An Encore Salute To The Untold
Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”-
A Real Independence Day (4th
of July) Walk Through The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades
Greg Green, site manager
Introduction
[In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over
the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and
bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of
reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC
Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not
offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on
the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication
through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One
senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees
this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way,
made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read
film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68
partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old
Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or
graphic novels. I stand humbled.
Not only stand humbled though but in
a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided
to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced
and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when
I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated
his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior
writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging
his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over
the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love in
1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. One
called it a travesty.
Backing off after finding Allan, not
an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work
and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous
last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from
pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to
running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag
queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the
introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board
established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had
compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination
of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional
writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some
attention.
That was the way things went and not
too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that
is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I
noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered
on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been
radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the
faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would
resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.
I once again attempted to make the
mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series
(after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I
could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan
was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now
that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back
to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with
Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No
such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an
editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he
gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will
handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series.
Greg Green]
Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction
[As my replacement Greg Green, whom
I brought in from American Film Gazette
originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on
editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes
of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s
upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his
general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an
encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph
Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why
this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass
movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly
made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were
like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also
somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which
emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which
represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under
ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’
ethos and fate.
As I said I will describe that
transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime”
I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over
the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green
has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival,
about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not
have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around”
something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as
well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend
Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The
Roots Is The Toots rock and roll
coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever
worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam
Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote
against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I
have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into
the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket.
(Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles
with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided
through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts
to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious
segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called
fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off
and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been
present at the creation.
That would have been the end of it
but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos
around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in
the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the
archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing
some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing
films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic
novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world
that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line
academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found
another series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore
presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again
attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I
meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series
citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact
that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.
This time though the Editorial
Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach
Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to
insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called
autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told
Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have
put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have
willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can
understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in
my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their
opportunity to move up.
That part I had no problem with,
told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend”
about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no
confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only
after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all
places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame
Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old
days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy
Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that
same town whom I also helped stake to
his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on
my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in
love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.
If the reader can bear the weight of
this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the
so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite
all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various
aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the
publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days
before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I
clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I
had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason,
although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a
brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.
Tapped out in the East for a lot of
reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I
ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody
there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the
whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his
white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate.
So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the
preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie
Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat.
Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these
Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith
days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the
religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph
Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.
The helping Madame La Rue, real name
of no interest or need to mention,
running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least
had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the
downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high
class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our
dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy
lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night
when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a
fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly,
said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her
place for a while until I had to move on. Done
The whole drag queen idea tells me
that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and
had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking
with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to
slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is
the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old
neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual
identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front
gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had
lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money
to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to
stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East.
Done.
But enough about me. This is about two other working- class guys,
Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty
miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and
learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from
that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North
Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working
class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught
up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to
introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam
and Ralph in future segments.]
Allan Jackson Encore Introduction
Sadly I have
nothing to add to Sam Eaton’s great take not only on the 4th of
Julys of his recent experiences except that we must update number of years in
Afghanistan and Iraq and add Syria, Yemen and a few other places to the drumroll
of the American military around the world, Yes, sad and frustrating still.
A Real Independence Day Walk Through
The Streets- A Tale Of Two Parades
From The Pen Of Sam Eaton
Yeah, the streets of the small towns
and big cities of this nation were resplendent with red white and blue bunting,
the kids filled to the brim with soda, candy and hot dogs and adults coyly
sipping their store bought wines and beers in red plastic containers (or at
least that seemed the color of choice from a brief but telling visual
unscientific poll) as happens every hot summer July Independence Day, the
Fourth to short-haul the name of the event I am talking about. As a nice summer
holiday nobody, including me, has any quarrel, especially getting the school-stormed
kids out of doors and reddened from their prison pallor earned the previous
past nine months.
Well, maybe some out there in the
hinterlands have a quarrel with celebrating the Fourth as a freedom day after
my reading of an archival piece from a re-tweeted blog that my long-time friend
and political activist comrade, Ralph Morris (more about him later), send along
to me. He had received it via the Internet from our mutual friend living in New
York City, Fritz Jasper, a guy who refused to serve in Vietnam after he had
been inducted into the Army and his number was called to do 11 Bravo duty
(infantryman, grunt, cannon fodder, take your pick) back in the day and did a
serious year or more in an Army stockade for his troubles before some smart and
savvy civilian lawyer who knew the military law inside out got him sprung on a
habeas corpus petition in federal court or he might still be on in the wheat
fields of Kansas at Fort Leavenworth along with the heroic Wiki-leaks
whistleblower Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. [Sentenced commuted in 2017
by President Obama before he left office under his pardoning powers.]
The gist of the article and that is
all I want to do is give the gist since this sketch is about other matters,
although 4th of July connected, was penned by a NYU professor who
Fritz knows and let’s write on his blog, American
Politics Today. The good professor’s argument was that due to the way this
country got its freedom from old Mother England as a result of a straight up military
victory and the kind of society that was formed afterwards based on the
enslavement of black people and later the extermination of Native peoples
(although a lot was done well before that “later” to those “collateral damage”
peoples) we should be more circumspect about celebrating the event. Unlike say
the English, French or Russian revolutions which were hell-bound flat-out
social revolutions whatever happened later on to rein them in.
And the good professor from NYU,
Jack Kirby I think his name was who has written several books and monograms
along that same line, might have a very good point (and Fritz too who agreed
with that part of Kirby’s analysis about being circumspect all things
considered but disagreed with the “not celebrating” part since he sees it as a
legitimate part of the struggle from human freedom even if today we would
recoil from what that experience has produced. More on this in a minute when
Ralph and I weight in). But what interests today me as an old anti-war
campaigner (make that a full-time anti-war campaigner against the now endless
wars of the American imperium and other misadventures as well) since the early
1970s after I got “religion” as I like to call it on the issues of war and
peace is being able to use the day, and more importantly the thousands of
locally organized parades or other commemorations, to get our anti-war message
out.
The “got religion” part about war
came after some soul-searching when I learned that my best friend, Jeff
Mullins, from Carver High was blown away in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in
1969. Jeff had sent me a bunch of
letters telling me of the horrors of the situation, his desperation in trying
to right it, and his total disgust with the ugly abuse that the American
government was putting its soldiers, the people of Vietnam (and elsewhere in
Southeast Asia as it turns out), and virtually everything it touched a few
months before he was killed to tell one and all that the war was totally crazy,
totally “off the wall” as he called it. (I was a little sheepish at first since
through the vagaries of life I wound up with a military deferment due to being
the sole support for my mother and four much younger sisters after my drunken
sot of a father passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack in 1965. But I
got over that when somebody said the message “from the grave,” Jeff’s grave I
had to bring to the table squared things.)
The hard fact is that in the year
2015 despite almost fourteen years of endless war from that first bombing raids
on Kabul by Bush II in the aftermath of the horrendous unspeakable criminal
actions in New York on 9/11 until the latest (Spring, 2015) announced Obama
third wave, or is it fourth, “creeping
troop escalation” in Iraq the streets of America have been abandoned as a way
to get our message out by those who previously knew (if only for a minute in
the later part of 2002 and early 2003)
that you need to get the anti-war message out via the streets, raise hell about
the situation, since the media has blocked any coverage out otherwise as
yesterday’s news.
So the 4th of July is an
excellent place to bring the message home to a war-weary (and wary) people
without an “in your face” confrontation. (How are you going to, on either side,
get red-faced angry when soda-hot dog-candy filled kids and ordinary everyday
citizens out to get some well-deserved time off and have a few red cup brews
are looking your way with not unkindly feelings.) Now, full disclosure, Ralph Morris as a
Vietnam veteran like the fallen Jeff Mullins (and not Vietnam-era either since
he served eighteen months “in-country” as he calls it) and I who have worked
with him since we “met” at the RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971
are both members of an organization dedicated to the principle of peace,
Veterans For Peace (VFP), and have been for a number of years (he as a full
member and I as an associate since I am not a veteran, a least a war veteran
although Ralph always says that I am a “veteran” in his book since being peace
veterans is really what is important about what we have, or have not, done with
our lives).
VFP likes to, maybe lives to, use
any reasonable occasion to get the peace message out. So these days events like
4th of July parades, Memorial Day Peace remembrances, ditto Veterans
Day/Armistice Day (the real and original reason for the holiday going back to
end of World War I times), Saint Patrick’s Day in Boston, Gay Pride parades,
you name it you are very likely to find the white flags with the black-outlined
doves of peace embossed on them fluttering in the wind at some such occasion.
And this Fourth of July was no exception. Ralph who lives in Troy, New York when
we are not off somewhere spreading as best we can these days the good news of
peace came to Boston and joined the local VFP chapter, the Smedley Butler
Brigade (named in honor of the famous much decorated Marine Corps general who
coined the phrase “war is a racket” in a speech you can read if you Google his
name or go to Wikipedia). We marched on the evening of July 3rd
in the annual parade in historic Gloucester (of the famed fishermen going down
to the sea, those battling our home land the sea for its bounty) and in the
adjacent town of Rockport the next evening.
Late on 4th of July
evening after having walked our legs off the previous two early evenings we
headed to Johnny’s Olde Wagon Wheel Diner over on Thornton Street (Rockport)
for a meal (Johnny’s providing the best meatloaf dinner around and both Ralph
and I in our hitchhiking days in the early 1970s either on our own or through
the kindness of friendly truckers know many, many diners to compare the bills
of fare on that subject and that accolade is thus deserved) and a few drinks of
high-shelf whisky (although our favorite watering hole for that purpose when
Ralph is in Boston is Jack’s Grille down by the Financial District in the
downtown area but that place that day would be a zoo with the huge crowds that
attend the well-known concert on the Esplanade and fireworks after) in order to
“evaluate” what our takes on the two events were.
Now you have to know a little
something about VFP’s past participation in these Fourth of July parades in
Gloucester and Rockport. VFP started about twenty years to participate in the
two parades via the efforts of VFP members in both towns to get us in (at the
barbeque this year before the Rockport parade that fact was honored with a
short speech and, well, a cake). The first few years in the second Clinton
administration were rocky since a key component to any of this American spirit
holidays are groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Legion
posts who put a lock on patriotism of a certain kind, mainly of the unthinking
or wrong-thinking “my country, right or wrong” kind, and that is that. Moreover
the other key organizers for such events are the town police and fire
departments whose memberships overlap with the veterans’ groups many times. Those
combinations are used to organizing such events and normally set the agenda. So
the first few years were tough with the local organizers taking a stance out of
the playbook of the Allied War Council (AWC) in Boston which for five years now
has excluded VFP from its Saint Patrick’s Day parade held over in South Boston
in March of each year under the rubric, as one AWC-er put it-“we don’t want the
words “veterans” and “peace” put together in our (private) parade. Small towns
and cities are however under pressure, or if not should be, to see that the
whole community is represented and so VFP found a spot in each parade. Of
course another hard pressed time was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when
even Ralph and I were afraid to go on the streets with the peace message at a
time when the average citizen who generally is indifferent to our presence had
daggers in their eyes at the sight of peace signs or symbols (although we did,
we did go out among the hostile populace, at least in Boston that year, but with
the most trepidation that either of us had faced in our long anti-war careers)
and then with the war drums beating in the lead-up to the so-called slam-dunk
2003 Iraq War.
But each year since as the endless
wars have continued to meander their endless sun-less rivers the patriotic
bounce has stopped driving sneers, ugly remarks, old-time out of touch
anti-commie slurs and the like that every protestor from neophyte to veteran
knows is at least hidden in some quarters when you work “street” politics. Both
Ralph and I made that same observation this year (as well as our traditional
one about how those old yellow ribbons festooned on the back bumpers of cars
and trucks have faded to pale white). That absence of malice rather than the
notable increased cheering as the VFP contingent of white flag dove of peace
–embossed limply-walking older wars veterans, jauntily-walking younger Afghan
and Iraq war veterans and assorted peace group supporters approached their
vantage points is the most striking difference over the years. We both noted in
Rockport there was plenty of genuine cheering to overthrow any uncivil remarks
(although one guy, an old duffer who looked like he might have been a mess
sergeant in 1958, told us to “go back to Moscow” and another in that same old
duffer category to “just stay at home” apparently to not offend his starry
eyes. Jesus, where have these guys been since about 1991.)
Here is our dilemma though, and not
just Ralph, mine or VFP’s but for any “peaceniks” working the streets these
days. We could palpably see the war-weariness in the remarks headed our way,
especially in Gloucester an old working-class town that has provided more than
its share of soldiers and sailors as the city memorials, especially the latter,
to the fallen of that place readily testifies, those remarks made from many a
flatbed working man’s truck that dotted the route of the parade. Trucks, more
than either of us thought existed in a town that size (and missing for the most
part from the more upscale Rockport parade with its average Audi or BMW)
complete with whole families in the bed taking in the sights, having a little
something to eat or drink, and probably trying to figure out how to calm down
the sugar-laden kids before bedtime after such a hectic day of sights and
sounds.
Here is where Ralph and I have
racked our brains in sullen frustration-how do you turn that obvious
war-weariness into some kind of protest movement beyond the kind words and
rousing applause sent our way on parade days. We did not solve that dilemma
that night maybe because we were tired, maybe we were too sated from Johnny’s
meatloaf, maybe a few too many high-shelf whiskeys or maybe like the kids too
many sights and sounds. All I know is that we will be back next year, hopefully
with more people joining our efforts to spread the good words of peace around.
You can bet on that.
[Oops, before I forget since
whenever I mention how Ralph and I met down in D.C. on May Day 1971 people want
to know how that happened in a professional football stadium in May when the
football season is long past. Ralph wrote up his version in 2011 and I added a
few pithy comments (his term) for that American
Politics Today our friend Fritz runs for the fortieth anniversary of the
event. I will give a short wrap-up here to show why we have been amigos since
that strange day in May. You already know my reasons for turning anti-war but
Ralph’s came like Jeff’s from actual hard rock service in that benighted
country. In short as Ralph says when he is giving talks- “he grew disenchanted
with what he had to do as a soldier (as an 11 Bravo cannon-fodder like Jeff),
what his Army buddies getting blown away and mangled had to do, and what the damn
American government was making of them-nothing but animals (always said with a
sneer). So when he got out in late 1969, early 1970 he wound up working with a
predecessor of VFP, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). By 1971 with no
end of the war in sight a lot of us, radicals, frustrated liberals, ex-G.I.s
upped the ante- decided to as the slogan went-“if the government would not shut
down the war, we would shut down the government.”
As thousands descended on Washington
including Ralph with New York VVAW and me then living in Cambridge with some
radicals I knew we really thought we had enough to change history. For that
illusion many of us, Ralph and me among them, wound upon the football field at
RFK being used that May as a holding area for those arrested. He noticed I was
wearing a VVAW supporter button in honor of Jeff and that started our
friendship. If you need more info on that day just check Wikipedia because I have to move on.
