An Encore -When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time

An Encore -When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of The Late Folk-Singer Dave Van Ronk’s Time

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

 

Sometimes Sam Lowell and his “friend” (really “sweetie,” long time sweetie, paramour, significant other, consort or whatever passes for the socially acceptable or Census Bureau bureaucratic “speak” way to name somebody who is one’s soul-mate, his preferred term) Laura Perkins whose relationship to Sam was just described at the end of the parentheses, and righteously so, liked to go to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich to either cool off in the late summer heat or in the fall before the New England weather lowers its hammer and the place gets a bit inaccessible and too windswept to force the delicate Laura into the weathers. That later summer  heat escape valve is a result, unfortunately for an otherwise Edenic environment of the hard fact that July, when they really would like to go there to catch a few fresh sea breezes, is not a time to show up at the bleach white sands beach due to nasty blood-sucking green flies swarming and dive-bombing like some berserk renegade Air Force squadron lost on a spree captained by someone with a depraved childhood who breed in the nearby swaying mephitic marshes (mephitic courtesy of multi-use by Norman Mailer who seemed to get it in every novel- if you don't what it means look it up but think nasty and smelly and you will close-okay).



The only “safe haven” then is to drive up the hill to the nearby robber-baron days etched Crane Castle (they of the American indoor plumbing fortune way back) to get away from the buggers, although on a stagnant wind day you might have a few vagrant followers, as the well-to-do have been doing since there were the well-to-do and had the where-with-all to escape the summer heat and bugs at higher altitudes. By the way I assume that “castle” is capitalized when it part of a huge estate, the big ass estate of Crane, now a trust monument to the first Gilded Age, not today’s neo-Gilded Age, architectural proclivities of the rich, the guy whose company did, does all the plumbing fixture stuff on half the bathrooms in America including in the various incantations of the mansion. 

Along the way, along the hour way to get to Ipswich from Cambridge Sam and Laura had developed a habit of making the time more easy passing by listening to various CDs, inevitably not listened to for a long time folk CDs, not listened to for so long that the plastic containers needed to be dusted off before being brought along, on the car's improvised  CD player. And as is their wont while listening to some CD to comment on this or that thing that some song brought to mind, or the significance of some song in their youth.  One of the things that had brought them together early on several years back was their mutual interest in the old 1960s folk minute which Sam, a little older and having grown up within thirty miles of Harvard Square, one the big folk centers of that period along with the Village and North Beach out in Frisco town, had imbibed deeply. Laura, growing up “in the sticks,” in farm country in upstate New York had gotten the breeze at second-hand through records, records bought at Cheapo Records and the eternal Sandy's on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge and a little the fading Cambridge folk scene through breathing in the coffeehouse atmosphere when she had moved to Boston in the early 1970s to go to graduate school.     

One hot late August day they got into one such discussion about how they first developed an interest in folk music when Sam had said “sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan, maybe some a little younger too if some hip kids have browsed through their parents’ old vinyl record collections now safely ensconced in the attic although there are stirrings of retro-vinyl revival of late according a report I had heard on NPR."


Some of that over 50 crowd and their young acolytes would also have known about how Dylan, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s singing Woody’s songs imitating Woody's style something fellow Woody acolytes like Ramblin’ Jack Elliot never quite got over moved on, got all hung up on high symbolism and obscure references. Funny guys like Jack actually made a nice workman-like career out of Woody covers, so their complaints about the "great Dylan betrayal, about moving on, seen rather hollow now. That over 50s crowd would also know Dylan became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, their generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then he would settle for the master troubadour of the age.

Sam continued along that line after Laura had said she was not sure about the connection and he said he meant, “troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them by song and poetry as well if not decked in some officially approved garb like back in those olden days where they worked under a king’s license if lucky, by their wit otherwise but the 'new wave' post-beatnik flannel shirt, work boots, and dungarees which connected you with the roots, the American folk roots down in the Piedmont, down in Appalachia, down in Mister James Crow’s Delta, and out in the high plains, the dust bowl plains. So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered.”  

Laura said she knew all of that about the desperate search for roots although not that Ramblin’ Jack had been an acolyte of Woody’s but she wondered about others, some other folk performers whom she listened to on WUMB on Saturday morning when some weeping willow DJ put forth about fifty old time rock and folk rock things a lot of which she had never heard of back in Mechanicsville outside of Albany where she grew up. Sam then started in again, “Of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s. He had been washed by it when he came to the East from Hibbing, Minnesota for God’s sake (via Dink’s at the University there), came into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, the next big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. For us. But also those in little oases like the Village where the disaffected could pick up on stuff they couldn’t get in places like Mechanicsville or Carver where I grew up. People who I guess, since even I was too young to know about that red scare stuff except you had to follow your teacher’s orders to put your head under your desk and hands neatly folded over your head if the nuclear holocaust was coming, were frankly fed up with the cultural straightjacket of the red scare Cold War times and began seriously looking as hard at roots in all its manifestations as our parents, definitely mine, yours were just weird about stuff like that, right, were burying those same roots under a vanilla existential Americanization. How do you like that for pop sociology 101.”

“One of the talents who was already there when hick Dylan came a calling, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who as you know we had heard several times in person, although unfortunately when his health and well-being were declining not when he was a young politico and hell-raising folk aspirant. You know he also, deservedly, fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.”    

“Here’s the funny thing, Laura, that former role is important because we all know that behind every  'king' is the 'fixer man,' the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were like some mighty mystic (although in those days when he fancied himself a socialist that mystic part was played down). Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute. New York like I said, Frisco, maybe in small enclaves in L.A. and in precious few other places during those frozen times a haven for the misfits, the outlaws, the outcast, the politically “unreliable,” and the just curious. People like the mistreated Weavers, you know, Pete Seeger and that crowd found refuge there when the hammer came down around their heads from the red-baiters and others like advertisers who ran for cover to “protect” their precious soap, toothpaste, beer, deodorant or whatever they were mass producing to sell to a hungry pent-up market.  



"Boston and Cambridge by comparison until late in the 1950s when the Club 47 and other little places started up and the guys and gals who could sing, could write songs, could recite some be-bop deep from the blackened soul poetry even had a place to show their stuff instead of to the winos, rummies, grifters and con men who hung out at the Hayes-Bickford or out on the streets could have been any of the thousands of towns who bought into the freeze.”     

“Sweetie, I remember one time but I don’t remember where, maybe the Café Nana when that was still around after it had been part of the Club 47 folk circuit for new talent to play and before Harry Reid, who ran the place, died and it closed down, I know it was before we met, so it had to be before the late 1980s Von Ronk told a funny story, actually two funny stories, about the folk scene and his part in that scene as it developed a head of steam in the mid-1950s which will give you an idea about his place in the pantheon. During the late 1950s after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking road wanderlust adventure novel, On The Road, that got young blood stirring, not mine until later since I was clueless on all that stuff except rock and roll which I didn’t read until high school, the jazz scene, the cool be-bop jazz scene and poetry reading, poems reflecting off of “beat” giant Allen Ginsberg’s Howl the clubs and coffeehouse of the Village were ablaze with readings and cool jazz, people waiting in line to get in to hear the next big poetic wisdom guy if you can believe that these days when poetry is generally some esoteric endeavor by small clots of devotees just like folk music. The crush of the lines meant that there were several shows per evening. But how to get rid of one audience to bring in another in those small quarters was a challenge."



"Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate “from hunger” snarly nasally folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art be-bop poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s where that very same folk singer probably in that very same club then played for the 'basket.' You know the 'passed hat' which even on a cheap date, and a folk music coffeehouse date was a cheap one in those days like I told you before and you laughed at cheapie me and the 'Dutch treat' thing, you felt obliged to throw a few bucks into to show solidarity or something.  And so the roots of New York City folk according to the 'father.'

Laura interrupted to ask if that “basket” was like the buskers put in front them these days and Sam said yes. And then asked Sam about a few of the dates he took to the coffeehouses in those days, just out of curiosity she said, meaning if she had been around would he have taken her there then. He answered that question but since it is an eternally complicated and internal one I having to do with where she stood in the long Sam girlfriend  pecking order (very high and leave it at that unless she reads this and then the highest) have skipped it to let him go on with the other Von Ronk story.


He continued with the other funny story like this-“The second story involved his [Von Ronk's] authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course just like today maybe people are getting doctorates in hip-hop or some such subject. Eager young students, having basked in the folk moment in the abstract and with an academic bent, breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the 'skinny.' Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and a wicked snarly cynic’s laugh but also could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish once published in the dissertation would then be cited by some other younger and even more eager students complete with the appropriate footnotes. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one, right.”

Laura did not answer but laughed, laughed harder as she thought about it having come from that unformed academic background and having read plenty of sterile themes turned inside out.       

As Laura laugh settled Sam continued “As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer, who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who was featured on that  Tom Rush documentary No Regrets we got for being members of WUMB, when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. It turned out to be Von Ronk's version which you know I still play up in the third floor attic. After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which tended to be spoofs on some issue of the day.”

Laura laughed at Sam and the intensity with which his expressed his mentioning of the fact that he liked gravelly-voiced guys for some reason. Here is her answer, “You should became when you go up to the third floor to do your “third floor folk- singer” thing and you sing Fair and Tender Ladies I hear this gravelly-voiced guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, some Old Testament Jehovah prophet come to pass judgment come that end day time.”

They both laughed. 

Laura then mentioned the various times that they had seen Dave Von Ronk before he passed away, not having seen him in his prime, when that voice did sound like some old time prophet, a title he would have probably secretly enjoyed for publicly he was an adamant atheist. Sam went on, “ I saw him perform many times over the years, sometimes in high form and sometimes when drinking too much high-shelf whiskey, Chavis Regal, or something like that not so good. Remember we had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2002 I think. He had died a few weeks before.  Remember though before that when we had seen him for what turned out to be our last time and I told you he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and we agreed his performance was subpar. But that was at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music. Yeah like he always used to say-'when the tin can bended …..and the story ended.'

As they came to the admission booth at the entrance to Crane’s Beach Sam with Carolyn Hester’s song version of Walt Whitman’s On Captain, My Captain on the CD player said “I was on my soap box long enough on the way out here. You’re turn with Carolyn Hester on the way back who you know a lot about and I know zero, okay.” Laura retorted, “Yeah you were definitely on your soap-box but yes we can talk Carolyn Hester because I am going to cover one of her songs at my next “open mic.” And so it goes.                      

*****Ain’t Got No Time For Corner Boys Down In The Street Making All That Noise

*****Ain’t Got No Time For Corner Boys Down In The Street Making All That Noise

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night-- When Billie Ruled The Roost- Second First Take

He was the first. A certified 1958 A-One prime custom model first. Yes, Billie was the first. Billie, William James Bradley that is if you did not know his full moniker, was the first. No question about it, no controversy, no alternate candidates, no hemming and hawing agonizing about this guy’s attributes or that guy’s style and how they lined up against Billie’s shine in order to pick a winner. No way, get it.

Billie, first in what anyway? Billie, first, see, first in line of the then ever sprouting young schoolboy king corner boy wannabes. Wannabes because the weres (or the alreadys if you want to put a time frame on the matter), the corner boy weres (ditto on the alreadys), the already king corner boy weres (no need for ditto alreadys after this one), the older, say sixteen to twenty somethings since after that the only corner they were hanging in was in some county or state pen doing that first nickel for armed robbery or threat of armed robbery which is the same thing if you are a frightened Mom and Pop store owner or a kid gas jockey at a filling station), mainly not schoolboys or, christ, not for long schoolboys (for about six different reasons from being too stone cold dumb to get out of eight grade and hence too old to be robbing fellow students of lunch money to the best one when Red Radley hung the headmaster out to dry from his office and was asked to leave under penalty of three to five somewhere), mainly not working, jesus, mainly not working (working relegated to what their poor sap fathers were up to and thus square, double square) mainly just hanging around ("lying about," not laying about, was a name for it from Grandma Radley who had a distinct sneer on her face when she utter the sounds, a fit name at that) were already playing, really hip-swaying, lazily hip-swaying if you wanted to win games, wizard pinball machines in the sacred corner boy small town mom and pop variety night (not the same locale not that anybody had heard ant they would where a frightened Mom or Pop was held up at gunpoint) or cueing up in some smoke-filled big town pool hall (and playing high school kids for vagrant quarters to feed the jukebox).

Or working on hot souped-up cars (half the materials stolen from “midnight auto” the rest from Joe’s Junkyard the burial grounds for has-been automobile or ill-fated ones which did not survive the two o’clock in the morning “chicken runs” down the far end of Adamsville Boulevard to see who was the king hell king of the hot rod night not an unimportant title among that crowd), a touch of grease like some sacred balm pressed, seemingly decaled pressed, into their uniform white tee-shirts (no dopey vee-necks or muscle shirts need apply) and always showed, showed an oily speck anyway, on their knuckles (black-rimmed layered fingernails that never seemed to get clean no matter how much Borax was applied, an unspoken given).

To impressionable working poor boys coming up behind them and unaware of what pranks produced such efforts (having only sad sack nose-to-the grindstone fathers as alternative models) the cars were to die for, sleek tail-finned, pray to god two-toned cherry red and white if you put the finish on right (no going to some hack paint shop, no way, not for this baby, not for that ’57 Chevy), dual exhaust, big cubic engine numbers that no amateur had a clue to but just knew when sighted that thing would fly (well, almost fly) into the boulevard night, that sea air, sex-charged boulevard night. Tuned-up just right for that cheap gas to make her run, yah, that cheap City Service gas that was even cheaper than the stuff over at the Merit gas station, by two cents (neither station’s gas jockeys known to have been subject to the gunpoint whims that would have them peeing in their pants).

Or talking some boffo (that’s the word look it up if you think it is a lie -meaning with that certain something that would get a guy going if she got to sit next to him in that “boss” cherry red and white Chevy and he wouldn’t have to coax her like some bloody rosary bead novena frail with the Bible, okay the damn Bible between her knees), usually blonde (although frankly who could tell if her natural hair was really that condition or from a bottle and it did not really matter if she was boffo but subject of conversation from early on to the question of how anybody, how any guy could tell unless she, or they, took her underpants off for investigation,  and that talk created adolescent fervid dreams), although not always, maybe a cute rosy red-lipped and haired number (meaning in that neighborhood some Irish Catholic girl who had left those rosary beads and novenas far behind even if she still went to communion at Sunday morning eight o’clock Mass after a night of “playing the flute,” or being checked out for the natural color of her hair), in a pinch, a soft, sultry, svelte brunette (who loved to “play the flute” to be able to sit in the front seat of that “boss” car and a guy did not have to investigate her natural hair color since she would show and tell all sassy and sweaty), tight cashmere sweater-wearing (showing a proud nipple to a candid world whether aroused or not), all, tight Capri pant-wearing (meaning nothing more than a guy was going to have some work to do to check out what was under the underpants or she mercifully sliding them off to avoid rough handling), all, hustled out of her virtue (or maybe into her virtue) down by the seashore after some carnival-filled night (or maybe the “reserved” area of the drive-in movies meaning the place where no responsible parent would bring their young children and where nobody saw nothing but fogged up windows, cars rocking a little and hearing low moans).

A night that had been filled with arcade pinball wizardry, cotton candy, salt-water taffy, roller coaster rides, and a few trips in the tunnel of love, maybe win a prize from the wheel of fortune game too. A night capped with a few illicit drinks from some old Tom, or johnny, Johnny Walker that is, rotgut to make that talking easier, and that virtue more questionable, into or out of. All while the ocean waves slap innocently against the shore, drowning out the night’s heavy breathed, hard-voiced sighs.

Or, get this, because it tells a lot about the byways and highways of the high-style corner boy steamy black and white 1950s night, preparing, with his boys, his trusted unto death boys, his Omerta-sworn boys, no less to do some midnight creep (waylaying some poor bedraggled sap, sidewalk drunk or wrong neighborhooded gee, with a sap to the head for dough, or going through some back door, and not gently, to grab somebody’s family heirlooms or fungibles, better yet cash on hand) in order to maintain that hot car, cheap gas or not, or hot honey, virtuous or not. Yah, things cost then, as now.

And, yah, in 1958, in hard look 1958, those king hell corner boy "weres" already sucked up the noteworthy, attention-getting black and white television, black and white newsprint night air. Still the lines were long with candidates and the mom and pop variety store-anchored, soda fountain drugstore-anchored, pizza parlor-anchored, pool hall-anchored corners, such as they were, were plentiful in those pre-dawn mall days. But see that is the point, the point of those long lines of candidates in every burg in the land or, at least became the point, because in 1948, or 1938, or maybe even 1928 nobody gave a rat’s ass, or a damn, about corner boys except to shuffle them out of town on the first Greyhound bus.

Hell, in 1948 they were still in hiding from the war, whatever war it was that they wanted no part of, which might ruin their style, or their dough prospects. They were just getting into those old Nash jalopies, revving them up in the "chicken run" night out in the exotic west coast ocean night. In 1938 you did not need a Greyhound bus coming through your town to put them on board  because these guys were already on the hitchhike road, or were bindled-up in some railroad jungle, or getting cracked over the head by some “bull”, in the great depression whirlwind heading west for adventure, or hard-scrabble work. And in 1928 these hard boys were slugging it out, guns at the ready, in fast, prohibition liquor-load filled cars, and had no time for corners and silly corner pinball wizard games (although maybe they had time for running the rack at Gus’s pool hall and a quick back seat blow job between hauls, if they lived long enough).

That rarified, formerly subterranean corner boy way of life, was getting inspected, dissected, rejected, everything but neglected once the teen angst, teen alienation wave hit 1950s America. You heard some of the names, or thought you heard some of the names that counted, but they were just showboat celebrities, celebrities inhabiting Corner Boy, Inc. complete with stainless tee-shirt, neatly pressed denim jeans, maybe a smart leather jacket against the weather’s winds, unsmoked, unfiltered cigarettes at the ready, and incurably photogenic faces that every girl mother could love/hate.

Forget that. Down in the trenches, yah, down in the trenches is where the real corner boys lived, and lived without publicity most days, thank you.

Guys like Red Hickey, tee-shirted, sure, denim-jeaned, sure, leather-jacketed, sure, chain-smoking (Lucky Strikes, natch), sure, angelic-faced, sure, who waylaid a guy, put him in an ambulance waylaid, just because he was a corner boy king from another cross-town corner who Red thought was trying to move in, or something like that. Or guys like Bruce “The Goose” McNeil, ditto shirted, jeaned, jacketed, smoked (Camels), faced who sneak-thieved his way through half of the old Adamsville houses taking nothing but high-end stuff from the swells. Or No Name McGee, corner boy king of the liquor store clip. Yah, and a hundred other guys, a hundred no name guys, except maybe to the cops, and to their distressed mothers, mainly old-time Irish and Italian novena-praying Catholic mothers, praying against that publicity day, the police blotter publicity day.

But you did not, I say, you did not hear those Hickey, McNeil, No Name stories in the big town newspapers or in some university faculty room when those guys zeroed in on the corner boy game trying to explain, like it was not plain as the naked eye to see, and why, all that angst and alienation. And then tried to tell one and all that corner boy was a phase, a minute thing, that plentiful America had an edge, like every civilized world from time immemorial had, where those who could not adjust, who could not decode the new American night, the odorless American night, the pre-lapsarian American night shifted for themselves in the shadows. Not to worry though it was a phase, just a phase, and these guys too will soon be thinking about that ticky-tack little white house with the picket fence.

Yah, but see, see again, just the talk through the grapevine about such guys as Red, The Goose, No Name, the legendary jewelry store clip artist, Brother Johnson (who set himself apart because he made a point of the fact that he didn’t smoke, smoke cigarettes anyway), and a whole host of guys who made little big names for themselves on the corners was enough to get guys like Billie, and not just primo candidate Billie either, hopped-up on the corner boy game. Yah, the corner boys whose very name uttered, whose very idea of a name uttered, whose very idea of a name thought up in some think-tank academy brain-dust, and whose very existence made a splash later (after it was all over, at least the public, publicity all over, part), excited every project schoolboy, every wrong side of the tracks guy (and it was always guys, babes were just for tangle), every short-cut dreaming boy who could read the day’s newspaper or watch some distended television, or knew someone who did.

And Billie was the first. The star of the Adamsville elementary schoolboy corner boy galaxy. No first among equals, or any such combination like that either, if that is what you are thinking. Alone. Oh sure his right-hand man, Peter Paul Markin, weak-kneed, book-wormy, girl-confused but girl-addled, took a run at Billie but that was seen, except maybe by Peter Paul himself, as a joke. Something to have a warm chuckle over on dreary nights when a laugh could not be squeezed out any other way. See, Peter Paul, as usual, had it all wrong on his figuring stuff. He thought his two thousand facts knowledge about books, and history, and current events, and maybe an off-hand science thing or two entitled, get this, entitled him to the crown. Like merit, or heredity, or whatever drove him to those two thousand facts meant diddley squat against style, and will.

Billie tried to straighten him out, gently at first, with a short comment that a guy who had no denim blue jeans, had no possibility of getting denim blue jeans, and was in any case addicted to black chinos, black cuffed chinos, has no chance of leading anybody, at any time, in anything. Still Peter Paul argued some nonsense about his organizing abilities. Like being able to run a low-rent bake sale for some foolish school trip, or to refurbish the U.S.S. Constitution, counted when real dough, real heist dough, for real adventures was needed. Peter Paul simmered in high-grade pre-teen anguish for a while over that one, more than a while.

Billie and Peter Paul, friends since the first days of first grade, improbably friends on the face of it although Billie’s take on it was that Peter Paul made him laugh with that basketful of facts that he held on to like a king’s ransom, protecting them like they were gold or something, finally had it out one night. No, not a fist fight, see that was not really Billie’s way, not then anyway or at least not in this case, and Peter Paul was useless at fighting, except maybe with feisty paper bags or those blessed facts. Billie, who not only was a king corner contender but a very decent budding singer, rock and roll singer, had just recently lost some local talent show competition to a trio of girls who were doing a doo wop thing. That part was okay, the losing part, such things happen in show biz and even Billie recognized, recognized later, that those girls had be-bopped him with their cover of Eddie, My Love fair and square. Billie, who for that contest was dressed up in a Bill Haley-style jacket made by his mother for the occasion, did the classic Bill Haley and the Comets Rock- Around-The-Clock as his number. About halfway through though one of the arms of his just made suit came flying off. A few seconds later the other arm came off. And the girls, the coterie of Adamsville girls in the audience especially, went crazy. See they thought it was part of the act.

After that, at school and elsewhere, Billie was besieged daily by girls, and not just stick-shaped girls either, who hung off all his arms, if you want to know. And sensitive soul Peter Paul didn’t like that. He didn’t care about the girl part, because as has already been noted, and can be safely placed on golden tablets Peter Paul was plenty girl-confused and girl-addled but girl-smitten in his funny way. What got him in a snit was that Billie was neglecting his corner boy king duty to be on hand with his boys at all available times. Well, this one night the words flew as Billie tired, easily tired, of Peter Paul’s ravings on the subject. And here is the beauty of the thing, the thing that made Billie the king corner boy contender. No fists, no fumings, no forget friendships. Not necessary. Billie just told Peter Paul this- “You can have my cast-offs.” Meaning, of course, the extra girls that Billie didn’t want, or were sticks, or just didn’t appeal to him. “Deal,” cried Peter Paul in a flash. Yah that was corner boy magic. And you know what? After that Peter Paul became something like Johnson’s Boswell and really started building up Billie as the exemplar corner boy king. Nice work, Billie.

You know Freddie Jackson too took his shots but was strictly out of his league against the Billie. Here it was a question not of facts, or books, or some other cranky thing bought off, bought off easily, by dangling girls in front of a guy a la Peter Paul but of trying to out dance Billie. See Freddie, whatever else his shortcomings, mainly not being very bright and not being able to keep his hands out of his mother’s pocketbook when he needed dough so that he had to stay in many nights, worst many summer nights, could really dance. What Freddie didn’t know, and nobody was going to tell him, nobody, from Peter Paul on down if they wanted to hang with Billie was that Billie had some great dance moves along with that good and growing singing voice. See, Freddie never got to go to the school or church dances and only knew that Billie was an ace singer. But while Freddie was tied to the house he became addicted to American Bandstand and so through osmosis, maybe, got some pretty good moves too.

So at one after-school dance, at a time when Freddie had kept his hands out of his mother’s pocketbook long enough not to be house-bound, he made his big move challenge. He called Billie out. Not loud, not overbearing but everybody knew the score once they saw Freddie’s Eddie Cochran-style suit. The rest of the guys (except Billie, now wearing jeans and tee-shirt when not on stage in local talent contests where such attire got you nowhere) were in chinos (Peter Paul in black-cuffed chinos, as usual) and white shirts, or some combination like that, so Freddie definitely meant business. Freddie said, “If I beat you at dancing I’m running the gang, okay?” (See corner boys was what those professors and news hawks called them but every neighborhood guy, young or old, knew, knew without question, who led, and who was in, or not in, every, well, gang). Billie, always at the ready when backed up against the wall, said simply, “Deal.” Freddie came out with about five minutes of jitter buggery, Danny and the Juniors At The Hop kind of moves. He got plenty of applause and some moony-eyedness from the younger girls (the stick girls who were always moony-eyed until they were not stick girls any more).

Billie came sauntering out, tee-shirt rolled up, tight jeans staying tight and just started to do the stroll as the song of the same name, The Stroll, came on. Now the stroll is a line dance kind of thing but Billie is out there all by himself and making moves, sexual-laden moves, although not everybody watching would have known to call them that. And those moves have all the girls, sticks and shapes, kind of glassy-eyed with that look like maybe Billie needed a partner, or something and a “why not me” look. Even Freddie knew he was doomed and took his lost pretty well, although he still had that hankering for mom’s purse that kept him from being a real regular corner boy when Billie got the thing seriously organized.

Funny thing, Lefty Wright, who actually was on the dance floor the night of the Freddie-Billie dance-off, pushed Billie with the Freddie challenge. And Freddie was twenty times a better dancer than Lefty. Needless to say, join the ranks, Lefty. Canny Danny O’Toole (Cool Donna O’Toole’s, a stick flame of Billie’s, early Billie, brother) was a more serious matter but after a couple of actions (actions best left unspecified) he fell in line. Billie, kind of wiry, kind of quick-fisted as it turned out, and not a guy quick to take offense knew, like a lot of wiry guys, how to handle himself without lots of advertising of that fact. He was going to need that fist-skill when the most serious, more serious than the Canny Danny situation came up. And it did with Badass Bobby Riley, Badass was a known quality, but he was a year older than the others and everybody knew was a certified psychopath who eventually drifted out of sight. Although not before swearing his fealty to Billie. After taking a Billie, a wiry Billie, beating the details of which also need no going into now. And there were probably others who stepped up for a minute, or who didn’t stay long enough to test their metal. Loosey Goosey Hughes, Butternut Walsh, Jimmy Riley (no relation to Badass), Five Fingers Kelly, Kenny Ricco, Billy Bruno, and on and on.

But such was the way of Billie’s existence. He drew a fair share of breaks, for a project kid, got some notice for his singing although not enough to satisfy his huge hunger, his way out, he way out of the projects, projects that had his name written all over them(and the rest of his boys too). And then he didn’t draw some breaks after a while, got known as a hard boy, a hard corner boy when corner boy was going out of style and also his bluesy rockabilly singing style was getting crushed by clean-cut, no hassle, no hell-raising boy boys. And then he started drawing to an outside straight, first a couple of frame-up show trial juvenile clip busts, amid the dreaded publicity, the Roman Catholic mother novena dread publicity, police blottered. Then a couple of house break-ins, taking fall guy lumps for a couple of older, harder corner boys who could make him a fall guy then, as he would others when his turn came. All that was later, a couple of years later. But no question in 1958, especially the summer of 1958 when such things took on a decisive quality, Billie, and for one last time, that’s William James Bradley, in case anyone reading needs the name in order to look it up for the historical record was Billie's time. Yah, 1958, Billie, ah, William James Bradley, and corner boy king.

Funny, as you know, or you should know, corner boys usually gain their fleeting fame from actually hanging around corners, corner mom and pop variety stores, corner pizza parlors, corner pool halls, corner bowling alleys, corner pinball wizard arcades, becoming fixtures at said corners and maybe passing on to old age and social security check collection at said corner. Or maybe not passing to old age but to memory, memory kid’s memory. But feature this, in Billie’s great domain, his great be-bop night kingship, and in his various defenses of his realm against smart guys and stups alike, he never saw so much as a corner corner to rest his laurels on. And not because he did not know that proper etiquette in such matters required some formal corner to hang at but for the sheer, unadulterated fact that no such corner existed in his old-fashioned housing project (now old-fashioned anyway because they make such places differently today), his home base.

See, the guys who made the projects “forgot” that, down and out or not, people need at least a mom and pop variety store to shop at, or nowadays maybe a strip mall, just like everybody else. But none was ever brought into the place and so the closest corner, mom and pop corner anyway, was a couple of miles away up the road. But that place was held by a crowd of older corner boys whose leader, from what was said, would have had Billie for lunch (and did in the end).

But see here is where a guy like Billie got his corner boy franchise anyway. In a place where there are no corners to be king of the corner boy night there needs to be a certain ingenuity and that is where “His Honor” held forth. Why not the back of the old schoolhouse? Well, not so old really because in that mad post-World War II boom night (no pun intended), schools, particularly convenient elementary schools even for projects kids were outracing the boomers. So the school itself was not old but the height of 1950s high-style, functional public building brick and glass. Boxed, of course, building-boxed, classroom-boxed, gym-boxed, library-ditto boxed. No cafeteria-boxed, none necessary reflecting, oddly, walk to school, walk home for lunch, stay-at-home mom childhood culture even in public assistance housing world. And this for women who could have, if they could have stood the gaff from neighbor wives, family wives, society wives screamed to high heaven for work, money work. That was Billie world too, Billie day world. Billie September to June world.

But come dusk, summer dusk best of all, Billie ruled the back end of the school, the quiet unobserved end of the school, the part near the old sailors’ graveyard, placed there to handle the tired old sailors who had finished up residing at the nearby but then no longer used Old Sailors’ Rest Home built for those who roamed the seven seas, the inlet bays, and whatever other water allowed you to hang in the ancient sailors’ world. There Billie held forth, Peter Paul almost always at hand, seeking, always seeking refuge from his hellfire home thrashings. Canny Danny, regularly, same with Lefty and Freddie (when not grounded), and Bobby while he was around. And other guys, other unnamed, maybe unnamable guys who spent a minute in the Billie night. Doing? Yah, just doing some low murmur talking, most nights, mostly some listening to Billie dreams, Billie plans, Billie escape route. All sounding probable, all wistful once you heard about it later. All very easy, all very respectful, in back of that old school unless some old nag of a neighbor, fearful that the low murmur spoke of unknown, unknowable conspiracies against person, against the day, hell, even against the night. Then the cops were summoned. But mainly not.

And then as dusk turned to dark and maybe a moon, an earth moon (who knew then, without telescope, maybe a man-made moon), that soft talk, that soft night talk, turned to a low song throat sound as Billie revved up his voice to some tune his maddened brain caught on his transistor radio (bought fair and square up at the Radio Shack so don’t get all huffy about it). Say maybe Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers Why Do Fools Fall In Love? and then the other ragamuffins would do harmony. Yah, that was twelve, maybe thirteen year old night, most nights, the nights of no rough stuff, the nights of dreams, maybe. But like some ancient siren call that sound penetrated to the depths of the projects and soon a couple of girls, yes, girls, twelve and thirteen year old girls, what do you expect, stick girls and starting shape girls, would hover nearby, maybe fifty yards away but the electricity was in the air, and those hardly made out forms drove Billie and his choir corner boys on. Maybe Elvis’ One Night as a come on. Then a couple more girls, yes, twelve and thirteen year old girls, have you been paying attention, sticks and starting shapes, join those others quietly swaying to the tempo. A few more songs, a few more girls, girls coming closer. Break time. Girl meets boy. Boy meets girl. Hell, even Peter Paul got lucky this night with one of Billie’s stick rejects. And as that moon turned its shades out and the air was fragrance with nature’s marshlands sea air smells and girls’ fresh soap smells and boys’ anxiety smells the Billie corner boy wannabe world seemed not so bad. Yah, 1958 was Billie’s year. Got it.

 

*****Damn It- Free Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Jail!

*****Damn It- Free Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Jail!

Leonard Peltier in 1972

I am passing this along which was passed to me so check it out. (November 2015) 

Anonymous7:57 PM

 

The correct contact information for Peltier's defense committee (and ACCURATE information regarding Leonard Peltier, his case, and the campaign for freedom) is ILPDC, PO Box 24, Hillsboro, OR 97123. Web: www.whoisleonardpeltier.info.

Click to a Leonard Peltier Defense Committee site.

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/ 

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier was framed up for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents marauding in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 69-year-old Peltier is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another eleven years! Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family.

Commentary

This entry is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need add little except to say that this man, a natural leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), should never have spent a day in jail. Free him now.

"We, along with millions of others, do not believe that Leonard Peltier should have been incarcerated at all. We demand his unconditional release from prison."

************
Leonard Peltier was arrested in Canada on February 6, 1976, along with Frank Blackhorse, a.k.a. Frank Deluca. The United States presented the Canadian court with affidavits signed by Myrtle Poor Bear who said she was Mr. Peltier’s girlfriend and allegedly saw him shoot the agents. In fact, Ms. Poor Bear had never met Mr. Peltier and was not present during the shoot-out. Soon after, Ms. Poor Bear recanted her statements and said the FBI threatened her and coerced her into signing the affidavits.

• Mr. Peltier was extradited to the United States where he was tried in 1977. The trial was held in North Dakota before United States District Judge Paul Benson, a conservative jurist appointed to the federal bench by Richard M. Nixon. Key witnesses like Myrtle Poor Bear were not allowed to testify and unlike the Robideau/Butler trial in Iowa, evidence regarding violence on Pine Ridge was severely restricted.
• An FBI agent who had previously testified that the agents followed a pick-up truck onto the scene, a vehicle that could not be tied to Mr. Peltier, changed his account, stating that the agents had followed a red and white van onto the scene, a vehicle which Mr. Peltier drove occasionally.
• Three teenaged Native witnesses testified against Mr. Peltier, they all later admitted that the FBI forced them to testify. Still, not one witness identified Mr. Peltier as the shooter.
• The U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case claimed that the government had provided the defense with all FBI documents concerning the case. To the contrary, more than 140,000 pages had been withheld in their entirety.
• An FBI ballistics expert testified that a casing found near the agents’ bodies matched the gun tied to Mr. Peltier. However, a ballistic test proving that the casing did not come from the gun tied to Mr. Peltier was intentionally concealed.
• The jury, unaware of the aforementioned facts, found Mr. Peltier guilty. Judge Benson, in turn, sentenced Mr. Peltier to two consecutive life terms.
• Following the discovery of new evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Mr. Peltier sought a new trial. The Eighth Circuit ruled, “There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and data improperly withheld from the defense been available to him in order to better exploit and reinforce the inconsistencies casting strong doubts upon the government's case." Yet, the court denied Mr. Peltier a new trial.
• During oral argument, the government attorney conceded that the government does not know who shot the agents, stating that Mr. Peltier is equally guilty whether he shot the agents at point-blank range, or participated in the shoot-out from a distance. Mr. Peltier’s co-defendants participated in the shoot-out from a distance, but were acquitted.
• Judge Heaney, who authored the decision denying a new trial, has since voiced firm support for Mr. Peltier’s release, stating that the FBI used improper tactics to convict Mr. Peltier, the FBI was equally responsible for the shoot-out, and that Mr. Peltier's release would promote healing with Native Americans.
• Mr. Peltier has served over 29 years in prison and is long overdue for parole. He has received several human rights awards for his good deeds from behind bars which include annual gift drives for the children of Pine Ridge, fund raisers for battered women’s shelters, and donations of his paintings to Native American recovery programs.
• Mr. Peltier suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart condition. Time for justice is short.
• Currently, Mr. Peltier’s attorneys have filed a new round of Freedom of Information Act requests with FBI Headquarters and all FBI field offices in an attempt to secure the release of all files relating to Mr. Peltier and the RESMURS investigation. To date, the FBI has engaged in a number of dilatory tactics in order to avoid the processing of these requests.

**************
THIS ARTICLE FROM PARTISAN DEFENSE NOTES WAS PASSED ON TO THE WRITER BY THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTTEE, P.O. BOX 99 CANAL STREET STATION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10013. 

THERE IS NOTHING THAT I NEED TO ADD EXCEPT THAT HISTORIANS OVER THE LAST GENERATION HAVE STEPPED OVER ALL OVER THEMSELVES TO CORRECT THE PREVIOUS FALSE ROLE ASSIGNED TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES. THAT IS TO THE GOOD. BUT THE WRITER HAS ONE QUESTION –WHY IS THIS NATIVE AMERICAN LEADER STILL IN JAIL? ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Thirty years ago, on 6 February 1976, American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Leonard Peltier was seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in western Canada. Peltier had fled there after a massive U.S. government attack the previous June—by FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents, SWAT cops and white vigilantes—on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation during which two FBI agents were killed. After Canadian authorities held Peltier for ten months in solitary confinement in Oakalla Prison, he was extradited to the U.S. on the basis of fabricated FBI testimony. In 1977, Peltier, a member of the Anishinabe and Lakota Nations, was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences on frame-up murder charges stemming from the shooting of the two FBI agents.

While Peltier had sought refuge in Canada, two others charged in the agents' killings were acquitted in a federal court in Iowa. Jurors stated that they did not believe the government witnesses and that it seemed "pretty much a clear-cut case of self-defense" against the FBI invasion. In Peltier's trial the prosecution concealed ballistics tests showing that his gun could not have been used in the shooting, while the trial judge ruled out any chance of another acquittal on self-defense grounds by barring any evidence of government terror against the Pine Ridge activists. At a 1985 appeal hearing, a government attorney admitted, "We can't prove who shot those agents."

AIM had been in the Feds' gun sights because of its efforts to fight the enforced poverty of Native Americans and the continued theft of their lands by the government and energy companies, which were intent on grabbing rich uranium deposits under Sioux land in South Dakota. The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee stated in 2004: "Virtually every known AIM leader in the United States was incarcerated in either state or federal prisons since (or even before) the organization's formal emergence in 1968, some repeatedly." Between 1973 and 1976, thugs of the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON), armed and trained by the hated BIA and FBI, carried out more than 300 attacks in and around Pine Ridge, killing at least 69 people.
As we wrote during the fight against Peltier's threatened deportation, "The U.S. case against Peltier is political persecution, part of a broader attempt by the FBI to smash AIM through piling up criminal charges against its leaders, just as was done against the Black Panthers" (PTFNo. 112, 4 June 1976). AIM and Peltier were targeted by the FBI's deadly Counter-intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) of disruption, frame-up and murder of the left, black militants and others. Under COINTELPRO, 38 Black Panthers were killed by the FBI and local cops. Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) spent 27 years in prison for a crime the FBI knew he could not have committed before finally winning release in 1997. Mumia Abu-Jamal—also an innocent man— remains on Pennsylvania's death row today.

In November 2003, a federal appeals court ruled, "Much of the government's behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and in its prosecution of Mr. Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed." But the court still refused to open the prison doors for Peltier. Last year, U.S. District Court judge William Skretny turned down Peltier's request for documents suppressed by the government, even while acknowledging that he could have been acquitted had the government not improperly withheld them. Peltier attorney Michael Kuzma stated that the evidence withheld by the government amounts to a staggering 142,579 pages!

On February 24, Skretny again ruled that the FBI can keep part of its records secret in the name of "national security." Peltier noted in a message to the March 18 protests against the Iraq occupation, "Our government uses the words 'national security' and fighting the war on transnational terrorism as a smoke screen to cover up further crimes and misconduct by the FBI." Also this February, defense attorney Barry Bachrach argued in St. Louis federal court that the federal government had no jurisdiction in Peltier's case, since the shootings occurred on a reservation.

Millions of people have signed petitions for Peltier over the years, including by 1986 some 17 million people in the former Soviet Union. His frame-up, like that of Geronimo ji Jaga and Mumia Abu-Jamal, demonstrates that there is no justice in the capitalist courts of America. While supporting all possible legal proceedings on behalf of the class-war prisoners, we place no faith whatever in the "justice" of the courts and rely solely on the power of mass protest centered on the integrated labor movement.

After Peltier's third appeal for a new trial was denied in 1993, thousands of prominent liberals, celebrities and others—ranging from Willie Nelson to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mother Teresa—called for a presidential pardon. In a recent column titled "Free Leonard Peltier!" (5 February), Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote: "Many Peltier supporters put their trust in a politician named Bill Clinton, who told them that when he got elected he 'wouldn't forget' about the popular Native American leader. Their trust (like that of so many others) was betrayed once Clinton gained his office, and the FBI protested. In the waning days of his presidency, he issued pardons to folks like Marc Rich, and other wealthy campaign contributors. Leonard Peltier was left in his chains!"

Peltier is one of 16 class-war prisoners to whom the Partisan Defense Committee sends monthly stipends. For more information on his case, or to contribute to Peltier's legal defense, write to: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, 2626 North Mesa #132, El Paso, TX 79902. Free Leonard Peltier and all class-war prisoners! 

*****From Veterans For Peace In Massachusetts-Stop The Damn Endless Wars-Revelations

*****From Veterans For Peace In Massachusetts-Stop The Damn Endless Wars-Revelations

What VFP Stands For - 

 

 

 

 

 

Revelations-From The Sam Eaton-Ralph Morris Series

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

Ralph Morris had always considered himself a straight-up guy. Straight up when he dealt with customers in his high-precision electrical shop in Troy, New York inherited from his father after he retired before he himself recently retired and turned it over to his youngest son, James, who would bring the operation into the 21^st century with the high tech equipment precision electrical work needs nowadays. Straight up when he confronted the trials and tribulations of parenthood and told the kids that due to his political obligations (of which more in a minute) he would be away and perhaps seem somewhat pre-occupied at times he would answer any questions they had about anything as best he could (and the kids in turn when characterizing their father to me, told me that he was hard-working, distant but had been straight up with them although those sentiments said in a wistful, wondering, wishing more manner like there was something missing in the whole exchange and Ralph agreed when I mentioned that feeling to him that I was probably right but that he did the best he could). Straight up after sowing his wild oats along with Sam Eaton, Pete Markin, Frankie Riley and a bunch of other guys from the working class corners who dived into that 1960s counter-cultural moment and hit the roads, for a short time after the stress of eighteen months in the bush in Vietnam. Meaning sleeping with any young woman who would have him in those care-free days when we were all experimenting with new ways to deal with that fretting sexual issue and getting only slightly less confused that when we got all that god-awful and usually wrong information in the streets where most of us, for good or evil learned to separate our Ps and Qs. After which he promised his high school sweetheart, Lara Peters, who had waited for him to settle down to be her forever man. And straight up with what concerns us here his attitude toward his military service in the Army during the height of the Vietnam War where he did his time, did not cause waves while in the service but raised, and is still raising seven kinds of holy hell, once he became totally disillusioned with the war, with the military brass and with the American government (no “our government” his way of saying it not mine) who did nothing but make thoughtless animals out of him and his buddies.             

Giving this “straight up” character business is important here because Ralph several years ago along with Sam Eaton, a non-Vietnam veteran having been exempted from military duty due to being the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after his ne’er-do-well father died of a massive heart attack in 1965, joined a peace organization, Veterans For Peace (VFP), in order to work with others doing the same kind of work (Ralph as a  full member, Sam an associate member in the way membership works in that organization although both have full right to participate and discuss the aims and projects going forward) once they decided to push hard against the endless wars of the American government (both Ralph and Sam’s way of putting the matter). Without going into great detail Sam and Ralph had met down in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 when they with their respective groups (Sam with a radical collective from Cambridge and Ralph with Vietnam Veterans Against the War) attempted to as the slogan went-“shut down the government if it did not shut down the war.” Unfortunately they failed but the several days they spent together in detention in RFK Stadium then being used as the main detention area cemented a life-time friendship, and a life-time commitment to work for peace. (Sam’s impetus the loss of his best corner boy high school friend, Jeff Mullins, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1968 who begged him to tell everybody what was really going on with war if he did not make it back to tell them himself.)        

That brings us to the Ralph straight up part. He and Sam had worked closely with or been member of for several years in the 1970s VVAW and other organizations to promote peace. But as the decade ended and the energy of the 1960s faded and ebbed they like many others went on with their lives, build up their businesses, had their families to consider and generally prospered. Oh sure, when warm bodies were needed for this or that good old cause they were there but until the fall of 2002 their actions were helter-skelter and of an ad hoc nature. Patch work they called it. Of course the hell-broth of the senseless, futile and about six other negative descriptions of that 2003 Iraq war disaster, disaster not so much for the American government (Sam and Ralph’s now familiar term) as for the Iraqi people and others under the cross-fires of the American military juggernaut (my term). So they, having fewer family and work responsibilities were getting the old time anti-war “religion” fires stoked in their brains once again to give one more big push against the machine before they passed on. They started working with VFP in various marches, vigils, civil disobedience actions and whatever other projects the organization was about (more recently the case of getting a presidential pardon and freedom for the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle –blower soldier Chelsea Manning sentenced to a thirty-five year sentence at Fort Leavenworth for telling the truth about American atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan). Did that for a couple of years before they joined. And here is really where that straight up business comes into play. See they both had been around peace organizations enough to know that membership means certain obligation beyond paying dues and reading whatever materials an organization puts out-they did not want to be, had never been mere “paper members” So after that couple of years of working with VFP in about 2008 they joined up, joined up and have been active members ever since.        

Now that would be neither here nor there but Ralph had recently been thinking about stepping up his commitment even further by running for the Executive Committee of his local Mohawk Valley  chapter, the Kenny Johnson Chapter. (Sam as an associate member of his local chapter, the James Jencks Brigade is precluded as a non-veterans from holding such offices the only distinction between the two types of membership.) He ran and won a seat on the committee. But straight up again since he was committed to helping lead the organization locally and perhaps take another step up at some point he decided this year to go to the National Convention in San Diego (the geographic location of that site a definitive draw) and learn more about the overall workings of the organization and those most dedicated to its success.

So Ralph went and immersed himself in the details of what is going on with the organization. More importantly he got to hear the details of how guys (and it is mostly guys reflecting the origins of the organization in 1985 a time when women were not encouraged to go into the service), mostly guys from his Vietnam War generation as the older World War II and Korea vets pass on and the Iraq and Afghan war vets are still finding their “voice” came to join the organization. What amazed him was how many of the stories centered on various objections that his fellow members had developed while in whatever branch of the military they were in. See Ralph had kept his “nose clean” despite his growing disenchantment with the war while serving his eighteen months in country. He had been by no means a gung-ho soldier although he had imbibed all the social and political attitudes of his working class background that he had been exposed to concerning doing service, fighting evil commies and crushing anything that got in the way of the American government. He certainly was not a model soldier either but he went along, got along by getting along. These other guys didn’t.

One story stood out not because it was all that unusual in the organization but because Ralph had never run up against anything like it during his time of service from 1967-1970. Not in basic training AIT, not in Vietnam although he had heard stuff about disaffected soldiers toward the end of his enlistment. This guy, Frank Jefferson, he had met at one of the workshops on military resisters had told Ralph when he asked that he had served a year in an Army stockade for refusing to wear the uniform, refusing to do Army work of any kind. At least voluntarily. The rough details of Frank’s story went like this. He had been drafted in late 1968 and was inducted into the Army in early 1969 having had no particular reason not to go in since while he was vaguely anti-war like most college students he was not a conscientious objector (and still doesn’t since he believes wars of national liberation and the like are just and supportable, especially those who are facing down the barrel of American imperialism, was not interested in going to jail like some guys, some draft resisters, from his generation who refused to be inducted an did not even think about the option of Canada or some such exile. Moreover the ethos of his town, his family, his whole social circle was not one that would have welcomed resistance, would not have been understood as a sincere if different way of looking at the world. Add to that two guys had been killed in Vietnam from his neighborhood and the social pressure to conform was too great to buck even if he had had stronger convictions then. 

Three days, maybe less after Frank was deposited at Fort Jackson in South Carolina in January, 1969 for basic training he knew he had made a great mistake, had had stronger anti-war feelings, maybe better anti-military feelings than he suspected and was heading for a fall. This was a period when draftees, those fewer and fewer men who were allowing themselves to be drafted, were being channeled toward the infantry, the “grunts,” the cannon-fodder (words he learned later but not known as he came in) and that was his fate. He was trained as an 11 Bravo, killer soldier. Eventually he got orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transport to Vietnam. On a short leave before he was requested to report Frank went back to Cambridge where he grew up and checked in with the Quakers which somebody had told him to do if he was going to challenge his fate in any way. The counsellor there advised him to put in a CO application at Fort Devens nearby. He did so, was turned down because as a Catholic objector he did not qualify under the doctrine of that church. (And he still held to his “just war” position mentioned above). He tried to appeal that decision through military then civilian channels with help from a lawyer provided by the Quakers (really their American Friends Service Committee) although that was dicey at best. Then, despite some counsel against such actions Frank had an epiphany, a day of reckoning, a day when he decided that enough was enough and showed up at parade field for the Monday morning report in civilian clothes carrying a “Bring The Troops Home” sign. Pandemonium ensued, he was man-handled by two beefy lifer-sergeants and was thrown in the stockade. Eventually he was tried and sentenced to six month under a special court-martial for disobeying orders which he served. He got out after during that stretch and continued to refuse to wear the uniform or do work. So back to the stockade and re-trial getting another six months, again for disobeying lawful orders. Fortunately that civilian lawyer had brought the CO denial case to the Federal Court in Boston on a writ of habeas corpus and the judge ruled that the Army had acted wrongly in denying the application. A few weeks later he was released. Frank said otherwise he still might forty plus years later be doing yet another six month sentence. So that was his story and there were probably others like that during that turbulent time when the Army was near mutiny.

Ralph said to himself after hearing the Jefferson story, yeah, these are the brethren I can work with, guys like Jefferson really won’t fold under pressure. Yeah, that’s right.