From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog

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

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

Markin comment:

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

From The Archives Of  Women And Revolution

Markin comment:

The following is an article from an archival issue of Women and Revolution that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of  Women and Revolution during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

Women and Revolution-1971-1980, Volumes 1-20  


http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/w&r/WR_001_1971.pdf

********

***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night-Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel"

 

A YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing Teen Angel.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard- working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.

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

MARK DINNING

"Teen Angel"

(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)

Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh

That fateful night the car was stalled

upon the railroad track

I pulled you out and we were safe

but you went running back

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

What was it you were looking for

that took your life that night

They said they found my high school ring

clutched in your fingers tight

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone

They've taken you away.

I'll never kiss your lips again

They buried you today

Teen angel, can you hear me

Teen angel, can you see me

Are you somewhere up above

And I am still your own true love

Teen angel, teen angel, answer me, please

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

First off, get used to hearing ad finitum about angels, earth-bound, heaven-sent, hell-sent, angelic, yes, angelic, heart-broken, heart-breaking angels, and how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Enough angels to make old revolutionary Puritan poet John Milton's angel fights in Paradise Lost seem, well, punk by comparison. That is if you really want to know about 1950s rock subject matter, all of the above, naturally being teen angels (as if there were any other kind), maybe even Milton's, and that brings us to the heart of this Mark Dinning teen angst classic, Teen Angel.

Frankly, I am bewildered by the bizarre lyrics and story line here, although it rates high, very high on my newly constructed teen song angst-o-meter. Peggy and Billy, okay I know they are not named, or maybe nameable, in the universal teen night but let’s call them that to give name to the kinds of fools we are dealing with, were stranded out on railroad tracks in old Billy’s apparently dead-ender car, probably his father’s hand-me-down. That should have been the first tip-off to Peggy. There were a million guys in town with “boss” cars, including Linc with his ’57 cherry red Chevy by the look on his face every time you passed by, who would have been more than happy to give you a tumble.

Or maybe Billy just didn’t have gas dough and the clunker ran out, unfortunately, ran out on that old dreaded isolated track with all those signs saying don’t stop, please don’t stop, on the tracks because even if trains were going out of style in the big 1950s freeway car exodus they still ran every now and again. No dough Billy, christ I knew seven guys (although not Linc) who had plenty of dough, or could get it, to show you a good time, including Frankie (and Frankie, supposedly only had eyes for his ever lovin’ sweetie, Joanne).

Okay, the ways of love are strange, no question, so Billy it was. But, jesus, he pulled you out, you were safe and then you went ballistic over some f-----g, cheapjack ring, some cheapjack fake gold (like about four carat gold filigree, maybe) with fako diamond and barely legible stuff written on it class ring. And you knew, since you had been out with Billy for a while by then that it was cheapo. Come on you couldn’t have been that naïve. Now you have left Billy all choked up over his teen angel lost, and I know for a fact that he stayed that way, for a while. But just recently he seems to be on the mend because didn’t Tommy T. see him and Linda Lou, ya, sweet “hot stuff’ Linda Lou, walking hand and hand into Kay’s Jewelry Store, the upscale jewelry store. I wonder what they were looking for?

A Walk Down "Dream Street"-With Those Who Came Of Age In The Atlantic Section of North Quincy In Mind

 

 

A little something to set the mood for this sketch…

 

Let us speak of dreams… 

This now seemingly benighted sketch started life as a simple question posed a while back by a fellow classmate about whether my (our) outrageously extravagant dreams from high school days had worked out or not. That question drove me back to memories, hard, hard-bitten, hard-aching, hard-longing, mist of time, dream memories, of North schoolboy days and of the need to search for my old high school friend and running mate (literally, in track and cross country, as well as “running” around town doing boy high school things, doing the best we could, or trying to), Bill Cadger.

A lot of discussion of my dreams involved Bill, the front steps of North, and were driven by some unfathomable amount of teen angst so naturally I answered the question with those facts in mind, especially sitting on those steps. Those old, “real”, august, imposing, institutionally imposing, grey granite-quarried (from the Granite City, natch) main entrance steps (in those days serious steps, two steps at a time steps, especially if you missed first bell, flanked by globular orbs and, like some medieval church, gargoyle-like columns up to the second floor, hence “real”) is a place where Bill and I spent a lot of our time, talking of this and that.

Especially summer night time: hot, sultry, sweaty, steam-drained, no money in pockets, no car to explore the great American teenage night; the be-bop, doo-wop, do doo do doo, ding dong daddy, real gone daddy, be my daddy, let it be me, the night time is the right time, car window-fogged, honk if you love jesus (or whatever activity produced those incessant honks in key turned-off cars), love-tinged, or at least sex-tinged, endless sea, Wollaston Beach night. Do I need to draw you a picture, I think not. Or for the faint-hearted, or good, denizens of that great American teenage night a Howard Johnson’s ice cream (make mine cherry vanilla, double scoop, no jimmies, please) or a trip to American Graffiti-like fast food drive-ins, hamburger, hold the onions (just in case today is the night), fries and a frappe (I refuse to describe that taste treat at this far remove, look it up on Wikipedia, or one of those info-sites) Southern Artery night. Lost, all irretrievably lost, and no thousand, thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge), no, million later, greater experiences can ever replace that. And, add in, non-dated-up, and no possibility of sweet-smelling, soft, rounded, bare shoulder-showing summer sun-dressed (or wintry, bundled up, soft-furred, cashmere-bloused, for that matter), big-haired (hey, do you expect me to remember the name of the hair styles, too?), ruby red-lipped (see, I got the color right), dated-up in sight. So you can see what that “running around town, doing the best we could” of ours mainly consisted.

Mostly, we spoke of dreams of the future: small, soft, fluttery, airless, flightless, high school kid-sized, working class-sized, North Quincy-sized, non-world–beater-sized, no weight dreams really, no, that’s not right, they were weighty enough but only until 18 years old , or maybe 21, weighty. A future driven though, and driven hard, by the need to get out from under, to get away from, to put many miles between us and it, crazy family life (the details of which need not detain us here at all, as I now know, and I have some stories to prove it, that condition was epidemic in the old town then, and probably still is). And also of getting out of one-horse, teen life-stealing, soul-cramping, dream-stealing, small or large take your pick, even breathe-stealing, North Quincy. Of getting out into the far reaches, as far as desire and dough would carry, of the great wild, wanderlust, cosmic, American day and night hitch-hike if you have too, shoe leather-beating walking if you must, road (or European road, or wherever, Christ, even Revere in a crunch, but mainly putting some miles between).

 “Today I am interested in the relationship between our youthful dreams and what actually happened in our lives; our dreams of glory out in the big old world that we did not make, and were not asked about making; of success whether of the pot of gold or less tangible, but just as valuable, goods, or better, ideas; of things or conditions, of himalayas, conquered, physically or mentally; of discoveries made, of self or the whole wide world, great or small. Or, perhaps, of just getting by, just putting one foot in the front of the other two days in a row; of keeping one’s head above water under the impact of young life’s woes; of not sinking down further into the human sink; of smaller, pinched, very pinched, existential dreams but dreams nevertheless.

I will confess here, as this seemingly is a confessional age, or, maybe just as a vestige of that family history-rooted, hard-crusted, incense-driven, fatalistic Catholic upbringing long abandoned but etched in, no, embedded in, some far recesses of memory that my returning to the North Quincy High School Class of 1964 fold did not just occur by happenstance. A couple of months ago (December 2007) my mother, Doris Margaret Johnson (nee Radley) NQHS Class of 1943, passed away. For a good part of her life she lived in locations a mere stone's throw from the school. You could, for example, see the back of the school from my grandparents' house on Young Street. As part of the grieving process, I suppose, I felt a need to come back to North Quincy. To my, and her, roots. As part of that experience as I walked up Hancock Street and down East Squantum I passed by the old high school. That triggered some memories, some dream street memories that motivate today's question.

If my memory is correct, and I am not just dream-addled, I had not been in North Quincy for at least the pass 25 years and so I was a little surprised to see that the main entrance steps of the high school, and central to the question posed, were no longer there. You remember the steps, right? They led to the then second floor and were flanked by, I think, a couple of lions or some gargoyles. (I have since then, after viewing a copy of the 1964 Manet, found out that they were actually flanked by a sphere and a column on each side. I was close though, right?) I can remember spending many a summer night during high school, along with my old pal from the class Bill Cadger, the legendary track man and cross country runner, sitting on those steps talking about our futures. Now for this question I am only using the steps as a metaphor, so to speak. You probably have your own 'steps' metaphor for where you thrashed out your dreams. How did they work out?

A lot of what Bill and I talked about at the time was how we were going to do in the upcoming cross country and track seasons, girls, the desperate need to get away from the family trap, girls, no money in pockets for girls, cars, no money for cars, girls. (Remember, please, those were the days when future expectations, and anguishes, were expressed in days and months, not years.) Of course we dreamed of being world-class runners, as every runner does. Bill went on to have an outstanding high school career. I, on the other hand, was, giving myself much the best of it, a below average runner. So much for some dreams.

We spoke, as well, of other dreams then. I do not remember the content of Bill's but mine went something like this. I had dreams for social justice. For working people to get a fair shake in this sorry old world. That, my friends, has, sad to say, not turned out as expected. But enough from me. I will finish this entry with a line from a Bob Dylan lyric. "I'll let you be in my dream, if I can be in your dream". Fair enough?”

***The Bard Of The North Adamsville High School Class Of 1964?, “Say What?”

 

 

For Linda, Class Of 1964

Peter Paul Markin, Class Of 1964, comment:

Recently someone from my high school class, Linda, whose last name shall be omitted not out of consideration for her sensibilities but rather to avoid the long litigation which I am sure would ensue if I mentioned her last name and others clamored on and on about why their names were not included, wrote an e-mail, a friendly e-mail I assume, asking me if I, with this never-ending (my word, she just said “a lot”) stream of stories about the old days at early 1960s North Adamsville High, was trying to be the bard (her word, not mine) of the Class of 1964. I rapidly replied with this short answer- “What, are you kidding?”(Although I wish I had said the faux- hip, “say what?,” used in the headline to this entry). Later though, after I thought about it for a while, I realized that I did (and do) mean to be ONE of the latter-day voices of our class. Why? I have, with all due modesty, the perfect resume for the job. Here it is:

I belonged to no in-school clubs. I couldn’t (can’t) sing so the glee club was out although I was tempted to join, low-voice, whisper-voice join, white shirt, string tie, black chinos and all because a certain Rosemary I had eyes for sang a very sweet alto, or whatever they call that sing-song voice that made me think of flowered-fields, picnic baskets and, well, it never worked out so I will just say I was smitten, lonely smitten. (Let me leave it at Rosemary, no last names, again since I am still wary of that litigation from certain Susans, Lindas, and Anns who might still feel hurt not to see their names in lights here. Even though if I had approached them in those days I would have received the deep-freeze, a big time deep-freeze, and been dismissed out of hand.)

The same was true for the school newspaper, the unlamented North Star, although in that case it was a Carol whom I would have joined in order to cub report next to (ditto, on leaving out the last name, okay) except in her case she had a big bruiser of a boyfriend who just happened to play right tackle for the championship Red Raiders school football team. And he (I will use no first or last name for that monster even now and not because I fear litigation, no because I fear for my life, and rightly so) made it very clear one time when I actually talked to her for more that about a minute that unless I had a interest in doormats I had better take my ragamuffin, low- rent act elsewhere. Moreover, I doubt, very seriously doubt, that after about two days I could have kept a straight face while performing my duties as a cub reporter reporting on such hot spot topics as the latest cause bake sale, the latest words of wisdom from Miss (Ms.) Sonos, the newspaper’s faculty advisor, about whatever was on her dippy mind, or “shilling” to drum up an audience for the next big school play. Not “the world is my beat” Peter Paul Markin. No way.

I, moreover, belonged to no after-school organizations like the chess club, science club, bird-watchers or any of those other odd-ball activities that couldn’t rate enough to get the school-day imprimatur. See, after school was “Frankie’s time,” Frankie Riley held forth inside, in front of, and sometimes behind, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs” (remember that term?) and I was none other than one of Frankie’s corner boys. Not only that but I was his “shill,” his scribe, busy promoting every scheme, every idea, every half-idea, and every screwy notion that made its way into his ill-formed brain. So who would have had time for a “scoop” on the amount raised at some bake sale, what that nutty Sonos had to say on astrophysics or U.F.O’s, or the virtues of some ill-conceived, poorly-acted school play.

I freely admit, freely admit now, after a lifetime of turmoil, of struggle over ten thousand ideas, the fire of a thousand half-ideas, and a few thousand thought-provoking books that I had known about the Great Books Club held after school I might have been drawn to that. I spend much time later in life struggling with ideas that could just as easily have been thrashed out then. And, of course, the other problem was that if I had known about the club the only girl that I remember that might have been a member of the club and that I might have wanted to talk to was Sarah (remember we are not using last names in case you forgot), and she was, well, just a stick although I liked to talk to her in class. A lot.

Nor did I belong to church-affiliated clubs, christ no, I was on that long doubting Thomas road away from churchly concerns. Oh, except for one Minnie, yah, sweet Irish rose Minnie, whom I used to sit a few rows behind at 8:00 AM Mass at Sacred Heart and stare at her ass on Sunday. But I could have done that anywhere, and did according to her best friend, Jean, who sat behind me in class and has stated for the record in public as recently as a couple of years ago that I did it every time I could in the corridor and that Minnie knew about it, and kind of liked the idea although a lot of good that knowledge does me now. Moreover Phil Larkin (it’s okay to use his last name because I have already talked about “Foul-Mouth” Phil before, plenty, and he is in no position, no position this side of a four by six cell, to even spell the word litigation in my presence), yah, Phil Larkin moved in on her way before I got up the nerve to do more than watch her sway.

Ditto organizations like the YMCA, Eagle Scouts, or any of those service things. Corner boy life declared such things as strictly corn- ball. Not that I had anything, per se, against joining organizations. What I was though, and this was the attraction of rough-edged, snarly corner boy-ness for me, was alienated from anything that smacked of straight up, of normal, of, well square. And everything mentioned above, except for the girl part. And in that girl part maybe not including a stick like Sarah although I really did like to talk to her in class. She had some great big ideas, and knew how to articulate them. I hope she still does. Yes, I know what you are thinking. Instead of watching Minnie sway 24/7 I could have been cheek to cheek with Sarah, discussing stuff and... Don’t you think I haven’t thought about that, christ?

I also played no major sport that drove a lot of the social networking of the time (I am being polite using that term here: this is a family-friendly site after all. Isn’t it? If it isn’t then upon notice I will be more than happy to “spill the beans” about what was said, how it was said, and by whom about who "did" what every school day Monday morning before school in the boys’ lav, or the girls’ lave for that matter. And, again I will not worry in the least about litigation. Hey, the truth is a powerful defense.). The sports that did drive me throughout my high school career, track and cross-country, were then very marginal sports for “nerds,” low-rent fake athletes, and other assorted odd-balls, and I was, moreover, overwhelmingly underwhelming at them, to boot. I have recently moved to have my times in various track events declared classified information under a national security blanket just so certain prying eyes like ace-runner Bill Bailey and, naturally, that nemesis Frankie Riley do no gain access to that information for their own nefarious purposes.

I did not hang around with the class intellectuals, although I was as obsessed and driven by books, ideas and theories as anyone else at the time, maybe more so. I was, to be polite again, painfully shy around girls, as my furtive desire for Minnie mentioned above attests to, and therefore somewhat socially backward, although I was privately enthralled by more than one of them. Girls, that is. And to top it all off, to use a term that I think truly describes me then, I was something of a ragamuffin from the town's wrong side of the track, the notorious Blank Street section over by the bridge to Boston. Oh, did I mentioned that I was also so alienated from the old high school environment that I either threw, or threatened to throw, my yearbook in the nearest river right after graduation; in any case I no longer have it.

Perfect, right? No. Not a complete enough resume? Well how about this. My family, on my mother’s side, had been in the old town since about the time of the “famine ships” from Ireland in the 1840s. I have not gone in depth on the family genealogy but way back when someone in the family was a servant of some sort, to one of the branches of the presidential Adams family. Most of my relatives distance and far, went through the old high school. The streets of the old town were filled with the remnants of the clan. My friends, deny it or not and I sometimes did, the diaspora "old sod" shanty Irish aura of North Adamsville was in the blood.

How else then can one explain, after a forty year hiatus, this overweening desire of mine to write about the “Dust Bowl” that served as a training track during my running days. (The field situated just across the street from North Adamsville Middle School, of unblessed memory. Does anyone really want to go back in early teen life? No way.) Or write on the oddness of separate boys’ and girls’ bowling teams during our high school years, as if mixed social contact in that endeavor would lead to s-x, or whatever. Or my taking a “cheap” pot shot at that mysterious “Tri-Hi-Y” (a harmless social organization for women students that I have skewered for its virginal aspirations, its three purities; thoughts, acts, and deeds, or something like that). Or the million other things that pop into my head these days.

Oh yah, I can write, a little. Not unimportant for a bard, right? The soul of a poet, if somewhat deaf to the sweetness of the language. Time and technology has given us an exceptional opportunity to tell our collective story and seek immortality and I want in on that. Old Walt Whitman can sing of America, I will sing of the old town, gladly.

Well, do I get a job? Hey, you can always “fire” me. Just “click” and move on.

---

***Those Oldies But Goodies… For Those Who Waited By The Midnight Phone

 

 

A YouTube film clip of the Teen Queens performing the classic Eddie My Love.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard-working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.

EDDIE MY LOVE

(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956

The Fontane Sisters - 1956

The Chordettes - 1956

Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

Also recorded by:

Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

Eddie, my love, I love you so

How I wanted for you, you'll never know

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait to long

Eddie, please write me one line

Tell me your love is still only mine

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

(Transcribed from the Teen Queens

recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)

**********

Come closer will you, because I have got a story to tell, come on away from that midnight phone waiting and maybe put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,

Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, 2000s teens except the techno-gadgets ways to wait, to wait that midnight call are different, well, well there you have it,

and let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public 1950s story,

and let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to,

and let’s make it a winter night, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…,

and let’s make it, oh the hell with that “let’s make it” and get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along.

I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. Her Eddie’s flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.

Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. Yes, I know the story because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after school with her head down, head moping down after the mailman came.

Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a mantrap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up. Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge.

“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants” look, came rumbling and tumbling into town.

Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes car but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Eddie John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,

Eddie gave Sue the once over, like guys will do automatically, even though I secretly thrill to know that that once over is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me,

We talked, idle talk, sex in the air talk, but don’t talk about talk, still talk a lot for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean-ed charm too.

Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. Truce, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Eddie John Cooper and that cherry ’57 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was supposed to have a “date”, some donk poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I close that cherry door.

And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me everything.

Come late August as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.

I started crying, crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day.”

Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie has done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that.

But Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Eddie John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, no Eddie, well, enough of that, let's just say Eddie’s moved on.

And Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. And Betty then why don’t you call your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone.