From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Walking Daddy Of Joy Street
was a piece of work, a real throwback to ancient times, maybe back to Pharaoh
times, if that guy needed a fixer man, 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 Harvard
Square 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. Yah, it was that way then too. Christ,
the stories they told about him when he was on the high wire, the
stories they told about his own mad monk madnesses that played fast company
with anything his fellahin beats did. Stories, just to get this straight 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, right then at a time when everybody who had caught that 1960s
breeze that came out kicking from the stinking dinosaur 1950s (Jack and company
excluded) at the time when everybody was practically giving as much dope away
as they were selling. The righteous of the earth bent on a mission, a magic
puff mission. 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 seen, day and night, 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 and slinky connections got a pouch full of
Acapulco Gold into the jailhouse and by the time they were done the place
smelled like some college dorm, or some Chinese opium den. Beautiful. (Somebody
else who had another part of that same story said that Walking Daddy had gone
bail for all of them as well. That sounds right too.)
Then that cloud puff all kind of
turned in on itself. Too much war madness, Vietnam War madness for those too
young to remember or who have forgotten, too much parent authority anger and
counter-offensive against the stillborn new age, too much hubris, too much bad
dope, and hell, 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 when the tide ebbed sometime in the early 1970s..
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 under 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 the Joy Street
part of his moniker 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 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 then, the time when I would see him around, 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, some
Mexican dirty road trying to make a score without connections. Guys like his
friend Billy Smoot who didn’t know the whole thing was rigged up, that the fix
was in, and that it had been since eternity and wound up face down with two
slugs in him for trying to go “independent” when the cartels moved in. That
shook Walking Daddy to the core, but what was he to do the great Mandela has turned
the wheel and called his profession. 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 client services to
that community. Another said he knew more Assistant-Attorneys-General than the
Attorney-General did. And he certainly more about their private recreational
habits.) 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment