When Women And Men Sang The Blues For Keeps-The Hook Is In Play- With John Lee Hooker In Mind

When Women And Men Sang The Blues For Keeps-The Hook Is In Play- With John Lee Hooker In Mind  

By Lance Lawrence

“Hey guys, do you want to go to the PX and have a couple of beers, near beers I guess you would call them but having a few drinks beats sitting here in this dumbass barracks waiting for some trusty corporal to look for volunteers to clean the latrine or make up beds or the ten thousand other stupid things they make you do here in fucking Basic,” chortled Ralph Morris as he asked Billy Raymond from Toledo and Bart Simmons from Scranton that most important question. Ralph from Troy in upstate New York was having a very hard time adjusting to the Army way, the military way the drill sergeants called it, usually called it at about four in the morning when they pulled a sneak inspection or had you carry your footlocker, Christ your footlocker, out into the company formation for no rational reason. Had a hard time adjusting there at Fort Gordon in godforsaken red clay Georgia, that red clay no joke as he had almost eaten some one afternoon when the company was doing bayonet practice drills out in the boonies and Drill Sergeant Mackey suddenly called out for the company to hit the ground and he crashed into the soft mucky soil. So every time the company was through for the day after supper (supper at five o’clock, Jesus, that was almost lunch time back home) he would head, alone or with his new found friends Basic friends this night Billy and Bart who were also having their own adjustment problems, Billy had been threatened with an Article 15 already, to the PX to drink the 3.2 authorized standard Army beer that wouldn’t get anybody’s mother drunk and listen to the jukebox to some tunes to make him forget.

Forget that he had actually joined the Army unlike the hippies and college guys who were burning their draft cards left and right up North. He hadn’t volunteered, signed up, no way, not at first, but when his number was called he went just like his father, grandfather and younger brother, Kenny, who actually had volunteered from the get-go back in 1965 when the whole shooting match in Vietnam was just heating up and was now safely home and trying to adjust as he said to the “real” world. That duty to country when called was the way the Morris family viewed the world, viewed it through patriotic eyes like most of the families in Troy who had sent their sons off to wars, and Vietnam whatever was happening in Harvard Square, New York City, Ann Arbor, New Haven, Old Town in Chicago or out on the whole freaking West Coast was no exception, not even as he thought about heading to the PX in 1969. Then he had made the stupid mistake of listening to Kenny who told him that Vietnam was a very dangerous place for draftees since all a draftee was good for was to be a “grunt,” an 11 Bravo, an infantryman, which is all the Army wanted in late 1968 to fill in the depleted ranks after a hard year of fighting when he was drafted (cannon-fodder Ralph would call it later but that was much later after he had taken the fall) and so he had signed up for a three year commitment, became Regular Army, an RA in front of his numbers and had decided on to sign up for communications school as his job.

But that was before he took the oath, before he was hustled out of the Army Recruiting Station in Albany and sent to Fort Dix first for Basic Training which turned out to be full when he arrived and so he had wound up at Fort Gordon just outside Augusta for Basic and this awful feeling that he had made a terrible mistake, that while he had no serious objection to going to Vietnam this mickey mouse crap was not for him. He had found kindred in Billy and Bart and a couple of other guys from Newton up in Massachusetts who would go to the section of the PX that was closed off from the main body where you bought clothes, smokes, and toiletries and sit at the small tables and drink a few beers, pop quarters in the jukebox and forget about what a hellish day it had been until the place closed at 10 PM. Jesus, 10 PM back home he and his corner boys would just be going out the door going over to Ready Teddy’s Bar to listen to live music, live blues music by Buddy and the Nighthawks who covered Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, Magic Slim, and even John Lee Hooker on occasion.

That last performer, the Hook, was why Ralph wanted to go to the PX, wanted company too. See Ralph thought the Hook was dead, he had not heard otherwise, had not  heard any recent stuff on The Blues Is The Dues radio show he listened to on WSKI out of Saratoga Springs, out of Skidmore College about twenty-five miles up the road from Troy where they played the Hook and the others. Ralph had gotten all heated up when a week before he heard a group called Canned Heat on the juke playing a song called On The Road Again with a beat that sounded very much like the boom boom boom guitar stuff that the Hook had perfected along with that deep bass voice that would put the fear into anybody who crossed that brother if he had his whiskey and cocaine habits on. So he had made a call home to Ronny Black who would know and sure enough who was doing the boom guitar work on the song but one John Lee Hooker. The Army stuff was still chicken shit, probably always would be but at least for a couple of hours he could cool his fragile head listening to the real deal when they call off the names in the blues pantheon.           

Searching 10,000 Years For A Hopi Warrior Dream-Once Again With The Late Native American Artist And Poet T.C Cannon In Mind

Searching 10,000 Years For A Hopi Warrior Dream-Once Again With The Late Native American Artist And Poet T.C

Cannon In Mind 

 

      

By Ronan Saint John

Gerald Scott was beset by ancient dreams of late, maybe not going back 10,000 warrior years like he liked to pretend, but maybe twenty years back (still you will know that he had ancient dreams, 10,000 year dreams when you bring a word like beset, his word, into the equation this early on). For back then, back in his youth he had dreamed the dream of 10,000 year warriors, along with his friends, Jack Lennon and James Lawson (not Jim or Jimmy not since childhood and mother’s call) when he first went west, went via some covered wagon dream as he and they, along with Sarah Mays (now Sarah Scott although she will when mad at Gerald revert to Mays but that is another story which she can tell at her leisure) landed in Joshua Tree out in the California high desert. The pack of them had just graduated from their respective colleges and as youth might do back then, now too, they decided to travel before settling down to whatever they would settle down to although college debt-bound these days probably not likely and rather work, work as a damn Starbuck’s barista if necessary to get the damn thing down before Social Security benefits come into play.

I won’t name the colleges, all four, since that too does not matter to our story and they can tell one and all about their four years at their leisure as well except that Gerald had taken a course in Native American history at his school. Had done so to fulfill an elective requirement at first but got so into what the real history of those many tribes were compared to the baloney he had been force-fed when he was a kid in school, on television and in the cinema when those benighted indigenous peoples were called Indians buying into the standard lie that these were the lost tribes of the Northwest Passage and Christopher Columbus’ misdirected signals to lay claim to the Americas (a name also reeking of illegitimacy but I will stop on this road for guys like Seth Garth and Frank Jackman of American Left History blog can run the rack on those injustices far better than I can). And so the trip with a few dollars, a few knapsacks, a few sleeping bags and a beat up but serviceable Toyota Camry purchased on the cheap from Sarah’s brother who was heading into the Army.      

I could probably spend a good portion of what I have to say running circles around how this quartet finally got to the high desert out in Joshua Tree but guys like Jack Kerouac, who influenced my father in his time to head out to California in the 1960s when he was young himself, Benny Gold, Lester Lawrence and a million other literary travelers have beaten the paths out to the west already. Like I say this is about a 10,000 year vision not some ill-begotten travelogue with AAA ratings. I do have to mention the last leg, the last leg before sunny and hot California desert because the route they travelled was through the states that are square, as the writer Thomas Wolfe put when he was noting something very different about the folk out there, the usurpers, those who stand on somebody else’s land and memory. They had done a circuitous route around the four states where Native Americans still had some existence, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona. At Gerald’s urging they stopped along the way at every reservation area they came across, especially the Hopi reservation which joins those four states together.

Gerald had told the other three that he had had a strange dream one night when they were outside Grand Island, Nebraska about a dance in which they, the three men, were participating in someplace in the West in some canyon where the night fire was flicking off the canyon walls and that flickering was driving the men to more fervent dancing. Beyond that Gerald did not, could not, find meaning in what that dream portended. Except he thought it had meant something about his growing affinity for those long-lost warrior kings who were crucified by the trail of tears the white man, he and his people, had brought upon some other people’s land. And so the search for what that all meant. Since nobody was in a hurry to get home or get to ocean California which meant at some point turning back East and whatever they were going to do lives, everybody consented to the route.             

That route would indeed portend something because along the way they wound up in Gallup, New Mexico during August and were just in time for the annual Intertribal gatherings at Red River Junction. They camped just outside the state park there on Friday and the next day spend the day learning about Native American tribal lore from the various tribes gathered at the site. One of the things that caught Gerald’s attention, as it did the others including Sarah, was the mesmerizing effect of the tribal dancing. Dancing that when it counted back in the day prepared the warriors to confront whatever enemy of the day was to be fought-other tribes or the encroaching white man with his womenfolk and youngsters. The rhythm, the warrior beat filled their heads, although this was not spoken of until later, until after they reached Joshua Tree, with their own warrior dreams, maybe pipe dreams is a better way to put the situation.      

Back at the campsite that night as the sun was setting and the heat of the dusty day was settling down when they came to their site they, Gerald first from the way I heard the story, noticed a medium-sized camper with many logos, or what looked like logos on it, a fire going and a few what looked like older men sitting around a big drum with sticks playing to a methodical beat and chanting something that he could not understand (and never did, then or later). They decided to get closer which none of the men around the drum objected to. When the men took a break one of the younger men waved the four devotees over and asked how they liked it, asked if they had gone to the Intertribal. Yes, on both counts. He introduced himself as Jack Two Feathers and asked their names, where they were from, and why they were there. Gerald explained the Native American interest part.

Then Jack Two Feathers mentioned that it was the tradition of his tribe, the Hopi, to enhance their drumming, enhance their connection with their ancestors, and, laughingly, just to get high to use peyote buttons. The Hopis had had trouble with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other law enforcement agencies over the use of the substance which they, the Hopis, claimed was part of their religious experience and thus protected under the white man’s United States Constitution. They would lose that argument in the United States Supreme Court but among the young, and some of the older fearless men they still carried out the peyote tradition.

Jack Two Feathers asked them if they had ever tried peyote and Gerald mentioned that his father had told him that he had as a proper 1960s young hippie type, but he had not. None of the others had either. They all agreed, once Jack Two Feathers calmed them down about the effects of the substance, to try some once he told them that it would increase their spiritual well-being to see what it was all about. Jack Two Feathers passed out some stuff that looked like mushrooms or something and told them to chew the stuff well. After about an hour, and after Jack Two Feathers had rejoined the older men around the drum who were ready to continue their drumming ceremony, the buttons began to kick in.

Nothing particularly dramatic happened that night except they were mesmerized by the beat of the drum, mesmerized by some younger Hopis who started to dance to the beat of the drums and would go into a fever pitch, and they did not come down from their highs to finally go to sleep until almost dawn. Packing up the next afternoon to head toward Joshua Tree via the Arizona desert and the Grand Canyon Jack Two Feathers came by their laden car and passed a small packet of peyote buttons to Gerald saying that maybe some time they too would see the face of sorrow, the faces of warrior-kings who had roamed at will in these their lands before the white man’s greed took it all away and left nothing good behind. Maybe even have a spiritual journey out of the experiences as well.               

Fast forward to Joshua Tree a couple of weeks later and a couple of late night until dawn peyote button rounds flames flickering against the grey, beige, red clay canyon walls, the three men bare-chested while some others met drummed and Gerald and the others finally found out what Jack Two-Feathers meant, felt that 10,000 year ancient warrior dream and would be forever changed by the experience. Gerald laughed as they started heading home about whether he should tell his father what happened. Nah, he would never believe the tale.

When Marvel Comics Said Something About The Condition Of The World Today-About The Desperate Search For Some Rough Justice In This Wicked Old World-Marvel Studio’s “Black Panther” (2018)-A Film Review

When Marvel Comics Said Something About The Condition Of The World Today-About The Desperate Search For Some Rough Justice In This Wicked Old World-Marvel Studio’s “Black Panther” (2018)-A Film Review

Link to a NPR Christopher Lydon Open Source show on the on the social significance of the massive blockbuster Marvel Comics Studio creation Black Panther:

http://radioopensource.org/the-world-of-wakanda/

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont    

Black Panther, starring Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan and a host of black actors who have made their respective marks in Hollywood, directed by Ryan Coogler, 2018

Hey, I wasn’t trying to rain on anybody’s parade when I mentioned at a staff meeting that I did not think that the latest creation out of Marvel Comics Studio the financial blockbuster Black Panther was that interesting a story line given the hype created around the production and the astronomical box office numbers. I wasn’t even attempting to deal with the significance the film might have as the work of an almost totally black cast, black director and set in the virginal non-colonial land of Wakanda which had the added bonus of producing AND keeping its own vital raw resources, or resource is probably a better way to put it. All I knew was that for an over two hour film, seemingly all these Marvel productions need to be over two hours or are not worth the effort despite the hard fact, which is true here as well, that except for the advanced cinematic action technology on display they all could have used a bit more cutting in the editorial offices.    

Maybe it is because I was never, ever a devotee of comic books or of films based on them, not even Superman if you can believe that, that I was somewhat cavalier with my comments. Nevertheless, for my blasphemy I was made to walk the plank. Bart Webber who revels in all things comic book and who has over the years done a stellar job of reviewing these Marvel cinematic productions was originally assigned by site manager Greg Green to do this review. But between my frankly merely off-hand comments and Greg’s having listened to a Christopher Lydon NPR Open Source hour on The World Of Wakanda where the old man had every academic he could squeeze in give their views of the world-historic significance of the first serious black comic superhero my number came up.

Since I have already alluded to the story-line weakness, which I do not think overcomes whatever black self-identity and self-worth it may impart on the audiences that watched the film, I will just run with that and let you check out the over-arching social and academic views by checking out the Open Source link above. Meaning I will take my own counsel on letting those factors get decided by time and history about who was right or wrong on the world-historic nature of a certain comic book character. You already know this is about a mystical African land named Wakanda which European imperialism was not able to exploit over the centuries it was in the killing fields of Africa trying to satiate its overweening greed.  No mean task to have done, no question, but which by keeping quiet and keeping it valuable resource hidden from global view was able to prosper.

The minute you say that though you know the dramatic tension is going to be between those who want to get at the “gold” and those who want to keep the damn thing for their own internal use. That drama gets played out big time after the current Wakanda head of state got blown away and caused what amounted to a succession crisis between the legitimate son who wanted to keep to the old ways and the adopted son who wanted to use the Wakanda resources to bring down the neo-imperialism which was retarding post-colonial societal development. And by the way enrich and empower his own ambitions.

Naturally, real or fiction such tensions get a serious workout with first the legitimate son T’Challa (aka Black Panther) gaining the throne through the traditional rites of passage and then the pretender, the “bad guy” N’Jakada, (aka Killmonger) stepping up and asserting his rights also through combat and a preliminary victory. Sounds familiar even if two black guys are running the game this time. Just as naturally after a little time under N’ Jakada and his Pan-African dreams the Wakandans back T’Challa after the requisite number of mock battles and mortal combat between the pair. If I seem to have condensed the storyline too much well I have just done so to show that this is really something that guys could go crazy about, black or white. World-historic it is not and Greg Green and Christopher Lydon’s gushings are not going to change my mind on this one. The only virtue here is if Greg publishes this review he will think twice about not letting Bart Webber go through his paces and drag the story line out like he was being paid by the word.    

Updated Introduction to Frank Jackman’s Fate -In Honor Of The Native American Artist and Poet T.E. Cannon and All The Members Of The Vietnam War Class Of 1969 Whatever Their Fate

Updated Introduction to Frank Jackman’s Fate -In Honor Of The Native American Artist and Poet T.E. Cannon and All The Members Of The Vietnam War Class Of 1969 Whatever Their Fate   

Jesus, Even I can’t believe this- An Introduction to the Introduction by Allan Jackson

Originally the “Introduction” to an encore version of Frank Jackman’s Fate below was to be placed as my introduction to a sketch in the encore edition of the The Roots Is The Toots rock and roll series. I had been behind the recreation of series after I had been dismissed from running this publication having been given what by all accounts was a vote of confidence by friend and foe alike to do the Introductions to the series having been the evil genie who sweated blood and tears and that of the writers to bring the original forth. That series   highlighted, mostly highlighted how a group of guys, guys we called corner boys among ourselves in line with what all the then up-to-date sociologists, academics and criminologist described our existence who grew up poor, came of age in the 1950s rock and roll night and took graduate degree courses in the blues, folk, acid rock of the subsequent 1960s where we called ourselves, proudly called ourselves the Generation of ’68.

Some of us kicking and screaming and some of us following gladly the lead of Peter Paul Markin (whose name I have used for years as my on-line moniker) who saw and heard the fresh breeze coming first among us. Like a lot of things thought that idea got waylaid when Frank Jackman did an essay/sketch centered on his Army experiences during the Vietnam War and his curious notion that he was part of the Vietnam War Class of 1969 after he was overwhelmed with the fact that many of his friends and associates had passed through Vietnam in that year. The straw that broke the camel’s back, the thing that got him to what I called “come out of the closet” about his Army service which had started in 1969 was his assignment to review the art exhibit of the work of the late Native American artist and poet T.E. Cannon at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Cannon had spent the latter part of his Vietnam tour of duty with the 101^st Airborne Division in 1969. Frank took that as the decisive portent. He would come out of the closet as described below in a very public way looking for recognition from his fellow veterans who had their own 1969 experiences. That change is what took Frank’s experiences out of that rock and roll series and removed it to an Introduction to a separate piece about an encore of Frank Jackman’s Fate  But even that now seems misplaced and so we will produce this as a separate sketch independent of either of the previous placements     

********

Originally Intended Introduction by Allan Jackson

[That Frank Jackman is a piece of work, a real piece of work. Many people know that he has worked as a political commentator for both the hard copy and now on-line version of American Left History (and before that both the East Bay Other and The Eye and before that an eye-popping number of publications as a free-lancer). And many know that he was one of the corner boys I grew up with along with a few other writers here like Sam Lowell. What many people do not know is that Frank back in the 1960s when every young guy patriotic, indifferent or protesting had some choices to make even if by ignorance, took a very different direction from the rest of us, from the corner boys, hell, from most of the guys facing the draft and facing orders to Vietnam. Took a different turn on military service during our generation’s, the so-called Generation of ’68’s, war, the Vietnam War. Sure Frank, kicking and screaming since he had lost a chance to go to law school when they stopped the draft deferments for law school students, allowed himself to be indentured (his term) when his draft call came in 1969, actually 1968 for his physical and 1969 for induction.

Frank told me once that after about three days in basic training down at Fort Jackson in South Carolina (I did mine at Fort Dix in New Jersey where most guys from the North went so I don’t, and neither does he, why he wound up there except that being far from home and resources freaked him out knowing that he had better not go crazy down there for he might find himself in some black box or worse) that he knew that he had made a huge mistake, had to let his basic genie, anti-war genie out of the bag, hell bottle, hell some container. Most importantly unlike the rest of us (including me who held my doubts in and did my tour like every other fucking stupid asshole who knew better, knew that our fellow corner boys Rickie Rizzo and Frank White had laid their heads down in 1966 for no good reason except getting etched in black granite but went anyway but this isn’t about me and that story can wait another day, maybe a decade since I still don’t fully understand it) Frank as was his wont when he felt deeply about something followed through, went down in the mud with mano a mano with the whole fucking Army establishment, Made as he said laughingly once it was over and we could talk about it since most of us corner boys who went like sheep to the slaughter were very ambivalent about what Frank did for a while, including the Scribe, Peter Paul Markin if you can believe that rue the day they drafted him.  One bastard colonel almost lost his rank for his efforts in trying to shut Frank up so that black hole idea was no joke. He won, won his freedom but it was a very close thing, close indeed. Funny, and not in a laughing way Frank suffered a lot of the same feelings that he no longer knew the old world we grew up in that the rest of us who went did coming back to the ‘real’ world after the Army.  

All the rest of us corner boys who were draft-worthy had either enlisted or had accepted the draft without murmur, including Rickie Rizzo and Frank White who laid down their heads on the plateaus of Central Vietnam and whose names now are etched in the town memorial and in black granite in Washington for eternity. We would have spat on anybody, Frank included, who actually would have even though about refusing induction whatever we thought of the war and most of us saw it as a big bother to whatever other plans we had had. We would all change our minds later and I and others have written about that sea change elsewhere. So the collective North Adamsville corner boys were not any different from the whole cohort of our generation who had decisions to make one way or another about what to do when the war dragged on seemingly forever.

Then there was outlier Frank, or what we thought then was outlier Frank, who would accept that crazed induction and then refuse to go to Vietnam as an infantryman, as a grunt as we called ourselves and as “cannon fodder” as we learned to call ourselves when we got smarter after our military service and after, as always, the late Peter Paul Markin,  forever etched in North Adamsville lore of a certain old time corner boy generation as Scribe, gave us the skinny on what the fuck we had been through, why and for who. Frank would flat out refuse to go when after Basic Training and AIT (Advanced Infantry Training which I also went through and which in 1969, and a few years before and a few years after meant only one desperate destination-Vietnam-as it did for me). Frank’s story which not all of us knew, including me, knew at the time since we were in Vietnam as part of what we, he would call the Vietnam War Class of 1969, either because we didn’t want to believe it or didn’t want to hear about it from our own guilt about going to war once we got in-country and knew we were fucked, had been fucked over royally.      

This is the way Frank told it one night in the early 1970s when we were all back and after we were able to listen to him since like I said not all of us we happy with him while he going down in the mud like some berserk lunatic, was fucking around with the Army, what (and we were being fucked). He had received orders for Vietnam down in Fort Benning in Georgia, had come home and immediately, or if not immediately since I think he said he shacked up with some young woman for some time before he did so since he had like the rest of us had a thirty day leave before having to show up at Fort Lewis in Washington, went to get some G.I. counselling from the Quakers over in Cambridge. Even the idea of checking in with the Quakers seemed strange when I first heard about it in Vietnam, about the service they were offering guys in the military in their peaceful bid to end the endless war. Whatever else we knew we knew that our church, the Roman Catholic Church, at the official level accepted the government’s version of the necessary defense of Vietnam as the key domino part of a just war in order to put its own stamp on it as such, supported it long after other religious groups turned away from support, except a few crazy renegades like the Berrigan brothers who Father Lally railed against in Sunday sermons from the blood-stained pulpit at Sacred Heart.

These Quakers were historically with some others like Mennonites known as anti-war people, as conscientious objectors to war (except I wondered at the time about Grace Kelly in her Quaker maiden role in High Noon since she did a rooty-toot toots on the bad guys when her man was in danger but that could have been self-defense and some such and not war). Quirky people who I never really had had truck with except knowing they were some kind of Protestant sect. What they had going for them was they had been deeply involved in draft counselling, in draft resistance which had its heyday in the Vietnam War for those who don’t know what I am talking about. Strangely while I was in college, working my way through since my family had no, nada money for such a cause, I serviced coffee machines and part of my route passed right by the Arlington Street Universalist or Unitarian Church this before they united later in the decade so I am not sure which in downtown Boston where the draft resistance was located, was a draft sanctuary and I would beep my horn. Such were the contradictions of Allan Jackson-hell Frank and every other corner boy as well. Hell Scribe lived for the contradictions that would finally lead him to an early grave.

What they, the Quakers started doing and I am not sure when, and I am not sure if I asked Frank if he would know either, was they started offering G.I. counselling at some point when it became clear that a small munity was beginning to form in the military by drafted citizen-soldiers and others, guys back from Vietnam too, who were looking for personal and political ways to oppose the war. How Frank found out about the service I don’t remember but somehow he got over there to leafy Cambridge and that changed everything.  

Hey, you should know this about Frank. He was/is a quiet guy, a bookish guy like Scribe except in the corner boy days Scribe had so many angsts and alienations that he was forever running his mouth. So Frank was no leader, not exactly a follower either but one of the guys, one of the guys who went along with every caper Scribe or Frankie Riley our acknowledged leader put to paper. If anybody figured to be a crazy anti-war guy it was Scribe not Frank. Scribe when he got what he called “religion” would become a fire and brimstone guy about war later but it was nobody but Frank who did what he did and had kept pretty quiet about it before he opened up to us that night.

What Frank learned from the Quakers was that he could put in an application to the Army for conscientious objector status. Yeah, I know what you are thinking because I thought the same thing too and as I am writing this down it still sounds implausible even though federal courts up and down have declared it a valid way to get out of the military. If you signed up for the Army or got drafted how the hell a person could be a conscientious objector-be what I thought and still think a little something like a Quaker. Here was Frank’s first hurdle though. Putting an application in at Fort Lewis where he was supposed to go was filled with some danger since they were dragooning such applicants in the dead of night and shipping them to Vietnam under guard after formally and quickly turning the application down.

That tactic would make it hard to get to a federal court in time to get a writ of habeas corpus on jurisdictional grounds (thanks Frankie Riley for that information). Another option and the Quakers were wise to give options and not orders even if with a Quakerly wink was to go AWOL (absent without leave) which means in military terms unlawful for over thirty days or so at which time he would be what was called “dropped from the roles,” essentially a free agent and turn himself in at the nearest army base which happened to be Fort Devens about forty miles west of Boston. While waiting to have the AWOL litigated he could put his C.O application in without the Fort Lewis danger. (Frank also gave a bunch of other reasons why this strategy was good, but I forget them except it would be easier for his Quaker-provided lawyer to get to him which makes sense.)

Frank followed the second option (there had been a couple of others presented but this was the best of the bunch as far as I remember), went AWOL, turned himself in at Fort Devens, and while his AWOL case was being disposed of put in his C.O. application, got some minor punishment and a fine I think and, no capital AND, his application turned down within a few weeks. Done. Cooked next stop Vietnam. Well not quite. There were some changes happening in C.O. law since many applications, mostly civilian, were being turned down and being litigated in the lower federal courts and eventually a few in the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS in tweeter speak) some of which would be decided before Frank’s time was up and helpful to his case. His lawyer took that application to the federal court in Boston and on the basis of the merits of his case was able to get a judge to order a temporary restraining order (TRO) which kept Frank in the court’s jurisdiction pending disposition. (That legal maneuver turned out to be very useful later but also at the time since on the very day the TRO was ordered the Army was in the process of giving him another set of orders to Fort Lewis and then Vietnam-under guard, under the guard of two lifer sergeants-whee! Even I was impressed by the maneuvering on that one as Frank hid on base all day while the petition was before the court in Boston.)

During this time Frank was reading like crazy, reading radical anti-war stuff and the like and staying in touch with the Quakers whom he liked as people even if he did not always understand where they were coming from. I think, and I have mentioned it to him since that the Army’s whole treatment of him and especially that “under guard” maneuver broke something in him, broke him free maybe and I made him laugh once when I told him before I knew the whole story and before he had decided to resist what were they going to do –put him in the stockade. Once you get clear on that-once you face that dragon and don’t flinch then what the hell do what you have to do-which is what I would eventually come to see was my own attitude toward what Frank did and what the rest of us didn’t do. That was also the time along with the G.I. counselling that the Quakers and others (some much more radical and less committed to non-violence) were moving away from reliance on mass marches in place like Washington, D.C. and pleading with politicians and hitting the military bases with G.I. coffeehouse outreach nearby and smaller marches and rallies in front of the bases.    

These ideas sparked Frank’s imagination, got him into second gear in his defining his commitment to the anti-war struggle. Like I said something snapped in Frank, something of the old time stay cool and out of the firing line when the Scribe or Frankie Riley were in high dungeon which is my clearest high school corner boy memory of him, Now Frank was the heroic John Brown avenging angel that the Scribe kept talking what we considered his crazy talk about on lonesome penniless Friday night. In corner boy talk Frank did not give a fuck about what the Army did or did not want to do to him. One day when the Quakers decided to have a rally outside the gates of Fort Devens protesting the war (and trying to drum up interest among the soldiery there) Frank, Private E-1 Francis James Jackman (that E-1 the lowest rank possible for a soldier since he had been reduced in rank due to that AWOL rap) decided to leave the fort in uniform doing duty hours and join them. That night Frank, Private E-1 Francis James Jackman and you know the why of E-1, after returning to his barracks was picked up by the MPs and taken to the Provost Marshal’s office and from there thrown in solitary at the stockade.

That what they called “disobeying lawful orders," not being on the base during duty hours, would eventually lead to the first of two special courts-martial both which like I said technically were labelled as “disobeying lawful orders” and sentenced to six months on each rap. It was at that first court-martial that when Frank was asked if he had any words in his defense he took out a ragged piece of paper and read from the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War. With his back to the judges and facing the courtroom crowd which included some supporters gathered from the Quakers and others who periodically showed up outside the fort to call for his freedom. That support was important as Frank found out during his jail terms to keep spirits up knowing that some people were outside rooting him on (not his parents or any relatives but he did not dwell on that when he spoke to us that late night but and we knew what was what about Acre families and the war who like Frank’s father had supported the war in many cases to the bitter end. He would be forever grateful to the Quakers and allies for that. (By the way if anybody is wondering why Frank was not shipped off to Fort Leavenworth the worse military facility out in Kansas and the one the drill sergeants in basic training kept warning every scared recruit was going to be their fate if they fucked up, or gave them any lip that TRO held him under the court’s jurisdiction in Massachusetts but also meant that they could not give him a general court martial with longer sentences  that the Judge Advocate-General’s Office wanted to impose.              

And so Frank did his time, read a lot, wrote some and talked a blue streak to the few other guys who he roomed with when he was not in solidarity. He never the whole time he was imprisoned there had been let into the general population and perhaps they, the  Army, showed a tad bit of  sense for their fears since he was on his righteous John Brown avenging angel high horse and Frank said he would have started an anti-war rally in the stockade if he had been out there. As it was he never had more than a couple of roommates at a time, I guess cellmates is a better way to say it, and never saw more than a few people when he was out playing basketball in the compound which was the way used his recreational time. (Truth; Frank was one of the worst pick-up basketball players of all time and was absolutely the last guy picked when we were bucking up for teams, one time we played short not to have to take him.)   Also took stock of his personal life when the wife he married, a college sweetheart, refused to come see him in the stockade despite her own anti-war views getting grief from her Marine Corps World War II Pacific War father. That would be the first of three marriages for Frank (and the rest of us, except Jack Callahan and his beloved forever Chrissie, not far behind in the marriage department). Took a look too at what he would do if he got done with his sentence before the judge ruled in his case. A definite possibility given the logjam in the courts as his lawyer made clear. He was also trying to chart out what he would do if the judgement came down against him while he was in the stockade and they tried to rush him out under guard to Fort Lewis and transport to Vietnam.

In the situation Frank need not have worried since judgement did not come down during the first sentence. Frank set up the next part of what he had to say by saying it was hard to explain but once you have decided to do what you had to do and faced the limit, faced jail then other things kind of fell into place. And so they did when Frank was released from his first sentence and decided his Army time was over, decided to refuse to wear the uniform. Did it with a flourish though worthy of Scribe since one Monday morning at Morning Report, the weekly parade field event to see who showed up and who was AWOL he walked from his barracks to the parade field in civilian clothes (he said he had bell-bottom trousers on which when I recall this now I have to laugh about oh foolish, funny youth except his G.I. boots). Walked with a sign calling “Bring The Troops Home. I need not detail that once again since you know as well as I do now that he wound up in the stockade again in solidarity. And again received that six months special court-martial sentence for his troubles.

For years after Frank would make us laugh when he mentioned that he could have kept doing those sentences until he was old and gray he had been so determined to run out his course. Fortunately toward the end of his second sentence, a few days before as it turns out the federal judge in Boston granted his writ of habeas corpus and a week or so later when the JAG decided not to appeal he was discharged, an honorable discharge just like the rest of us. So Frank was discharged not by the Army really but by that old cranky judge.                  

Funny after that night and maybe by unwritten agreement among ourselves since I know nobody mentioned for us to do this we kind of put Frank’s experience, put our own Vietnam War experiences in some deep recess of our brains. Just like our World War II fathers had done before us with less reason to be ashamed or humiliated. The only thing Frank’s father ever mentioned was that he had been ashamed of Frank, had had a hard time at work and among the neighbors for a while but after he finally got over those feelings he had a little unspoken pride that a Jackman had done what he thought was the honorable thing to do when he needed to his father’s mind do something. We went about our collective lives, drifted apart or closer usually depending on where we were in the marriage and brood raising merry-go-round.

Frank did mention to me when we were talking one night several years later that he sometimes had doubts about the wisdom of what he had done. Not that he wasn’t personally proud that he stood up when the deal when down but that maybe he should have gone to Vietnam and tried to raise some holy hell there among the growing disillusioned common soldiers there. I never said anything to him about it but in my mind,  I thought he was crazy to think that the Army which was willing to put him in a black box and was ready at a minute’s notice to ship his ass to ‘Nam was going to let him run loose among already mutinous troops. But there we left it.         

Left it until a few years ago when something began to stir in Frank about why he kept his anti-war fight on the low despite having spent most of the rest of his life actively opposing the wars of the American imperium (sometimes dragging us along as on the Iraq War in 2003, sometimes not as in the initial reaction post-9/11 to the war on Afghanistan). Maybe it was reflecting on age and mortality like many of us our types are finding we are doing more often. Reflecting on a worthwhile life, what we did and didn’t do or should have done differently. I ask him that question one night recently when we were having a few drinks at Jack’s in Cambridge and he surprised me with his answer.  Said what triggered him was running into a guy up in Maine who had served in Vietnam in 1969, the time when Frank was refusing to go to Vietnam, who said of his own experience that he had gone through two marriages and neither wife ever knew he had been in Vietnam. Talk about keeping it on the low. He would run into others who more or less shared that some silence about their Vietnam service. The kicker for Frank though was in the fall of 2017 when PBS aired the Lynn Novick-Ken Burns ten-part eighteen hour Vietnam series and in the very first episode a couple of Marines whose wives had known each other for over a decade and both couples had socialized frequently neither knew that the other had been in Vietnam. Weird vibes, very weird.

Those thoughts got Frank off the dime, got him thinking that he needed to let some people know that there had been resistance inside the military. Encouraged everybody to tell their story for the couple of generations that are now pretty clueless about what a hellish time it was to be a young man (mostly men then) facing all kind of decisions based on the mutterings of old men. Frank, as usual for him, got a slow start, let a couple of people know one time when he was going down to Washington for an anti-war demonstration. Talked about it around a round table one night with a bunch of guys who were in Vietnam in 1969. (Frank was developing a feeling that he needed to be accepted as a member of that class despite his own personal twist.) Frank came out of the closet for real though on Memorial Day of 2018 when as part of the Poor People’s Campaign’s War Economy Week he was asked to speak as somebody impacted by war. Impacted his way as surely as others were impacted in theirs. Felt good about it afterward, felt that maybe he really had been on the right side of the angels when the deal went down. 

You Do Need A Pilot To Know Which Way The Plane Goes-And An Air Marshal To Boot -Liam Neeson’s “Non-Stop”-(2014)-A Film Review

You Do Need A Pilot To Know Which Way The Plane Goes-And An Air Marshal To Boot -Liam Neeson’s “Non-Stop”-(2014)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

Non-Stop, starring Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, 2014

This is the first film review I have done in a while since I have been more than happy to let the younger writers get their feet wet in the cutthroat dog eat dog world of contemporary film reviewing where everybody who has seen a film and has access to the Internet has become a film critic-at least in his or her own mind and maybe that of their companions. I laugh every time I think about what another old-time film critic Sam Lowell mentioned a while back about the old days when film reviewers if they didn’t just fob the review off on a younger protégé like I have done a few times of late with my own associate Alden Riley grabbed the copy that the fawning publicity departments at the studios put out to the press, dusted off the copy, cut the top off  and put their names there and submitted the damn thing. And nobody was the wiser. Sometimes when I see what the so-called democratic and universal Internet hath wrought I too long for those old days. *  

The reason I grabbed this film, Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop though is because it deals at least tangentially with the aftermath of 9/11 something which at the personal, social and historic level has changed the way we do the business of living in the world just like December 7, 1941 and November 22, 1963 were other such turning points which negated that fresher, newer world we thought we had going for us. Since I am not giving much away about the plot this story line involves the personal vendetta a guy had against the Federal Air Marshals program for not stopping the horrors of 9/11 a result which included the death of his father in the rumble of the World Trade Center. While this plot is fictious there is enough around in the odd-ball world of conspiracy theorists who have built up a cottage industry proclaiming the inevitable new generation of wild boy false flags that had attached to the earlier Pearl Harbor and Jack Kennedy assassination events.  

Of all the people you would not want to be guarding the security of an airplane on an international flight from New York to London one alcoholic, cigarette-smoking lost soul American Federal Air Marshal Bill Marks, the role well-regarded actor Liam Neeson plays, would be a prime candidate. Especially if trouble was brewing. Needless to say, the trouble comes almost the minute the plane was airborne (and before Bill has had his next drink on the quiet). Some techno-wizard had hacked his cellphone and presented Bill with this professional dilemma. Get, get any way possible, 150 million smackers, dollars not a bad number if you are going to essentially hijack a plane and face the death penalty if you fail or somebody will die every twenty minutes. Guess what-the bodies start falling down like clockwork. For a while Bill was befuddled, can’t figure out who or what is doing the dance of death. All he knew was that everybody was a suspect, everybody had to be checked.       

       

Naturally in a suspense film there have to be a number of false flags, false leads before the real perpetrator or perpetrators are rounded up and neutralized. Now Bill was old-school, an old beat-up, beat-down New York City cop before somebody gave him the lifeline of an air marshal job (despite his fear of flying-oh well) and so he roughed up everybody at 30,000 feet like he was back on the mean streets of the city. Said rough ups producing some deaths which in true false flag fashion are marked against Bill. See the “perp” had figured Bill out for a serious fall guy given his less than stellar profile and had set the poor bastard up to take the fall. To do actions which when the deal goes down will make him look like the guilty party. Bill even puts fellow passenger and eventual love interest Jen, played by Julianne Moore, on the grill. But not to worry Bill once the finger points his way. He gets religion and doubles down on the perps once they up the ante with the old bomb in the suitcase routine, a gag that has been around since about Icarus’s time but which Bill, the pilot, or rather co-pilot since the pilot fell down as part of the dastardly scheme, modern technology and what the hell old fashion grit foiled without too much trouble. Pretty good for a used-up cop fall guy who saved the day against a serious if misplaced grievance. I told you 9/11 made things a lot tenser, made the world less livable in a number of ways. Even in fictional films centered on the topic.

[* I mentioned above some of the pitfalls of  modern day citizen film reviewers and if you Google this film you will find a full array of reviews by those less interested in the suspense of the film than presenting very own theories about Bill in relationship to 9/11 including his having been in the pay variously of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, the usual CIA deep state gag and the Bush Family Estate. Remember this is a fictional film please, but also remember that there are some very lonely heart folk out there sniffing cyber-ether or something.]