trotsky stood with the ‘softs’, the Mensheviks, in the initial fight in 1903. Although Trotsky almost immediately afterward broke from that faction I do not believe that his position in the 1903 fight contradicted the impulses he exhibited throughout his career-personally ‘libertarian’, for lack of a better word , and politically hard in the clutch.

Even a cursory glance at most of Trotsky’s career indicates that it was not spent in organizational in-fighting, or at least not successfully. Trotsky stands out as the consummate free-lancer. More than one biographer has noted this condition, including his definitive biographer Isaac Deutscher. Let me make a couple of points to take the edge of this characterization though. In that 1903 fight mentioned above Trotsky did fight against Economism (the tendency to only fight over trade union issues and not fight overtly political struggles against the Czarist regime) and he did fight against Bundism (the tendency for one group, in this case the Jewish workers, to set the political agenda for that particular group). Moreover, he most certainly favored a centralized organization. These were the key issues at that time. Furthermore, the controversial organizational question did not preclude the very strong notion that a ‘big tent’ unitary party was necessary. The ‘big tent’ German Social Democratic model held very strong sway among the Russian revolutionaries for a long time, including Lenin’s Bolsheviks. The long and short of it was that Trotsky was not an organization man, per se. He knew how to organize revolutions, armies, Internationals, economies and so on when he needed to but on a day to day basis no. Thus, to compare or contrast him to Lenin and his very different successes is unfair. Both have an honorable place in the revolutionary movement; it is just a different place.

***Out In The 1950s Film Noir Night- With Robert Mitchum And Jane Russell’s Macao In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sometimes a guy, a guy on the lam, a guy wanted elsewhere for this and that, or just a restless guy, a guy who has seen his share of the world’s woes without even looking for them, has got to do what a guy has to do. Ditto with a gal, ditto on that on the lam, or just restless, gal has got to do what a gal has to do theme. And sometimes, not by accident I am sure, that restless guy longing for some stability meets up with that restless gal, ditto on the stability meet up, meet up in Macao (although that is not the only locale where such perhaps star-crossed meetings could take place, not by a long shot). Macao will do just as well as any other locale when the restless need the background of an open city, an exotic city, a no holds barred city, a place to not be from city, a place that is not wherever your last port of call was. That was Macao back the wild west days when Robert and Jane met up, met up to find some stability and to see if they were indeed star-crossed, or something.

Naturally a story goes with it, or rather stories when you are talking about male and female waifs, about drifters, grifters and midnight sifters (and in Macao that last category was full to the brim with candidates for the jobs). Him, Robert, a big rough, tough guy, a guy who could take a punch and throw one, who you would not mind having in your corner when the bad stuff comes down, no, who you want right behind your back on those occasions, as it will eventually come to in a wide open town, where rough-hewn guys, or guys who think they are rough-hewn guys, life is cheap in the Orient, come a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper. A guy with some trouble hanging over him back in the States, probably some woman (or women) trouble, and in any case a guy who was footloose and like a lot of guys who saw heavy service during the war (World War II for those who are asking) had trouble settling down to some nine to five niche waiting for the other shoe to drop. Her, Jane, a knock-out brunette, all woman, all woman enough for any man to handle, even rough-hewn guys, a woman who could handle herself in the clinches, or be handled in those same clinches, depending on her mood, and she too of indeterminate means and where froms. She called herself a singer like a lot of white girls on the loose did in those days, and not just in Asia, a lot of girls trying to avoid the whorehouses and the pawings, trying to hit the high notes like Peggy Lee did when she grooved with Benny Goodman or the sultry Billie Holiday low and sweet did always but never having that just right mix of slavery times and hard times to pull it off. But with enough eye candy appeal to have the customers, the male customers, in any clip joint gasping for air. Yah, she had done a few round-heel things in her time to get by, just like any girl would. But working the whorehouses, the clubs, or working some rich sugar daddy she was her own woman. And she could always sing a little. So they met, met sliding one afternoon into Macao, and what of it.

The what of it was that the town was sewed up, sewed up tight by Vince, Vince Halloran, yah that Halloran, the one who ran everything from numbers, hookers, illegal liquor on up to high- grade opium like Macao was his private plantation. And it was. Everything, everything worth owning anyway was signed, sealed and delivered to Vince. And nobody, nobody alive squawked. There was the rub though the because international police were very interested in Brother Vince, very interested in taking him down a notch. They were on to something until one of their own took a Vince-inspired knife in the back. They then responded like cops everywhere do when one of their own goes down, good or bad, and the cop they had working the case was already in Vince’s right (or was it left) pocket. So they put on the heat. Sent another cop in to bust one Vincent Halloran for good.

But even an edgy, cagy, nervous guy like Vince is not going to crumble over an off-hand murder of a cop, not in Macao anyway. And not when Jane showed up at his door looking for a job (as his mistress, a singer in his Kit Kat Club, or to work in his high-end whorehouse, take your pick, she came to Macao broke) to break his concentration. And not when, cagy and all, clever guy and all, Robert turned up at same door looking, looking for something. And Vince decided two things, first, he was going to have at Jane no matter what, and no matter who he has to step over to get her in his bed full-time, and second, he decided, erroneously not having been back in the States for a long time and seen restless guys like Robert hanging off every street corner, that Robert smelled of cop. Robert had to laugh at that one.

Despite, or maybe because of, the hazards of those two driving schemes in the end guys like Vince try to stretch it too far, try to think just because they own some two-bit city that they own everything and everybody passing through. Jane did not, repeat did not tumble to Vince, not her kind, not rough-hewn enough after she eyed Robert, and not rich enough to keep her holed up like some pet in Macao. She would be the first to tell you, like she told Robert when he tried move in too fast on her, she was good in the clinches either way and she dropped Vince the first way like a piece of dirt. And Robert, reaching back into some old-fashioned memory bank remembered that he had done his military service to rid the world of the Vinces. And while one Vince in the world more or less was not going to change things it might change the balance just a little. And so Vince was served up, served up to those international police, and Vince will have many a starless night to think where his judgment went wrong. Yah, and that Jane, according to Robert, proved pretty good in the clinches… both ways.

In Honor Of The 142^nd Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-On The Barricades- Theresa Dubois’ Journey.

She had heard that they needed help over on Rue Martin, that the barricade work there had gone slowly and that if that barricade was breeched before completion then the whole northern front of Paris was in danger, was in danger from either the gruesome Germans, or worse, the vanquished Theirs government if it ever got its act together and tried retake Paris, retake their Commune, with or without German help. So she, Theresa Dubois, all of sixteen, all of sound working- class background, all of bright-eyed idealism and all of, well, all of fetching, fetching in non-revolutionary times when more than one stout-hearted working class gallant would take dead-aim at that fetching manner of hers. But these were revolutionary times, or Theresa acted on that premise and attempted, foolishly attempted, to hide that beauty beneath shabby boys clothing and unkempt hair. And nobody, no man young or old, at the Rue Moulin barricade tried to do more that out- do each other in showing one Theresa Dubois what a great barricade builder he was.

But revolutionary fervor, revolutionary elan, and revolutionary idealism would all go for naught if that Rue Martin intersection did not hold and so Theresa and her younger sister, Louise, also dressed in boys clothing slipped away to the other desperate location. Along the way, along the fifteen or twenty blocks it would take to reach Rue Martin before dark the sisters talked, mostly sisterly talked, girl talk in low voices about this or that young man who did, or did not, measure up on the barricade work at Rue Moulin but also as they drew nearer about what they expected, what they hoped for once they had secured their Commune. That got them to thinking about the new schools that were being talked about, the new schools where girls, girls like them, would be encouraged to learn, book learn, or trade learn as the case might be, and about the right to vote for women that seemed unbelievable just the previous year, and about having time to just sit along the Seine and daydream. [They also talked about whether the new government, or the doctors assigned to the problem, would be able to find a way so they didn’t have to deal with their “period” a cause of painful troubles for both girls. They weren’t sure that the government would be able to do anything about it. In any case they both agreed that they were too modest to ask anybody to anything about it even if they could.]

Upon reaching the Rue Moulin fortifications they were appalled by the sloppy and incomplete work previously done there. They immediately, with all the fervor of young revolution, went hither and yon to move the several young men who were dallying around the spot to get moving. And something in the manner of the young women (or the age- old sight of two women, young and fetching, in a man’s world) got the men moving.

Now barricades, at least in Paris, at least since the revolution of ’89 of blessed memory were something of an art form, something that in the best cases not only protected what they were intended to protect against unwanted intruders from whatever source but were hospitable as well. And so the sisters, Theresa in the lead, set about showing the young how to make their “new home” a new home. Logs and paving stones out front, varies wires, pickets, and ropes to retard any offensive advance from the opponent and behind overhangings to protect against all weathers. And then the furnishings (the young men had foolishly thrown many chairs helter-skelter on the pilings and were sitting on stumps) to make the place reasonable to while away the sentry duty hours.

When dusk settled in they stopped for the evening and one of the young men made some stew, which they all ate greedily. While sitting around the campfire that night to keep warm, Theresa noticed a young man, Laurent, a young man who had done much work strengthening the barricades once the two sisters took charge, was looking in her direction. And she flushed, was looking back…

In Honor Of The 142^nd Anniversary Of The Paris Commune –Jean-Paul Roget’s Fear

Jean-Paul Roget frankly was exhausted after coming out of the three hour meeting of the sectional committee of the Paris Commune that had just been declared a few days previously and was desperately in need of organization now that the Theirs government had fled to Versailles leaving the city to the “people.” And that idea of organization, damn, the desperate need for organization, first and foremost of the food supplies and military defense of the city against an attack by either forces loyal to Theirs or from the dreaded Prussians who just that moment had most of the capital surrounded and squeezed in was needed right then. What had Jean-Paul exhausted was not the daunting tasks of organization in front of him and his comrades, tough as they were, but that the three hour meeting that had just finished produced not resolve and purpose but only reams and reams of hot air.

Now that that people of Paris were masters of their own house every dingbat orator, lawyer, crackpot radical and not a few dandies saw their opportunity to wax and wane endlessly about the beautiful struggle that had taken place, that a new day was aborning ,and ill-witted material like that. Take Varlin, a Proudhonist who had been, in the old days back in ’48 quite the radical figure, had been seemingly on every barricade and who in the aftermath of the June Days bloodbath been transported (exiled). This day however he felt the need, and felt it for hours, to push the notion of artisan cooperatives at a time when Paris was losing that segment of the population to the every-devouring factories that were in fact more efficient in the production of goods. Moreover dear Varlin was captivated by the notion that now that Theirs had fled (and good riddance) there was no reason to pursue his troops and disband them as agents of potential counter-revolution.

Certainly Varlin had forgotten the harsh memories of’48 but he was not the worst offender against the urgency of the times. The old windbag Capet, jesus, was he still alive thought Jean-Paul when he heard that name announced from the podium, went on and on about the glory days, the glory days of ’89 like life had stopped in that blessed time. In the same vein (maybe vain) as well Dubois, an old time working-class radical, a semi-follower of Marx from over in England, kept harping on the need to take over the banks in order to finance the new affairs of the Commune. Jean-Paul himself merely a tanner, and a good one, laughed when that idea was announced for where would he, or anyone else, get the money for their daily personal and business needs. A couple of other speakers went on and on as well about how great the peoples’ needs were without however coming up with one solid working idea. At least Jean-Paul had suggested setting a maximum on the price of bread that could help the people but that was merely “taken under advisement” And so ended a day, a fruitless day by Jean –Paul’s lights in the life of the Commune…

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers- A Film Adaptation

DVD Review

The Killers, starring Edmond O’Brian, Burt Lancaster, and Ava Gardner, based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, 1946
As I have mentioned before at the start of other reviews in this genre I am an aficionado of film noir, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falconand Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they also have classic femme fatalesto add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh yah, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s) produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, femme fataleinterest and sheer duplicity the film under review, The Killers, is under that former category.

Although the screen adaptation owes little, except the opening passages, to Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same name this is primo 1940s crime noir stuff. Here, although Hemingway left plenty of room for other possibilities in his plot line, the question is why did two professional killers, serious, bad-ass killers want to kill the seemingly harmless “Swede”(played by a young, rough-hewn Burt Lancaster). But come on now, wake up, you know as well as I do that it’s about a dame, a frill, a frail, a woman, and not just any woman, but a high roller femme fatale. In this case that would be Kitty Collins (played by sultry, very sultry, husky-voiced, dark-haired Ava Gardner) as just a poor colleen trying to get up from under and a femme fatalethat has the boys, rich or poor, begging for more.

As I have noted recently in a review of the 1945 crime noir, Fallen Angel, femme fatales come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions. But, high or low, all want some dough, and man who has it or knows how to get it. This is no modernist, post-1970s concept but hard 1940s realities. And duplicity, big-time duplicity, is just one of the “feminine wiles” that will help get the dough. Now thoroughly modern Kitty is not all that choosy about the dough's source, any mug will do, but she has some kind of sixth sense that it is not the Swede, at least not in the long haul, and that notion will drive the action for a bit. And if you think about it, of course Kitty is going with the smart guy. And old Swede is nothing but a busted-up old palooka of a prize fighter past his prime and looking, just like every other past his prime guy, for some easy money. No, no way Kitty is going to wind up with him in some shoddy flea-bitten rooming house out in the sticks, just waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Let’s run through the plot a little and it will start to make more sense. You already know that other shoe dropped for Swede. And why he just waited for the fates to rush in on him. What you didn’t know is that to get some easy dough for another run at Ms. Kitty’s affections he, Swede, is involved along with Kitty’s current paramour, “Big Jim”, and a couple of other midnight grifters in a major hold-up of a hat factory (who would have guessed that is where the dough, real dough, was). The heist goes off like clockwork. Where it gets dicey is pay-off time. Kitty and Big Jim are dealing the others out, and dealing them out big time. And they get away with it for a while until an insurance investigator (yah, I know, what would such a guy want to get involved in this thing) trying to figure out why Swede just cast his fate to the wind starts to figure things out. And they lead naturally to the big double-cross. But double-crossing people, even simple midnight grifters, is not good criminal practice and so all hell breaks loose. Watch this film. And stay away from dark-haired Irish beauties with no heart, especially if you are just an average Joe. Okay.

Note: This is not the first Hemingway writing, or an idea for a writing, that has appeared in film totally different from the original idea. More famous, and rightly so, is his sea tale, To Have Or Have Not, that William Faulkner wrote the screenplay and that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall turned into a steamy (1940s steamy, okay) black and white film classic.

PLEASE JOIN THE STAND OUT AGAINST ISRAELI APARTHEID!
When: Friday, March 22 at 5:30 to 7:30 PMWhere: Harvard Square in front of Au Bon Pain
This event is being held to mark the international 2013 Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW).
Boston has so many events scheduled that March is Israeli Apartheid Month –
see the list at http://boston.apartheidweek.org/

PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND SPREAD THE WORD!
Sponsored by the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights (bcprights.org)

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Anniverary of Iraq War, and on June 1st, attend the rally at Fort Meade

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June 1: Rally for Bradley Manning at Fort Meade By exposing the truth, Bradley Manning helped end a war based on lies. Join us June 1, 2013 to rally in support of Bradley Manning at Fort Meade. A still from the Collateral Murder video which exposed the murder of two Reuters journalists This week, pundits across the political spectrum are searching for meaning in the tenth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. The decade-long campaign of bombings and occupation left hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and millions wounded, displaced, or scarred. Justified with lies about biological and chemical weapons that never existed, the senseless war cost U.S. tax-payers more than 3 trillion dollars, and far more in blood and shame. Tens of thousands of US soldiers were wounded or killed, and to this day, $490 billion is owed to veterans. Many credit President Obama with the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, and almost none mention the fact that it was cables provided by Bradley Manning and published by WikiLeaks that made Obama’s attempt to keep troops there past the 2011 deadline impossible. As CNN reported in October of that year, [Iraq and U.S.] negotiations were strained following WikiLeaks’ release of a diplomatic cable that alleged Iraqi civilians, including children, were killed in a 2006 raid by American troops rather than in an airstrike as the U.S. military initially reported. Obama had wanted to keep troops beyond President Bush’s 2011 deadline, but required the condition that all U.S. soldiers be guaranteed legal immunity for their actions. Upon reading the WikiLeaks-released cables, the Iraqi government refused. By revealing the hidden realities of the Iraq War, Pfc. Bradley Manning achieved his noble goal of sparking domestic debate, and he helped begin the end of an aggressive, violent, and counterproductive war. Rally at Fort Meade, June 1. Here are a few of WikiLeaks’ revelations about the U.S war in Iraq: 15,000 more Iraqi civilians had been killed than were reported in any other count U.S. soldiers were formally commanded not to investigate reports of torture committed by the Iraqi Federal Police with whom they cooperated The American occupation of Iraq has failed to stabilize the widespread violence and corruption that has escalated following the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure Embarrassed by the exposure of its failures, the military is seeking to make an example of Bradley Manning, and for this reason we must thank, support, and defend him. The government has chosen to pursue all 22 counts, amounting to a life sentence without parole, against Bradley when his court-martial trial finally begins on June 3. We’re calling on supporters to descend in droves to Ft. Meade, MD, on June 1, 2013. President Obama and Gen. Martin Dempsey have already deemed Bradley guilty, pressuring Judge Denise Lind to follow suit, making it impossible for Bradley to receive a fair trial. The military court has failed to repudiate Bradley's unlawful torture and the violation of his right to a speedy trial. It has significantly hindered the defense's ability to discuss both Bradley’s motive to expose wrongdoing and the fact that no harm has come from WikiLeaks’ publications. So we must support Bradley both inside and outside the courtroom. We must express our outrage at the government’s attempts to send this generation’s Daniel Ellsberg to jail for life. Bradley Manning put his life and liberty on the line to inform his fellow Americans about a disturbing war’s darkest secrets, and on June 1, we must return the favor. Learn more about organizing a van or bus to Ft. Meade — grants are available. If you can’t make it to Fort Meade, organize a solidarity event in your own community. Help us continue to cover 100% of Bradley's legal fees! Donate today.

Victor Serge’s The Case Of Comrade Tulayev

 

Normally I do not read novels as I have enough on my plate in reading all the history books I need to read. However, every once in a while a novel comes along that illuminates a historical situation better than a history and begs for some attention. Victor Serge’s political parable falls in that category.  His subject is a fictional treatment of the Great Terror highlighted by the Moscow Trials in the Soviet Union of the 1930’s. This Great Terror liquidated almost the whole generation of those who made the October Revolution of 1917 and administered the early Soviet state as well as countless other victims. Adding a personal touch, as an official journalist of the Communist International he knew many of that generation. The political and psychological devastation created by this catastrophe is certainly worthy of novelistic treatment. In fact it may be the only way to truly comprehend its effects. Serge is particularly well placed to tell this story since he was a long time member of the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the Soviet Union and barely got out of there at the height of the Terror as a result of an international campaign of fellow writers to gain his freedom. The insights painfully learned from this experience place his book in the first rank.  

The plot line is rather simple- a disaffected Russian youth of indeterminate politics, as an act of hubris, kills a high level Soviet official in the then Stalinized Soviet Union and sets in motion a whirlwind of governmental reaction. As if to mock everything the Russian Revolution had stood until that time this youth goes free while a whole series of oppositionists of various tendencies, officials investigating the crime and other innocent, accidental figures are made to ‘confess’ or accept responsibility for the crime with their lives in the name of defending the Revolution 9read Stalin).

While the plot line is simple the political and personal consequences are not, especially for anyone interested in drawing the lessons of what went wrong with the Russian Revolution. The central question Serge poses is this- How can one set of Communists persecute and ultimately kill another set of Communist who it is understood by all parties stand for the defense of the same revolution?  Others such as Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon, Andre Malraux in Man’s Fate and George Orwell in several of his books have taken up this same theme of political destruction with mixed success and ambiguous conclusions. In any case, aside from the tales of obvious bureaucratic obfuscation in turning the crime to a political vendetta which Serge treats masterfully the answer does not resolve itself easily.

What Serge  concludes, based I believe on his own personal trial of fire in that same period, and makes his novel valuable is that one must defend ones revolutionary integrity at all costs. His own conduct bears this out. The history of the period also bears this out not only in the Soviet Union but in Spain and elsewhere. For every Bukharin, Zinoviev or out of favor Stalinist factionalist who compromised himself or herself there were many, mainly anonymous Left Oppositionists and other such political people who did not confess, who did not abandon their political program and went to exile and death rather than capitulate. History may have not absolved them yet. However, those courageous fighters need no good conduct certificate before it, the reader of these lines or me.   

 

Victor Serge (With Natalia Sedova- Leon Trotsky’s Widow) –The Life And Death Of Leon Trotsky

As far as I know Victor Serge’s biography of Leon Trotsky was the first comprehensive evaluation from a left-wing perspective of the Bolshevik leader’s life and work after his death. From that perspective it is valuable for two reasons. Serge himself was a secondary Communist leader after the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917 and witnessed many of the events described in the book. Moreover, for a long period of time he was a member of the Trotsky-led Left Opposition to the rise of Stalinism which formed in the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International in the 1920’s. Additionally, Serge wrote this book in collaboration with Trotsky’s widow, Natalia Sedova who provides many of the personal insights into Trotsky’s life, work and behavior that round out Serge’s historical narrative. This is a task she also performed in Trotsky’s memoir My Life and there is some overlap of the material used. Most importantly this biography fills out the last ten years of Trotsky’s life not covered in his memoir. If a reader wants a rewarding insider’s view of the whirlwind of Trotsky’s life from prophetic rise to leadership to subsequent fall and isolation for his steadfast beliefs I would recommend reading both books.

The main task Serge sets himself here is to place the dramatic and ultimatelyfateful events of Trotsky’s life in the content of his role in the peaks and valleys of the Russian revolutionary movement from the turn of the 20^thcentury under his assassination in 1940. Those included his leadership of the defeated Revolution of 1905, his internationalist fight against World War I, his organizing the October Revolution, his creation of the Red Army in the Civil War against the Whites, his various positions as a Soviet official, the defeat of the Left Opposition led by him by Stalin and his henchmen and his failure to create a viable leftwing alternate Stalinist rule in exile. Just to summarize the highlights of his career above indicates that we are dealing with a very big task and a very big historical figure. Although Serge had broken politically with Trotsky several years before this biography was written he senses this and mainly lets Trotsky’s accomplishments and mistakes speak for themselves.

As I noted in my review of Trotsky’s My Life many of the events depicted in this biography such as the seemingly arcane disputes within the Russian revolutionary movement, the very real attempts of the Western Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks by force of arms in the Civil War after their seizure of power and the struggle of the various tendencies inside the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International in the 1920’s discussed in the book may not be familiar to today's audience. Nevertheless one can take the measure of the man from the strength of Trotsky's commitment to his cause and the fight to preserve his personal and political integrity against overwhelming odds. As the organizer of the October Revolution, creator of the Red Army in the Civil War, theorist, orator, writer and fighter Trotsky was one of the most feared men of the early 20^th century to friend and foe alike. Today, the natural audience for the book, especially those trying to find a way out of the impasse that the international labor movement as the victim of a one-sided class war finds itself in, needs to critically assess Trotsky’s life and times. This book will help.

Victor Serge - The Russian Revolution  

I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider although history writing is not his strongest form of expressing his views. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period by Sukhanov (for the February period), Leon Trotsky and John Reed.   The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to with former allies and current enemies to end Russian participation in World War I and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.

Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at
this late date to offer an argument that historians must be detached from the subject of
their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her argument
straight. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic premise of the Bolshevik
leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise was that Russia as the weakest link in
the capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and as a
consequence take the road to socialism. The failure of that European development, the
subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the seeds of degeneration
implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country that was left to its own
resources underlies the structure of his argument.         __

Although Serge was not present during the first year of the Russian Revolution the time of the events depicted in this book and therefore was not an actual eyewitness to the events and the book itself was not written until 1930 he brings and informed although critical insiders slant on the dramatic unfolding of events. Underlying his selection of events is a formation of a theory of degeneration of the revolution and while it is true that the Bolsheviks appear to have had enough cadres to make and consolidate state power they did not have enough to extend the revolution to socialism

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20^th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Notwithstanding the demise of the Russian Revolution in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the Russian Question as a factor in world politics and the subsequent corresponding lowering of political consciousness anyone who wants learn some lessons from that experience will find this book an informative place to start.

 

Victor Serge's Year One Of The Russian Revolution

I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's History of the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind. The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.

Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And try to stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated Russia as the weakest link in the capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20^th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as Utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the Russian Question as a factor in world politics anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.

***Out In The 1950s Rockabilly Night –With Bill Riley And The Little Green Men's MyGirl Is Red-Hot In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

No question Eddie Jackson was vain. No, not about his personal aspect, not at all, for such considerations were beneath the dignity of a newly minted hot-rod king of the night who had just converted his first Hudson no account car into a souped-up dandy that had blown Slim Jacob’s Packard sedan off the “chicken run”road out on Highway 61 on the outskirts of Memphis one sultry summer night a few weeks back. He rated, to the extent that it mattered, that he was only average for looks, a little too thin and wiry for he-man appearances and a funny gait too although he, as was the uniform of the times, decked himself out in the apparel of the hot-rod night white tee- shirt, denim jeans, wide black buckled belt (which doubled as a convenient weapon when unexpected trouble reared its head) and thick engineer boot, buckled as well, topped off by an ever dangling cigarette, a Camel, unfiltered, just barely hanging from the corner of his mouth. He knew, moreover, that his looks did not matter as long as he was the walking daddy of the hot-rod night for the girls would practically take of their underpants, and maybe more, just for the chance to sit in that Hudson front with him. And he had the scratches on his back to prove that statement.

No Eddie was vain about the appearance of his girlfriend of the time (not to be confused with that horde one or more who might have produced those scratches on Eddie’s back). The one who sat next to him at Jimmy Jack’s Shack, the local drive-in restaurant where he hung out waiting for the night to develop and, more importantly, the one who would ride with him down that lonely stretch of Highway 61 heading south on a “chicken run” when some goof who hadn’t heard he was the king of the walking daddy night and ill-advisedly threw down some god forsaken challenge. His last girl, Wanda, no question and all around agreed even some of the married guys, or maybe especially the married guys, was a fox, all slinky, all curvy and full of bumps in the right places, in her Capris and cashmere sweater, long and blonde (real or not he did not ask, no guy did and just assumed not in those Marilyn-etched years). But she had moved away to Chi town and the big lights and he had been left alone.

Alone except for those sweaty women ready to take off undergarments just to ride with him. And that is where his problem came in. He got interested in one of them, Sheila (although she had not, strictly speaking, been one of the offerees but had been standing outside Jimmy Jack’s Shack eying his vehicle and had badgered him into letting her take a ride with him), who he had figured for nothing but a one night stand, maybe two and then flee. She was funny and made him laugh and told him some stuff about the old days and that (old Pharaoh times and Babylonians and Cretans and stuff which she found interesting and that made him think she was screwy at first but which kind of grew on him although don’t tell her that, either about the screwy or kind of grew on him part). See she was a senior in high school who was going to college at Memphis State in the fall and while she had been just as clawing as any not going to college girl looking to ride with Eddie she was different and he liked that, liked that a lot. Plus she had a few things, a few hot sexual things, different, that she had read about, read about in a book called the Kama Sutra whatever that was, that she would do for him when they were over at Lookout Peak, the local lovers’ lane.

(Sheila had made him laugh once when they had done one of the positions illustrated in the book in the backseat and afterward she said that if he was still pining for Wanda she, all bumps and curves, would not have been able to do what they had just done so chalk one up for skinny no breast girls. She also said don’t be fooled by smart girls like her and girls from good homes too who liked sex just as much, maybe more, that those hot Wanda girls, except they kept it under the sheets and didn’t spread it around town. And he had to privately agree, having had to endure many a Wanda headache night, or not into it night, or it hurts too much night. Still Wanda was a fox and looked good, real good in that front seat and that meant a lot.)

What Sheila was not though was beautiful, foxy, hot, and certainly not red hot. And that bothered him, or rather it bothered him that the guys over at Jimmy Jack’s Shack would make a point out of teasing him about her, about his plain jane girlfriend when their honeys were almost uniformly hot, and where Wanda’s essence was still felt around the joint. Yah, it bothered him, bothered him that even a king of the hot-rod night needed to keep up appearances, needed to have fox in that front seat when the deal went down. Bothered him that he was going to have to ditch Sheila sometime despite the fact that she made him laugh, and read all that stuff that got him hot. See, yah, he was starting to figure that she was red-hot in her own way whatever the guys said. Just then he thought maybe she would ditch him come fall when she went off to college and found some joe really interested in Pharaoh times and stuff like that and that would be the end of it. Till then he figured she could ride with him, ride with him just fine…