Jack’s Merrimack River.
Rough, torrents flowing without a break, rock-stepping rough, boulders really
up by the painted sprayed cliffs near the University, cliff names etched in
paint going back to Jack time, (then, Jack time, just friendly old Lowell
Textile, strictly for the textile trade wonks and wanna-be, not Jack-worthy),
undertow dragging against foolhardy feet for the unsteady and first
understandings that the world IS a dangerous place but also, without
embarrassment, that the river is the river of life. Bridged, bridged at
strategic points bridged, brawny steel and trestle bridged to take on all
traffics rumbling across the torrent below river, granite foundations stones
placed in such a way as to defend against rising rivers, hurricanes, wars, and
other earthen disasters.
Bridged, not metaphor
bridged, Jack would no heard of it, would smirk that devil’s smirk and dismiss
you and your damn metaphor out of hand, so no to some Hemingway mind-wrought big two-hearted Idaho idyllic river but real
bridged, Jack London old time bridged, Call Of The Wild nights of the long
knives bridged between poor, working poor, working textile poor Lowell on one
side and the desperately, or repeatedly poor like clan Kerouac, chronically
unemployed, semi-chronically drunk and disorderly, poor, Acre poor.
Blessed Saint Jeanbon, patron
saint of the Acre poor, the Acre poor (and throw in some lumpen criminal
vagabonds, scavengers, and just plain thugs to boot, they thrive in the easy
pickings Acre, and a thousand other Acre places too) known to kindred poor Josh
Breslin (mother, nee LeBlanc, the LeBlancs from up Quebec City way) in the
French –Canadian Atlantic Avenue Acre over in Olde Saco, Maine and well-known
as well to Irish stews Peter Paul Markin down in Acre projects in Adamsville,
Massachusetts way. Yes, Saint Jeanbon, patron saint muse of the Acre poor,
wherever they are located. The back-biting, bitching, somewhere over the rainbow
poor, the Botts diner after midnight heavy-lidded after manly bouts with
fugitive whiskey bottles poor, the pick up the fags (okay, okay here cigarette
butts) from the Merrimack Street ground, and cadging (while the bartender is
not looking) half- finished manly whiskies (or, hell, by midnight whatever is
left on napkin-soaked tables and counters), poor. And one thousand, maybe one
million other unspoken, always unspoken, pathologies, tics, and whatnots, never
allowed to air in the sometimes fetid (although near no oceans or marshes but
from mixed and matched industrial chemicals), damn stinking Lowell industrial
summer night. And cold, pale blue cold winter too, except maybe not fetid. Pick
a cold word, okay.
Jack rough river, working-
class Jack rough all brawny and bustle, flowing to great unseen Atlantic shores
(where real fetid smells, nature smells from churned seas and drowned marshes,
periodically stink the air) and from there to great American homeland England
before the fall and real homeland, France, ageless France bountiful and smart
long before the bloody Anglos were made hip to using spoons for porridge, before
Arcadian Plains of Abraham falls and hard English burnt offering exiles. And damn cursed native tongues (patois they
called it) banned just like with the gaelic Irish and the brogue Scots, what
madness in Empire, that seaward sun never sets empire thumbing it beefsteak
nose at culture brought from courtly France and well-bred manners. And
strangers in a strange land (Longfellow homage poem exiles anyway) when Canad
soils gave out, or no work prospects loomed , or the lore of two dollars a day
(in real money, Anglo-derived money, damn) sent half of Quebec streaming down
to the paper and textile mill towns, river towns, Olde Saco, Manchester,
Nashua, and sainted, sunned, stunned, acid- stained Lowell.
Merrimack (Jack play word
Mary Mack, Markin play word Mary Mack all dressed in black), hometown river of
youth, callous youth, question, going
into young manhood. Hanging around corner boy LeClerc’s mom and pop variety
store cadging quarters from working men streaming out of the second-shift mills,
occasionally stealing odd lots of penny candy, you know Baby Ruth,
Butterfingers, Snickers (or, snickers), Milky Way, to avoid the heavy tariff at
the Bijou Theater come Saturday afternoon double bill, double trouble, matinee
specials. And Ma, Meme called so in the old-fashioned back home Montreal way
from whence she came trotting for those dame yankee dollars, having to sneak quarters to Mr. LeBlanc to
cover those sweet tooth penny candied larcenies . And you thought you were so
clever, Jack old boy, old dog. But that was the life, the corner boy life small
stealing, small cadging, jack-rolling some drunk kid for his quarters (doled
out by his Meme for his penny candy Bijou extravaganzas). Boys, always about
boys, and adventures and thinking, and forever writing, writing just in case.
Later dream stories, at those
same corners or maybe further the river toward Pawtucketville across from
Father Kerouac’s social club (and drinking bout hang-out) but always eternally
corner dream stories now long gone to malls and fast food courts and no
loitering, no trespassing, no skate-boarding, no breathing human unkind trances.
To speak about jail break-outs, about small town prison escapes, the young
always seeing even New York City as too small for their outrageous appetites, and good luck, letting
Lowell sun eat the dust of your tracks fill the night air, about big time jobs
and celebrity (once the word was discovered). And then the talk turned serious
as the wisp of a beard showed (more than five o’clock shadows for Jack, dark,
French-etched two times a day shaved Jack) turned to manly shavings and childish voice turned to
deep bass, serious talk about girls, about what they were made of, and more
importantly what made them tick. A lifetime of wonders and sorrows to spill the
river-ladened night. A clue though, a clue worth a king’s ransom would have
been worth all that lucre if they could just figure out what the hell they
wanted. The girls, okay. They, the corner boys, all sized, shaped, smarts,
greek, French, ethnic corner boys (who else would inhabit the Acre in those
days, the bloody Irish lived in Irishtown, just like they did in Olde Saco and
Adamsville, down in Irishtown south Lowell way, down Maggie Cassady way but
more on that later) found out soon
enough after a few bouts of love dust at the old Starlight Ballroom, now
famous, town famous, since Benny Goodman and his band had set its 1939 foot in
the front door and blasted everything to be-bop, beepy-be-bop, don’t stop, mad
man music including soon to be front singing Jack-enflamed Paula. Yah, that was
where she got her start.
Jack’s river of sorrow, of Meme
hurts and Maggie Cassidy hurts too. (I told you
I would have more on her). Forgotten now Paula (forgotten, even forgotten
of red dress seductions which made him toss and turn many a night, many a night
before Maggie devoured sleep). Forgotten Meme (and her old-fashioned Montreal
French stories that he would use later to bulk out his own stories when his
brain ran dry) , forgotten although always hovering as a stark and real cut
knives presence (and mixed in as with all mothers , mothers since Eve, generous
helpings of love gifts bought with shoe leather- stained hands from working at that
damn old mother-twisting shoe mill) really until the Maggie fever had subsided,
subsided several years, later but that is a story for another time, a time
after New York City lights, Village
mysteries, sea adventures and searches for the
blue-pink great American West night, and of Neal Cassady romps, and next
million word adventures.
What mattered now though was
that our boy, our Jack O’Kerouac, or Jack McKerouac, or Jack, hell, let’s leave
it at Jack Celtic got himself all balled up over an Irish colleen, from over in
Irishtown, well away from the Acre and well away from handy corner boys to hold
his hand when old Maggie turned up the heat. Yes, Maggie, blessed virgin Maggie,
of the pale blue eyes, of the pale blue heart, and of the lace curtain
appetites. Of white picket fences, and houses, white too, to go with them, a
spotted dog and a few stray whining kids to keep the cold nights warm. No sale,
no Jack of the river sale, not our boy in the end but it was a close call and
maybe if she had turned down those silken stockings just once he would have
wound up white fence- picketed through his heart in some cozy bungalow close by
Dracut Forest.
Yes, Jack would know manly hurts after that one but not before clowning himself before her with feats of modern athletic daring against black ravens , against arch-rival Lawrence gridiron, Lawrence also of the river and of history, of strikes and struggle of a different kind, of bread and roses. Of clowning corner boy clowning, deciding stay or go, stay or go, of drunken dance floor episodes (no, not when Benny Goodman, Hail Be-bop Benny, held forth and made the Starlight Ballroom quake, but other times, other Maggie pouting times, or Maggie tired times, or Maggie “friend” times, the list was endless, and he endlessly patiently impatient as each phase of the Maggie moon turned into ashes. And into Jack death pyre.
Interlude: Jack’s low sun
going down behind the river and before that the tree strewn, living tree strewn
river upstream, upstream where it all began and where Jack began.
Pawtucketville, the Acre, South Lowell, the trolley tracks end, and the endless
winter snow walks, the endless summer river ebb walks, the fret Maggie walks,
the no dime for carfare (quaint word) walk, the walk to save for penny candy
walk, the million word walk, the first school dance walk, the no money for prom
car (or car or license, okay) walk, the night before the big game walk, walked
in Dracut Forest to avoid mad crashing fans who want to know glory, if only
Jack reflected glory, yes, walk, walk too, get out of the house when Meme
cursed his dark night.
But really prelude to million
mile walks from New Jersey shores, looking out from broken down, oil-stained,
oil smelled eastern piers and dreaming hookah Tangiers dreams, from Time Square
dope blasts with every faux hipster who could afford a string tie, soft shoes,
midnight sunglasses and a be-bop line of patter, pitter patter, really, from
rockymountainhills walks in beloved Cassady country poolrooms and juke joints,
from ghost dance walks in saline deserts channeling ancient Breton hurts and
shamanic wanderlust, from dark bracero Mex walks waiting on broken down
senorita love in some stinking Imperial Valley bean field, from Presidio fast
by the golden gate bridge, fast by North Beach walks, from Big Sur hunger
walks, from life walks, from death walks. Walks, shoe leather- eating walks,
okay.
******
Jack of Lowell hometown, Jack
of some Micmac-traded ancient Canad
French-Canadian fur trader beyond time and back to Breton woods and great field
of serf fellaheen peasants plowing, cowing, milking, harvesting, corvee-ing
some milord’s land seen in some far distance, since with river running. Ownership
burned out in the Yankee mill night, the time-owned night, the day too. Mainly
now of triple and double-deckers squalid
flats constantly changing renter-ship, constantly babies squabble in six
languages, but above all patois, beautiful lilt keltic fringe hard Atlantic
seas and torrents of rain Breton coast patois. And so they established an outpost
here, among the mix of mill town hands, making mill things, dreaming non-mill
things, and for the men working, working hard and long and then off to some
card-playing (as disguise for heavy drinking) Franco-American Club, no women,
no children, no kikes, no micks, no English (absolutely no English for there is
a swollen bone to pick over that on one), no oppressors unnamed and unloved
allowed. A man’s life as befits a man whose people came down from places deep
in Quebec woods and along the mighty Saint Lawrence.
Those are ancient myths of
gentile beggar fellaheen birth among the Canad and pedigree not to be touted in
non-pedigree Americas, and certainly not in non-pedigree Lowells (except by
certain mill owners who spoke only to god, or to Cabots maybe). And so they mix
of fellaheen patois, of roasted fires, of sweet gentle wines to that good
night, of sober work, of somber life explained the fate of that American mix,
Lowell style. And explained too the greek, french, irish, break-out of
ungrateful sons (and daughters but not as well seen). Sons with words to say,
with American songs to sing, not Whitman song, that was another time, another
place and another America but songs against mill stream night, songs against
the death of personal dreams , of
wayward sons, well-meaning wayward sons but wayward.
Ah, Lowell setting sun Lowell and its time of great decline, great decline on Jack’s birth river. The stink of tannic acid, the blue dye, the red dye, hell, the yellow dye river dying for lack of work, for worked out mills, for moved to cheap jack cheaper labor southern ports of call. And so the Lowell setting sun turned in on itself, turned to be-bop music and Botts midnight diners with guys, guys who used to work the midnight shift, and restless, now lingering over mad cups of joe to ward off the worthless sense of non-self. Fixed in place and the younger ones seeing that said no mas, not me, and spoke of flights of fancy, and of real flights, flights from Merrimack river roads to trash-strewn asphalt highways west.
Lowell, water Lowell, canal
Lowell, fresh-faced farm girl Lowell hands weaving the wicked weave of the loam
and then to other pursuits none the worse for wear at least that was the call,
the advertised call that brought them from Acton, Concord, and Littleton farms
or maybe before those places had names, town names, just Farmer Brown’s
rosy-cheeked daughter from over there where that dusty road intersected the
corner of Brother Brown’s land. Later gentle waters, gentle confluence waters
from high hill brooks and bramble, from flow Concord, Lowell sing, not some
sing-song Shepard’s sing, not some cattle- lowing sing, not some elysian fields
sing but the sing of great bobbed machines whistling late into the night, hell
what night, whistling into daybreak and fearful noises for those poor tenement,
double and triple tenement, dwellers who form the perimeter of the mill mile, sweet
cloth and money-making mill mile.
And Jack born, born and
raised, to term an old phrase a mere stone’s throw away along that same river
bend as it curves up the cliffs near Pawtucketville, the old time Meme and Pepe
French quarter where Jack would get his fill of double and triple-deckers. And
rosy tales of those ancient Breton fields and thieving thriving French fur- traders amid the scream of broken
whiskey bottles, a few broken by him, murderous wives bent on murder for
having; too many children, too many children close together, too many short
paychecks and too many long grocer’s bills, too many drunken husband nights
without him or with him all sex hungry and stinking of anglo whiskies or greek
anise, or just murderous to be murderous in fear of the lost Hollywood dream
and no chance to pull a Mildred Pierce or even a lite Lana Turner twist
against some old drunken greek short order
chef seaside road diner hell fate.
Jail-break midnight teenagers
looking for quick quarters for the jukebox to play Artie Shaw, Benny
Goodman or some latest be-bop daddy,
standing around in front of the Bijou Theater or the Starlight Ballroom to see if
there are any dreams being manufactured inside, and looking for a way to make sense of a world that they didn’t
create. That Jack, that Jack teen age boy, teen age corner boy like all the
others didn’t create, that played and that ate at him, ate at him from crawl
time to crawling down the gutter time. But if you are going to bust out you had
better have something more than halfback hero’s good looks, if you are going to
go toe to toe with the gods (and we know he was aching, bleeding really, to go
toe to toe with them, for a while anyway). So he started, started early, a
million word journey use stubbled pencils, and squirrelly inks until, until he
got the hang of writing non-stop with a roll of newsprint and a squirrelly old
typewriter. Praise Brother Remington
And funny growth too, the
sturdy, durable fleet youth, all black hair and oo-la-la French good looks,
verified, verified first by wistful small-breasted French girls with long thin
legs, also from the old Canad descended and maybe a few rascally fur-traders in
the background too. Later wild red-headed Irish girls trying, a little, to break
from heathen brown-haired sexless, sex-hate Irish boys murmuring novenas,
stations of the cross, and smelling of altar wines and priest pokes would toss
and turn dreaming of oo-la-la Frenchmen read about in some school girl school
book, or heard on unsavory streets from the older girls, the girls who no
longer have the sign of the cross when they passed Saint Joseph’s, or Saint
Brigitte’s, or Saint Germaine’s or Immaculate Conception, or Sacred Heart,
Saint, saint, saint, Saint Mary’s, okay, or any of the three billion (but I
exaggerate) other Lowell holy, holy places where a man can turn from saint Jack
to shaman Jack in a wink of an eye.
That is when she came by,
she Maggie she, but call her all girl-kind, no, womankind, with her pale white
skin, her pale blue eyes, her dark hair
and her well-turned ankles, and disturbed his sleep. And he never got over
that, that way that she could keep him on a string while every other girl was
ready to throw herself to the ground for him (in order that he could have the
stamina to beat Lawrence on Thanksgiving Day, in order for him to write some
little ditty for her, in order for him to dance with her at the school dance, in
order, one girl claimed she had to “do it” in order to improve her voice so she
could sing with some faux- Benny Goodman [all the rage then in the late 1930s
be-bop night] quintet, in order, hell, at the end it was just in order to, what
did they call it in Lowell High School Monday morning girls’ lav before school
girl talkfest about what did, or didn’t happen on Friday or Saturday night, oh
yah, to say they had been jacked by him).
Later, later when the reasons
changed but the girls (no, women then) still though jacked thoughts he feigned
lack of interest, feigned writer’s cramp, feigned zen Buddhist abstinence,
feigned, not so feigned maybe, drunk or drugged impotence. But no man, no real
man, or fairy (term of art forgiven, please) or even lowly Time Square whores,
hookers, drifters and fags (term of art,
not forgiven) knew that he had had his insides torn out by old Maggie, Maggie
the cat with no downy billows ending long before Tennessee Williams ever put
pen to paper. So say a prayer for Jack, Jeanbon Jack, if you are the praying
kind and curse hellish dark-haired Irish colleens.
Spinning wheels, million
football goals scored, million girls jacked, million drinks drunk with clownish
corner boys from age six on, million yards of pure textile loomed enough to
satisfy even the haughtiest Lowell Textile School professor, million words
written, million smokestack fumes emitted into the cold Lowell air night.
Finished, town finished, Maggie finished, corner boy finished, home finished.
Break out time, break out to great northern seas to write like some mad monk
plastered on cheap jack vineyard wines, homemade, pressed fast and sipped fast
(and on the sly). Neon sign break-out, New Jack City beckoned.
Interlude: Four in the morning cold coffee slurps, percolator (quaint word) on the stove brewing up another break- speed batch to endure hours more of non-stop, non-connected, non-punctuated writing. Writing of Trailways bus stop waits, waits for continental visions (if one does not the mind the company, the inevitable, to be kind ,too large company in the next seat), in search of that great blue-pink American West night (and later the international blue-pink night) in dirty washrooms filled with seven hundred manly stinks, and six perfumes to kill the smell, the urinate smell, street-wise rest room for weary travelers, hobos, bums, and tramps, take your pick, maybe some hung over soldier trying to decide on AWOL or frantic rush back to base and evaporated dreams, nightmares really. Of seasick sailors running overboard at the first wave heave, or first explosion in the dread Murmansk run North Atlantic icy waters night one sailor, seasick, no, sick of the sea, writing, writing in disregard of heaves, and lifeboat-worthy explosions.
Of Village flophouse lofts filled with chattering (to vanish fear) expatriate exiles, native born from Iowa, Minnesota, Denver, maybe, in ones and twos, trying to hold out against the impending red scare cold war night, the death night to destroy the promise of golden age utopias. Of Scollay Square whores ready to take your pain away, no questions asked, filled with stories, small dream from small town stories about easy lost virginity and local scandal, with jack-roller ready pimp/boyfriends just in case things got rough, or some easy dough was to be had.
Of some mad notion that writing two million words would take that pain away as easily as that whore promise, and finding some jack-roller instead when the brain ran dry, the pen ink ran dry, the newsprint roll ran out and there were no Meme or Gerald memory blasts to fall back on. Of some ache, some unfound ache to find that Adonis double (Janus, maybe, blond they say, maybe) zen master, gear master, chariot master that everybody in that Village loft, that San Francisco North Beach bungalow, thatMalibu henhouse, that Tijuana whorehouse, that Tangiers opium den, hell, even that Trailways stink bathroom was waiting on.
********New York City, Time Square of course, Columbia of course(before the heist of all property when it was merely an Ivy outpost in a brazen, bare knuckles city), the Village of course (those who need to know what village just move on), of movies and movie theaters, and, uh, art films for the discreet, of men in raincoats stinking or urine or Thunderbird wines, of drifters, grifters, grafters, midnight sifters, hustling, always hustling like some rats on speed, of mad men and monks, and semi-monks disguised as poets, of street poet gangsters all shiny words and a gun at your head to say yes you liked the last verse, of Gregory Corso, of muggers and minstrels, of six dollar whores for a quickie, of twelve dollar whores who will take you around the world, of neon signs, night and day, of neon cars and car beams night and day, of trash spread every which way, of the flotsam and jetsam of human existence cloistered against 42nd Street hurts, of Howard Johnson’s frankfurts eaten by the half dozen to curve hungers, not food hungers but hungers that dare not speak their name, of Joe and Nemo’s two AM fatty griddle hamburgers, of fags and fairies, and, shade distant dreams, of quasi-Trotskyite girl lovers taking a rest from their bourgeois travels who loved truth, truth and dark-haired revolutionary French guys from textile mill lowells, all proletarian Lowell and can write too, write one million words on order, and of stalinite-worthy betrayals with some new found friend’s wife, or husband, of Siberia exile of the mind, and of second million word writes all while riding the clattering subway to and fro, and not to speak of Soho or the Village. And of junkies, of every description, morphine, speed, cocaine, and of hustlers pushing their soft wares, call your poison, step right up, of William Burroughs, of deadly terror at the prospects for the next fix, of human mules face down in some dusty Sonora town failing to make that connection to get them well, and of off-hand forgotten murders. Jesus, suffering humanity.
And of men met in New York,
really Times Square jungles (post- Maggie girls, women, frills, frails, dames,
bitches, etc., etc., of no serious consequence except as pillows, weeps,
dreams, and such). Of word magicians, maybe not two million but enough, of
great earth-devouring fags (no offense here), chain-smoking New Jersey
sodomites, reading Walt Whitman by day and wine drunk and man horny at night
(or maybe day too but mainly reading and infernal writing always writing like
that was all that life could be except enough experiences to write about. Of
Allen om Ginsberg.Of breaking out of silly Eliot great modern bean- counting
words in need of glossaries of comprehension, of jazz-inspired be-bop high
white words to take the whole red scare, cold war stalinite night away, and to
calm the nuclear blast headed our way, butt up (no sexual reference intended
and no spite) and chronicle each and every experience with that broken down
typewriter, and that roll of low-grade paper ripped out of the be-bop 1950s
night. And of Adonis all-american golden boy, Neal, meets all-american dark-haired
boy in some Denver saloon, or pool hall yelling, shoot pools , make some dough
and off in some 1946 Studebaker in straight forty-eight hour gears-grinding search
of the great blue-pink American West night, or maybe just Maggie, that eluded fugitive
fragrance that he could never name of Maggie, who knows. Yes, the father that
we knew, the father that we did not know. Jack, Jack of the Merrimack.
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