On The Occasion Of The Centennial Of John Fitzgerald
Kennedy’s Birthday-Frank Jackman’s Journey-Take Two
By Political Commentator Frank Jackman
[Recently in what I had assumed would be a one-time short
reminiscence on the centennial of John Fitzgerald Kennedys’ birth here in
Massachusetts about the effect that the election of the first Irish Catholic
President back in 1960 had on the bedraggled psyches of a bunch of Irish
Catholic working class (hell working poor and lower if the truth be known)
kids, corner boys, whom I hung around with and came of age with in that Camelot
time. Apparently in this age of instant social media feedback and quick
communications my simple plan has now turned into yet another screed.
The reason? These days there can only be one reason in my
universe. One Francis Xavier Riley, the acknowledged leader of the corner boys
of our times back in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the Acre section of
North Adamsville. Once again like in the old days Frankie has seen to it that
I, or anybody else who might venture some idea not cooked up by and authorized
by him, that proper homage be paid to the Scribe, to the late fallen comrade
Peter Paul Markin, who was our “intellectual” leader. Funny when Frankie was
running the show back then he treated the Scribe like a dog-except on those
occasions when he wanted the Scribe to write something up about him, to be his
“flak.” That was how Makin got his moniker in the first place after he had in order
to ingratiate himself with Frankie when he came from across town to live in the
Acre written some bullshit about how
Frankie was the “second coming,” something like for the school newspaper and
everybody bowed down to Frankie thereafter.
Now the bone that Frankie had to pick with me was that in
that rather simple remembrance about Jack Kennedy’s hold on us, one of our own
running the whole show, I didn’t emphasize enough how Markin, how the Scribe
got us off our collective girl hunger asses and out on the stump for Jack
around town. Didn’t speak enough of the Scribe’s “vision” that a new day was
coming, a “new breeze across the land” as Markin called it which drove a lot of
his thoughts then and for several years after before the ebb tide blew him away.
Funny again that if I recall correctly Frankie could not have given a rat’s ass
about all of that at the time. All he cared about was “doing the do” with
Minnie Murphy. But Frankie was not the acknowledged leader of the Acre corner
boys of our time for nothing because he was able to twist my tail about how
Markin had given us all a grand purpose and why soil his potter’s grave down in
dreaded Sonora, Mexico when a few kind words would be as welcome as the morning
breeze. So I had to re-write the whole freaking thing over. Jesus, Mary and
Joseph why did I ever start this small JFK tribute in the first place. Below is
the revised, final sketch. Scribe wherever you are I hope you are satisfied
with my few words. I am sure Frankie won’t be. Frank Jackman]
******
Sure now, today, as anybody who is familiar with the American Left History on-line site and The Progressive Journal print site that
I write for these days knows, or should be expected to know, I along with many
of my political kindred have long raked many of the policies and projects that
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States 1961-1963, initiated
over the coals. Most notable of those
nefarious exploits for those of us who were inspired, maybe inflamed is
a better word once we were actual witnesses on television as the rebels entered
Havana by the exploits of the revolutionaries (without being revolutionaries
ourselves but proper liberals and social democrats) in Cuba who overthrew the
Batista regime was the fumbled Bay of Pigs invasion in the spring of 1961 which
was our first point of serious differences with a generally positive attitude
toward Camelot.
More troublesome was the deep state escalation of American
involvement in Vietnam which led to the slippery slope that tore this society
asunder as we can as near to a cold civil war as we had in this country until
very recently. (Of course in the “revisionist” histories since JFK has come off
as something of a pacifist who would have hightailed it out of Vietnam the
minute things got out of hand and let the commies overrun the land. This from a
guy deeply enamored of counter-guerilla warfare, in love with Special Forces
and of manliness in person and politics). There were other generic differences
that came to the fore later when we were seeking, desperately seeking, for what
gangster saint brother Robert Kennedy called, “stealing” a page from Alfred
Lord Tennyson, “ a newer world.” Looking for more socialist-oriented solutions
to what ailed society.
All that however was later. Today I want to speak of the
promise that the election of JFK meant to a bunch of Irish Catholic corner boys
from the poverty-stricken Acre section of North Adamsville back in the fall of
1960 when we felt that first fresh breeze coming over the land from the icy
depths of the red scare Cold War night that we had come of political age in.
That “fresh breeze,” as I have noted many, many times elsewhere an expression
that fellow corner boy and our house “intellectual” the late Peter Paul Markin,
the Scribe, (the actual Markin, not the moderator of the ALH blog site who uses that moniker in honor of our fallen brother
long departed) would endlessly bore us with in those days when all we gave a
rat’s ass about (also an expression I have used many, many times concerning our
reaction to Markin’s “fresh breeze” statement) was girls, getting dough to deal
with girls and cars, “boss” cars not necessarily in that order. (To be fair to
Markin he was the king hell king of the midnight creep when we needed dough at
the times when his seamier side got ahead of the “better angel of his nature”).
None of us, me, Jack Callahan, the legendary football player
who for some reason liked hanging with the bad boys when he was not being
forlornly chased by defensive players or girls after Chrissie McNamara made her
feelings known to him, Frankie Riley, our esteemed corner boy leader and a
genius organizer, Phil Larkin, Jimmy Murphy, Ralph Kiley, Ricky Russo, Allan
Stein, the corner boys although the latter two were not full Irish, but only
half Irish got as carried away with Markin’s fresh breeze coming as he did. Back then when before he “taught”
us what it was like to on the cutting edge of the new day we could have,
ignorantly to be sure, could have given a rat’s ass about breezes or elections.
The routine, the bare necessity routine was girls, cars, and dough and how to
get all three or any combination thereof. Markin would continue to spout forth on
that subject for another half decade before it did come in the form of the many
threads that led up to the Summer of Love, San Francisco, 1967 which Alex James
and others have written about in this the 50th anniversary year of
that “youth nation” explosion. By then
though we had all been “converted” to the wisdom of Markin’s ideas after he
came back to fetch us in the late summer of 1967.
But long before that breeze
came to fruition Markin made us thrill beyond words to be able to say “one of
own,” an Irish Catholic had done what Al Smith could not do a few decades
before and get elected president in a low-slung Protestant-controlled country.
(My grandfather never got over the dirty campaign waged by the “refined” WASPs,
the Brahmins, you know the people with the three-name monikers like Wesley
Stuart Gardner, names like that who used every Papal Plot lie in the book to
down the beleaguered Smith against the heathen Hebert Hoover of Hooverville
fame.) Markin made us see that it did not matter that JFK was the scion of
“chandelier” Irish unlike our own “shanty” Irish digs. He was ours in all its
glory.
Markin, like in many other such endeavors was the bell-weather
for our take on JFK. For getting enthusiastic about the guy, about getting out
the vote in our town for our man. I have mentioned above (in the brackets) my
belief that even Frankie Riley our leader could have given a rat’s ass about
the elections until Markin pulled the plug of our indifference. But once Markin
convinced him that the election was important then Frankie got all worked about
it. Got things organized. The Scribe was not the guy who would organize the
stuff though. Jesus no. He could not organize himself out of a paper bag much
less run a political campaign in a large neighborhood. The one time the Scribe
did try to organize one of our midnight creeps to get dough when Frankie was
out of town was almost a disaster. His plan was great (in fact Frankie would
later execute it to perfection) but he “forgot” you needed a few look-outs for
the cops when pulling a midnight creep and we almost wound up with a show-down
with the cops who were cruising the neighborhood at that hour. So once the
Scribe won Frankie over he organized the whole caper.
(By the way many local Acre urban legends have grown up
around how the Scribe got his moniker. Here’s the skinny. When he came across
town in junior high school to live in the Acre with his family, his mother had
grown up in the Acre, he latched onto Frankie the first day somehow. To seal
the deal though he wrote something for the school newspaper about a speech that
Frankie had given about President Eisenhower in some assembly after he beat
Adlai Stevenson the second time. Everybody, teachers especially, agreed that
the Scribe’s article was A-one. When I read the article I thought it sounded
like Frankie, thieving, scheming, conniving Frankie Riley, had just given the
Gettysburg Address or something. Here’s the real reason that Markin got the
moniker from that time forward from Frankie (all the way to San Francisco, 1967
when he subsequently “became” the Be-Bop Kid). Markin had written the whole
thing. Had written the speech and written the write-up. Pure Frankie
conniving).
Frankie won’t like this but that election of 1960 was also a
prime example of the contradictions that would a little over decade later do
Markin in and which for many of the rest of us was a close thing between
freedom and a dark dungeon. See Markin among his million other thoughts like
the fresh breeze and the like was all hopped up about getting rid of nuclear
weapons, was all hopped up for the United States to get rid of them
unilaterally if necessary. The rest of us, especially Frankie Riley, our esteemed
acknowledged leader, thought he was crazy, crazy with the Russian armed to the
teeth with similar such weapons. Frankie almost hit the Scribe in Civics class
from what I heard when he tried to present the idea in a class discussion.
Don’t forget though that we were still seriously hung up on the Cold War stuff
we read about and were taught was the real deal in school.
One thing about Markin though was he put his money where his
mouth was most of the time. He had heard about a rally, stand-out, vigil or
something in Boston, at the Boston Common near the Park Street subway station
against nuclear weapons in October of 1960 a few weeks before the election
sponsored by a group called SANE, Doctor Spock’s group, some Quakers and other
odd-balls. He was determined to go although he expressed some fears that he
might be harmed by pro-nuclear weapons people who would see red over the issue.
But he did go saying later to us that he had found some kindred spirits who
were not afraid unlike a fearful fourteen year old boy and that got him
through.
(This is not the place to digress too much about side stuff
but Markin’s fear was the subject of a bet between him and Frankie Riley that
he would not go. Markin was very proud of winning that bet and would bring it
up periodically long after we could have given a rat’s ass about the wager
since we were always betting on almost any propositions that struck our
fancies. The most infamous bet, a rigged job by Frankie, was when he needed
“date” money in high school and he bet the Scribe on how high Tonio at the
pizza place we hung out at would fling the pizza after having worked it out
with Tonio to fling low. Markin never knew what hit him except he was out about
six dollars and Frankie was out with Minnie Murphy doing whatever that night.)
Here’s where the Markin contradiction came in, maybe the
human condition contradiction when all is said and done after my own fifty plus
years of having gone through my own sets of contradictions. During the
television debates between JFK and his Republican opponent, then Vice President
Nixon who was later a president in his own right and a common criminal as well
Kennedy made a great deal out of some supposed “missile gap” between the United
States and Russia that had developed under the Eisenhower-Nixon regime. To our
disadvantage. That “gap” was among others things in the number and
effectiveness of the American nuclear arsenal. Kennedy’s solution: build more
and better such weapons. Totally against what the Scribe had tried do in
Boston. Nevertheless the very next weekend after that Boston anti-nuclear
weapons rally Markin rounded us up to go up to the North Adamsville Kennedy for
President headquarters located in a small shed-like building on the property of
the Knights of Columbus and grab a bunch of leaflets to go door to door putting
them in mail slots. Of course before the Scribe could take step one Frankie
intervened and told the guys to go to the supermarkets, the post office, a
couple of banks opened on Saturday in those days before ATMs, the bowling alley
and the football fields. That is where they could hand out eye to eye with the
receivers their materials. Frankie laughed at Markin and his hokey idea of
stuffing leaflets in mail boxes.
Such were the ups and downs of having “one of our own”
getting elected to the White House in sunnier days. And one of our own hipping
us to the idea.
Is this good enough, Frankie?
