The Walking Daddy Of Joy Street

 From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

The Walking Daddy Of Joy Street was a piece of work, a real throwback to ancient times, and to ancient dreams not all pleasant.  A time back in the 1960s Boston  from whence he came when everything touched by, washed by, the young, held some kind of big flower, big cloud puff promise. He held himself among the young although maybe cutting the high side a little since he had come of age at the tail end of the be-bop beat era, the tail end of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady rushing through mad monk existences before beat, beat down, beat around, beatitude became just another commercial venue, and had smoked his first joint in some poetry- strewn back room of some coffeehouse in about 1959.

See he had fed right in that new scene, fed right into that big cloud puff stuff as the max daddy ganja man in town, at least the white section of town. Christ, the stories they told about him then, about his own mad monk madnesses, and not told by some fried-brained fool all twisted up and brain-mashed from too many hits, way too many, of the pipe making stuff up in order to walk in Walking Daddy’s reflected glory. Stories told straight up in ganga bong pipe smoke-filled rooms and rolled dollar cocaine snort dens about when Walking Daddy turned, or helped turn the town hip.

Walking Daddy was right there at the beginning, at the time when everybody was practically giving as much dope away as they were selling. No sales pitch, no come-on, but just to, well, just to turn the brethren on, new age a-borning turn the sleepy-headed brethren on.  He was passing out big rough-edged blunts like they were going out of style, and righteous stuff too. They told a story of some Back Bay bust, booze-busted, dope-busted, maybe some underage sex thing busted too, such things were all kind of mixed up together then on police blotters, where some number, maybe twenty, guys and gals were busted at some too noisy party and hauled into to the stationhouse. Somehow Walking Daddy heard about their plight and through some nefarious connections got a pouch full of Acapulco Gold into the jailhouse and by the time they were done the place smelled was like some college dorm, or some Chinese opium den. Beautiful. (Somebody else had another part of that same story who said that Walking Daddy had gone bail for all of them as well. That sounds right too.)

Then it all kind of turned in on itself. Too much war madness, too much parent anger, too much bad dope, too much, too much.  The always lurking greed-heads got greedier, the product got poorer, or really some slap-dash quick- change artists looking for easy money, started passing oregano and other crap as dope to make a fast killing and broke the high. Yah, just broke the high. Walking Daddy just soldiered on though, after all he was a dope- dealer and that was his profession, and had been an honorable one too before the greed-heads burned the thing to the ground, but it was not the same, not the same at all.        

Nobody knew his real name, although the name Bob and Tom had been thrown around the place by some young women who seemed to know him more personally, and whom he employed un some unknown conditions to package his product, but Walking Daddy will do just find because this memory blast is not about a name but more a sense of the times (we can skip the reference to Joy Street part too since we know where his kingdom was). A sense of the times and of some of the denizens who survived in that heady atmosphere of late 1970s in Boston before everything turned to ashes, to violence, and to some bizarre behaviors once cocaine became the drug de jus. See Walking Daddy had a sense of that earlier time too, that 60s time, a sense that weed had been played out just like when he had started out and beat had turned to retreat , and people wanted to move on and get their kicks on Route 666 then. Get their kicks on cousin cocaine.

Walking Daddy’s place was smack dab in the center of the action, right there on Joy Street up on Beacon Hill right near the State House. Now the place itself wasn’t anything, maybe less that anything to speak of, two small rooms, a living room and a bed room with a small kitchenette, a studio really. But what made it a magnet was that Walking Daddy, all forty-four years of him, all six-one and one hundred and ninety pounds of him, all long brown hair, beard, eyes of him, was the main man cocaine dealer around that area at a time when cocaine (sister, coke, snow, girl, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood) was just emerging as the drug of choice for those with discretionary incomes who wanted to get their kicks after tiring of marijuana or other lesser drugs. This all happened at a time before guys were winding up very dead in some Sonora dusty dirt road trying to make a score without connections. Guys like his friend Billy Bradley who didn’t know the whole thing was rigged up, and had been since eternity and wound up face down with two slugs in him for trying to go “independent” when the cartels moved in. A time too before cousin cocaine got whipped around in some crack bong pipes and guns started to foul the play. And so Joy Street became a Mecca and Walking Daddy “walked with the king.”       

Sure Walking Daddy wanted to make money, make lots of it from an overheard conversation passed on from one of his “employees” but he also had, and this was passed on too, an idea that he would make his Joy Street digs something of an old time opium den, a place when select company could unwind, could do their lines, and get their kicks in a friendly environment. And what allowed Walking Daddy to do that was two, no, really three things. First he was, unlike poor Billy, connected, connected down Mexico way and so would not expect to find himself in some dusty back road ditch, face down. Second he was connected at the State House at just that moment when cocaine was getting to be the marijuana of the 70s generation who wanted good stuff and had the dough to pay for it. (Some wag said that he could have been an honorary member of the Bar Association for his services to that community. Another said he knew more Assistant-Attorneys-General than the Attorney-General did.) So while, once in a while, out on the streets he had to stand  for a drug pat-down by some clueless cop who thought he was on the level, was just doing his job, the cop that is, before higher powers stepped in, he was left alone. Third, and this is where Walking Daddy took a certain pride in his work, he was inclined to give away as much stuff as he sold, especially to the bags full of young women college students who dotted the area.

Strangely though he wasn’t tagged with any woman, although there were always plenty of women around including those previously mentioned “employees” and while there was a little talk that maybe he was a fag, gay, a homo, by those who were outside his circle it seemed more like he was just not into sex, or women or stuff like that although a few were more than ready to give him a chase. Oh yes, and he never touched the stuff himself, maybe a little weed like in the old days if it was passed around but no sister.

So on any given day back then, starting in late afternoon Walking Daddy could be seen walking around Cambridge Street, Charles Street, maybe Beacon Street if he was heading to the Common picking up acolytes, picking up a stray a woman or two to add some zest to the nightly doings. Picking up some low-lifes too, some hard-edged corner boys, some North End toughs or Southie hard guys, maybe just out of Deer Island or Walpole, some beat down old winos from Berkeley Street, or some guys from anywhere who had maybe taken too many hits from the bong in the 1960s and never got over it, since Walking Daddy liked to think that he could cater to all kinds with the common denominator of snow to bind his “nation” together. Yah, Walking Daddy was a piece of work.