Good Morning, Vietnam-Indeed-The Trials And Tribulations Of One Adrian Cronauer

By Si Lannon     

I knew from the minute I picked up this guy Adrian Cronauer from the airport that no way was he going to last in our outfit. You can take it from me Eddie Garlick even after all these years, maybe because of all those years and the changes I have seen in this man’s, oops, just Army, that he had a “misfit” target written all over him. Our outfit if you could call it that was producing, well, hell, producing propaganda and glad tidings to the increasing number of troops coming in-country and in need of some easy listening on the Armed Forces Radio Station-Vietnam edition. You may think that once I laid that tag on you that I was some kind of radio personality myself or helped with production. No, how I got into that job, that mostly very good and “safe” job, safe as anything was in Vietnam in those days when even office help like was liable to be spraying M-16 ammunition out into the night sky just like the grunts was a fluke. Fortunately I got out of the country before the “shit really hit the fan,” excuse my language, when Mister Charlie owned the day and night. (Everybody for a long time said that “the night belonged to Charlie” what they didn’t tell you but you could figure out pretty quickly the day was his too but that was later) See my MOS, my training when I signed Uncle Sam’s papers, when I enlisted, was radioman, radioman not like what Cronauer and the others were doing but combat radioman out in the boondocks. Somehow the General, General Taylor, now long gone, said he needed a radio man and I was the one they picked or really I was there when the General said he needed a radio man and that was that. I was there and so I got that soft, well, kind of soft job after they found out I wasn’t any radio personality or a production guy they made me the driver, the go-fer. That is how I wound up at the airport greeting a real radio personality that the General had heard about, had heard do his thing and desperately wanted for his soldiers to listen to and take their minds off the fucking war (the General’s words not mine so you know he knew something was wrong from the beginning).               

So the minute I saw the bleary-eyed son of bitch come down the stairs of the plane all disheveled and looking like he had been on a three day drunk (it had actually been four) I knew he wouldn’t last and in a split second before he did his comedy thing to impress me I guess I started to panic that maybe this guy would take me down with him and I would wind up out in Pleiku where the other guys I came in-country with were located. So I started kind of stand-offish, tried to tell him about the “book” about regulations. It wasn’t like his was a brother, you know a guy from the neighborhood, from the “hood who you could tell what was what if you didn’t want to get your sorry black in a sling. The laugh was on me as you damn well know, or will know once I get through with this story. 

First of all Cronauer, nobody called him Adrian (and he told me once we had gotten to know each other that nobody but his mother called him that and he would usually not answer to the name even from her. I wouldn’t answer to Edward either from my mother knowing that I was in deep doo when she laid that name on me for some transgression) came over from some good awful place, Crete, or someplace like that and was Air Force whereas the rest of us were strictly Army, Regular Army. Second of all from minute one he had me both splitting a gut laughing and looking at him sideways like he was some guy from outer space. But see the General, General Taylor had heard him like I said he said the guys needed to hear a guy like Cronauer to get through as best they could.         

The real reason though, and I proved right in the end even though I did everything in my power to try to save him including getting the grunts, you know the guys who were going in and out of the boonies looking for Mister Charlie to send fan mail to get him back on the air was Sergeant Major Dickerson, the “Dick” as we called him behind his back. (I didn’t do any fighting although I did face gun fire and bomb explosions in my tour of Vietnam like a lot of guys not on the line, it was that kind of war, but I had nothing but respect for the enemy and would not call him the derogatory Charlie but always prefaced it with the honorific Mister to show my respects). Sergeant Major was all spit and polish, all rules and regulations, all-lifer, all the only good commie is dead commie so you knew, I knew the minute I saw Cronauer half out of uniform, hair too long and with a laugh a minute that he wasn’t going to go the distance, would fuck up somehow and made hash out of everything.

But while he was riding high one Airman Cronauer was beautiful was like a breath of fresh air in the Black Hole of Calcutta. The only thing I didn’t like in the few months that he was around was that he would always kid me about my turning the key to start the engine of the jeep when it was already running that I used to transport him around to his various doings. Being around him made me nervous and forgetful, always in the back of my mind figuring I was the fall guy, the expendable black guy. See General Taylor had personally assigned me to “look after” Cronauer since even the General knew he was loosely put together, a loose cannon. I guess even he didn’t know in the end how big a can of worms Cronauer would be after the Dick got through with him. 

You have to know something about Armed Forces Radio back in ’65, maybe any time but mostly the thing was about presenting “happy” news, maybe cover a press conference of some important figure who was in-country to see what was really going on (and never taking the blinders off to find out, never leaving MACV headquarters and definitely never asking the soldiers, the grunts, what the hell was going on while they were doing their whirlwind three day tours in-country while the guys were out there bleeding away) and play music like Ray Conniff, Percy Faith, I don’t know Guy Lombardo stuff our parents would did, would find appealing. And the guys, good guys really, who took their shifts, usually four hours unless they were covering for somebody, and gave what the Dick and Army regulations dictated to read and play. They even had two donkeys, two brothers who must have been orphans because no mother could love them (or have carried them in her womb) who red-penciled everything especially KIAs, and the lack of progress against Mister Charlie that was apparent to anybody except those idiot VIPs who had come in-country to see what it was all about and thought things were just fine-thank you.

Day one on air, no, minute one, Cronauer blew all of that away. Started off at six o’clock in the morning with his signature call-“Good Morning, Vietnam” but he would stretch those three words out for what seemed like an hour so you couldn’t help even at deadhead six in the morning smiling that this was something very different. Then he would do “mock” news reports, total bullshit of total bullshit, and then play something like James Brown, can you believe it, Brother James Brown. Needless to say the Dick blew his top, complained to General Taylor who told him to “fuck off” then because the men liked hearing Cronauer, and he did have a big breath of fresh air following. The General as you can gather was what you would call a soldiers’ General if you know what I mean mixed with the men, went out in the boonies to talk with them (unlike those General Staff guys who never came out of the bunker).          

What did Cronauer in, what did a lot of guys stuck in Vietnam then before there were too many guys hanging around in Saigon and everything got whorish was a girl, a beautiful Vietnamese girl who I told him was off-limits, was a no go. But Cronauer wouldn’t listen, spent every waking hour trying to figure out how to get next to this beauty, this Trinh. Including getting close to her brother Tran something I forget his full name, and it doesn’t matter since that was not his real name, his real Mister Charlie name as it turned out. As young as he was he was a cadre as we, meaning everybody including Cronauer found out-too late.  Although Cronauer didn’t see it that way he was basically asking this Tran to pimp for his sister. Nothing good could come of that, and nothing did despite the extensive wooing that Cronauer did.The cultural gap was too great unlike with the good-time girls who hung around the GIs at Jimmy Wah’s whoI will tell you about in a minute.

When push came to shove though nothing could save Cronauer. He had been too friendly with the natives as they say and the native had bitten him, had used his as a cover to blow up Jimmy Wah’s famous Saigon gin mill where GIs hung out. Blew up Jimmy’s place in broad daylight and this in 1965 so don’t tell me about what was what even then save that for the schoolboy histories, not the real deal. This Jimmy Wah was a character in his own right. Back in the hood, back in the 1960s hood anyway we called guys like that, black guys too on the low, Marys, maybe you called him a fag or “light on his feet,” a fairy or something although you couldn’t, wouldn’t and maybe shouldn’t get away with that these days at least in the public sphere of the all-volunteer Army where the gays and lesbians are crying out like crazy to be recognized for what they are and not discharged for their sexual orientation. The thing to know about Jimmy and Jimmy Wah’s joint was that he was “connected,” had some general who was his boyfriend and protector. A famous general too if I told you the name who Jimmy was “playing the flute for” if you know what I mean. That is why you could find good-time girls aplenty and GIs there at all times. That is why it was such an inviting target for Mister Charlie. And Cronauer with that beauty on his mind dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s for the whole mess.              

Not good, not good at all. Got me mixed up in it and almost ruined my career except the General had the Dick’s number and it was him that was hung out to dry not me. Cronauer, well, bad boy Cronauer got kicked out of the service for the good of the service as they say. Never did get too far with that Trinh before he became persona non grata in-country. Sent his young ass back to the States quick as a jack rabbit. End of story.   

Not quite. I heard that they are going to make a movie out of Cronauer’s crazy stay in Vietnam, going to get the comic Robin Williams to play Cronauer. I hope that it does okay but I will tell you nobody, nobody get it, could pull the antics that Cronauer did just out of the blue. I suppose when it comes out, they say next year, they say 1987 I will go to some theater not on base and watch it but I will know what the real deal was. Hey listen some nights I still wake up thinking about some antic that mad clown did on the air or out in the streets of Saigon. Always think even though I am a Sergeant Major myself here at Fort Meade with twenty-two down and eight to go about that last gift he left me. His farewell tape to the troops which I delivered on the radio. Got to do my own version of his Good Morning, Vietnam war cry, and got to feel for just one moment what it was like to have the world in your hands. Yeah, Cronauer was one hell of a guy, was a piece of work no question. You can take it from somebody who was there.  

Outside The Garden Of Eden-With Preston Sturgis’ "The Lady Eve" In Mind  

By Lance Lawrence

Take it from me, from William Demerest, that women are screwy, even two-timing women, or the two-timing woman I am thinking of just now was screwy. Yeah, I still insist that Charlie Pike, the guy old man Pike, yeah, that Pike who has made a ton of money selling ale-not beer, Jesus, not beer not if you don’t want to get an earful about the freaking differences, out of trouble. As best I could which as long as the whacky guy was alone in the Amazon or up the Nile the job was easy and I didn’t have to work up a sweat. Could sit around with the senoritas or whatever their designations were and swill beer (hell there wasn’t a bottle of Pike’s Ale within a thousand miles of where we were, thank God) and getting a little off-hand loving in. Like I said without working up a sweat.   

It was when Charlie, sonny boy, who could have given a sweet flying fuck about where his money came from as long as it rolled in for his various off-the-wall scientific experiments, got back to civilization for more than two minutes that every hustling guy and gal had their antennae set in his direction. Chasing Charlie down was all in a day’s work for a con artist like this Jean Harrington, who was working with her father and his associates on the very profitable trans-Atlantic ocean liner trade (this before a guy named Hitler who we eventually put paid to made it very unsafe for civilians to cross over to Europe or the other way around either for a while putting a big crimp into the con artist community’s source of livelihood).

I was supposed to make sure the “snakes” (not real snakes those Charlie could handle since that was his specialty) were de-fanged but this Jean did an end around and the minute, maybe two minutes, she had Charlie in her clutches, after she tripped him up as he passed her table oblivious to anything and claimed he had ruined her slippers, he was a goner. Had the scent of her perfume, jasmine something probably if I had to guess or maybe it was just bath soap, impressed on his heart and soul. The best I could do was to make sure he wasn’t beaten as clean as a jaybird by this combination. The thing that saved Charlie, saved my job too, was that the purser had photographic evidence that the Harrington entourage was nothing but a clip club. Charlie was bitter about it for a while, bitter than his affections such as they were got jobbed by a twisted hustler that he had intended to marry.        

You would figure case closed but you would figure wrong. This Jean either really had the “hots” for Charlie or she was a vengeful little bitch no matter how innocent she looked or whatever fragrance she was wearing. This is where the two-timing comes in, and maybe I shouldn’t call it two-timing because then you might think she was running after some other guy after Charlie gave her the heave-ho. No, this Jean was still going to plague the boy (man-boy at best). She, or somebody who looked very much like her, showed up at the Pike estate in the leafy suburbs of Maryland, down in horse country under the auspices of Sir Alfred somebody who vouched for her. Except now she was wearing an English accent and calling herself Lady Eve. I swore on a stack of seven bibles and I swear now the two dames were the same-that Jean bitch that Charlie had ditched on the ocean-liner.     

Whatever her motive she got Charlie just as wrapped up in her fragrance as he had been with that Jean on the boat. Except he didn’t even bother to check out her credentials, to see if she was real and married her out of hand a few weeks later. Here is the strange part for some broad who was hustling a guy. On their honeymoon she gave Charlie a story about how many men she had “known” before him. He naturally flipped out and left the train in the middle of the night. Headed back home to sulk over his mistake. Funny though this Eve didn’t want any dough when she could have had half the world, the Pike Ale world anyway and the old man wasn’t even squawking.

I still had my job but I suggested to Charlie that maybe he should head back to the Amazon where he could handle the snakes there a lot better than his recent adventures. He bought my argument and we grabbed the next tub out. Get this though this Jean/Eve somehow got on the tub and pulled the same damn trick of tripping up clumsy Charlie as the first time. And he went crazy for her, and she for him as they kicked me out of his suite. Jesus, women are screwy, or one woman is as far as I can figure. Take my word for it, okay.     

Before The Deluge-Robin Williams’ Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell,

Good Morning, Vietnam, starring Robin Williams, Forrest Whittaker, 1987   

Frankly before I first saw Robin Williams in Good Moring, Vietnam I was not particularly a fan of his, didn’t see what all the uproar was about as he gained a widespread audience based, I think, on his uncanny ability to improvise as he went along which showed up on the screen when the deal went down. After watching Williams’ go through his paces in the tragi-comic film (we will get to the tragic part in a second) though and learning as well that he had improvised many of the signature radio broadcasts which dot the film I found myself laughing like crazy. Laughing like crazy almost as much the second time around even though I knew where the thing was going. With Forrest Whittaker playing the straight man Private Eddie Garlick to Williams’ zany radio personality character Adrian Cronauer the thing worked like a charm. That was the funny part, the part that a 1987 audience I think would be happy to see.

Now to the tragic part, the part that Adrian got himself dragged into by his friendship with a young Vietnamese man whom he was trying to get close to so that he could in turn get close to his beautiful sister. As it turned out, not surprisingly, with what we later painfully found out after a decade of in your face war was that the young man was a Vietnamese patriot meaning a National Liberation Front fighter, an “enemy” who used Adrian as cover for his actions against the then beginning to burgeon American military presence in Vietnam which would not end until those graphic scenes of helicopters taking fleeing Vietnamese and Americans off of the American Embassy in April 1975. But in 1965 all was fresh so to speak as even the wary GIs heading to the boondocks and other tough spots who Adrian was gathering around his broadcasts could laugh a little when he did his magic. A kind of age of innocence before the deluge. Nice juxtapositions. Nice work Robin Williams whatever else was eating you inside. Watch this one.               

    

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-In The Time Of The Hard Motorcycle Boys- “The Wild One” A Film Review-And More

Zack James’ comment June, 2017:

Sometimes you just have to follow the bouncing ball like in those old time sing along cartoons they used to have back in say the 1950s,the time I remember them from, on Saturday afternoon matinees at the old now long gone Stand Theater in my growing up town of North Adamsville. Follow me for a minute here I won’t be long. Earlier this spring my oldest brother, Alex, took attended a conference in San Francisco which he has done periodically for years. While there he noticed an advertisement on a bus for something called the Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. That ad immediately caught his attention he had been out there that year and had participated in those events at the urging of his friend Peter Paul Markin who was something of a holy goof (a Jack Kerouac term of art), a low rent prophet, and a street criminal all in one. When Alex got back to the East after having attended the exhibition he got in contact with me to help him, and the still standing corner boys who also had gone out West at Markin’s urging to put together a tribute booklet honoring Markin and the whole experience.

After completing that project, or maybe while completing it I kept on thinking about the late Hunter S. Thompson who at one time was the driving force behind gonzo journalism and had before his suicide about a decade ago been something of a muse to me. At first my thoughts were about how Thompson would have taken the exhibition at the de Young since a lot of what he wrote about in the 1960s and 1970s was where the various counter-cultural trends were, or were not, going. But then as the current national political situation in America in the Trump Age has turned to crap, to craziness and straight out weirdness I began to think about how Thompson would have handled the 24/7/365 craziness these days since he had been an unremitting searing critic of another President of the United States who also had low-life instincts, one Richard Milhous Nixon.

The intertwining of the two stands came to head recently over the fired FBI director James Comey hearings where he essentially said that the emperor had no clothes. So I have been inserting various Thompson-like comments in an occasional series I am running in various on-line publications-Even The President Of The United States Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked-Tales From The White House Bunker. And will continue to overlap the two-Summer of Love and Age of Trump for as long as it seems relevant. So there you are caught up. Ifs not then I have included hopefully for the last time the latest cross-over Thompson idea.           

************      

Zack James comment, Summer of 2017                

Maybe it says something about the times we live in, or maybe in this instance happenstance or, hell maybe something in the water but certain things sort of dovetail every now and again. I initially started this commentary segment after having written a longest piece for my brother and his friends as part of a small tribute booklet they were putting together about my and their takes on the Summer of Love, 1967. That event that my brother, Alex, had been knee deep in had always interested me from afar since I was way too young to have appreciated what was happening in San Francisco in those Wild West days. What got him motivated to do the booklet had been an exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park where they were celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the events of that summer with a look at the music, fashion, photography and exquisite poster art which was created then just as vivid advertising for concerts and “happenings” but which now is legitimate artful expression.

That project subsequently got me started thinking about the late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, the driving force behind a new way of looking at and presenting journalism which was really much closer to the nub of what real reporting was about. Initially I was interested in some of Thompson’s reportage on what was what in San Francisco as he touched the elbows of those times having spent a fair amount of time working on his seminal book on the Hell’s Angels while all hell was breaking out in Frisco town. Delved into with all hands and legs the high points and the low, the ebb which he located somewhere between the Chicago Democratic Convention fiasco of the summer of 1968 and the hellish Rollins Stones Altamont concert of 1969.     

Here is what is important today though, about how the dots get connected out of seemingly random occurrences. Hunter Thompson also made his mark as a searing no holds barred mano y mano reporter of the rise and fall, of the worthy demise of one Richard Milhous Nixon at one time President of the United States and a common low-life criminal of ill-repute. Needless to say today, the summer of 2107, in the age of one Donald Trump, another President of the United States and common low-life criminal begs the obvious question of what the sorely missed Doctor Gonzo would have made of the whole process of the self-destruction of another American presidency, or a damn good run at self-destruction. So today and maybe occasionally in the future there will be some intertwining of commentary about events fifty years ago and today. Below to catch readers up to speed is the most recent “homage” to Hunter Thompson. And you too I hope will ask the pertinent question. Hunter where are you when we need, desperately need, you.       

*******

Zack James comment, Summer of 2017 

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. (Walking with the king not about walking with any king or Doctor King but being so high on drugs, your choice, that commin clay experiences fall by the way side. In the times of this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place, where many walked with the king, if you prefer, and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society, in high art society these days) at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20^th of this year.   

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol Hill and saying out loud the emperor has no clothes and would not know the truth if it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other bullshit would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs who like their forbears would stop at nothing he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now  

DVD Review

The Wild One, Marlon Brando, Lee Marvin, produced by Stanley Kramer,1954

Okay here is the book of genesis, the motorcycle book of genesis, or at least my motorcycle book of genesis. But, before I get to that let me make about seventy–six disclaimers. First, the whys and wherefores of the motorcycle culture, except on those occasions when they become subject to governmental investigation or impact some cultural phenomena, is outside the purview of the leftist politics that dominate the commentary in this space. There is no Marxoid political line, as a rule, on such activity, nor should there be. Those exceptions include when motorcyclists, usually under the rubric of “bad actor” motorcycle clubs, like the famous (or infamous) Oakland, California-based Hell’s Angels are generally harassed by the cops and we have to defend their right to be left alone (you know, those "helmet laws", and the never-failing pull-over for "driving while biker") or, like when the Angels were used by the Rolling Stones at Altamont and that ill-advised decision represented a watershed in the 1960s counter-cultural movement. Or, more ominously, from another angle when such lumpen formations form the core hell-raisers of anti-immigrant, anti-communist, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-black liberation fascistic demonstrations and we are compelled, and rightly so, to go toe to toe with them. Scary yes, necessary yes, bikes or no bikes.

Second, in the interest of full disclosure I own no stock, or have any other interest, in Harley-Davidson, or any other motorcycle company. Third, I do not now, or have I ever belonged to a motorcycle club or owned a motorcycle, although I have driven them, or, more often, on back of them on occasion. Fourth, I do not now, knowingly or unknowingly, although I grew up in working class neighborhoods where bikes and bikers were plentiful, hang with such types. Fifth, the damn things and their riders are too noisy, despite the glamour and “freedom” of the road associated with them. Sixth, and here is the “kicker”, I have been, endlessly, fascinated by bikes and bike culture as least since early high school, if not before, and had several friends who “rode”. Well that is not seventy-six but that is enough for disclaimers.

Okay, as to genesis, motorcycle genesis. Let’s connect the dots. A couple of years ago, and maybe more, as part of a trip down memory lane, the details of which do not need detain us here, I did a series of articles on various world-shaking, earth-shattering subjects like high school romances, high school hi-jinks, high school dances, high school Saturday nights, and most importantly of all, high school how to impress the girls( or boys, for girls, or whatever sexual combinations fit these days, but you can speak for yourselves, I am standing on this ground). In short, high school sub-culture, American-style, early 1960s branch, although the emphasis there, as it will be here, is on that social phenomena as filtered through the lenses of a working class town, a seen better days town at that, my growing up wild-like-the-weeds town.

One of the subjects worked over in that series was the search, the eternal search I might add, for the great working class love song. Not the Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel generic mush that could play in Levittown, Shaker Heights or La Jolla as well as Youngstown or Moline. No, a song that, without blushing, one could call our own, our working class own, one that the middle and upper classes might like but would not put on their dance cards. As my offering to this high-brow debate I offered a song by written by Englishman Richard Thompson (who folkies, and folk rockers, might know from his Fairport Convention days, very good days, by the way), Vincent Black Lightning, 1952. (See lyrics below.) Without belaboring the point the gist of this song is the biker romance, British version, between outlaw biker James and black-leathered, red-headed Molly. Needless to say such a tenuous lumpen existence as James leads to keep himself “biked" cuts short any long term “little white house with picket fence” ending for the pair. And we do not need such a boring finish. For James, after losing the inevitable running battle with the police, on his death bed bequeaths his bike, his precious “Vincent Black Lightning”, to said Molly. His bike, man. His bike. Is there any greater love story, working class love story, around? No, this makes West Side Story lyrics and a whole bunch of other such songs seem like so much cornball nonsense. His bike, man. Wow! Kudos, Brother Thompson.

Needless to say that exploration was not the end, but rather the beginning of thinking through the great American night bike experience. And, of course, for this writer that means going to the books, the films and the memory bank to find every seemingly relevant “biker” experience. Thus, readers of this space were treated to reviews of such classic motorcycle sagas as “gonzo” journalist, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels and other, later Rolling Stone magazine printed “biker” stories and Tom Wolfe’ Hell Angel’s-sketched Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (and other articles about California subset youth culture that drove Wolfe’s work in the old days). And to the hellish Rolling Stones (band) Hell’s Angels “policed” Altamont concert in 1969. And, as fate would have it, with the passing of actor/director Dennis Hooper, the 1960s classic biker/freedom/ seeking the great American night film, Easy Rider. And from Easy Rider to the “max daddy” of them all, tight-jeaned, thick leather-belted, tee-shirted, engineer-booted, leather-jacketed, taxi-driver-capped (hey, that’s what it reminds me of), side-burned, chain-linked wielding, hard-living, alienated, but in the end really just misunderstood, Johnny, aka, Marlon Brando, in The Wild One.

Okay, we will cut to the chase on the plot. Old Johnny and his fellow “outlaw” motorcycle club members are out for some weekend “kicks” after a hard week’s non-work (as far as we can figure out, work was marginal for many reasons, as Hunter Thompson in Hell’s Angels noted, to biker existence, the pursue of jack-rolling, armed robbery or grand theft auto careers probably running a little ahead) out in the sunny California small town hinterlands.(They are still heading out there today, the last time I noticed, in the Southern California high desert, places like Twenty-Nine Palms and Joshua Tree.)

And naturally, when the boys (and they are all boys here, except for couple of “mamas”, one spurned by Johnny, in a break-away club led by jack-in-the-box jokester, Lee Marvin as Chino) hit one small town they, naturally, after sizing up the local law, head for the local café (and bar). And once one mentions cafes in small towns in California (or Larry McMurtry’s West Texas, for that matter), then hard-working, trying to make it through the shift, got to get out of this small town and see the world, dreamy-eyed, naïve (yes, naive) sheriff-daughtered young waitress, Kathy, (yes, and hard-working, its tough dealing them off the arm in these kind of joints, or elsewhere) Johnny trap comes into play. Okay, now you know, even alienated, misunderstood, misanthropic, cop-hating (an additional obstacle given said waitress’s kinships) boy Johnny needs, needs cinematically at least, to meet a girl who understands him.

The development of that young hope, although hopeless, boy meets girl romance relationship, hither and yon, drives the plot. Natch. Oh, and along the way the boys, after a few thousand beers, as boys, especially girl-starved biker boys, will, at the drop of a hat start to systematically tear down the town, off-handedly, for fun. Needless to say, staid local burghers (aka “squares”) seeing what amount to them is their worst 1950s “communist” invasion nightmare, complete with murder, mayhem and rapine, (although that “C” word was not used in the film, nor should it have been) are determined to “take back” their little town. A few fights, forages, casualities, fatalities, and forgivenesses later though, still smitten but unquenched and chaste Johnny (and his rowdy crowd) and said waitress part, wistfully. The lesson here, for the kids in the theater audience, is that biker love outside bikerdom is doomed. For the adults, the real audience, the lesson: nip the “terrorists” in the bud (call in the state cops, the national guard, the militia, the 82nd Airborne, The Strategic Air Command, NATO, hell, even the weren't we buddies in the war Red Army , but nip it, fast when they come roaming through Amityville, Archer City, or your small town).

After that summary you can see what we are up against. This is pure fantasy Hollywood cautionary tale on a very real 1950s phenomena, “outlaw” biker clubs, mainly in California, but elsewhere as well. Hunter Thompson did yeoman’s work in his Hell’s Angels to “discover” who these guys were and what drove them, beyond drugs, sex, rock and roll (and, ya, murder and mayhem, the California prison system was a “home away from home”). In a sense the “bikers” were the obverse of the boys (again, mainly) whom Tom Wolfe, in many of his early essays, was writing about and who were (a) forming the core of the surfers on the beaches from Malibu to La Jolla and, (b) driving the custom car/hot rod/drive-in centered (later mall-centered) cool, teenage girl–impressing, car craze night in the immediate post-World War II great American Western sunny skies and pleasant dream drift (physically and culturally). Except those Wolfe guys were the “winners”. The “bikers” were Nelson Algren’s “losers”, the dead-enders who didn’t hit the gold rush, the Dove Linkhorns (aka the Arkies and Okies who in the 1930s populated John Steinbeck’s Joad saga, The Grapes Of Wrath). Not cool, iconic Marlin-Johnny but hellbend then-Hell Angels leader, Sonny Barger.

And that is why in the end, as beautifully sullen and misunderstood the alienated Johnny was, and as wholesomely rowdy as his gang was before demon rum took over, this was not the real “biker: scene, West or East. Now I lived, as a teenager in a working class, really marginally working poor, neighborhood that I have previously mentioned was the leavings of those who were moving up in post-war society. That neighborhood was no more than a mile from the central headquarters of Boston's local Hell’s Angels (although they were not called that, I think it was Deathheads, or something like that). I got to see these guys up close as they rallied at various spots on our local beach or “ran” through our neighborhood on their way to some crazed action. The leader had all of the charisma of Marlon Brando’s thick leather belt. His face, as did most of the faces, spoke of small-minded cruelties (and old prison pallors) not of misunderstood youth. And their collective prison records (as Hunter Thompson also noted about the Angels) spoke of “high” lumpenism. And that takes us back to the beginning about who, and what, forms one of the core cohorts for a fascist movement in this country, the sons of Sonny Barger. Then we will need to rely on our Marxist politics, and other such weapons.

*************


ARTIST: Richard Thompson
TITLE: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Lyrics and Chords

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you
It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Box Hill they did ride

/ A - - - D - / - - - - A - / : / E - D A /
/ E - D A - / Bm - D - / - - - - A - - - /

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand
But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man
I've fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22
And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I've got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

“Even The President Of The United States Sometimes Must Have To Stand Naked”- Tales From The Bunker-Hunter Thompson Where Are  You When We Need You

It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Lyrics

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn that he's not busy being born
Is busy dying

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you'd just be
One more person crying

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright ma, I'm only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright ma, I can make it

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Do what they do just to be nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say "God bless him"

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole that he's in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright ma, if I can't please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright ma, it's life, and life only

Songwriters: Bob Dylan

It's Alright, Ma lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Co.

Artist: Bob Dylan

Album: Bringing It All Back Home

Released: 1965

Genre: Folk-rock

Zack James’ comment June, 2017:

Maybe it says something about the times we live in, or maybe in this instance happenstance or, hell maybe something in the water but certain things sort of dovetail every now and again. I initially started this commentary segment after having written a longest piece for my brother and his friends as part of a small tribute booklet they were putting together about my and their takes on the Summer of Love, 1967. That event that my brother, Alex, had been knee deep in had always interested me from afar since I was way too young to have appreciated what was happening in San Francisco in those Wild West days. What got him motivated to do the booklet had been an exhibit at the de Young Art Museum in Golden Gate Park where they were celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the events of that summer with a look at the music, fashion, photography and exquisite poster art which was created then just as vivid advertising for concerts and “happenings” but which now is legitimate artful expression.

That project subsequently got me started thinking about the late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, the driving force behind a new way of looking at and presenting journalism which was really much closer to the nub of what real reporting was about. Initially I was interested in some of Thompson’s reportage on what was what in San Francisco as he touched the elbows of those times having spent a fair amount of time working on his seminal book on the Hell’s Angels while all hell was breaking out in Frisco town. Delved into with all hands and legs the high points and the low, the ebb which he located somewhere between the Chicago Democratic Convention fiasco of the summer of 1968 and the hellish Rollins Stones Altamont concert of 1969.     

Here is what is important today though, about how the dots get connected out of seemingly random occurrences. Hunter Thompson also made his mark as a searing no holds barred mano y mano reporter of the rise and fall, of the worthy demise of one Richard Milhous Nixon at one time President of the United States and a common low-life criminal of ill-repute. Needless to say today, the summer of 2107, in the age of one Donald Trump, another President of the United States and common low-life criminal begs the obvious question of what the sorely missed Doctor Gonzo would have made of the whole process of the self-destruction of another American presidency, or a damn good run at self-destruction. So today and maybe occasionally in the future there will be some intertwining of commentary about events fifty years ago and today. Below to catch readers up to speed is the most recent “homage” to Hunter Thompson. And you too I hope will ask the pertinent question. Hunter where are you when we need, desperately need, you.       

*******

Zack James comment, Summer of 2017 

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. (Walking with the king not about walking with any king or Doctor King but being so high on drugs, your choice, that commin clay experiences fall by the way side. In the times of this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place, where many walked with the king, if you prefer, and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society, in high art society these days) at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20^th of this year.   

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. He would have gone crazy seeing all the crew deserting the sinking U.S.S. Trump with guys like fired FBI Director Comey going to Capitol Hill and saying out loud the emperor has no clothes and would not know the truth if it grabbed him by the throat. Every day would be a feast day. But perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other bullshit would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs who like their forbears would stop at nothing he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now  

In The Time Of The Soviet-American World War II Friendship-With Edward Myrtryk’s Seven Miles From Alcatraz In Mind-Again  

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

Recently I responded to an old time film review, the Seven Miles From Alcatraz mentioned in the headline to this piece by my old friend and competitor Sandy Salmon (mentioned below in more detail) in order to express dismay not at the review which was perfectly okay but at what the plotline was trying to get at, what propaganda points since this was a World War II production were being made in the film itself. The plotline centered on a couple of escapees from the “Rock,” from Alcatraz out there in that big Japan seas swirl called San Francisco Bay where American land ended then (this during the height of World War II before bombed-out Hawaii acquired vaunted statehood to extend the empire). My objection to that plotline was that I found it incredulous that a filmmaker, a filmmaker who later would fall under the ax when the Cold War red scare freeze came rushing in (and later turn fink when they put the squeeze on), Edward Dmytryk, would bring a couple of hardened shoot ‘em up cons into the “popular front” against the Fascist Axis whatever his political sympathies were at the time.

I got two diverse reactions from that simple comment. One, from the unusual red-baiters who saw my comment as just another part of the international communist conspiracy to foul-up the pure American air, the purity of the cinema (using that exact high blown word which told me a lot about where they were coming from culturally) even some seventy years after the fact. I was befuddled by this tact since apparently these people had not heard the news, the rather old news, the Soviet empire had been dismantled about twenty-five years ago and was no longer in effect (although Russia is much in the news again these days but for different reasons).

The other respond was “shock” that I could not believe that two felons, two stalwart Americans in the immersed in the felony community, could identify with the just cause of the anti-Nazi struggle. In short that I wore my political incorrectness on my sleeve for all the candid world to see. Apparently in their view these guys who were ready to commit murder and mayhem against the denizens of the lighthouse that lammed onto in their escape until the Nazi menace confronted them in the face. The minute I saw those words felony community or maybe it was career criminal community I was seething at that point I knew I was in deep trouble.

For those who did not see the original comment (or Sandy’s rather ordinary but well-written review of the film which took the whole experience at face value I have re-posted it below with a few added points to address the “better dead than red” and better dead than politically incorrect comment. This should end the tempest in a teapot.    

*********

Okay, okay regular readers of this space (and of the on-line version of the American Film Gazette) know that I have, how did Pete Markin the administrator of this site put it, oh yeah, put myself out to pasture. In other words retired from the day to day grind of film reviews what with the inevitable deadlines sneaking up and giving me heartburn when I haven’t figured out a “hook” to tie the review up with and Pete is e-mailing me every other minute for copy like some whirling dervish (no offense to the dervish community intended) I had had enough. I had conned my old friend, colleague and competitor Sandy Salmon (from that same American Film Gazette where he was a regular film critic with a by-line long before I began to occasionally write for the publication) into doing the yeoman’s work until he in his turn will retire and let younger hands get their chance. (Maybe under the circumstances I such not have used the word “conned” which might offend members of the career criminal community so I will say “browbeat” which I assume will offend no “community.”) I also mentioned in that notice of retirement that I would occasionally comment on whatever I felt like commenting on as long as I didn’t have to meet some damn deadline.     

I have of late been impressed by some of Sandy’s reviews which are pretty good and which I have no quarrel with. What I have noticed when he reviews older films which is what this space is more and more dedicated to given the paucity of current first rate films is that some remark he makes or some insight of his gets me to the computer to make a comment. That is what I am up to today in regard to a recent review he did of a 1940s World War II film, part propaganda, part action thriller entitled Seven Miles From Alcatraz. The “hook” for me was not the fact that it was directed by Edward Myrtryk who would after the war be red-baited and scapegoated as one of the Hollywood Ten, guys who wouldn’t snitch on their fellows who might have in the past been reds, you know, communists . Honorably done at the time although unlike Howard Fast and Dalton Trumbo he eventually spilled his guts to whoever would listen in order to save his wretched career. That direction might have been part of what I was looking at which I will explain in a minute since the thrust of the film fit in very well with what the American Communist Party on orders from Moscow were doing to help the war effort once the Soviets became allies of the Allied Alliance in 1941.        

No, what got me about this film was that even hardened criminals could under the story-line presented aid the war effort, could in this case be anti-Nazi fighters. My first reaction was WTF, yeah, that is exactly what I thought. Here is the gist of the story. A couple of hard cases tired of Alcatraz, the “Rock”, the supposedly inescapable Rock out in the dangerous Frisco Bay swirls and eddies escaped to a lighthouse out in the harbor, out by the Japan currents from what I could gather. At that lighthouse there was the lighthouse keeper (an important job in the treacherous waters in the Bay), his daughter and a couple of other guys, one a goof but the other who just so happens to turn out to be a Nazi spy. A Nazi spy who was connected with a group of fellow conspirators who have plans to blow up half of Frisco town once they grabbed a submarine ride off that lighthouse’s reaches and get back to the Fatherland. Naturally they get nowhere once these cons get their patriotic fervor up after they “realize” that if Frisco town goes the Rock goes too if they get captured and are returned there. The conspiracy and the sub once the military gets a fix on them from the lighthouse keeper after the cons struggle with the Nazi agents trying to get back home goes to the briny deep. Fair enough nobody liked the idea, least of all me, of half of Frisco town being blown up.

What is really galling though is the idea that these hardened hoods were to be considered cinematically part of the great united front to wipe the Nazis and their allies off the face of the earth. Guys from Steubenville, Ohio and Hazard, Kentucky who were itching to volunteer once the Japanese did their dastardly deeds at Pearl Harbor I understand as part of the front. Guys building ships, welding like crazy on three shifts 24/7/365 to produce a ship a day I get it. Rosy the riveter picking up the slack when the menfolk went off to war great. Granny planting her Victory Garden, nice work. Kids running around getting string and aluminum foil for the war effort good young citizens. But cons who would as soon as put a slug in you, hey, in that light-keeper if it came to it before they “got religion” on what was what with the damn Nazis no I cannot buy that. What was Dmytryk thinking of anyway when he took on this film and the screwy story line.                

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love, 1967-A Dream Fragment On Looking For A Few Good…Mystics -In The Matter Of Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”

Zack James’ comment June, 2017:

You know it is in a way too bad that “Doctor Gonzo”-Hunter S Thompson, the late legendary journalist who broke the back, hell broke the neck, legs, arms of so-called objective journalism in a drug-blazed frenzy back in the 1970s when he “walked with the king”’ is not with us in these times. In the times of this 50^th anniversary commemoration of the Summer of Love, 1967 which he worked the edges of while he was doing research (live and in your face research by the way) on the notorious West Coast-based Hell’s Angels. His “hook” through Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters down in Kesey’s place in La Honda where many an “acid test” took place and where for a time the Angels, Hunter in tow, were welcomed. He had been there in the high tide, when it looked like we had the night-takers on the run and later as well when he saw the ebb tide of the 1960s coming a year or so later although that did not stop him from developing the quintessential “gonzo” journalism fine-tuned with plenty of dope for which he would become famous before the end, before he took his aging life and left Johnny Depp and company to fling his ashes over this good green planet. He would have “dug” the exhibition, maybe smoked a joint for old times’ sake (oh no, no that is not done in proper society) at the de Young Museum at the Golden Gate Park highlighting the events of the period showing until August 20^th of this year.   

Better yet he would have had this Trump thug bizarre weirdness wrapped up and bleeding from all pores just like he regaled us with the tales from the White House bunker back in the days when Trump’s kindred one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal was running the same low rent trip before he was run out of town by his own like some rabid rat. But perhaps the road to truth these days, in the days of “alternate facts” and assorted other bullshit    would have been bumpier than in those more “civilized” times when simple burglaries and silly tape-recorders ruled the roost. Hunter did not make the Nixon “hit list” (to his everlasting regret for which he could hardly hold his head up in public) but these days he surely would find himself in the top echelon. Maybe too though with these thugs he might have found himself in some back alley bleeding from all pores. Hunter Thompson wherever you are –help. Selah. Enough said-for now  

Book Review

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe, Bantam Books, New York, 1968

The subject of “Gonzo journalism”, a journalistic literary trend started in the 1960s, and its most well-known practitioner, the late Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, has received much ink in this space over the past several years. The gist of this journalistic literary trend is that the writer gets “down and dirty” with whatever he or she is writing about and becomes an aspect of the story, one way or another. Now this notion set the traditionalists who worked under the so-called objectivist theory, “nothing but the facts, Jack” back on their heels. Of course, we all knew, and know, that this traditional approach was honored in the breech more than the observance and that old Hunter was merely rubbing everyone’s face in it. However, Hunter Thompson was not the only one trying to got to “edge city” in his writing in what now has become, academically translated, called the “new journalism”. The writer under review, Tom Wolfe, also tried in a less zany way to break out of the traditional mold as well.

While Thompson was more than happy to tweak “edge city” Brother Wolfe, by his whole social existence, and by something deep down in his training never really got all the way there. He never really pressed the issue of his own involvement in the story, nor would it perhaps have worked for him, but surely off of this early work he is on to something different from the run of the mill “straight” journalism of those days. Heck, even Hunter Thompson, argued, and argued strenuously, that most of his attempts at "gonzo” didn’t work either. Here some of Wolfe’s entries are brilliant, some much less so but that seems par for the course when one is experimenting with new forms. The most polished form of those attempts is the early, now classic, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Below is a sketch of that work from another entry in this space today that gives the highlights:


"And why does Brother Wolfe (or is it really Brother Wolf?) earn this blame? Well, frankly, merely by telling this acid-etched (literally) story about the late author Ken Kesey (most famous for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion), his California-gathered (naturally, right?) tribe of Merry Pranksters, their then rural California coastal communal arrangements (or non-arrangements, or dis-arrangements, as the case may be), and their antics, including a collectively produced and massively-filmed cross-country “bus” ride that cemented their collective experiences. No kidding- you were truly either on the “bus” or off the “bus” if you got entangled with this crowd.

Oh, did I mention, as well, their deep-end “edge city” drug experiences, especially the then little known acid (LSD) trips? Those drug experiments, important as they were to the story line of the book, are, however, not what have me up in arms though. Hey, experimenting with drugs, or experimenting with sometime (sex, the karma sutra, Zen, zen, sex, abstract primitivist painting, free-form verse, sex, hitchhiking the universe, sex, etc.) was de rigueur in those halcyon days. I wouldn’t waste my breathe, and your time, recounting those kinds of stories. Everybody did drugs back then, or was….unhip. And almost no one, hip, unhip, cloven-footed, or haloed angel wanted to be thought of as unhip.

The others, those who claim memory lose today on the subject, or some story along those lines, just lie. Or were cloistered somewhere, and such circumstances are better left untold. Or, and here is my favorite, didn’t inhale. The number of guys (and gals) who NOW say that they didn’t inhale exceeds the total youth tribe members of the 1960s. Unless, of course, my numbers are off, slightly. I, in any case, need not go through that scene again. Read Wolfe’s book or watch Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider or ask your parents or…ouch, grandparents." Actually, read this book.

Bet, Bet Straight Up-With The Old Riverdale Neighborhood Corner Boys In Mind

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

As everybody familiar with this space (or with the on-line version of the American Film Gazette )knows I have retired from the day to day grind of writing film reviews and have handed over that chore, at least temporary, to my in the not too distance future retiring old friend, colleague and competitor Sandy Salmon. I noted when I posted my retirement notice that I, like old time military men, would just fade away. I also noted that I would as the occasion warranted write a little something, a little commentary if the subject interested me. That is my purpose today.        

Recently Sandy Salmon reviewed a 1947 film, a murder mystery of sorts that had a long prior pedigree, Seven Keys To Baldpate, which had been based on a play by the same name back in the early 20^th century which in turn was based on a crime novel by the great crime writer Earl Derr Biggers (whose popular Charlie Chan series is perhaps much better known). Sandy did a good job of reviewing this film which hinged on the idea of a guy, a crime writer, making a bet with his publisher for five thousand cash that he could write a crackerjack mystery novel in twenty-four hours. As he attempted to do such out in the boondocks at an allegedly closed down inn with the only key to the place all hell broke loose, a couple of off-hand murders and such, by people who had collectively mysteriously come up with the six other keys of the title. One of those six people was a ringer, was the good-looking blonde with well-turned legs secretary to the guy who the crime writer made the bet with. No, not a sex lure like would be included in such a plotline now, at least not publicly, not in 1947 but to distract him anyway she could to make him miss his deadline. What the hell that ain’t fair, no way, especially when after the smoke cleared and the crime writer solved the whole mystery of why the other five people were there she flopped herself on his lap when he went to write that story to win the bet and dared him to ignore her. Needless to say the other guy won the bet        

Sandy mentioned at the start of his review that some guys will bet on anything, any proposition to pass the time. That got me to thinking after I had read the review about what the deal was in the old days in my growing up hometown of Riverdale about forty miles west of Boston when me and my high school corner boys who hung around Sal’s Pizza Parlor would to while away the lonesome, girl-less, no dough, no serious dough to not be girl-less bet on all kinds of propositions for a couple of bucks, maximum five probably. Certainly not five thousand which as Sandy mentioned is nothing but walking around money now but then was a number which we could not get around, couldn’t believe existed, not in our neighborhood where rubbing nickels together was a tough enough battle.

Now a lot of the bets with guys like Sammy Young, Billy Riley, Jack Callahan the great school football player before Chrissie McNamara did her own flop down on his lap and dared him to move her which he had had absolutely no inclination to do, Sid Green, Pat Murphy and Ian Smith were on the outcome of various sports events. You know back in those days whether the hapless Red Sox would finish last in the American League (or how long a losing streak the team would go on once they started their inevitable losing), how many points would the golden age Celtics score (or allow). We also did our fair share of betting on football games, no so much the games themselves as each play, pass or run, stuff like that, which sounds exotic but except for one time when I got on a bad streak and lose twenty-two bucks which took me about six weeks of caddying for the Mayfair swells to pay was usually the difference of two or three dollars.         

Other bets were a bit racier. Like whether Sally, who was going out with Pat, would let him “touch” her, and you know what I mean and don’t ask how we verified such bets but just know that we did do so. Or whether such and such a girl, a hot girl usually, would take the bait and give one of us a date. Hell, sometimes when the girls came into Sal’s to have some pizza, Cokes and to play the great jukebox that he had over in the corner we would bet on what song a girl would play. There was a certain art to that proposition for instance if a girl had just broken up with her boyfriend there would likely be some slow sad song chosen. You get what I mean. Sometimes it would be whether the notoriously late local bus would arrive on time or not. So anything was up for betting purposes.         

         

That ringer secretary in the film though got me thinking about the strangest bet I ever made back then, maybe ever. One Friday night, another one of those girl-less ones, Jack Callahan, this is before fetching Chrissie McNamara snagged him, bet me on how high Sal would toss the pizza dough when he was kneading and stretching it to make his great pizza pies. Jack’s idea for calling the bet, mine too for taking it, was that one of us but not both could have enough kale for a date with Laura Lawrence on Saturday night. We were both interested in her and she liked us both well enough although Jack as the football hero probably had the edge aside from the money factor. So the bet was on. Oh, I forgot to tell you that if one of the corner boys made a proposition the other guy (or guys depending on the nature of the bet) had to take the bet, or lose and pay up anyway. So naturally I said “bet.”      

The time of the bet was probably about seven o’clock so we had to wait a bit for Sal to start making more pizzas for the crowd that would be coming in around eight or so for their slice and soda before heading to some date or to the local lovers’ lane. Sal did eventually get going, maybe a half an hour later. The idea for who would win any individual bet on the toss was whether Sal flipped the dough above or below the Coke sign directly behind him. I got to call the first bet. Low. I won and the race was on taking my shots at high or low. I did pretty well for a while, was up maybe seven or eight dollars which would be enough to take Laura out, maybe a movie and something to eat. I figured I was in. Then my luck began to change, change dramatically and before long I was down about ten bucks before Sal stopped tossing the goddam stuff.

Jack smiled a knowing smile, knowing that he was going to escort Laura around and maybe get to “touch” her and you know what I mean by that and I don’t have to spell it out. Here’s where everything about that film review by Sandy comes into play. Sal was the ringer. Remember Jack was a football hero and Sal loved football, loved Jack’s prowess on the field and Jack had told him the situation earlier in the day before I showed up there. They had planned to let me win early to draw me in and had set up a silent signal about which position I had taken. How about that. Don’t you think now that I am thinking about it and getting burned up all over again that the next time I go over to Jack and Chrissie’s house in Hingham that I should ask for that ten bucks back-with interest. Yeah, Sandy had it right some guys will bet on anything.