***From
The Brothers Under The Bridge Series-
The Stuff
Of Dreams-Down Los Gatos Way
From
The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:
In the first installment of this series of
sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical
mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned,
in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into
my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not
listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many
memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now
defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town,
California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans
who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the
real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before
them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned
railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of
California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”
The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after
I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment,
of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the
course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the
countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep
themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than
empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period,
were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with
several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens
in Massachusetts and another down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that
period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in
on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.
After making connections with some Vietnam
Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I
was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my
helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the
old Eye archives, I went up into my
attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no
newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes,
specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them
into shape.
The ground rules of those long ago stories
was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill
what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much
editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current
series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove
it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.
Not every guy I interviewed, came across,
swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from
was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I
am recalling in this sketch from 1979 fits this description, had no real desire
to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest
about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed, or some story that had
stuck with them. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day
and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the
deep recesses of his mind.
Some wanted to give a blow by blow
description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in,
others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times,
or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back
the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or got caught
up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his
whole blessed life pointed the other way. Pete Allen’s life story fit that latter
description, the couldn’t handle part. He just kind of drifted around the West
Coast (after spending a little time back home in the East) after he got out of
the service, got caught up with some wrong gees, did too much dope and a little
time and landed in the “jungle,” the one they set up in Segundo near the arroyo
where I met him.
What makes his story different from others,
almost uniquely different in some respects, is that he wanted to tell a story
that had haunted him for a while that was told to him when he first started
frequenting the jungles back east a little in Gallup, New Mexico at the huge
jungle camp (which got bigger, much bigger during Native American Inter-Tribals
in August) near the old Southern Pacific sidings back in 1973. There he
befriended (or was befriended by) an old Mex hobo, Felipe, who had been on the
road for almost forty years after the events he related. Felipe had seen good times, bad times, and worse
times but no matter what he told his story, the story of his encounter with the
legendary Mexican bandit chief , El Lobo back in the 1930s (who even I had
heard of when I went south of the border for various, ah, things, okay). Pete
felt in respect for his friendship with Felipe that he had to relate the story,
to continue Felipe’s work. Why it haunted him (and maybe haunted Felipe too, these
things are hard to figure) was whether he too should think twice before
pursuing any stuff of dreams that he might have had. Good point. I like to
finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular
sign; no question Pete’s sign was that of the stuff that dreams are made of.
The Stuff
Of Dreams-Down Los Gatos Way
It didn’t start out that way, the
stuff of dreams, the search for gold that is, but it sure finished up that way,
finished up that way with guys lying face down in some broken unnamed desert
arroyo, nobody to mourn them, or cover them over except those fierce desert
winds that would make short work of the matter, if that counted. Yah, it didn’t
start out that way with pipe dream guys just buying into another guy’s dreams,
catching their own fire dreams to get out from under whatever it was they were
trying to get out from under from. Trying to brush off the dust of their own
small dreams, maybe just trying to get back to square one, gringo Norte
Americano square one from whence they came, came south for some reason, or no
reason, came south to sunny Mexico. Maybe took up the dream, another man’s
dream to get back to some long lost Molly, all bright blue eyes and straw
blonde, and a fresh start, and, damn, to get away from that stinking brown-eyed
world, that brown dust from the brown roads, those brown-skinned, fierce-
looking brown-eyed braceros, and those brown senoritas with their sparkling,
dancing brown eyes and their karma sutra tricks (although none of them, the
senoritas, would have known that term or the book they came from , just the
arts from handed- down cantina mother to daughter practice ), whores, really,
who spoiled a man, a gringo man, for blond-haired Mollies if you didn’t get
away fast enough. Or maybe they came south for the senoritas , for the
brown-eyed senoritas, for the cheap and easy brown-eyed senoritas with the
sparking dancing eyes looking for sugar daddy gringos with fierce blues eyes
and strange hungers, strange hung-up sex hungers, to get out from under the
bracero life. So yah it didn’t start out that way, no way.
Maybe
I had better start at the beginning, or at the beginning where my just then
road amigo Felipe, who saw the whole thing many years before and lived to tell
about it, came into the story and told a bunch of us the story over a windy
night camp fire in a jungle camp along the Southern Pacific Railroad just
outside of Gallup, New Mexico one night, one 1973 night. Told us about how when
he was young he had got caught up with a trio of guys, gringos of course, who
were bitten by the stuff of dreams.
It started down in Vera Cruz, like I
said down in sunny Mexico, and it started with this gringo, Burl, bumming a
cigarette off Felipe who was driving a cab at the time down at the docks where
this Burl’s ship, some tramp freighter that had seen better days, the S.S.
Corcoran, had just landed. This Burl, after Felipe gave him the cigarette (and
a pack of matches to light it with too, damn Felipe should have cross the gee
off right there), asked him about hotels, and, more importantly about cantinas
and senoritas, stuff like that, just like a million guys have done who have
been guy ship bound for too long months since they invented ships. It seemed,
contrary to his appearance, four or five days growth on his face, in a time
when clean-shaven was the rule, ruffed-up clothes, non-descript worn-out shoes,
really sneakers, and smelling, well smelling like he could use a bath, or
something, that this guy has some dough coming, coming as back pay off his
tramp steamer journey as a ship’s mate. Felipe brightened to this news because
now he turned on his tourista guide niceness full blast, offering the guy
another cigarette (keep the matches, amigo) and his services as someone who
could safely get Mister Burl through the maze of Vera Cruz night life in one
piece. Burl agreed and the game was on.
Two
weeks later after drinking up half the high-shelf scotch in town, keeping
company with half the brown-eyed senoritas at the La Paz whorehouse (nicely
named although more hell got raised there, more fortunes got lost, more teeth
got knocked out that in the rather placid other precincts of the town) and
setting his favorite from the La Paz , Maria (hell, they are all named Maria or
Lupe something in cantina- ville), up in an adjoining hotel room for serious
pleasure, and after smoking just one too many joints of that high-spirited
marijuana grown in some wilds outside of town Burl, Burl Jackson, from
Baltimore, U.S.A. was flat broke again, flat broke with no ship heading out
since the Corcoran had left the week before without him (and good riddance he
said of that old tub in an alcoholic haze one night when Felipe informed him of
the ship’s departure), no prospects, no money for the room rent, and by now
probably no Maria as well.
While Burl pondered his choices he
asked Felipe for a cigarette, and a loan. No dice, Felipe wasn’t born yesterday
and was keeping his easily earned dough and so he just pleaded that he had
already spent his dough trying to feed his family, gracias though. So Burl
would have to bracero/gringo/downtrodden pan-handle the ricos Americanos for a
while over at the Central Plaza where they hung out to get a stake up and find
another ship if not in Vera Cruz then some other port.
And
that is where Burl Jackson met Tim Conway, Tim Conway of Laredo, Texas and also
with no dough, no prospects and no place to stay just then but with big dreams,
big dreams of easy and cheap brown-eyed mex whorehouse girls, and plenty of
them, who would take you around the world for a dollar and a little tip. Jesus,
Burl said at this news. He wised the kid up about the cheap part, forget that
once those laughing Spanish eyes got under your skin and you set up a one for
your easy rider, easy rider woman like he had with Maria, although he left the
easy part for the kid to figure for himself. In fact Tim, after some
conversation, had sized Burl up as a gringo rico and was ready to put the bite
on him. Jesus, again. They talked for a while and kind of got along.
While they were standing on that
good Mexican soil trying to figure out if two gringos were better than one this
old geezer, this old ancient geezer with a beard like Jehovah, the stink of a
guy who had been out in the desert or someplace without a bathtub, long
straggly hair, and about six missing teeth drawing a couple of pack mules
behind him came by and asked if they were American in some low-down English.
“Of course they were Americans, jesus, what did he think they were some
brown-eyed braceros,” Tim had wailed out. He then asked them if they were
looking for work. “Of course they were looking for work, and what of it.” Burl had
shouted out. The old geezer (real name Walter Simons but nobody ever called him
anything but Old Geezer according to Felipe who had seen him off and on around
town when he came in from the hills for the previous four or five years) had a
proposition for the boys if they would trouble themselves to show their faces
at the Imperial Hotel about six o’clock that evening after he had cleaned up
and had supper. Burl looked at Tim and shrugged his shoulders in disbelieve at
the Old Geezer’s address but were non-committal on the appointment.
Needless to say they were, after a
fruitless afternoon of not finding anything worthwhile, knocking on the door of
Room 216 of the Imperial Hotel at six that evening. And here was the now regal
Old Geezer’s proposition. He was an old time prospector (believable) and had
hit some pay-dirt, some gold dust pay-dirt, out in the arroyos and foothills
around Los Gatos about one hundred and fifty miles away from there toward the
interior of sunny Mexico. He needed help to dig for and pan the stuff on an
equal basis, each a third share. He didn’t trust the Mex, the dirty braceros that
would cut his throat for a dollar and change if he turned his back on them but
with gringos he could feel that at least they wouldn’t cut his throat and he
had size dup Burl and Tim as okay, okay for what he was offering. No soap
though, not that night and not for a few nights more until Burl and Tim were
forced into some stinking bracero rooming house with about fifty stinking
braceros in a space for twenty when a rain squall forced them indoors. Then
they were back at Room 216, hats in hands.
A couple of days later they took
off, Tim, Burl, the Old Geezer, four pack mules loaded with supplies and tools
for a couple of months work, and Felipe who Burl persuaded the Old Geezer to
take along for wages to “keep house” for them. (They kept Felipe in the dark
about what they were up to until they got close to Los Gatos but he had kind of
figured it out when Tim and Burl kept talking about registering their claim in
Tampico. He knew the area as well and the history of a million gringos going
for the gold but he just let them play out their hand, like he always did with
gringos, because they were kind of trigger-happy when it came right down to
it.) Needless to say a couple of gringos one more at home in the seas of the
world, the seven seas, and whorehouses like Burl and a raw kid like Tim, who
dreamed of whorehouses and keeping his hands lily-white in the bargain sweated,
cursed, wanted to turn back about six times, got a little sunstroke, maybe a
little desert- addled, maybe snake-bit and insect- bit and twelve other kind of
bits for the seven days it took to get to Los Gatos after stumbling, tumbling,
mumbling over some rocky arroyos, some saline desert and some ragged foothills.
But damn they made it, made camp and prepared for el dorado, yah, big time el
dorado if the Old Geezer wasn’t cracked.
Do
you need to know the work, the twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day work these
tres hombres went through for about a month before they even clawed, scratched,
culled a small assay of gold for their troubles, work sleep, eat and not too
much to preserve the supplies. No, you can figure that part of the story out,
and if you can’t Felipe said even he had helped out just to past the time.
Finally that small assay traced down into a bigger lode, yah, they had hit pay
dirt. Not big, according to the Old Geezer, who over midnight camp fires would
tell them about how many times he had hit pay-dirt, jumped on easy street for a
while, then busted out and hit the road again looking for that really big
mother lode. This one, also according to his estimates, was not the mother lode
but a month’s work would let them ride easy street for a while. Burl and Tim
bought the ticket and took the ride, especially Tim, a smart young guy who
figured that with his share he would just buy a whorehouse and then he would
get his loving free. The Old Geezer laughed, hell, even Burl laughed at the
kid’s moxie (and naiveté).
So they worked, worked the lode,
worked it good, and plied their takings together one for all, at least at the
beginning. Burl, Felipe guessed was the first to get the fever, gold fever,
checking each night for an hour, maybe more the weight, and calculating his
share, and maybe more than his share after a while when Felipe noticed that
fevered look he had seen before when a man had been out in the desert, had
suffered privations, and, hell, hadn’t been around the gentle influence of a
woman, even a brown-eyed Mex whore, for a while. The he started staying in his
tent more, avoiding the nightly gabfest camp fire except to eat, eat quickly
and return to his tent. Tim caught it too, caught it as bad, so most nights
before they headed out back to Tampico and then Vera Cruz it was only the Old
Geezer, sometimes muttering to himself like he had the fever too and Felipe
although Felipe had caught a certain look from the geezer that made him realize
the old man was playing with his younger companions. Not a good sign.
After a
couple of small incidents, incidents that if left to fester would have led to
gun play between Burl and Tim no question in their then current state, nothing
in the real world really something about the food and how it tasted funny ( a reflection
of Felipe, and his culinary skill, if nothing else but fuel for their feud)
magnified out in the hills the Old
Geezer declared they had been out long enough and it would be best to go back
to civilization, divvy up the profits and each head their separate ways.
Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, Burl and Tim bucked the idea at first
wanting pan forever, when the geezer mentioned stray banditos out in the hills
who if they found out some gringos were afoot might come and do them all in.
That got the boys’ attention and so they broke camp, started heading back. A
couple of days out they ran into a couple of stray banditos, fought them off,
and began to hunker down on security. Three or four days later coming out of a
narrow canyon they were confronted by a
bandito force of about twenty desperados, some with they look of career bandits
about them, others who looked like the remnants of Pancho Villa’s various
armies now free-lancing with whoever paid and fed them.
The
leader, a serious guy named El Lobo, a legend in the Mexico night just behind
Villa and Zapata in the local hill pantheon and a name known even in places
like Tampico and Vera Cruz, known and dreaded by Felipe one he spoke his name,
who between spits, told the gringo trio (he did not direct anything, in anger
or calm, toward Felipe) that he knew, knew so don’t lie to him, that they had
gold and that he wanted half of it to let them go. The three parlayed. Tim and
Burl, strung out on gold like men strung out on some unattainable woman, were
for fighting it out and moving on quickly, the old man wiser and ready to take
half of something, gold something, rather than a hail of lead was ready for
compromise. He finally talked them into it, although the arguments were heated
and the vagrant smell of gun powder was just below the surface. He called over
to El Lobo, rendered the collective decision, went to the pack mule saddle
bags, got the goods, passed El Lobo his share, and then went back and joined up
with Tim and Burl.
Just
then a fusillade of gun fire rang out from the bandito side. Tim fell first,
then Burl, and finally the Old Geezer cursing El Lobo’s name. As the bandito army took everything not tied
down away, gold, mules, supplies, El Lobo shouted to Felipe, now su companero,
and asked if he wanted to join the gang. Felipe said no. To that El Lobo, the
blood rising in his face and the thought that tonight at least his men would be
fed and bedded indoors in some back road cantina , said-“Tell everyone you see
what happened here today, and what will happen to them if they come looking for
the oro in El Lobo’s backyard.” And he did.
