***Daydream Visions Of Adamsville Beach, Circa 1964-In Honor Of Elsa Alva (nee Daley), Class Of 1964

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:
I have been dedicating some of my sketches to various people. When I first wrote this one in 2008 I had not one in particular in mind but when I recently rewrote it I did have Elsa in mind. I did not know her well at North Adamsville, and do not know her now much better now, but I felt her presence very strongly when I was rewriting this thing. So here it is.>
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Taffrail Road, Yardarm Lane, Captain's Walk, Quarterdeck Road, Sextant Circle, and the Adamsville Old Sailor’s Home (and cemetery about a quarter of a mile away, closed now but the final resting place for many a sea-faring man, known and unknown). Yes, those names and places from the old housing project down in South Adamsville where I came of age surely evoke imagines of the sea, of long ago sailing ships, and of desperate, high stakes battles fought off shrouded, mist-covered coasts by those hearty enough to seek fame and fortune. And agile enough to keep it. Almost from my first wobbly, halting first baby steps down at “the projects” I have been physically drawn to the sea, a seductive, foam-flecked siren call that has never left me. Moreover, ever since this writer was a toddler his imagination has been driven by the sea as well. Not so much of pirates and prizes but of the power of nature, for good or evil.

Of course, anyone with even a passing attachment to Adamsville has to have an almost instinctual love of the sea; and a fear of its furies when old Mother Nature turns her back on us. Yes, the endless sea, our homeland the sea, the mother we never knew, the sea... But enough of those imaginings. If being determines consciousness, and if you love the ocean, then it does not hurt to have been brought up in Adamsville with its ready access to the bay and water on three sides. That said, the focal point for any experience with the ocean in Adamsville centers, naturally, around its longest stretch of beach, aptly, if not ingeniously, named Adamsville Beach.

For those of us of a certain age, including this writer, one cannot discuss Adamsville Beach properly without reference to such spots such as Howard Johnson's famous landmark ice cream stand (now a woe-begotten clam shack of no repute). For those who are clueless as to what I speak of, or have only heard about it in mythological terms from older relatives, or worst, have written it off as just another ice cream joint I have provided a link to a Wikipedia entry for the establishment. That should impress you of the younger set, I am sure. Know this: many a hot, muggy, sultry, sweaty summer evening was spent in line impatiently, and perhaps, on occasion, beyond impatience, waiting for one of those 27 (or was it 28?) flavors to cool off with. In those days the prize went to cherry vanilla in a sugar cone (backup: frozen pudding). I will not bore the reader with superlative terms and the “they don’t make them like they use to” riff, especially for those who only know “HoJo’s” from the later, pale imitation franchise days out on some forsaken great American West-searching highway, but at that moment I was in very heaven.

Nor can one forget those stumbling, fumbling, fierce childish efforts, bare-footed against all motherly caution about the dreaded jellyfish, pail and shovel in hand, to dig for seemingly non-existent clams down toward the Merrymount end of the beach at the, in those days, just slightly oil-slicked, sulfuric low tide. Or the smell of charcoal-flavored hot dogs on those occasional family barbecues (when one in a series of old jalopies that my father drove worked well enough to get us there) at the then just recently constructed old barren old Treasure Island (now named after some fallen Marine, and fully-forested, such is time) that were some of the too few times when my family acted as a family. Or the memory of roasted, really burnt, sticky marshmallows sticking to the roof of my mouth. Ouch!

But those thoughts and smells are not the only ones that interest me today. No trip down memory lane would be complete without at least a passing reference to high school Adamsville Beach. The sea brings out many emotions: humankind's struggle against nature, some Zen notions of oneness with the universe, the calming effect of the thundering waves, thoughts of immortality, and so on. But it also brings out the primordial longings for companionship. And no one longs for companionship more than teenagers. So the draw of the ocean is not just in its cosmic appeal but hormonal, as well. Mind you, however, we are not discussing here the nighttime Adamsville Beach, the time of "parking" and the "submarine races." [For the heathens, or those from Kansas or some such place, going to watch the submarine races was a localism meaning going, via car, down to the beach at night, hopefully on a very dark night, with a, for a guy, girl and, well, start groping each other, and usually more, a lot more, if you were lucky and the girl was hot, while occasionally coming up for air and looking for that mythical submarine race. Many guys (and gals) had there first encounter with oral sex that way, if the Monday morning before school boys’ lav talk, and maybe girls’ lav talk too, was anything but hot air.] Our thoughts are now pure as the driven snow. We will save that discussion for another time when kids and grand-kids are not around. Here we will confine ourselves to the day-time beach.

Virtually from the day school we got out of school for summer vacation I headed for the beach. And not just any section of that beach but the section directly between the Squaw Rock and Adamsville Heights Yacht Clubs. Now was situating myself in that spot done so that I could watch all the fine boats at anchor? Or was this the best swimming location on the beach? Hell no, this is where we heard (and here I include my old running pal and classmate, Bill Bailey) all the "babes" were. We were, apparently, under the influence of Beach Blanket Bingo or some such early 1960s Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicillo (sic) teenage beach film. (For those who are again clueless this was a “boy meets girl” saga like Avatar, except on the beach...and on Earth.)

Well, for those who expected a movie-like happy ending to this piece, you know, where I meet a youthful "Ms. Right" to the strains of Sea of Love, forget it. (That is the original Sea of Love, by the way, not the one used in the movie of the same name sung by Tom Waits at the end, and an incredible cover that you should listen to on YouTube.) I will keep the gory details short, though. As fate would have it there may have been "babes" aplenty down there but not for this lad. I don't know about you but I was just too socially awkward (read: tongue-tied) to get up the nerve to talk to girls (female readers substitute boys here). And on reflection, if the truth were to be known, I would not have known what to do about it in any case. No job, no money and, most importantly, no car for a date to watch one of those legendary "submarine races" that we have all agreed that we will not discuss here. But we can hardly fault the sea for that, right?
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The above piece came about as a result of a response to some correspondence, via, a manically hard-working and determined North Adamsville High School class reunion committee member who shall remain nameless (except for gender, she) concerning old-time memories of Adamsville Beach which formed one of the backdrops to our high school experiences. In the wake of my commentary everybody and their brother (or sister) who ever came within fifty miles of smelling the sulfuric-flecked sea air at that beach has felt some kind of ‘civic duty’ to bring out his or her own salt-encrusted memories of the place. Below, mainly unedited (who could edit someone’s civic duty), is the traffic in response to the above piece. No one is required to wade through all the blather but to make a New York Times-like offical record seems appropriate under the circumstances.
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Betty Gilroy 1985 (view profile)
Posted: Jul 22 2008 11:00pm PST
In reply to Peter Paul Markin 1964

I grew up close to Adamsville Beach...I used to ride my bike there, runaway there... was a great bike path, I loved it as a kid. I used to hang out with friends from school, had some great jelly fish fights there. Ahhh, my friend and her boy fell asleep on the beach divider {Markin: sea-wall]with his hand on her stomach. How was she going to explain that one to mom and dad? (And, no, you dirty old man, they were not having oral sex or anything like that, although I learned later from my own experience that this was a “hot” spot for such things being so secluded and all. She, maybe they, didn’t know anything about sex then according to her, although later she told me about a couple of things, nasty-sounding things then but nice now, to do with guys. I am blushing now, and getting a little funny-feeling too, when I think about it now but the sound of the ocean in the background was a great place to do those things, those so-called nasty things. I know it got me going.)

I lived in Adamsville Central in the ‘70s to the early 80s and then moved to North Adamsville. I love the views, and the clam shack, the ice cream, all the clam diggers... the pond on the way from Marlboro Street, jumping the fence trying to catch the bull frogs going to the swamp cemetery swinging from the willow tree I think... I live in California and have a son that’s 7 (I hope he doesn't read what I wrote above, about that sex stuff I mean, but the ocean did turn me on, a lot) around the age that I would ride my bike the freedom, the safeness I had skate boarding around losing track of time, I haven't been back since my 10 year reunion I miss it, my friends, but then again I'm older with responsibilities maybe some day again I will take my son and show him Adamsville Beach and throw a few jelly fish his way??

Betty
North Adamsville High 85
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Memories Of Adamsville Beach

Peter Paul Markin, 1964
Posted: Jul 26 2008 05:31am PST
In reply to Betty Gilroy, 1985

Betty- Thanks for the reply. The glint of silver off the Treasure Island Bridge when the sun hit it at a certain time. The early morning winter sun coming up over the horizon on the bay. The Boston skyline at dusk (pre-Marina Bay times when there was an unimpeded view). Well, we could go on and on with our memories but the one thing that caught my eye in your reply was the word “escape.” In one sense I was using Adamsville Beach as a metaphor for that idea in my story. I do not know about you and your family but, to be kind, I had a very rocky time growing up and certainly by the time I got to high school I was in desperate need of a sanctuary. It is no accident that I (and my old running mate, Bill Bailey) spent a fair amount of time there.

I went back to Adamsville last year (2007) while they were doing some reconstruction and cleaning the place up. I wrote about that in a sketch entitled Do You Know Adamsville Beach? that I posted here but then deleted. My original idea was to draw a comparison between the old hazy, happy memories of Adamsville in our youth and looking at it with today's older eyes. Somehow it just didn't fit right as a discussion item with the things I was trying to write then. If you would kindly reply to this message I will place it as a reply to some of what you have mentioned in your message about 'coming home.' By the way the jellyfish are still there in all their glory and please, take mother's advice, do not step on them, they might be poisonous.

Finally, I will not let you off the hook. I won’t comment on the "dirty old man" remark as I will take it as just a cute “fresh,” maybe flirty remark on your part. Yes, and I know as well as you that this is a family-friendly site but how did your friend explain away her 'sleeping' on the old wall to mom and dad? That bit about how she (they) didn’t know anything about sex, oral or otherwise, just doesn’t wash. Everybody “knew,” including parents who probably invented the spot, you only went to that particular spot with one thing in mind. You can send me a private e-mail with the real details if you like and then you can see if I am really a dirty old man or not. Regards, Peter Paul Markin

[Markin: Betty, by the way did send me an e-mail, several in fact, and I am still blushing, blushing profusely over some of her information old and ‘mature’ as I am. Let's put it this way my temperature was rising not a little. Frankly, some of the stuff (various sexual positions) she spoke of have to defy the laws of nature, but so be it. We were young and flexible (in more that one way) then. Forward.]
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Craig Wallace, North Adamsville High,1957 (view profile)
Posted: Jul 23 2008 10:34am PST
In reply to Peter Paul Markin,1964

Peter Paul: I heard from a younger friend, a woman friend (of my ex-wife’s actually) who knew you back in the day Professor Joan Murphy from over at MIT, who used to call you P.P., and that you liked it. [Markin: Tolerated it from her only because she was Frankie Riley’s ever-loving girlfriend. You remember the Riley family, the one with all the great North Adamsville raider red football players, Frankie was my corner boy chieftain up in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor. And she was, well, let's leave it as Frankie's ever-loving girlfriend.]

I don't have an awful lot to say about the beach, since I lived in a few other places while growing up. I do remember walking along the old sea wall and jumping across the openings trying to grab the rail to avoid falling. I once caught the rail, but hit the edge of the concrete wall with my shin. It hurt, but I didn't think it was broken.

Once a friend ran into a guy at the beach, and for some reason began to "exchange words." They were about to go at each other, but the lifeguard told them to take their dispute elsewhere. They went across the street to the grass in front of a stand where clams and other goodies were sold. The friend proceeded to tear the other guy apart. It didn't last that long. The friend was 5'-7" tall and the other guy 6'-3". I heard that some years later they ran into each other again and had a big laugh about the whole thing. Kids do grow up.

When I visited Massachusetts with my wife and two kids in 1983, my brother took us through some of the "old haunts," and we roamed the beach a bit. They got a kick out of a pair of horseshoe crabs skittering along the edge of the low tide line. I also went back there in 2007 and took a few walks along the beach. I did miss the old candle pin bowling alley, which appears to have been replaced by condos as was the old Adamsville Grammar School where I went through 1st grade (Miss Gray) and most of 2nd grade (Miss Lindberg).

Oh, yeah. I believe the Adamsville East Elementary School on Huckins Avenue is still in operation. I read that there's a boundary somewhere in North Adamsville and that kids who live east of the line go to Adamsville East School and those west of that line go to Parker Elementary on Billings Road. What is now North Adamsville High School included grades 7 through 12 till 1958 or 1959. So, even though I lived in 3 or 4 places, I was able to attend all 6 years at the same school.

Overall, most memories of Adamsville Beach are pretty good.

Craig S. Warren, 1957
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Peter Paul Markin reply:
Craig

Nobody has to stay on the subject at hand, all information about the old times in North Adamsville is welcome, but did you ever go to the beach? From the way you described it I thought maybe you knew about it from some picture postcard, of any beach, anywhere. Were you one of those, and there were not a few if I recall, who "rode," hot-rod rode the Adamsville Shore Boulevard and never touched down on the sand, or caught a fresh sea breeze on a hot summer day. Just kept cruising, eyes forward or left honed in on the ice cream, bowling alley, clam shack side, looking for the be-bop night, girls, or something. Like old Adamsville was Kansas or some sod town.

Peter Paul Markin,1964
Posted: Jul 23 2008 12:51pm PST
In reply to Craig Wallace, 1957
This entry started as a short sketch in this space but I deleted it because it did not fit in with what I was trying to evoke in these pages then. Now the sketch does serve as a decent reply though for Betty Gilroy's,(1985) and Craig Wallace's (1957) comments above. I, moreover, actually am writing about the old-time beach here and not everything else under the sun like hot sex spots and Adamsville school locations. Christ. Peter Paul Markin

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Okay, in the sketch above(Daydream Visions Of Adamsville Beach, Circa 1964) this writer got all misty-eyed about the old days at Adamsville Beach. I went on and on about things like the various flavors of ice cream at HoJo's, the local king-of-the-hill ice cream stand, the vagaries of clam-digging in the oil-soaked flats and about the smell of charcoal- broiled hot dogs at Treasure Island. And I did not fail to mention the obligatory teenage longings for companionship and romantic adventure associated with the sea. But enough of magical realism. Today, as we are older and wiser, we will junk that memory lane business and take a look at old Adamsville in the clear bright light of day.

Last year, as part of the trip down the memory lane that I have been endlessly writing about in this space, I walked the length of Adamsville Beach from the Squaw Rock Causeway to the bridge at Adamsville Shore. At that time the beach area was in the last stages of some reconstruction work. You know, repave the road, redo the sidewalks, and put in some new streetlights. Fair enough-even the edges of Mother Nature can use a make-over once in a while. The long and short of this little trip though was to make me wonder why I was so enthralled by the lure of Adamsville Beach in my youth.

Oh sure, most of the natural landmarks are still there, as well as some of the structural ones. Those poor, weather-beaten yacht clubs that I spend many a summer gazing on in my fruitless search for teenage companionship (read: girls). And, of course, the tattered Beachcomber gin mill in much the same condition is still there as are the inevitable clam shacks with their cholesterol-laden goods. That is not what I mean-what I noticed were things like the odd smell of low-tide when the sea is calm, the tepidness of the water as it splashed, barely, to the shore-when a man craved the roar of the ocean-and the annoying gear-grinding noise caused by the constant vehicular traffic on the near-by boulevard. Things that I was, frankly, oblivious to back in the days.

There is thus something of a disconnect between the dreaminess and careless abandon of youthful Adamsville Beach and the Adamsville of purposeful old age-the different between eyes and ears observing when the world was young and there were things to conquer and now. The lesson to be learned- beware the perils of memory lane. But don't blame the sea for that, please.

.....and the tin can bended, and the story ended (title from the late folksinger/folk historian Dave Van Ronk's last album). That seems about right.
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On Our 'Code Of Honor'

Peter Paul Markin, 1964
Posted: Jul 26 2008 05:42am PST
In reply to Craig Wallace, 1957
Craig- I am very interested in having you fill out this story about the fight between your friend and the other guy down at Adamsville Beach that you mentioned before (see above). I do not need to know the gory details nor what happened years later. What I am looking for is your take on what the whole incident meant at the time. This was hardly an unusual event at then(or now for that matter), right?

I am trying to put together an entry based on our working class “code of honor”- male version- at the time before women's liberation and other social phenomena helped us to expand our sense of the world and how we should act in it. Even “loner” types like me would not back down on certain 'turf' issues (girls, giving way while walking on the street, who you "hung" with, where your locker was, which “lav” you used, etc.) and took a beating rather than concede the point. Enough for now but give this some thought.

Regards, Peter Paul
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Fight . . . ?

Craig Wallace,1957 (view profile)
Posted: Jul 28 2008 09:09am PST
In reply to Peter Paul Markin,1964
Peter Paul (I won’t call you P.P., okay). [Markin: Watch it old man. The days of the bogus 'code of honor' may be long gone but every working-class corner boy still has a slight edge on, even fifty years later, okay.]

The scuffle between a friend of mine and a much bigger guy at Adamsville Beach was not really "earth shaking." It started a couple days before when the friend and I were walking along one of the streets leading to the beach, Bayfield Road, perhaps. The "other guy" passed by in a car with some of his friends, including a couple girls. That guy yelled some insult at my friend in reference to his "eye-wear." He probably was trying to impress the girls by showing them he could insult anyone and all could get a good laugh out of it. Of course, my friend yelled something equally offensive at those in the passing car, which kept going. The "incident" appeared to have terminated.

A few days later the friend and I crossed the road to the beach near one of the yacht clubs and there was the guy who had yelled the insulting remarks. Apparently, he thought he could continue the verbal abuse without suffering the consequences, because he yelled something similar again. My friend went after the kid, but was informed by the lifeguard that they better take their "dispute" elsewhere. They went across the road to a grassy area and, encouraged by a small crowd that was gathering around them, proceeded to "get it on." My friend was usually a fairly pacific person, but when "pushed," he was like a cornered wolverine that would take on anybody or anything. The scuffle didn't last long, and the bigger kid got the worst of it. That time was the end of the dispute. Apparently nobody was seriously hurt, but maybe some had a bit more respect for the smaller kids after that. Some years later the two met, and remembering the incident, shared a good laugh over the whole thing.

Then, as now, I saw no esoteric meaning to the "battle." It didn't seem like the medieval days when one would "defend his honor" or that of a "damsel in distress." It was just an exchange of words that developed into a short round of what may be referred to these days as "ultimate fighting" where no rules are observed. I had a couple scuffles in elementary school and my son did in middle school, but we more-or-less outgrew such things. Sadly, nowadays those "scuffles" can become more deadly and end with somebody paying the "ultimate price." Are we reverting to the "Dark Ages." I hope not.

Anyway, enough said of a "juvenile incident."

Craig, 1957
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The "Code of Honor"

Peter Paul Markin, 1964
Posted: Aug 03 2008 11:31am PST
In reply to Craig Wallace, 1957
Craig, thanks for story. It gives me an angle for a story that I will write about on our youthful sense of “honor.” This story that you related, especially the part about impressing the girls, etc. really says something about that code.

Regards, Peter Paul
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Day and Night At Adamsville Beach

Peter Paul Markin, 1964
Posted: Aug 02 2008 06:21am PST
In reply to Betty Gilroy, 1985
I mentioned in my original story that all of us would talk about daytime Adamsville Beach (although once the kids are out of sight-the nighttime is the right time- can come into play). I hope that at some point Betty Gilroy will expand on her comment about her girlfriend down at the day time beach and the incident alluded in her comment about her falling asleep. Ms. Gilroy is more than capable of telling her own version of the story. [Markin: She did via e-mail, private e-mail, and it would take a civil war to get the information out of me, or a few bucks. Let me put it this way. I was blushing for days, maybe now even, as I mentioned above]. The only point I want to make here is that some of these day time remembrances are as funny as what might have happened at night. Funny now, that is.

Regards, Peter Paul
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Anyone Remember Adamsville Beach?

Robina Moore, 1978 (view profile)
Posted: Aug 15 2008 04:35pm PST
In reply to Peter Paul Markin, 1964
Totally agree that growing up on Adamsville Beach was an experience. So natural at the time, but looking back I now see how fortunate I was. I don’t remember the HoJo’s but I do remember the 19 cent hotdogs sold on the beach that was a few blocks from my house. What a treat for the neighborhood kids to get together and go get a dog.

As far the beach was concerned as kids, we followed the tides. Some parent would parade a group us kids and watch over us. Generally for two hours before high tide, and two hours after, and they always had snacks and drinks in tow…just gotta love the moms for that! Swim, dig in the sand, play catch in the water and when finally tired, lay on a towel and listen to WRKO or WMEX on the transistor radio.

Once I hit teenage years, I choose not to venture near the beach. I think my parents knew about the cosmic and hormonal appeal as well as primordial longings going on there. I was taught at a young age, the beach is not a good place at night. I totally thank them for instilling this and letting Adamsville Beach be filled with wonderful childhood memories. With that said, I am thrilled at the revitalization, and hope this generation of children will have a chance to create memories that they can cherished forever.
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Back In The Days

Peter Paul Markin, 1964
Posted: Aug 18 2008 02:49pm PST
In reply to Robina Moore, 1978
Robina-Very nicely told memories. That is the thing that I was trying to evoke in writing this particular commentary. A few points.

*The reason for the boxes in your entry [Markin:since deleted] is that when you transfer from a word processor to the message space here the apostrophes and quotation marks turn into some Serbo-Croatian dialect in the process. It happens to me all the time. You have to change them in this space to avoid that.

* Do you, or anyone else, know when HoJo's left the Adamsville Beach site?

* Did you mean 19 dollars for a hot dog? You put 19 cents but that can't be right. Nothing ever cost 19 cents.

• You realize, of course, that this is a generic North Adamsville site and therefore members of generations X, Y or Z may not be familiar with the term “transistor radio.” For their benefit, that was a little battery-powered gizmo that allowed you to listen to music, the 'devil's music,' rock 'n' roll, without your parents going nuts. And no, sorry, you could not download whatever you wanted. Yes, I know, the Stone Age.

Regards, Peter Paul Markin
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The Nighttime Is The Right Time....

Peter Paul Markin, 1964
Posted: Aug 21 2008 08:08am PST
In reply to Robina Moore, 1978
...to be with the one you love. Yes, that classic Ray Charles tune (covered by many, including a steamy tribute version by The Rolling Stones in their 2005 Fenway Park concert) is a good lead in to what I want to mention here. Most of the comments on this entry have concerned day time Adamsville Beach but I have been thinking that it is time to open up to the night time episodes. Here are my reasons:

• Hey, it is entirely possible that some of our fellow alumni never went to Adamsville Beach during the day. They might have a legitimate grip against us for that. Remember we are using this cyberspace so that everyone has their "15 minutes of fame."

• The heck with protecting the kids and grandkids. They know this stuff already. Let's face it, as well, no self-respecting member of the hip-hop/iPod/Sidekick/texting generations (or younger) would dream of reading this far down into the entry. Ugh!

• Frankly, there is only so far we can go with the day-time Adamsville Beach. While there have been some nice comments there is only so far you can go with jellyfish, 19 cent hot dogs, teenage romantic longings and getting sand kicked in your face. We need to spice this up. In short, sex, or the hint of it, sells.

These are all good and sufficient reasons but, as usual, my real reason for arguing inclusion here is personal curiosity. I have been waiting some forty-four years to ask this simple question. Why, while we were driving down Adamsville Shore Boulevard on those cold October nights, let's say, were most of the cars all fogged up? What, were their defrosters not working? Come on, please, tell me.

Out In The 1970s Be-Bop Night- The Girl With The Pale Blue Eyes-Take Four

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He was getting ready to leave her again, leave her like he had so many times before, and like he would probably do again. Who knows what it was this time maybe he got mad that she did not take his newly found passion for saving the world now that it was going to hell in a hand-basket seriously and was in desperate need of fixing or maybe it was he could not for the life of him understand why she wanted to stay cooped up in the little white house with picket fence and dog that they had shared in Old Lyme for the past several years and let the world drift by while she, they, pursued their respective careers. She, a very, very competent lawyer and he a better than middling free-lance editor for well-known local publishing houses, although he had done everything from washing dishes to teaching school once he decided, or she decided him, to settle down a bit after he got the trauma of Vietnam under some kind of control .

He had a half-ironic vision that in forty or fifty years if he was still alive he would still be leaving her, or still be working his way back to her. That forty or fifty year thought didn’t faze him, didn’t cause him pain, and didn’t make him tremble. Didn’t make him tremble that maybe there would not be a forty or fifty years, that she would cut it off, or he would before then. That was outside the box of their relationship and always had been in the now numberless times they had danced this dance. That was just the way their love worked, or didn’t work. Yes, they both agreed, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes in maniacal rage, that was just the way it was between them and had been from about the first time they met a decade or so back in the mid-1970s.

As he packed his belongings to head out for wherever he was heading this time he had a moment’s confusion. Like the other times, that numberless times, it was not clear where he would go, west to California, east on some tramp steamer to Morocco and some Kasbah hash den, north on the hitchhike trail before the snows set in and then south to the Baja, he didn’t know until he went out the door and walked some distance, maybe picked up a ride and that would decide it. All he knew was he was, she was, in a place neither of them wanted to be and so he would cast his fates to the wind. And he thought too, as he had thought so many times before when this damn interlude came upon them, about how he had met, or almost didn’t meet, his girl with the pale blue eyes.

Soldier Johnson had to laugh about that last fact, about how they had almost not met, or rather how he had almost not connected with his Jewel, Jewel Samson, the woman he was now about to leave again. Back then Soldier had thought that he had blown the dust of old North Adamsville off his shoes after he finished his military service and so his return, his painful return, back to his growing up hometown after he had busted out for the umpteenth time on the West Coast was quite a letdown. So he had drifted back east, had not picked up much of anything coming back, and had thus wound up, hat in hand, at his parent‘s front door one night, defeated for the moment in life’s battles. The cost of that defeat, the immediate cost was a constant harping by his mother, taking up her vigil established since childhood, about his, uh, short-comings, short-comings against her expectation, and against the myriad neighbor children who had “made good.” After one such painful exchange with his distraught mother who continued to make it her personal responsibility to remind him constantly that at thirty- two he needed to get on with his life, needed to get a job, get married, get to whatever he had to do and in response to that also numberless tirade he had fled out the door and headed to Adamsville Beach to cool out a bit.

[Soldier (real name Lawrence) Johnson had gotten that name, that moniker, while in basic training down at Fort Dix in New Jersey from the other raw recruits who kidded him about his non-existent soldierly deportment. He had done more drill sergeant-inspired push-ups for unmade bunks, footloose foot lockers, misshapen uniforms than anyone thought possible. More extra- duty KP (kitchen patrol for the civilians), more confined to quarters, more night guard duty, well, more of everything that most common grunts (enlisted men) would go well out of their way to avoid. And more screw-ups at the firing range or out at maneuvers than anyone thought possible either.

But the name stuck, stuck through hell-hole Vietnam where he was not the worst soldier, not at all, taking a little shrapnel to save a buddy, taking point out in that bloody Mekong Delta, swampy, fly-infested night and, mainly against all odds surviving the experience. Physically surviving it and when he got home his old corner boys from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor kept the name on him and kept it on even more so him after they had heard his exploits for about the ten thousandth time. And it also stuck through his post -soldier internal war that he waged within himself and that he hid from his parents, his corner boys, and his hastily-married first wife. His post-Vietnam trauma as it was described at the time before the condition got a more scientific name, including a stint at the VA hospital out in Frisco and another vagabond stint under the lost soul bridges of Southern California.]

Soldier walked the two miles to the beach from the family house so by the time that he got to the his favored boyhood spot near the North Adamsville Yacht Club and sat on the seawall to catch a cool breeze it was getting a little late. He had no sooner settled in for a serious think than Jewel came walking by with her girlfriend, Laura. Came walking by like something out of the mist of time, like maybe a 1940s pin-up model all the guys overseas would cherish inside their lockers or on the inner lid of their trunks in some forlorn barracks in some forlorn outpost of civilization, maybe some rock of land surrounded by infinite Pacific seas or Normandy fogs. Or maybe a 1940s movie star, maybe Lana Turner, all in white when she sizzled up the screen and sizzled up poor clueless John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Twisted up dear John so bad he went to the big step off with a smile, or half-smile on his face, just for thought having been with her, having smelled that gardenia perfume she threw off. Jewel came all dressed in white, white blouse, white shorts, short showing long well-thought out legs and well-turned ankles, white socks hugging white tennis shoes, and even from a distance of ten feet he could see, set off by her well- developed summer tan, those pale blue eyes that would haunt his dreams forever after.

And those eyes would cause him more hell and anguish than he ever imaged. Funny you see because it didn’t have to have happened that way, didn’t have to have happened at all. Soldier still caught up in his mother-inflamed big think about the contours of his future had let her pass by, let her go in his thoughts without comment. But as she moved a little distance away he switched from thoughts of getting a job, or whatever else of the twenty-one demands his mother insisted he pursue to thoughts of how this young passing woman, or rather one with her look, her sultry virginal look had always eluded him, had always been outside his grasp. Yah, he knew that sultry virginal thing was a contradiction but it was all tied up with his Catholic upbringing and those Sunday morning novena–driven girls he watched from behind out from the neighborhood. And by his teenage boy thoughts, corner boy-driven thought, of hot women inflamed by magazines, television, the movies and later when he knew the score with such girls, knew they were inflamed too, so make of it what you will.

In high school, maybe starting in freshman year, he and his friends, his corner boys now from Salducci’s Pizza Parlor having moved up a step from Harry’s in the normal progression of corner boy-hood, would hit Adamsville Beach right where he was sitting at that moment and watch, no, more than watch, leer, as the girls went by, the girls who would be dressed very much like Jewel, would sway in the sun very much like Jewel, would fill the very air with their presence, with that subtle fragrance that emitted from them as they passed by. While other guys, particularly guys like Frankie Riley and Timmy Kelly, would have those swaying girls all in white by the dozens he had no such luck as much as they inflamed his schoolboy heart.

At night, summer nights, when the girls turned from white shorts to white dresses he also struck out. He seemed to get either the black-etched arty types who wanted to save the world or save him, or just be friends, or something like that, or the bookworms, especially the bookworms of indeterminate dress, say plaid and stripes or some such combination who endlessly wanted to speak of books, and not much else. He was okay with the books part, although the not much else drove him to distraction. And his dream white- dressed girls, wearing shorts or dresses, were not bookworms, were not even concerned about books for all he knew. Later, before ‘Nam, while he was in college he settled for the bookish types and left it at that. After ‘Nam he took whatever came his way, mainly fast and loose women, women like that wife that he married in far too much haste, who would not dream of wearing white, or be accused of dreaming about much of anything. But he never in the back of his mind really ever stopped thinking that someday he might snatch one, snatch that girl in white of his fevered boyhood dreams. And he never missed an opportunity to stare at them, younger or older, when they passed by ignoring him.

That summer day he could see that she, Jewel, was younger, maybe too much younger than he was (they would laugh, cry, make fun about that difference, that twelve year difference as it turned out since she was only twenty, a sophomore in college, at the time), and so he let the thing go by as just another fantasy and that was that. Then, as fate would have it, the pair of young women walked back up past the yacht club again near the place where he was sitting and from out of nowhere, or maybe out of that boyhood angst, he called out to them, called out to the girl with the pale blue eyes that her eyes were pretty. That he eyes reminded him of the sun-drenched seas behind them (or some such thing for he was so nervous to get it out that he was not sure he remembered his exact words correctly but close enough).

Jewel looked at him, startled, like nobody had ever made that comment to her before. Being, as he found out later, a gentile young woman, she came over and asked him if he was speaking to her and when he responded that he was she said “thank you” with a slightly blushed face and in a hushed voice that spoke to him of adventures, and desire. That was all the opening he needed, well, almost the only opening, once he asked her name and what she did. It turned out that she was a student at Boston University a place where he had gone to school a couple of years before he busted out about a decade before and wound up getting drafted into the damn army. Something in her manner gave him the impression she was looking for something, or maybe it was something in his kindly manner that stopped her (that kindly thing, along with what she called his wisdom of the ages prophet long hair and beard, as she mentioned later, was what kept her talking to him as he sat on that seawall).

Laura had to go, or had made some other excuse to leave them, but Jewel decided to sit on the seawall with him. They sat for hours talking, talking about this and that, about the travails of school life, about how he wanted to go back to school since he could do it on the G.I Bill and maybe teach, something like that, about busted dreams, hers too, since she had wanted, desperately wanted to be a scientist, wanted to be like Madame Curie who she had read about as a child, but was then knee- deep in a pre-law school program that he parents had pushed on her, kicking and screaming.

He spoke about Vietnam and his lost decade, about a time back in Greenwich, Connecticut where she grew up, that she had no real recollection of except of protests that would drive her conservative parents crazy, and fearful childhood television snippets (he avoided speaking of his internal wars, his sometimes tough nights just then although that subject would emerge with a vengeance over time). They kid boy and girl-like spoke about musical likes (many shared, like The Doors, the Stones, Bob Dylan), movies (they both loved film noir, especially Bogie and Bacall), lots of things almost making stuff up in order not to leave that wall. He spoke vaguely of his busted married and she of a couple of guys who it didn’t work out with, not for her not trying she said.

As Jewel and Soldier talked into the dusk they both were getting just slightly flirty along the way, feeling things out, feeling whether this had any future (as they both mentioned to each other later in recapping that first meeting). All they knew was that they almost simultaneously asked for each other’s telephone numbers, and laughed. There was a lot more of that, that flirty then hesitation feeling, before they became a couple. And while whether they might be star-crossed lovers or have an eternal love still was being played out that day strangely enough started it, started their rocky road. Started out with those pale blue eyes.

Out In The Appalachia Home Night- For Prescott Breslin, Senior-Take Three

 

A YouTube film clip of June Carter Cash performing Storms Are On The Ocean one of Prescott Breslin’s favorite boyhood tunes.

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

Scene: Brought to mind by the song Storms Are On The Ocean performed by June Carter Cash on her Wildwood Flower album. An Appalachian scene all brokered with a traditional cabin, fixed up, although not all of them were, or could be if company, coal company-owned, or the times were too tough to do more than tar-paper this, stuff an odd piece of wood in that, put something in a broken to keep the mountain mist winds at bay. It was, is, those winds rushing down into the valleys though not the obvious signs of poverty and ill-health that capture the mind’s eye, that make one long for the simple beauty of the place and which kept many a pioneer anchored when, after the land gave out, the time for moving on animated the more adventurous ones.

And the others, Prescott Breslin’s people? They stood on the land, stood there and did not prosper, did not prosper a damn, when the coal companies came a-calling for human fodder to work the mines. Except Saturday night, Saturday night barn dance time, when the fiddles, guitars, mandolins and assorted home-made instruments came out and for just that short period the mountains, the mountain winds, and the music blowing down into the valleys were one.

********

Prescott Breslin was beside himself on that snowy December day just before the Christmas of 1953. He had just heard, no more than heard, he had been told directly by Mr. John MacAdams, the owner’s son, that the James MacAdams & Son Textile Mill was closing its Maine operations in Olde Saco and moving to Lansing, North Carolina right across the border from his old boyhood hometown down in Harlan, Harlan, Kentucky, bloody Harlan of labor legend, song, and story right after the first of the new year. And the reason that the usually steady Prescott was beside himself at hearing that news was that he knew that Lansing back country, knew that the matter of a state border meant little down there as far as backwater ways went, knew it deep in his bones, and knew that come hell or high-water that he could not go back, not to that kind of defeat.

Prescott (not Pres, Scottie, or any such nickname, by the way, just dignified Prescott, one of his few vanities), left the mill at the closing of his shift, went across the street to Millie’s Diner, sat at the stooled-counter for singles, ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of Millie’s homemade pumpkin pie, and put a nickel in the counter jukebox, selecting the Carter Family’s Storms Are On The Ocean that Millie had ordered the jukebox man to insert just for Prescott and the other country boys, and occasionally girls but mainly boys, or rather men who worked the mills in town and sometimes needed a reminder of home down south or up north, or something like that with their coffee and pie.

Hearing the sounds of southern home brought a semi-tear to Prescott's eye until he realized that he was in public, was at hang-out Millie’s where he had friends, and realized that Millie, thirty-something, but motherly-kind Millie was looking directly at him and he held it back with might and main. In a flash he thought, tear turning to grim smirk, how he had told his second son, Kendrick, just the previous year when he asked about the Marine Corps uniform hanging in a back closet in the two by four apartment that they still rented from the Olde Saco Housing Authority and naively asked him why he went to war. He had answered that he preferred, much preferred, taking his chances in some forsaken battlefield than finish his young life out in the hard-bitten coal mines of eastern Kentucky. Then, as the last words of Storms echoed in the half-empty diner, he thought, thought hard against the day that he could not turn back, never.

Then, as the last words of Storms echoed in the half-empty diner, he thought, thought hard against the day that he could not turn back, never, although his head was swimming with all kind of thoughts. Thoughts about how they would probably never get out from under that grim two by four apartment that was supposed to be a mere stepping stone leg up for returning veterans like himself until they got back on their feet after the war. Thought about all the other veterans who had moved on, moved on to that little white picket fence house they all dreamed of (and that he had virtually promised to his wife, Delores, just as soon as they got on their feet). Thought about having to fend off neighbor arguments, neighbor midnight fights, and departing neighbor mockery in a place where there was too little room to breathe, breathe some private moment air. And thought about the impoverished dignity of his growing up tar-paper shack of home where at least one had land and space to call one’s own and maybe he, they, should have tried to eke out an existence there. Thought about the boyhood coming of age things, that first taste of white lightnin’ at twelve and discovering girls not long after, going to the Saturday dance, all sweaty with desire and nervousness in that order, listening to the band, a pick-up band of fiddlers, guitar and bass players and always a few home-made instruments to add to the sound as they played into the mountain air night.  

And so just then too came creeping in that one second of self-doubt, that flash of why the hell had he fallen for, and married, a Northern mill- town girl (the sweet, reliable Delores, nee LeBlanc, met at the Starlight Ballroom over in Old Orchard Beach when he had been short-time stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Base down in New Hampshire), stayed up North after the war when he knew the mills were only a shade bit better that the mines. He had faced every kind of insult for being southern from the insular Mainiacs (they actually call themselves that with pride, the hicks), and it wasn’t really because he was from the south although that made him an easy target but because he was not born in Maine like Delores and could never be a Mainiac even if he lived there one hundred years. More to the point he had had three growing, incredibly fast growing boys, with Delores. He reached, suddenly, into his pocket, found another stray nickel, put it in the counter jukebox, and played the flip side of Storms, Anchored In Love.

As the song played any sentiment about the old homestead evaporated as he also recalled those black coal bins when he was a coal checker as a boy before he moved inside to the mines, remembered the abandoned coal heaps that fouled up the countryside and mocked the mountain air coming down the valleys, remembered the bleak no-account existence walking home after the excitement of Saturday night dance to that foolish excuse for a bed that his father, Jacob, had rigged up for him. Remembered as well the long days of just sitting, sitting waiting for something to happen, anything.     

Yes, times would be tough since the MacAdams Mill was one of the few mills that had stayed around as they all headed south after the war for cheaper labor, and didn’t he know all about that from the mine struggles, Jesus, but Delores, the three boys, and he would eke it out somehow. As he tightened up his jaw to face the new reality he thought there was no going back, no way.

 

 

From The Marxist Archives-For the Communism of Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht!

Workers Vanguard No. 906	18 January 2008

TROTSKY

LENIN

For the Communism of Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht!

(Quote of the Week)

This month, the International Communist League continues the communist tradition of honoring the “Three L’s”: Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, who died in January 1924, and Marxist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were assassinated in January 1919 by the reactionary Freikorps as part of the German Social Democratic government’s suppression of the Spartakist uprising. We print below a 1930 appreciation of Rosa Luxemburg published in the Militant, newspaper of the Communist League of America, the Trotskyists at the time.

From the period of her first work in Poland to the day that the Communist Party in Germany was founded by her and Karl Liebknecht, her record can be searched in vain for any compromise in principle….

It was Rosa Luxemburg who published the first appeals to the German proletariat, to the German masses, to rise against the imperialist war and the socialist bellwethers who led them to the slaughter….

Rosa Luxemburg knew how to stand and fight as a minority, even a minority of one. Especially now should this characteristic of hers be recalled, when it is as necessary and difficult to swim against the current as it was in her time….

Despite their conflicting viewpoints on many questions, said Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg was an eagle. The modern Communist movement is as inseparable from the name and work of Rosa Luxemburg as it is from the name of Lenin. For both of them the International was the fatherland. To attempt to identify either of them with one particular nation is as meaningless as to say, for instance, that Marx was a German revolutionist. Both of them were single-mindedly consecrated to the triumph of the international proletariat. Both of them were teachers and soldiers in an epoch that makes them greater than those who illuminated the pages of history in the past. Both of them were devoted to the cause that is superior to all others because its victory opens an entirely new epoch for humanity. For that they are deathless.

—“Rosa Luxemburg—11 Years After,” Militant, 18 January 1930

************

Leon Trotsky

Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg!

(June 1932)

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Written: June 28, 1932.
First Published: The Militant [New York], August 6 and 13, 1932.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2005. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

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Stalin’s article, Some Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism, reached me after much delay. After receiving it, for a long time I could not force myself to read it, for such literature sticks in one’s throat like sawdust or mashed bristles. But still, having finally read it, I came to the conclusion that one cannot ignore this performance, if only because there is included in it a vile and barefaced calumny about Rosa Luxemburg. This great revolutionist is enrolled by Stalin into the camp of centrism! He proves – not proves, of course, but asserts – that Bolshevism from the day of its inception held to the line of a split with the Kautsky center, while Rosa Luxemburg during that time sustained Kautsky from the left. I quote his own words: “... long before the war, approximately since 1903-04, when the Bolshevik group in Russia took shape and when the Left in the German Social Democracy first raised their voice, Lenin pursued a line toward a rupture, toward a split with the opportunists both here, in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, and over there, in the Second International, particularly in the German Social Democratic Party.” That this, however, could not be achieved was due entirely to the fact that “the Left Social Democrats in the Second International, and above all in the German Social Democratic Party, were a weak and powerless group ... and afraid even to pronounce the word ‘rupture,’ ‘split.’”

To put forward such an assertion, one must be absolutely ignorant of the history of one’s own party, and first of all, of Lenin’s ideological course. There is not a single word of truth in Stalin’s point of departure. In 1903-04, Lenin was, indeed, an irreconcilable foe of opportunism in the German Social Democracy. But he considered as opportunism only the revisionist tendency which was led theoretically by Bernstein.
Kautsky at the time was to be found fighting against Bernstein. Lenin considered Kautsky as his teacher and stressed this everywhere he could. In Lenin’s work of that period and for a number of years following, one does not find even a trace of criticism in principle directed against the Bebel-Kautsky tendency. Instead one finds a series of declarations to the effect that Bolshevism is not some sort of an independent tendency but is only a translation into the language of Russian conditions of the tendency of Bebel-Kautsky. Here is what Lenin wrote in his famous pamphlet, Two Tactics, in the middle of 1905: “When and where did I ever call the revolutionism of Bebel and Kautsky ‘opportunism’? ... When and where have there been brought to light differences between me, on the one hand, and Bebel and Kautsky on the other? ... The complete unanimity of international revolutionary Social Democracy on all major questions of program and tactics is a most incontrovertible fact” [Collected Works, Volume 9, July 1905]. Lenin’s words are so clear, precise, and categorical as to entirely exhaust the question.
A year and a half later, on December 7, 1906, Lenin wrote in the article The Crisis of Menshevism: “... from the beginning we declared (see One Step Forward, Two Steps Back): We are not creating a special ‘Bolshevik’ tendency; always and everywhere we merely uphold the point of view of revolutionary Social Democracy. And right up to the social revolution there will inevitably always be an opportunist wing and a revolutionary wing of Social Democracy” [ibid., Volume 11, December 7, 1906].
Speaking of Menshevism as the opportunistic wing of the Social Democracy, Lenin compared the Mensheviks not with Kautskyism but with revisionism. Moreover he looked upon Bolshevism as the Russian form of Kautskyism, which in his eyes was in that period identical with Marxism. The passage we have just quoted shows, incidentally, that Lenin did not at all stand absolutely for a split with the opportunists; he not only admitted but also considered “inevitable” the existence of the revisionists in the Social Democracy right up to the social revolution.
Two weeks later, on December 20, 1906, Lenin greeted enthusiastically Kautsky’s answer to Plekhanov’s questionnaire on the character of the Russian revolution: “He has fully confirmed our contention that we are defending the position of revolutionary Social Democracy against opportunism, and not creating any ‘peculiar’ Bolshevik tendency ...” [The Proletariat and Its Ally in the Russian Revolution, ibid., Volume 11, December 10, 1906].
Within these limits, I trust, the question is absolutely clear. According to Stalin, Lenin, even from 1903, had demanded a break in Germany with the opportunists, not only of the right wing (Bernstein) but also of the left (Kautsky). Whereas in December 1906, Lenin as we see was proudly pointing out to Plekhanov and the Mensheviks that the tendency of Kautsky in Germany and the tendency of Bolshevism in Russia were – identical. Such is part one of Stalin’s excursion into the ideological history of Bolshevism. Our investigator’s scrupulousness and his knowledge rest on the same plane!
Directly after his assertion regarding 1903-04, Stalin makes a leap to 1916 and refers to Lenin’s sharp criticism of the war pamphlet by Junius, i.e., Rosa Luxemburg. To be sure, in that period Lenin had already declared war to the finish against Kautskyism, having drawn from his criticism all the necessary organizational conclusions. It is not to be denied that Rosa Luxemburg did not pose the question of the struggle against centrism with the requisite completeness – in this Lenin’s position was entirely superior. But between October 1916, when Lenin wrote about the Junius pamphlet, and 1903, when Bolshevism had its inception, there is a lapse of thirteen years; in the course of the major part of this period Rosa Luxemburg was to be found in opposition to the Kautsky and Bebel Central Committee, and her fight against the formal, pedantic, and rotten-at-the-core “radicalism” of Kautsky took on an ever increasingly sharp character.
Lenin did not participate in this fight and did not support Rosa Luxemburg up to 1914. Passionately absorbed in Russian affairs, he preserved extreme caution in international matters. In Lenin’s eyes Bebel and Kautsky stood immeasurably higher as revolutionists than in the eyes of Rosa Luxemburg, who observed them at closer range, in action, and who was much more directly subjected to the atmosphere of German politics.
The capitulation of German Social Democracy on August 4, 1914, was entirely unexpected by Lenin. It is well known that the issue of the Vorwärts with the patriotic declaration of the Social Democratic faction was taken by Lenin to be a forgery by the German general staff. Only after he was absolutely convinced of the awful truth did he subject to revision his evaluation of the basic tendencies of the German Social Democracy, and while so doing he performed that task in the Leninist manner, i.e., he finished it off once for all.
On October 27, 1914, Lenin wrote to A. Shlyapnikov: “I hate and despise Kautsky now more than anyone, with his vile, dirty, self-satisfied hypocrisy ... Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote, long ago, that Kautsky has the ‘subservience of a theoretician’ – servility, in plainer language, servility to the majority of the party, to opportunism” (Leninist Anthology, Volume 2, p.200, my emphasis) [ibid., Volume 35, October 27, 1914].
Were there no other documents – and there are hundreds – these few lines alone could unmistakably clarify the history of the question. Lenin deemed it necessary at the end of 1914 to inform one of his colleagues closest to him at the time that “now,” at the present moment, today, in contradistinction to the past, he “hates and despises” Kautsky. The sharpness of the phrase is an unmistakable: indication of the extent to which Kautsky betrayed Lenin’s hopes and expectations. No less vivid is the second phrase, “Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote, long ago, that Kautsky has the ‘subservience of a theoretician.’ ...” Lenin hastens here to recognize that “verity” which he did not see formerly, or which, at least, he did not recognize fully on Rosa Luxemburg’s side.
Such are the chief chronological guideposts of the questions, which are at the same time important guideposts of Lenin’s political biography. The fact is indubitable that his ideological orbit is represented by a continually rising curve. But this only means that Lenin was not born Lenin full-fledged, as he is pictured by the slobbering daubers of the “divine,” but that he made himself Lenin. Lenin ever extended his horizons, he learned from others and daily drew himself to a higher plane than was his own yesterday. In this perseverance, in this stubborn resolution of a continual spiritual growth over his own self did his heroic spirit find its expression. If Lenin in 1903 had understood and formulated everything that was required for the coming times, then the remainder of his life would have consisted only of reiterations. In reality this was not at all the case. Stalin simply stamps the Stalinist imprint on Lenin and coins him into the petty small change of numbered adages.
In Rosa Luxemburg’s struggle against Kautsky, especially in 1910-14, an important place was occupied by the questions of war, militarism, and pacifism. Kautsky defended the reformist program: limitations of armaments, international court, etc. Rosa Luxemburg fought decisively against this program as illusory. On this question Lenin was in some doubt, but at a certain period he stood closer to Kautsky than to Rosa Luxemburg. From conversations at the time with Lenin I recall that the following argument of Kautsky made a great impression upon him: just as in domestic questions, reforms are products of the revolutionary class struggle, so in international relationships it is possible to fight for and to gain certain guarantees ("reforms") by means of the international class struggle. Lenin considered it entirely possible to support this position of Kautsky, provided that he, after the polemic with Rosa Luxemburg, turned upon the right-wingers (Noske and Co.). I do not undertake now to say from memory to what extent this circle of ideas found its expression in Lenin’s articles; the question would require a particularly careful analysis. Neither can I take upon myself to assert from memory how soon Lenin’s doubts on this question were settled. In any case they found their expression not only in conversations but also in correspondence. One of these letters is in the possession of Karl Radek.
I deem it necessary to supply on this question evidence as a witness in order to attempt in this manner to save an exceptionally valuable document for the theoretical biography of Lenin. In the autumn of 1926, at the time of our collective work over the platform of the Left Opposition, Radek showed Kamenev, Zinoviev, and me – probably also other comrades as well – a letter of Lenin to him (1911?) which consisted of a defense of Kautsky’s position against the criticism of the German Lefts. In accordance with the regulation passed by the Central Committee, Radek, like all others, should have delivered this letter to the Lenin Institute. But fearful lest it be hidden, if not destroyed, in the Stalinist factory of fabrications, Radek decided to preserve the letter till some more opportune time. One cannot deny that there was some foundation to Radek’s attitude. At present, however, Radek himself has – though not very responsible – still quite an active part in the work of producing political forgeries. Suffice it to recall that Radek, who in distinction to Stalin is acquainted with the history of Marxism, and who, at any rate, knows this letter of Lenin, found it possible to make a public statement of his solidarity with the insolent evaluation placed by Stalin on Rosa Luxemburg. The circumstance that Radek acted thereupon under Yaroslavsky’s rod does not mitigate his guilt, for only despicable slaves can renounce the principles of Marxism in the name of the principles of the rod.
However the matter we are concerned with relates not to the personal characterization of Radek but to the fate of Lenin’s letter. What happened to it? Is Radek hiding it even now from the Lenin Institute? Hardly. Most probably, he entrusted it, where it should be entrusted, as a tangible proof of an intangible devotion. And what lay in store for the letter thereafter? Is it preserved in Stalin’s personal archives alongside with the documents that compromise his closest colleagues? Or is it destroyed as many other most precious documents of the party’s past have been destroyed?
In any case there cannot be even the shadow of a political reason for the concealment of a letter written two decades ago on a question that holds now only a historical interest. But it is precisely the historical value of the letter that is exceptionally great. It shows Lenin as he really was, and not as he is being re-created in their own semblance and image by the bureaucratic dunderheads, who pretend to infallibility. We ask, where is Lenin’s letter to Radek? Lenin’s letter must be where it belongs! Put it on the table of the party and of the Comintern!
If one were to take the disagreements between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg in their entirety, then historical correctness is unconditionally on Lenin’s side. But this does not exclude the fact that on certain questions and during definite periods Rosa Luxemburg was correct as against Lenin. In any case, the disagreements, despite their importance and at times their extreme sharpness, developed on the basis of revolutionary proletarian policies common to them both.
When Lenin, going back into the past, wrote in October 1919 (Greetings to Italian, French, and German Communists) that “... at the moment of taking power and establishing the Soviet republic, Bolshevism was united; it drew to itself all that was best in the tendencies of socialist thought akin to it ...” [ibid., Volume 30, October 10, 1919], I repeat, when Lenin wrote this he unquestionably had in mind also the tendency of Rosa Luxemburg, whose closest adherents, e.g., Marchlewsky, Dzerzhinsky, and others went working in the ranks of the Bolsheviks.
Lenin understood Rosa Luxemburg’s mistakes more profoundly than Stalin; but it was not accidental that Lenin once quoted the old couplet in relation to Luxemburg:

Although the eagles do swoop down and beneath the chickens fly, chickens with outspread wings never will soar amid clouds in the sky.

Precisely the case! Precisely the point! For this very reason Stalin should proceed with caution before employing his vicious mediocrity when the matter touches figures of such status as Rosa Luxemburg.

In his article A Contribution to the History of the Question of the Dictatorship (October 1920), Lenin, touching upon questions of the Soviet state and the dictatorship of the proletariat already posed by the 1905 revolution, wrote: “While such outstanding representatives of the revolutionary proletariat and of unfalsified Marxism as Rosa Luxemburg immediately realized the significance of this practical experience and made a critical analysis of it at meetings and in the press,” on the contrary, “... people of the type of the future ‘Kautskyites’ ... proved absolutely incapable of grasping the significance of this experience ...” [ibid., Volume 31, October 20, 1920]. In a few lines, Lenin fully pays the tribute of recognition to the historical significance of Rosa Luxemburg’s struggle against Kautsky – a struggle which Lenin himself had been far from immediately evaluating at its true worth. If to Stalin, the ally of Chiang Kai-shek, and the comrade-in-arms of Purcell, the theoretician of “the worker-peasant party,” of “the democratic dictatorship,” of “non-antagonizing the bourgeoisie,” etc. – if to him Rosa Luxemburg is the representative of centrism, to Lenin she is the representative of “unfalsified Marxism.” What this designation meant coming as it does from Lenin’s pen is clear to anyone who is even slightly acquainted with Lenin.
I take the occasion to point out here that in the notes to Lenin’s works there is among others the following said about Rosa Luxemburg: “During the florescence of Bernsteinian revisionism and later of ministerialism (Millerand), Luxemburg carried on against this tendency a decisive fight, taking her position in the left wing of the German party.... In 1907 she participated as a delegate of the SD of Poland and Lithuania in the London congress of the RSDLP, supporting the Bolshevik faction on all basic questions of the Russian revolution. From 1907, Luxemburg gave herself over entirely to work in Germany, taking a left-radical position and carrying on a fight against the center and the right wing ... Her participation in the January 1919 insurrection has made her name the banner of the proletarian revolution.”
Of course the author of these notes will in all probability tomorrow confess his sins and announce that in Lenin’s epoch he wrote in a benighted condition, and that he reached complete enlightenment only in the epoch of Stalin. At the present moment announcements of this sort – combinations of sycophancy, idiocy, and buffoonery – are made daily in the Moscow press. But they do not change the nature of things: What’s once set down in black and white, no ax will hack nor all your might. Yes, Rosa Luxemburg has become the banner of the proletarian revolution!
How and wherefore, however, did Stalin suddenly busy himself – at so belated a time – with the revision of the old Bolshevik evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg? As was the case with all his preceding theoretical abortions so with this latest one, and the most scandalous, the origin lies in the logic of his struggle against the theory of permanent revolution. In this “historical” article, Stalin once again allots the chief place to this theory. There is not a single new word in what he says. I have long ago answered all his arguments in my book The Permanent Revolution. From the historical viewpoint the question will be sufficiently clarified, I trust, in the second volume of The History of the Russian Revolution (The October Revolution), now on the press. In the present case the question of the permanent revolution concerns us only insofar as Stalin links it up with Rosa Luxemburg’s name. We shall presently see how the hapless theoretician has contrived to set up a murderous trap for himself.
After recapitulating the controversy between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks on the question of the motive forces of the Russian revolution and after masterfully compressing a series of mistakes into a few lines, which I am compelled to leave without an examination, Stalin writes: “What was the attitude of the German Left Social Democrats, of Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg, to this controversy? They invented a utopian and semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution ... Subsequently, this semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution was seized upon by Trotsky (in part by Martov) and turned into a weapon of struggle against Leninism.” Such is the unexpected history of the origin of the theory of the permanent revolution, in accordance with the latest historical researches of Stalin. But, alas, the investigator forgot to consult his own previous learned works. In 1925 this same Stalin had already expressed himself on this question in his polemic against Radek. Here is what he wrote then: “It is not true that the theory of the permanent revolution ... was put forward in 1905 by Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky. As a matter of fact this theory was put forward by Parvus and Trotsky.” This assertion may be consulted on page 185, Problems of Leninism, Russian edition, 1926. Let us hope that it obtains in all foreign editions.
So, in 1925, Stalin pronounced Rosa Luxemburg not guilty in the commission of such a cardinal sin as participating in the creation of the theory of the permanent revolution. “As a matter of fact, this theory was put forward by Parvus and Trotsky.” In 1931, we are informed by the identical Stalin that it was precisely “Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg ... who invented a Utopian and semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution.” As for Trotsky he was innocent of creating the theory, it was only “seized upon” by him, and at the same time by ... Martov! Once again Stalin is caught with the goods. Perhaps he writes on questions of which he can make neither head nor tail. Or is he consciously shuffling marked cards in playing with the basic questions of Marxism? It is incorrect to pose this question as an alternative. As a matter of fact, both the one and the other are true. The Stalinist falsifications are conscious insofar as they are dictated at each given moment by entirely concrete personal interests. At the same time they are semi-conscious, insofar as his congenital ignorance places no impediments whatsoever to his theoretical propensities.
But facts remain facts. In his war against “the Trotskyist contraband,” Stalin has fallen foul of a new personal enemy, Rosa Luxemburg! He did not pause for a moment before lying about her and vilifying her; and moreover, before proceeding to put into circulation his giant doses of vulgarity and disloyalty, he did not even take the trouble of verifying what he himself had said on the same subject six years before.
The new variant of the history of the ideas of the permanent revolution was indicated first of all by an urge to provide a dish more spicy than all those preceding. It is needless to explain that Martov was dragged in by the hair for the sake of the greater piquancy of theoretical and historical cookery. Martov’s attitude to the theory and practice of the permanent revolution was one of unalterable antagonism, and in the old days he stressed more than once that Trotsky’s views on revolution were rejected equally by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. But it is not worthwhile to pause over this.
What is truly fatal is that there is not a single major question of the international proletarian revolution on which Stalin has failed to express two directly contradictory opinions. We all know that in April 1924, he conclusively demonstrated in Problems of Leninism the impossibility of building socialism in one country. In autumn, in a new edition of the book, he substituted in its place a proof – i.e., a bald proclamation – that the proletariat “can and must” build socialism in one country. The entire remainder of the text was left unchanged. On the question of the worker-peasant party, of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, the leadership of the October Revolution, on the national question, etc., etc., Stalin contrived to put forward, for a period of a few years, sometimes of a few months, opinions that were mutually exclusive. It would be incorrect to place the blame in everything on a poor memory. The matter reaches deeper here. Stalin completely lacks any method of scientific thinking, he has no criteria of principles. He approaches every question as if that question were born only today and stood apart from all other questions. Stalin contributes his judgments entirely depending upon whatever personal interest of his is uppermost and most urgent today. The contradictions that convict him are the direct vengeance for his vulgar empiricism. Rosa Luxemburg does not appear to him in the perspective of the German, Polish, and international workers’ movement of the last half-century. No, she is to him each time a new, and, besides, an isolated figure, regarding whom he is compelled in every new situation to ask himself anew, “Who goes there, friend or foe?” Unerring instinct has this time whispered to the theoretician of socialism in one country that the shade of Rosa Luxemburg is irreconcilably inimical to him. But this does not hinder the great shade from remaining the banner of the international proletarian revolution.
Rosa Luxemburg criticized very severely and fundamentally incorrectly the policies of the Bolsheviks in 1918 from her prison cell. But even in this, her most erroneous work, her eagle’s wings are to be seen. Here is her general evaluation of the October insurrection: “Everything that a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness, and consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky, and the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honor and capacity which the Social Democracy of the West lacked were represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism.” Can this be the voice of centrism?
In the succeeding pages, Luxemburg subjects to severe criticism the policies of the Bolsheviks in the agrarian in the agrarian sphere, their slogan of national self-determination, and their rejection of formal democracy. In this criticism we might add, directed equally against Lenin and Trotsky, she makes no distinction whatever between their views; and Rosa Luxemburg knew how to read, understand, and seize upon shadings. It did not even fall into her head, for instance, to accuse me fact of the fact that by being in solidarity with Lenin on the agrarian question, I had changed my views on the peasantry. And moreover she knew these views very well since I had developed them in detail in 1909 in her Polish journal. Rosa Luxemburg ends her criticism with the demand, “in the policy of the Bolsheviks the essential must be distinguished from the unessential, the fundamental from the accidental.” The fundamental she considers to be the force of the action of the masses, the will to socialism. “In this,” she writes, “Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hütten, ‘I have dared!’”
Yes, Stalin has sufficient cause to hate Rosa Luxemburg. But all the more imperious therefore becomes our duty to shield Rosa’s memory from Stalin’s calumny that has been caught by the hired functionaries of both hemispheres, and to pass on this truly beautiful, heroic, and tragic image to the young generations of the proletariat in all its grandeur and inspirational force.

*Nick And Nora To The Rescue- Dashiell Hammet's "The Thin Man"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Dashiell Hammett's classic detective novel, The Thin Man.

Book Review

The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett, Alfred A. Knopf, new York, 1934

Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick Charles (and wife Nora), Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective. Hammett, on the way to creating these literary works of art did journeyman's work at the detective genre in various pulp detective magazines. Moreover, in the beginning he hid his detectives behind the anonymous, although not faceless or without personality, average detectives of a national detective agency, the Continental Op series(shades of his own past). One of those efforts is an early almost totally unrelated version of The Thin Man that those who have read the later version (or know Nick, Nora and Asta only from the film series) would not recognize.

Dashiell Hammett is perhaps better known for creating the classic modern proto-typical detective, one Sam Spade the detective-hero (or anti-hero, if you prefer) of the literary (and film) noir The Maltese Falcon. With The Thin Man he took a different tack in providing a model detective- the urbane Nick Charles, his side-kick society wife, Nora, and their ever present faithful dog companion, Asta. The story line here centers on a missing eccentric inventor/businessman who it is suspected has been a victim of foul play. Enter Nick, Nora and Asta at the request of his wondering society family (wondering, that is, about the fate of the dough necessary to keep them in their luxuries) and after a series of misadventures and false leads Nick grabs the villain. That is what old Nick has in common with the illustrious Mr. Spade-the dogged (not pun, intended) and tenacious search for the truth and the killer, come what may. If you like your detectives with a light touch this is for you. If you like your detective novels to be minor works of literary art this is also for you. Hammett (along with the above-mentioned Raymond Chandler) practically reinvented the previously rather shabby art of the early detective story into literature. Kudos.

Note: It is not altogether clear to me what Hammett’s political sympathies (or rather more to the point, organization connections) were in the period of his great detection-writing period, the early 1930s, although one can speculate they were at least progressive. I should note for those who are only familiar with the detective novels and crime short stories that Hammett was a make-no-bones-about-it supporter of the American Communist Party during the hard, don’t trust your neighbor, see reds under every bed, your mommie is a commie turn her in, prison house, American night of the red scare, Cold War, post World War II period (and earlier as well, during the Popular Front all the way with FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), Joe Stalin, our father can do no wrong, Moscow Trials liquidate the Old Bolsheviks, the makers of the revolution, time but this post-war period is what concerns me here).

This was period when anything to the left of Herbert Hoover, including probably red tablecloths on restaurant tables, was suspect. This is also the period of the unlamented Joe McCarthy, the equally unlamented Richard Nixon, the deep, fatal, anti-communist purges in the labor unions from which we still suffer today (and anti-red purges in many other political and cultural institutions as well), and of the time of “the naming of names.” The high watermark time of the “fink” and of the “blacklist.” I have vilified, rightly so, no, righteously so, the likes of movie director Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata, On The Waterfront) for their “stool pigeon” scab actions before the "committees".

Kazan was, unfortunately, not alone in that dark, witch-hunt, keep your eyes down, keep walking straight ahead with blinkers on, and tell them what they want to know although they already know it, night. I have also heaped tons of well-deserved praise on the heroic Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, for holding their ground under intense pressure and under penalty of paying the ultimate price, their lives, for their steadfastness. For defending the Soviet Union, not in our Trotskyist way, but in their own honorable way, and didn’t complain about it when they were called on it, unjustly, by the American imperial state.

Dashiell Hammett was called, tooth brush in hand, before the “red scare” committees and just said no. Hats off. Now there is no need to get mushy about it, and one should not forget that in the end Hammett’s Stalinist politics (and vilification of leftist political opponents like our Trotskyist forbears) made us not less political opponents, but isn’t there something in old Hammett’s actions, that sense of “tilting to the windmills,” that leads right back to Sam Spade (and Nick and Nora in an oblique, half-funny way). Yes, I thought you would think so.

Storms Are On The Ocean- For Prescott Breslin, Senior

A YouTube film clip of June Carter Cash performing Storms Are On The Ocean one of Prescott Breslin’s favorite boyhood tunes.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

Scene: Brought to mind by the song Storms Are On The Ocean performed by June Carter Cash on her Wildwood Floweralbum.

An Appalachian scene all brokered with a traditional cabin, fixed up, although not all of them were, or could be if company, coal company-owned, or the times were too tough to do more than tar-paper this, stuff an odd piece of wood in that, put something in a broken to keep the mountain mist winds at bay. It was, is, those winds rushing down into the valleys though not the obvious signs of poverty and ill-health that capture the mind’s eye, that make one long for the simple beauty of the place and which kept many a pioneer anchored when, after the land gave out, the time for moving on animated the more adventurous ones.

And the others, Prescott Breslin’s people? They stood on the land, stood there and did not prosper, did not prosper a damn, when the coal companies came a-calling for human fodder to work the mines. Except Saturday night, Saturday night barn dance time, when the fiddles, guitars, mandolins and assorted home-made instruments came out and for just that short period the mountains, the mountain winds, and the music blowing down into the valleys were one.

********

Prescott Breslin was beside himself on that snowy December day just before the Christmas of 1953. He had just heard, no more than heard, he had been told directly by Mr. John MacAdams, the owner’s son, that the James MacAdams & Son Textile Mill was closing its Maine operations in Olde Saco and moving to Lansing, North Carolina right across the border from his old boyhood hometown down in Harlan, Harlan, Kentucky, bloody Harlan of labor legend, song, and story right after the first of the new year. And the reason that the usually steady Prescott was beside himself at hearing that news was that he knew that Lansing back country, knew that the matter of a state border meant little down there as far as backwater ways went, knew it deep in his bones, and knew that come hell or high-water that he could not go back, not to that kind of defeat.

Prescott (not Pres, Scottie, or any such nickname, by the way, just dignified Prescott, one of his few vanities), left the mill at the closing of his shift, went across the street to Millie’s Diner, sat at the stooled-counter for singles, ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of Millie’s homemade pumpkin pie, and put a nickel in the counter jukebox, selecting the Carter Family’s Storms Are On The Ocean that Millie had ordered the jukebox man to insert just for Prescott and the other country boys, and occasionally girls but mainly boys, or rather men who worked the mills in town and sometimes needed a reminder of home down south or up north, or something like that with their coffee and pie.

Hearing the sounds of southern home brought a semi-tear to Prescott's eye until he realized that he was in public, was at hang-out Millie’s where he had friends, and realized that Millie, thirty-something, but motherly-kind Millie was looking directly at him and he held it back with might and main. In a flash he thought, tear turning to grim smirk, how he had told his second son, Kendrick, just the previous year when he asked about the Marine Corps uniform hanging in a back closet in the two by four apartment that they still rented from the Olde Saco Housing Authority and naively asked him why he went to war. He had answered that he preferred, much preferred, taking his chances in some forsaken battlefield than finish his young life out in the hard-bitten coal mines of eastern Kentucky. Then, as the last words of Storms echoed in the half-empty diner, he thought, thought hard against the day that he could not turn back, never.

And just then too came creeping in that one second of self-doubt, that flash of why the hell had he fallen for, and married, a Northern mill- town girl (the sweet, reliable Delores, nee LeBlanc, met at the Starlight Ballroom over in Old Orchard Beach when he had been short-time stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Base down in New Hampshire), stayed up North after the war when he knew the mills were only a shade bit better that the mines. He had faced every kind of insult for being southern from the insular Mainiacs (they actually call themselves that with pride, the hicks), and it wasn’t really because he was from the south although that made him an easy target but because he was not born in Maine and could never be a Mainiac even if he lived there one hundred years. More to the point he had had three growing, incredibly fast growing boys, with Delores. He reached, suddenly, into his pocket, found another stray nickel, put it in the counter jukebox, and played the flip side of Storms, Anchored In Love.

Yes, times would be tough since the MacAdams Mill was one of the few mills that had stayed around as they all headed south after the war for cheaper labor, and didn’t he know all about that from the mine struggles, Jesus, but Delores, the three boys, and he would eke it out somehow. As he tightened up his jaw to face the new reality he thought there was no going back, no way.