Of Angels And Things-With Mark Dinning’s Teen Angel (1960) In Mind

By Zack James

 

Fritz Taylor as he has grown older, has reached retirement age from his career as a professional printer having worked for newspapers and after that position went south along with the industry with the crush of the new digital technology as a main form of people getting their news then as the owner of a small specialty print shop that he is in the process of turning over to younger hands, has been increasing inclined to stray thoughts from seemingly out of nowhere. Recently he told his old friend Bart Webber over lunch and cocktails at Johnny’s Dinner in Gloversville the town where both had come of age as both had harkened back to on occasion just to thrash out old memories. He told Bart that he had been having a series of dreams about angels, although not in any context that one would expect from a guy who was getting closer to meeting his maker or whatever happens when he passes.            

No, emphatically no, old Fritz as he explained to a credulous Bart he was having neither one of those increasingly frequent “senior moments” nor was he reverting back to his youth when discussing what he now called the Tommy-rot that plagued his life. That Tommy-rot reference referring to the days before he got “religion” on religion and would take on all-comers on such Thomist scholastic subjects as how many angels could fit on the head of a needle. When he was a believer, a believer in the hard-core Roman Catholic version of religion the religion of his forbears as far back as anybody could remember, he would think nothing of wiling away the hours with anybody who wanted to discuss what was what about religion, about the “true” religion and eventually the question of angels would come up, especially the question of that vaporous guardian angel who every priest, nun, his mother, hell, the Pope in Rome told him was looking out for him. Then one day when he really was down on his luck, had made a series of disastrous decision when he could not hold his wanting habits in and was homeless and friendless and needed an angel in the worst way he got wise and finally figured out that he was on his own. After that the thrill of such argumentation abandoned him as well along with the thoughts of angels.  

No, Fritz was thinking of a different context, a different way in which angels came into play also in his youth. As one could have figured out indirectly since it was mentioned earlier that Fritz had come of retirement age so one could also figure out that he had come of age in the classic age of rock and roll and while there may have been a few guys around who loved their rock better Fritz held his own when it came to the songs that influenced his generation. So his series of dreams centered on his sitting fixed like glue in a booth in Doc’s Drugstore circa 1960 listening to something on Doc’s jack-up top end jukebox provided for the listening pleasure of the Gloversville High students who made the trek across the street from the school to listen and sip sodas and grab a snack. But here is the freaky part of the dreams every song that would come on that fabulous jukebox had something to do with angels-and no other songs would penetrate the airwaves. Fritz told Bart he took this for a sign, a sign of what he did not know.     

Those dreams when he awoke one morning after having a particularly vivid one got him thinking that there were in fact many angel-based songs back in the day. So he went onto YouTube typed in “angel” and came up with a zillion angel songs. Not all were from his time but enough were so that they brought back reminiscences of lost time.

Say a song like Earth Angel by the Penguins where the heavens, or heavenly angels take a back seat to the earthly delights, a song like Johnny Angel where some frill was crying for some loving from her Johnny boy who was out two-timing her, probably with her best friend, a song like Angel Eyes which is self-explanatory, or a song like Devil or Angel where the composer of the song forgot his or her basic John Milton Paradise Lost when we all knew that devils and devils’ kindred were all noting but fallen angels, those who took the wrong side in the big ass civil war in the heavens before the gates of Eden fell. Fritz said that he could have gone on but Bart who after all had been there sitting in real time alongside him most afternoons at Doc’s and so knew what Fritz was getting at  could figure out the rest for himself.

The one song Fritz couldn’t figure, one that kept recurring in several dreams was the eternal playing of Mark Dinning’s famous classic angel song, Teen Angel. Then he finally figured out what that damn song kept reoccurring. This was the one song that he and Seth Garth, yes, Seth Garth the well-known free-lance music critic for such publications as Rock, Folk Age and The Stone Today whom they had gone to school with had fought a battle royal over. See Seth had back then, back in 1960 when they were both just naïve and ignorant freshman, had  written a review of the song for Mimi Murphy, the editor of the school newspaper, The Magnet where he extolled the young girl in the song whose rash action would soon make her a teen angel as a model for the real girls of Gloversville. Undying devotion to her boyfriend after she had run back her boyfriend’s car which was stalled on the tracks and a railroad train was heading that way. Apparently the boyfriend narrator of the song had pulled her out when the car first got stuck and they were safe but somehow during the confusion she had left his class ring, a big deal then signifying “going steady,” signifying hands off and stuff like that, in the car. She ran back and you know the rest, or can figure it out.         

“Bullshit” said Fritz to Seth one Friday night in front of Vinny’s Sub Shop where they all hung out when they had no dough or no dates after he had read Seth’s article extolling this phantom angel. The frill was a cluck, a stupe, and about seven dizzy other things according to Fritz. Here is how the fight progressed at least from Fritz’s side since Seth as was his wont then, and now, would not budge on his take on the song. First of all Fritz said that the guy narrator’s car probably was some “shit-box” and the bimbo should have had had better sense than to hang with a guy who didn’t have a “boss” car, or had a car probably handed down from a hard-pressed father that couldn’t even maneuver a railroad track without causing mayhem. Next point, really the clincher, the guy probably had given that cheapjack class ring to every girl whom he tried to get into the pants of before teen angel’s time, used that token of teenage seriousness to get whatever he could from any bimbo who would fall for his two-bit charm. Worse, worse of all was that a freaking class ring was about one rung above giving a girl a cigar band, or maybe a twisted paper clip. Anybody who would even think of buying an overpriced nowhere class ring from Kay’s Jewelry which would tarnish about three days after you got it was, well, from nowhere. The guys around Vinny’s that night tended to line up with Fritz seeing the dizzy doll as just another hapless fool for love-and good riddance.    

The funny thing was that “controversy” would come up periodically the rest of freshman year, usually on those dough-less, date-less Friday nights until at some point all sides got tired of the thing and moved on to critiquing some other song. Funnier still was that fifty years later when Fritz Googled “teen angel” to look once more at the lyrics he knew in his heart that he had been right and all the old bile came to the surface. Maybe not world-historic right, but right. The frail was a cluck then, and now. Funniest of all though was the recent interest that Fritz had been taking old time folk ballads and religious hymns a number of them dangling angels around their lyrics. One in particular was drawing his attention, Angel Band. As he was getting closer to meeting his maker or whatever happened when he passed Fritz thought about one phrase in the last verse of that hymn-“I hear the noise of wings.” He wondered whether just before that end as the light faded he would hear that noise of wings. And too whether he would get the “skinny” from “teen angel” about her take on that rash move she made that fateful night.