Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Dubs performing their 1950s classic, Could This Be Magic?.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll; Volume 4, various artists, Ace Records, 1994
Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which grace each CD in this The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series. The photo on this CD, as might be expected, shows a girl, a pony-tailed, starch-bloused, woolen-sweatered, wide, flouncy skirt-wearing, Penny Parker, all grown up almost, as the good teen D.J., a.k.a. hostess, that she is, doing her chore of spinning platters, okay, okay, putting records on her portable 45s record player for the guests at her sweet sixteen party, her very first house teen be-bop hop.
We all wish her well, right? And hope she plays a couple of Elvis, Chuck, and Jerry Lee things and not too many slow dances since some of the guys still have not got the hang of that yet. Oh yes, for the clueless, a record player was a machine to put records on in order to hear those guys just mentioned. And records, for the really clueless, were grooved, vinyl plate-like objects that kept the blues away in the 1950s teen night. Just like iPOD, texting, yahoo messaging, etc. keep the blues away from the hip-hop nation teen night.
******
“Don’t come back before one,” Penny Parker, now sweet sixteen party-crowned Penny Parker, as she shouted to her parents leaving out the breezeway door to the garage to take off to places unknown, maybe unknowable, until at least that one o‘clock hour. Peter Parker, Penny proud without showing it, muttered under his breath that he damn well would not be back before one, come hell or high water, while that rock and roll music was infesting, and that was the word that he used, his house. Or at least the downstairs part, rock and roll previously being limited to the Penny upstairs netherworld, and kept away from his ears, well, mainly away form his ears. “Now, Peter,” was all that Delores Parker at first could come up with, and that was usually enough. Tonight however she added, and told him so in no uncertain terms, that her husband was being an old fogy seeing that this was Penny’s sweet sixteen party, she had baby-sat to perdition in order to fund the party (with a little Parker parent help, Delores mainly), had done mostly what they had asked of her, as much as one could expect from a rock-addled post World War II teenager from what she had read in the women’s magazines that she was addicted to reading.
Most importantly tonight was, and here is where woman-girl- female whatever solidarity came in, Penny was going to “coax” Zack Smith into giving her his class ring, the universal teen sign of “going steady,” hands off, and a 180 degree turn in their sometimes stormy relationship since back in about junior high school. If he showed. At least, Delores, thought, she had given that Jimmy Kelly the air, although he was invited, invited tonight for old times sake since Jimmy had been there the night Penny played her first record, Could This Be Magic by the Dubs on her brand new, slave wages-bought record player. But enough of Parker parents, tonight is Penny's night.
Penny night or not, Miss Parker is already starting to fret that Zack will be a no-show. See they had had an argument last week about that “going steady” thing, that eternal love class ring- signifying thing, and Zack for the twenty-third, at least, time stormed off. And Penny for the twenty-second time made peace over the telephone, the midnight blues telephone. But you never knew with Zack. All Penny knew was she wanted him, wanted him bad, and wanted him here tonight to share her sweet sixteen-ness.
So as the couples, maybe a dozen or so of their close friends, started filling up the Parker living room Penny, knowing that she was not the only rock-addled teen in the room, played D.J. And revved up the old Sear& Roebuck recorder player with a stack of platters (records, 45 RPM records okay); Ray Sharpe ‘s Linda Lu; Nappy Brown’s Little by Little; Maybe by the Chantels although she always wondered how they could get their voices that high on that one; a tear-jerker but a slow one by request from Pammy and Sue who had boyfriend troubles of their own, Little Anthony and the Imperials’ Tears On My Pillow which got even hardened corner boys a little weepy as she found out once when Zack and she were “finished” and king corner boy Frankie Riley had asked her out, and she had accepted. Well, she thought that should last this crowd for a while, for a while until Zack gets here, hopefully.
Later, around ten, ten-thirty, just as she was about to give up the thought of Zack’s coming that night, and had resigned herself to playing D.J. putting Buddy Knox’s Party Doll on(although she wasn’t feeling like any party doll then) for this rock-addled crowd Zack came in kind of sneakily through the side door. And instead of coming over to say thanks to Penny for inviting him or any other kind of social graces recognition he began to get into an animated conversation with Jimmy Kelly. Nothing serious but as Penny found out later Zack was miffed at Jimmy, one of his best friends now that the Zack-Jimmy girl wars, or rather Penny wars were over in Zack’s favor, because Jimmy had not told Penny that he was going to be a little late. But that miffed-ness turned into nothing once Zack told the reason for his lateness. See, Penny performing, as it turned out, her last D.J duty for the evening putting on that much requested previously mentioned Could This Be Magic was finally called over by Zack and as the strains of the song echoed through the house he presented her with his class ring, just a while ago engraved with To P.P. Always 10/7/59. Magic.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night-"What Folksinger Dave Van Ronk Stole"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Dave Van Ronk performing Fair and Tender Ladies.
What Folksinger Dave Van Ronk Stole
“Hey Joyell, good news Dave Van Ronk is playing at the Club Morocco over in Harvard Square next Friday night, do you want to go?” Phil Kiley asked over the telephone, the late night telephone as was his habit in dealing with Joyell, Joyell Davidson. While he waited for an answer he thought about how he had started making these late night calls. Reason: well two reasons really, Joyell worked at the Eden Café in Kenmore Square as a waitress most week nights for a few hours for pocket change to be among what she sardonically called the “proles,” and what she called part of a proper education, a sociology degree-driven education, about how the other half lived. Of course, the so-called proles were other girls from the university, some whom Joyell knew from her classes, who were also seeing how the other half lived, more or less, although some may have actually needed the pocket change.
This Eden Café, by the way, catered to nothing but university students, mainly university students who had fathers who had dough like Joyell’s (her father was some rich stockbroker in New York City and, from what Phil gathered, she hardly needed to work), so the whole bourgeois-prole combination running its commentary through every 1960s college was rather comical every time Phil, a real prole, a real son of the working poor at university on a partial scholarship, went into the place. Went in to see or pick up Joyell, not to eat. Too expensive for him, he tended to eat at Timmy’s Irish Pub down near Fenway Park where the “eats” was cheap, and plentiful.
But that Eden Café “experience,” or more the idea behind it, is what drove Phil toward Joyell in the first place. That "bourgeois slumming" make him desire her even more ever since they met last month at the beginning of school in Professor Sharpe’s Modern Social Theory seminar. And one thing led to another and now they were at the talking stage, talking over the phone or after work as he walked her to her apartment that she shared with another girl, a decidedly bourgeois non-slumming girl, down Commonwealth Avenue toward the Boston Common. And that was the second reason that Phil made his late night calls. He was just flat-out scared that anything he said to Joyell, a New York City girl, a Hunter College High girl, and a Jewish girl (or mostly Jewish according to the way that she described her family’s genealogy, but enough Jewish to satisfy the Israelis is the way she put it) might be taken the wrong way.
Sure Phil had plenty of girls, plenty of kind of interesting girls back at North Adamsville High a couple of years back, but they were all cookie-cutter Irish Catholic girls of varying degrees of virtue who mainly thought about marriage, white picket fences, and more than he would like to admit, girls who wanted to have many kids to honor Jesus, jesus. But Joyell talked of thing that he had not heard of like the ballet, the opera, the opera for christ sakes, and Broadway (and, more often, off-Broadway off-beat plays). Phil had read a ton of modern plays, O’Neill, Brecht, Tennessee Williams, and so on but he had never actually seen a Broadway play, just some hokey high school production of Chekov’s Cherry Orchard and stuff like that. But the saving grace was Joyell’s fantastic interest in the burgeoning folk scene-the one that had developed right down the street from her (so to speak) in the Village (Greenwich Village in New York City for the greenhorns).
This interest mirrored Phil’s own fascination with roots music, first with rockabilly before rock ‘n’ roll got stale, country blues, then city blues, and now going through folk traditional and protest songs, especially the protest songs. Joyell actually knew people who knew the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and other folk names the reader might not recognize but that Phil spent many a Sunday radio night listening to for hours on the local folk station. And, back in North Adamsville High days, he developed an intense interest in the music of folksinger Dave Van Ronk. Not just of his vast knowledge of the American songbook but his very gritty-voiced (and professional) renditions of those songs. He heard Van Ronk's version of Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies first and flipped out. That is the one that he, timidly, sang to Joyell when they were comparing notes about folksingers. Strangely, as important as Van Ronk was to the behind- the-scenes New York (and general) folk scene that was working west to San Francisco and north to Boston (although Boston, with the Club 47 in Harvard Square and the like, of starting out Joan Baez and whiz Eric Von Schmidt, could stake its own secondary claims to importance) he was not that well-known. So when he heard that Van Ronk was coming to town he was beside himself fretting away the hours to ask Joyell for their first "date."
“Sure,” answered Joyell, “I hope he is all that you have cracked him up to be. If I don’t see you before then come by around seven o’clock and we can walk over if it is a nice night and save the cab fare. And if you get a chance come by Thursday to the ‘Eden’ and you can walk me home, okay?”
(Another funny Joyell "prole" thing, she thought taxis were too, too bourgeois although she didn’t say it exactly that way, Phil thought afterwards. She never mentioned taking the bus, the bus from Dudley that almost passed her apartment. He also found out later that everybody, everybody with the price of the fare, and tip of course, took cabs in New York City).
“Okay,” was all Phil could say, "and I will try to come by Thursday but I have to work that night myself." (Phil, no prole status -craving student looking for pocket change had a job driving a truck around the city delivering boxes, of this and that, to stores and factories a few nights a week depending on demand.)
As it turned out Phil had to work that Thursday night and so did not see Joyell until he showed up at her door around seven o’clock that Dave Van Ronk Friday night. Melissa (the non-slumming bourgeois roommate) opened the door and pretty much ignored his existence after that, although freshman year they had had a couple of classes together and she sat a few seats away from him then. But Phil hardly noticed the snub, if it was a snub, and not just Melissa’s problem with men, or something like that because he was hopped-up, not drug hopped-up if that’s what you think, but maybe more sexual promise hopped-up if anything but mainly just excited to have a date with such an exotic flower as Joyell.
Then she came out of her room looking, well, looking fetching with a peasant blouse (expensive peasant blouse if that is not an oxymoron), the de rigueur jeans of the folk scene, sweater on her arm against a possible cool weather night, black hair gleaning, eyes flashing, laughing eyes he thought. God’s own gypsy princess. On seeing her then he got even more hopped-up, if that was possible.
And his luck had held, that night was a clear, fall-ish October night, big moon, big promise, and perfect for walking over the Massachusetts Avenue bridge (pavement smoots and all) through Central Square to the edge of Harvard Square where the Club Morocco’s lights beckoned all to come and eat, drink and be merry. Of course Phil was also hopped-up on talking about Dave Van Ronk, like somehow keeping the talk on him was a magic mantra to ward off their social differences (although pro-prole Joyell seemed to like him well enough his insecurities as well as his lack of social lacks some times got the best of him, especially with her). As he analyzed the situation later this over-hype was probably decisive in what happened later.
But, except for that nervousness, things went along okay, maybe better than okay as Joyell suddenly displayed a great deal of knowledge about mountain music, a staple of Van Ronks’s play list. She rattled off some stuff about the British musicologist, Cecil Shape, who had “discovered” that Fair and Tender Ladies song that Phil was always harping on down in the hills and hollows of Kentucky in 1916 He was impressed (and was still impressed later, but for another reason) when he found out that trying to impress him she had gone, as he had and many others as well, to Sandy’s Records on Mass Ave where she got the “skinny” on lots of folk information).
You knew, if you have been to Harvard Square anytime between the landing of the Mayflower and 1963, that the Club Morocco was not so much a coffeehouse, the vital core of the folk revival existence, as a be-bop jazz club. Moreover they sold liquor, liquor by the glass, as Phil’s Irish-born grandmother used to say when his father and his cronies hightailed it over to North Adamsville’s Dublin Grille to toss down a few (well, more than a few) rather than a sober (lesser, really) amount at home, so naturally Phil and Joyell were carded at the door to make sure they were twenty-one. No problem, no problem either in finding some seats near the front to hear Mr. Van Ronk better. While getting seated, they half, or maybe quarter-listened to the front performer twanging away on some sing-along thing that was suppose to get everybody in the spirit of the thing. (Why, Phil wondered, did they always have some lame, half on, half off-key local “coming folk star” to warm up the audience when you came to see, see exclusively that night, the main performer. And the front guy, and it was usually guys, was never heard from again, usually.)
More importantly, Phil noticed Dave at the bar drinking a couple of shots (whiskey shots, he assumed) straight-up. Well anything to fortify you Phil thought. Probably will help to get that gravelly voice razor-edged. Then Dave tossed another as Phil turned to give his undivided attention to his gypsy princess. Damn she looked, well, fetching was the word that came to his mind, at least for public consumption, although if Phil was was honest with himself he was just hopped-up, sexually hopped up.
The front man finished up to lackluster applause, as he should have expected except for his sing-along rendition of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land always a crowd-pleaser, especially late in the night. The MC announced Dave to hearty applause; aficionados were clearly in the house for this performance. Phil noticed that as he came away from the bar Dave tossed another straight-up whisky down. He got slightly nervous never having heard any rumors about a drinking problem but also knowing, first hand-knowing, or rather observing, that several straight-up drinks were not a good sign. Moreover Dave had what Phil thought at first was a water bottle (or soda, although he had always been taught at home to call it tonic) but on closer inspection looked much more like a flask on his hip. Dave took to the impromptu stage, taking the steps steadily enough, introduced himself, and after the applause died down, started in right away on his Fair and Tender Ladies version, sounding a little tinny in the process. And sipping from the flask.
Another song, Cocaine Blues, followed. And then the axe. Well the axe for Phil, anyway. Dave literally mumbled the old time traditional song Railroad Boy. Joyell had had enough by then. As she explained while they were walking out the door she was no “purist” but she wasn’t going to spend the night listening to a drunk, a drunk that she could have listened to on the street outside to better effect. Out the door she spied an MTA bus, the one to Dudley that went right by her apartment, and told Phi that she was going to take it home. Home alone. And that was what Dave Van Ronk stole from one heart-broken Phillip Francis Kiley.
What Folksinger Dave Van Ronk Stole
“Hey Joyell, good news Dave Van Ronk is playing at the Club Morocco over in Harvard Square next Friday night, do you want to go?” Phil Kiley asked over the telephone, the late night telephone as was his habit in dealing with Joyell, Joyell Davidson. While he waited for an answer he thought about how he had started making these late night calls. Reason: well two reasons really, Joyell worked at the Eden Café in Kenmore Square as a waitress most week nights for a few hours for pocket change to be among what she sardonically called the “proles,” and what she called part of a proper education, a sociology degree-driven education, about how the other half lived. Of course, the so-called proles were other girls from the university, some whom Joyell knew from her classes, who were also seeing how the other half lived, more or less, although some may have actually needed the pocket change.
This Eden Café, by the way, catered to nothing but university students, mainly university students who had fathers who had dough like Joyell’s (her father was some rich stockbroker in New York City and, from what Phil gathered, she hardly needed to work), so the whole bourgeois-prole combination running its commentary through every 1960s college was rather comical every time Phil, a real prole, a real son of the working poor at university on a partial scholarship, went into the place. Went in to see or pick up Joyell, not to eat. Too expensive for him, he tended to eat at Timmy’s Irish Pub down near Fenway Park where the “eats” was cheap, and plentiful.
But that Eden Café “experience,” or more the idea behind it, is what drove Phil toward Joyell in the first place. That "bourgeois slumming" make him desire her even more ever since they met last month at the beginning of school in Professor Sharpe’s Modern Social Theory seminar. And one thing led to another and now they were at the talking stage, talking over the phone or after work as he walked her to her apartment that she shared with another girl, a decidedly bourgeois non-slumming girl, down Commonwealth Avenue toward the Boston Common. And that was the second reason that Phil made his late night calls. He was just flat-out scared that anything he said to Joyell, a New York City girl, a Hunter College High girl, and a Jewish girl (or mostly Jewish according to the way that she described her family’s genealogy, but enough Jewish to satisfy the Israelis is the way she put it) might be taken the wrong way.
Sure Phil had plenty of girls, plenty of kind of interesting girls back at North Adamsville High a couple of years back, but they were all cookie-cutter Irish Catholic girls of varying degrees of virtue who mainly thought about marriage, white picket fences, and more than he would like to admit, girls who wanted to have many kids to honor Jesus, jesus. But Joyell talked of thing that he had not heard of like the ballet, the opera, the opera for christ sakes, and Broadway (and, more often, off-Broadway off-beat plays). Phil had read a ton of modern plays, O’Neill, Brecht, Tennessee Williams, and so on but he had never actually seen a Broadway play, just some hokey high school production of Chekov’s Cherry Orchard and stuff like that. But the saving grace was Joyell’s fantastic interest in the burgeoning folk scene-the one that had developed right down the street from her (so to speak) in the Village (Greenwich Village in New York City for the greenhorns).
This interest mirrored Phil’s own fascination with roots music, first with rockabilly before rock ‘n’ roll got stale, country blues, then city blues, and now going through folk traditional and protest songs, especially the protest songs. Joyell actually knew people who knew the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and other folk names the reader might not recognize but that Phil spent many a Sunday radio night listening to for hours on the local folk station. And, back in North Adamsville High days, he developed an intense interest in the music of folksinger Dave Van Ronk. Not just of his vast knowledge of the American songbook but his very gritty-voiced (and professional) renditions of those songs. He heard Van Ronk's version of Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies first and flipped out. That is the one that he, timidly, sang to Joyell when they were comparing notes about folksingers. Strangely, as important as Van Ronk was to the behind- the-scenes New York (and general) folk scene that was working west to San Francisco and north to Boston (although Boston, with the Club 47 in Harvard Square and the like, of starting out Joan Baez and whiz Eric Von Schmidt, could stake its own secondary claims to importance) he was not that well-known. So when he heard that Van Ronk was coming to town he was beside himself fretting away the hours to ask Joyell for their first "date."
“Sure,” answered Joyell, “I hope he is all that you have cracked him up to be. If I don’t see you before then come by around seven o’clock and we can walk over if it is a nice night and save the cab fare. And if you get a chance come by Thursday to the ‘Eden’ and you can walk me home, okay?”
(Another funny Joyell "prole" thing, she thought taxis were too, too bourgeois although she didn’t say it exactly that way, Phil thought afterwards. She never mentioned taking the bus, the bus from Dudley that almost passed her apartment. He also found out later that everybody, everybody with the price of the fare, and tip of course, took cabs in New York City).
“Okay,” was all Phil could say, "and I will try to come by Thursday but I have to work that night myself." (Phil, no prole status -craving student looking for pocket change had a job driving a truck around the city delivering boxes, of this and that, to stores and factories a few nights a week depending on demand.)
As it turned out Phil had to work that Thursday night and so did not see Joyell until he showed up at her door around seven o’clock that Dave Van Ronk Friday night. Melissa (the non-slumming bourgeois roommate) opened the door and pretty much ignored his existence after that, although freshman year they had had a couple of classes together and she sat a few seats away from him then. But Phil hardly noticed the snub, if it was a snub, and not just Melissa’s problem with men, or something like that because he was hopped-up, not drug hopped-up if that’s what you think, but maybe more sexual promise hopped-up if anything but mainly just excited to have a date with such an exotic flower as Joyell.
Then she came out of her room looking, well, looking fetching with a peasant blouse (expensive peasant blouse if that is not an oxymoron), the de rigueur jeans of the folk scene, sweater on her arm against a possible cool weather night, black hair gleaning, eyes flashing, laughing eyes he thought. God’s own gypsy princess. On seeing her then he got even more hopped-up, if that was possible.
And his luck had held, that night was a clear, fall-ish October night, big moon, big promise, and perfect for walking over the Massachusetts Avenue bridge (pavement smoots and all) through Central Square to the edge of Harvard Square where the Club Morocco’s lights beckoned all to come and eat, drink and be merry. Of course Phil was also hopped-up on talking about Dave Van Ronk, like somehow keeping the talk on him was a magic mantra to ward off their social differences (although pro-prole Joyell seemed to like him well enough his insecurities as well as his lack of social lacks some times got the best of him, especially with her). As he analyzed the situation later this over-hype was probably decisive in what happened later.
But, except for that nervousness, things went along okay, maybe better than okay as Joyell suddenly displayed a great deal of knowledge about mountain music, a staple of Van Ronks’s play list. She rattled off some stuff about the British musicologist, Cecil Shape, who had “discovered” that Fair and Tender Ladies song that Phil was always harping on down in the hills and hollows of Kentucky in 1916 He was impressed (and was still impressed later, but for another reason) when he found out that trying to impress him she had gone, as he had and many others as well, to Sandy’s Records on Mass Ave where she got the “skinny” on lots of folk information).
You knew, if you have been to Harvard Square anytime between the landing of the Mayflower and 1963, that the Club Morocco was not so much a coffeehouse, the vital core of the folk revival existence, as a be-bop jazz club. Moreover they sold liquor, liquor by the glass, as Phil’s Irish-born grandmother used to say when his father and his cronies hightailed it over to North Adamsville’s Dublin Grille to toss down a few (well, more than a few) rather than a sober (lesser, really) amount at home, so naturally Phil and Joyell were carded at the door to make sure they were twenty-one. No problem, no problem either in finding some seats near the front to hear Mr. Van Ronk better. While getting seated, they half, or maybe quarter-listened to the front performer twanging away on some sing-along thing that was suppose to get everybody in the spirit of the thing. (Why, Phil wondered, did they always have some lame, half on, half off-key local “coming folk star” to warm up the audience when you came to see, see exclusively that night, the main performer. And the front guy, and it was usually guys, was never heard from again, usually.)
More importantly, Phil noticed Dave at the bar drinking a couple of shots (whiskey shots, he assumed) straight-up. Well anything to fortify you Phil thought. Probably will help to get that gravelly voice razor-edged. Then Dave tossed another as Phil turned to give his undivided attention to his gypsy princess. Damn she looked, well, fetching was the word that came to his mind, at least for public consumption, although if Phil was was honest with himself he was just hopped-up, sexually hopped up.
The front man finished up to lackluster applause, as he should have expected except for his sing-along rendition of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land always a crowd-pleaser, especially late in the night. The MC announced Dave to hearty applause; aficionados were clearly in the house for this performance. Phil noticed that as he came away from the bar Dave tossed another straight-up whisky down. He got slightly nervous never having heard any rumors about a drinking problem but also knowing, first hand-knowing, or rather observing, that several straight-up drinks were not a good sign. Moreover Dave had what Phil thought at first was a water bottle (or soda, although he had always been taught at home to call it tonic) but on closer inspection looked much more like a flask on his hip. Dave took to the impromptu stage, taking the steps steadily enough, introduced himself, and after the applause died down, started in right away on his Fair and Tender Ladies version, sounding a little tinny in the process. And sipping from the flask.
Another song, Cocaine Blues, followed. And then the axe. Well the axe for Phil, anyway. Dave literally mumbled the old time traditional song Railroad Boy. Joyell had had enough by then. As she explained while they were walking out the door she was no “purist” but she wasn’t going to spend the night listening to a drunk, a drunk that she could have listened to on the street outside to better effect. Out the door she spied an MTA bus, the one to Dudley that went right by her apartment, and told Phi that she was going to take it home. Home alone. And that was what Dave Van Ronk stole from one heart-broken Phillip Francis Kiley.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake’s “This Gun For Hire”-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for This Gun For Hire.
DVD Review
This Gun For Hire, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, based on a novel by Graham Greene, Paramount Pictures, 1942
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from 1942, This Gun For Hire, offers parts of both. The plot line maybe less so, although because it is set in World War II America and indirectly part of the fight to defeat the nefarious (in this case Japanese) enemy it has a certain intrigue factor. As for femme fatale energy, or rather quasi-femme fatale energy, although I have always considered Veronica Lake (and her classic air over her eye look) fetching here she is cross between that type and the girl next door.
As for the plot. Alan Ladd, a gun for hire to the highest bidder does his job as expected and is paid off for doing so. Unfortunately those that hired Ladd to silence an employee of a chemical company whose president was ready to sell poison gas to the highest bidder (Japan)were not on the level. They tried, might and main, to set Brother Ladd up as the fall guy. But one does not get to be, or rather one does not survive in the hired gun business, by being a chump for some nefarious scheme. Needless to say the plot is partially driven by his well-earned revenge.
However, a second plot line is brought in by Ms. Lake. America was at war and selling poison gas to the bidder, Japan, was, well, not right so she is “hired” to get the goods on the chemical operation through a weak-link, one of the company executives. Naturally in the course of these two plots unwinding the Ladd-Lake combination is brought to a boil, well, almost a boil. Through twists and turns the pair get the bad guys, although Ladd as a bad guy himself, or maybe just misunderstood, has to take a bullet for the cause because as we all know- “crime, especially murder, does not pay.” Not as good a pairing of Ladd and Lake as in The Glass Key but okay. But you can see what I mean about this one being sort of a semi-classic noir, right?
DVD Review
This Gun For Hire, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, based on a novel by Graham Greene, Paramount Pictures, 1942
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from 1942, This Gun For Hire, offers parts of both. The plot line maybe less so, although because it is set in World War II America and indirectly part of the fight to defeat the nefarious (in this case Japanese) enemy it has a certain intrigue factor. As for femme fatale energy, or rather quasi-femme fatale energy, although I have always considered Veronica Lake (and her classic air over her eye look) fetching here she is cross between that type and the girl next door.
As for the plot. Alan Ladd, a gun for hire to the highest bidder does his job as expected and is paid off for doing so. Unfortunately those that hired Ladd to silence an employee of a chemical company whose president was ready to sell poison gas to the highest bidder (Japan)were not on the level. They tried, might and main, to set Brother Ladd up as the fall guy. But one does not get to be, or rather one does not survive in the hired gun business, by being a chump for some nefarious scheme. Needless to say the plot is partially driven by his well-earned revenge.
However, a second plot line is brought in by Ms. Lake. America was at war and selling poison gas to the bidder, Japan, was, well, not right so she is “hired” to get the goods on the chemical operation through a weak-link, one of the company executives. Naturally in the course of these two plots unwinding the Ladd-Lake combination is brought to a boil, well, almost a boil. Through twists and turns the pair get the bad guys, although Ladd as a bad guy himself, or maybe just misunderstood, has to take a bullet for the cause because as we all know- “crime, especially murder, does not pay.” Not as good a pairing of Ladd and Lake as in The Glass Key but okay. But you can see what I mean about this one being sort of a semi-classic noir, right?
Sunday, August 28, 2011
On Intergenerational Sex-“…And Keep Me Young As I Grow Old”- With A Tip Of The Stetson To The “Belfast Cowboy,” Van Morrison
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing The Beauty Of The Days Gone By which has the "... and keep me young as I grow old" line in it.
Markin comment:
This space, fundamentally, is devoted to political struggles, the big picture communist future political struggles that reflect the hard fact, as noted by Leon Trotsky's definitive biographer, Isaac Deutscher, that we communists have in the past, and continue now, to devote the bulk of our energies to the most immediately pressing of the three great tragedies of life, the struggle against hunger. The other two, sex and death, have gotten short shrift other than to be dealt with in broad brush stokes, basically arguing that in our communist future those two acknowledged mysterious passages will be dealt with more thoughtfully, less traumatically, and with deeper insight.
That said, where does that leave my old North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 corner boy class mate, Johnny Silver, and his twin sex and death dilemmas-growing old and still having a yearning for sexual adventure, sexual adventure with younger, much younger women. Other than calling him, rightly I think, a “ dirty old man” for even thinking about having sex with a young, curvaceous, nubile woman, to speak nothing of what it might do to his physical condition, we have no immediate communist program to alleviate his problem. Sorry Johnny. No question though under such a now seemingly utopian regime inter-generational sex will be no more the subject of scandalous gossip that various other homo and heterosexual variations of sexual activity that are the norm now.
Now, if one has been attentive, I have, with the exception of Leon Trotsky’s brief fling with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in the late 1930s during his Mexican exile, not spent much time on the personal sex lives of our revolutionary forbears. That has been in keeping with the traditional reticence of revolutionaries to discuss their personal sexual lives. And with my own preferences in the uses of this space. I, however, feel that Johnny Silver’s case can be instructive for those of us who are going into our “golden years” and are still as randy as middle schoolers. Therefore I have posted Johnny Silver’s story, non-communist, non-political, Johnny Silver’s story, here for your perusal. The weak of heart, those under a doctor’s care, and assorted outraged moral philistines should avoid reading this for the good of your lives and/or souls. Note, and note carefully that other than a little editorial work this is strictly Johnny’s responsibility although I will admit my temperature and pulse were vicariously rising somewhat while performing this onerous task.
Johnny Silver’s comment:
I always liked younger girls when I was just a kid and I never got out of that habit, that sweet young thing habit. I used to take a lot guff from Frankie Riley, Peter Paul, and the other corner boys “up the Downs” at our hang-out, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, when at sixteen I dated up twelve-year old “Luscious” Linda Lorraine (but “hot,” hot way beyond her years as I found out, have mercy, when she practically “raped” me, raped me if you can believe that, on our first date down at the North Adamsville Beach one summer night. I won’t say more because Peter Paul, who is editing this thing, might take a heart attack when he reads this since he never got to first base with her, and he tried, at least that is what she said, they all tried). They would yell “jail bait,” “baby-snatcher,” “cradle-robber,” and all that stuff that has been said by people, guys especially, since about the time Adam tried to date up Eve (who was a lot younger than he was and must have been pretty “hot” herself to get Adam off the straight and narrow) but she was fine, some sweet soap-smelling fine, and just getting some nice curves and stuff. Maybe that is where I go the habit. [Markin: All we ever said was “watch out” Johnny. Linda, who lived the next street over from me then, was nothing but a “man trap,” a serious man-trap and Johnny was only one of several who enjoyed her “favors” in those days. Despite Johnny’s obvious lapse of memory I never tried to get to first base, or any base with her. As for the others, the corner boy others, I would not be surprised if on some “horny” girl friend-less nights they didn’t take a shot at it. It wasn’t hard. Last we heard of Linda she had had several kids by her early twenties and died of a heroin overdose in her mid-thirties so it wasn’t the age thing at all about Linda whatever Johnny might say now.]
And it's always pretty much was that way going forward. My first wife, Laurie, whom I met and who Peter Paul knows, was nothing but a fox when I was in graduate school and she was in high school and whom I met when I came back for a North Adamsville –Adamsville high school Thanksgiving Day football game. She was captain of the Red Raider cheer-leaders and I took dead aim at her [Markin: I agree Laurie was a fox, no question, but again we told Johnny to “watch out” on her as well because she was nothing but a man-eater as he found out a few kids, and a lot of alimony payments, later. I admit I took a “run” at her myself when they split up but I am still grinding my teeth over the way she treated me during our short “affair,” if that’s what you could call it.] When I met my second wife, Alicia, she was just in graduate school and I was in my late thirties. [Markin: Johnny and I started drifting apart then, mainly different parts of the country, so I don’t know about Alicia’s qualities but Johnny says that she treated him “good,” which to Johnny always meant good at giving him oral sex and stuff like that. Okay, get used to it we are adults and more explicit sexual details will be coming up so be forewarned. And take your heart medicine for god’s sake.] My third wife, Becky, was barely out of college and I was in my forties when we met but she was “good.”
After that I stopped marrying them and just settled into a steady diet of “dating” seemingly ever younger women that I met through my work contacts or other social situations. [Markin: Johnny was, and is, a very good construction site consulting engineer.] And then, after Carrie left to pursue her screen-writing “dream” in California things dried up, dried up hard for this older man [Markin: Carrie was Johnny’s last serious live-in girlfriend, emphasis on the girl part, barely legal]. Well, first, damn the computer age for one thing, since it meant I could do more of my consulting work from home. And get more work done (and charge more as well). But it meant that the social situations also dried up. And no 50-something guy, no 50-something guy in his right mind, is going to the “meat market” singles bars around town trying to pick up the young ones when they have plenty of young guys around to moon over and get worked up about. [Markin: I am trying to be gentle with Brother Silver here but he “forgot” to mention getting laughed at, ridiculed and told to go “back to the nursing home” by those self-same younger women. He also “forgot” to mention that he was not a 50-something guy but a 60-something guy when the “heat” came on him.]. And second, damn, whatever that Adam “spreading his seed” thing was because even if things dried up socially this old man wasn’t dried up, if you get my meaning. [Markin: Translation; he was still as randy as a middle- schooler] So I did whatever any “on the information super-highway” guy would do, I went online looking for sex sites, younger women-centered sex sites. [Markin: Johnny didn’t have to work up a sweat finding them they practically come at you from the homepage onward.]
Of course “dating” services have been going on since just after Adam and Eve got it on. (Eve, by the way, a younger woman, a much younger woman and probably pretty “hot,” with a firm, curvaceous, naked body hot from what I heard, if I didn’t mention it before). Nowadays though (thank god, and thank god I took my medicine beforehand) the sexually explicit stuff women are putting online for your perusal is “over the top,” especially the younger ones, thank god. So naturally I filled out my “profile” page, paid my dough (via credit card but be careful), and “joined” all the other guys, horny guys waiting, wanting to “get laid” tonight.
Well things were kind of slow for a while since I blocked off returning messages to any women over thirty, and rightly so as they started looking kind of sad sack by then (although there were plenty of them around, around with kid baggage, if that is where your tastes run go see). I though at first it might be because there was a prejudice against 50-something guys in this hellish youth-drive universe. [Markin: See note above on the age question, the Johnny Silver age question.] And then Tracy, sweet eighteen-year old Tracy, answered my plea.
Now Tracy was not your average young woman (girl really but let’s leave it at that). She was eighteen, bright, intelligent, ambitious, resourceful, and looking for a “sugar daddy,” whatever that might mean. Yes dear, Johnny Silver is just your meat. [Markin: After some research this old-fashioned term “sugar daddy” could mean, like in the old days, someone, some man, who paid the freight to today’s “hook-up” or “friends-with benefits," or something entirely innocuous.] But here is where the problem came in. We sent many message back and forth and we were making some headway. She stated clearly that she was not into “mere boys,” but older men who had been around, and knew a thing or two (or three). Yes Tracy, Johnny is very, very just your meat.
Eventually she agreed to meet me in a public place to discuss, discuss our “the exact meaning of sugar daddy" business, and the like. But here is where the wheels started to come off, almost. She wanted some pictures of me, presumably recently up-loaded digital camera-produced photos, before we met. Her idea, innocent enough, and actually reasonable enough, was to make sure I was not some three-headed monster or, perhaps, someone recently released from parole for any number of charges from sexual offenses to murder and mayhem [Markin: Smart girl. As for any possible sexual offenses, as far as I know, they were all consensual and not in the least bit criminal although a few irate fathers might differ. The murder and mayhem I would advise that Johnny plead the Fifth on that one.]
And that was the first stumbling block. See, old guys like Peter Paul and me, were not suckled on computer technology practically from birth like today’s kids. We survive on the “information super-highway” but juts barely and while I know, as Markin does, enough to get by let’s just call us “primitives.” In short, I confess, bitterly confess, any pictures I had were not digital, and even if they were I did not know how to up-load them onto any site, sex site or not. Truth. However Tracy did not believe me, and it made sense in her iPhone, iPad, texting, Facebook world that everybody knew how to do such an eight year old simple task. I only avoided total defeat by producing some older photos and reading every manual for up-loading that came with the printer. But it was a near thing.
I won’t bore the reader with the details of our first meeting, or our later meetings but she was certain fetching in person and wiser in age than some of the older young women that I have been with through the years. But the big thing was that she was wonderful in bed. And this is where the faint-hearted, or just plain perverted, can get off and find your own sex site. Well let’s start off as always with the firm, soft, wrinkle-free skin, breast, buttock, thighs, that has driven me wild since old-time Linda Lorraine (hell, I can still smell her Palmolive soap, or perfume or whatever she used to drive the boys wild even now). Then of course the school-girlish strip tease that always gets me going. And then placing her mouth, well, placing her mouth where it did some good. Hell though everybody who reads this knows what’s what. I don' t have to draw a diagram, do I? Yes, we did it did several times (not all in one day, Viagra is good but no that good). She was very inventive with positions and of course, I knew a thing or two (or three) that got her going (read: moaning and groaning for her sugar daddy and not the old –fashioned meaning of the word either whatever Markin’s research said it meant in the old days). She still smiles about those two (or three things when I bring it up).
But the point is really about “… and keep me young while getting old” as the line from the Van Morrison song, The Beauty Of The Days Gone By. Some guys get it by pumping iron or other maniac strenuous exercising, and some by endless youth-enhancing operations. And some, like Markin, by writing endlessly about the old days like they were coming back, or could do anybody any good. [Markin: Watch it, Johnny, watch it brother.] Me, no, I want a young thing, a young firm thing, a young sex-crazed thing, a firm young thing that wants a lesson in those two (or three) things I could teach her (and have her sweaty-smiling a couple of days later over) right next to me right up until, and maybe past, judgment day. Can you blame me?
Markin postscript comment:
We had better get to that communist future in a hurry, a real hurry. In the meantime I’ll go off and take a shower, a very cold shower. Oh yes, Johnny, by the way (BTW for the cyber-slang crowd) what is Tracy’s cell phone number? Or does she have a geezer-craving girlfriend? Whatever you do, Johnny- “don’t watch out, not now.”
Markin comment:
This space, fundamentally, is devoted to political struggles, the big picture communist future political struggles that reflect the hard fact, as noted by Leon Trotsky's definitive biographer, Isaac Deutscher, that we communists have in the past, and continue now, to devote the bulk of our energies to the most immediately pressing of the three great tragedies of life, the struggle against hunger. The other two, sex and death, have gotten short shrift other than to be dealt with in broad brush stokes, basically arguing that in our communist future those two acknowledged mysterious passages will be dealt with more thoughtfully, less traumatically, and with deeper insight.
That said, where does that leave my old North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 corner boy class mate, Johnny Silver, and his twin sex and death dilemmas-growing old and still having a yearning for sexual adventure, sexual adventure with younger, much younger women. Other than calling him, rightly I think, a “ dirty old man” for even thinking about having sex with a young, curvaceous, nubile woman, to speak nothing of what it might do to his physical condition, we have no immediate communist program to alleviate his problem. Sorry Johnny. No question though under such a now seemingly utopian regime inter-generational sex will be no more the subject of scandalous gossip that various other homo and heterosexual variations of sexual activity that are the norm now.
Now, if one has been attentive, I have, with the exception of Leon Trotsky’s brief fling with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in the late 1930s during his Mexican exile, not spent much time on the personal sex lives of our revolutionary forbears. That has been in keeping with the traditional reticence of revolutionaries to discuss their personal sexual lives. And with my own preferences in the uses of this space. I, however, feel that Johnny Silver’s case can be instructive for those of us who are going into our “golden years” and are still as randy as middle schoolers. Therefore I have posted Johnny Silver’s story, non-communist, non-political, Johnny Silver’s story, here for your perusal. The weak of heart, those under a doctor’s care, and assorted outraged moral philistines should avoid reading this for the good of your lives and/or souls. Note, and note carefully that other than a little editorial work this is strictly Johnny’s responsibility although I will admit my temperature and pulse were vicariously rising somewhat while performing this onerous task.
Johnny Silver’s comment:
I always liked younger girls when I was just a kid and I never got out of that habit, that sweet young thing habit. I used to take a lot guff from Frankie Riley, Peter Paul, and the other corner boys “up the Downs” at our hang-out, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, when at sixteen I dated up twelve-year old “Luscious” Linda Lorraine (but “hot,” hot way beyond her years as I found out, have mercy, when she practically “raped” me, raped me if you can believe that, on our first date down at the North Adamsville Beach one summer night. I won’t say more because Peter Paul, who is editing this thing, might take a heart attack when he reads this since he never got to first base with her, and he tried, at least that is what she said, they all tried). They would yell “jail bait,” “baby-snatcher,” “cradle-robber,” and all that stuff that has been said by people, guys especially, since about the time Adam tried to date up Eve (who was a lot younger than he was and must have been pretty “hot” herself to get Adam off the straight and narrow) but she was fine, some sweet soap-smelling fine, and just getting some nice curves and stuff. Maybe that is where I go the habit. [Markin: All we ever said was “watch out” Johnny. Linda, who lived the next street over from me then, was nothing but a “man trap,” a serious man-trap and Johnny was only one of several who enjoyed her “favors” in those days. Despite Johnny’s obvious lapse of memory I never tried to get to first base, or any base with her. As for the others, the corner boy others, I would not be surprised if on some “horny” girl friend-less nights they didn’t take a shot at it. It wasn’t hard. Last we heard of Linda she had had several kids by her early twenties and died of a heroin overdose in her mid-thirties so it wasn’t the age thing at all about Linda whatever Johnny might say now.]
And it's always pretty much was that way going forward. My first wife, Laurie, whom I met and who Peter Paul knows, was nothing but a fox when I was in graduate school and she was in high school and whom I met when I came back for a North Adamsville –Adamsville high school Thanksgiving Day football game. She was captain of the Red Raider cheer-leaders and I took dead aim at her [Markin: I agree Laurie was a fox, no question, but again we told Johnny to “watch out” on her as well because she was nothing but a man-eater as he found out a few kids, and a lot of alimony payments, later. I admit I took a “run” at her myself when they split up but I am still grinding my teeth over the way she treated me during our short “affair,” if that’s what you could call it.] When I met my second wife, Alicia, she was just in graduate school and I was in my late thirties. [Markin: Johnny and I started drifting apart then, mainly different parts of the country, so I don’t know about Alicia’s qualities but Johnny says that she treated him “good,” which to Johnny always meant good at giving him oral sex and stuff like that. Okay, get used to it we are adults and more explicit sexual details will be coming up so be forewarned. And take your heart medicine for god’s sake.] My third wife, Becky, was barely out of college and I was in my forties when we met but she was “good.”
After that I stopped marrying them and just settled into a steady diet of “dating” seemingly ever younger women that I met through my work contacts or other social situations. [Markin: Johnny was, and is, a very good construction site consulting engineer.] And then, after Carrie left to pursue her screen-writing “dream” in California things dried up, dried up hard for this older man [Markin: Carrie was Johnny’s last serious live-in girlfriend, emphasis on the girl part, barely legal]. Well, first, damn the computer age for one thing, since it meant I could do more of my consulting work from home. And get more work done (and charge more as well). But it meant that the social situations also dried up. And no 50-something guy, no 50-something guy in his right mind, is going to the “meat market” singles bars around town trying to pick up the young ones when they have plenty of young guys around to moon over and get worked up about. [Markin: I am trying to be gentle with Brother Silver here but he “forgot” to mention getting laughed at, ridiculed and told to go “back to the nursing home” by those self-same younger women. He also “forgot” to mention that he was not a 50-something guy but a 60-something guy when the “heat” came on him.]. And second, damn, whatever that Adam “spreading his seed” thing was because even if things dried up socially this old man wasn’t dried up, if you get my meaning. [Markin: Translation; he was still as randy as a middle- schooler] So I did whatever any “on the information super-highway” guy would do, I went online looking for sex sites, younger women-centered sex sites. [Markin: Johnny didn’t have to work up a sweat finding them they practically come at you from the homepage onward.]
Of course “dating” services have been going on since just after Adam and Eve got it on. (Eve, by the way, a younger woman, a much younger woman and probably pretty “hot,” with a firm, curvaceous, naked body hot from what I heard, if I didn’t mention it before). Nowadays though (thank god, and thank god I took my medicine beforehand) the sexually explicit stuff women are putting online for your perusal is “over the top,” especially the younger ones, thank god. So naturally I filled out my “profile” page, paid my dough (via credit card but be careful), and “joined” all the other guys, horny guys waiting, wanting to “get laid” tonight.
Well things were kind of slow for a while since I blocked off returning messages to any women over thirty, and rightly so as they started looking kind of sad sack by then (although there were plenty of them around, around with kid baggage, if that is where your tastes run go see). I though at first it might be because there was a prejudice against 50-something guys in this hellish youth-drive universe. [Markin: See note above on the age question, the Johnny Silver age question.] And then Tracy, sweet eighteen-year old Tracy, answered my plea.
Now Tracy was not your average young woman (girl really but let’s leave it at that). She was eighteen, bright, intelligent, ambitious, resourceful, and looking for a “sugar daddy,” whatever that might mean. Yes dear, Johnny Silver is just your meat. [Markin: After some research this old-fashioned term “sugar daddy” could mean, like in the old days, someone, some man, who paid the freight to today’s “hook-up” or “friends-with benefits," or something entirely innocuous.] But here is where the problem came in. We sent many message back and forth and we were making some headway. She stated clearly that she was not into “mere boys,” but older men who had been around, and knew a thing or two (or three). Yes Tracy, Johnny is very, very just your meat.
Eventually she agreed to meet me in a public place to discuss, discuss our “the exact meaning of sugar daddy" business, and the like. But here is where the wheels started to come off, almost. She wanted some pictures of me, presumably recently up-loaded digital camera-produced photos, before we met. Her idea, innocent enough, and actually reasonable enough, was to make sure I was not some three-headed monster or, perhaps, someone recently released from parole for any number of charges from sexual offenses to murder and mayhem [Markin: Smart girl. As for any possible sexual offenses, as far as I know, they were all consensual and not in the least bit criminal although a few irate fathers might differ. The murder and mayhem I would advise that Johnny plead the Fifth on that one.]
And that was the first stumbling block. See, old guys like Peter Paul and me, were not suckled on computer technology practically from birth like today’s kids. We survive on the “information super-highway” but juts barely and while I know, as Markin does, enough to get by let’s just call us “primitives.” In short, I confess, bitterly confess, any pictures I had were not digital, and even if they were I did not know how to up-load them onto any site, sex site or not. Truth. However Tracy did not believe me, and it made sense in her iPhone, iPad, texting, Facebook world that everybody knew how to do such an eight year old simple task. I only avoided total defeat by producing some older photos and reading every manual for up-loading that came with the printer. But it was a near thing.
I won’t bore the reader with the details of our first meeting, or our later meetings but she was certain fetching in person and wiser in age than some of the older young women that I have been with through the years. But the big thing was that she was wonderful in bed. And this is where the faint-hearted, or just plain perverted, can get off and find your own sex site. Well let’s start off as always with the firm, soft, wrinkle-free skin, breast, buttock, thighs, that has driven me wild since old-time Linda Lorraine (hell, I can still smell her Palmolive soap, or perfume or whatever she used to drive the boys wild even now). Then of course the school-girlish strip tease that always gets me going. And then placing her mouth, well, placing her mouth where it did some good. Hell though everybody who reads this knows what’s what. I don' t have to draw a diagram, do I? Yes, we did it did several times (not all in one day, Viagra is good but no that good). She was very inventive with positions and of course, I knew a thing or two (or three) that got her going (read: moaning and groaning for her sugar daddy and not the old –fashioned meaning of the word either whatever Markin’s research said it meant in the old days). She still smiles about those two (or three things when I bring it up).
But the point is really about “… and keep me young while getting old” as the line from the Van Morrison song, The Beauty Of The Days Gone By. Some guys get it by pumping iron or other maniac strenuous exercising, and some by endless youth-enhancing operations. And some, like Markin, by writing endlessly about the old days like they were coming back, or could do anybody any good. [Markin: Watch it, Johnny, watch it brother.] Me, no, I want a young thing, a young firm thing, a young sex-crazed thing, a firm young thing that wants a lesson in those two (or three) things I could teach her (and have her sweaty-smiling a couple of days later over) right next to me right up until, and maybe past, judgment day. Can you blame me?
Markin postscript comment:
We had better get to that communist future in a hurry, a real hurry. In the meantime I’ll go off and take a shower, a very cold shower. Oh yes, Johnny, by the way (BTW for the cyber-slang crowd) what is Tracy’s cell phone number? Or does she have a geezer-craving girlfriend? Whatever you do, Johnny- “don’t watch out, not now.”
Saturday, August 27, 2011
When Radio Ruled The Air-Waves-"Stardust:Decca Records:Classics and Standards Collection"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I’ll Get By.
CD Review
Stardust: The Classic Decca Hits and Standards Collection, various artists, Decca Records, MCA, 1994
I am a first generation child of the television age, although in recent years I have spent more time kicking and screaming about that fact than watching the damn thing. Nevertheless I can appreciate this little compilation of Decca hits and standard tunes from the 1940s and 1950s as a valentine to the radio days of my parents’ youth, parents who came of musical age (and every other kind of age as well) during the Great Depression of the 1930s and who fought, or waited for those out on the front lines fighting, World War II. I am just old enough though, although generation behind them, to remember the strains of songs like the harmonic –heavy Mills Brothers Paper Dolls (a favorite of my mother’s) and The Glow Worm (not a favorite of anybody as far as I know although the harmony is still first-rate) that came wafting, via the local Adamsville radio station WJDA, through our big box living room radio in the early 1950s. It seemed they, or maybe the Andrews Sisters, be-bopping (be-bopping now, not then, you do not want to know what I called it then), on Rum And Coca-Cola or tagging along with Bing Crosby on Don’t Fence Me In were permanent residents of the airs-waves in the Markin household.
I am also a child of Rock 'n' Roll but those above-mentioned tunes were the melodies that my mother and father came of age to and the stuff of their dreams during World War II and its aftermath. The rough and tumble of my parents raising a bunch of kids might have taken the edge off it but the dreams remained. In the end it is this musical backdrop, behind the generation musical fights that roils the Markin household in teen times, that makes this compilation most memorable to me. Just to say names like Dick Haymes (I think my mother had a “crush” on him at some point), Vaughn Monroe, The Inkspots (who, truth, I liked even then, even in my “high, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly days, especially on If I Didn’t Care and I’ll Get By-wow), and Lois Armstrong. Or songs like Blueberry Hill, You’ll Never Know, A- Tisket- A Tasket, You Always Hurt The One You Love and so gather in a goodly portion of the mid-20th century American Songbook. Other talents like Billie Holiday, The Weavers, and Rosemary Clooney and tunes like Lover Man (and a thousand and one Cole Porter Billie-sung songs), Fever, and As Time Goes By (from Dooley Wilson in Casablanca) came later through very different frames of reference. But the seed, no question, no question now, was planted then.
Let’s be clear as well going back to that first paragraph mention of television - there something very different between the medium of the radio and the medium of the television. The radio allowed for an expansion of the imagination (and of fantasy) that the increasingly harsh realities of what was being portrayed on television did not allow one to get away with. The heart of World War II, and in its immediate aftermath, was time when one needed to be able to dream a little. The realities of the world at that time seemingly only allowed for nightmares. My feeling is that this compilation will touch a lot of sentimental nerves for the World War II generation (that so-called ‘greatest generation’), including my growing-up Irish working class families on the shores of North Adamsville. Nice work.
CD Review
Stardust: The Classic Decca Hits and Standards Collection, various artists, Decca Records, MCA, 1994
I am a first generation child of the television age, although in recent years I have spent more time kicking and screaming about that fact than watching the damn thing. Nevertheless I can appreciate this little compilation of Decca hits and standard tunes from the 1940s and 1950s as a valentine to the radio days of my parents’ youth, parents who came of musical age (and every other kind of age as well) during the Great Depression of the 1930s and who fought, or waited for those out on the front lines fighting, World War II. I am just old enough though, although generation behind them, to remember the strains of songs like the harmonic –heavy Mills Brothers Paper Dolls (a favorite of my mother’s) and The Glow Worm (not a favorite of anybody as far as I know although the harmony is still first-rate) that came wafting, via the local Adamsville radio station WJDA, through our big box living room radio in the early 1950s. It seemed they, or maybe the Andrews Sisters, be-bopping (be-bopping now, not then, you do not want to know what I called it then), on Rum And Coca-Cola or tagging along with Bing Crosby on Don’t Fence Me In were permanent residents of the airs-waves in the Markin household.
I am also a child of Rock 'n' Roll but those above-mentioned tunes were the melodies that my mother and father came of age to and the stuff of their dreams during World War II and its aftermath. The rough and tumble of my parents raising a bunch of kids might have taken the edge off it but the dreams remained. In the end it is this musical backdrop, behind the generation musical fights that roils the Markin household in teen times, that makes this compilation most memorable to me. Just to say names like Dick Haymes (I think my mother had a “crush” on him at some point), Vaughn Monroe, The Inkspots (who, truth, I liked even then, even in my “high, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, Buddy Holly days, especially on If I Didn’t Care and I’ll Get By-wow), and Lois Armstrong. Or songs like Blueberry Hill, You’ll Never Know, A- Tisket- A Tasket, You Always Hurt The One You Love and so gather in a goodly portion of the mid-20th century American Songbook. Other talents like Billie Holiday, The Weavers, and Rosemary Clooney and tunes like Lover Man (and a thousand and one Cole Porter Billie-sung songs), Fever, and As Time Goes By (from Dooley Wilson in Casablanca) came later through very different frames of reference. But the seed, no question, no question now, was planted then.
Let’s be clear as well going back to that first paragraph mention of television - there something very different between the medium of the radio and the medium of the television. The radio allowed for an expansion of the imagination (and of fantasy) that the increasingly harsh realities of what was being portrayed on television did not allow one to get away with. The heart of World War II, and in its immediate aftermath, was time when one needed to be able to dream a little. The realities of the world at that time seemingly only allowed for nightmares. My feeling is that this compilation will touch a lot of sentimental nerves for the World War II generation (that so-called ‘greatest generation’), including my growing-up Irish working class families on the shores of North Adamsville. Nice work.
Friday, August 26, 2011
“First Let’s Kill All The Lawyers”-Not- “The Lincoln Lawyer”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film The Lincoln Lawyer.
DVD Review
The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tormei, based on the novel by Michael Connelly, Liongate, 2011
Yes, I know, everybody, everybody including Richard III, I think, who uttered some variation of that idea in William Shakespeare’s play of the same name, hates lawyers. Hates them until old justice time comes along and everyone, including this writer, hopes to high heaven that their lawyer is up to the task of representing them zealously, and in some desperate cases more than zealously. And that combination of sentiments, that hate/love thing, is what drives this film which according to my usually reliable sources follows the Michael Connelly novel pretty closely.
Needless to say, except for the thugs, pimps, dope dealers, hellish motorcycle angels, bail bondmen, public servant grifters and grafters and a bewitching lawyer ex-wife (played by Marissa Tormei) nobody, no viewer anyway, is suppose to like the Lincoln lawyer at the outset. (Named the Lincoln lawyer, by the way, not for his ethical resemblance to Father Abraham but because he rides around in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln.) His wheeling and dealing just this side of the law is what makes him the darling of that rogue’s gallery of characters listed above (except, of course, the fetching ex-wife, and maybe her a little too) and the bane of the District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Police Department establishment.
That deft and ruthless maneuvering is what also draws him to the attention of a vicious killer of women, women of the night to use a quaint phrase, and a surefire way to commit the “perfect murder” and like so many before him said murderer thought he was scot-free as is the usual case once the Lincoln lawyer was on the case. But see, said Lincoln lawyer “got religion” along the way after he and those around him were slated to take the fall if that vicious killer (a mommy’s boy to boot) got tripped up.
So you know damn well pretty early on that our trusty Lincoln lawyer is not taking the fall and, moreover, is going to see that an actual piece of real justice occurs in the process by the freeing a framed man who was sitting in stir through his negligence (and disbelief in innocence) by seeing that that vicious killer gets his jolt up at Q. Therefore you see we had it all wrong. There is some rough justice in the world. And one had better not kill off all those lawyers if there is going to be even that amount. The twists and turns getting there, although fairly well-worn by now in movie-dom, are what make this film one to see.
DVD Review
The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tormei, based on the novel by Michael Connelly, Liongate, 2011
Yes, I know, everybody, everybody including Richard III, I think, who uttered some variation of that idea in William Shakespeare’s play of the same name, hates lawyers. Hates them until old justice time comes along and everyone, including this writer, hopes to high heaven that their lawyer is up to the task of representing them zealously, and in some desperate cases more than zealously. And that combination of sentiments, that hate/love thing, is what drives this film which according to my usually reliable sources follows the Michael Connelly novel pretty closely.
Needless to say, except for the thugs, pimps, dope dealers, hellish motorcycle angels, bail bondmen, public servant grifters and grafters and a bewitching lawyer ex-wife (played by Marissa Tormei) nobody, no viewer anyway, is suppose to like the Lincoln lawyer at the outset. (Named the Lincoln lawyer, by the way, not for his ethical resemblance to Father Abraham but because he rides around in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln.) His wheeling and dealing just this side of the law is what makes him the darling of that rogue’s gallery of characters listed above (except, of course, the fetching ex-wife, and maybe her a little too) and the bane of the District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Police Department establishment.
That deft and ruthless maneuvering is what also draws him to the attention of a vicious killer of women, women of the night to use a quaint phrase, and a surefire way to commit the “perfect murder” and like so many before him said murderer thought he was scot-free as is the usual case once the Lincoln lawyer was on the case. But see, said Lincoln lawyer “got religion” along the way after he and those around him were slated to take the fall if that vicious killer (a mommy’s boy to boot) got tripped up.
So you know damn well pretty early on that our trusty Lincoln lawyer is not taking the fall and, moreover, is going to see that an actual piece of real justice occurs in the process by the freeing a framed man who was sitting in stir through his negligence (and disbelief in innocence) by seeing that that vicious killer gets his jolt up at Q. Therefore you see we had it all wrong. There is some rough justice in the world. And one had better not kill off all those lawyers if there is going to be even that amount. The twists and turns getting there, although fairly well-worn by now in movie-dom, are what make this film one to see.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
In The Matter Of The Zen Western- Johnny Depp’s Dead Man- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Johnny Depp’s Dead Man.
DVD Review
Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, eerily edgy music by Neil Young, Miramax 1995
Sure, I have taken plenty of shots at variations on the great American West, past and present, from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove to The Last Picture Show from The Wild Bunch to Crazy Hearts and everything in between. As well, I have always been glad, glad as hell, to review any movie starring Johnny Depp that might come my way. So here we have the combination of Johnny Depp as, well, Johnny Depp as usual (except maybe for those seemingly endless Pirate sequels) taking on an edgy role that less talented or more timid male actors would have walked away from, way a way from.
No one doubts that the old Hollywood (and dime store novel) vision of the old John Wayne "howdy, partner" American West is long gone. And with the ground-breaking work of The Wild Bunch back in the 1970d we have seen, well we have seen, more plausibly views of that old time West, including some pretty unsavory characters in search of fame and fortune around the edges of the great frontier before it melted at the turn of the 20th century. That pasting of the frontier, of course, did not stop anybody with the least carefree spirit or who was just plain tired of the “civilized” East from heading by anyway they could to the great expanses of the old-time West. And that is where William Blake (played by Johnny Depp), no not the 18th century mad man English poet and supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution (although that mistake plays a part in the plot), but an accountant, for god’s sake, enters the story.
William Blake’s transformation into a man of the West complete with notches on his revolver, seemingly in slow-motion at times and all in black and white, is what drives this curious film. We have an educated “savage," Native American, savage white man bounty-hunters, a twisted rich land-owners (played by the late Robert Mitchum) and every mangy "old dog" who made it, or did not make it in the West. And every pathology known to humankind showed its face in this fierce portrayal of the West but also, a very surprising positive portrayal of Native American culture and its demise with the advance of the white man. William Blake, accountant, is one of Johnny Depp’s edgier performances, no question, and if you can stay with the zen aspect of the thing a very well done performance. Not for everyone, and certainly not for those who might still be clinging to some John Wayne idea of the West.
DVD Review
Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, eerily edgy music by Neil Young, Miramax 1995
Sure, I have taken plenty of shots at variations on the great American West, past and present, from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove to The Last Picture Show from The Wild Bunch to Crazy Hearts and everything in between. As well, I have always been glad, glad as hell, to review any movie starring Johnny Depp that might come my way. So here we have the combination of Johnny Depp as, well, Johnny Depp as usual (except maybe for those seemingly endless Pirate sequels) taking on an edgy role that less talented or more timid male actors would have walked away from, way a way from.
No one doubts that the old Hollywood (and dime store novel) vision of the old John Wayne "howdy, partner" American West is long gone. And with the ground-breaking work of The Wild Bunch back in the 1970d we have seen, well we have seen, more plausibly views of that old time West, including some pretty unsavory characters in search of fame and fortune around the edges of the great frontier before it melted at the turn of the 20th century. That pasting of the frontier, of course, did not stop anybody with the least carefree spirit or who was just plain tired of the “civilized” East from heading by anyway they could to the great expanses of the old-time West. And that is where William Blake (played by Johnny Depp), no not the 18th century mad man English poet and supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution (although that mistake plays a part in the plot), but an accountant, for god’s sake, enters the story.
William Blake’s transformation into a man of the West complete with notches on his revolver, seemingly in slow-motion at times and all in black and white, is what drives this curious film. We have an educated “savage," Native American, savage white man bounty-hunters, a twisted rich land-owners (played by the late Robert Mitchum) and every mangy "old dog" who made it, or did not make it in the West. And every pathology known to humankind showed its face in this fierce portrayal of the West but also, a very surprising positive portrayal of Native American culture and its demise with the advance of the white man. William Blake, accountant, is one of Johnny Depp’s edgier performances, no question, and if you can stay with the zen aspect of the thing a very well done performance. Not for everyone, and certainly not for those who might still be clinging to some John Wayne idea of the West.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
The Road To…., The Corner Boys Of The 1930s-Tom Hanks’ “Road to Perdition”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film The Road To Perdition.
DVD Review
The Road To Perdition, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, Dreamworks, 2002
I have spent a lot of time in this space writing about my corner boy experiences growing up in my old Irish and Italian working class neighborhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I have also spent some time talking about the corner boys who just immediately preceded us in the early 1950s. Pretty tame really although if you were on the receiving end of a vicious beating, got your money stolen in some back alley, or had your personal household possessions ransacked or stolen by some midnight shifter your perspective might not be so romantic. The “corner boys,” Irish and Italian mainly, of 1930s Great Depression Chicago though, as portrayed in the film under review, The Road to Perdition, make all that other stuff seem “punk” by comparison.
Of course the motives to join a gang of lumpenproletarians in all cases were the same then, and today. That is “where the money was” to paraphrase the old-time famous bank robber, Willy Sutton. No question all those guys in the 1930s and later were (and are) from hunger. But also looking for the quick dollar and the “no heavy lifting” life not associated with steady working class factory every day values. Equally true is the fact that there are always more “hungry” guys than the market can bear which leads to two things-external “turf wars” between gangs and internal turf wars over who controls what within gangs. And that is the heart of this story.
The problem for Tom Hanks, a trusted, very trusted, enforcer (read: “hit man”) for Irish mob boss Paul Newman (he of many such corner boy roles going back to Cool Hand Luke and before) is that Newman's psychotic son wants his share of the goodies as befits a son and heir apparent. Needless to say that things get dicey, very dicey as they maneuver to the top, including the gangland-style execution of Hanks’ family that was suppose to include a son, the narrator of the film, who is forced to help Hanks’ seek the inevitable revenge required by the situation. In the end though Tom Waits is right in the opening line from Jersey Girl- “Ain’t got no time for the corner boys, down in the streets making all that noise.” A nice cinematically-pleasing 1930s period piece and what turned out to be a great farewell performance by the late Paul Newman.
DVD Review
The Road To Perdition, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, Dreamworks, 2002
I have spent a lot of time in this space writing about my corner boy experiences growing up in my old Irish and Italian working class neighborhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I have also spent some time talking about the corner boys who just immediately preceded us in the early 1950s. Pretty tame really although if you were on the receiving end of a vicious beating, got your money stolen in some back alley, or had your personal household possessions ransacked or stolen by some midnight shifter your perspective might not be so romantic. The “corner boys,” Irish and Italian mainly, of 1930s Great Depression Chicago though, as portrayed in the film under review, The Road to Perdition, make all that other stuff seem “punk” by comparison.
Of course the motives to join a gang of lumpenproletarians in all cases were the same then, and today. That is “where the money was” to paraphrase the old-time famous bank robber, Willy Sutton. No question all those guys in the 1930s and later were (and are) from hunger. But also looking for the quick dollar and the “no heavy lifting” life not associated with steady working class factory every day values. Equally true is the fact that there are always more “hungry” guys than the market can bear which leads to two things-external “turf wars” between gangs and internal turf wars over who controls what within gangs. And that is the heart of this story.
The problem for Tom Hanks, a trusted, very trusted, enforcer (read: “hit man”) for Irish mob boss Paul Newman (he of many such corner boy roles going back to Cool Hand Luke and before) is that Newman's psychotic son wants his share of the goodies as befits a son and heir apparent. Needless to say that things get dicey, very dicey as they maneuver to the top, including the gangland-style execution of Hanks’ family that was suppose to include a son, the narrator of the film, who is forced to help Hanks’ seek the inevitable revenge required by the situation. In the end though Tom Waits is right in the opening line from Jersey Girl- “Ain’t got no time for the corner boys, down in the streets making all that noise.” A nice cinematically-pleasing 1930s period piece and what turned out to be a great farewell performance by the late Paul Newman.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s- Penny’s Brand New Phonograph
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Penguins performing their 50s classic, Earth Angel.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll; Volume One, various artists, Ace Records,1994
Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which grace each CD in this The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series. The photo on this CD, as might be expected, shows the ubiquitous, highly coveted, then and today, old time LP (and 45’s convertible) record player and the family radio, probably RCA, both weapons in the 1950’s teenage wars to have our own music, and to be able to listen to said music 24/7 without parental interference, or knowledge. Of course, not everybody, teenage everybody, and that’s what counted, including rock dizzy Penny had one or the other and that is the struggle we are to presently witness.
“Good night, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd, the kids were no problem and thanks again for the money.” “Whee,” Penny Parker whispered under her breathe, as she went out the door. Those kids were nothing but monsters, refusing to go to bed unless, and until, they watched Maverick on television, Penny played checkers with Bobby and Billy Dodd (sister Laura was satisfied to be a spectator), and they each (all three on this one) got not one, but two scoops of ice cream before surrendering to Penny’s demands. And all for a lousy seventy-five cents an hour. Those were slave wages, slave wages even for a thirteen year old girl and Penny, Parker proud if not Parker bright, bright yet anyway thought for just a minute to give up this monster-sitting, well, baby-sitting really, up. “No,” she yelled into the Clintondale night, “No way after all I have put up with from those beasts am I giving up my dream record player now, no way.” And that was that.
Penny, Parker bright or proud notwithstanding, was a creature of her times, as we all are more or less. And the times called for every self-respecting teenager, and teenagers were all that counted in Penny’s universe, had his or her own private, up in his or her room, phonograph to play his or her favorite music, rock ‘n’ roll music, naturally. Not some lame Benny Goodman or Doris Day mumble that her parents listened to on the radio downstairs and drove Penny up a wall, maybe up more than one wall. And drove her right out of the Parker door down to Bop Benny’s Record Shop to play the jukebox there when the newest of the new records came out. See, Penny did not have her own record player like every other girl, every other teen-age girl that counted in her class at Clintondale Junior High School. Even Pammy Fuller had one, and Pam’s parents had them practically living on the county farm. But Peter Parker, father Parker, was adamant that he would not pay for anything that was connected with rock ‘n’ roll. Not out of religious principles, or anything like that, but he just hated the sound. Yes, I know, Peter Parker, square, square cubed.
So that left Penny down at Benny’s throwing nickels, dimes, and quarters in that old juke box. Many nickels when Kathy Young’s A Thousand Stars was hot, or when she had a crush, a big crush, on Zack Smith and she “broke the bank,” playing Earth Angel by the Penguins and When We Get Married by The Dreamlovers whenever Zack was in Benny’s and she wanted to draw his attention to her. Or the time when “Foul-Mouth” Phil Jackson dared her to play Eddie My Love by the Teen Queens when he was trying to date her up, or what passed for a date at twelve.
One day her brother, Paul, a year older than Penny but seemingly about a million years wiser saw that she had put at least fifty cents in the box when she was feeling all sentimental about Jimmy Kelly, her ex-beau, or as ex-beau as any thirteen year old girl is allowed to have, and was playing I Love How You Love Me by the Paris Sisters like crazy. He just flat-out told her after dinner that night that it would be a whole lot easier and less expensive to just get her own record player and play up in her room to her heart’s contend. Penny stood there in disbelief, not in disbelief about the idea but that dear old dad would go for it. Well, the long and short of it, was that dear old dad did go for it, with the usual provisos that there would be no loud or late playing. Sure daddy.
And that prospect, that record player of her very own, with her own platters to spin (records, grooved vinyl records to the squares), and no bother, except maybe to invite Jimmy or Zack over bother, is why this night as she walks home she is muttering about wage slavery, the injustices of the world, the teenage world, the only one that counted in case someone might have forgotten, and other communistic sentiments, if anybody had hear her. Penny figured after that night that another twelve hours of drudgery, another nine dollars and she could get that cool one that she saw in the Sears&Roebuck catalogue.
But then Penny, Parker bright just then, looked pensively down at the sidewalk when she realizes that she would have to buy records to feed that record player and that she would have to continue baby-sitting for slave wages forever with Dodd monsters to get all the 45s that she absolutely needed. And then, horror of horrors, what if Jimmy liked Sixteen Candles by the Crests and Zack didn’t but liked Rockin’ Robin by Bobby Day (and he probably would) and she had to buy both records. Well, what’s a girl to do but, Penny, Parker proud just then, thought she would be able to figure it out.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll; Volume One, various artists, Ace Records,1994
Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which grace each CD in this The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series. The photo on this CD, as might be expected, shows the ubiquitous, highly coveted, then and today, old time LP (and 45’s convertible) record player and the family radio, probably RCA, both weapons in the 1950’s teenage wars to have our own music, and to be able to listen to said music 24/7 without parental interference, or knowledge. Of course, not everybody, teenage everybody, and that’s what counted, including rock dizzy Penny had one or the other and that is the struggle we are to presently witness.
“Good night, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd, the kids were no problem and thanks again for the money.” “Whee,” Penny Parker whispered under her breathe, as she went out the door. Those kids were nothing but monsters, refusing to go to bed unless, and until, they watched Maverick on television, Penny played checkers with Bobby and Billy Dodd (sister Laura was satisfied to be a spectator), and they each (all three on this one) got not one, but two scoops of ice cream before surrendering to Penny’s demands. And all for a lousy seventy-five cents an hour. Those were slave wages, slave wages even for a thirteen year old girl and Penny, Parker proud if not Parker bright, bright yet anyway thought for just a minute to give up this monster-sitting, well, baby-sitting really, up. “No,” she yelled into the Clintondale night, “No way after all I have put up with from those beasts am I giving up my dream record player now, no way.” And that was that.
Penny, Parker bright or proud notwithstanding, was a creature of her times, as we all are more or less. And the times called for every self-respecting teenager, and teenagers were all that counted in Penny’s universe, had his or her own private, up in his or her room, phonograph to play his or her favorite music, rock ‘n’ roll music, naturally. Not some lame Benny Goodman or Doris Day mumble that her parents listened to on the radio downstairs and drove Penny up a wall, maybe up more than one wall. And drove her right out of the Parker door down to Bop Benny’s Record Shop to play the jukebox there when the newest of the new records came out. See, Penny did not have her own record player like every other girl, every other teen-age girl that counted in her class at Clintondale Junior High School. Even Pammy Fuller had one, and Pam’s parents had them practically living on the county farm. But Peter Parker, father Parker, was adamant that he would not pay for anything that was connected with rock ‘n’ roll. Not out of religious principles, or anything like that, but he just hated the sound. Yes, I know, Peter Parker, square, square cubed.
So that left Penny down at Benny’s throwing nickels, dimes, and quarters in that old juke box. Many nickels when Kathy Young’s A Thousand Stars was hot, or when she had a crush, a big crush, on Zack Smith and she “broke the bank,” playing Earth Angel by the Penguins and When We Get Married by The Dreamlovers whenever Zack was in Benny’s and she wanted to draw his attention to her. Or the time when “Foul-Mouth” Phil Jackson dared her to play Eddie My Love by the Teen Queens when he was trying to date her up, or what passed for a date at twelve.
One day her brother, Paul, a year older than Penny but seemingly about a million years wiser saw that she had put at least fifty cents in the box when she was feeling all sentimental about Jimmy Kelly, her ex-beau, or as ex-beau as any thirteen year old girl is allowed to have, and was playing I Love How You Love Me by the Paris Sisters like crazy. He just flat-out told her after dinner that night that it would be a whole lot easier and less expensive to just get her own record player and play up in her room to her heart’s contend. Penny stood there in disbelief, not in disbelief about the idea but that dear old dad would go for it. Well, the long and short of it, was that dear old dad did go for it, with the usual provisos that there would be no loud or late playing. Sure daddy.
And that prospect, that record player of her very own, with her own platters to spin (records, grooved vinyl records to the squares), and no bother, except maybe to invite Jimmy or Zack over bother, is why this night as she walks home she is muttering about wage slavery, the injustices of the world, the teenage world, the only one that counted in case someone might have forgotten, and other communistic sentiments, if anybody had hear her. Penny figured after that night that another twelve hours of drudgery, another nine dollars and she could get that cool one that she saw in the Sears&Roebuck catalogue.
But then Penny, Parker bright just then, looked pensively down at the sidewalk when she realizes that she would have to buy records to feed that record player and that she would have to continue baby-sitting for slave wages forever with Dodd monsters to get all the 45s that she absolutely needed. And then, horror of horrors, what if Jimmy liked Sixteen Candles by the Crests and Zack didn’t but liked Rockin’ Robin by Bobby Day (and he probably would) and she had to buy both records. Well, what’s a girl to do but, Penny, Parker proud just then, thought she would be able to figure it out.
Monday, August 22, 2011
An Old Geezer Jogging, Kind Of, At The North Adamsville"Dust Bowl" (A.K.A. The Cavanaugh Track)-For Bill Bailey, North Adamsville Class Of 1964
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Hicham el Guerouj, the Moroccan Knight, setting the one mile run world record in 2008.
Peter Paul Markin comment:
I have written a number of entries in this space about the old days at North, North Adamsville High School in the early 1960s, for those unfamiliar with that hallowed ground, and the like. This little beauty follows in that same tradition, although with this twist- the "old geezer" described in the headline to this entry has requested anonymity for reasons that will become obvious once the tale he has asked me to tell unfolds. I think, however, that the average, above-average, classmates that old North produced can all figure this one out. Right?
For those of us who went to North Adamsville Junior High School and can remember that far back this year (2010) marks the 50th anniversary of our graduation from that unhallowed school. For the old geezer, a man know personally to me from the old days and man given to the faux-heroic feat, the odd-ball, off-hand symbolic gesture, and a disturbingly steadfast adherence to the drumbeat of history this called for some action. Now the old geezer and I go back to the times when we were corner boys together along with Frankie Riley, yes, Frankie Riley the now successful lawyer that you keep reading about in the newspapers of late (that is if anybody still reads such things in the “new age”) along with several other guys at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs.” (For those unfamiliar with that term don’t worry about such a localism it does not affect the story here). So when I speak of odd-ball behavior I know of where I speak.
As if merely a nodding commemoration of the 50th anniversary graduation “event” were not enough since this year also marked the 50th anniversary of the old geezer’s first seriously taking up running (indoor and outdoor track, cross country) as a sport, under the guidance of old time North Adamsville Junior High, Coach Bob Lewis, a gesture was required. As a historic “gesture” he decided to an attempt to run one mile around the old "Dust Bowl" track that served (and still serves) as an “athletic field” for the North high school and middle school (a.k.a. junior high school) community since Hector was a pup. And if not that long, then since beyond local memory.
Now this Herculean effort was to be done in spite of the fact that the old geezer had done no more, at most, than run for the bus for the past quarter of a century, or more. And just missed that bus on more occasions that warrants attention here. Note also that the distance selected for this “heroic” effort was the well-known classic one mile that he sought to run. Not for him that old "lame" 600 yards around the front driveway circle at North that everyone had to do as part of the old-time yearly President's Physical Fitness Test. Kids’ stuff. No, he went back to the mist of time and to feats like those of the first sub-four minute miler, Roger Bannister. (For those unfamiliar with that name it too is not germane to this story, although you can Google the name or look it up in Wikipedia if you have a little time on your hands.
For those not familiar with the location the old "Dust Bowl" is the field the next street over from the North Adamsville Middle School. It served as our junior high school field for some other sports as well. It also was the place where the legendary 1964 football team, led by "Bullwinkle", "Woj", Jim Fallon, Charlie McDonald, Tom Kiley, Walt Simmons, Don McNally, Lee Munson and a host of others practiced being mean under Coach Lion in order to beat beleaguered cross town arch-rival Adamsville High School that year. Now I know that some readers here "know" that location.
Furthermore, it was also the training ground and meet location for the high school spring track team where the silky-strided Bill Bailey held forth in distance running, Ritchie McDonald and others in the middle distances, Brooks Atkins in the sprints, Carl Lindberg and Ralph Moore in the hurdles, Al Bartley in the pole vault and a host of others who ran around in their skimpy black shorts, including the old geezer. The old geezer, moreover, was then distinguished by being a consummate well-below average runner. He had the “slows” as every other teammate told him at every possible opportunity. He was not sure on this one, nor am I, but, perhaps, the football cheerleaders led by the spunky Josie Weinfeld, the sprightly Roxanne Gower, and the plucky Linda Plane also practiced there. In short, if you were not familiar with the locale and grew up in the old town there then you now stand accused of being willfully out of touch with old North Adamsville reality.
I should also mention that this name "Dust Bowl" is not mere hyperbole on my part. In summer and fall, at least, there was more dust that the EPA would find tolerable these days. Moreover, as the old geezer told me the field 'owed' him. So revenge was also a motive here, as well. Apparently he still has cinders in his left knee from when he fell while running on the track 50 years ago. Ouch! He asked me to ask around to see if others had similar "war stories", although none came worthy of notice-mere band-aid wounds. Moreover, and this is symbolic in its own way, the track is not the normal quarter-mile one that you only had to go around four times to the mile(for the non-Math whizzes out there) but five laps to the mile. That may explain many things about our subsequent lives, right?
Okay, now to the big event. In the interest of accuracy this "event", according to the old geezer's information, occurred at about 9:00 AM on February 6, 2010. Now why he was not in Florida or at least in some warm house instead of being out on the "track" will go a long way to explaining the "inner demons" that plague then this sixty-three year-old man's psyche. Moreover, he continued on with his quest despite having to wait upon dogs, and their owners, who seemingly felt such an hour was ripe for a canine national convention at the old bowl. But, we digress.
The old geezer started off okay with the usual burst of adrenaline one gets when the big day finally comes carrying him along for a while, he then settled into a 'pace' and all went well until he started breathing heavily, got light-headed and began feeling cramps in his thigh, and that was only on the first lap. It went down hill from there. He insisted I give the gory details of each lap but thank god for the Delete button. Intrepid soul that he is he” dogged" it out. He informed me that his time for the mile has been declared a matter of national security and therefore not available to the public, although he did allude to an unfavorable comparison with the time it takes to get to the moon and back. Nevertheless the gesture is in the books, a member of the class of 1964 has been vindicated, and life can return to normal. Oh, the old geezer did mention this. For those of you with grandchildren under the age of five he is ready to take on all comers. Okay.
Postscript- If you can believe this the old geezer refuses to permit me to post the “news” of his “heroic” one mile effort if I do not include a blow-by-blow description of his five lap (remember the “Dust Bowl” is five laps to the mile in case you might have forgotten). I thought that giving a short summary of his first lap was more than adequate but no we need to know every hurried breathe, every turned toe, every near collapse. The reader should feel no compulsion to wade through this but don’t forget the Delete button is readily at hand. In any case the following is strictly the old geezer’s take on the matter.
Old Geezer comment:
That February day was cold but not much colder than in the old days when we went down to Clintondale and their winter outdoor track in January that really froze you. The trick was to take off your sweat suit, jump on the oval banked-wooden track as quickly as possible and hit the starting line just as the starter yelled to run. And then do the same thing in reverse after the race. Funny the old Dust Bowl with the exception of them taking out the wooden bleachers where the seven (hey, maybe it was six if you didn’t count the girl scorer, the cute girl scorer, Roseanne something, I think) track and field fans gathered in the old days the place looked like it hadn’t been upgraded since about 1964. Same old rutted, brambly, asphalty, hard-scrabble surface that you dare not trip and fall on. I know because I still carry some “cinder” from the old days in my left knee. But enough. To the run itself.
Of course I started out slow, slow as hell, slower than a couple of the dogs that were rummaging around along with their “guardians.” As I picked up steam I was going pretty good until I started breathing real heavy, started to get the inevitable sweating, and my legs started getting light and wobbly. That was almost at the end of the first lap with four more to go. I almost stopped but I am not built that way, slow or fast, mainly slow I almost always finished a race except when I came up injured a couple of times. The second lap was tough as I started to put my head down to push myself along just like in the old days. Painful step after step.
The third lap got a little better as I got in stride and was pretty uneventful except for a random dog who decide he (or she) wanted to be my “rabbit” ( a rabbit in track is someone who sets the pace, a fast pace, for others and then either falls back or drops out). The fourth lap though almost did me in. I stumbled and almost fell on a clod of dirt that must have been dug up before the winter set in. I managed to right myself but I felt kind of dizzy after that for a while. Hey, four laps are done now and I am at the “gun” lap (fifth for those legions who don’t know track “lingo”). No way am I not going to finish now. And while it seemed like an eternity I did finish with a “sprint” the last ten yards or so. After about twenty minutes recuperation while my pulse slowed down, my blood pressure stabilized and about thirteen other medical conditions passed the crisis point I left the dust bowl feeling I had even up the score on that damn place.
Markin comment:
That "fifteen minutes of fame" thing is pretty attenuated here but for those who actually read this last section there you have it. Enough.
Peter Paul Markin comment:
I have written a number of entries in this space about the old days at North, North Adamsville High School in the early 1960s, for those unfamiliar with that hallowed ground, and the like. This little beauty follows in that same tradition, although with this twist- the "old geezer" described in the headline to this entry has requested anonymity for reasons that will become obvious once the tale he has asked me to tell unfolds. I think, however, that the average, above-average, classmates that old North produced can all figure this one out. Right?
For those of us who went to North Adamsville Junior High School and can remember that far back this year (2010) marks the 50th anniversary of our graduation from that unhallowed school. For the old geezer, a man know personally to me from the old days and man given to the faux-heroic feat, the odd-ball, off-hand symbolic gesture, and a disturbingly steadfast adherence to the drumbeat of history this called for some action. Now the old geezer and I go back to the times when we were corner boys together along with Frankie Riley, yes, Frankie Riley the now successful lawyer that you keep reading about in the newspapers of late (that is if anybody still reads such things in the “new age”) along with several other guys at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the Downs.” (For those unfamiliar with that term don’t worry about such a localism it does not affect the story here). So when I speak of odd-ball behavior I know of where I speak.
As if merely a nodding commemoration of the 50th anniversary graduation “event” were not enough since this year also marked the 50th anniversary of the old geezer’s first seriously taking up running (indoor and outdoor track, cross country) as a sport, under the guidance of old time North Adamsville Junior High, Coach Bob Lewis, a gesture was required. As a historic “gesture” he decided to an attempt to run one mile around the old "Dust Bowl" track that served (and still serves) as an “athletic field” for the North high school and middle school (a.k.a. junior high school) community since Hector was a pup. And if not that long, then since beyond local memory.
Now this Herculean effort was to be done in spite of the fact that the old geezer had done no more, at most, than run for the bus for the past quarter of a century, or more. And just missed that bus on more occasions that warrants attention here. Note also that the distance selected for this “heroic” effort was the well-known classic one mile that he sought to run. Not for him that old "lame" 600 yards around the front driveway circle at North that everyone had to do as part of the old-time yearly President's Physical Fitness Test. Kids’ stuff. No, he went back to the mist of time and to feats like those of the first sub-four minute miler, Roger Bannister. (For those unfamiliar with that name it too is not germane to this story, although you can Google the name or look it up in Wikipedia if you have a little time on your hands.
For those not familiar with the location the old "Dust Bowl" is the field the next street over from the North Adamsville Middle School. It served as our junior high school field for some other sports as well. It also was the place where the legendary 1964 football team, led by "Bullwinkle", "Woj", Jim Fallon, Charlie McDonald, Tom Kiley, Walt Simmons, Don McNally, Lee Munson and a host of others practiced being mean under Coach Lion in order to beat beleaguered cross town arch-rival Adamsville High School that year. Now I know that some readers here "know" that location.
Furthermore, it was also the training ground and meet location for the high school spring track team where the silky-strided Bill Bailey held forth in distance running, Ritchie McDonald and others in the middle distances, Brooks Atkins in the sprints, Carl Lindberg and Ralph Moore in the hurdles, Al Bartley in the pole vault and a host of others who ran around in their skimpy black shorts, including the old geezer. The old geezer, moreover, was then distinguished by being a consummate well-below average runner. He had the “slows” as every other teammate told him at every possible opportunity. He was not sure on this one, nor am I, but, perhaps, the football cheerleaders led by the spunky Josie Weinfeld, the sprightly Roxanne Gower, and the plucky Linda Plane also practiced there. In short, if you were not familiar with the locale and grew up in the old town there then you now stand accused of being willfully out of touch with old North Adamsville reality.
I should also mention that this name "Dust Bowl" is not mere hyperbole on my part. In summer and fall, at least, there was more dust that the EPA would find tolerable these days. Moreover, as the old geezer told me the field 'owed' him. So revenge was also a motive here, as well. Apparently he still has cinders in his left knee from when he fell while running on the track 50 years ago. Ouch! He asked me to ask around to see if others had similar "war stories", although none came worthy of notice-mere band-aid wounds. Moreover, and this is symbolic in its own way, the track is not the normal quarter-mile one that you only had to go around four times to the mile(for the non-Math whizzes out there) but five laps to the mile. That may explain many things about our subsequent lives, right?
Okay, now to the big event. In the interest of accuracy this "event", according to the old geezer's information, occurred at about 9:00 AM on February 6, 2010. Now why he was not in Florida or at least in some warm house instead of being out on the "track" will go a long way to explaining the "inner demons" that plague then this sixty-three year-old man's psyche. Moreover, he continued on with his quest despite having to wait upon dogs, and their owners, who seemingly felt such an hour was ripe for a canine national convention at the old bowl. But, we digress.
The old geezer started off okay with the usual burst of adrenaline one gets when the big day finally comes carrying him along for a while, he then settled into a 'pace' and all went well until he started breathing heavily, got light-headed and began feeling cramps in his thigh, and that was only on the first lap. It went down hill from there. He insisted I give the gory details of each lap but thank god for the Delete button. Intrepid soul that he is he” dogged" it out. He informed me that his time for the mile has been declared a matter of national security and therefore not available to the public, although he did allude to an unfavorable comparison with the time it takes to get to the moon and back. Nevertheless the gesture is in the books, a member of the class of 1964 has been vindicated, and life can return to normal. Oh, the old geezer did mention this. For those of you with grandchildren under the age of five he is ready to take on all comers. Okay.
Postscript- If you can believe this the old geezer refuses to permit me to post the “news” of his “heroic” one mile effort if I do not include a blow-by-blow description of his five lap (remember the “Dust Bowl” is five laps to the mile in case you might have forgotten). I thought that giving a short summary of his first lap was more than adequate but no we need to know every hurried breathe, every turned toe, every near collapse. The reader should feel no compulsion to wade through this but don’t forget the Delete button is readily at hand. In any case the following is strictly the old geezer’s take on the matter.
Old Geezer comment:
That February day was cold but not much colder than in the old days when we went down to Clintondale and their winter outdoor track in January that really froze you. The trick was to take off your sweat suit, jump on the oval banked-wooden track as quickly as possible and hit the starting line just as the starter yelled to run. And then do the same thing in reverse after the race. Funny the old Dust Bowl with the exception of them taking out the wooden bleachers where the seven (hey, maybe it was six if you didn’t count the girl scorer, the cute girl scorer, Roseanne something, I think) track and field fans gathered in the old days the place looked like it hadn’t been upgraded since about 1964. Same old rutted, brambly, asphalty, hard-scrabble surface that you dare not trip and fall on. I know because I still carry some “cinder” from the old days in my left knee. But enough. To the run itself.
Of course I started out slow, slow as hell, slower than a couple of the dogs that were rummaging around along with their “guardians.” As I picked up steam I was going pretty good until I started breathing real heavy, started to get the inevitable sweating, and my legs started getting light and wobbly. That was almost at the end of the first lap with four more to go. I almost stopped but I am not built that way, slow or fast, mainly slow I almost always finished a race except when I came up injured a couple of times. The second lap was tough as I started to put my head down to push myself along just like in the old days. Painful step after step.
The third lap got a little better as I got in stride and was pretty uneventful except for a random dog who decide he (or she) wanted to be my “rabbit” ( a rabbit in track is someone who sets the pace, a fast pace, for others and then either falls back or drops out). The fourth lap though almost did me in. I stumbled and almost fell on a clod of dirt that must have been dug up before the winter set in. I managed to right myself but I felt kind of dizzy after that for a while. Hey, four laps are done now and I am at the “gun” lap (fifth for those legions who don’t know track “lingo”). No way am I not going to finish now. And while it seemed like an eternity I did finish with a “sprint” the last ten yards or so. After about twenty minutes recuperation while my pulse slowed down, my blood pressure stabilized and about thirteen other medical conditions passed the crisis point I left the dust bowl feeling I had even up the score on that damn place.
Markin comment:
That "fifteen minutes of fame" thing is pretty attenuated here but for those who actually read this last section there you have it. Enough.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
“The Next Girl Who Throws Sand In My Face Is…” Johnny Silver’s Sad Be-Bop 1950s Beach Blanket Saga.
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Falcons performing You're So Fine.
DVD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘N’ Roll: The Late 50s, various artist, Time-Life Records, 1997
Markin comment:
No question that my corner boy comrades from the old Frankie Riley-led Salducci’s Pizza Parlor hang-out and me from the day high school got out for the summer drew a bee-line straight to the old-time Adamsville Beach of blessed memory. Did we go to said beach to be “one” with our homeland, the sea? No. Did we go to admire the boats and other things floating by? No. Did we go to get a little breeze across our sun-burned and battered bodies on a hot and sultry August summer day. No. Well, maybe a little. But come on now we are talking about sixteen, maybe seventeen, year old guys. We were there, of course, because there were shapely teeny-weeny bikini-clad girls (young women, okay, let’s not get technical about that pre-woman’s liberation time) sunning themselves like peacocks for all the world, all the male teenage North Adamsville world, the only world that mattered to guys and gals alike., to see.
And they were sunning themselves and otherwise looking very desirable and, well, fetching, in not just any old spot wherever they could place a blanket but strictly, as tradition dictated, tradition seemingly going back before memory, between the North Adamsville and Adamsville Yacht Clubs. So, naturally, every testosterone-driven teenage lad who owned a bathing suit, and some who didn’t were hanging off the floating dock right in front of said yacht clubs showing off, well, showing off their prowess to the flower of North Adamsville maidenhood. And said show-offs included, of course, Frankie Riley (when he was not working at the old A&P Supermarket), his faithful scribe, Peter Paul Markin, and other including the, then anyway, “runt of the litter,” Johnny Silver. It is Johnny’s sad beach blanket bingo tale that gets a hearing today. If it all sounds kind of familiar, even to the younger set, it is because, with the exception of the musical selections, it is.
*********
“The next girl who throws sand in my face is going get it,” yelled Johnny Silver to no one in particular as he came back the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boy beach front acreage just in front of the seawall facing, squarely facing, midpoint between the North Adamsville and Adamsville Yacht Clubs. As the sounds of Elvis Presley’s Loving You came over Frankie Riley’s transistor radio and wafted down to the sea, almost like a siren call to teenage love, one of those no one in particulars, Peter Paul Markin replied, “What did you expect, Johnny? That Katy Larkin is too tall, too pretty and just flat-out too foxy for a runt like you. I am surprised you are still in one piece. And I would mention, as well, that her brother, “Jimmy Jukes,” does not like guys, especially runt guys with no muscles bothering his sister.” Johnny came back quickly with the usual, “Hey, I am not that small and I am growing, growing fast so Jimmy Jukes can eat my… “But Johnny halted just in time as one Jimmy Jukes, James Allen Larkin, halfback hero of many a North Adamsville fall football game came perilously close to Johnny and then veered off like Johnny was nothing, nada, no thing. And after Jimmy Jukes was safely out of sight, and Frankie flipped the volume dial on his radio louder as the Falcons’ You’re So Fine came on heralding Frankie’s attempt by osmosis to lure a certain Betty Ann McCarthy his way, another standard brand fox in the teenage girl be-bop night, Johnny poured out his sad saga.
Seems that Katy Larkin was in one of Johnny’s classes, biology he said, and one day, one late spring day Katy, out of the blue, asked him what he thought about Buddy Holly who had passed away in crash several years before, well before he reached his potential as the new king of the be-bop rock night. Johnny answered that Buddy was “boss,” especially his Everyday, and that got them talking, but only talking, almost every day until the end of school. Of course, Johnny, runt Johnny, didn’t have the nerve, not nearly enough nerve to ask a serious fox like Katy out, big brother or not. Not until this very day when he got up the nerve to go over to her blanket, a blanket that also had Sara Bigelow and Tammy Kelly on board, and as a starter asked her if she liked Elvis’ That’s When The Heartache Begins. She answered quickly and rather curtly (although Johnny did not pick up on that signal) that it was “dreamy.” Then Johnny’s big moment came and he blurted out, “Do you want to go to the Surf Dance Hall with me Saturday night? Crazy Lazy is the DJ and the Rockin’ Ramrods are playing. And as the reader knows, or should be presumed to know, Johnny’s answer was a face full of sand. And that sad, sad beach saga is the end of another teen angst moment. So the to the strains of Robert and Johnny’s We Belong Together we will move along.
Well, not quite. It also seems that Katy Larkin, tall (too tall for Johnny, really), shapely (no question of really about that), and don’t forget foxy, Katy Larkin had a “crush” on one John Raymond Silver if you can believe that. She was miffed, apparently more than somewhat, that Johnny had not asked her out before school got out for the summer. That more than somewhat entailed throwing sand in Johnny’s face when he did get up the nerve to ask. So on the first day of school, while Johnny was turning his radio off and putting it in his locker just before school started, after having just listened to the Platters One In a Million for the umpteenth time, Katy Larkin “cornered” (Johnny’s term) Johnny and said in a clear, if excited voice, “I’m sorry about that day at the beach last summer.” And then in the teenage girl imperative, hell maybe all woman imperative, “You are taking me to the Fall All-Class Mixer and I will not take no for an answer.” Well, what is a guy to do when that teenage girl imperative, hell maybe all women imperative, voice commands. So Johnny is now re-evaluating his attitude toward beach sand and maybe, after all, it was just a girl being playful. In any case, Johnny grew quite a bit that summer and now Katy Larkin is not too tall, not too tall at all, for Johnny Silver to take to the mixer, or anywhere else she decides she wants to go.
DVD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘N’ Roll: The Late 50s, various artist, Time-Life Records, 1997
Markin comment:
No question that my corner boy comrades from the old Frankie Riley-led Salducci’s Pizza Parlor hang-out and me from the day high school got out for the summer drew a bee-line straight to the old-time Adamsville Beach of blessed memory. Did we go to said beach to be “one” with our homeland, the sea? No. Did we go to admire the boats and other things floating by? No. Did we go to get a little breeze across our sun-burned and battered bodies on a hot and sultry August summer day. No. Well, maybe a little. But come on now we are talking about sixteen, maybe seventeen, year old guys. We were there, of course, because there were shapely teeny-weeny bikini-clad girls (young women, okay, let’s not get technical about that pre-woman’s liberation time) sunning themselves like peacocks for all the world, all the male teenage North Adamsville world, the only world that mattered to guys and gals alike., to see.
And they were sunning themselves and otherwise looking very desirable and, well, fetching, in not just any old spot wherever they could place a blanket but strictly, as tradition dictated, tradition seemingly going back before memory, between the North Adamsville and Adamsville Yacht Clubs. So, naturally, every testosterone-driven teenage lad who owned a bathing suit, and some who didn’t were hanging off the floating dock right in front of said yacht clubs showing off, well, showing off their prowess to the flower of North Adamsville maidenhood. And said show-offs included, of course, Frankie Riley (when he was not working at the old A&P Supermarket), his faithful scribe, Peter Paul Markin, and other including the, then anyway, “runt of the litter,” Johnny Silver. It is Johnny’s sad beach blanket bingo tale that gets a hearing today. If it all sounds kind of familiar, even to the younger set, it is because, with the exception of the musical selections, it is.
*********
“The next girl who throws sand in my face is going get it,” yelled Johnny Silver to no one in particular as he came back the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boy beach front acreage just in front of the seawall facing, squarely facing, midpoint between the North Adamsville and Adamsville Yacht Clubs. As the sounds of Elvis Presley’s Loving You came over Frankie Riley’s transistor radio and wafted down to the sea, almost like a siren call to teenage love, one of those no one in particulars, Peter Paul Markin replied, “What did you expect, Johnny? That Katy Larkin is too tall, too pretty and just flat-out too foxy for a runt like you. I am surprised you are still in one piece. And I would mention, as well, that her brother, “Jimmy Jukes,” does not like guys, especially runt guys with no muscles bothering his sister.” Johnny came back quickly with the usual, “Hey, I am not that small and I am growing, growing fast so Jimmy Jukes can eat my… “But Johnny halted just in time as one Jimmy Jukes, James Allen Larkin, halfback hero of many a North Adamsville fall football game came perilously close to Johnny and then veered off like Johnny was nothing, nada, no thing. And after Jimmy Jukes was safely out of sight, and Frankie flipped the volume dial on his radio louder as the Falcons’ You’re So Fine came on heralding Frankie’s attempt by osmosis to lure a certain Betty Ann McCarthy his way, another standard brand fox in the teenage girl be-bop night, Johnny poured out his sad saga.
Seems that Katy Larkin was in one of Johnny’s classes, biology he said, and one day, one late spring day Katy, out of the blue, asked him what he thought about Buddy Holly who had passed away in crash several years before, well before he reached his potential as the new king of the be-bop rock night. Johnny answered that Buddy was “boss,” especially his Everyday, and that got them talking, but only talking, almost every day until the end of school. Of course, Johnny, runt Johnny, didn’t have the nerve, not nearly enough nerve to ask a serious fox like Katy out, big brother or not. Not until this very day when he got up the nerve to go over to her blanket, a blanket that also had Sara Bigelow and Tammy Kelly on board, and as a starter asked her if she liked Elvis’ That’s When The Heartache Begins. She answered quickly and rather curtly (although Johnny did not pick up on that signal) that it was “dreamy.” Then Johnny’s big moment came and he blurted out, “Do you want to go to the Surf Dance Hall with me Saturday night? Crazy Lazy is the DJ and the Rockin’ Ramrods are playing. And as the reader knows, or should be presumed to know, Johnny’s answer was a face full of sand. And that sad, sad beach saga is the end of another teen angst moment. So the to the strains of Robert and Johnny’s We Belong Together we will move along.
Well, not quite. It also seems that Katy Larkin, tall (too tall for Johnny, really), shapely (no question of really about that), and don’t forget foxy, Katy Larkin had a “crush” on one John Raymond Silver if you can believe that. She was miffed, apparently more than somewhat, that Johnny had not asked her out before school got out for the summer. That more than somewhat entailed throwing sand in Johnny’s face when he did get up the nerve to ask. So on the first day of school, while Johnny was turning his radio off and putting it in his locker just before school started, after having just listened to the Platters One In a Million for the umpteenth time, Katy Larkin “cornered” (Johnny’s term) Johnny and said in a clear, if excited voice, “I’m sorry about that day at the beach last summer.” And then in the teenage girl imperative, hell maybe all woman imperative, “You are taking me to the Fall All-Class Mixer and I will not take no for an answer.” Well, what is a guy to do when that teenage girl imperative, hell maybe all women imperative, voice commands. So Johnny is now re-evaluating his attitude toward beach sand and maybe, after all, it was just a girl being playful. In any case, Johnny grew quite a bit that summer and now Katy Larkin is not too tall, not too tall at all, for Johnny Silver to take to the mixer, or anywhere else she decides she wants to go.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
In The Time Of The Time Of The British Blues Explosion-He Ain't No One-Trick Pony- The Belfast Cowboy Rides Again Van Morrison’s “Keep It Simple”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing Behind The Ritual.
CD Review
Keep It Simple, Van Morrison, Exile Records, 2008
Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.
And that brings us to the album under review, Keep It Simple, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hence the Belfast Cowboy. But he ain't no one-trick pony.No way, no how. Too many hard life lessons "learned."
If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on School of Hard Knocks, a classic bluesy number; the thoughtful Song Of Home; the pathos of No Thing; the title song reflecting back from back in youthful rock times, Keep It Simple; and, something out of time, Behind The Ritual. The Belfast Cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys worn their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves. But I guess they do.
CD Review
Keep It Simple, Van Morrison, Exile Records, 2008
Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.
And that brings us to the album under review, Keep It Simple, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hence the Belfast Cowboy. But he ain't no one-trick pony.No way, no how. Too many hard life lessons "learned."
If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on School of Hard Knocks, a classic bluesy number; the thoughtful Song Of Home; the pathos of No Thing; the title song reflecting back from back in youthful rock times, Keep It Simple; and, something out of time, Behind The Ritual. The Belfast Cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys worn their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves. But I guess they do.
Friday, August 19, 2011
On The 20th Anniversary Of The Demise Of The Soviet Union- A Defeat For The International Working Class Movement-Plant The Red Flag Of Our Communist Future Everywhere.
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for a chronology of the events that contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991-92. Use this entry for an overview and then look for books and articles that analyze this world-historic defeat for the international working class movement. And for how we go forward.
Markin comment:On this 20th anniversary of the demise of the Soviet Union-a world historic defeat for the international working class movement look to our future, our class struggle future. Spain, Italy, Greece, we need more red flags as the class struggle heats up to a white heat intensity. Fight, fight to the death if need be, for workers governments. There had better be "a spectre haunting Europe" beginning right now. And our memory of Soviet times and our red flag symbolizes that fight.
Bandiera rossa [Red Flag]
Avanti o popolo, alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa, bandiera rossa
Avanti o popolo, alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Evviva il socialismo e la libertà!
Degli sfruttati l'immensa schiera
La pura innalzi, rossa bandiera
O proletari, alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Il frutto del lavoro a chi lavora andrà.
Dai campi al mare, alla miniera
All'officina, chi soffre e spera
Sia pronto è l'ora della riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Soltanto il socialismo è vera libertà.
Non più nemici, non più frontiere
Sono i confini rosse bandiere
O socialisti, alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Nel solo socialismo è pace e libertà.
Falange audace cosciente e fiera
Dispiega al sole rossa bandiera
Lavoratori alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Evviva il comunismo e la libertà!
Forward people, to the rescue
Red flag, red flag
Forward people, to the rescue
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Long live socialism and freedom!
The exploited's immense formation
Raises the pure, red flag
Oh proletarians, to the rescue
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
The fruits of labor will be for he who works!
From the country to the sea, to the mine
To the workshop, those who suffer and hope
Be ready, it's the hour of vengeance
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Only socialism is true freedom.
No more enemies, no more frontiers
The borders are red flags
Oh socialists, to the rescue
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Only in socialism is there peace and freedom.
Bold, conscious and proud ranks
Unfurl the red flag in the sun
Workers to the rescue
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Long live communism and freedom!
Revolutionary Italian song.
Translated for marxists.org by Clara Statello and Mitchell Abidor
Markin comment:On this 20th anniversary of the demise of the Soviet Union-a world historic defeat for the international working class movement look to our future, our class struggle future. Spain, Italy, Greece, we need more red flags as the class struggle heats up to a white heat intensity. Fight, fight to the death if need be, for workers governments. There had better be "a spectre haunting Europe" beginning right now. And our memory of Soviet times and our red flag symbolizes that fight.
Bandiera rossa [Red Flag]
Avanti o popolo, alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa, bandiera rossa
Avanti o popolo, alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Evviva il socialismo e la libertà!
Degli sfruttati l'immensa schiera
La pura innalzi, rossa bandiera
O proletari, alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Il frutto del lavoro a chi lavora andrà.
Dai campi al mare, alla miniera
All'officina, chi soffre e spera
Sia pronto è l'ora della riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Soltanto il socialismo è vera libertà.
Non più nemici, non più frontiere
Sono i confini rosse bandiere
O socialisti, alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Nel solo socialismo è pace e libertà.
Falange audace cosciente e fiera
Dispiega al sole rossa bandiera
Lavoratori alla riscossa
Bandiera rossa trionferà.
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Bandiera rossa la trionferà
Evviva il comunismo e la libertà!
Forward people, to the rescue
Red flag, red flag
Forward people, to the rescue
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Long live socialism and freedom!
The exploited's immense formation
Raises the pure, red flag
Oh proletarians, to the rescue
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
The fruits of labor will be for he who works!
From the country to the sea, to the mine
To the workshop, those who suffer and hope
Be ready, it's the hour of vengeance
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Only socialism is true freedom.
No more enemies, no more frontiers
The borders are red flags
Oh socialists, to the rescue
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Only in socialism is there peace and freedom.
Bold, conscious and proud ranks
Unfurl the red flag in the sun
Workers to the rescue
Red flag will triumph.
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Red flag will be triumphant
Long live communism and freedom!
Revolutionary Italian song.
Translated for marxists.org by Clara Statello and Mitchell Abidor
In The Time Of The Time Of The British Blues Explosion-He Ain't No One-Trick Pony- The Belfast Cowboy Rides Again Van Morrison’s “Down The Road”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing the title song from the album under review, Back On Top.
CD Review
Down The Road, Van Morrison, Exile Records, 2002
Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.
And that brings us to the album under review, Pay The Devil, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hence the Belfast cowboy.
If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on Steal My Heart Away, a classic bluesy number; the thoughtful The Beauty Of Days Gone By; the pathos of Chopping Wood; the title song reflecting back on youthful rock timesDown The Road; and, something out of time,Fast Train. The Belfast cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys worn their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves. But I guess they do.
CD Review
Down The Road, Van Morrison, Exile Records, 2002
Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.
And that brings us to the album under review, Pay The Devil, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hence the Belfast cowboy.
If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on Steal My Heart Away, a classic bluesy number; the thoughtful The Beauty Of Days Gone By; the pathos of Chopping Wood; the title song reflecting back on youthful rock timesDown The Road; and, something out of time,Fast Train. The Belfast cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys worn their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves. But I guess they do.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
In The Time Of The Time Of The British Blues Explosion- This Ain't No One-Trick Pony- The Belfast Cowboy Rides Again Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing In The Back Room.
CD Review
Brown Eyed Handsome Man , Van Morrison, Bono Records, 2000
Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.
And that brings us to the album under review, Pay The Devil, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hence the Belfast Cowboy. But this ain't no one-trick pony. No way, no how not with that deep musical background.
If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on He Ain’t Give You None, a classic bluesy number; the thoughtful Beside You; the pathos of Send Your Mind; the title song from back in youthful rock timesBrown Eyed Handsome Man; and, something out of time,The Back Room. The Belfast Cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys worn their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves. But I guess they do.
CD Review
Brown Eyed Handsome Man , Van Morrison, Bono Records, 2000
Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.
And that brings us to the album under review, Pay The Devil, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hence the Belfast Cowboy. But this ain't no one-trick pony. No way, no how not with that deep musical background.
If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on He Ain’t Give You None, a classic bluesy number; the thoughtful Beside You; the pathos of Send Your Mind; the title song from back in youthful rock timesBrown Eyed Handsome Man; and, something out of time,The Back Room. The Belfast Cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys worn their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves. But I guess they do.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
In Honor Of The “Old Man”- On The 71st Anniversary Of The Death Of Leon Trotsky-How it Happened-Natalia Sedova Trotsky
bolsheviks, COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, Fourth International, leon trotsky, russian revolution, theroy of permanent revolution, V.I. Lenin
Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
******
Markin comment on this article:
Of course Natalia Sedova was Trotsky's "wife" for most of their lives and suffered the many exiles, imprisonments, privations and other unsettling problems that confronted the great revolutionary. She, unlike Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, was not intensely political but more a steadfast companion and rock solid force behind the big man of history. Her later turning away from the work of the Fourth International and her husband's defense of the Soviet experience in reaction to her personal tragedies and an impressionistic view of the post-World War Cold War situation does not negate the earlier critical support she gave to his efforts.
********
Natalia Sedova Trotsky
How it Happened
Written:1940
First Published:1941 (English translation)
Source: Fourth International
Online Version: Natalia Sedova Internet Archive, December 2001
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Mike Bessler (original markup by ETOL)
(Tuesday, August 20, 1940; 7 o'clock in the morning)
"You know, I feel fine today, at all events, this morning; it's a long time since I felt so well... Last night I took a double dose of the sleeping drug. I noticed that it does me good."
"Yes. I recall that we observed this in Norway when you used to feel run-down much more often... But it isn't the drug itself that does you good, it's sound sleep, complete rest."
"Why yes, of course."
As he opened in the morning or closed at night the massive steel shutters built in our bedroom by our friends after the attack of May 24 on our home, L. D. would occasionally remark: "Well, now no Siqueiros can get at us." And upon awakening he would greet me and himself by saying, "You see, they didn't kill us last night after all, and yet you are still dissatisfied." I defended myself as best I could... Once, after such a "greeting," he added pensively: "Yes, Natasha, we received a reprieve."
As far back as 1928, when we were being exiled to Alma-Ata, where the unknown awaited us, we had a talk one night in the compartment of the train which was taking us into exile... We could not sleep, after the tumult of the last weeks, and especially the last days, in Moscow. In spite of our extreme fatigue, the nervous excitement persisted. I recall that Lev Davidovich said to me then: "it's better this way (exile). I am not in favor of dying in a bed in the Kremlin."
But this morning he was far from all such thoughts. Physical well-being made him look forward eagerly to a "really good" day's work. Vigorously he walked out into the patio to feed his rabbits, after performing swiftly his morning toilet and dressing just as quickly. When his health was poor, the feeding of the rabbits was a strain on him; but he couldn't give it up, as he pitied the little animals. It was difficult to do it as he wanted to, as was his custom--thoroughly. Besides, he had to be on guard; his strength had to be conserved for another, different kind of work--work at his desk. Taking care of the animals, cleaning their cages, etc., provided him, on the one band, with relaxation and a distraction, but, on the other hand, it fatigued him physically; and this, in turn, reflected on his general ability to work. He became completely absorbed in everything he did, regardless of the task.
I recall that in 1933 we departed from Prinkipo for France, where we lived in a lonely villa not far from Royan, by the shores of the Atlantic. Our son together with our friends had arranged for this villa which was called "Sea-Spray." The waves of the turbulent ocean came into our garden, and salt spray would fly in through the open windows. Surrounded by our friends, we lived under semi-legal conditions. We would have on occasion as many as twenty people. Eight or nine lived on the premises. In view of our position, it was out of the question to call in a housekeeper or someone to help in the kitchen. The whole burden fell on Jeanne, my son's wife, and on Vera Molinier, and I also helped. The young comrades washed the dishes. Lev Davidovich, too, wanted to help with the housework and began washing dishes. But our friends protested: "He should rest after dinner. We can manage ourselves." Besides, my son Leva told me: "Papa insists on using a scientific method of dish-washing, and this eats up too much of our time." In the end, L. D. had to retire from this occupation.
The middle way, the lackadaisical attitude, the semi-indifferent manner, these he knew not. That is why nothing tired him so much as casual or semi-indifferent conversations. But with what enthusiasm did he go to pick cacti with a view to transplanting them in our garden. He was in a frenzy, being the first on the job and the last to leave. Not one of the young people surrounding him on our walks into the country and working with him outdoors could keep pace with him; they tired more quickly, and fell behind one after the other. But he was indefatigable. Looking at him, I often marveled. Whence did he draw his energy, his physical endurance? Neither the unbearably hot sun, the mountains nor descents with cacti heavy as iron bothered him. He was hypnotized by the consummation of the task at hand. He found relaxation in changing his tasks. This also provided him with a respite from the blows which mercilessly fell upon him. The more crushing the blow the more ardently he forgot himself in work.
Our walks, which were really war-expeditions for cacti, became more and more rare because of "circumstances beyond our control." However, every now and then, having had his fill of the monotony of his daily routine, Lev Davidovich would say to me: "This week we ought to take a whole day off for a walk, don't you think so?"
"You mean a day for penal labor?" I would twit him.
"All right, let's go, to be sure."
"It would be best to get an early start. Shouldn't we leave around six in the morning?"
"Six is all right with me, but won't you get too tired?"
"No, it will only refresh me, and I promise not to overdo it."
Usually Lev Davidovich fed his fondly-watched rabbits and chickens, from a quarter past seven (sometimes 7:20) till nine o'clock in the morning. Sometimes he would interrupt this work to dictate into the dictaphone some order or some idea which occurred to him. That day he worked in the patio without interruption. After breakfast he assured me that he felt fine and spoke of his desire to begin dictating an article on conscription in the United States. And he actually did start to dictate.
At one o'clock Rigault, our attorney in the case of the May 24th attack, came to see us. After his departure, Lev Davidovich looked into my room to tell me, not without regret, that he would have to postpone work on the article and to resume preparing the material for the trial in connection with the attack upon us. He and his attorney had decided that it was necessary to answer El Popular in view of the fact that L. D. had been accused of defamation at a banquet given by that publication.
"And I will take the offensive and will charge them with brazen slander." he said defiantly.
"Too bad, you won't be able to write about conscription."
"Yes, it can't be helped. I have to postpone it for two or three days. I have already asked for all the available materials to be placed on my desk. After dinner, I shall start going over them. I feel fine," he once again assured me.
After a brief siesta, I saw him sitting at his desk, which was already covered with items relating to the El Popular case. He continued to be in good spirits. And it made me feel more cheerful. Lev Davidovich had of late been complaining of enervation to which he succumbed occasionally. He knew that it was a passing condition, but lately he seemed to be in greater doubt about it than ever before; today seemed to us to mark the beginning of improvement in his physical condition. He looked well too. Every now and then I opened the door to his room just a trifle, so as not to disturb him, and saw him in his usual position, bent over his desk, pen in hand. I recalled the line, "One more and final story and my scroll is at an end." Thus speaks the ancient monk-scribe Pimen in Pushkin's drama "Boris Godounov," as he recorded the evil deeds of Czar Boris.
Lev Davidovich led a life close in semblance to that of a prisoner or a hermit, with this difference that in his solitude he not only kept a chronological record of events but waged an indomitably passionate struggle against his ideological enemies.
Brief as that day was, Lev Davidovich had until five in the afternoon dictated into the dictaphone several fragments of his contemplated article on conscription in the United States and about fifty short pages of his exposure of El Popular, i.e. of Stalin's machinations. It was a day of physical and spiritual equanimity for him.
Jacson Appears
At five, the two of us had tea, as usual. At twenty minutes past five, perhaps at half past, I stepped out on the balcony and saw L. D. in the patio near an open rabbit hutch. He was feeding the animals. Beside him was an unfamiliar figure. Only when he removed his hat and started to approach the balcony did I recognize him. It was "Jacson."
"He's here again," it flashed through my mind. "Why has he begun to come so often?" I asked myself.
"I'm frightfully thirsty, may I have a glass of water?" he asked, upon greeting me.
"Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?"
"No no. I dined too late and feel that the food is up here," he answered, pointing at his throat. "it's choking me." The color of his face was gray-green. His general appearance was that of a very nervous man.
"Why are you wearing your hat and topcoat?" (His topcoat was hanging over his left arm, pressed against his body.) "It's so sunny today."
"Yes, but you know it won't last long, it might rain." I wanted to argue that "today it won't rain" and of his always boasting that he never wore a hat or coat, even in the wont weather, but somehow I became depressed and let the subject drop. Instead I asked:
"And how is Sylvia feeling?"
He did not appear to understand me. I had upset him by my previous question about his topcoat and hat. And he was completely lost in his own thoughts, and very nervous. Finally, as if rousing himself from a deep sleep, he answered me: "Sylvia?... Sylvia?..." And catching himself, he added casually: "She's always well."
He began to retrace his steps towards Lev Davidovich and the rabbit hutches. I asked him as he walked away: "Is your article ready?"
"Yes, it's ready."
"Is it typed?"
With an awkward movement of his hand, while he continued to press against his body his topcoat in the lining of which were sewn in, as it was later revealed, a pickaxe and a dagger, he produced several typewritten pages to show me.
"It's good that your manuscript is not written by hand. Lev Davidovich dislikes illegible manuscripts."
Two days earlier he had called on us, also wearing a topcoat and a hat. I did not see him then as, unfortunately, I was not at home. But Lev Davidovich told me that "Jacson" had called and had somewhat surprised him by his conduct Lev Davidovich mentioned it in a way which indicated that he had no desire to elaborate upon the matter, but at the same time he felt that he had to mention it to me, sensing some new feature about the man.
"He brought an outline of his article, in reality a few phrases--muddled stuff. I made some suggestions to him. We shall see." And Lev Davidovich added, "Yesterday he did not resemble a Frenchman at all. Suddenly he sat down on my desk and kept his hat on all the while."
"Yes, it's strange" I said in wonderment. "He never wears a hat."
"This time he wore a hat," answered Lev Davidovich and pursued this subject no further. He spoke casually. But I was taken aback: it seemed to me that on this occasion he had perceived something new about "Jacson" but had not yet reached, or rather was in no hurry to draw conclusions. This brief conversation of ours occurred on the eve of the crime.
Wearing a hat.. topcoat on his arm... sat himself down on the table--wasn't this a rehearsal on his part? This was done so that he would be more certain and precise in his movements on the morrow.
Who could have suspected it then? It stirred us to embarrassment, nothing more. Who could have foretold that the day of August 20, so ordinary, would be so fateful? Nothing bespoke its ominousness. From dawn the sun was shining, as always here, the whole day brightly. Flowers were blooming, and grass seemed polished with lacquer... We went about our tasks each in his own way, all of us trying in whatever we did to facilitate Lev Davidovich's work. How many times in the course of that day did he mount the little steps of this same balcony, and walk into this, his room, and sit down on this very same chair beside the desk... All this used to hem ordinary and is now by its very ordinariness so terrible and tragic. No one, none among us, not he himself was able to sense the impending disaster. And in this inability a kind of abyss yawns. On the contrary, the whole day was one of the most tranquil. When L. D. stepped out at noon into the patio and I perceived him standing there bareheaded beneath the scorching sun, I hastened to bring him his white cap to protect his head against the merciless hot rays. To protect from the sun... but even at that very moment he was already threatened with a terrible death. At that hour we did not sense his doom, an outburst of despair did not convulse our hearts.
I recall that when the alarm system in the house, the garden and the patio was being installed by our friends and guard posts were being assigned, I drew L. D.'s attention to the fact that a guard should also be posted at his window. This seemed to me at the time so palpably indispensable. But L. D. objected that to do so it would be necessary to expand the guard, increase it to ten which was beyond our resources both in point of money and of available people at the disposal of our organization. A guard outside the window could not have saved him in this particular instance. But the absence of one worried me. L. D. was likewise very touched by a present given him by our American friends after the attack of May 24. It was a bullet proof vest, something like an ancient shirt of mail. As I examined it one day, I happened to remark that it would be good to get something for the head. L. D. insisted that the comrade assigned to the most responsible post wear the vest each time. After the failure suffered by our enemies in the May 24 attack, we were absolutely certain that Stalin would not halt, and we were making preparations. We also knew that a different form of attack would be used by the G.P.U. Nor did we exclude a blow on the part of a "solitary individual" sent secretly and paid by the G.P.U. But neither the bullet-proof vest nor a helmet could have served as safeguards. To apply these methods of defense from day to day was impossible. It was impossible to convert one's life solely into self-defense--for in that case life loses all its value.
The Assassination
As "Jacson" and I approached Lev Davidovich the latter addressed me in Russian, "You know, he is expecting Sylvia to call on us. They are leaving tomorrow." It was a suggestion on his part that I should invite them to tea, if not supper.
"I didn't know that you intend leaving tomorrow and are expecting Sylvia here."
"Yes...yes... I forgot to mention it to you."
"It's too bad that I didn't know, I might have sent a few things to New York."
"I could call tomorrow at one."
"No, no, thank you. It would inconvenience both of us."
And turning to Lev Davidovich, I explained in Russian that I had already asked "Jacson" to tea but that he refused, complaining about not feeling well, being terribly thirsty and asked me only for a glass of water. Lev Davidovich glanced at him attentively, and said in a tone of light reproach, "Your health is poor again, you look ill... That's not good."
There was a pause. Lev Davidovich was loath to tear himself away from the rabbits and in no mood to listen to an article. However, he controlled himself and said, "Well, what do you say, shall we go over your article?"
He fastened the hutches methodically, and removed his working gloves. He took good care of his hands, or rather his fingers inasmuch as the slightest scratch irritated him, interfered with his writing. He always kept his pen like his fingers in order. He brushed off his blue blouse and slowly, silently started walking towards the house accompanied by "Jacson" and myself. I came with them to the door of Lev Davidovich's study; the door closed, and I walked into the adjoining room....
Not more than three or four minutes had elapsed when I heard a terrible, soul-shaking cry and without so much as realizing who it was that uttered this cry, I rushed in the direction from which it came. Between the dining room and the balcony, on the threshold, beside the door post and leaning against it stood... Lev Davidovich. His face was covered with blood, his eyes, without glasses, were sharp blue, his hands were hanging.
"What happened? What happened?"
I flung my arms about him, but he did not immediately answer. It flashed through my mind. Perhaps something had fallen from the ceiling--some repair work was being done there--but why was he here?
And he said to me calmly, without any indignation, bitterness or irritation, "Jacson." L.D. said it as if he wished to say, "It has happened." We took a few steps and Lev Davidovich, with my help, slumped to the floor on the little carpet there.
"Natasha, I love you.'" He said this so unexpectedly, so gravely, almost severely that, weak from inner shock, I swayed toward him.
"0...0... no one, no one must be allowed to see you without being searched."
Carefully placing a pillow under his broken head, I held a piece of ice to his wound and wiped the blood from his face with cotton...
"Seva must be taken away from all this..."
He spoke with difficulty, unclearly, but was--so it seemed to me--unaware of it.
"You know, in there--" his eyes moved towards the door of his room--"I sensed... understood what he wanted to do.... He wanted to strike me... once more... but I didn't let him," he spoke calmly, quietly, his voice breaking.
"But I didn't let him." There was a note of satisfaction in these words. At the same time Lev Davidovich turned to Joe, and spoke to him in English. Joe was kneeling on the floor as I was, on the other side, just opposite me. I strained to catch the words, but couldn't make them out. At that moment I saw Charlie, his face chalk-white, revolver in hand, rush into Lev Davidovich's room.
"What about that one" I asked Lev Davidovich. "They will kill him."
"No... impermissible to kill, he must be forced to talk," Lev Davidovich replied, still uttering the words with difficulty, slowly.
A kind of pathetic whining suddenly broke upon our ears. I glanced in a quandary at Lev Davidovich. With a barely noticeable movement of his eyes, he indicated the door of his room and said condescendingly, "It's he"... "Has the doctor arrived yet?"
"He'll be here any minute now... Charlie has gone in a car to fetch him."
The doctor arrived, examined the wound and agitatedly stated that it was "not dangerous." Lev Davidovich accepted this calmly, almost indifferently as though one could not expect any other pronouncement from a physician in such a situation. But, turning to Joe and indicating his heart, he said in English, "I feel it here... This time they have succeeded." He was sparing me.
The Last Hours
Through the roaring city, through its vain tumult and human din, through its garish evening lights, the emergency ambulance sped, weaving through traffic, passing cars, with the siren incessantly wailing, with the cordon of police motorcycles shrilly whistling. We were bearing the wounded man unbearable anguish in our hearts, and with an alarm that increased with every passing minute. He was conscious. One hand remained quietly extended along the body. It was paralyzed.
Dr. Dutren told me this after the examination at home, in the dining room, on the floor. For the other hand, the right, he couldn't find a place, describing circles with it all the time, touching me, as if seeking a comfortable place for it. He found it more and more difficult to talk. Bending very low I asked him how he felt.
"Better now," answered Lev Davidovich.
"Better now." This quickened the heart with keen hopes. The ear-splitting tumult, the whistles and the siren continued to wail but the heart pulsed with hope. "Better now."
The ambulance pulled up at the hospital. It stopped. A crowd milled around us. "There may be enemies," it flashed through my mind, as was always the case in similar situations. "Where are our friends? They must surround the stretcher..."
Now he was lying on the cot. Silently the doctors examined the wound. On their instructions, a "sister" began shaving his hair. I stood at the head of the cot. Smiling imperceptibly, Lev Davidovich said to me, "See, we found a barber too..."
He was still sparing me. That day we had talked about the necessity of calling a barber to give him a hair-cut, but did not get around to it. He was now reminding me of it. Lev Davidovich called Joe, who was standing right there, a few feet away from me and asked him, as I learned later, to jot down his farewell to life. When I inquired what Lev Davidovich had said to him, Joe replied, "He wanted me to make a note about French statistics." I was greatly surprised that it was something related to French statistics at such a time. It seemed strange. Unless perhaps his condition was beginning to improve...
I remained standing at the head of the cot, holding a piece of ice to the wound and listening attentively. They began to undress him. So as not to disturb him, his working blouse was cut with scissors; the doctor politely exchanged glances with the "sister" as if to encourage her; next came the knitted vest, then the shirt. The watch was unstrapped from his wrist. They then began to remove the remaining garments without cutting them, and he said to me then, "I don't want them to undress me... I want you to do it." He said this quite distinctly, only very sadly and gravely.
These were the last words he spoke to me. When I finished I bent over him and touched his lips with mine. He answered me. Again... And again he answered. And once again. It was our final farewell. But we were not aware of it.
The patient fell into a state of coma. The operation did not bring him out of this condition. Without removing my eyes, I watched over him all that night, waiting for the "awakening." The eyes were closed, but the breathing, now heavy, now even and calm, inspired hope. The following day passed the same way. By noon, according to the judgment of the doctors, there was an improvement. But toward the end of the day, a sharp change in the sick man's breathing suddenly took place. It became rapid, more and more rapid, instilling mortal fear. The physicians, the hospital staff surrounded the cot of the sick man. They were obviously agitated. Losing my self-control, I asked what this meant, but only one among them, a more cautious man answered. "it would pass," he said. The others remained silent. I understood how false was all consolation and how hopeless everything really was.
They lifted him up. His head slumped on one shoulder. The hands dangled like those in Titian's crucifixion: "The Removal from the Cross." Instead of a crown of thorns, the dying man wore a bandage. The features of his countenance retained their purity and pride. It seemed as if at any moment now he would straighten up and take charge himself. But the wound had penetrated the brain too deeply. The awakening so passionately awaited never came. His voice was also stilled. Everything was ended. He is no longer among the living.
Retribution will come to the vile murderers. Throughout his entire heroic and beautiful life, Lev Davidovich believed in the emancipated mankind of the future. During the last years of his life his faith did not falter, but on the contrary became only more mature, more firm than ever.
Future mankind, emancipated from all oppression will triumph over coercion of all sorts. He taught me to believe in this too.
November, 1940
Coyoacan, Mexico
Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
******
Markin comment on this article:
Of course Natalia Sedova was Trotsky's "wife" for most of their lives and suffered the many exiles, imprisonments, privations and other unsettling problems that confronted the great revolutionary. She, unlike Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, was not intensely political but more a steadfast companion and rock solid force behind the big man of history. Her later turning away from the work of the Fourth International and her husband's defense of the Soviet experience in reaction to her personal tragedies and an impressionistic view of the post-World War Cold War situation does not negate the earlier critical support she gave to his efforts.
********
Natalia Sedova Trotsky
How it Happened
Written:1940
First Published:1941 (English translation)
Source: Fourth International
Online Version: Natalia Sedova Internet Archive, December 2001
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Mike Bessler (original markup by ETOL)
(Tuesday, August 20, 1940; 7 o'clock in the morning)
"You know, I feel fine today, at all events, this morning; it's a long time since I felt so well... Last night I took a double dose of the sleeping drug. I noticed that it does me good."
"Yes. I recall that we observed this in Norway when you used to feel run-down much more often... But it isn't the drug itself that does you good, it's sound sleep, complete rest."
"Why yes, of course."
As he opened in the morning or closed at night the massive steel shutters built in our bedroom by our friends after the attack of May 24 on our home, L. D. would occasionally remark: "Well, now no Siqueiros can get at us." And upon awakening he would greet me and himself by saying, "You see, they didn't kill us last night after all, and yet you are still dissatisfied." I defended myself as best I could... Once, after such a "greeting," he added pensively: "Yes, Natasha, we received a reprieve."
As far back as 1928, when we were being exiled to Alma-Ata, where the unknown awaited us, we had a talk one night in the compartment of the train which was taking us into exile... We could not sleep, after the tumult of the last weeks, and especially the last days, in Moscow. In spite of our extreme fatigue, the nervous excitement persisted. I recall that Lev Davidovich said to me then: "it's better this way (exile). I am not in favor of dying in a bed in the Kremlin."
But this morning he was far from all such thoughts. Physical well-being made him look forward eagerly to a "really good" day's work. Vigorously he walked out into the patio to feed his rabbits, after performing swiftly his morning toilet and dressing just as quickly. When his health was poor, the feeding of the rabbits was a strain on him; but he couldn't give it up, as he pitied the little animals. It was difficult to do it as he wanted to, as was his custom--thoroughly. Besides, he had to be on guard; his strength had to be conserved for another, different kind of work--work at his desk. Taking care of the animals, cleaning their cages, etc., provided him, on the one band, with relaxation and a distraction, but, on the other hand, it fatigued him physically; and this, in turn, reflected on his general ability to work. He became completely absorbed in everything he did, regardless of the task.
I recall that in 1933 we departed from Prinkipo for France, where we lived in a lonely villa not far from Royan, by the shores of the Atlantic. Our son together with our friends had arranged for this villa which was called "Sea-Spray." The waves of the turbulent ocean came into our garden, and salt spray would fly in through the open windows. Surrounded by our friends, we lived under semi-legal conditions. We would have on occasion as many as twenty people. Eight or nine lived on the premises. In view of our position, it was out of the question to call in a housekeeper or someone to help in the kitchen. The whole burden fell on Jeanne, my son's wife, and on Vera Molinier, and I also helped. The young comrades washed the dishes. Lev Davidovich, too, wanted to help with the housework and began washing dishes. But our friends protested: "He should rest after dinner. We can manage ourselves." Besides, my son Leva told me: "Papa insists on using a scientific method of dish-washing, and this eats up too much of our time." In the end, L. D. had to retire from this occupation.
The middle way, the lackadaisical attitude, the semi-indifferent manner, these he knew not. That is why nothing tired him so much as casual or semi-indifferent conversations. But with what enthusiasm did he go to pick cacti with a view to transplanting them in our garden. He was in a frenzy, being the first on the job and the last to leave. Not one of the young people surrounding him on our walks into the country and working with him outdoors could keep pace with him; they tired more quickly, and fell behind one after the other. But he was indefatigable. Looking at him, I often marveled. Whence did he draw his energy, his physical endurance? Neither the unbearably hot sun, the mountains nor descents with cacti heavy as iron bothered him. He was hypnotized by the consummation of the task at hand. He found relaxation in changing his tasks. This also provided him with a respite from the blows which mercilessly fell upon him. The more crushing the blow the more ardently he forgot himself in work.
Our walks, which were really war-expeditions for cacti, became more and more rare because of "circumstances beyond our control." However, every now and then, having had his fill of the monotony of his daily routine, Lev Davidovich would say to me: "This week we ought to take a whole day off for a walk, don't you think so?"
"You mean a day for penal labor?" I would twit him.
"All right, let's go, to be sure."
"It would be best to get an early start. Shouldn't we leave around six in the morning?"
"Six is all right with me, but won't you get too tired?"
"No, it will only refresh me, and I promise not to overdo it."
Usually Lev Davidovich fed his fondly-watched rabbits and chickens, from a quarter past seven (sometimes 7:20) till nine o'clock in the morning. Sometimes he would interrupt this work to dictate into the dictaphone some order or some idea which occurred to him. That day he worked in the patio without interruption. After breakfast he assured me that he felt fine and spoke of his desire to begin dictating an article on conscription in the United States. And he actually did start to dictate.
At one o'clock Rigault, our attorney in the case of the May 24th attack, came to see us. After his departure, Lev Davidovich looked into my room to tell me, not without regret, that he would have to postpone work on the article and to resume preparing the material for the trial in connection with the attack upon us. He and his attorney had decided that it was necessary to answer El Popular in view of the fact that L. D. had been accused of defamation at a banquet given by that publication.
"And I will take the offensive and will charge them with brazen slander." he said defiantly.
"Too bad, you won't be able to write about conscription."
"Yes, it can't be helped. I have to postpone it for two or three days. I have already asked for all the available materials to be placed on my desk. After dinner, I shall start going over them. I feel fine," he once again assured me.
After a brief siesta, I saw him sitting at his desk, which was already covered with items relating to the El Popular case. He continued to be in good spirits. And it made me feel more cheerful. Lev Davidovich had of late been complaining of enervation to which he succumbed occasionally. He knew that it was a passing condition, but lately he seemed to be in greater doubt about it than ever before; today seemed to us to mark the beginning of improvement in his physical condition. He looked well too. Every now and then I opened the door to his room just a trifle, so as not to disturb him, and saw him in his usual position, bent over his desk, pen in hand. I recalled the line, "One more and final story and my scroll is at an end." Thus speaks the ancient monk-scribe Pimen in Pushkin's drama "Boris Godounov," as he recorded the evil deeds of Czar Boris.
Lev Davidovich led a life close in semblance to that of a prisoner or a hermit, with this difference that in his solitude he not only kept a chronological record of events but waged an indomitably passionate struggle against his ideological enemies.
Brief as that day was, Lev Davidovich had until five in the afternoon dictated into the dictaphone several fragments of his contemplated article on conscription in the United States and about fifty short pages of his exposure of El Popular, i.e. of Stalin's machinations. It was a day of physical and spiritual equanimity for him.
Jacson Appears
At five, the two of us had tea, as usual. At twenty minutes past five, perhaps at half past, I stepped out on the balcony and saw L. D. in the patio near an open rabbit hutch. He was feeding the animals. Beside him was an unfamiliar figure. Only when he removed his hat and started to approach the balcony did I recognize him. It was "Jacson."
"He's here again," it flashed through my mind. "Why has he begun to come so often?" I asked myself.
"I'm frightfully thirsty, may I have a glass of water?" he asked, upon greeting me.
"Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?"
"No no. I dined too late and feel that the food is up here," he answered, pointing at his throat. "it's choking me." The color of his face was gray-green. His general appearance was that of a very nervous man.
"Why are you wearing your hat and topcoat?" (His topcoat was hanging over his left arm, pressed against his body.) "It's so sunny today."
"Yes, but you know it won't last long, it might rain." I wanted to argue that "today it won't rain" and of his always boasting that he never wore a hat or coat, even in the wont weather, but somehow I became depressed and let the subject drop. Instead I asked:
"And how is Sylvia feeling?"
He did not appear to understand me. I had upset him by my previous question about his topcoat and hat. And he was completely lost in his own thoughts, and very nervous. Finally, as if rousing himself from a deep sleep, he answered me: "Sylvia?... Sylvia?..." And catching himself, he added casually: "She's always well."
He began to retrace his steps towards Lev Davidovich and the rabbit hutches. I asked him as he walked away: "Is your article ready?"
"Yes, it's ready."
"Is it typed?"
With an awkward movement of his hand, while he continued to press against his body his topcoat in the lining of which were sewn in, as it was later revealed, a pickaxe and a dagger, he produced several typewritten pages to show me.
"It's good that your manuscript is not written by hand. Lev Davidovich dislikes illegible manuscripts."
Two days earlier he had called on us, also wearing a topcoat and a hat. I did not see him then as, unfortunately, I was not at home. But Lev Davidovich told me that "Jacson" had called and had somewhat surprised him by his conduct Lev Davidovich mentioned it in a way which indicated that he had no desire to elaborate upon the matter, but at the same time he felt that he had to mention it to me, sensing some new feature about the man.
"He brought an outline of his article, in reality a few phrases--muddled stuff. I made some suggestions to him. We shall see." And Lev Davidovich added, "Yesterday he did not resemble a Frenchman at all. Suddenly he sat down on my desk and kept his hat on all the while."
"Yes, it's strange" I said in wonderment. "He never wears a hat."
"This time he wore a hat," answered Lev Davidovich and pursued this subject no further. He spoke casually. But I was taken aback: it seemed to me that on this occasion he had perceived something new about "Jacson" but had not yet reached, or rather was in no hurry to draw conclusions. This brief conversation of ours occurred on the eve of the crime.
Wearing a hat.. topcoat on his arm... sat himself down on the table--wasn't this a rehearsal on his part? This was done so that he would be more certain and precise in his movements on the morrow.
Who could have suspected it then? It stirred us to embarrassment, nothing more. Who could have foretold that the day of August 20, so ordinary, would be so fateful? Nothing bespoke its ominousness. From dawn the sun was shining, as always here, the whole day brightly. Flowers were blooming, and grass seemed polished with lacquer... We went about our tasks each in his own way, all of us trying in whatever we did to facilitate Lev Davidovich's work. How many times in the course of that day did he mount the little steps of this same balcony, and walk into this, his room, and sit down on this very same chair beside the desk... All this used to hem ordinary and is now by its very ordinariness so terrible and tragic. No one, none among us, not he himself was able to sense the impending disaster. And in this inability a kind of abyss yawns. On the contrary, the whole day was one of the most tranquil. When L. D. stepped out at noon into the patio and I perceived him standing there bareheaded beneath the scorching sun, I hastened to bring him his white cap to protect his head against the merciless hot rays. To protect from the sun... but even at that very moment he was already threatened with a terrible death. At that hour we did not sense his doom, an outburst of despair did not convulse our hearts.
I recall that when the alarm system in the house, the garden and the patio was being installed by our friends and guard posts were being assigned, I drew L. D.'s attention to the fact that a guard should also be posted at his window. This seemed to me at the time so palpably indispensable. But L. D. objected that to do so it would be necessary to expand the guard, increase it to ten which was beyond our resources both in point of money and of available people at the disposal of our organization. A guard outside the window could not have saved him in this particular instance. But the absence of one worried me. L. D. was likewise very touched by a present given him by our American friends after the attack of May 24. It was a bullet proof vest, something like an ancient shirt of mail. As I examined it one day, I happened to remark that it would be good to get something for the head. L. D. insisted that the comrade assigned to the most responsible post wear the vest each time. After the failure suffered by our enemies in the May 24 attack, we were absolutely certain that Stalin would not halt, and we were making preparations. We also knew that a different form of attack would be used by the G.P.U. Nor did we exclude a blow on the part of a "solitary individual" sent secretly and paid by the G.P.U. But neither the bullet-proof vest nor a helmet could have served as safeguards. To apply these methods of defense from day to day was impossible. It was impossible to convert one's life solely into self-defense--for in that case life loses all its value.
The Assassination
As "Jacson" and I approached Lev Davidovich the latter addressed me in Russian, "You know, he is expecting Sylvia to call on us. They are leaving tomorrow." It was a suggestion on his part that I should invite them to tea, if not supper.
"I didn't know that you intend leaving tomorrow and are expecting Sylvia here."
"Yes...yes... I forgot to mention it to you."
"It's too bad that I didn't know, I might have sent a few things to New York."
"I could call tomorrow at one."
"No, no, thank you. It would inconvenience both of us."
And turning to Lev Davidovich, I explained in Russian that I had already asked "Jacson" to tea but that he refused, complaining about not feeling well, being terribly thirsty and asked me only for a glass of water. Lev Davidovich glanced at him attentively, and said in a tone of light reproach, "Your health is poor again, you look ill... That's not good."
There was a pause. Lev Davidovich was loath to tear himself away from the rabbits and in no mood to listen to an article. However, he controlled himself and said, "Well, what do you say, shall we go over your article?"
He fastened the hutches methodically, and removed his working gloves. He took good care of his hands, or rather his fingers inasmuch as the slightest scratch irritated him, interfered with his writing. He always kept his pen like his fingers in order. He brushed off his blue blouse and slowly, silently started walking towards the house accompanied by "Jacson" and myself. I came with them to the door of Lev Davidovich's study; the door closed, and I walked into the adjoining room....
Not more than three or four minutes had elapsed when I heard a terrible, soul-shaking cry and without so much as realizing who it was that uttered this cry, I rushed in the direction from which it came. Between the dining room and the balcony, on the threshold, beside the door post and leaning against it stood... Lev Davidovich. His face was covered with blood, his eyes, without glasses, were sharp blue, his hands were hanging.
"What happened? What happened?"
I flung my arms about him, but he did not immediately answer. It flashed through my mind. Perhaps something had fallen from the ceiling--some repair work was being done there--but why was he here?
And he said to me calmly, without any indignation, bitterness or irritation, "Jacson." L.D. said it as if he wished to say, "It has happened." We took a few steps and Lev Davidovich, with my help, slumped to the floor on the little carpet there.
"Natasha, I love you.'" He said this so unexpectedly, so gravely, almost severely that, weak from inner shock, I swayed toward him.
"0...0... no one, no one must be allowed to see you without being searched."
Carefully placing a pillow under his broken head, I held a piece of ice to his wound and wiped the blood from his face with cotton...
"Seva must be taken away from all this..."
He spoke with difficulty, unclearly, but was--so it seemed to me--unaware of it.
"You know, in there--" his eyes moved towards the door of his room--"I sensed... understood what he wanted to do.... He wanted to strike me... once more... but I didn't let him," he spoke calmly, quietly, his voice breaking.
"But I didn't let him." There was a note of satisfaction in these words. At the same time Lev Davidovich turned to Joe, and spoke to him in English. Joe was kneeling on the floor as I was, on the other side, just opposite me. I strained to catch the words, but couldn't make them out. At that moment I saw Charlie, his face chalk-white, revolver in hand, rush into Lev Davidovich's room.
"What about that one" I asked Lev Davidovich. "They will kill him."
"No... impermissible to kill, he must be forced to talk," Lev Davidovich replied, still uttering the words with difficulty, slowly.
A kind of pathetic whining suddenly broke upon our ears. I glanced in a quandary at Lev Davidovich. With a barely noticeable movement of his eyes, he indicated the door of his room and said condescendingly, "It's he"... "Has the doctor arrived yet?"
"He'll be here any minute now... Charlie has gone in a car to fetch him."
The doctor arrived, examined the wound and agitatedly stated that it was "not dangerous." Lev Davidovich accepted this calmly, almost indifferently as though one could not expect any other pronouncement from a physician in such a situation. But, turning to Joe and indicating his heart, he said in English, "I feel it here... This time they have succeeded." He was sparing me.
The Last Hours
Through the roaring city, through its vain tumult and human din, through its garish evening lights, the emergency ambulance sped, weaving through traffic, passing cars, with the siren incessantly wailing, with the cordon of police motorcycles shrilly whistling. We were bearing the wounded man unbearable anguish in our hearts, and with an alarm that increased with every passing minute. He was conscious. One hand remained quietly extended along the body. It was paralyzed.
Dr. Dutren told me this after the examination at home, in the dining room, on the floor. For the other hand, the right, he couldn't find a place, describing circles with it all the time, touching me, as if seeking a comfortable place for it. He found it more and more difficult to talk. Bending very low I asked him how he felt.
"Better now," answered Lev Davidovich.
"Better now." This quickened the heart with keen hopes. The ear-splitting tumult, the whistles and the siren continued to wail but the heart pulsed with hope. "Better now."
The ambulance pulled up at the hospital. It stopped. A crowd milled around us. "There may be enemies," it flashed through my mind, as was always the case in similar situations. "Where are our friends? They must surround the stretcher..."
Now he was lying on the cot. Silently the doctors examined the wound. On their instructions, a "sister" began shaving his hair. I stood at the head of the cot. Smiling imperceptibly, Lev Davidovich said to me, "See, we found a barber too..."
He was still sparing me. That day we had talked about the necessity of calling a barber to give him a hair-cut, but did not get around to it. He was now reminding me of it. Lev Davidovich called Joe, who was standing right there, a few feet away from me and asked him, as I learned later, to jot down his farewell to life. When I inquired what Lev Davidovich had said to him, Joe replied, "He wanted me to make a note about French statistics." I was greatly surprised that it was something related to French statistics at such a time. It seemed strange. Unless perhaps his condition was beginning to improve...
I remained standing at the head of the cot, holding a piece of ice to the wound and listening attentively. They began to undress him. So as not to disturb him, his working blouse was cut with scissors; the doctor politely exchanged glances with the "sister" as if to encourage her; next came the knitted vest, then the shirt. The watch was unstrapped from his wrist. They then began to remove the remaining garments without cutting them, and he said to me then, "I don't want them to undress me... I want you to do it." He said this quite distinctly, only very sadly and gravely.
These were the last words he spoke to me. When I finished I bent over him and touched his lips with mine. He answered me. Again... And again he answered. And once again. It was our final farewell. But we were not aware of it.
The patient fell into a state of coma. The operation did not bring him out of this condition. Without removing my eyes, I watched over him all that night, waiting for the "awakening." The eyes were closed, but the breathing, now heavy, now even and calm, inspired hope. The following day passed the same way. By noon, according to the judgment of the doctors, there was an improvement. But toward the end of the day, a sharp change in the sick man's breathing suddenly took place. It became rapid, more and more rapid, instilling mortal fear. The physicians, the hospital staff surrounded the cot of the sick man. They were obviously agitated. Losing my self-control, I asked what this meant, but only one among them, a more cautious man answered. "it would pass," he said. The others remained silent. I understood how false was all consolation and how hopeless everything really was.
They lifted him up. His head slumped on one shoulder. The hands dangled like those in Titian's crucifixion: "The Removal from the Cross." Instead of a crown of thorns, the dying man wore a bandage. The features of his countenance retained their purity and pride. It seemed as if at any moment now he would straighten up and take charge himself. But the wound had penetrated the brain too deeply. The awakening so passionately awaited never came. His voice was also stilled. Everything was ended. He is no longer among the living.
Retribution will come to the vile murderers. Throughout his entire heroic and beautiful life, Lev Davidovich believed in the emancipated mankind of the future. During the last years of his life his faith did not falter, but on the contrary became only more mature, more firm than ever.
Future mankind, emancipated from all oppression will triumph over coercion of all sorts. He taught me to believe in this too.
November, 1940
Coyoacan, Mexico
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