Once I Was A Good Boy-With Guitarist T-Bone Walker In Mind 

By Lester Lannon 

 

No question Frank Jackman started out once as a good boy. Even his mother, Delores, brought up a pious Catholic and a “no tolerance” for evil type of mother admitted that up to the age of about eight he was a model child, went to school every day, got as good marks in school as he could with his limited abilities, went to church, that Roman Catholic Church thing his mother lived for, and was a star in Sunday school class. Then at about eight, maybe nine he fell in with the wrong crowd, fell in with some wrong gees as the saying went in the old neighborhood. Three of those young cronies spent many years in prison for armed something, one just finishing up a dime’s worth for armed robbery of a liquor store. Frank’s fate will be discussed further below after we figure out how he went from a good boy to bad.

A lot of people, you know, professional sociologists, criminologists and psychologists, blamed it on the neighborhood, “the projects,” where Frank and the others came of age. No question they had a point for the statistics bear out the facts of all kinds of strange pathologies among people at the bottom of the feeding chain, the hungry ones, “los olvidados” as one Spanish guy, one hip Spanish sociologist who came out of the place, called those “forgotten” hermanos (not hermanas so much) in the barrio when liberals were actually interested in trying to figure out how to make all boats rise. No question “from hunger” drove a lot of stuff back then when Frank was coming of age in the 1970s, now too although nobody is looking to closely at the subject (except to construct more jails or in the international case drop more bombs). And no question if Frank had been brought up in say leafy Forest Lawn or Glen Ellen he might not have run into those wrong gees, Ronnie, Ducky, Pistol, and Whiplash. Would maybe have found some Alfred, Harry and Bradley let us say and planned mayhem on the basketball court or something and not the local gas station which first got Frank into  trouble (unarmed robbery in the daytime). Actually that first troubled covered up in the courts so not counted was the ‘five-finger clip” at Kay’s Jewelry up in Riverdale Square. Like I said that didn’t count.        

But to Delores’ mind, to Paul his father’s too, Frank was strictly “bad seed,” although not put in such a graphic pseudo-sexual way. Bore the mark of Cain, the mark of the early banishment from Eden unto as the 1930s writer titled one of his novels –East of Eden. And they, their other three boys, Frank’s grandparents and the rest of the extended family bore down on him with those thoughts until he actually began to believe he was marked by the original sin we are all born with under high hell Catholic doctrine. Started almost the day that Frank (and Whiplash not known as Whiplash then, that came later at about age fourteen when he took a chain and nearly beat a guy to death for being on the “wrong” corner and needed to teach the guy a lesson about turf) got caught at Kay’s trying to “five-finger” a bunch of onyx with diamond chips rings to give to some girl Pistol was trying to get a blow job from. (That part, the head reason, never came out and would have freaked out the whole neighborhood, the adults anyway. To keep the record straight despite the lack of jewelry to entice the girl Pistol got his blow job anyway. She was that kind of guy-crazy girl.)       

So Frank (never Frankie, just Frank) went from bad to worse. Got sly as he grew older, got to thinking about what he didn’t have in the world, saw what his father had to grovel for to keep his family, to keep Frank, feed and clothed. The sight of the poor bedraggled man coming home always with his damn head down even when he had steady work and a reason to pull his head up for a moment made Frank swear to himself one night an oath to never be like his father, never grovel to anybody period if he could help it. As far as anybody ever knew Frank never did, but never did grow up to be half the man his father had been as he began to recognize long and too late afterward while serving an armed robbery rap for single-handedly robbing the First National Bank of Gloversville of a hundred thou (unfortunately he set off an alarm in the bank on his way out and the cops found him a few days later in New York. Lesson learned: always have another guy at your back).

But that was later, a half- dozen armed robberies and assaults later. The key one, the one that gave him that first record, on the way to a near permanent home in some state correctional institution including now at the “max” security Hammerhead joint. The first was the night he along with Fast Eddy Jones robbed at gunpoint the Cities Service gas station on Thorndike Street in Riverdale. Got away with it for a while, even got a free blow job from that girlfriend of Pistol’s she was so juiced up by what he had done, so yeah, she was that kind of girl but don’t tell Pistol that because he thinks she is still chastely waiting for him to finish up his dime at Shawshank up in Maine for robbing a grocery store when he was high as a kite on cousin cocaine. Pistol would kill her and every guy who even looked at her so please keep this to yourself.

Naturally kids of fourteen are going to brag about such an event if for no other reason than to prove their manhood out on the dangerous streets. At least naturally for Fast Eddy (Frank never bragged about nothing- his motto just do the thing-from robbery to boffing some frail who looked his way ever so slightly). So Frank and Fast Eddy took the fall, did the youth detention center, reform school, for a couple of years and that was that. (Fast Eddy would open his mouth once too often usually to some frail and wound up face down in the Merrimack River up in New Hampshire for his efforts.)

No need to list all the other felonies that Frank committed from that time to his thirty-fifth birthday because Frank was strictly an armed something guy and the only distinction between the crimes was the time served. Except that last one-that three strikes and you are out last one. The one where a bank sneeze, a bank cop at the Portland (Georgia) Trust Bank got hit between the eyes when he believed that the money he was guarding was his and got rum brave, but also got  very dead. Felony murder, murder one  and in death penalty crazy Georgia that meant the big step-off, the big kiss-off of the face of the earth. He is still waiting for the “hangman” as this written. Every once in a while his ancient mother is able to get down to Georgia to see her boy, her bad boy. And every time she says to Frank-“up to the age of about eight you were  a model child, went to school every day, got as good marks in school as you could with your limited abilities, went to church, that Roman Catholic Church thing that I lived for, and were a star in Sunday school class.” Frank just took that never-ending line in and sat in stony silence.