From
The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Staff Sergeant John Prescott in the
adjacent room, “Johnny P.” to his pals gathered around a small table drinking
sodas and coffee, was a quiet, unassuming guy, a guy with just that barebones
patriotism that animated many working- class kids to “do their duty” and join
up when America was in danger, no questions asked. Not quite “my country, right
or wrong” but pretty close when all was said and done. And that call came as
the early 1960s, a time of high school fun and frolic and for ace football star
Johnny P, fun and frolic with one fetching Chrissie O’Shea and their flaming
romance that was the talk of the Class of 1964 at old North Adamsville High,
turned to mid-1960s and that clarion drumbeat the country was in danger in some
place called red-infested Vietnam. Johnny, and not just Johnny, answered the
call. And here, gathered around a small table, in early May 1968 his old corner
boys from in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor “up the downs,” as they called
the small stores and shops that made up the area, were chatting away like mad.
Suddenly, Frank Riley, fabled
Frankie, the king of the be-bop Salducci’s night in those fresher days, that
early 1960s time when the world was young and everything seemed possible, yelled
to no one in particular but they all knew what he meant, “Remember that night
after graduation when Tonio threw us that party at the pizza parlor.” And all
the other five gathered at the table became silence with their own memories of
that night. See, Tonio was the king hell owner and zen master pizza maker at
Salducci’s and a guy who treated Frankie (and therefore most of Frankie’s
friends) like a son. So Tonio put out a big deal party right on the premises,
closed to all but Frankie, his friends and hangers-on (and girls of course).
Tonio, at least this is what he said at the time, appreciated that Frankie
brought so much business his way what with his corner boys, their corner boys,
and the, ah, girls that gathered round them and who endlessly fed the juke box
that he had to show his appreciation in such a way. And everybody had a great
time that night, with the closed door wine, Tonio-provided wine, flowing like
crazy and nobody, no authorities or parents the wiser for it.
Part of that great time, the part
the guys around the 1968 table were remembering just then, the part of that
great gun-ho 1964 time occurred late that night when, plenty of wine under
their belts, Frankie and the corner boys, talked “heroic” talk. Talked about
their military service obligations that was coming up right on them. And this
was no abstract talk, not this night, for not only was this a party put on by
Tonio to show his gratitude but a kind of going away party for ace football
player and part-time corner boy (the other part, the more and more part, with
one fetching Chrissie O’Shea), Johnny Prescott, who had decided to sign up
right after graduation and would be getting ready to leave for “boot camp” at
Fort Dix, New Jersey in a few weeks. So everybody was piling on the bravery
talk to Johnny about “killing commies” somewhere, maybe Vietnam, maybe Germany,
hell, maybe Russia or China. And Johnny, not any rum-brave kind Johnny, not any
blah blah-ing about bravery, football or war, Johnny just kind of sat there and
let the noise go by him. His thoughts then were of Chrissie and doing
everything he could to get back to her in one piece.
Of course heaping up pile after pile
on the bravery formula was one Frankie Riley, ever the politician as well as
the king of the corner boy night, who had so just happened to have landed,
through a very curious connection with the Kennedy clan, a coveted slot in a
National Guard unit. So, Frankie, ever Frankie, could be formally brave that
night in the knowledge that he would be far away from any real fighting. His
rejoinder was that his unit “might” be called up. The others kidded him about
it, about his “week-end warrior” status, but just a little because after all he
would be serving one way or another. Also kind of silent that night was Fritz
Taylor just then on the unannounced verge ready to “do his duty” after having
had a heavy-duty fight with his mother about his future, or lack of a future,
and her “hadn’t he better go in the service and learn a trade” talk.
Most vociferous that night was Timmy
Kiley. Yes, Timmy, the younger brother of the legendary North Adamsville and
later State U. football player “Thunder Tommy” Kiley. He was ready to catch
every red under every bed and do what, when and where to any he caught. Timmy
later joined the Navy to “see the world” and saw much of some dreary scow in
some dry-dock down in Charleston, South Carolina. Even Peter Paul Markin,
Frankie’s right-hand man, self-described scribe, and publicly kind of the
pacifist of the group, who usually got mercilessly “fag-baited” for his pale
peace comments was up in arms about the need to keep the “free world” free as the
tom-toms of war in Southeast Asia were seeping through and getting down to the
places where the cannon fodder, ah, kids who would do the actual fighting lived.
Places exactly like North Adamsville. But that was just the way he talked, kind
of a studied hysterical two-thousand facts diatribe then. Markin, student
deferred, at that 1968 table had just gotten notice from his friendly neighbors
at the North Adamsville Draft Board that upon graduation he was to be drafted.
And he was ready, kicking and screaming about some graduate school project that
the world really needed to know about, to go. That was the way it was in the
neighborhood. Go or be out of step, be different, be a red or pink maybe. Frank Ricco, the so-called token Eye-talian,
of the Irish-laden Salducci’s corner boy night (and a kid that Tonio actually
hated, some kind of Mafioso, omerta thing with his father) also displayed
super-human brave talk that 1964 night but he, at least, was credited , not so
many months later, with not only going in the Marines but of seeing some
heavy-duty action in jungle-infested Kontum, and some other exotic and mainly
unpronounceable places farther south in the water-logged rice paddles of the
Mekong Delta of Vietnam.
Quiet, quieter than Johnny Prescott when
he was thinking of Chrissie in the old corner boy night, or Fritz, then sullenly
furious at his mother or at his hard-scrabble fate, or both, was Johnny
Callahan. Johnny no stranger to corner boy controversy, no stranger to
patriotic sentiments, at least publicly to keep in step with his boys, secretly
hated war, the idea of that war in Vietnam coming up and was seriously hung up
on the Catholic “just war” theory that had been around since at least Saint Augustine,
maybe earlier. See Johnny had a grandmother (and also a mother, but less so)
who was an ardent Catholic Worker reader and adherent to their social
philosophy. You know, Dorothy Day and that crowd of rebel Catholics wanting to
go back to the old, old days, the Roman persecution days, of the social gospel
and the like.
And grandmother had the “just war”
theory down pat. She had been the greatest knitter of socks for “the boys”
during World War II that the world may have ever known. But on Vietnam she was
strictly “no-go, no-go, no way” and she was drilling that in Johnny’s head
every chance she got (which was a lot since Johnny, having, well let’s call it
“friction” with his mother, the usual teenage
angst friction, sought refuge over at grandma’s). Now grandma was pressing
Johnny to apply for conscientious objector status (CO) but Johnny knew that as
a Catholic, a lapsing Catholic but still a Catholic, the formal “just war”
theory of that church would not qualify him for CO status. He wanted to,
expected to, just refuse induction. So that rounded out that party that night.
Hell, maybe in retrospect it wasn’t such a great party, although blame the
times not Tonio for that.
Just then, as each member at the
table thought his thoughts, started by Frankie’s remembrance someone from the
other room called out, “pall-bearers, get ready.”
Postscript:
Staff Sergeant John Phillip Prescott made the national news that 1968 year,
that 1968 year of Tet, made the Life magazine photo montage of those
killed in service in Vietnam on any given week. Johnny P.’s week was heavy with
casualties so there were many photos, many looks of mainly working-class
enlisted youth that kind of blurred together despite the efforts to recognize
each individually. And, of course, Johnny P.’s name is now etched in black
marble down in Washington, D.C. John Patrick Callahan served his two year “tour
of duty” as federal prisoner 122204, at the Federal Correctional Institution,
Allentown, Pennsylvania. The road less traveled, indeed.
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