*****Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

*****Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups' Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities, those that he thought would bring some small honor to his name, that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that “fifteen minutes of fame,” if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. That “fifteen minutes of fame” business which he thought had been uttered by the Pop-artist Andy Warhol in one of his prankster moments, one of his New York high society put-downs, was fine by him even if it had been the result of some small honor thing.

The subject of that small honor done in the spurt of his youth that had defined a lot of what came later is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from North Adamsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. (His world view did not encompass the entire world or what was the same thing the young nations part of that view but later after making plenty of international connections from here and there he could have said he was waiting for that breeze to bust out over the world.)

It was not like Edward was some kind of soothsayer, like some big think tank thinker paid well to keep tabs on social trends for those in charge so they didn’t get waylaid like they did with the “rebel without a cause” and “beat” phenomena or anything like that back then, like could read tea leaves or tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair when she had come to that location with her daughter, Gypsy Anne, one hot August week when he was about twelve. Madame that day read that he was made for big events. The big event that he was interested in just then was winning a doll, a stuffed animal or something like that for dark-haired, dark-eyed just starting to fill out  Gypsy Anne at the Skee game which he was an expert at. (For those clueless about Skee, have forgotten or have never spent their illicit around carnivals, small time circuses, or penny-ante amusement parks, the game is simplicity itself once you get the hang of it and play about 10,000 hours’ worth of games you roll small balls, which come down a chute one you pay your dough, or credit/debit card the way they have the machines worked now a days, and you roll them like in bowling up to a target area like in archery and try to get a ton of points which gives you strips of coupons to win a prize depending on high your score is, and what you want. Like I say, simple.) And Edward did win her a stuffed animal, a big one, and got a very big long wet kiss for his heroics (and “copped a little feel” from that starting to fill out shape of hers and he finally solved, no, he solved for that one minute that budding girls turned to women were as interested in sex, or at least being “felt up” as the other guys around Harry’s Variety Store had told him  they were if approached the right way) down by the beach when she gave her best twelve year old “come hither” look, not the last time he would be snagged by that look by her or any other women later. No way though that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression, left him with that vague feeling about the big breeze coming, not then when the hormones drove his big thoughts, and not for a long while.

That big breeze blowing through the land thing had not been Edward’s idea anyway, not his originally although he swore by it once he thought about the possibilities of breaking out of Podunk North Adamsville, but came from “the Scribe,” the late Peter Paul Markin, a corner boy at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys on Thornton Street where he occasionally hung out in high school since he had been childhood friends with the leader of that crowd, Frankie Riley, who read books and newspapers a lot and would go on and on about the thing on lonesome Friday nights when all the guys were waiting, well, just waiting for something to happen in woebegone North Adamsville where the town mainly went to sleep by ten, or eleven on Friday and Saturday night when Jack Slack’s closed late (for the younger set, Doc’s Drugstore, the place where he and Frankie hung in their younger days as well, the place where they all first heard rock and roll played loud on Doc’s jukebox by the soda fountain, every night was nine o’clock at night just when things were getting interesting as the shadows had time to spank vivid boy imaginations and you wonder, well, maybe not you, but parents wondered why their kids were ready to take the first hitchhike or hitch a freight train ride out of that “one-horse town” (an expression courtesy of the grandmothers of the town, at least the ones he knew, mostly Irish grandmothers with corn beef and cabbage boiling on their cast-iron stoves and smirks on their faces, if grandmothers could have smirks over anything, about how dear the price of everything was if you could get it a very big problem, including Edward’s Anna Riley, where he first heard the words).

Here is where that big breeze twelve million word description thing Markin was talking about intersected with that unspoken trend for Edward (unknown and unspoken since the corner at Jack Slacks’ did not have a resident professional academic sociologist in residence to guide them since those “hired guns” were still hung up on solving the juvenile delinquency problem and so as usual well behind the curve  and Markin, the Scribe as smart as he was, was picking his stuff up strictly from newspapers and magazines who were always way also behind the trends until the next big thing hit them in the face). Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear based on his recommendations.

Even Markin deferred to him on this one, on his musical sense, the beat or the “kicks” as he called then although he, Markin, would horn in, or try to, on the glory by giving every imaginable arcane fact about some record’s history, roots, whatever which would put everybody to sleep, they just wanted to heard the “beat” for crying out loud. Edward did have to chuckle though when he thought about the way, the main way, that Markin worked the jukebox scene since he was strictly from poverty, from the projects, poorer even than Edward’s people and that was going some if you saw the ramshackle shack of a house that he and his four older brothers grew up in. The Scribe used to con some lonely-heart girl who maybe had just broken up with her boyfriend, maybe had been dateless for a while, or was just silly enough to listen to him into playing what he wanted to hear based on what Edward had told him. But he was smooth in his way since he would draw a bee-line to the girl who just put her quarter in for her three selection on Jack Slack’s jukebox (Doc’s, sweet and kindly saint Doc whose place was a bee-hive after school for that very reason , had five for a quarter if you can believe that). He would become her “advisor,” and as the number one guy who knew every piece of teenage grapevine news in the town and whom everybody therefore deferred on that intelligence so he would let her “pick” the first selection, usually some sentimental lost love thing she could get weepy over, the second selection would be maybe some “oldie but goodie,” Breathless or At The Hop, which everybody still wanted to hear, and then on number three, the girl all out of ideas Markin would tout whatever song had caught his ear. Jesus, Markin was a piece of work. Too bad he had to end the way he did down in Mexico now lying in some unmarked grave in some town’s potter’s field back in the mid-1970s which guys from the old town were still moaning over.

That was Markin on the fringes but see Edward’s senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music (what high priest Markin called something like the “musical counter-revolution” but he was always putting stuff in political bull form like that) that had passed for rock.  Which, go figure, the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes, guys with flipped hair and dimples like Fabian and Bobby Rydell but was strictly nowhere with Edward. The breeze Edward felt was going to bury that stuff under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis, and where Elvis got his stuff from like Lonnie Johnson and the R&B and black electric blues guys, the rockabilly hungry white boys, and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to big ass speakers that were just coming along to bring in the new dispensation.

More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air Edward was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called “the folk minute of the early 1960s,” and not just by Markin when he wrote stuff about that time later before his sorry end. Everybody would eventually hone in on Dylan and Baez, dubbed the “king and queen” of the moment by the mass media always in a frenzy to anoint and label things that they had belatedly found about out about and run into the ground.  But when folk tunes started showing up on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner over on Latham Street where the college guys hung and where families went to a cheap filling dinner to give Ma a break from the supper meal preparations it was guys like the Kingston Trio, the Lettermen, and the Lamplighters who got the play after school and some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over the stuff when Edward made recommendations.

He had caught the folk moment almost by accident late one Sunday night when he picked up a station from New York City and heard Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie songs being played, stuff that Mr. Dasher his seventh grade music teacher had played in class to broaden youthful minds, meaning trying to break the Elvis-driven rock and roll habit. So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother, that Anna Riley with her boiling kettles and smirks mentioned before,   who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations (and Markin’s harping with the political and so-called historical slant triggered by his own grandmother’s devotion to the Catholic Worker movement added in). But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.

That fascination with music had occupied Edward’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records and later folk albums, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.

One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat driven by some wild guitar by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Edward became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound.

Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and Brenda that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.

So Edward was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught later in high school up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in North Adamsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Edward would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.”  So Edward had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they had severely disapproved of the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Edward played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother).

Then came 1964 and  Edward was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.

That is where Edward had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Edward knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid.  Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:                   

“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his job working on repairing that ship up in Maine, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like Carver, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Ann Arbor, Manhattan, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy, had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by.)

Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.

And not just about hair styles either. But about midnight trips on the clanking subway to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat”  except on silly television shows and by “wise” social commenters who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s news).

Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Edward be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker just then). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word either and so everybody learned about sex is some strange osmotic out in the streets, in the school lavs, and from older almost as clueless older brothers and sisters just like now.)     

Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Markin, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jack’s Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were and at Jack Slack’s alleys not Jimmy Jack’s that was for the jukebox and for checking out the girls who were putting dough in that jukebox] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worse though, worse than worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."

And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:      

“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little longer than mid-calf was the flash point) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "And that Eddie [“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie], and his new found friends like Peter Markin taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since he has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester.  And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."

Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Markin were sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between them, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt whose Joshua Gone Barbados and a couple of other songs would become folk staples and classics). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when they head south this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Markin. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)

They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and have purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south down to Mississippi goddam and Alabama goddam on a chartered bus. But get this Peter turned to Edward and said, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Edward made a very severe off-putting “no way” face. Yes, we are still in the time just before the sea change after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck though, young travelers, good luck.

 

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Early IWW Organizer Vincent St. John

Click on the title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archive's copy of his appreciation of early IWW leader, Vincent St. John, from his 1955 "The IWW".

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

*****

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Memories Of Rick-With Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” In Mind

Memories Of Rick-With Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman’s “Casablanca” In Mind

By Seth Garth

[Before he passed away in the late 1980s the long time French police officer, Commandant Louis Renault (everybody, everybody but the bad guys who crossed his path and there were plenty and not all of them Germans, called him “Louie” for his mild-mannered easy style when he was not in hot pursuit of some nefarious types)who had worked both in colonial Algeria and French Morocco before heading back home to work with the National Police in his hometown of Lyon, liked to sit in the Café Algiers there and reminisce about all his adventures as a cop. When asked about the most memorable person, friend or foe, he had been up against in his times he would without much hesitation blurt out the name of Rick Blaine.

Rick of Rick’s Café in Casablanca when Louie had worked in French Morocco early in World War II after the fall of the French Republic and the rise of the Vichy government which controlled that colony then. He as a police officer noted the changing of the guard and went about his business as usual-regimes come and go he had always said but the cops are forever. After investigation of Rick’s past, most of the early part as a tough guy out of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City a place where Rick would make people laugh when he said even the mighty Germans would think twice about occupying and had included some troubling adventurous activity for the “wrong” side in Ethiopia and Spain during the 1930s, he, after having had his palm “greased” issued the liquor and nightclub license for Rick to keep his Cafe Americian open under his prefecture.

For most of the time he knew Rick in Casablanca they had had a good working relationship. Rick would let him “win” at the roulette wheel as his pay-off for letting illegal gambling go on in full sight, “comp” him for drinks and dope, mostly hashish, and let him have his women “rejects” on the rebound. Then she came in, came in as Rick said one drunken night when she had her claws in him bad again “of all the gin joints in all the world she had to show up at his door.” From then on things got interesting, very interesting. The following is a translation by Jean Marais of what Louie had to say when he was asked by a National Police archivist for details of his relationship with one Rick Blaine (1920-1982)-SG]             

“That Rick Blaine was a piece of work, one of the last of the pre-war, pre-World War II if anybody is asking which war we are talking about, romantics tilting his lance at the windmills in the name of love-or the thrill of adventure, maybe even the thrill of tweaking somebody’s nose just for the hell of it, Louie Renault was reminiscing out loud to those who were attending his retirement party. Retirement from the National Police, [the French coppers although they are not national cops like the FBI in America but just like city and town cops there run through the central government], the guys who keep order in places like Paris and Lyon (since it was a governmental pension he was about to receive after much haggling his service during Vichy times first in Algiers and then in French-controlled Morocco, in Casablanca, was included as well as his Lyon assignments). He had been asked a question by one of the younger policer officers about what was his most memorable episode in a long and illustrious career. Of course Louie had to go back to those early war days when he ran the operation for Vichy in godforsaken Casablanca to find some events, some characters who could qualify for what that young officer was asking about. Had to go back to Rick Blaine without question.             

“Yes, Rick was the real thing, I wasn’t kidding when I mentioned his name,” Louie blurted out when the officer did not comprehend why a guy whom he had on other occasions called nothing but a saloon keeper, a guy out for himself whatever checkered past he might have had rated so high. “Let me fill you and see if I am not right about this whole matter.” He would say out of earshot that even De Gaulle would gladly take a back seat after hearing this story since he was safely in London being a pain in the ass to the British and American while “little guys” like Rick and a guy who looked pretty big even by De Gaulle standards Victor Lazlo were mercilessly tweaking the German’s tail.        

“Once the Germans marched into Paris they controlled the whole political situation but since they couldn’t handle a total occupation of France and wreak havoc on the rest of Europe at the same time they left part of the country to the French military, to General Petain who worked out of Vichy, the place where the specialized water comes from. Yeah, collaborators, liked they used to try to hang on me before Rick came to Casablanca, Lazlo too, and got everybody well. I had been in Algiers during that time but once the new political reality hit I was assigned to run the police operations in bloody Casablanca-a backwater where every odd-ball thing could and did happen as well as plenty of illegal stuff from dope to women to smuggling. Just my cup of tea. I figured that I could make more graft there in the Casbah than staying in Algiers once the British and Americans got serious about dislodging the Germans from Northern Africa.   

“No sooner had I landed in Casablanca then I spied Rick’s place, Rick’s Café Americian he called it, a place where there was plenty of booze, women, gambling, dope and whatever else you wanted. Or wanted done-life was cheap there-dirt cheap. The bloody Arabs could barely keep themselves busy except when some silly “blood honor” thing came up and we had to pick up the mess after the killings. Some he said, the other guy said stuff and then bang-bang. Had to arrest about fifteen people, family members from both sides and show them a little baton to the head just to let them know we meant business. Nobody ever faulted me on that score. I walked in and introduced myself to Rick without saying anything further. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye he said later after all the smoke had cleared and we could be honest with each other, sized me up and down and knowing that I would do “business” after that appraisal said would the previous arrangement with the Prefect I was replacing be okay- a cut of the profits, a slice of the gambling [paid out by his “winning at roulette” with lucky red 22], my pick of women, free liquor and dope, and deep discounts on anything else I needed. Also told me of his dealings, his working relationships for dope, booze and Moslem women which it seemed some of the Europeans were crazy for although I was strictly for the low-rent French tarts who found Casablanca easy on their virtue, with Sydney Greenstreet, an émigré merchant of sorts from England over in the Casbah. I immediately issued the necessary licenses that each new Prefect was entitled to issue as was my prerogative. Done.

“This Rick was a hard guy to figure though the more I ran into him on the street or more regularly in his place either to grab some young woman, to grab my cut, to “win” at roulette, or just to have some high shelf bonded whiskey that I became very fond of. Somebody said, I think it was Frenchie the main bartender, that Rick had had some kind of an adventurous past, had run some guns to Ethiopia when they were trying to hold off the Italians when Mussolini was flexing his muscles and later fought with the International Brigades, with the Communists in Spain when Franco was working up to flexing his muscles. I had already known that past from the files the previous Prefect had left and from a couple of snitches I had run through Rick’s place but the “grease” from Rick’s deal said otherwise in my eyes.   When I first met him he was all business like I said, if you said green he said okay what shade, that kind of thing.

“Somebody said, maybe it was Frenchie again since I sat at the bar of the joint many a night to “enforce” the no gambling regulation and to drink a few high shelf scotches, that Rick had been unlucky in love and that was why when he, Rick,  had his choice of any girl he wanted, two if he was feeling frisky, would take them up to his office and apartment upstairs from the club, do whatever it was that they did, some wild stuff I heard from a couple of them that I caught on the “rebound” especially from one who took him “around the world” which she would later do with me and the next night would not know them. Tell them to sell their wares in the Casbah, a low thing to say to a European woman if you knew anything at all about what went on in the Casbah. I never went there personally but would sent for this Greenstreet to deliver me my graft and whatever dope I was looking for at the time. Like I said mainly hashish from the pipe. In the end it would be that lost love that had been bothering Rick once she came to town but early on you couldn’t tell what was eating at him. Just knew that he had a chip on his shoulder which would not fall off.

“Jesus, in those days there were all kinds of people as you can imagine trying to get out of Europe for one reason or another and once France and the countries around it fell to the Germans that was doubled up. Homeless, stateless Jews, who we all knew were being savaged by the Germans and by Vichy too, International Brigaders who couldn’t go back to their occupied homelands, local Communists who didn’t get or who couldn’t get underground, anybody out of the ordinary, we even had a couple of kids, rich kids who had left Hamburg once Hitler said that jazz was a Negro-Jew conspiracy and banned the music. If you looked at a map of Europe in say 1941 you would notice that there was not much wiggle room to work with in order to get out of some occupied spot. The road out though however they got there led to Casablanca no matter what the individual reason for leaving Europe was. The link. The air flights to Lisbon and from there anyplace but the old canard Europe.

“So you know that there was plenty of money to be made by those daring enough to act as smugglers to get these desperate people out one way or another. I could have made plenty if I had decided to use my position to get real greedy but I didn’t want to deal with a bunch of desperate people bothering me about why they weren’t getting out fast enough. Rick and the Casbah made me plenty-for a while. All the action either went through that guy Sidney Greenstreet who ran his operation out of the Casbah where he mainly handled small fry, people of no account but with money, or at Rick’s for the higher class clientele. Mostly the wealthier Jews and previously high placed officials of democratic governments who the Germans were desperate to find and make an example out off for their compatriots under occupation. Some seriously shady characters, art forgers, crazed jazz aficionados, con artists, three card monte hustlers, independent dope dealers-mainly heroin out of the Afghan fields working their way West to the cities, jack-rollers, rapists and assorted slugs, characters who even we had to keep an eye on to keep any kind of order plopped themselves there.          

“Things though were going fine until some horse’s asses, as it turned out guys we had on our radar but couldn’t quite nab, decided they would murder a couple of German couriers and grab a couple of letters of transit they were travelling with. Now these letters of transit were like gold-would make their possessor a pot of gold. Maybe two pots if they worked it right. These were no questions asked documents which only had to have names filled in order to catch a flight to Lisbon and from there wherever else they wanted to go. This weasel, well known to us from a couple of rip-off jobs he did on unsuspecting travelers, a guy named Peter Lorre was part of the gang who took the couriers down. One night he showed up at Rick’s the natural place to start looking for high-end buyers and we nailed him-took him in “custody” but he didn’t have the letters of transit on him. He hanged himself in his cell before we could get much more out of him. Rick had been as cool as a cucumber when this weasel, this sweaty little nobody showed his ugly face there. This Lorre begged Rick to hide him. Rick just blew him off, told him to get lost. A couple of customers made noises when we grabbed and manhandled Lorre saying they wouldn’t patronize Rick’s again because of his attitude in the matter. Rick told them something that impressed me at the time-he wasn’t sticking his neck out for anybody. Those customers by the way were back the next night when I let Rick reopen the place and he sent them over a couple of drinks. They were his best buddies then.   

“That courier murder business though would lay us all low. See the Germans had sent over this hard-ass major, Major Veidt (sic) I think his name was if I remember the name correctly, to look into the matter. I was trying to impress him so he would put in a good word for me with Vichy. That was the whole idea behind making a big deal out of the Lorre arrest (and I was happy when he hung himself because he would have not stood up well under German methods and he might have spilled who knows what about what was going on in Casablanca at the time). That made Rick’s gesture at the time this guy Lorre begged him to save him from my men even more important. Rick just looked the other way and Lorre was a goner. We never did get the other guys in with Lorre when we rounded up, our what did we call them, oh yes,  “usual suspects”, Communists and con men and a few whores who we regularly rounded up to fill the jails full and make it look like we were doing our jobs. Some wound up out in a desert graveyard once we were done with them.                                                                                                                                                     

 

“Like I said in those days all kinds of people were coming through town. One of them a guy I mentioned before and said I would speak of again named Victor Lazlo had escaped from a German concentration camp and somehow he had worked his way through whatever network he had in Europe to Casablanca. This Lazlo was well-known as a leader of the resistance to the German occupations of half of Europe so a guy whom the Germans, especially this Major Veidt, were foaming at the mouth to get their hands on. But as long as he didn’t do anything illegal I had no reason to arrest him. I had half-figured when I heard he was in town to see who the highest bidder, strictly cash, was for his hide and take my cut that way.

“I really shouldn’t short-change this guy Lazlo, a lot of people even blasé don’t give a fuck Casablanca denizens full of booze, dopes and bad luck were ready to follow him, ready to help him give the Germans and Vichy a black eye. To me though he was just another guy who if he got what he wanted would still depend on guys like me to keep the mud of the earth off their shoes. Still he had a way about him even though he looked like some goddam professor from the Sorbonne who were a dime a dozen when it came to action on their ideas You had to respect a little anyway a man who could avoid the bloody talon clutches of the Gestapo when those guys were riding high, had agents, spies and snitches in every organization including the resistance. I know since I had a couple of my stoolies working for me on the local resistance which as I will tell you in a minute helped me, me go along Louie, the nice cop, grab him right from under the Germans’ noses.

“Let me give you an example about this Lazlo that I remember because I was in Rick’s the night it happened. This Major Veidt was having a party, a drunken officers and their damn collaborator bitches’ party, singing old German and Nazi songs at the top of their lungs. Lazlo came in, saw the play and fuming after a few cognacs decided very un-professor- like to tweak the Germans’ noses. He started up with some patriotic French and Czech songs, that was the place where he was from so he definitely had grievances against the Nazis, and the crowd went with him. Yeah, this was guy people would follow, people who ordinarily wouldn’t say boo. Such hungry men are dangerous. Lazlo was doomed from that night on and I have half-expected the Germans to take him out for the desert sights right then.      

“But here is where things got interesting. Interesting to me once I got bored with the play with Lazlo and the Germans. This Lazlo, besides what I said about his presence was a good-looking guy in the old-fashioned sense of the term with good manners, a proper bourgeois under normal circumstances but more noticeable once you knew he had escaped the German clutches, and a good tipper according to Frenchie, was not travelling alone. He had this beautiful woman with him, one of the most beautiful I have ever seen then or now, Ilsa something, I am not sure we ever knew her last name and it didn’t matter with a beauty like that. When she showed up our Rick went crazy, went crazy like a loon. See as we all found out later he had come to Casablanca just ahead of the German armies advancing on Paris with this black guy who was an entertainer, a singer and piano player named Sam and a sour look on his face. He had “known” Ilsa in Paris, had been her fancy man from what I could tell. No way that they had separate rooms in quaint old pre-war Paris. They were supposed to blow town together and meet at the train station one evening on the last train out of Paris before the Germans stopped the trains. She was a “no show.” She was in living color the reason that Rick had been so indifferent to everything. Why he turned over perfectly good women to me without batting an eyelash.            

“Of course the minute she showed up the old flames were re-kindled-for both of them. She had spied Sam at the piano through the heavily smoke-filled room, had forced him to play “their” song, If I Didn’t Care I think and when Rick heard that he went ballistic, was ready to come to blows with Sam since Sam had been ordered never to play the song. Then he spotted her across the piano and he melted down like an ice cube. It seems that in Paris she had assumed her husband, this Lazlo was dead, had been killed by the Germans. False report. That last day in Paris she found out through some underground source that Lazlo was still alive and she had gone to him. Leaving Rick standing in the rain at the fucking train station. Naturally all of this stuff I learned later but that “left standing in the rain” is what drove Rick to get up on his high horse and create nothing but trouble for me and my men once she came into view.  

“You know this Ilsa was no question a beauty, soft-spoken, had a scent of desert bloom or jasmine who knows something exotic coming off of her every time I came within three feet of her. Not my kind of woman not that I would have thrown her out of bed but she seemed a bit too ethereal for my tastes. Didn’t seem the slightest bit political (and Rick said she wasn’t which is why he was attracted to her in Paris the first place having just come over the Pyrenees from that losing fight in Spain and maybe why Lazlo kept her by his side too). Didn’t seem anything but beautiful and with good manners as well but figure two tough guys were attracted to her for keeps and she had sometimes that jangled their nerves if you get my drift. I figured her like this though some women, and by no means all of them, are meant for love. Are built up in such a way that guys have to get next to them or die trying. Outside of that very important trait they if seen walking by would fade from view after a few sighs. That was Ilsa, smart, yes, steady, yes, loyal, depends, but made for love, made to stand beside and steady a man of the world. Allow him to do those things he had to do to make himself complete. Christ, enough of that I am talking like some old washer woman. Back to the Rick end of things.               

“That long gone Lorre had given Rick the letters of transit to keep for him the night Rick looked the other way when we grabbed the weasel and made him squeal or whatever weasels do when they are caught. When with Rick’s help he fell down, wound up at the end of his checkered tie, Rick figured that he would use the letters to get himself out of hellhole Casablanca. He said that even Hell’s Kitchen in New York where he had grown up (and had “advised” the Germans to think twice about trying to occupy if you recall) was less dangerous than Casablanca so you get an idea how bad things were-how cheap life was on in the desert. Worse than the bloody wogs the British were always moaning about in the Raj, in India. He wasn’t going alone though. She, Ilsa, was going with him. She had snuck up into his apartment one night when Lazlo was out doing his organizing of the local resistance. As a result of that outlawed meeting I had Lazlo picked up when he surfaced, you couldn’t have such meetings and I knew that German major would be happy to hear that I had the great Victor Lazlo locked up like a caged animal.

“Whatever Rick and Ilsa did and from what Frenchie said Oscar the head waiter told him they had definitely gone under the sheets from his disheveled look and the blush on her face when Rick told Oscar to escort her home they were blowing town together. When Oscar told me that story a few days later I wondered about what had happened. What had made sour Rick decide to blow a good thing in Casablanca (my good thing too don’t forget). No question Ilsa was a beauty, an exceptional beauty but after the way she had left him high and dry in Paris I figured maybe a quick roll in the hay and then off alone. But you never know about beautiful women, sometimes they can be just as kinky as any whore or any low-rent tart. She didn’t look that way but maybe with a few drinks and an agenda of her own-like getting Lazlo out- alone- she took him around the world like that ex-flame Lisette had.      

“Somehow and I never could get him to tell me exactly what happened he had had an epiphany after that night some kind of turnaround. All he would say back then was the way the world was just then the troubles of three people, him, Ilsa and Lazlo weren’t worth a hill of beans compared what was going on. But whatever the source from then on he was on fire, was maybe thinking back to that old fight in Spain, thought about some payback for lost comrades, maybe what would happen if the Germans won, maybe he just didn’t like that Major Veidt and his arrogant ways closing up his café when the high rollers were coming in for their weekend beatings.

“So he gave Ilsa one story about how they should meet at the airport and blow town. She was all over that idea and had dropped any mention of Lazlo. He told me another. Talked me into a deal that when I thought about it later I should have figured was bullshit from minute number one. Confessed to me that he had the letters. Was blowing town with Ilsa and that was that. He said -let’s do this though. Let Lazlo out, let him get to the airport with the letters and grab him as an accessory for the courier murders. A feather in my cap was all I could think of. Would get that fucking Major Veidt off my back about picking up Lazlo and showing him the desert sights. When the deal went down though Rick was faking the whole thing. Maybe not about wanting to flee with Ilsa but about his attitude toward Lazlo. He had convinced me of his plan but when the deal went down I was the fall guy, well, one of the fall guys. That German major took the big fall when he tried to stop the plane to Lisbon as Lazlo and Ilsa got on the plane. Rick took him down without a murmur in one clean shot making me wonder how the Loyalists lost in Spain with a guy like that working with them.

         

“Needless to say when I was caught in a bind I stepped away from danger by refusing to arrest Rick. I went into the usual dodge-round up the usual suspects, double it up this time since a goddam German major was under the ground. I resolved the bind I was in pretty simply. I figured my days in Morocco were finished and so I saw the writing on the wall. I walked away with Rick (an action that I was successfully able to use in order to have my service time there count toward my retirement which I had many hassles over before I won). We made our way to Brazzaville with the dough Rick grabbed from Greenstreet when Rick sold him his interest in the café. I stayed there grabbing my graft until the end of the war and had worked various grifts with Rick until he went back to Europe a few months later where he joined up with the French resistance, worked with Samuel Beckett the exiled Irish playwright who was deeply into the organization from what I heard later. I heard from him a few times over the years before he passed away a few years ago. I guess Casablanca was in his blood because after the war he ran the Café Casablanca in New York City for some thirty years before he gave it up to retire. But what a guy that Rick was, giving up that luscious piece for unsung glory underground in France. Making that big gesture for love. Yeah, the last of the pre-war romantics.

When The Music Died- With The Late Bobby Vee’s Take Good Care Of My Baby In Mind

When The Music Died- With The Late Bobby Vee’s Take Good Care Of My Baby In Mind

By Lance Lawrence

  

As I usually do at the end of every year I check out in the newspapers which provide such information to fill space at that time I looked to see what singers and songwriters had passed on during that year. You know people like Prince and Leonard Cohen in 2016. Looking at the list for 2016 I noticed that the name Bobby Vee came up, a singer from the late 1950s and early 1960s who was a member in good standing of what I have called elsewhere the “musical counter-revolution.”

Let me explain that last term. I am a proud member in good standing of the now classic age of rock and roll, a child of the 1950s beat that drove us over the top. The stuff that got us through, even those of us who were just a shade too young in those post-World War II baby-boomer days to full appreciate what was going on. The stuff from sexy, hungry Elvis, duck-walking Chuck Berry, who put the rock in rock and roll Bo Didderly, madman Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly and several others. The stuff that many parents, including mine, called the “devil’s music.” And calling it that made us love it even more.

Then all of a sudden, or it seemed that way, the music stopped, the beat “died, what with Elvis in the Army, Chuck away for “playing house” with Mister’s daughters, Jerry Lee over the top with his kissing cousin and Buddy down in some Iowa cornfield. But music, as many things, abhors a vacuum, a man-made vacuum in this case since the powers that be in the record industry fell down under that parent and governmental pressure and made rock just another vanilla genre.

That was where Bobby Vee (and others like Fabian, Bobby Darin and Slim Jones) got their big chance. Got to give us stuff like Devil or Angel which we could have given a damn about (whether the girl was a devil or angel as long as she paid attention to me and “put out” when the time came). Sure we listened to it-what else were we to do when that was what the rock stations we were glued to played during those doldrum times. Worse, worse of all from a personal point of view the girls, those fickle girls loved these guys, thought they were “cute” and got all dreamy over their gooey lyrics. What was a guy to do when one of those platters like Bobby’s Take Good Care Of My Baby was the democratic choice for the last chance, last dance come Saturday night.

I, as you can tell, am still bitter about that little coup even if I didn’t know what was behind it then. But funny thing a recent listen to on YouTube of Take Good Care Of My Baby sounded, well, sounded pretty good. Go figure. So long Bobby.      

         

Demand clemency for Leonard Peltier

 

Dear friends We invite you to sign this petition in support of Leonard Peltier, wrongly jailed for 40 years. Please circulate to your networks. Many thanks PAYDAY "It should be remembered that Standing Rock was the site of the 1974 conference of the International Indigenous Movement that spread throughout the Americas and beyond, the starting point for the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [UNDRIP]... I call on all my supporters and allies to join the struggle at Standing Rock in the spirit of peaceful spiritual resistance and to work together to protect Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth. I also call upon my supporters and all people who share this Earth to join together to insist that the US  complies with and honors the provisions of international law, as expressed in the UNDRIP, International Human Rights Treaties and the long-neglected Treaties and trust agreements with the Sioux Nation."  Leonard Peltier, from a solidarity statementwith the Standing Rock resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. For more info, contact the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee:http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/

Don�t let my father die in prison Take Action � � SHARE THIS ACTION My name is Kathy Peltier and I am the daughter of imprisoned Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier. In 1975, during a confrontation with members of the American Indian Movement, two FBI agents were shot dead. My father was convicted of their murders, but has always denied killing the agents. Judges and legal experts agree that his trial was unfair. He's been in prison over 40 years - my entire life. Now his health is failing. My worst fear is that my father will die in prison and I won't have any real time with him. Help bring my father home: Tell President Obama to grant Leonard Peltier clemency. Even behind bars, my father is an inspiration. His name is synonymous with the struggle for Native rights, and he recently issued a statement in solidarity with everyone standing together at the Camp of the Sacred Stones at Standing Rock: "It is an honor to have been alive to see this happen with you young people. You are nothing but awesome in my eyes."  Many people have called for him to be granted leniency and freedom, but he remains in prison. That's why Amnesty International USA has included his case in its Write for Rights letter-writing marathon. Join Write for Rights and add your name to this urgent petition: Free Leonard Peltier. The Federal Bureau of Prisons says it won't take care of my father until his condition - he has an abdominal aortic aneurysm - gets even worse. But I'm afraid it will be too late. It would mean everything to me if my father could spend a little of his life with me. Urge President Obama to grant clemency to my father, Leonard Peltier, so that he can live out the rest of his days with his family. On behalf of my father and my brother, and for all the people you help through your kindness and your activism, thank you. In solidarity, Kathy Peltier  2016 Amnesty International USA | 5 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10001 | 212.807

When Superman Cashed His Check- Ben Affleck’s “Hollywoodland” (2006)-A Film Review

When Superman Cashed His Check- Ben Affleck’s “Hollywoodland” (2006)-A Film Review  

DVD Review           

By Sam Lowell

Hollywoodland, starring Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins, 2006    

No question Hollywood knows how to make good noir films ever since they put classics like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Out Of The Past among others together back in the 1930s and 1940s. And that genre gets a modern workout here in the film under review, Hollywoodland, centered on the death of actor George Reeves who won a certain amount of fame as Superman in the hit television series in the 1950s (a series that I watched faithfully early on when I was a kid although I don’t think I took the news of his death all that personally unlike the boy in the film but that death had occurred later when I had stopped watching the series). The noir part is the intrigue that builds up over the possible ways he might have died although for the record everybody wanted the thing put down as suicide-just another guy who couldn’t hack the fact that his show had been cancelled and that he had been type-cast as a guy in tights and a muscle shirt with funny lettering, maybe gay but nobody publicly said anything about that until Rock Hudson’s AIDS time blown the lid off the whole thing. Yeah a has-been guy who had only the acting range for such kid-appropriate roles.      

Let’s see where the trail leads here. George Reeve, played by Ben Affleck, committed suicide in 1959 by shooting himself in his bedroom while his fiancé (as you know that status did not preclude a little gayness in those uptight times when guys would seek marriage for cover against the “light on your feet” charges) and others were down stairs. That hard fact is part of the historical record, the police record. But there were enough contrary statements and allegations to, well, fill a book which in fact happened and allowed a fictionalized film to try to fill in the blanks-or create a nice noir story about the prizes and pitfalls of Hollywood in the 1950s.     

Naturally, although a noir can survive without one, murder always spices one up. As does having a fictionalized shoulder to the wheel private detective look for leads on a dead-end trail after the “too busy” cops have thrown the case into the cold files. Enter one Louis Simo, P.I., nicely understatedly played by Adrien Brody, a been around the block once too many times down at the heels divorced father of a young son who was Superman series devotee (and a kid who took the death of the super hero pretty hard including almost burning the house down trying to get rid of his Superman costume since suicide was not a manly way to solve any problems among the young anyway). He takes the case when Reeves’ mother is unhappy with the Los Angeles Police Department’s work on what happened to her son.   

Brother Simo might have been a two bit, second-rate private detective but he was tenacious, was committed to seeing what was to be seen to the end which placed him in the company of guys like Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe. Ready to take a fist or too, a slug in his body if need be, to see if there was a way to grab some rough justice in the world. See if the rumors of a “hit” doing the deed to poor George for some unknown agent or if that lovely fiancée accidently pulled the trigger. The three theories mix and match in flashbacks throughout the film, although in the end that suicide seems the mostly like answer.   

But along the way there was enough confusion about motives, enough questions about who in Reeves’ life might want him out of the way to keep things moving. The prime “evidence” for the hit-man theory was the woman scorned always a good choice when murder, murder most foul is in the air. The woman scorned, an older woman scorned, Toni Mannix, played by Diane Lane, the paramour of Eddie Mannix, played by Bob Hoskins, had plenty of reason to have done the deed, or had it hired out. She had picked Reeves up one night at a party and they quickly became lovers (it was okay old Eddie had a mistress so “no foul” as they say). Including her setting up house with Reeves (she paid, or rather Eddie paid). They went along for a few years, years when Reeves became a big television hero among the younger set (me).     

After the Superman show was cancelled though our George was at wits end, needed a project (interesting he accused Toni of not lifting a finger to help his career even though she was well-connected through Eddie). He headed to New York where he met his fatal mistake-his- Lenore who wound up as his fiancée as they headed back to the cesspools of Hollywood. Needless to say Toni is beside herself and it is that fact that drives the hitman theory full force. And our man Simo is living proof since as he digs deeper into the cold, cold case he is warned off about seven different ways by various private dicks and security guys who work for guess who-Eddie Mannix who whatever else he might be does not want to see Toni bothered.

In the end we are left with nothing but pure speculation just where we started about what happened the night of Reeves’ death. But you know with the gritty feel of this one, the familiar menacing background music and period piece cars and costumes made me think that Hollywood still knows how to put a noir together when it wants to. Thanks Adrien, Ben, Diane and company.  

To Seek A Newer World-The Trials And Tribulations Of The Non-Violence Path To Social Change -Join The Resistance

To Seek A Newer World-The Trials And Tribulations Of The Non-Violence Path To Social Change -Join The Resistance   

Frank Jackman comment:

Recently I noted in a short comment about my checkered political past concerning my very often wavering adherence to the principles of non-violent action that Anna Riley my maternal grandmother was a great believer in the social message of the Catholic Worker movement, gave great credence to the essentially non-violent social change message that leaders like Dorothy Day had to say about pursuing the course. I failed to mention then that around the old neighborhood, the Acre section of North Adamsville, the geographic fate of the working poor section, mostly Irish from “famine ships” times to “just off the boat,” most definitely mostly Catholic, that sweet Anna Riley was considered a “saint.” That saint designation provoked primarily by her ability for over fifty years to put up with one curmudgeon, and I am being kind here, named Daniel Patrick Riley, her husband and my maternal grandfather. Virtually everybody in the neighborhood, the older folks and his many local relatives, including me, had except on his deathbed and when they laid him down to rest which in Irish tradition forgives even the most wicked, had nothing but curses when his name was spoken. He was that kind of man, unfortunately.    

But dear sweet grandmother Anna was also known around the neighborhood by all except the most hardened heathen Protestants, few as they were, who had nothing but scorn for the raggedly shanty Irish, as a saint for her gentle but persistent adherence to her well-defined Christian-etched social gospel. She was always among the leaders when someone was to be evicted from one of the crummy three-decker apartment buildings for which the section in imitation of the far larger ones in the Dorchester and South Boston sections was locally famous, or infamous. Moreover when the “boyos” were on strike against the shipbuilding companies which drove the economy of the town in those days (now long gone and almost forgotten once the shipbuilders headed off-shore to cheaper labor markets leaving the Acre even poorer and less stable) Anna was the first to knock on doors to get the women and non-shipbuilding men down to the picket lines in support of the brethren. She did a million small and unacknowledged kindnesses as well but also made sure that the local authorities (they were always called the authorities, governmental, court, police around the Acre) knew when children were going to bed hungry in the land of plenty, the 1950s land of plenty.       

What drove Anna like I said was her simple but strong sense of social gospel which was derived not from the main tenets of the Roman Catholic Church (that “Roman” not necessary in North Adamsville but as I am addressing a wider audience Roman to separate from other forms of Christianity) but from her allegiance to a small group of “renegades” the Brethren of the Common Life led by old Father Joyce who was constantly in hot water with the very conservative Cardinal who presided over the Archdiocese of Boston. That old goat threaten ex-communication and perdition to anybody who adhered to such basic principles as opposition to war, charity to the poor and bedraggled, and any communal what he called communistic sensibilities ( I never did get the whole list of their principles but these general categories give an idea of what the organization was about). Hence Anna’s kinship with the old-time Catholic Workers movement.           

Hence also her very great influence over my youthful political and social formation. She never pressed the Brethren issue on me, per se, since my mother and uncles were adamantly opposed to her views and maintained a strict orthodox Roman Catholic view of the world but just being around her gave me a sense of what she was about. And as I came of age in the red scare Cold War anti-communist keep your head down and let Ike handle everything late 1950s her bromides against the craziness of the known world egged me on. Egged me on too when I began to spent more and more time at her house which was only a few blocks from my family house as my mother got to be more and more (and more) overbearing. Those were the days too when Daniel had been placed  in what today would be called an “assisted living” home and back then a rest home after he suffered a stroke. So the place was tranquility itself, a place to read stuff like the Catholic Worker which she subscribed to and other books and pamphlets put out by the Brethren and other such organizations like the Quakers            

I mentioned in that previous comment about non-violent action that in my youth, my younger days, the idea of non-violent action was not an abstract question. I was especially (and so was Grandma) impressed by   the assertive and definitely not passive non-violent lines of the black civil right movement in the South that were unfolding before my eyes  seemingly every night on television and which held great sway over me. In those days sympathy for the black civil rights struggle down South was almost non-existent in the Acre. Any sympathy even in school debating the merits of the case against Mister James Crow and its equivalent in the North was met with snarls of “n----r-lover,” or worse. (Belying the old-time leftist notion that the poor and working people have much in common no matter what race or ethnic grouping which should override everything else. Unfortunately almost the direct opposition was/is true since down there at the margins of society down there where the working poor meet the thugs, gangsters and rip-off artists it is every person for him or herself-and theirs). So very early on I had had to take a very close look at some of the trends that had developed in the struggle for human emancipation. The central debate in my mind, and remember too I was a child of the Acre as well, was about passive non-violence argued by the likes of Tolstoy or a more muscular one that was beginning to form in action down South. I gravitated toward the more muscular variety (and so did Grandma).           

Naturally direct non-violent actions in the North other than solidarity actions with the struggle down South were few and far between in those days. Mainly sit-ins around equal access to places that were supposed to serve the general public-but didn’t. I have mentioned elsewhere that my very first public political street action demonstration had been a SANE-Quaker and other religious pacifistic organizations rally at historic Park Street Station on Boston Common around the struggle against nuclear weapons in the fall of 1960 (at a time when I was also campaigning like crazy to get one of our own, Jack Kennedy, elected President, even though he was rattling the “missile gap” saber-go figure).        

In retrospective those heady days when the black civil rights movement was carrying all before it were also the heydays of my belief in creative non-violent action. The time when whatever Doctor King and the other leadership said about bowing our heads before the aggressors held me in its thrall. Although, and here is my contradiction of the time if you will, I was enamored under the spell of my maternal grandfather, that old curmudgeon Daniel Riley, an ardent Irish nationalist of the struggle in Ireland that got its modern start around Easter, 1916. Despite his gruffness and meanness I would sit by and listen as he told tales learned from cousins who had been in the 1916 fight even if at other times I avoided him like the plague. So let’s put it down that I was probably more tactically committed to non-violent actions (and under current circumstances still am with what I see of the huge disparity of forces on our side and those leveled against us-and the passive quiescence of the working populations).

The great change, maybe of emphasis, maybe of getting older and wiser, and maybe, just maybe as a result of my truncated Army career which was a watershed of sorts since that service happened during the Vietnam War (where I didn’t go although I was 11 Bravo, an infantryman but that is a story also told elsewhere). The savagery of the American government against a small but real national liberation struggle (like the British for a long time against the Irish if you want an analogy until they got noses bloody in 1916) which could not be fought any other way except under the gun led me away from even that previous total tactical acceptance of the idea that non-violent action could slay the evil dragon. And that stance has not changed much in the last forty years or so, although I wish those who can “keep the faith,” the faith of my youth, well.