From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Out In The Be-Bop 1960's Night- The Salducci's Pizza Toss Bet

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Out In The Be-Bop 1960's Night- The Salducci's Pizza Toss Bet

You all know Frankie, right? Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, fierce Frankie when necessary, and usually kind Frankie by rough inclination when it suits his purposes. Yah, Frankie from the old North Adamsville neighborhood. Frankie to the tenement, the cold-water flat tenement, born. Frankie, no moola, no two coins to rub together except by wit or chicanery, poor as a church mouse if there ever was such a thing, a poor church mouse that is. Yes, that Frankie. And, as well, this writer, his faithful scribe chronicling his tales, his regal tales. Said scribe to the public housing flats, hot-water flats, but still flats, born. And poorer even than any old Frankie church mouse. More importantly though, more importantly for this story that I am about to tell you than our respective social class positions, is that Frankie is king, the 1960s king hell king of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, if not then North Adamsville’s finest still the place where we spent many a misbegotten hour, and truth to tell, just plain killed some time when we were down at our heels, or maybe down to our heels.

Sure you know about old Frankie’s royal heritage too. I clued you in before when I wrote about my lost in the struggle for power as I tried to overthrow the king when we entered North Adamsville High in 1960. By wit, chicanery, guile, bribes, threats, physical and mental, and every other form of madness he clawed his way to power after I forgot the first rule of trying to overthrow a king- you have to make sure he is dead. But mainly it was his "style,” his mad-hatter “beat” style, wherefore he attempted to learn, and to impress the girls (and maybe a few guys too), with his arcane knowledge of every oddball fact that anyone would listen to for two minutes. After my defeat we went back and forth about it. He said, reflecting his peculiar twist on his Augustinian-formed Roman Catholicism, it was his god-given right to be king of this particular earthy kingdom but foolish me I tried to justify his reign based on that old power theory (and discredited as least since the 17th century) of the divine right of kings. But enough of theory. Here’s why, when the deal went down, Frankie was king, warts and all.

All this talk about Frankie royal lineage kind of had me remembering a story, a Frankie pizza parlor story. Remind me to tell you about it sometime, about how we used to bet on pizza dough flying. What the heck I have a few minutes I think I will tell you now because it will also be a prime example, maybe better than the one I was originally thinking about, of Frankie’s treacheries that I mentioned before. Now that I think about it again my own temperature is starting to rise. If I see that bastard again I’m going to... Well, let me just tell the story and maybe your sympathetic temperature will rise a bit too.

One summer night, yah, it must have been a summer night because this was the time of year when we had plenty of time on our hands to get a little off-handedly off-hand. In any case it would have had to be between our junior and senior years at old North Adamsville High because we were talking a lot in those days about what we were going to do, or not do, after high school. And it would have had to have been on a Monday or Tuesday summer night at that as we were deflated from a hard weekend of this and that, mainly, Frankie trying to keep the lid on his relationship with his ever lovin’ sweetie, Joanne. Although come to think of it that was a full-time occupation and it could have been any of a hundred nights, summer nights or not.

I was also trying to keep a lid on my new sweetie, Lucinda, a sweetie who seemed to be drifting away, or at least in and out on me, mostly out, and mostly because of my legendary no dough status (that and no car, no sweet ride down the boulevard, the beach boulevard so she could impress HER friends, yah it was that kind of relationship). Anyway it's a summer night when we had time on our hands, idle time, devil’s time according to mothers’ wit, if you want to know the truth, because his lordship (although I never actually called him that), Frankie I, out of the blue made me the following proposition. Bet: how high will Tonio flip his pizza dough on his next pass through.

Now this Tonio, as you know already if you have read the story about how Frankie became king of the pizza parlor, and if you don’t you will hear more about him later, was nothing but an ace, numero uno, primo pizza flinger. Here’s a little outline of the contours of his art, although minus the tenderness, the care, the genetic dispositions, and who knows, the secret song or incantation that Tonio brought to the process. I don’t know much about the backroom work, the work of putting all the ingredients together to make the dough, letting the dough sit and rise and then cutting it up into pizza-size portions.

I only really know the front of the store part- the part where he takes that cut dough portion in front of him in the preparation area and does his magic. That part started with a gentle sprinkling of flour to take out some of the stickiness of the dough, then a rough and tumble kneading of the dough to take any kinks out, and while taking the kinks out the dough gets flattened, flattened enough to start taking average citizen-recognizable shape as a pizza pie. Sometimes, especially if Frankie put in an order, old Tonio would knead that dough to kingdom come. Now I am no culinary expert, and I wasn’t then, no way, but part of the magic of a good pizza is to knead that dough to kingdom come so if you see some geek doing a perfunctory couple of wimpy knead chops then move on, unless you are desperate or just ravenously hungry.

Beyond the extra knead though the key to the pizza is the thinness of the crust and hence the pizza tosses. And this is where Tonio was a Leonardo-like artist, no, that’s not right, this is where he went into some world, some place we would never know. I can still see, and if you happened to be from old North Adamsville, you probably can still see it too if you patronized the place or stood, waiting for that never-coming Eastern Mass. bus, in front of the big, double-plate glass pizza parlor windows watching in amazement while Tonio tossed that dough about a million times in the air. Artistry, pure and simple.

So you can see now, if you didn’t quite get it before that Frankie’s proposition was nothing but an old gag kind of bet, a bet on where Tonio will throw, high or low. Hey, it’s just a variation on a sports bet, like in football, make the first down or not, pass or rush, and so on, except its pizza tosses, okay. Of course, unlike sports, at least known sports, there are no standards in place so we have to set some rules, naturally. Since its Frankie’s proposition he gets to give the rules a go, and I can veto.

Frankie, though, and sometimes he could do things simple, although that was not his natural inclination; his natural inclination was to be arcane in all things, and not just with girls. Simply Frankie said in his Solomonic manner that passed for wisdom, above or below the sign in back of Tonio’s preparation area, the sign that told the types of pizza sold, their sizes, their cost and what else was offered for those who didn’t want pizza that night.

You know such signs, every pizza palace has them, and other fast eat places too, you have to go to “uptown” eateries for a tabled menu in front of your eyes, and only your eyes, but here’s a list of  Tonio’s public offerings. On one side of the sign plain, ordinary, vanilla, no frills pizza, cheap, maybe four or five dollars for a large, small something less, although don’t hold me to the prices fifty years later for christ sakes, no fixings. Just right for “family night”, our family night later, growing up later, earlier in hot-water flats, public housing hot-water flats time, we had just enough money for Spam, not Internet spam, spam meat although that may be an oxymoron and had no father hard-worked cold cash for exotic things like pizza, not a whole one anyway, in our household. And from what Frankie told me his too.

Later , when we had a little more money and could “splurge” for an occasional take-out, no home delivery in those days, when Ma didn’t feel like cooking, or it was too hot, or something and to avoid civil wars, the bloody brother against brother kind, plain, ordinary vanilla pizza was like manna from heaven for mama, although nobody really wanted it and you just feel bloated after eating your share (and maybe the crust from someone who doesn’t like crust, or maybe you traded for it); or, plain, by the slice, out of the oven (or more likely oven-re-heated after open air sitting on some aluminum special pizza plate for who knows how long) the only way you could get it after school with a tonic (also known as soda for you old days non-New Englanders and progeny), usually a root beer, a <i>Hires</i> root beer to wash away the in-school blahs, especially the in-school cafeteria blahs.

Or how about plump Italian sausage, Tonio thickly-sliced, or spicy-side thinly-sliced pepperoni later when you had a couple of bucks handy to buy your own, and to share with your fellows (those fellows, hopefully, including girls, always hopefully, including girls) and finally got out from under family plain and, on those lucky occasions, and they were lucky like from heaven, when girl-dated you could show your stuff, your cool, manly stuff, and divide, divide, if you can believe that, the pizza half one, half the other fixing, glory be; onion or anchovies, oh no, the kiss of death, no way if you had the least hope for a decent night and worst, the nightmarish worst, when your date ordered her portion with either of these, although maybe, just maybe once or twice, it saved you from having to do more than a peck of a kiss when your date turned out not to be the dream vision you had hoped for; hams, green peppers, mushrooms, hamburg, and other oddball toppings I will not even discuss because such desecration of Tonio’s pizza, except, maybe extra cheese, such Americanized desecration , should have been declared illegal under some international law, no question; or, except, maybe again, if you had plenty of dough, had a had a few drinks, for your gourmet delight that one pig-pile hunger beyond hunger night when all the fixings went onto the thing. Whoa. Surely you would not find on Tonio’s blessed sign this modern thing, this Brussels sprouts, broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, wheat germ, whole wheat, soy, sea salt, himalaya salt, canola oil, whole food, pseudo-pizza not fit for manly (or womanly) consumption, no, not in those high cholesterol, high-blood pressure, eat today for tomorrow you may die days.

On the other side of the sign, although I will not rhapsodize about Tonio’s mastery of the submarine sandwich art (also known as heroes and about seventy-six other names depending on where you grew up, what neighborhood you grew up in, and who got there first, who, non-Puritan, got there first that is) are the descriptions of the various sandwich combinations (all come with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, the outlawed onions, various condiment spreads as desired along with a bag of potato chips so I won’t go into all that); cold cuts, basically bologna and cheese, maybe a little salami, no way, no way in hell am I putting dough up for what Ma prepared and I had for lunch whenever I couldn’t put two nickels together to get the school lunch, and the school lunch I already described as causing me to run to Tonio’s for a sweet reason portion of pizza by the slice just to kill the taste, no way is right; tuna fish, no way again for a different reason though, a Roman Catholic Friday holy, holy tuna fish reason besides grandma, high Roman Catholic saint grandma, had that tuna fish salad with a splash of mayo on oatmeal bread thing down to a science, yah, grandma no way I would betray you like that; roast beef, what are you kidding; meatballs (in that grand pizza sauce); sausage, with or without green peppers, steak and cheese and so on. The sign, in all it beatified Tonio misspelled glory.

“Okay,” I said, that sign part seemed reasonable under the circumstances (that’s how Frankie put it, I’m just repeating his rationalization), except that never having made such a bet before I asked to witness a few Tonio flips first. “Deal,” said Frankie. Now my idea here, and I hope you follow me on this because it is not every day that you get to know how my mind works, or how it works different from star king Frankie, but it is not every day that you hear about a proposition based on high or low pizza tosses and there may be something of an art to it that I, or you, were not aware of. See, I am thinking, as many times as I have watched old saintly Tonio, just like everybody else, flip that dough to the heavens I never really thought about where it was heading, except those rare occasions when one hit the ceiling and stuck there. So maybe there is some kind of regular pattern to the thing. Like I say, I had seen Tonio flip dough more than my fair share of teenage life pizzas but, you know, never really noticed anything about it, kind of like the weather. As it turned out there was apparently no rhyme or reason to Tonio’s tosses just the quantity of the tosses (that was the secret to that good pizza crust, not the height of the throw), so after a few minutes I said "Bet." And bet is, high or low, my call, for a quarter a call (I have visions of filling that old jukebox with my “winnings” because a new Dylan song just came in that I am crazy to play about a zillion times, <i>Mr. Tambourine Man</i>). We are off.

I admit that I did pretty well for while that night and maybe was up a buck, and some change, at the end of the night. Frankie paid up, as Frankie always paid up, and such pay up without a squawk was a point of honor between us (and not just Frankie and me either, every righteous guy was the same way, or else), cash left on the table. I was feeling pretty good ‘cause I just beat the king of the hill at something, and that something was his own game. I rested comfortable on my laurels. Rested comfortably that is until a couple of nights later when we, as usual, were sitting in the Frankie-reserved seats (reserved that is unless there were real paying customers who wanted to eat their pizza in-house and then we, more or less, were given the bum’s rush) when Frankie said “Bet.” And the minute he said that I knew, I knew for certain, that we are once again betting on pizza tosses because when it came right down to it I knew, and I knew for certain, that Frankie’s defeat a few nights before did not sit well with him.

Now here is where things got tricky, though. Tonio, good old good luck charm Tonio, was nowhere in sight. He didn’t work every night and he was probably with his honey, and for an older dame she was a honey, dark hair, good shape, great, dark laughing eyes, and a melting smile. I could see, even then, where her charms beat out, even for ace pizza flinger Tonio, tossing foolish old pizza dough in the air for some kids with time on their hands, no dough, teenage boys, Irish teenage boys to boot. However, Sammy, North Adamsville High Class of ’62 (maybe, at least that is when he was supposed to graduate, according to Frankie, one of whose older brothers graduated that year), and Tonio’s pizza protégé was on duty. Since we already knew the ropes on this thing I didn’t even bother to check and see if Sammy’s style was different from Tonio’s. Heck, it was all random, right?

This night we flipped for first call. Frankie won the coin toss. Not a good sign, maybe. I, however, like the previous time, started out quickly with a good run and began to believe that, like at Skeet ball (some call it Skee-ball but they are both the same–roll balls up a targeted area to win Kewpie dolls, feathery things, or a goof key chain for your sweetie) down at the amusement park, I had a knack for this. Anyway I was ahead about a buck or so. All of a sudden my “luck” went south. Without boring you with the epic pizza toss details I could not hit one right for the rest of the night. The long and short of it was that I was down about four dollars, cash on the table. Now Frankie’s cash on the table. No question. At that moment I was feeling about three feet tall and about eight feet under because nowadays cheap, no meaning four dollars, then was date money, Lucinda, fading Lucinda, date money. This was probably fatal, although strictly speaking that is another story and I will not get into the Lucinda details, because when I think about it now that was just a passing thing with her, and you know about passing things- what about it.

What is part of the story though, and the now still temperature-rising part of the story, is how Frankie, Frankie, king of the pizza parlor night, Frankie of a bunch of kindnesses, and of a bunch of treacheries, here treachery, zonked me on this betting scandal. What I didn’t know then was that I was set up, set up hard and fast, with no remorse by one Francis Xavier Riley, to the tenements, the cold-water flat tenements, born and his cohort Sammy. It seems that Sammy owed Frankie for something, something never fully disclosed by either party, and the pay-off by Sammy to make him well was to “fix” the pizza tosses that night I just told you about, the night of the golden fleecing. Every time I said "high" Sammy, taking his coded signal from Frankie, went low and so forth. Can you believe a “king”, even a king of a backwater pizza parlor, would stoop so low?

Here is the really heinous part though, and keep my previous reference to fading Lucinda in mind when you read this. Frankie, sore-loser Frankie, not only didn’t like to lose but was also low on dough (a constant problem for both of us, and which consumed far more than enough of our time and energy than was necessary in a just, Frankie-friendly world) for his big Saturday night drive-in movie-car borrowed from his older brother, big-man-around- town date with one of his side sweeties (Joanne, his regular sweetie was out of town with her parents on vacation). That part, that unfaithful to Joanne part I didn’t care about because, once again truth to tell, old ever lovin’ sweetie Joanne and I did not get along for more reasons than you have to know. The part that burned me, and still burns me, is that I was naturally the fall-guy for some frail (girl in pizza parlor parlance time) caper he was off on. Now I have mentioned that when we totaled up the score the Frankie kindnesses were way ahead of the Frankie treacheries, no question, which was why we were friends. Still, right this minute, right this 2010 minute, I’m ready to go up to his swanky downtown law office (where the men’s bathroom is larger than his whole youth time old cold- water flat tenement) and demand that four dollars back, plus interest. You know I am right on this one.

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The Ghost Dance-Late 1969

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Scenes From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The Ghost Dance-Late 1969

Scene Nine: Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night- The Ghost Dance-Late 1969</b>

Damn, already I missed Angelica, road-worthy, road-travel easy, easy on the eyes and easy getting us a ride Angelica as I traveled down Interstate 80 onto the great prairie Mid-American hitchhike road after we parted at the Omaha bus station, she heading home East, at least Indiana east from Nebraska, and I to the savage search for the blue-pink great American West night. And I will tell you true that first ride and every ride after that, every miserable truck stopped or sedan ride, it didn’t matter, made me utter that same missed Angelica oath.

Right then though I was on my first connection ride out of Omaha and as luck would have it this big bruiser, full tattoo armed with snakes, roses and lost loves names, truck driver who was obviously benny-ed, benny-ed to perdition and was talking a blue streak was driving right through to Denver, my next destination. All I wanted was the ride but I knew enough of the road, enough of the truck driver come-on part of it anyway to know that this guy’s blue streak was a small price to pay for such a lucky break.

See, some guys, some guys like Denver Slim, who left me off at that long ago (or it seemed like long ago) Steubenville truck stop and Angelica (hey, now I know who to blame for my miseries, if I ever get my hands on that damn Denver Slim… Yah, yah, what are you going to do, big boy?), wanted to talk man to man. Back and forth like real people, especially as I reminded him of his errant (read: hair growing long , full-bearded hippie –swaying) son. Other guys are happy for the company so they can, at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour with the engine revved high and where conversation is made almost painful and chock-filled with the “what did you says?”, spout forth on their homespun philosophy and take on this wicked old world. With these guys an occasional “Yah, that’s right,” or a timely “What did you mean by that?” will stand you in good stead and you can nod out into your own thoughts.

And that is exactly where I wanted be, as old Buck (where do they get these names out in Mid-America anyway) droned on and on about how the government was doing, or not doing this or that for, or to, the little guy who helped build up, not tear down, the country like him. Thinking about what Aunt Betty, sweet Neola, Iowa grandmotherly Aunt Betty, said as she left me off at the Interstate 80 entrance still rings in my ears. I was good for Angelica. Hell, I know I was. Hell, if I had any sense I would admit what I know inside. Angelica was good for me too. But see certain times were funny that way. No way in 1962, or ‘64, or ’66, let’s say, that I would have run into an Angelica. I was strung out, strung out hard on neurotic, long black-haired (although that was optional), kind of skinny (not thin, not slender, skinny, wistfully skinny, I say), bookish, Harvard Square, maybe a poet, kind of girls. If I said beatnik girls, and not free-form, ethereral, butterfly breeze “hippie” girls you’d know what I mean.

As a kid I was cranked on pale, hell wan was more like it, dark-haired, hard Irish Catholic girls, and I mean hard Irish Catholic girls with twelve novena books in their hands, and unrequited lust in their hearts. So, I swear, when Angelica’s number turned up I was clueless how to take just a plain-spoken, says what she means, means what she says young woman who had dreams (unformed, mainly, but dreams nevertheless) that also were plain-spoken. Ah, I can’t explain it now, and I doubt I ever will. Just say I was stunted, stunned, and smitten, okay and let me listen to old Buck’s drone.

Later.

I have now put many a mile between me and Omaha and here I am well clear of that prairie fire dream now in sweet winter desert night Arizona not far from some old now run down, crumbling Native American dwellings that keep drawing my attention and I still want to utter that oath, that Angelica oath. Sitting by this night camp fire casting its weird ghost night-like shadows just makes it worst. And old now well-traveled soldiers turned “hippies”, Jack and Mattie, playing their new-found (at least to me) flute and penny whistle music mantra to set the tone.

Hey, I just remembered, sitting here wrapped up in Angelica and ancient primal tribal memories out of the whistling black star-filled night that I haven’t filled you in on where I have been, who I have seen (like John and Mattie), and how I got here from that star-crossed Neola night, at least the past Denver part. Jesus, and here we are only a few hundred miles from the ocean. I can almost smell, smell that algae sea- churned smell, and almost see the foam-flecked waves turn against the jagged-edged La Jolla rocks and mad, aging surfer boys from another time looking for that perfect wave. Yah, another more innocent time before all hell broke loose on us in America and crushed our innocent youthful dreams in the rice paddies of Asia, our Angelica plain-spoken dreams, but not our capacity to dream. That only makes the Angelica hurt worst as I remember that she had never seen the ocean, the jagged edged, foam-flecked ocean that I went on and on about. I was to be her Neptune on that voyage west to the rim of the world. Well let me get to it, the filling you in part..

After grabbing that straight ride from blue streak talkin’ old Buck I did tell you about, and a short but scary two day delay by a serious snow squall hurricane-wind tumult just before the Rocky Mountain foothills leading into Denver I got there in good order. If I didn’t tell you before, and now that I think about it I didn’t, I was to hook up with my now traveling companions, Jack and Mattie, there for the final trip west to the ocean and serious blue-pink visions. If you don’t remember Jack and Mattie, they are two guys that I picked up on the Massachusetts highways heading south in the days when I had a car in the early spring. We had some adventures going south, that I will tell you about another time, before I left them off in Washington, D.C. so they could head west from there. We agreed then to meet up in Denver later in the year where they expected to stay for a while. My last contact with them in late summer had them still there but when I arrived at the communal farm on the outskirts of Denver where they had been staying I was informed that they had gotten nervous about being stuck in the snow-bound Rockies and wanted to head south as fast as they could. They had left a Phoenix address for me to meet them at. I stayed at the commune for a few days to rest up, doing a little of this and that, mostly that, and then headed out myself on what turned to be an uneventful and mercifully short hitchhike road trip to Phoenix to connect with them.

And so here we are making that last push to the coast but not before we investigate these Native American lands that, as it turns out, we all had been interested in ever since our kid days watching cowboys and Indians on the old black and white 1950s small screen television. You know Lone Ranger, Hop-along Cassidy, Roy Rogers and their sidekicks’ fake, distorted, prettified Old West stuff. Stuff where the rich Native American traditions got short shrift.

Earlier today we had been over to Red Rock for an Intertribal celebration, a gathering of what was left of the great, ancient warrior nations that roamed freely here not all that long ago but who are now mere “cigar store” Indian characters to the public eye. The sounds, the whispering shrill canyon sounds and all the others, the sights, the colors radiant as they pulled out all the stops to bring back the old days when they ruled this West, the spirit, ah, the spirit of our own warrior shaman trances are still in our heads. I am still in some shamanic-induced trance from the healing dances, from warrior tom-tom dances, and from the primal scream-like sounds as they drove away the evil spirits that gathered around them (not hard enough to drive the marauding “white devil” who had broken their hearts, if not their spirits though). Not only that but we scored some peyote buttons (strictly for religious purposes, as you will see) and they have started to kick in along with the occasional hit from the old bong hash pipe (strictly for medicinal purposes).

So right now in this dark, abyss dark, darker than I ever saw the night sky in the East even though it is star-filled, million star-filled, in this spitting flame-roared campfire throwing shadow night along with tormented pipe-filled dreams of Angelica I am embedded with the ghosts of ten thousand past warrior- kings and their people. And if my ears don’t deceive me, and they don’t, beside Jack’s flute and Mattie’s penny whistle I hear, and hear plainly, the muted gathering war cries of ancient drums summoning paint-faced proud, bedecked warriors to avenge their not so ancient loses, and their sorrows as well.

And after more pipe-fillings that sound got louder, louder so that even Jack and Mattie seem transfixed and begin to play their own instruments louder and stronger to keep pace with the drums. Then, magically, magically it seemed anyway, I swear, I swear on anything holy or unholy, on some sodden forebear grave, on some unborn descendent that off the campfire- reflected red, red sandstone, grey, grey sandstone, beige (beige for lack of better color description), beige sandstone canyon echo walls I see the vague outlines of old proud, feather-bedecked, slash mark-painted Apache warriors beginning, slowly at first, to go into their ghost dance trance that I had heard got them revved up for a fight. Suddenly, we three, we three television-sotted Indian warriors got up and started, slowly at first so we are actually out of synch with the wall action to move to the rhythms of the ghosts. Ay ya, ay ya, ay ya, ay ya,…..until we speed up to catch the real pace. After what seems an eternity we are ready, ready as hell, to go seek revenge for those white man injustices.

But just as quickly the now flickering camp fire flame goes out, or goes to ember, the shadow ghost dance warriors are gone and we crumble in exhaustion to the ground. So much for vengeance. We, after regaining some strength, all decide that we had better push on, push on hard, to the ocean. These ancient desert nights, sweet winter desert nights or not, will do us in otherwise. But just for a moment, just for a weak modern moment we, or at least I knew, what it was like for those ancient warriors to seek their own blue-pink great American West night.

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- Out In The Jukebox Saturday Night-With The Platters "Only You" In Mind

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- Out In The Jukebox Saturday Night-With The Platters "Only You" In Mind  

Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a classic rock series that goes under the general title <i>The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era</i>. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that <em>Zeitgeist</em> today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.

Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex; or rather I should say “doin’ the do” in case the kids are around, and about the local “custom” (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic “watching the submarine races.”

Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get-my- medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I’m not jazzed up to go be-bop juke-boxing around the town.), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.

A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on this compilation that I am thinking of just now shows dreamy girls waiting for their platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. There is your chance, boy, grab it. Just hanging around the machine with some cashmere-sweatered, beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date (or, more often, a telephone number to call). Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boyfriend. Lucky guy, maybe.

But here is where the real skill came in. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (one of eight million guy slang words for girl in our old working class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boyfriend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next.

Then you made your move-“Have you heard <em>Only You</em>? NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up.” Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s <em>Sweet Little Rock and Roller</em>, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to … for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc., etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs from that compilation I am thinking about. Here are the stick outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” mentioned above on tough nights):

<em>Oh Julie</em>, The Crescendos (a great one if you knew, or thought you knew, or wanted to believe that girl at the jukebox’s name was Julie); <em>Lavender Blue</em>, Sammy Turner (good talk song especially on the word play); <em>Sweet Little Rock and Roller</em>, Chuck Berry (discussed above, and worthy of consideration if your tastes ran to those heart-breaking little rock and rollers. I will tell you about the ONE time it came in handy sometime); <em>You Were Mine</em>, The Fireflies; <em>Susie Darlin’,</em> Robin Luke (ditto the Julie thing above); <em>Only You</em>, The Platters (keep this one a secret, okay, unless you really are a sensitive guy).

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- Nah, I Couldn’t Keep Her, My Little Rock ‘n’ Roller-With The Late Chuck Berry, The Father of Us All In Mind r ry

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- Nah, I Couldn’t Keep Her, My Little Rock ‘n’ Roller

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of mad man rock and roller Chuck Berry performing his classic Sweet Little Rock and Roller.

Sweet Little Rock and Roller-Chuck Berry

Nineteen years old and sweet as she can be.
All dressed up like a downtown, Christmas tree.
Dancin' an' hummin' a rock-roll melody.

She's the daughter of a well-respected man.
Who taught her how to judge and understand.
Since she became a rock-roll music fan.

Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Her daddy don't have to scold her.
Her partner can't hardly hold her.
She never gets any older.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.

Instrumental break.

Should have seen her eyes when the band began to play.
And the famous singers sang and bowed away.
When the star performed she screamed and yelled, "Hooray!"

Ten thousand eyes were watchin' him leave the floor.
Five thousand tongues were screamin', "More! More!"
And about fifteen hundred waitin' outside the door.

Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Fades.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.

Joshua Lawrence Breslin is a natural born liar so what he says, sometimes, can be, and should be, taken with a very large grain of Himalaya salt. The current cause for my characterization is a recent little dispute that we had about women who, well, were little rock and rollers back in the day. And what effect they had on us, then and now. For those not in the know, and there may be a few not familiar with the specific term  although once described it will sent bells of recognition ringing through your head, she (and she here is meant to be nothing more than the proper pronoun designation for the subject of two women-loving guys. Women and other combinations choice your own pronoun) was that little “hot” flirt that you (and about one hundred other guys in town or school) had no shot, nada nunca nada shot, at. And if you did then about a week later she left you for the next best thing on her next best thing list of conquests. And you? Well, you were left with either eternal regret that you didn’t at least take a chance and take a run at her or eternal pining away that that you did take a run at her and didn’t have what it took to keep her. Yah, I thought you would recognize the situation once I clued you in. 

And that is where my liar accusation comes in. Josh Breslin (hell, nobody called him that three name monte thing back in the day he just picked that up when he started writing because he thought it sounded “cool” and distinguished him for other average joe writers) when I first met him introduced himself (without one bit of self-consciousness) as the Prince of Love in those summer of love, circa 1967, San Francisco love-in nights. He had just graduated from high school up in Olde Saco, Maine and was looking, well, looking for something like we all were that year and had hitchhiked across the country in that quest before starting off to college in the fall. Well, one thing led to another and that college thing got pushed back a couple of years when  he decided to tag along with us on Captain Crunch’s merry pranskster-ish, yellow brick road bus as we headed up and down the West Coast looking, well, looking for the great American West night if nothing else.

 I have now known Josh for over forty years through thick and thin and while we parted ways for a while, he off to write and I to do this and that, the last few years have brought us together like that sneak thief (love variety) pair we were back in the day so I can call him a liar. And I can say so (actually call him out is what I am trying to) in the public prints a place where his is (or was until his recent retirement) well-known as journalist for various left-wing and progressive magazines and newspapers, the ones that wind up in the back hall recycle bin half-read (or unread).

The subject of our current “dispute” centers on whether one “Butterfly Swirl” (real name Karen Riley, Carlsbad [CA] High Class of 1968 the last we saw of her) was a little rock ‘n’ roller heartbreaker, or rather THE rock and roll heartbreaker of his life. Of course Ms. Butterfly was my girlfriend before Josh “stole” her away from me on that merry prankster bus trip but that is not, or only a little, of what burns me up this moment. See I said Butterfly was the heartbreaker of his life and quoted chapter and verse the number of times HE said she was but now Josh has conveniently nominated another girl (young woman) from up in Olde Saco where he grew up (and moved back to several years ago) whom he met when he left the prankster bus and headed home. He met her over at the Sea and Surf Club in Old Orchard and he said that Butterfly was nothing but a surfer girl and not much of one at that compared to one Allison D’Amboise, the heartbreak girl of the ocean night according to Josh. He can tell you about Allison’s virtues sometime but I want to speak of Ms. Butterfly Swirl right now.    

Let me explain how things happened with Butterfly that little rock and roll heartbreaker. Captain Crunch (real name Steve Silverman, Columbia Class of ’58) was a friend, not close as I recall, but a friend of the main merry prankster in those days, Ken Kesey (you can read about him and the whole merry prankster experience in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test),    

and had put together his own merry prankster expedition which was running up and down the West Coast in 1966 and 1967. I had picked up the bus ride accidently when I was hitch-hiking up from Mexico and met them on the Pacific Coast Highway at LaJolla just north of San Diego in the spring of 1967. They were heading north toward San Francisco for some big bust out jail-break cultural thing that was going to change all of us forever (the”summer of love,” and maybe it did). Like I said from then on for a few years I was “on the bus.”

That is where Butterfly Swirl comes in, or rather the times, maybe. Butterfly (like I said before real name Karen Riley, but we were not into real names that year, or for a few years after that either, I was then calling myself The Be-Bop Kid) was nothing but a young girl getting ready to go into her senior year in high school in Carlsbad and that summer, but like a million others then, she was looking, well, looking for something. Now Carlsbad was (is) one of those eternal surfer towns where all the young guys “hang five” or ten or whatever looking for the perfect wave. And in those days all the “hot’ chicks (term of art used then, okay) sat on the sand waiting for those “hot” surfer guys to find the damn thing. Yes, as one can readily see boring, especially if you are waiting on the beach, “hot,” know it, and are looking to break out of the waves yourself and interested in taking no prisoners. That is what drove Karen to our prankster bus when we parked on Carlsbad Boulevard one beautiful blue sky day to take in the view of mother Pacific splashing fiercely to shore.

Butterfly was drawn like a magnet to the by then psychedelically-painted bus.  She talked to a couple of guys, including the Captain, and the rest was history. She came with us up the highway and after a week or so although she was a few years younger than I we were “married,” meaning whatever that meant on any given day on the bus. (I did not find out until later as I was involved with another woman when Butterfly came “on the bus,” a woman who called herself Madame DeFarge in honor of the revolution, French she said, that Butterfly had twisted a couple of other guys on the bus around her finger before she go to me just for a little practice.)

That “marriage” lasted until we hit ‘Frisco and the Prince of Love showed up at a park on Russian Hill where we were parked and was also drawn to the bus, and eventually to my “wife” Butterfly. That affair lasted, hot and heavy lasted, for a couple of weeks and then Butterfly just disappeared one night leaving a short note saying she had to get back to her boyfriend, some golden-tanned, golden-haired water-pruned surfer boy she had left on the beach at Carlsbad forlorn and contrite.

Yah, that was the last we saw of her and Josh was crestfallen for a while. In those days crestfallen was a couple of weeks max, although I sensed for the many months after that while we were together travelling he had something eating at him. Later, like I said, when we talked it over finally he made his first confession, and would do so periodically for many years, years that encompassed three marriages and several other relationship combinations.   But that was then. Now, over forty years later, he comes up with this Old Orchard flame burn-out story. This mermaid from the sea saga about Ms. Alison D’Amboise. And you wonder why I have to call him out publicly on this one.

The thing that Josh said knocked him out about Butterfly was that she was a tall, thin, sandy blond with plenty of personality, especially around guys. Fetching is the word we used at the time (and still do). She would flirt like crazy whenever a guy was within about ten feet of her [maybe five if I recall]. And she knew it, although not in a calculating way but more “here I am boys, take a chance on paradise if you dare.” And that got every guy’s blood up; especially once she got a guy in her sights but wasn’t going to let him get to first base. Jesus, and just 17. Like I said now Josh is calling her just another faded bleach blond sex trap bimbo. Nah, she was nothing but a little rock and roller. Hell, I was glad to get her off my hands at some point (to go back to Madame DeFarge) but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t glad, glad as hell to take a run at her even if I couldn’t keep her. And I still think that.            

From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-When The Scribe Called The New Breeze Coming To The Land-And We Didn’t Give A Rat’s Ass

From The Archives Of The Carter’ Variety Store 1950s Corner Boys-The “From Hunger” Boys Do, Well, Do The Best They Can-When The Scribe Called The New Breeze Coming To The Land-And We Didn’t Give A Rat’s Ass

By Sam Lowell

Seth Garth from the old Tonio’s Pizza Parlor corner boys from the Acre section of North Adamsville back in the early 1960s probably said it best about Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe (that name used by me in earlier pieces was not his moniker until Tonio times when Frankie Riley bestowed it on him after writer some press agent bullshit about him for the high school newspaper. One night after the Scribe had gone on and on about some “fag” (then “fag” in our neighborhood, maybe worse) poem by a guy named Allen Ginsberg called Howl* and then switched gears on the turn of a dime about the plan for that night’s “midnight creep” (read: burglary of some Mayfair swell house, or what passed for such in North Adamsville) Seth called him a “walking contradiction.” I think that fit the Scribe perfectly and I have already given a classic example of my own earlier experience with the Janus-like Scribe personality (Seth did not meet the Scribe until eight- grade in junior high after his family had moved across town. That was when he, secretly, very secretly trusting on me with the secret, worked with some Jewish guy from Adamsville Center to send books to black children in Alabama in the late 1950s when they were trying break vicious Mister James Crow down there (the Scribes term). All the while acting as Carter corner boy leader Ronnie Mooney’s shill doing the big “clip” operations that started our illegal careers in sixth grade and seventh grades.    

(* The breakthrough “beat” poem which made Ginsberg’s career and which, get this, the Scribe would later read sections of only lonely Friday nights in front of Toni’s when we had no dough. Did that until guys, guys including me, who could have given a rat’s ass about the “fag” poem threatened to throw him off the roof of the high school gratis if he did not stop. That would stop him for the night, but he would be back. Funny even now I go to YouTube every now and again when I need some poetic boost to listen to Ginsberg howling forth when the world was young, and we were warrior-kings.)  

I have given some play to later versions of that contradiction but this day my mind is on that good angel part of the Scribe, or at least the part that saw some way out of the hole we were in down in the mud, down in what I call now (what the heck would I have known of such a word then) the totally destructive Hobbesian world of all against all down at the base of society where social solidarity is seen as a sign of weakness, or simple prey for the predators.

I am not sure when he first said the expression probably in early 1960, might have been late 1959 in case when we were still in the projects (my family would to the Bottoms, which is just what it was of the Acres, a year after the Scribe’s at the beginning of ninth grade) but whenever I was blue, or he was, he would say that he sensed “ a new breeze blowing in the land,” that we might after all get out from under. He didn’t exactly explain it in specific terms but I believe that it animated the better angel of his nature for as long as that projected breeze had some promise when it did finally fully unfold in the mid-1960s. He would at least through high school carry that larcenous heart around but it was more like baggage from the past than anything else as long as he felt the uptick.

I think I wrote one time about a bet that the Scribe made with our Tonio’s  corner boy leader Frankie Riley about whether he, the Scribe, would have “the balls” (or some term like that) to go, as he intended, to the Boston Common in the fall of 1960, October I think before the elections which brought our own Jack Kennedy to the White House, to participate in a demonstration called by then famed baby doctor, Doctor Spock, and an organization called SANE to protest nuclear weapons proliferation. Frankie baited him mercilessly on that one since he saw guys like Spock, the Quakers and other bleeding hearts afraid to go toe to toe with the Russians as dupes, commies, and fairies. (That would be a fair estimate of the attitudes of the rest of us except I never took the Scribe as a dupe except maybe to those furious wanting habits that would lay him low over a decade later). The Scribe took the bait, took the bet, a five dollar bet big money in those tight Acre days, (had to take the bet in any case since to not do so meant you lost and had to pay anyway in the ethos of the corner days.) Frankie would have egg all over his face, the Scribe would have his five dollars (and money for a date) and would “win his spurs” in that event (one of the few times he would tell me later when he was really afraid that he would be wasted by a bunch of hoboes and rednecks from South Boston who were egging on the crowds to attack the small demonstration of Quakers, pacifists and other do-gooders in the world).   

That is just the clearest early example of what the Scribe got into. He would lead, try to lead some of us into the coffeehouse folk scene over in Cambridge when rock and roll had kind of gone into hiatus and folk seemed to give some evidence of that new breeze, and girls liked it too. There were other movements and such which the Scribe would bore us with on some desolate Friday night when we could have yet again given a rat’s ass about such things. The big turning point the biggest feather in the Scribe’s cap was his projection of the Summer of Love brewing out in the California sun in 1967 and him jumping into that craziness with all arms, all everything. More importantly dragged me, sensible me, rough and ready Frankie Riley and every other corner boy except Rick Rizzo and David White who had already laid down their heads in bloody Vietnam and now are remember in town square and black granite in Washington out to San Francisco when he came back to get us moving there to see what was what.  

The Scribe had gotten lots of scholarship help when he was accepted to Boston University after graduation in 1964 (I had too at Tufts and Frankie at Boston College). In the spring of junior year though he decided that he had to see what was going on out in Frisco and dropped out of school right after finals I think. That would later prove to be a fateful decision since in the heart of the Vietnam War when the generals were screaming for foot soldiers a student deferment kept you away from the wolves for a while and no deferment leave you at the mercies of your friends and neighbors at the draft board which would snag him in 1969, sent him to Vietnam and create a situation in his head that he never really recovered from. But in the spring of 1967 he was in full blossom to his dream breeze coming true and got so tied up in it that he made special trip back to the Acre to get reinforcements.

We would all go for varying times (I stayed out there until 1970 when that devil draft board began to call my sweet number and I hightailed it back to Tufts, fast) and while series of adventures up and down the West Coast which Seth, Jack Callahan, hell, even straight-laced Frankie Riley have written about a while back when Alex James had his youngest brother Zack write and produce a small tribute booklet to the Scribe on the 50^th anniversary of that Summer of Love. I went through many ups and downs with the Scribe (and on my own as well0 before he fell down in the end but I will always think kindly of the times we spent out West deep in that new breeze he saw coming way before the rest of us did (or gave a rat’s ass about, okay)

The constant reader already knows that I have been teasing the readers of this series with a promise to speak of one Billy Bradley who along with the now well-reported Ronnie Mooney led the Carter’s Variety Store corner boys for good or evil but I have to tell a few stories about the Scribe, about Peter Paul Markin. A guy who off and on for the next twenty years before he fell down, went down hard in Mexico trying to “cure” his eternal wanting habits with a quick score was my best friend, and on good days would acknowledge that on his part, whom I met on the first day of class at Snug Harbor Elementary School in Miss Sullivan’s fourth grade class after we had moved to Adamsville from Riverdale. The Markin stories will help set up the link to Billy Bradley, in fact I would argue that you cannot understand Billy without knowing more about the Scribe (and the tangled three-way relationship between us not always good).

Not so strangely the Scribe was a nerdish combination of mad hatter plans to get out from under the projects life which he was far more sensitive about than the rest of us (although I still feel marked heavily by those formative experiences) and bookish, serious bookish babble of ideas like some ill-regarded prophet related to nothing at all that was crushing our spirits in the projects. I learned that about him the very first day of school by my observing the Scribe the next row over reading a book on American revolutionary Samuel Adams which I said looked interesting. That set the frame rolling as we talked until battered down by old biddy Sullivan’s wrath. That cost us a first day, first day of school if you can believe it, after school detention, the first of many. The Scribe would blow that detention business off (and I would a little toward the end of the year) as some kind of overhead to finding interesting things to talk about in school since nothing like that existed in his household (nor mine either fore that matter. Over the years he would make many calculated decisions in the same holy goof manner (thanks Jack Kerouac) from which way the cultural winds were blowing to how to work the plan for the latest “midnight creep.”    

As unbelievable as I thought it was at the time because I was somewhat shy and a little socially backward that first day the Scribe mentioned that he hung out with a bunch of guys, projects guys all, fourth and fifth grade guys, at Carter’s Variety Store which then (and if you can believe this now as well) was the only place in the whole area to shop for those without cars or who needed a quick item or two.

[My family had moved in a few weeks before school opened in September, so I knew what Carter’s was, had been there getting milk and stuff my mother but I think I only saw the corner boys hanging out maybe once as I scurried home. They looked about my age but I knew from a roughed up experience with the 12^th Street corner boys in Riverdale when I tried to engage a couple of them that you do not talk to corner boys, do not join up on your own but need to be “sponsored” and so I kept my distance.]   


That first day of school was the day I met Ronnie Mooney who I have spilled ink about in five previous installments of this series and who was at the time was becoming the recognized leader of the Carter corner boys. In some funny ways, the Scribe, and me a little less so, didn’t seem to fit the mold of these guys, thugs like Rodger the Dodger, Lenny who would later lay down his head in Vietnam, George, Tiny John and a revolving cast of guys for he was way too “intellectual” for what these guys were about or so I thought. The other side of the Scribe, the screwy gene side, the missing link side, was a truly larcenous heart. Using plenty of his “intellectual” energy to plan and plot, along with Ronnie, various capers, mostly small time but all illegal.

Even that first day the reason the Scribe was so hopped up to meet his corner boys was because he needed a look-out for a clip he was planning at Kaye’s Jewelry near Bert’s Market to grab some stuff and get it converted to cash (fencing it I guess we would call it today). Like I say small time stuff, small down at the base of society where there is never enough of anything and family-sized “no, we can’t afford it” coexist with some furious wanting habits.    

He always had a million schemes going and always a mix between his good instincts like when he proposed to sent books to Alabama so some black children could read* and planning a “midnight creep” to rob some house of its worldly possessions, sell them and live on what he called, we called, easy street for a while.    

(*The Scribe actually acted on that book proposal a little latter on the quiet since the white bread projects were a hotbed of racial animosity for the simple reason, no maybe not so simple reason, that no matter how bad things were in a place like the projects at least the denizens were white and the kids, us, imbibed that idea for the most part even if we did not understand it. Another situation where the Scribe committed me to silence although I have mentioned that episode many times over the years explaining the Scribe’s motions. Guys like Ronnie, Billy too would have crucified him if they had known probably about that project run him out of the projects.

The way the thing worked was that he actually put a small ad in the local newspaper asking for books (he also asked the local branch of the public library, but they turned him down cold). He got a response from a Jewish kid, also a no-no grouping in the projects life where anti-Semitism was more visceral than the black experience since a number of Jewish people lived in the new single-family houses up the road. That kid has some connections, so some books made their way south.)

At the same time, although I don’t remember if that was true with his working the books idea, he would be setting up a scheme to rob a house. Cool as a cucumber. This is where Adamsville Beach comes in again. The first time he proposed the idea to me (I was something like a sounding board for all he listened to me when he was hellbent on an idea) we were sitting at the seawall on the beach, what he called his office. It was in sixth grade, probably the spring, early summer when people would be away, would be away from those newly built single-family homes up the road.

This section, then anyway, was not well-policed (although the Scribe had the police patrol routine worked out) had some distance between houses ( a selling point for crammed in urban dwellers) and each as in all such developments in those days had similar set-ups, including bulkhead entry into the cellars and a breezeway between house and garage that was a joke to break into. The Scribe’s idea was to try the breezeway first, usually the easiest entry since as with many such quickly built structures the thing was flimsy (and probably no developer thought about corner boy midnight creep robbers. If that failed then the bulkhead was the target, an easy target since he had figured out a way to unlatch the doors with a device wedged between the doors, easy stuff really.               

Here it is best to give another contradiction of the Scribe. He was a nerd, was clueless about how to organize such a plan, the working parts. Once he presented the idea to Ronnie and Billy, and then the rest of the guys and suggested he would lead the first raid they balked, were ready to hang his ass in the grass. Christ, he could hardly keep his hands steady doing the “clip” (as I was so we both were lookouts in that juvenile caper). So Ronnie, and then when Ronnie grew away from the crowd Billy, later at Doc’s Harry Devine and at Tonio’s Frankie Riley would be the operational chiefs of such projects.

The one time the Scribe had the bright idea to do a creep on his own he almost got us all arrested when he both miscalculated the police patrol schedule and that the house selected was not empty but had somebody baby-sitting a child inside. Jesus, but when he was “on” his ideas were on point.  Hey, we never got caught for nothing he set up. Maybe it was that beach air that drove him on.   

  

Globalization 101-With Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks “Larry Crowne” (2011) In Mind

Globalization 101-With Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks “Larry Crowne” (2011) In Mind

DVD Review 

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Larry Crowne, starring Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks,  

It was bound to happen. Long after the world has seen the fall-out of both the international financial crisis of the last decade and the long-term trends toward globalization (and Internet-ization if there is such a word I know there is such a concept) Hollywood has come up with a cinematic idea about how that process is affecting the average Joe (or Jane but this film centers on a guy) in America. Long gone are epics about the plight of the family farm which bit the dust in 1980s and films about average working stiff Joes done in by the de-industrialization of America in the Rust Belt which has had current political repercussions with the bizarre and odd-ball Presidency of one Donald J. Trump whose moves since his inauguration are making room for him to take over James Buchanan’s place in the cellar of American President ratings. (James of that last gasp before the Civil War when he bent his knees to the Southern wing of his Democratic Party). The new look is how the average non-college white collar Joe has taken the fall in the latest phase of the race to the bottom. While the plot of this vehicle, Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks’ Larry Crowne, that crown with an ‘e’ as he is at pains to explain, is rather thin in places as social commentary of the times there are some points, a few comic, which are worthy of talking about further.     

Here are some specifics to think about. The title’s Larry Crowne (remember with an ‘e’ and this is the last time I will say it) was a middle-level management type who was pursuing a second career in the retail corporate world at a Wal-Mart wannabe. In his first career he had been a twenty year lifer in the Navy (as a cook). Basically Larry is the go-getter type which every large company is looking for to oversee operations down at the base. Problem: Larry is stuck in that storefront job having been overlooked for promotions losing to lesser employees. Reason: Larry does not have a college diploma in back of his name which the corporate eagles deem a requirement for advancement.

In the cutthroat world of retail that means Larry is out. Hell let’s not be gentle about this. Larry is fired, out, on the street, unemployed. Yeah, I know most large companies, maybe all large companies, would be thrilled to lower their bottom lines by having cheap go-getter labor but we will let that pass. As we will with the idea that a college degree is now required in order to advance in the lower reaches of the corporate world. Just ask those kids with high student debt loans working as wait staff and Uber drivers if I am lying.

Of course Larry had built his life around that second career. Or had wanted to before his firing and his divorce. The long and short of it was that Larry’s assets, his house mainly, were “underwater.” What to do? Well after many rebuffs in the job market (he didn’t want to go back to that cook’s life business) he decided to go to college, to get some new white collar skills in the age of globalization’s new standard of several retraining processes in one’s working life. Obviously Larry was not going to some high-end elite Ivy League school (although they are looking for diversity these days and Larry’s resume might get him some play) but to the more practical junior college system (as it exists in California the scene of the action in this film). So staid middle-aged Larry (although if memory serves Tom Hanks first came on the horizon as a closet cross-dresser in television’s Bosom Buddies which making comic plots about such behavior was not so political incorrect-and insensitive making him very much the high, high side of “middle-aged”) goes to college, takes some courses which will make him globalization marketable in the new international economy.    

Junior colleges in California (and elsewhere) are really diverse operations, maybe more diverse than many four year college campuses so there is a serious mix of racial, ethnic, class and age factors in the student population. Our staid Larry though is something of a hidden gem since a group of younger student “bikers” took him under their wings. Practical Larry seeing that he would never get out from under his debt has abandoned his gas-guzzler SUV for a “bike” purchased from a neighbor who is running an on-going flea market out of his premises. That “bike” business should be explained. I am not talking about some “hog”, and the group he joined as some vision out of the late Hunter Thompson’s evil dirty Hell’s Angels who would put fear is every self-respecting citizen. No, these are motor scooter enthusiasts which after viewing this film will now become a “hip” fad among non-evil, non-dirty folk who want cheap transportation and to be “cool” at the same time.   

Now I have not said word one about Julia Roberts, about Tom’s co-star and her role in this whole plot. As it turns out one of the courses that Larry got a recommendation to take was an “informal remarks”- based speech class. Guess who is teaching the class (and looking ice queen beautiful doing so although she has lost a step or two in that beauty department despite those great high cheekbones)? Yes Professor Tinot, Julias’ role. The good professor though is not a happy camper, seems distressed by her job teaching too social media savvy kids the beauties of the English language (which are still consideration) and getting frustrated by their seeming indifference. Is unhappy with her martial life. Bingo along comes Larry and inch by inch he kind of grows on her (after she finally dumps her blocked, blocked many ways, writer husband) and she on him in the process of Larry becoming a grade A student. 

Yeah, I know, I spent all that time throwing dust in your eyes about Hollywood finally taking a look at what globalization has done to a poor middle-aged, middle-class poor white collar smucks and what they have given us is yet another boy meets girl (okay mature man meets mature woman although some of their actions seem sophomoric) saga wrapped up as a romantic comedy. So fire me. Although this pair, Roberts, Hanks, both have Oscars on their shelves and this film is nowhere near show-casing why they deservedly received them if you have a minute take a peek.  

The Case That Turned A Once Famous California P.I Lew Archer Into A Has-Been-The Road Down To Skid Road Aint That Far-The Jameson Affair

The Case That Turned A Once Famous California P.I Lew Archer Into A Has-Been-The Road Down To Skid Road Aint That Far-The Jameson Affair  

By Seth Garth

You never know what is going to tweak a reader’s interests, especially when it becomes the plural “readers” looking for the same answers. That was the case recently in response to my piece on the late once famous California private detective, snoop, gumshoe, sleuth, keyhole peeper or whatever you call them in your neighborhood Lew Archer (1915-2019) who came out of U.S. Army Military Intelligence after World War II ready to take on Sam, Miles, Phillip, Nick, the legendary Phil Larkin whoever on and become the king of the hill in the profession. Had the early credentials too. I outlined most of that in my very distinct “not an obituary” of the man whom I held in some esteem even as late as the early 1970s when I interviewed him in San Francisco where he was working for P.I. Hall of Famer Sheila Sharp (the first female to make it Dame May Whitty’s attempt was a joke or taken that way by the nominating committee).

You can see all of that in that recent piece but what readers have been wondering about is the case that broke Lew’s streak, brought him low as a big time P.I who would thereafter work his way down to repo work and keyhole peeping and then when he flunked that as the office go-fer (courtesy of Sheila in all cases who never really gave up on him, had a soft spot for when he was in his prime and ripping up crime and criminals until she in exasperation had to let him go when he was dipping into the coffee and crullers petty cash). That was the Jameson case (I have seen it spelled Jamison and Jameston but I will go woth the way it was printed in the Bay Tribune), although Jameson himself was a marginal figure, was one of those poor little rich boys who pined away for some young women when she ditched him for the next best thing and he never got over it) who had, get this, hired Lew out of the telephone directory where he was first on the Greater L.A. P.I. list. The gaff was that this overweight high-roller bum who stilled lived at home with his father sucking up honey buns was hung up on some girl he had known all his life, had planned to marry and she had turned him down cold, or got that way after some sidewalk Lothario lit up her sky. (That young woman, Leila and her own complicated relationship with this new blue Lothario had a few twists and turns which however even a graduate of one of those “become a P.I. in ten easy lessons (plus plenty of dough) used to be featured on matchbook covers could have figured out before lunch).        

   

The reason this Jameson kid, Peter I think, wanted Lew’s services was that he thought this Lothario, hell let’s call him that since he operated under about five different names anyway was a fake, a phony, damaged goods, a bum of the month selection maybe linked up to some bad asses, some hoods from Vegas when that town was still the Wild West unlike today when the glitter is off, way off and grandmothers with slot-machine worthy arms rule the roost. Was either a bagman or muscle or chief skimmer for Lenny Graham when he was king of the hill before the boys from the East headed out to take over. Maybe that is where Lew made his first line of mistakes, working the criminal gangster element grift that every P.I., even though matchbook graduate works from when serious money is involved, a few people are getting stacked up murdered and there is no trace, especially that last part. But P.I. 101 tells you watch out for some misdirection, something out of left field.  

That’s the front, okay the excuse, Lew put up when I interviewed him in the early 1970s as to why he fucked up what looked like a straight up bad guy gangsters case with a few bucks, throw away money by Vegas standards in play which sent him off the rails. The reality was somewhat different when I checked with Detective Sergeant Ames from the Sunnyvale Police Department who had to save Lew’s bacon from being fried, from him being the late Lew Archer back then and from his ex-wife Martha. Actually Martha is the key since shortly before Lew took the Jameson case Martha threw him out of the house, sent him packing leaving him to fend for himself where he was to sleep. She did care whether it was some sleepy motel or under a bridge but not in her house. Martha had gotten tired, very tired of being the social equivalent of a golf widow and even more tired of Lew’s grabbing every piece of ass he could find on a case (an a few times when just standing around). And kind of flaunted that sexual prowess around to the boys in the precinct and at the annual P.I. conventions. Always had some bimbo on his shoulder without fail.

I am not shrink, psychiatrist or anything like that but the way Martha laid out her story part of Lew’s trysts were to prove he could play with the big boys, the legends like Sam who famously had some twist named Mary in the hay and then calm as you please sent her over when the bodies piled up and it looked like he would take the heat for the bundle after she bang-banged them. Guys like Marlowe who took on two wealthy if screwy sisters at the same time, grabbed some silver wig gangster’s wife and a few stray waitresses and female bookstore clerks, hell even a librarian all while putting said gangster to bang-bang heaven. Guys like Lance Lane who never took a case unless it was some frail in distress and he got a little something besides wages and expenses for his troubles. Or the legendary Phil Larkin who to this day is still going after the young lovelies on the Internet, and they are responding. Yeah, so you could say it was the ethos of the then brotherhood to grabbed what could be grabbed in the sex department.           

That ethos appeared to be okay with Lew until he got the Martha toss and then he lost it. What in the old literature was called a “lost of nerve” but which really was sexual impotency, sexual dysfunction anyway. Today even tough, hard guys would on the sly get some help, grab some pills, see a doctor at least but then that was out and so Lew fell down on his own hubris. Just start with the young woman, that Leila, who this clown Jameson hired Lew to drag, kicking and screaming if necessary, away from that half-baked Lothario who had good looks, some patter and some ready cash as well. Had designs on the young woman’s family fortune, which turned out to be non-existent since her philandering and gambling father had dried up the well. She made it clear when Lew interviewed her that a little romp in the hay could be in the cards if Lew laid off her honey. Lew turned her down cold.       

From there strangely enough it was all downhill as Lew got twisted up in some silly story that the Lothario was “connected” with the mob in Vegas, might have been some mobster’s son or protégé. As mentioned before Lew, who previously had thought out all the angles before moving in, leaped all over that and maybe I would have too except our boy was a bright bulb who had gone to college, several and had some pretty bright professors ready to move mountains to get him ahead. That Vegas diversion let Lew fall down a couple more times, especially with the young house-bound wife of some French literature scholar who practically took her clothes off in front of him. Started rubbing him in the groin area, was ready to take him to heaven since her professor had gone stone cold. No sale.

Of course along with the sexual miscues the bodies kept piling up to Lew’s confusion, that young woman’s mother who he for the life of him could not figure in the gangster scenario, the Lothario whom he thought had been the subject of a gangland “hit”, a couple of Vegas types, some mysterious doctor connected to all parties and a guy who paved the way for others, all because Lew was so enthralled with the academics, was so taken in by the bullshit that the big time French scholar put out about not grabbing every young fresh student he could find in his classes. Yeah, like demented professors couldn’t commit a series of murders to keep their lady friends. The coppers, I hate to say, got there just in time before that deranged intellectual was ready to bang-bang Lew, saved his bacon. Now you have as much skinny as a I can tell you about the long sad downhill skid row tale of one Lew Archer. Damn.     

On May Day, Any Day-Stop The Freaking Deportations -This Is An Immigrant Country

From The Archives-May Day 2019 -The International Workers Holiday And Remembrances Of The Haymarket Martyrs   

By Lance Lawrence

Sometimes you get an assignment by default and sometimes by your own ignorance, or inability to keep your big mouth shut. That latter is the case here when a few months ago I mentioned that I had seen something about a group called the Haymarket Martyrs, a bunch of freaking anarchists to some fellow writers around the water cooler (that “freaking” the term I used   since all I knew, know about live anarchists is the ones that guys like Seth Garth and Frank Jackman report on when they are doing pieces on protests and inevitably a cohort of young people, mostly young anyway, show up in black from head to toe but who generally act okay except when a street fight erupts). They laughed at my ignorance since they were almost all steeped in some left-wing political traditions where I was strictly from journalism school. I had needed a job after graduation and the editor here was looking for a non-left-wing political traditions writer, preferably apolitical. I won.   

Greg Green, the editor here told me that the group of mainly immigrant anarchists were framed up by the State of Illinois after a police riot, and more importantly when policemen were killed allegedly by some black hand anarchist groups out to waste cops and the capitalists who hire them. A bunch were executed after bogus trials (and the usual “nobody knows who fired the shots or if it was cross-fire or by other coppers” but that those dead coppers had to be vindicated  and so a bunch of immigrants took the fall) and later some were pardoned after the real story could not be suppressed any longer. Greg not only gave me the lowdown on who these guys were (most famously Albert Parsons whose black wife Lucy would go in to struggle mightily to vindicate her husband and do other great work) but for my own learning curve benefit mentioned that I should look into the origins of May Day which were directly  related to the Chicago events. That too helped by my big mouth reference to the fact that the only thing I knew about May Day was that it was day when as kids we were given little Papier Marche baskets of candy to celebrate some ancient spring rite, some joyous occasion in any case.             

I have hit the highlights of what I learned in that piece about the Martyrs and May Day except it became an important international workers holiday once the Second International, the Socialist International guided by the spirit of international solidarity adopted it as the day of workers’ remembrances, including those anarchists who under later circumstances the socialists would consider “loose cannons.” May Day, short course.        

Happy Birthday To You-In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *The Nitty- Gritty Folk (Oops) Jazz Voice Of Dave Van Ronk- The Traditional Blues Tune “Cocaine Blues”

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.   

Click on title to link to the late folk singer/historian Dave Van Ronk performing in his patented nitty-gritty manner the old World War I era “Cocaine Blues”. Dave insisted, right up until the end on both his last CD (…and the tin can bended, and the story ended) and DVD concert ("Dave Van Ronk At The Bottom Line In 2001”) that he was informed by jazz and considered himself a jazz vocalist. You be the judge, folk or jazz. This ain’t no opera singer though, right?

Cocaine Blues

Every time my baby and me we go uptown,
Police come in and knock me down.
Cocaine all around my brain.

Hey baby, better come here quick,
This old cocaine is ‘bout to make me sick.
Cocaine all around my brain.

Yonder come my baby, she's dressed in red,
She's got a shot-gun,
Says she's gonna kill me dead.
Cocaine all around my brain.

Hey baby, better come here quick,
This old cocaine ‘bout to make me sick.
Cocaine all around my brain.
(Instrumental Bridge #1)

You take Sally, an’ I’ll take Sue,
Ain't nah difference between the two.
Cocaine all around my brain.

Hey baby, you better come here quick,
This old cocaine ‘bout to make me sick.
Cocaine all around my brain.
(Instrumental Bridge #2)


Cocaine's for horses and it's not for men,
Doctor said it kill you, but he didn’t say when.
Cocaine all around my brain.

Hey baby, you better come here quick,
This old cocaine ‘bout to make me sick.
Cocaine all around my brain.

Hey baby, you better come here quick,
This old cocaine ‘bout to make me sick.
Cocaine all around my brain.

*The Nitty- Gritty Folk (Oops) Jazz Voice Of Dave Van Ronk- Bob Dylan’s “Buckets Of Rains”

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.   

Click on title to link to the late folk singer/historian Dave Van Ronk performing in his patented nitty-gritty manner Bob Dylan’s classic FOLK song “Buckets Of Rain”. Dave insisted, right up until the end on both his last CD (…and the tin can bended, and the story ended) and DVD concert ("Dave Van Ronk At The Bottom Line In 2001”) that he was informed by jazz and considered himself a jazz vocalist. You be the judge, folk or jazz. This ain’t no opera singer though, right?


"Buckets Of Rain" Bob Dylan



Buckets of rain
Buckets of tears
Got all them buckets comin' out of my ears.
Buckets of moonbeams in my hand,
I got all the love, honey baby,
You can stand.

I been meek
And hard like an oak
I seen pretty people disappear like smoke.
Friends will arrive, friends will disappear,
If you want me, honey baby,
I'll be here.

Like your smile
And your fingertips
Like the way that you move your lips.
I like the cool way you look at me,
Everything about you is bringing me
Misery.

Little red wagon
Little red bike
I ain't no monkey but I know what I like.
I like the way you love me strong and slow,
I'm takin' you with me, honey baby,
When I go.

Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must.
You do what you must do and ya do it well,
I'll do it for you, honey baby,
Can't you tell?

Happy Birthday Jim Kweskin-The Max Daddy Of Jug- Out In The Kazoo-Driven 1920s Night- The Time Of The Cannon Jug Stompers- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Cannon Jug Stompers performing Big Railroad Blues to give a flavor of the old-time jug music.

Cannon’s Jug Stompers: The Complete Works: 1927-1930, The Cannon Jug Stompers, Yazoo Records, 1989

So Jim Kweskin took a few jugs, a few washboards, a few kazoos, a penny whistle, maybe a couple of fiddles, and a washtub with a string and pole, got some friends like Geoff Muldaur, and Maria Muldaur (nee something else like Donato) to play the damn stuff (and sing too) and created jug music from scratch in the 1960s folk minute night. No, one thousand times, no. The folk minute was about “discovering” roots music. You know stuff from the hills and hollows of Kentucky, or some old labor songs from the 1930s hard class struggle, or some sea island s congregation spirituals from god knows where in outer Georgia (the United States Georgia, okay). So like Bob Dylan, Eric Von Schmidt, hell even Dave Von Ronk, they all torn up the backwoods, or at least the dusty Greenwich Village old records stores, and went hunting for some sound that would satisfy their roots needs (and provide a little cash in the coffeehouse crazed night). And Cannon’s Jug Stompers along with the Memphis Jug Band (and, as it turned out, about seven different state Sheik bands, you know the Mississippi Sheiks, and so on) were must hears if you wanted to replicate any old time jug sound.

Of course the Cannon Jug Stompers didn’t work the Cambridge folk scene back in the day, way back in the day, or some cozy Village club and certainly not some North Beach blow-out be-bop joint but worked the carny shows, the juke joints and the back road houses of the south to very segregated audiences. So while some black guys (and a few women) were wilding the joint up in café society New York or New Orleans with the latest high white not jazz riffs these brothers were working cheap street. So be it. Listen up to Big Railroad Blues, Cairo Rag, Pretty Money Blues and a few others and you won’t worry so much why you don’t miss the jazz notes. And be glad, glad as hell, that Harry Smith, the great American Folk Music anthologist whose anthology all the old folkies (including the afore-mentioned Jim Kweskin Jug Band members) knew by heart including them in his work.

On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Fourth International-*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Anniversary Of His Death- Stalinism and Bolshevism (1937)

Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right?

Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist (I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding.); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s.

I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.