What Did His Father-In Law Say To Her Mother-In-Law-Nothing, Absolutely Nothing- Death To “In-Law” Jokes-Now!

What Did His Father-In Law Say To Her Mother-In-Law-Nothing, Absolutely Nothing- Death To “In-Law” Jokes-Now!

By Steve Lucas, special guest commentary

I am sick unto death of “in-law” jokes, period. Moreover, sick unto death of being the butt of every “in-law” joke that has hit the Lucas-Levine family ever since my son Mark married Marie Levine some twenty-years ago under some very strange circumstances as even I must admit. But to have to every few years, as now, even in retirement, withstand the siege of the Levine devourer machine come family reunion time is beyond the pale, is something I might very well do something about this time. Maybe think something really devious up to ruffle some feathers. Especially, to keep that braggart-roaster Jerry, Jerry Levine, father to dear sweet Marie, and father-in-law to my son Mark even if it was a close thing, the becoming a father-in-law part off kilter.          

    

Let me tell the tale and even the most jaded taste, even the most “live and let live” aficionados will cry to the high heavens with me for vengeance. You might as well know at the beginning that Steve Lucas is not my real name, or at least you should not assume that it is because back about twenty years ago when Mark and Marie sprang the big news that they wanted to get married I was working, well, for the government in a very sensitive capacity. (I will not disclose which agency I worked for since I have something like a non-disclosure agreement with the agency involved some members of whom would be very happy to cut my throat for even mentioning the alphabet soup agency I actually worked for which was so hush-hush in those days only about ten, eleven people know the whole story, or what they think is the whole story.)

Everybody, my son, Jerry Levine, a couple of rogue associates who went free-lancing on their own when they saw a big payday coming up and no desire to share, sided with the bad guys and have yet to be heard from again, assumed it was the CIA and I did nothing to dissuade them from that “front.” The truth is that after the fiasco in Afghanistan, after CIA agents high and low fled like a gaggle of geese when they done supplying the mujahedeen against the Soviets and then dropped out to leave these cock-eyed Arabs or whatever they are to their own devises they have been nothing but jerkoffs and bunglers who I wouldn’t trust to go to the post office to mail a letter if there are any around anymore. They are like the Marines whose last great expedition was in Inchon in Korea around 1950 and they have been living off their respective high points ever since. The alphabet soup “deep state” although we never used that term of art agency I worked for would have had your average CIA operation done before noon with time for a nap before lunch.              

         

Since everything, all the important parts, about that caper has been exposed, been written about by I think Tom Clancy, has been made into a movie starring a guy named Mike Douglas I can fill in some of the information about what I was doing when my Mark laid that bombshell about getting married on me . That while I was on what I will call the Hotel Olga case, although it was not about any hotel (hotels were sites for various aspects of the caper however) but about some rogue ex-Soviet KGB agents grabbing a top of the line (then) Soviet submarine and preparing to sell to the highest bidder, either a state actor whose interests would not coincide with United States interests or a non-state actor who wanted to have the capacity to get, what did Johnny Rocco, the famous gangster out of 1930s Chicago call it, oh yeah, “more,” more dough and power with no heavy lifting.    

The reader does not need to know why I was in Moscow at the time, okay, although that same reader can guess that I was arranging a deal with the Russian guys, agents of the oil oligarchs as it turned out and that as part of the deal agreement was reached that it would be consummated in four days, a Sunday  (not my timetable, theirs, so I couldn’t tip my hand that I needed more time due to “personal” reasons). There is your international intrigue opener but see this mixed in with my having to be in Chicago, yeah, Johnny Rocco’s wide-open Chi town for a party that I was throwing for the young betrothed and to meet the future in-laws, or better fete them officially since I would actually meet them a day or two earlier.  

That “earlier” would set off a train of events which, as I said before I have not lived down to this day. My Mark would be considered a “catch” in today’s meat market, young, good-looking, a lawyer with great prospects and raised by a mother, my ex-wife Donna, who did a good job when I was “working” whatever caper the agency had me running around the world to do. This Marie, a doll, was also a great catch but here is where things broke down and continue to break down on the subject unto this day.  The father, this Jerry Levine, a doctor if you could call it that, a so-called cosmetic surgeon, you know giving well-heeled men and women a tuck here a pull there with no heavy lifting and no particular reason for doing it (except to hear Jerry tell it even today in his own retirement you would think his was the greatest service to build self-esteem since Freud, and cheaper). This guy, a Jewish guy, had about every phobia known to mankind, maybe more, fear of flying, heights, claustrophobia, small spaces, big spaces, guns, or any sense of adventure beyond the usual Saturday country club bullshit that has been going on at least since John O’Hara exposed the whole thing many years ago in an endless series of novels about the vacuous lives of that set. But Jerry had also worked himself up into this fetish for giving his daughter, his Marie, a big wedding, a big sent off and that is how I got bushwhacked, yes, bushwhacked is exactly right into showing up in Chi town when I really needed to be in Paris that weekend to close the deal with the third party I was acting as the middle man for the oligarchs for.     

I might as well tell you since you will find out anyway, or maybe know already if you read the Clancy book or saw the movie, that I was in such deep cover with such a crooked trail of exploits, some even true, known by a bunch of domestic intelligence agencies that during the entire Hotel Olga caper, start to finish, the “feds” were on my ass. (Again, although I have no non-disclosure agreement with this agency everybody assumed it was the FBI, and I let it go as that. Although the FBI probably hasn’t done anything except hassle some has-been Reds since J. Edgar catch John Dellinger with his pants down in some whorehouse in Kansas City and never got over it.) Wouldn’t you know that the “feds” crashed the little pre-wedding reception I had set up in the exclusive Hotel Lennox for Mark and Marie. I was too deep into the case, was too close to wrapping up a serious threat to our national security to let them get to me. So, with their guns drawn, I threw Jerry in front of me to make my escape (and I hear their leader Special Agent Pride is still scratching his head over how I was able to flee, unarmed, with a civilian stiff against his coterie of fifteen gunslingers. Keep scratching.)       

That little silly hostage incident I guess you could call it that meant nothing to me (or history when the deal went down) is really the start of the in-law hassles, the insults. See I had to take Jerry to Paris with me, despite his fear of flying, to see this guy, this hard-ass international gangster, Pierre, not his real name but what the hell, who wanted that freaking submarine to run his dope, his women, his hot cargo, and his guns without hassles via the high tech gadgetry that would be almost undetectable. Like Johnny Rocco Pierre was a “more” guy. A “more” guy with a funny twist though although I had dealt with Pierre several times before on big dope deals and money transfers when Uncle Sam needed some plausible deniability since he was a “fairy,” light on his feet, you know, a homosexual, a gay guy I guess you would call him today. He made a big play for Jerry and I encouraged it although I couldn’t really see good-looking Pierre with an overweight anxious high-end Revlon salesman. In any case nothing big came of it since Jerry was as hetero as you could get but the diversion helped since I got access to Pierre’s computer codes and his money laundering operations.           

A lot of stuff in the spook, spy business and it is usually good for business, good for cover is to have a lot of bullshit out there about how you did this, didn’t do that and so Jerry turned out to be a free ad for me when I had him, fear of heights and all, free-float with me off the tallest building in Chi town. Had him hanging around with “feds” giving them all kinds of wrong information that I had been feeding him all along. And whatever else he is throwing out to his “public” unto this day when my name and how we “met” comes up. Naturally I cleaned up the Pierre case, wrapped it up solo (it is pure bull that Jerry was “with me every step of the way” as he tells the story not in my hearing in capturing Pierre, grabbing some serious dough, 170 mil not bad, and bonking that freaking high-tech submarine to the briny deep and saving a the world from another million stone cold junkies, grifters, sifters, and midnight drifters). Naturally too around the family hearth with the old ladies and gents bored silly and looking for some goose Jerry can pull out the heart-rendering story of how he saved the wedding of Mark and his daughter Marie from a stumblebum derelict like me. A mere in-law. Enough said.   

All The Junkies Were Valiant-Crying Out For Repentance And God Save Us Sinners-The Junkies Have Always Been With Us-The Fixer Man Too- Let Me Count The Ways

All The Junkies Were Valiant-Crying Out For Repentance And God Save Us Sinners-The Junkies Have Always Been With Us-The Fixer Man Too- Let Me Count The Ways

By Fritz Taylor

I have calmed down a little, come off my high horse a little about the subject of a piece I did a couple of articles back. The article supposedly about famed crime novel (and friend of young Rav Wilson who has caught on at this publication recently) Lem Kane’s switch over to police procedurals from the previous slam bang of private detection he had built his solid no non-sense but also take no prisoners reputation on but really about the hard reality of what the public coppers in places like Fort Point Estates down in Fulton County Georgia did, or did  not do about crime and criminals. Fort Point Estates being not some arbitrary example but the place where me and my kin going back a couple of generations grew up and lived. A place where northerners like Seth Garth and Ralph Morris who grew up in the same kind of places maybe more properly call “the projects.” Not the fucking pretty picture by-the numbers- squeeze a clue a page out police procedural where the coppers actually don’t grab every freebie coffee and cruller not nailed down if you can believe that but follow the leads to their logical conclusions providing some closure to the case, and maybe to some desperate redemption seeking family. And not the pretty boy and girl television bull either where in something like forty-two minutes they are calling whatever the case is “a wrap.”

The reality. The Fort Point Estates reality was basically nothing but the public coppers from top to bottom as I found out much too late in the case of Captain Dorian who ran the police substation on site before he wound up being run into the state pen not for the high crimes he let get by, let his men get by with but for stealing some city materials like copper tubing and selling the stuff on the black market except maybe hold their grubby little hands out for whatever pocket change they can scoop up from the fixer man, grifters, and pimps. In the priority of things copper the fixer man was king, followed by the pimps and then the grifters with their ten-percent dreams and discount prices.  

I mentioned in the previous two pieces in what appears seems to be a short series brewing that the public coppers worked hand in hand with the local owner of the only variety store, the only place in the area to get provisions especially if like lots of residents including my family at times you had no automobile to get to other places. That guy, Jimmy Bob Carter (and his wife always called Lady Vivian but I am not sure why) not only sold milk and bread but ran the local “book,” ran the whores out of his upstairs space and was the fixer man for the junkies and hopeless who needed a little something for the head, a little something to get through the day, days really. (As far as I know the stuff was mainly opiums, morphines, maybe cocaine although that seemed a stretch for the time since a lot of the fathers in the Estates had been veterans from World War II and had grievous injuries for which they had been doped up with say morphine before they had been discharged ready or not and needed a little something besides corn liquor to clear their heads, to ease the fucking pain.) In any case sitting there with hands at the ready and not accepting cheapjack crap like free coffee and crullers were the local public coppers who freely placed their bets in the “book” left right out on the open counter,  grabbed a whore or two and fled upstairs and looked the other way when Jimmy Bob did up his bindles, eight balls, and grams.        

Those remembrances, seemingly forgotten memories from a time when I, and all the kids I grew up with down there, learned way too early about the hard side of life how some stuff comes up to the surface. Like the time I was standing at Carter’s Variety, at Jimmy Bob’s front really for all the overpriced provisions he actually had in the store, trying to decide on what kind of cheapjack candy I wanted when a couple of coppers came in straight from their patrol car, in uniform picked up Jimmy Bob’s “book” and put down their bets and nobody said nothing. Or the time that Captain Dorian grabbed Jimmy Bob’s lead whore, Lula, and ran her up the stairs to do what of course then I didn’t know but it wasn’t to pray to the Lord like the Captain did on Sunday morning with his wife and five children at 7^th Street Baptist. Here’s a last example, a couple of coppers sitting in their squad car when a couple of known local junkies (they were notorious even among us kids who didn’t know squat about drugs or the seamy side of life for going “on the nod” at the little beach front about fifty yards down from Carter’s) walked into Jimmy Bob’s  looking like hell and coming out like they had just found Jesus (and maybe they had). Got “well” in any case.

Once you start dredging though who knows. I have had plenty of reasons not to trust, and at times to hate the public coppers no matter how nice and pretty they make them appear to be on cop television shows (although usually not on the daily news where they get the old see-saw). As mentioned in the last piece I had almost forgotten about the most notorious case that came out of the Fort Point Estates no good copper racket, the case of Tara Lee Parker. The murder most foul of Tara Lee Parker, which was never solved, maybe they never wanted solved. Tara Lee had been a classmate of my oldest brother, Lester, so he knew more about what happened than I did as a twelve-year old boy hardly up to date on sex and sexual depravity and sheer craziness. Tara Lee was maybe sixteen when she dropped out of school, according to Lester who had her in some of his classes.

I guess Tara Lee, was never much of a student, was known to the older crowd as a girl who liked to walk on the wild side, who ran away from home who knows how many times. Got a reputation for all kinds of depraved doings but that stuff I learned later for the word around the Estates when her name came up was slut, whore, pig and cocksucker, stuff like that. Eventually she got into Jimmy Bob’s stable, his good time girls, his girls who would go to the “game room” which is what he called his upstairs operation to do whatever. It was well-known to be frequently by richer guys from the Cherokee Hills section of town, the old money cotton and textile mills money that kept that section afloat. You would see cars, American cars, expensive American cars like Cadillacs and Lincolns, definitely not Estate cars like a Nash Rambler, in front of Carter’s Variety day and night. And young stuff like Tara Lee was there to service their needs.                

Now I didn’t know, still don’t, know all the arrangements that Jimmy Bob had had with his clients, but I guess for an extra price guys could take their whores elsewhere to do what they were going to do. That turned to be the downfall for one Tara Lee Parker. One morning some early morning fisherman found her body against a sullen tree truck along the swollen Dam River cut up bad I heard, cut up in a very sexually depraved way when I understood such things better later. The last guy seen with her was Gary Lyons, the son of the major mill operator in town in those days who employed a number of Estate fathers in his works for cheap pay, who had a serious reputation as a wild boy with the women.   

Here is where I will rant, here is where even over fifty years later I cry out for some closure for Tara Lee Parker. The coppers, Captain Dorian in the lead knew that she had a few off-kilter clients, including Gary, from the Cherokee Hills. Knew she had been out with some guy from there that night of her death because she had taken off with him in a Lincoln, the Lyons favorite car. Did they ever do anything to check Gary out, to check where he had been, who he had been with. Do anything but close down the investigation after about two days. No, and I would hear from a shaken Lester once he heard what had happened to Tara Lee that some two-bit copper said that more than two days was too much time to spent on the murder of a bent whore, that she was doomed anyway so forget about it. Yeah, run that remark on cop television shows why don’t you.

On top of the indecent way that the public coppers handled the case which is worth its own rant I have been informed by a reliable source that Gary Lyons, who would take over the family mill operations before sending them off-shore to Mexico and living the life of some kind of playboy passed away a couple of years ago. According to my source among the effects found in his mansion when they cleared things out was a pair of very old, very soiled women’ underwear with the initials TLP on them, other pairs as well in various conditions and apparently from later times. Too late for some serious justice but at least my brother Lester who really was broken up about her horrible death now has an idea of what happened and who did the foul deed.   

Honor The 150th Anniversary Of Lincoln's Preliminary Emanicipation Proclamation-September 22, 1862

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Emancipation Proclamation

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren

If You Want The Stuff Senator Bernie Sanders Has Been Talking About For A Million Years Including Out In The Wilderness When It Was Not Fashionable About Medicare For All, Eliminating Student Debt, The Fight For $15 (Hell Now More Than That) To Happen Accept No Substitutes-Fight For Bernie 2020 Not Come Lately Elizabeth Warren  

In Honor Of The King Of The Folk-Singing Hard-Living Hobos The Late Utah Phillips -From The Archives- *Labor's Untold Story-James P. Cannon On Wobblie Organizer Vincent St. John

Click on title to link to tribute by ex-Wobblie James P. Cannon on the IWW organizer Vincent St. John.

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

The Junkies Were Valiant-Crying Out For Repentance And God Save Us Sinners-The Junkies Have Always Been With Us-The Fixer Man Too-Hell, No, I Don’t Want No Whores Out On 8th Avenue

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Give Me Headlights, Streetlights, Hell Even Gaslights, But Don’t Leave Me Here To Fend Off The Wolves And The Deadly Fishes By Myself

Give Me Headlights, Streetlights, Hell Even Gaslights, But Don’t Leave Me Here To Fend Off The Wolves And The Deadly Fishes By Myself

By Will Bradley, Junior

I don’t know if under the now couple of year old editorial management of Greg Green it is a requirement that you have to be what somebody, one of the old-timers, called a city-slicker, a denizen of the urban landscape to the exclusion of maybe heading to say the Grand Canyon for a vacation or the wiles of West Egg  in Long Island down the road. It sure looks and sounds like it though when you go around the water cooler to hear people talk about where they have been or where they are going. Plenty of talk about Paris, London, Berlin, Frisco town, LA but not a peep about say King’s Canyon or Yosemite, or even Hoboken down New Jersey way. Under normal circumstances that is fine with me since I was born and raised just a shade off of Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. So I appreciate the streetlights, the safe noise of automobiles (except maybe that incessant buzzing when a car alarm goes off forever), people walking, talking, maybe loudly   to and fro at all hours and the convenience of say all-night drugstores and supermarkets (to speak nothing of gin mills open until very early in the morning).     

Others seem to share my good sense, so it was rather weird, startling to find myself being assigned by that very same editor to go report on the doings in a place called Lake Dennison located near the New Hampshire border in Massachusetts. Not just any doings but the doings of his friends Jane Rugg-Hurley and David Hurley who have been going up to that locale every summer for something like twenty-five years to camp out, to do a thing called kayaking, another thing called canoeing, some bird-watching which I have previously heard that people do, some fishing also heard of (for supper no less) and, let me put this one in quotes “communing with nature” for a couple of weeks.

The genesis of this assignment is of some interest since apparently from what Greg told Seth Garth when he turned the assignment down flat Jane and David had been putting increasing pressure on him, Greg, to both come up and do that “communing with nature” business and to write a story about the place and them. Naturally Greg claimed “conflict of interest” in that he could not possibly do justice to a story where he knew the parties so well. That led to his first asking Seth to do the deed knowing full-well that if Seth ventured these days further than 125^th Street he would get a nosebleed or some other horrible injury. Also knowing that the senior staff the way things are set up now to a person have the right of first refusal on any assignment (the privilege does not go the other way with grabbing juicy ones that is done in some totally byzantine way as far as I know). Everybody, every senior person, suddenly aware of their physical well-being if they could not see a streetlight nearby, could not run to CVS at 2 AM or order take-out after midnight exercised that right. Leaving a junior person, me, Will Bradley to carry the spear on this one.       

  

Greg, who had originally wanted me to stay a week finally settled on three days once I balked and pointed out that I had done the hatchet job on hoary legend of so-called private detective Sherlock Holmes and his in-house lover Doc Watson for him when every senior person bailed on that one. I was off one sunny August morning heading north through Connecticut and up to the borderlands (meaning where the trees outnumbered the houses by a lot). Despite all the advances in modern technology, Google Maps, GPS, travailing, concerning putting together a simple directions package when push came to shove I got lost in a place called Gardner for the very simple reason that once you get out in the boondocks all the modern technology in the world will not help if you are not satellite-connected, if you fall out of range. To start the sojourn off on the wrong foot Jane and David had to come to some location, a couple of streets I could identify to meet me in order to follow them to their campsite.

This campsite needless to say was fairly primitive meaning you had to chop and cut firewood or I guess buy some in order to cook meals or whatever else you need a campfire for when no stove or microwave is available. Meaning that your bodily function needs were addressed by some compost, environmental commode I never could figure out but which smelled to high heaven. Meaning also that despite the real-world jobs and money that the Hurleys possessed, which I found out later was considerable, they were “roughing” it in a dinky camper/jerry-rigged tent setup they had been using for years. Meaning on the latter a place where I was also set up to sleep in.

I won’t even describe the ordinary function hassles of camp life except to say I am not quite sure how the Union Army did what they did based on their camp life doings that I have read up on. I really didn’t sleep much but I don’t want to dwell on that stuff or the hardcore problems with daily hygiene since this is a “mood” piece, a piece about my reaction to that “communing with nature” noise that Greg advised me to center the article on. Meaning how the Hurleys (and their assorted brethren of the camps) spent their days. Day number one centered on this kayaking business which they were all excited about since they were so close to the lake that all they had to do was to slip the boat, ship or whatever the hell it was from the nearby lakefront and they were waterborne. Yes, they had no problem maneuvering their two-person kayak but when they showed me how to deal with this object (including the thankfully obligatory lifejacket) and I was actually in the water I flipped over, capsized they called it. Same thing the next day with the canoe which was supposed to be a little more stable but despite lifejacket at the ready was as capsize-worthy as the freaking yellow day-glo kayak.   

But that is all in a day’s work for a “city-slicker,” to be expected I guess for somebody who is woods and lake clueless. What was truly weird, what was scary to these ears were the desperate ravenous howls of the wolves who kept their noise up all night and throughout the day as well and who sounded like they were about fifty feet away (which they were not but some kids spotted a couple within the camp grounds). Here’s the real madness, the reason I am glad as hell that we are in an increasing urban country complete with those beautiful streetlights and other civilized amenities like a local Whole Foods market to buy real food. David decided on that very last day of my “imprisonment” to take me along with him as he went fishing (for supper he said). That seemed simple enough at the time but when we got to his favorite bountiful location along the lake about fifteen minutes from their campsite and he set up his and my fishing poles somehow I snagged a fish, some fearsome looking fish that I swear bit me, had teeth although David claimed it was only a Lake Dennison bass and harmless.

Fortunately I was able to get out of that locale alive without further damage but I swear despite all the good cheer of the Hurleys and how nice they must be when they get back to the city I think they have been out in the woods too long, too many years. Told Greg as much when he wanted to balk on printing this last paragraph. 

   

         The latest from Lake Woe Begone 

Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” In Mind

Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” In Mind 

By Lance Lawrence

A tear comes to my eyes every time I hear the name Johnny Cielo, yes, Johnny, one of Icarus’s latter- day sons who was a pioneer in aviation when that was tricky business-when flying by the seat of your pants really was something more than a quaint saying. (By the way for passport trouble purposes, for cons and scams, for ducking the law, John Law he called them Johnny Cielo had many aliases; Johnny Too Bad, Johnny Blade, Johnny Blaze, Blaze Johnson, Johnny Icarus, Izzy Johns and who knows how many other those are just the ones I remember but I will use his real name, assuming that it is for my purposes here). Yes, Johnny was a piece of work, was somebody who gave as good as he got and who had that flight dream from very early on, from the first day he heard about Wilbur and Orville Wright and their successors. Johnny though was strictly a fly boy adventurer, although he could have had a piece of Alleghany Airlines and lived on easy street for the rest of his life. Could have been flying Piper Clubs for the country club rubes to gawk over. But our Johnny was not built that way, didn’t want to become an extended cycle repair shop guy, didn’t have Howard Hughes’ overweening desire to own it all, whatever “it” was for the moment.       

Some people, even people knowledgeable about the history of aviation in America, have claimed they never heard of Johnny Cielo until you mention the Barranca air service set-up. Then they are all ears-not so much about the aviation part, the desperate flights to get the mail out, to get stuff delivered to impossible places, but about Johnny’s red-hot affair with film siren of the 1930s and 1940s Rita Hayworth. Yeah, there was plenty of truth to his exploits with the females, with high class dames like Rita back then. Rita who was every military guy’s favorite pin-up and if not then second. Johnny led Rita a merry chase, had her abandoning that very promising and lucrative Hollywood career to follow him to the wilds of Barranca down in Central America and then ditched her leaving her no choice but to grab the next best thing (this before the Aga Khan took his run at her and snagged her for a while-even “a while” most guy’s idea of heaven). Left Rita for some vaudeville tramp down on her uppers, somebody who couldn’t even stand in the same room as Rita but Johnny was funny that way-would stay with one woman just so and that not long. Told them straight out his fly-boy life was it and he did not expect a woman, wouldn’t ask a woman to follow him where he was going. And he was right, just ask Rita who did and got not even a by your leave.   

Maybe it is better to begin at the beginning, or at least how Johnny got down on his own uppers so bad he had to take a shot a running a fool’s errant airline down in sunny Banana Republic Barranca. Johnny got deep into running dope, you know, marijuana, opium stuff like that way before most people even know what the hell illegal drugs were about from sunny Mexico up north. Did it for a few years, made a ton of money and proceeded to blow it on dames, various experimental airplane projects and hand-outs to every drifter he ran across. Then one day an agent for whatever cartel he was working for at the time, such things are murky and best left murky told him he was through, that they had some new boy, their boy who would run the merchandise.

Johnny thereafter needed work, needed it bad to keep up with the fresh but expensive Rita. Nothing doing around America for a guy whose last job was a dope smuggler so he headed south to Central America when his old friend and comrade Letts Fagan said he had a deal for him if he came fast. The deal was a secured route for a mail and express delivery for everything south of Mexico to what the hell Antarctica if he wanted to go that far if they could set up the route through some pretty tough terrain in the days when propeller was king and planes still wobbly in inclement weather. Heading out he told Rita he was going, he didn’t expect her to follow, wouldn’t ask her to but can you believe she said “let’s go” and as a sign of her own seriousness she was ready the next day to travel-a world record maybe for a woman with a big wardrobe and plenty of luggage to pull off. Johnny was impressed-and pleased.      

Things started out pretty well for Johnny and Rita and Johnny and his new airline. Looked like he would meet all the deadlines imposed by the contract and by his own daring. Pulled a few rabbits out of the hat to get through a bunch of horrible weather to deliver whatever there was to deliver-typical Johnny Cielo magic. Then the roof caved in, or rather that tramp from some northward-bound tramp steamer trampled into town looking for some sweet sugar daddy- or a Johnny kind of guy. She wasn’t choosey especially when she found out that Johnny was carrying Rita in tow. Two minutes after she saw him she had him in a backroom at Lett’s restaurant doing whatever she wanted, whatever he wanted. (We are all adults and know what was what but when some guy, some Johnny latter-day devotee wrote up his biography the guy left the hard sexual description part out, just like they were doing in the films in those but you know as well as I do, and I know, because before the end Johnny told me, it was oral sex, a blow job, said she was good at that, Rita too, but you had to coax Rita and not the tramp.)

Okay even tramps have names, as if it mattered to Johnny or any other guy when a woman leads him to some backroom, so hers was Jean, Jean Smith I think Johnny said she called herself. Like I said Johnny had a fistful of aliases, so she probably did too. She was from nowhere, had done nothing but was something new and shiny for Johnny and that was that. Of course two dames, a glamour gal and a tramp or any combination thereof, working the same guy in the small blistered and balmy town are not going to make anything work in the end. That was when Rita blew town, went back to Hollywood to be knocked off by the Aga Khan for a while until she got bored. (The funny thing and even that biography guy didn’t know about the situation until I sent him a letter and he looked the stuff up after Rita blew that Moslem prince off and went back-where else Hollywood not Brooklyn or wherever she was from she and Johnny went under the sheets again for a while until she blew him off-nice trick. Johnny always spoke highly of his sassy redhead after that though-always had that glean in his eye when he mentioned her name. 

The tramp won round one. A big win but Johnny was all business for a while trying to make the nut with that fucking two-bit contract that must have been written up by a Wall Street lawyer it had so many escape clauses for the owners. Johnny had by his own reckoning, a half dozen ex-World War I planes of no repute, or something like that to get the mail and goods over the hump. Tough going, very tough as he lost a few guys who like him would rather die than not fly so they took risks, big risks, just for the hell of it. And nobody, Johnny made sure of that, mourned out loud about the dead guy, grabbed his smack sack possessions and divvied them up so no moony stuff. After one guy got, a guy who was supposed to buy this Jean a steak when he tried to make a play for her behind Johnny’s back, to sit with the angels, that what they called it she sniffled up and Johnny told her to shut up or follow Rita (Johnny could be cutting). Here’s the real deal Johnny part though-five minutes after the guy flamed out Johnny was a sky pilot taking the undelivered load over the hump and back in some kind of hurricane. (That “hump” not the Burma World War II hump that almost broke the backs of English and American pilots but through Condor Pass the next country over from Barranca.)   

When Old Pete Ruled The House-With Banjo Man Pete Seeger In Mind

When Old Pete Ruled The House-With Banjo Man Pete Seeger In Mind  

CD Review

By Zack James

Pete Seeger: headlines, footnotes and-a collection of topical songs, Pete Seeger, Smithsonian/Folkways, 1999

“You know you are wrong Seth about that first time we heard folk music, Woody Guthrie folk music in Mr. Lawrence’s music class back in seventh grade at old Jeramiah Holton Junior High,” Phil Larkin told one Seth Garth former old time music critic for the now long gone The Eye. Paid music critic a not unimportant point back in the day when alternative newspapers like The Eye survived and flopped on the sweat of unpaid unrequited volunteer labor and today too when the social media are flooded with citizen critics by the barrelful and everybody claims some expertise. Paid or not though Seth had called up Phil to verify what his fellow folk aficionado Jack Callahan and more recently drinking partner at the Erie Grille had told him when he had called upon Jack to refresh his memory about the first time he/they had heard a Woody Guthrie song. Jack had told Seth about the time that Mr. Lawrence had tried to unsuccessfully ween the class away from their undying devotion to the jail-break rock and roll music that was sweeping up youth nation just then. Then being the late 1950s. Seth had accepted what Jack said because he was after all a fellow aficionado, even if Seth had had to shoehorn him into the genre at the beginning and because he knew that Jack would not spread word around that Seth was not totally on top of every bit of arcane folk music lore around.  

So it was a reputation thing Seth was worried about even these many years later. He had mentioned Jack and his conversation at the Eire to Phil in passing one afternoon and Phil had said he would think about any possible earlier listening. This was important since Seth had become very cautious about using any information not fully verified ever since early on in his journalistic career he had made the cardinal error of not checking out hearsay and rumor fully. He was berated by his tough editor for that mishap. Never again. So he was using his double check method on this question since he had been asked to write an unpaid article about the old folk days for the prestigious American Folk Song Review.    

Phil continued the conversation by telling Seth, “Tell that jackass Jack Callahan didn’t he remember that in fourth grade Miss (now Ms.) Winot had played This Land Is Your Land  on that old cranky record player of hers in order to teach us some kind of  civics lesson, taught us that we were part of a great continental experiment. Remember that she had played the Weavers’ cover of that song with Pete Seeger doing that big bass voice thing and some other guy whose name I don’t remember was booming out the baritone and Ronnie Gilbert who just passed away was doing a big time soprano thing.” Jesus, Seth thought to himself Phil was right, right as rain. The two spoke of a few other non-music issues and then they both hung up.           

That was not the end of it for Seth though, not for his article anyway. See Phil’s mentioning of the name Pete Seeger had sent a chill down his spine. Pete Seeger, and only Pete Seeger had been the reason that he had been ever cautious about sources. Back in 1965 he (and Jack and Jack’s then girlfriend now wife, Kathy, and he thought Mary Shea was his date) had attended the Newport Folk Festival that summer. That was the summer that Bob Dylan exploded the traditional folk universe by introducing the electric guitar into some of his songs. Did so on the stage the final night of the festival to boos and applause. Seth had been working his very first job as a free-lancer for the East Coast Other, another of the million small publications starting up and falling trying to find a niche in the print universe (free-lancer by the way since the usually cash-stripped publication had nobody else going to the concert so Seth got the assignment).   

Here is where Seth had gotten into trouble though. He had a friend, a sound man friend who worked at the Club 47 in Cambridge who was doing duty at that job for the festival. A couple of days later he had run into the guy in Harvard Square and had asked Seth if he knew what had happened on the stage the night Dylan went electric. The guy swore that Pete Seeger had at some point pulled the plug on Dylan in disgust at taking folk music out into the common trough of rock and roll. Seth could hardly believe his ears-this was the hook that he would run his story on. In the event he put this hearsay into his article. No big deal, right. Just something to spice up the piece. The article was published with that information in it. No problem for a while. About a month later he was called into Larry Jeffers office, the editor of the East Coast Other then and shown a personal letter to the publication from Pete Seeger disclaiming the whole story about pulling the plug on Dylan and was looking for a retraction. Seth immediately went to the Club 47 to check with the sound man. It turned out that the sound man had not actually seen Pete pull the plug but had heard about the story from one of Dylan’s sidemen. The newspaper issued a retraction and Seth had egg all over his face.          

The whole story of whether Pete Seeger pulled the plug or not on Dylan became part of the urban legend of the folk scene and still has devotees on both sides of the dispute long after Pete is dead and Dylan in out on another leg of his never-ending tour. But you can bet six two and even that one Seth Garth will be checking sources to see if Miss (now Ms.) Winot was the original proponent of Woody Guthrie’s music. Enough said.     

When Mister Beethoven Got Rolled Over-With The Music Of Mister Chuck Berry In Mind

When Mister Beethoven Got Rolled Over-With The Music Of Mister Chuck Berry In Mind

CD Review

By Zack James

Chuck Berry: The Definitive Collection, Chuck Berry, Chess Records, 2006 

You never know when two or more old guys, two or more mature forget the old unless you seek peril gals too but this one is about guys, will gather down memory lane or what will trigger that big cloudburst. Seth Garth and Jack Callahan two old time friends from high school in Riverdale had an abiding interest in music successively rock and roll, the blues and folk music (never losing interest in any in the process just that one would wax and wane at any given time). Seth had eventually become as an early part of his journalistic career a music critic for the now long defunct The Eye, an alternative newspaper out in the Bay Area in the days when he, Jack and a few other guys like Phil Larkin headed out there to see what everything was all about in the intriguing Summer of Love, 1967.

Recently though Seth and Jack, and occasionally Phil would get together and talk music shop at the Erie Grille where they would down a few scotches to level out (their expression). One night they had been at Seth request discussing the first time they had heard the legendary Woody Guthrie sing his songs, or one of them anyway. As it turned out Seth had drawn a blank on when that might have occurred and he begged Jack to think the matter through since he was preparing an article, an unpaid article, for the American Folk Music Review and needed a frame of reference. Jack had come up with the answer-in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh grade music class when he put on Woody and a bunch of other stuff to try to ween them off rock and roll which the man hated (and which they loved, loved to perdition). Seth had accepted that answer (although later he contacted Phil again about the matter and Phil reminded him about the song This Land Is Your Land covered by the Weavers with Pete Seeger in Miss Winot’s fourth grade class on her cranky old record player and he would use that source in the article).     

All this talk of that fateful seventh grade music class, and Mr. Lawrence, is probably what solidified everybody in the class in their devotion to rock and roll. But that was a hard fought and paid for devotion. A few days after the night with Jack at the Erie Grille Seth woke up from a nap thinking about the time in Mister Lawrence’s class when he was being crazy about Beethoven, wanted the class to appreciate classical music.  Seth, Jack and Phil had had enough and started in one class singing Chuck Berry’s throwing down the gauntlet Roll Over Beethoven and the class cheered them on. Of course in this penalty-ridden world Mr. Lawrence took his revenge and the trio spent several afternoons after school since they refused to apologize for their outbursts. Seth smiled to himself-Yeah, rock and roll will never die. To prove that assumption just listen to Mister Chuck Berry’s gold star compilation here. And be prepared to do something rash.     

From The Archives Of The Struggle For Peace In Maine-From Peace Marches To Protecting The Good Green Earth And Space As Well !

The struggle for peace in Maine, as elsewhere, is driven by a thousand small events, created by a thousand small individuals who have this funny little idea that one, they can make a difference, and two, that we can live in a more peaceful just world and they are the heralds of the new dispensation. How about that.  

Join Keep Space For Peace Week -October 5-12 2019-And The Rest Of The Year Too!

The struggle for peace in Maine, as elsewhere, is driven by a thousand small events, created by a thousand small individuals who have this funny little idea that one, they can make a difference, and two, that we can live in a more peaceful just world and they are the heralds of the new dispensation. How about that.  

From The Archives And Proof Positive Senator Bernie Sanders Has A Sense Of Humor Despite Off-Handed Comments To The Contrary-Elect Bernie Sanders POSTUS 2020

Once Again-The Summer Of Love,1967-Postcards From  Lost Planet

By Jeffrey Thorne

The Scribe said it best one night, one cold San Francisco night, a summer night when the Japan currents went awry and reminded one of old Mark Twain’s witty sayings about the coldest winter he had ever spent-August in the city of sweet brethren Saint Francis, when he declared (so like that mad man to use the seventh person imperative for such small letter events), that the breeze coming through the land would shake society to its foundations. Would make nine to five a bore, make that long suburban tract complete with dishwasher and sanitary garbage disposal obsolete before the last mortgage payment hit the dirt, would make those three point two kids and that one dog a victim of old-fashioned thinking. Said, get this for a guy who became a non-believer, a non-believer in risen Christ if you can believe that very early in his teens (and went to church, side door church just to sit a few rows behind some lovely he was pining over just to watch her ass so yes a non-believer) that the new dispensation was at hand-if we could keep it, keep the bastards, and you know who the bastards were then-the night-takers and guys who conned you into nine to five dreams, suburban flats and, what was it three point two kids (we will pass on the not mandatory dog) from barking at the door.   

That was the rub, that little counter attack from out of the blue when we thought the world had stopped turning on itself

and had gone upside down that eventually would do in even the Scribe, would turn his mouth to ashes, would turn a sainted brethren (not many knew his given name was Francis in those days when everybody was “reinventing” themselves including clustering up new monikers to get washed clean (also a Scribe expression) down the gutter road, float him out to the Japan seas long before he ever heard the Duke blast that high white note. Yeah, blast the times, blast the whole fucking world for taking down a brethren as pure as snow.    

Happy, Happy 100th Birthday Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti-Max Daddy Of Famed “City Lights Bookstore” In “Beat” San Francisco When It Counted And Muse Of His Generation’s Poets

Happy, Happy 100^th Birthday Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti-Max Daddy Of Famed “City Lights Bookstore” In “Beat” San Francisco When It Counted And Muse Of His Generation’s Poets

A Ferlingetti Of The Mind – The Documentary Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth Of Wonder

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder, starring Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the usual cast of 1950’s “beat” and 1960s “hippie” characters  

Yeah, you know at some very young age, well before puberty, most of us get our natural stock of wonder beaten out of us, wonder at the world, wonder about why this is this way and that is that way, and the funny makeup of the nature of the universe, hell, just plain ordinary vanilla wonder. That is why poets, good and bad, are precious commodities in restoring the human balance, in letting us once more check in on the wonder game which their words, their particular scheme of words since they have not had their sense of wonder beaten out of them (no matter how hard in individual cases someone might have tried). Every self-respecting radical or progressive in some other field like, for example, Karl Marx in political theory has treasured their friendships with the poets, and rightly so no matter how quirky they get. That quirkiness and the precious commodity of wonder get a full workout by one self-described anarchist poet, Lawrence Ferlinghett as his life’s story unfolds in the documentary under review, Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth Of Wonder.      

Today perhaps not as many people outside of the San Francisco Bay area may be as familiar with the work of Ferlinghetti, although A Coney Island of the mind is one of the best selling poetry collection ever, and this film makes some amends for that short-coming. Of course the Ferlinghetti name might become more familiar in some circles if you put the name with the City Lights bookstore that he founded and which is still going strong today as a central haven for creative spirits in the area. Or for legal buffs and aficionados his connection with the “pornography” free of expression suit brought in the 1950s around publication of Allen Ginsburg’s Howl. That connection between poet and bookstore owner get plenty of exposure here as it should since it is hard to think of say Allen Ginsberg or Gregory Corso two poets active in that same period combining those two skills.

This film, since it doubles up as a short biopic as well as cultural artifact gives plenty of information about the long bumpy ride for Ferlinghetti to first begin unleashing his poetic visions and then tie those words into a new left-wing (as mentioned above, anarchist if anybody is asking) way of looking at society. Not so strangely a lot of his emergence as a poet and central cultural figure was connected when he hit San Francisco in the early 1950s. If  he had found himself in let’s say Cleveland at that time things might have turned out very differently for Frisco along with the Village in New York were oases against the prevailing cookie-cutter, keep your head down, Cold War red scare night where the misfits and renegades found shelter and kindred.        

Of course beside the poetic vision and the bookstore as cultural expression Ferlinghetti, as the film also makes clear, was one of those behind the scenes players who make new cultural explosions happen. He was, although not a “beat” poet himself (his take on the question) and although he was not a “hippie” poet either he was a central figure in both movements as be-bop beat gave way to acid-etched hippie-dom. Something I did not know was how many places like May 1968 in Paris and 1959 in Cuba he had been involved with which surely affected the weight of his more political poems. And in the end his prolific run of poetry in all sizes and shapes, especially the now classic A Coney Island of the Mind will be the legacy, will be that little slice of wonder future generations will cling to.