Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night-Fragments Of A Treasure Island (Cady Park) Dream #2- A Family Outing

An Encore Presentation-Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night-Fragments Of A Treasure Island (Cady Park) Dream #2- A Family Outing


[Recently in cleaning out one of my file cabinets in my law office in preparation for handing over the day to day operations to my younger partner so that I can pursue some other things I found some old stories that the late lamented Peter Markin had written and which had been published in the early 1970s in the East Bay Other, an alternative newspaper published out in the Bay Area now long defunct, from the days when all things were possible coming out of the 1960s. Markin was the corner boy supreme in our old neighborhood, was the guy who got us headed out to the West Coast when all hell and heaven was breaking out there. He didn't make the long haul, maybe couldn't when the deal went down but here he is day-dreaming about his youth. Hope you want to read the piece and think about your own family histories-Sam Lowell.]   



By the late Peter Paul Markin 



Do you need to know about all the little trips over to Treasure Island, a picnic spot down at the Merrymount end of Wollaston Beach, that I have threatened to talk about in previous entries? Trips that kind of formed the bookends of my childhood. Jesus, no. A thousand time no, and I say that having lived through them. My childhood memories overall can be best summed up in the words of the now long-departed black rapper extraordinaire, Biggie Smalls. He expressed it best and spoke a truth greater than he might have known, although he was closer to “hip-hop nation” than I ever could be, or could be capable of – “Christmas kind of missed us, birthdays were the worst days.” Ya, that’s the big truth, no question, but not the little Treasure Island truth, wobbly as it might come out. One such episode will give you an idea of what we (meaning me and my brothers) were up against but also, in the end, why although there were precious few wonderful childhood memories that are now worth the ink to tell you about, this one serves pretty well. Let me have my say.

******

There was a madness in this country in the 1950s. No, not the Cold War atomic-bomb-is-going-to-get-us-we-are-all-going-to-be-dead-next-week or “better dead than red” kind of madness although there was plenty of that, but a madness for the automobile, the sleeker, the more airplane-like, and more powerfully-engined the better. And, it wasn’t just, deafeningly mad as they were, those guys in the now almost sepia-faded photographic images of tight T-shirt wearing, rolled sleeve cigarette-packed, greased Pompadour-haired, long side-burned, dangling-combed , engineer-booted, chain-wielding, side of the mouth butt-puffing , didn’t care if school kept or not types bent over the hood of some souped-up ’57 Chevy working, no sweating pools of sweat, sweating to get even more power out of that ferocious V-8 engine for the Saturday night “ chicken" run.

And it wasn’t even those mad faux James Dean-sneered, "rebel without a cause"-posed, cooled-out, maybe hop-headed guys either. And it was always guys, who you swore you would beat down if they ever even looked at your sister, if you had a sister, and if you liked her enough to beat a guy down to defend her honor, or whatever drove your sense of right. And, of course she, your sister no less, is looking for all she is worth at this “James Dean” soda jerk (hey, what else could he be) because this guy is “cute”. Go figure.

No, and forget all those stereotypes that they like to roll out when they want to bring a little “color” to the desperately color-craving 1950s. This car madness was driven, and driven hard, by your very own stay-at-home-and watch the television, water the lawn, if you have a lawn and it needed watering and sometimes when it didn’t just to get out of the house, have couple of beers and take a nap on Saturday afternoon father (or grandfather, I have to remember who might be in my audience now) who always said “ask your mother” to blow you off. You know him. I know you know him he just has a different name than mine did. And maybe even your very own mother (or grandmother) got caught up in the car thing too, your mother, the one who always say “ask your father”. You know her too, don’t say no. I hope by now you knew they were working a team scam on you even if you didn’t have the kind of proof that you could take to court and get a little justice on.

Hell, on this car thing they were just doing a little strutting of their stuff in showcase, show-off, “see what I got and you don’t” time. Come on now, don’t pretend that you don’t know what I am talking about, at least if you too grew up in the 1950s, or heard about it, or even think you heard about it. Hey, it was about dreams of car ownership for the Great Depression-ed , World War II-ed survivors looking to finally cash in, as a symbol that one, and one’s family, has arrived in the great American dream, and all on easy monthly payments, no money down, and the bigger, the sleeker the better and I’ll take the heavy- chromed, aerodynamically-designed, two-toned one, thank you. That was how you knew who counted, and who didn’t. You know what I mean?

Heck, that 50s big old fluffy pure white cloud of a dream even seeped all the way down into “the projects” in Germantown, and I bet over at the Columbia Point “projects” too, although I don’t know for sure, and in the thousand and one other displaced person hole-in-the-walls “projects” they built as an afterthought back then for those families like mine caught on the slow track in “go-go” America. Except down there, down there on the edge of respectability, and maybe even mixed in with a little disrespectability, you didn’t want to have too good of a car, even if you could get that easy credit, because what we you doing with that nice sleek, fin-tailed thing with four doors and plenty of room for the kids in the back in a place like “the projects” and maybe there was something the “authorities” should know about, yes. Better to move on with that old cranky 1940s-style unhip, unmourned, uncool jalopy than face the wrath and clucking of that crowd, the venom-filled, green-eyed neighbors.

Yes, that little intro is all well and good and a truth you can take my word for but this tale is about, if I ever get around to it, those who had the car madness deep in their psyche, but not the wherewithal- this is a cry, if you can believe it today, from the no car families. Jesus, how could you not get the car madness then though, facing it every night stark-naked in front of you on the television set, small as the black and white picture was, of Buicks, and Chevys and Pontiacs and whatever other kind of car they had to sell to you. But what about us Eastern Mass bus dependents? The ones who rode the bus, back or front it didn’t matter, at least here it didn’t matter. Down South they got kind of funny about it.

As you might have figured out by now, and if you didn’t I will tell you, that was our family’s fate, more often than not. It was not that we never had a car back then, but there were plenty of times when we didn’t and I have the crooked heels, peek-a-boo-soles and worn out shoe leather from walking rather than waiting on that never-coming bus to prove it. And not only that but I got so had no fear of walking, and walking great distances if I had to, all the way to Grandma’s Young Street, North Quincy if I had to. That was easy stuff thinking back on it. I‘ll tell you about walking those later long, lonesome roads out West in places like just before the mountains in Winnemucca, Nevada and 129 degree desert- hot Needles, California switching into 130 degree desert-hot Blythe, Arizona some other time, because it just doesn’t seem right to talk about mere walking, long or short, when the great American automobile is present and rolling by.

It’s kind of funny now but the thing was, when there was enough money to get one, that the cars my poor old, kind of city ways naïve, but fighting Marine-proud father would get, from wherever in this god forsaken earth he got them from would be, to be polite, clunkers and nothing but old time jalopies that even those “hot rod” James Dean guys mentioned above would sneer, and sneer big time at. It would always be a 1947 something, like a Hudson or Nash Rambler, or who knows the misty, musty names of these long forgotten brands. The long and short it is, and this is what’s really important when you think about it, that they would inevitably break down, and breakdown in just the wrong place, at least the wrong place if you had a wife who couldn’t drive or help in that department and three screaming, bawling tow-headed boys who wanted to get wherever it was we were going, and get there-now.

I swear on those old battered crooked-heeled, peek-a-boo soled shoes that I told you about that this must have happened just about every time we were going on a trip, or getting ready to go on a trip, or thinking about going on a trip. So now you know what I was up against when I say that when I was a kid. Like I already told you before, in some other dream fragment, I was an easy target to be “pieced off” with a couple of spoonfuls of Kennedy's potato salad when things like that happened. Or some other easy “bought off” when the “car” joke of the month died again and there wasn’t any money to get it fixed right away and we couldn’t go more than a few miles. I blew my stack plenty and righteously so, don't you think.

So let me tell you about this one time , this one summer time, August I think , maybe in 1956, when we did have a car, some kind of grey Plymouth sedan from about 1947, that year seems to always come up when car year numbers come to mind, like I said before. Or maybe it was a converted tank from the war for all I know, it kind of felt like that sitting in the back seat because as the middle boy I never got to ride “shot gun” up front with Dad so I bore the brunt of the bumps, shakes, blimps, and slips in the back. I do know I never felt anything better than being nothing but always queasy back there.

This one, this beauty of a grey Plymouth sedan, I can remember very well, always had some major internal engine-type problem , or telltale oil- spilling on the ground in the morning, or a clutch-not-working right, when real cars had clutches not this automatic stuff, making a grinding sound that you could hear about half way around the world, but you will have to ask some who knows a lot more about cars about than I do for the real mechanical problems. Anyway this is the chariot that is going to get us out of “the projects” and away from that fiery, no breathe “projects” sun for a few hours as we started off on one of our family-famous outings to old Treasure Island down at the Merymount end of Wollaston Beach, about four or five miles from “the projects”, no more. It was hot as blazes that day that’s for sure, with no wind, no air, and it was one of those days, always one of those days, you could smell the sickly sweet fragrant coming from over the Proctor and Gamble soap factory across the channel on the Fore River side.

We got the old heap loaded with all the known supplies necessary for a “poor man’s” barbecue in those days. You know those cheap plastic lawn chairs from Grossman’s or Raymond’s or one of those discount stores before they had real discount stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart, a few old worn-out blankets fresh from night duty on our beds, some resurrected threadbare towels that were already faded in about 1837 from the six thousand washings that kids put even the most resilient towel through in a short time, the obligatory King’s charcoal briquettes, including that fear-provoking, smelly lighter fluid you needed to light them with in those barbaric days before gas-saturated instant-lite charcoal. For food: hot dogs, blanched white-dough rolls, assorted condiments, a cooler with various kinds of tonic (aka soda, for the younger reader) and ice cream. Ya, and some beach toys, including a pail and shovel because today, of all days, I am bound and determined to harvest some clams across the way from the park on Wollaston beach at low tide just like I’d seen all kinds of guys doing every time we went there so that we can have a real outing. I can see and hear them boiling in that percolating, turbulent, swirling grey-white water in the steaming kettle already.

All of this stuff, of course, is packed helter-skelter in our “designer” Elm Farms grocery store paper shopping bags that we made due with to carry stuff around in, near or far. Hey, don’t laugh you did too, didn’t you? And what about hamburgers you say, right? No, no way, that cut of meat was too pricey. It wasn’t until much later when I was a teenage and invited to someone else’s family-famous barbecue that I knew that those too were a staple, I swear. I already told you I was the “official” procurer of the Kennedy’s potato salad in another dream fragment so I don’t need to tell you about that delicacy again, okay?

And we are off, amazingly, this time for one of the few time in family-recorded history without the inevitable- “who knows where it started or who started it” -incident, one of a whole universe of possible incidents that almost always delayed our start every time our little clan moved from point A to point B. Even a small point A to point B like this venture. So everything was okay, just fine all the way up that single way out of “the projects”, Palmer Street, until we got going on Sea Street, a couple of miles out, then the heap started choking, crackling, burping, sneezing, hiccuping, smoking and croaking and I don’t know what else. We tumbled out of the car, with me already getting ready to do my, by now, finely tuned “fume act” that like I told you got a work-out ever time one of these misadventures rolled around, and pulled out every thing we could with us.

Ma , then knowingly, said we would have to go back home because even she knew the car was finished. I, revolutionary that I was back then, put my foot down and said no we could walk to Treasure Island, it wasn’t far. I don’t know if I can convey, or if I should convey to you, the holy hell that I raised to get my way that day. And I did a united front with my two brothers, who, usually, ignored me and I ignored them at this point in our family careers. Democracy, of a sort , ruled. Or maybe poor Ma just got worn out from our caterwauling. In any case, we abandoned a few things with my father, including that pail and shovel that was going to provide us with a gourmet’s delight of boiled clams fresh from the now mythical sea, and started our trek with the well-known basics-food and utensils and toys and chairs and, and…

Let me cut to the chase here a little. Of course I have to tell you about our route and about how your humble tour director got the bright idea that we could take a short cut down Chickatawbut Street. (This is a real street, look it up. I used to use it every time I wanted to ride my bike over to Grandma’s on Young Street in North Quincy.) The idea of said "smart guy" tour director was to get a breeze, a little breeze while we are walking with our now heavy loads by cutting onto Shore Avenue near the Merrymount Yacht Club. The problem is that, in search of breeze or of no breeze, this way is longer, much longer for three young boys and a dragged out mama. Well,the long and short of it is have you ever heard of the “Bataan Death March” during World War II. If you haven’t, look it up on “Wikipedia.” Those poor, bedeviled guys had nothing on us by the time, late afternoon we got to our destination. We were beat, beat up, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday, beat every way a human being can be beat. Did I say beat? Oh ya, I did. But Ma, sensing our three murderous hearts by then, got the charcoals burning in one of the fireplaces they provided back then, and maybe they still do. And we were off to the races.

Hey, do you really need to know about mustard and relish crammed char-broiled hot dogs or my brother’s strange ketchup-filled one on white-breaded, nasty-tasting hot dog rolls that we got cheap from Elm Farms or maybe it was First National, or my beloved Kennedy’s potato salad that kind of got mashed up in the mess up or "Hires" root beer, or "Nehi" grape, or "Nehi" orange or store–bought boxed ice cream, maybe, "Sealtest" harlequin (chocolate, strawberry and vanilla all together, see), except melted. Or those ever- present roasted marshmallow that stuck to the roof of my mouth. You’ve been down that road yourselves so you don’t need me for a guide. And besides I’m starting to get sleepy after a long day. But as tired, dusty, and dirty as I am just telling this story… Ah, Treasure Island.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- The Baby-Boomer Birth Of The Search For The Blue-Pink American Western Night- “American Graffiti”-Film Review

Out In The Be-Bop Night- The Baby-Boomer Birth Of The Search For The Blue-Pink American Western Night- “American Graffiti”-Film Review

DVD Review

American Graffiti, starring Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Harrison Ford, Paul LeMat, directed by George Lucas, 1973



Recently in this space I have been deep in remembrances of the influences, great and small, of the 1950s “beats” on my own sorry teen-aged alienation and teen-aged angst (sometimes they were separate anguishes, sometimes tied together like inseparable twins, mostly the later) and the struggle to find my place in the sun, to write in bright lights my own beat plainsong. Of course, that influence was blown over me second-hand as I was just a little too young, or too wide-world unconscious, to be there at the creation, on those first roads west, those first fitfully car-driven, gas-fuelled, thumb hanging-out, sore-footed, free exploration west, in body and mind. That first great rush of the adrenal in trying to discover, eternally discover as it has turned out, the search for the meaning of the great blue-pink American West night. Ah, pioneer-boys, thanks.

I just got a whiff, a passing whiff of that electric-charged air, the sweet “be-bop”, bop-bop, real gone daddy, cooled-out, pipe-filled with whatever, jazz-sexed, high white note blown, howling in the wind plainsong afterglow. Moreover, somewhat tarnished, a little sullen and withdrawn, and media-used up by my time. More than one faux black chino-wearing, black beret’d, stringy-bearded, nightshade sun-glassed, pseudo-poetic-pounding, television-derived fakir crossed my path in Harvard Square in those high stakes early 1960s high school days. And a few real ones, as well. (A couple, whom I still pass occasionally, giving a quick nod to, have never given up the ghost and still haunt the old square looking for the long-gone, storied Hayes-Bickford, a place where the serious and the fakirs gathered in the late night before dawn hour to pour out their souls, via mouth or on paper). More to the point, I came to late to be able to settle comfortably into that anti-political world that the “beats” thrived in. Great political and social events were unfolding and I wanted in, feverishly wanted in, with both hands.

You know some of the beat leaders, the real ones, don’t you? Remembered, seemingly profusely remembered now, by every passing acquaintance with some specimen to present. Now merely photo-plastered, book wrote, college english department deconstruction’d , academic journal-debated, but then in full glory plaid shirt, white shirt, tee shirt, dungarees, chinos, sturdy foot-sore cosmic traveler shoes, visuals of heaven’s own angel bums, if there was a heaven and there were angels and if that locale needed bums.

Jack, million hungry word man-child sanctified, Lowell mills-etched and trapped and mother-fed, Jack Kerouac. Allen, om-om-om, bop, bop, mantra-man, mad Paterson-trapped, modern plainsong-poet-in-chief, Allen Ginsberg. William, sweet opium dream (or, maybe, not so sweet when the supply ran out), needle-driven, sardonic, ironic, chronic, Tangiers-trapped, Harvard man (finally, a useful one, oops, sorry), Williams S. Burroughs. Neal, wild word, wild gesture, out of ashcan all-America dream man, tire-kicking, oil-checking, gas-filling, zen master wheelman gluing the enterprise together, Neal Cassady. And a whirling crowd of others, including mad, street-wise, saint-gunsel, Gregory Corso. I am a little fuzzy these days on the genesis of my relationship to this crowd (although a reading of Ginsberg’s Howl was probably first in those frantic, high school, Harvard Square, poetry-pounding, guitar-strummed, existential word space, coffee, no sugar, I’ll have a refill, please, fugitive dream’d, coffeehouse-anchored days). This I know. I qualified, in triplicate, teen angst, teen alienation, teen luddite as a card-carrying member in those days.

That brings us to the film under review, American Graffiti, and its relationship to the birth of the search for the blue-pink great American West night promised to be discussed in the headline. Well, let me run through the plot line for those who are not familiar with idea behind the film, or are too young to have a clue as to such goings-on but might want to know what the old fogies, their parents or (ouch) grandparents were up to (or thought they were up to) back in the days, or are the peers of those 1960s baby-boomers enshrined in the film, but have forgotten a thing or two since they watched the thing in 1973 (another ouch).

The opening scene sets the whole film up. A very spiffy, well-dressed, well-scrubbed, well-mannered (mostly), middle class crew of 1962-era Southern California suburban valley kids with plenty of disposable income at hands, are gathering for one last tribal meeting before they go their separate ways in the great adult grind-it-out, eyes-straight-forward, shoulder-to-the-wheel, little boxes world at their main club house, Mel’s fast food drive-in (already I have lost the younger set on that last point, on the non-mall food court, drive-in thing, right?). How did they get to said gathering spot, you might ask? Come on now, this is wide open-spaced California suburban valley how else would they get there other that in their own personal “teen mobiles.” Jesus, do I have to tell you everything.

They come in one and twos, mainly, in some of the best-looking “boss” car (excuse my reversion to an old-time term for excellence, automobile division) that you will see these days outside of an automobile museum. And besides that, many of them, the cars that is, are “souped-up” (look that one up yourself), especially valley hot-rod-king of the hill, John (played by Paul LeMat), and his yellow (mustard yellow, wow, can you believe that?) little deuce coup (ditto on the look up). Here is the point though, the main point even in this pre-1960s rebellion period, none of the cars look anything like any parent would drive, or could drive (except the few dweeby cars borrowed for the evening from some plaint, or beaten-down, beaten down by teen argument parent). Yes indeed, this is a gathering of the California branch of “youth nation” in all their tribal finery.

As is to be expected of a teen-centered (amazingly teen-centered, adults get merely cameo appearances in this one, and that seems about right) drama the plot line thins out considerably after the flash at Mel’s. Mainly, it is about a single night’s search for the 1962 version of the California blue-pink night (more on this below). And what drives that search? Cruising, natch. Why spend the time and expense involved in a “boss” car (you know that word now, right?) if you don’t create a stir up and down the main drag boulevard looking for…. , you can easily fill in that blank yourself. The rest of the plot centers on such eternal questions as the young leaving home and hearth to face the great wide world (here to be or not to be a college freshman by stars Ron Howard, as Steve, and Richard Dreyfus, as Curt), the usual boy looking for girl thing (including by oldster hot-rod king, Johnny) that I have endlessly reported on elsewhere in this space and that is not worthy of comment in a teen film. What else could such a film be about? Teen break-ups (Howard and Cindy Williams, as Laurie), cruising, stopping at Mel’s for some car-hopped fast food, cruising, a little hot- rod duel ( between Johnny and, ah, one Harrison Ford) on those open California highways (what else are they for?), and then daylight and the rude old work-a-day world intrudes, even on sanctified teen life.

This is one time though that I do not do justice to a film with a summary because this thing is well-directed, well-produced, and well-acted by a crew of then very young unknowns (mostly) that would go on to all kinds of other cinematic successes (including hot-rod runner-up, ah, Ford). The sense of déjà vu for this Eastern U.S.-born baby-boomer, including a great high school dance segment and a soundtrack that reads out of every classic Oldies But Goodies compilation that I have ever reviewed, was palpable, without being maudlin. Kudos

So what connection can be drawn, one might rightly ask in a review of American Graffiti, a film that depicts a snapshot of a then respectable early 1960s coming-of-age teen-driven culture. With, by then, a respectable post-birth of rock and roll (cleaned up of the “bad boys” like Jerry Lee Lewis) soundtrack. That also pays homage to a then very respectable post-Great Depression Okie-Akie invasion middle class-driven suburban valley life-style, and its respectable (mostly) California teen “boss” car culture. And highlights a then respectable superficial teen angst (“do you like my finger nails painted in crimson red or rose red?”, “do you want Pepsi or Coke with your hamburger, hold the onions?”, or something along those lines) and the search for now respectably beatified “beat” culture great blue-pink American West night? A film which, moreover, has not the slightest reference to, nor can in any way be taken to have been produced under the under the sign of, the “beats.” Hell, not even a Maynard G. Krebs (from the old time media image of beatniks television show, Dobey Gillis) beatnik caricature in the lot. Nada.

The closest that any character comes is my boy John, “greaser”, deuce coup, hot rod-king-of- the-hill, and working class poet (limited lyric car poet, okay)/ existential philosopher. And he doesn’t count because he has been around since Hector was a pup, is seen as an eternal “townie” by his middle class brethren, and is a throwback to James Dean and Marlon Brando 1950s California cool. And those guys (I mean the characters they played in Rebel Without A Cause and The Wild One not them as personalities, they were cool, no question) weren’t beat, no way. Beside John’s angst, important but kind of universal as it is, for some dewy-eyed female teeny-bopper to sit next to him in that old jalopy as he cruises those great California valley night highways is not the stuff of tragedy. Not in my book anyway, and I also had more than my share of that kind of teen angst.

No, what this film connects to, and connects to visually in the first instance, is that great big old search for that pink-blue American Western night that the “beats”, at least what I think the beats were searching for when they were doing their breakout from the post- World War II American crank-out death machine night. The shift from the Eastern American dark night westward (mainly, although some of beats were already vanguard- hovering around San Francisco waiting for the boys to come off the roads from the east and establish what was what) serves as a metaphor for much of what they were up to, if only to breakout, a little, from the nine-to-five, waiting for the bomb (atomic bomb) to drop world. That visual sense is most dramatically highlighted in the very first opening shots of this film where the pink-blue sky forms the backdrop to the activity starting up at California teen-hang-out (and elsewhere as well, even stuffy old Boston), fast food drive-in, Mel’s drive-in (A&W, Adventure Car-Hop, Diary Queen, fill in your own named spot), central committee headquarters for valley California teen night. .

Wait, let me detail this a little more so there is no mistake. The film opens with the first few anxious California “boss” cars (you remember what that word means, right?), almost tear-provoking in this reviewer, because I rode in teen cars just like those, rolling into neon-sign lighted Mel’s(lights just turned on against the kitchen-backdrop dark night) just as the sun is going down. There is a big old sun-devouring red devil of a cloud flaming up in the background. That is NOT the part of the pink-blue night I am talking about. Below, just below, nearer the horizon is the one I am talking about, the symbol of the search, and the stuff of dreams, the great American blue-pink dream escape.

I can hear great yawns and see rolled eyes piercing through cyberspace as you say so what is the big deal about some foolish ephemeral passing cloud, blue-pink, pink-blue, or hell, blue-blue. Philistines! Go back now to Mel’s, or wherever the blue-pink sky announces the nights doings, the night’s promises or disappointments. Those promises or those disappointments, great or small, went to make up the birth of the search for the great American Western night, the night of our own circumscribed teen, kiddish break-outs, great or small.

Make no mistake it was not the morning, the morning of school or toil, paid or unpaid. It was not the lazy afternoon, the time of study or of the self-same toil, paid or unpaid (the unpaid kind thanked for or not, or to quote the universal parent god of the time done because we keep a roof over your head). It was the night, no the approach, the blue-pink approach of night that drove our maddened dreams, hopefully signaling good omen for the night’s work. The day was mere preclude to that tiny feverishly sought breakout (now a small thing seen, but not then). The telephoned arrangements, the groomed preparations, the gathering of the odd dollar here or there, in order to first cruise that teen empty highway and then on second pass the filling teen night.

Now do you see how the “beats”, those unnamed, unnamable, sub-consciously-embedded beats drove our bust-out dreams for travel, for adventure, for wine (later, dope),for women (or men) and for song, for shaking off the dust of the old town, great or small, as long as it moving elsewhere, and on a thumb pulled-out, hard-driven, shoe leather-beaten shod foot if need be.

American Graffiti is a snapshot of just exactly that minute, just that historic minute before the great shake-out of the 1960s for the baby-boomer generation, after that minute some of us went left politically and became social activists. We made just about every political, social, and cultural mistake along the way and lost, no, were defeated, no again, were mauled, in the end in our dreams of “seeking that newer world.” (And have spent the past forty or so years having to fight a rear-guard against the straightjacket, death machine-loving yahoos and their consorts). Ya, but hear me out. The search for the blue-pink Great American Western night was not one of those mistakes.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- In The Time Of The High School Hop, Circa 1960-With Jerry Lee Lewis In Mind

Out In The Be-Bop Night- In The Time Of The High School Hop, Circa 1960-With Jerry Lee Lewis In Mind

By Josh Breslin 


Recently I have been in something of 1960s high school remembrance mode, mainly as a result of evaluating the influence of the “beats” (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady and the usual suspects), on my youthful political (not much), social (a fair amount), and cultural (lots) development, but also as a result of re-watching George Lucas’ American Graffiti, a 1960s coming-of-age film that fits comfortably in my own high school mode. I have reviewed the film as a whole elsewhere in this space but I wish to make a special point about the high school dance segment of the film (The Baby-Boomer Birth Of The Search For The Blue-Pink American Western Night- “American Graffiti”-A Film Review, dated September, 8, 2010).

George Lucas’s inclusion of a local high school dance segment in this film was inspired. The segment is not central to the action, such as it is, of the film, but it certainly is calculated to evoke almost universal nostalgia for anyone (meaning almost everyone these days) who has ever had to deal, in one way or another, with the question of this time-honored (if hoary) high school tradition. Each generation probably has its own take on what this experience was like, but most of the real action was behind the scenes. And in that sense the film caught the three high points. Women can fill in own blanks in reverse, but here are some of them from a man’s perspective.

First of all stag (single no way, with the guys, or not at all, although how many and who was always up for grabs, especially on the important “shotgun” question) or on a date (double-date, somebody’s left out sister, your sister, anything to not be a wallflower, a sickly wallflower among the ‘losers’ to boot, as those dance moments ticked slowly, so slowly by). Many an ungodly hour was spent on that date question mulling over, no, not what you think, who to invite, no that was usually the easy part, but rather getting up enough nerve to make the call to make the invitation. And check this out, on more than one occasion, and I am sure the same was true for you, somehow your intelligence network had failed and it turns out that the certain she, your dreamy certain she, damn, her, had a “steady.” Christ, what a waste of time.

Secondly, grooming preparations- I will propose here, in best scientific method form (or at least quasi-scientific form for that is all this thing will hold) that there was an inverse relationship to the amount of time that one spent on this work, you know, shower, shave (in those days you had to, if you could), comb always at the ready, a little something for the underarms and some men’s fragrance to give the smell of being the least bit civilized, and the answer to the stag/date question. In this sense the inverse is the extra time spent in order to attract that certain she (remember women just reverse the gender, or today everyone fill in your own preference experience) so when the next goddam dance or mixed social event came up you were dated up with that certain she and you could just throw a little fatal after-shave on and fly out the door. Oh, by the way, I refuse, I totally refuse to go over the number of time that I cooled my heels while that occasional captured “she” made her grooming preparations, first date or any date, even if it was just to make preparations to go to the drugstore soda fountain. Mercifully, on that score I did not have a sister to scream at or else I might not be writing this screed today, at least this side of a cell block.

Thirdly, the gathering of the dough, the always short of dough problem that plagued our poor working class household and that I noticed did not seem to be any kind of problem in that California suburban valley locale of American Graffiti. Money for exotic appearing (hey, it was California, remember, even the fast food drive-ins had to be retro-fine) double-dip hamburgers (with fries), cherry cokes, for two, for two, my god, plus some gas money, plus, plus, plus, you know a guy has got expenses in this world. The real problem was whether to borrow from parents, or pick up some chattel slave job. Getting it from the parents always came with some awful terms, usually worthy of some international diplomatic accord, and more grief than it was worth, unless I was desperate, or girl-hungry. Oh ya, and you had to hear the obligatory we do this and that to keep a roof over your head along with the bucks. You know the drill, probably.

And while we are on the subject of parents the inevitable question comes up about what time one should be home by. They say X, and make that loan, that hard-scrabble hideous loan that has more conditions and enforcements than a loan shark, contingent on the observance of a “reasonable” (parent reasonable) hour. I say Y, because in the back of my mind I, if I get lucky (no further discussion necessary, right?) then I need plenty of time and can’t be worried about curfews, or reasonable times. Come to think of it, even fifty years later, come on Ma you be reasonable (and it was always Ma on this one in our old working class neighborhoods, and maybe yours too. Dad was brought in, if he was brought in at all, at this point in our lives only for the heavy artillery stuff).

Once these preparations and battles have been settled then, and here is where American Graffiti is like from a dream, the question of transportation to the dance comes into play. Here I mean a car, and if you’ve read my review of American Graffiti you know I mean a “boss” car. You would have to go to an automobile museum to see such treasures these days. By the way don’t even utter the words public transportation for this occasion or I will think that you grew up in New York City or some place like that and that you have not really been paying attention after all my paeans to the California endless highways and the search of the elusive blue-pink great American Western night.

In any case, this car-less writer, this foot-sore, shoe leather-beaten, car-less writer, depended, sometimes cynically so, on cultivating friendships with guys who had such “boss” cars, particularly the renowned ’57 Chevy that still makes me quiver at the thought of. Needless to say, in expectation at least, of the night’s successes a stop at the local gas station for a fill-up (a couple of bucks then) check the oil and water, kick the tires and so on preceded our big entrance at the dance.

Part of the charm of the American Graffiti segment on the local high school dance is, as I have noted previously, once you get indoors it could have been any place U.S.A. (and I am willing to bet any time U.S.A., as well. For this baby-boomer, that particular high school dance, could have taken place at my high school when I was a student in the early 1960s). From the throwaway crepe paper decorations that festooned the place to the ever-present gym bleachers to the chaperones to the platform the local band (a band that if it did not hit it big would go on to greater glory at our future weddings, birthday parties, and other important occasion) covering the top hits of the day performed on it was a perfect replica.

Also perfect replica were the classic boys’ attire for a casual dance, plaid or white sports shirt, chinos, stolid shoes, and short-trimmed hair (no beards, beads, bell-bottoms, its much to early in the decade for that) and for the girls blouses (or maybe sweaters, cashmere, if I recall being in fashion at the time, at least in the colder East), full swirling dresses, and, I think beehive hair-dos. Wow! Of course, perfect replica were the infinite variety of dances (frug, watusi, twist, stroll, etc) that blessed, no, twice blessed, rock and roll let us do in order to not to have to dance too waltz close. Mercy. And I cannot finish up this part without saying perfect replica hes looking at certain shes (if stag, of course, eyes straight forward if dated up, or else bloody hell) and also perfect replica wallflowers, as well.

Not filmed in American Graffiti, although a solo slow one highlighted the tensions between Steve and Laurie (Ron Howard and Cindy Williams) but ever present and certainly the subject of some comment in this space was that end of the night dance. I’ll just repeat what I have repeated elsewhere. This last dance was always one of those slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, as I have noted before, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your sexual preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?

And after the dance? Well, I am the soul of discretion, and you should be too. Let’s put it this way. Sometimes I got home earlier than the Ma agreed time, but sometimes, not enough now that I think about it, I saw huge red suns rising up over the blue waters. Either way, my friends, worth every blessed minute of anguish, right?

**Just When You Thought It Was Safe To…, Not Bop-Doo-Wop

**Just When You Thought It Was Safe To…, Not Bop-Doo-Wop


A YouTube film clip of the Capris performing There's A Moon Out Tonight.





CD Review

Best Of Old Town Doo Wop, Various artists, 2-CD set, Ace Records



Confused by the headline? Don’t be, all it does is refer to a previous series of Oldies But Goodies (1950s-1960s oldies but goodies, just so you know) CD reviews in this space. That gargantuan task required shifting through ten, no, fifteen volumes of material that by the end left me limping, and crying uncle. See, as I explained in the last few reviews of the series, just when I thought I was done at Volume Ten I found that it was a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. In any case I whipped off those last five reviews in one shot to be done with it.



The reason for such haste at that point seemed self-explanatory. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories, teen memories, teen high school memories mainly, from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in the reviewed compilations. How many times can one read about guys with two left feet, the social conventions of dancing close, wallflowers, the avoidance of wallflower-dom, meaningful sighs, meaningless sighs, the longings for certain obviously unattainable shes (or hes if you want to switch genders), the trials and tribulations associated with high school gymnasium crepe paper-adorned dances, moonlight-driven dream thoughts of after dance doings, and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. And there and then I threw in the towel, I thought.



Well now I have recovered enough to take a little different look at the music of this period-the doo wop sound that hovered in the background radio of every kid, every kid who had a radio, a transistor radio, to keep parental prying ears at arms length, and who was moonstruck enough to have been searching, high and low, for a sound that was not just the same old, same old that his or her parents listened to. Early rock and rock, especially that early Sun Record stuff, and plenty of rhythm and blues met that need but so did, for a time, old doo wop-the silky sounds of lead singer-driven, lyrics-driven, vocal-meshing harmony that was the stuff of teenage “petting” parties and staid old hokey school dances, mainly, in my case, elementary school dances.



As I mentioned in the oldies but goodies reviews not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to, or meant to be, playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability, slow danceabilty, to make any Jack or Jill start snapping fingers then, or now. As I asked in that previous series and is appropriate to ask here as well what about the now seeming mandatory question of the best song in the compilation? The one that stands out as the inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar).

Here The Capris’ There’s A Moon Out Tonight fills the bill. And, yes, I know, this is one of those slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, as I have noted before, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your sexual preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?

**Out In The Be-Bop Night-The Old "Beat" Town-2010-With Jack Kerouac In Mind

**Out In The Be-Bop Night-The Old "Beat" Town-2010-With Jack Kerouac In Mind

By Josh Breslin -for old town corner boy Peter Paul Markin




Crossing the Neponset River Bridge from the Boston side these days, walking-sore-footed, ankle-ached, worn-out, scuffed leather shoes, rounded-heel shoes, soles thinned-out shoes walking-just as was almost always my mode of transportation, and maybe yours, in the old days, and sometimes for me in the not so old days-ain’t like it used to be. That new (1970s new, anyway), higher-standing , pot-holed patched, unevenly asphalt-paved even on good days, uninviting, if not just plain dangerous, walk-way, ugly slab-concreted, built by the lowest bidder, bridge that routes traffic, hither and yon, is not like the old one, “ walking to think things over friendly."



Not today, anyway, as I brace myself for a serious look see at our beat-up, beat-down, beaten-back, back-seat-taking, smudged-up, blood and sweat-stained, bitter-teared (very bitter-teared), life-drained, seen better days (although I do not, personally, remember having seen those better days, but people keep saying, even now, there was a such a time so let’s leave it at that), almost genetically memory embedded , character-building (yes, that old chestnut, as well), beautiful (yes, beautiful too, oddly, eerily beautiful, or as mad, shamanic poet Yeats, he of that that fine Anglo-Irish word edge, would put it, "terrible beauty a-borning" beautiful ), old working class home town.



It’s silly, I know, to get misty-eyed over it but I miss the old archaic pre-1970s drawbridge bridge with its ghastly-green gates to stop car traffic (how else could you describe that institutional color that no artist would have on his or her palette, and no serious professional business painter would stoop to brush on anything much less a gate) and the lonely stony-eyed concrete medieval fortress of a tower (and its poor, bored, had to be bored, keeper, or tender or whatever you call that “look out for the big boats coming and going” guy, and it was always some old guy who looked like he could swap stories, buddy to buddy, with King Neptune, and probably did) to let the bigger boats, courtesy of the law of the seas, make their way to dock.



Or, better, I hope, I fervently hope, for the boats to get clearance from that old codger, old Neptune’s brother, to race, to crawl, to put-put, to hoist sail or whatever such boats do to get to the open sea, the wide open blue-grey, swirling, mad, rushing, whirling dervish of a sea, out to beyond the breakwaters, out to beyond the harbor islands, to the land becoming mere speck, and then mere vanish, and more adventure than I could even dream of, or think of dreaming of. At least I hope those oil-stained, diesel-fuelled (including those awful faint-producing fumes), powerfully-engined, deep-drafted, fully–stocked boats that drove river traffic and stopped car traffic came back or went out in search of those adventures away from the placid wooden-lumbered doldrums docks up along the Quincy side of the river.



But, one thing is for sure, whatever happened to the boats, or on them, that old bridge, that old green-gate painted monster of a drawbridge, gave you a chance to pause mid-bridge, fright-free, not-having-to-watch-your-back-for-fast-cars-caroming-by free even, to look up and down midstream; to dream, perhaps, of tidal drifts and fair winds to the far reaches of this good, green planet, as far as you could carry yourself and your backpacked, bed-rolled belongings, or as long as the money held out; to bestir yourself afresh to think of oneness with the seventy-eight trillion life forms (hey, I didn’t count them, alright, this is just an estimate, a very rough estimate) that flow in the murky, and on some days very murky, depths right before your eyes down to our homeland, the sea; to dream vista dreams of far away picture postcard cooling ports-of-call in the sweaty, sultry summer day airs or churn madly with the flow of wild summer night airs that led from the old home town west, north, south, somewhere, anywhere; to dream the dream of dreams of misspent (no way, no way misspent), suggestive, very suggestive, radio-blared Lets Spend The Night Together or The Night Time Is The Right Time, whiskey-bottle in hand (or, maybe, beer-canned if dough was tight, or way back when and you were underage if your wino buyer didn't show that night), best-gal swinging (quaint, okay, but we are all adults and you know what I mean) Saturday nights; and, to think that one thought, that one midstream on the bridge-driven thought that would spring you from the woes of woe begotten, troubled-filled (for me, and, maybe, you) dear, (now dear, anyway) beat, ancient-ached, old timey, presidential graveyard of a growing-up home town.



This new one, this new bridge, as I stand mid-bridge and peek back to my left routes, if you can even call it that, traffic via a Daytona race track-worthy, curvy-swurvy ramp to the beach, Wollaston Beach, down the now, in places anyway, three lane-wide, freshly-paved and white-lined Quincy Shore Drive. That’s our old Wollaston Boulevard, down by shore everything’s alright, of sacred ashy memory. And as I watch the traffic flow, the car traffic I think not of vanilla, too bright, too light, too slight day time beach, for now, because I am flooded with visions of the “real” beach of my manic dreams- “the night time is the right time" beach. Enough of daytime, kiddish, bucket and shovel whines and childish butterfly daydreams, enough. Alright?



I just now, and you can follow along too, float dream of teenaged Saturday nights, or maybe even Friday nights, or both, cruising, nowhere, somewhere, anywhere, to the pink- blue, cloud-swollen, sun-devouring, Western nightdream skies, always just beyond our reach. Of you riding "shotgun" in your buddy’s car, a be-bop car, or, I hope, at least bop, late 1950s, and pray hard for a ’57 Chevy or something “cool” like that, borrowed from his old man, stopped at close by high school (remember), Merit gas station and filled, two-dollars-worth-of-gas-check the oil-please-filled. Or his own car, your buddy's, the old man's, leavings, given gratis, when that self-same old man stepped up to a new, bigger-finned, power-steered, rumble-engined, airplane of a car, a new sign that he had “made it” in hard dollar America. Of stolen sickly-sweet wines or breathe-soured whiskeys to ward off the night-forebodings, made sweeter or more sour by the stealing from that same old man’s, or maybe your old man's, liquor cabinet, if they had such an upscale thing, or else just from some dusty high cupboard shelf so the kids can’t get at it place. And, and, oh boy, visions of those moon-beamy, dreamy, seamy, steamy Saturday night beach parking, car-fogged, car-wrestled, “submarine races” watchings that were the subject of Monday morning boys’ rest room (okay, “lav”) roll call, recital and retailing (or, hell, probably in the girls’ room too, I bet, but the now women can tell their own tales). Whoa!



Beatified night-dreamed beach Quincy Shore Drive also routes, now that my blood pressure has returned to normal, to daydream summer sunbathing, or maybe even before summer sunbathing for early tans to drive away the fierce, ghost-like New England winter pales, in the real sun daytime down by the weather-beaten yacht clubs (tumbleweedy, seedy, paint-needy Wollaston and Squantum). Away, well a little away, from the early encountered mephitic sea grass marshes near the Causeway (you know where, right?-the old First National supermarket, now CVS drugs-for all occasions-store location), away from the deadened, fetid, scattered sea grasses and the muck, and in plain kid talk, away from the “stinks”, away from the tepid waves apologetically splashing on the ocean smooth-stoned dunes, away too from the jelly-fish (are they poisonous, or not?) spawning and spattered along the edges of the low tide line, and, most fervently, away, away from the oil-slicked mud flats of childish shovel and pail clam-digging adventures, clams squirting and screaming from their sand hovels that need not detain us here, that story has been told elsewhere by me, and often.



Once you have passed the fetid swamps, the mephitic marshes…, but wait a minute, who knows such un-childlike, or un-teenager-like, for that matter, words like fetid and mephitic and where, as a child, even if you knew the words, would you connect those words with pail and shovel digging to China, or some faraway place, beach; with tide-melting, furtive but fevered, sand castle-making, beach; with coolly and focused looking for treasure, somebody’s leavings, some body’s rich leavings so you think, beach; with learning about the fury of Mother Nature and the pull and push of tides first hand when old Mother (like womb mother) turns her fury on, beach; with later finger (or stick) sand-tracing of your name defying the tides to erase your brand as you fight, and fight hard, for your place in the sun (and maybe linking up your sweetie’s name, just for good measure, in that struggle with eternity), beach; with fellaheen digging for clams for fun or profit (or food for table, who knows) down at the Merrymount end, beach; with family barbecue outings, hot dogs and hamburgers, extra ketchup, please, beach. With, well, beach, beach. No, fetid and mephitic will not do, I like my dreams, my child remembrance dreams, cloud puffy and silky.



This bridge, this too far bridge, this man-standing memory bridge, or however you named it, or whatever you thought of it, or wherever you were heading, destiny-heading, heading to your growing-up-like-a-weed town, heading just like a-lemming-to-the-sea town pushes the brain in a couple of directions. Heading south anyway, shore drive south, south to the rivieras, south to the old time kid’s Paragon Park. Rickety, always needed, desperately needed, fresh paint coat, landlocked, off-limits showboat bar-entranced (gay place, before gay word existed as a social category, but what did we know then, or care, just quarters for skeets, please, ah, please), ocean-aired, between-the toes-sanded, sun glass-visioned against the furious midday sun Paragon Park. Roller coaster Paragon Park (hey, maybe sick, before you got the hang of it, right), wild mouse (kid's stuff, ya I know) Paragon Park, cheap, colorful skeet ball points trinket prize, sugar high, lips smacked cotton-candy, stuck to the roof of your mouth, roof of the world, salt water taffy-twisted, hot-dogged (hold the mustard, no onions), pin ball wizard’d, take your baby to the carnival feel the tunnel of love, Paragon Park.(Or later, coming of another age, the Surf, and a whole other memory bridge of dreams, not for now though.) Or south of that south to some old time, unnamed, misty adventure, some ancient Pilgrim-etched mayflower rocky shored adventure, some ancient forebear's praise Jehovah plainsong heard whistling through some weed-filled granite slate graveyards, not mine; mine is of shanty Irish "famine" ships and old kicked out of England convict labor, hell-hole, "hillbilly" Appalachia work the coal mines, boats. Down along that old slow as molasses, take your time, wait at every just barely red stoplight, watch out for side-glanced cop cars, two-laned, white stripped, no passing (hardly), ocean-touched (in places) road. Memory-washed, memory-etched, memory south youth road, ah.



Yes, that cotton-candy dream is enough to stir even a hardened soul, but as I shift, stiffly shift, weight on my tired old high-soled, age-qualified, age-necessary, bop-bop shoes(no more of "young" fashionista statement, skinny-soled, fire engine red Chuck Taylor’s, now of sturdy, new age, aero-flow, aero-glow, aero-know, aero-whatever, for this heavy work, this airy memory work, bop-bop shoes), I stand straight up in mid-bridge balance and veer my head to the right. That move makes me focus my mind’s eye to the heart, the soul, the guts of the old growing-up town via a narrow, straight and narrow, slit in the road, a road constructed in such a way as if to say no cuts-ups, fops (quaint, again), or oddballs wanted here, as it swerves to the edgings, the bare edgings, amidst the gathering flotsam and jetsam as it piles up on riverside old Hancock Street and as it meanders along like some far-removed river of its own, river of its own sorrows, river of its own pent-up angers, toward the Square.



But more than sorrows, ancient sorrows, more than angers, angers of whatever age, I am attacked, and not just in my mind’s eye either, by the myriad mirror-glassed buildings, mostly office buildings, maybe some apartments or condos but I hope not, that reflect off each other in some secret Bauhaus bright light, dead of night pact, post-post-modern architecture I am sure, functional I am sure, although when future, future generations dig up the artifacts I am also sure they will be as puzzled by the idea of such forms of shelter and commerce as I am. And beyond those future subjects of artifact a picture, a picture to feed the hungry buildings, of tactless, thoughtless pizza shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, donut shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, hamburger shop, take-out or eat-in, of whatever name, Applebee’s family-friendly food named, now you-name-it-for-me, please, fast-food shop, mini-mart shop, fill-up gas-station of many names, Hess named, that dot, no, deluge strip mall-heavy Hancock Street up pass our sanctified raider red-bled high school. And beyond to dowdy, drowsy, dusty–windowed (really, I actually touched one once, not a white glove inspection but it, the window that is, didn’t pass muster even by my liberal standards), how do they stay in business against the pull of the major chains (or their chains), small-stored, small-dreamed business ownership, Norfolk Downs.



Norfolk Downs, the good old “Downs” (although we just called it plain, old, ordinary, vanilla-flavored, one-horse Norfolk Downs back in the day) anchored still by named pizza shop, Balducci’s. Balducci’s of after school pizza slices or after nightime across the street hang-around underground bowling alley hungers. Plain, please, no one hundred and one choice toppings, thank you, and coke (bluish-green bottled Coca-Cola, okay, for the evil-minded): of nickels and dimes dropped in one-armed-bandit jukebox to hear the latest Stones (or Beatles) tune, or whatever struck a chord in those jumping-jack times, maybe some mopey thing if girl desire was high; yes, but also of weary, so weary, lonely, so lonely night time standings up against the front door wall, waiting, waiting for...(and, maybe, someone, some guy, some long side-burned, engineer-booted guy, cigarette pack, unfiltered, rolled in tee-shirt guy, some time machine guy, is still waiting, still holding up that wall today. Nobody told him the world, the world that counts, the teen world, had moved to the malls). And beyond Norfolk Downs, up that asphalt river, on to the fate of a million small city centers, ghost-towned, derelict, seen better days, for sure, no question, no question, Quincy Center.



But I find myself , just now, as a stream of cooling air, finally, finally crosses my bridge-stuck, bridge-dreamed path, not in thoughts of jumbled mist of time high school-hood Saturdays nights (nor Friday nights either) in Norfolk Downs pizza parlors or bowling alleys, but of whirling past anciently walked, shoe leather-beaten (always leather-beaten, crooked-heeled, thinning-soled shoes that could be the subject of their own separate bridge-like dream thoughts), oceaned-breezed (just like the breeze crossing over me now , ‘cause that is where it is coming from, it has to be), sharp-angled memories: some of hurt, some of high-hatted hurt, worse, a few, too few, of funny kiddish, ding-dong dumb done things (ever when too old to hide under that womb-like kiddish umbrella), the memories that is, of Atlantic streets, of breezing Quincy bays, of oceans-abutted streets etched deep, almost DNA deep.



Name names. Okay. Well-trodden Appleton Street sidewalks, drawn like a moth to flame to some now-forgotten she, by flickering, heart-quickening, unrequited, just barely teenage, but self-consciously teenage anyhow, romantic trance longings, doggedly working up non-courage, yes non-courage a very common thing in those days, to speak, or better, to write that one word, that one word still now not easily come by, that would spark interest (her interest), as I turned from boy to the buddings of manhood; of the close-quartered, no space, no space for anything but small pinched, tightly pinched, dreams , no room to breathe, no room to breathe anything but small breathe, hacked up, asphalted-up, lawn-free yards to quench driveway car thirsting, two and three-decked Atlantic Street houses passed on quick high school cross country practice runs; of family relative-burdened, just getting-started in adult life, small, cramped five room and tiny bath apartment dotted Walker and Webster Streets; of the closely-cornered, well-kept small manicured-lawn’d, busily repair-worked, no beach parking on the street in summertime, working class cottage-mansions of Bayfield Road (I always forget which is North and which is South, but no matter the description fits both as they feed to the endless sea stopped by that infernal stop light that keeps you waiting, waiting beyond impatience, to cross to the much repaired and replaced seawall and view of seaward homeland.); of Atlantic Junior High School’d (ya, I know, Middle School) teen angst (under either junior or middle school names), mad, hormonally mad, teen-brokered years, world wised-up with some twists, but also world sorry, straight-up, Hollis Avenue; and on and on, through to the beach-drained, tree-named streets. Sanctified beyond name streets all; beat, beatified streets all; mist-filled dream streets all; memory-soaked streets all; be-bop, then real gone daddy, now hip-hop, big old pie-in-the-sky looking for the universe somewhere, streets all.



But enough of old dog-eared memories let me get moving, after all with this bridge, this “new” bridge, one has to cross with purpose, serious purpose, and maybe a wing and a pray that one can get back to the old home town in one piece or, at least, be able to think that one precious thought that drove me, lemming-like, here in the first place. I walk down the broken hand-railed, dirt-piled , drift winds-sent littered steps to get off the bridge and immediately stretched before me ; one million water-logged, stubbed cigarette-butts; one thousand stray, crushed, empty, cellophaned cigarette-packages blown around seeking their rightful owners; one hundred infinite brand-named (ice cold something pictured Bud Lite seems like the winner), crushed (or at least dented) beer cans; assorted, unnumbered, brown whiskey(or were they gin) bottles, mainly cheap from the look of them, a drunkard’s feast at one time; high gloss advertisement mailings(endless CVS drugs to take your world’s pain away, Shaw’s food to curb that incurable hunger that gnaws away at your stomach, Wal-Mart back-to-school trinkets, gadgets and throw-aways when the kids find out, and find out fast, that this crap is not “cool”, K-Mart holiday bargains, three for a dollar); yellowing, dated, newspapers (local this-and-that news, distant war drum news, more war drum news from some other earth corner, bad news badder, and celebrity relief news, Lady GaGa, or some such doings, that’s the ticket for our times) strewn every which way, discarded fast food packages of all descriptions that I have no time to describe. On to the street I step, the hard-scrabble North Quincy street. Home.

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- A Dream Fragment On Looking For A Few Good…Mystics -In The Matter Of Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”

An Encore-Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- On Looking For A Few Good…Mystics -In The Matter Of Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”


By Josh Breslin




Okay, blame this foam-flecked entry totally on old wanna-be “gonzo” journalist/novelist Tom Wolfe and his infernal 1960s classic countercultural expose The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I’ll explain the ‘wanna-be’ part in some book review, or in some of other place where talking about and discussing the "new journalism (1960s-style, including the likes of Hunter Thompson and Joan Didion) is called for. But, at least for now, I want to explain the why of that ‘where the blame should be placed’.



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 zany 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 devil, or haloed angel wanted to be thought of as unhip.

The others, those who today claim memory loses 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.



Today, however, I am excised on another point. Wolfe mentioned, repeatedly, the quasi-religious, mystical nature of the Kesey-gathered Merry Prankster tribal experience. And central to that, as to all such mystical communal experiences, is the emergence of some kind of “messiah” figure, or at least a chief mystic who guides the group’s actions, including the inevitable breakout into the real wide world when that time comes. Then, the breakout time, is when the power struggle really begins as the increased number of acolytes gather round and begin the long process of the selection of the “ins” and “outs”. To speak nothing of the very serious question of who is to “guard” the wisdom tablet (maybe, literally, a tablet in this case). Or who conducts the ceremonials to adhere the devotees. This is well-trodden ground, in any case.



And what in hell am I mad about that little quirky business for? Kesey was hardly the first guy or gal, and will hardly be the last either, to come down off the mountain to spread the “good news”, if only among the elect-at first. Hear me out though. I am sick and tired, utterly sick and tired, after a life time of listening, or really, half-listening to the latest screeds of the “god-seekers”, secular or religious. And of the side show carnival guys claiming for the umpteenth time they have the “new message” about human redemption. And of the about the 287th, or so, rendition of the story line of those who succumbed to some “conversion” religious experience. Enough, right? Well, perhaps, but what I want to blurt out is that, damn, I think Wolfe, and through him, Kesey were basically right that this was a time, the 1960s that is , when we, and I include myself in this as well, were looking for the “new messiah.”



For starters though, just in case the reader is caught short on the term “new messiah”, forget all the rough and tumble organized traditional religious stuff. That was a non-contender, then anyway. Hell, that was what we were running away from, and running as hard as our wobbly, drug-filled heads would force our legs to take us. (The three of us who have "confessed" to such activity in those days, excuse me. I don’t know in what condition the others were in during their runs.) No, any “church” had to be in some freshly-mown meadow, or among the squirrel-infested pines, or at the edge of the earth on some place where ‘our homeland’ the ocean, the sand and our sense of the vastness of space met. And any “preacher”, of the “good book” or, for that matter, of the virtues of demonology had to wear multi-colored, flowing home-spun robes, or some discarded army& navy store uniform, or some sheepskin vest, or maybe nothing. But, please, no collars around your neck, or ours. There were plenty of candidates looking for the job, looking to be heard, looking to be listened to and looking for those who were looking, for awhile anyway, until they ran out of steam, ran off with their sweeties, or with the cash box.



What we were looking for, at least what I think we were looking for was someone, once the traditional politicians proved to have feet of clay, or were mired in mud and blood up to their necks, or were blown away, to lead us to the “Promised Land.” That’s right the “Promised Land”, not some old quirky, queasy, hard scrabble, no air place that we all knew, or all of us that were “hip” knew, was not where we were at then. You know sometimes it was as simple as finding someone who had an answer or two. If they had a plan, or had the whole thing mapped out, so much the better. Mainly they just didn’t have to shout about it to the whole square world and bring the squares in to corner it, corral it, organize it, and make it a thing that not even your square, square parents could love.

And that, my friends, is where someone like Ken Kesey got some play, got his edge. His simple Western- bred (American Western-bred) ways, his obvious literary talents that acted as a magnet for those who saw no real difference between mad scientist Kesey and ‘mad scientist’ McMurphy (in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest), and his strong branding personality held the Prankster commune together. For a while. Until he too proved to have feet of clay, and fled. But here is the main point in the end it required just too much of a leap of faith to sail into the mystic with the mystics. For those like me, and there were many others like me, we had our mystical moment but when the deal went down we had to look elsewhere to other names to “seek the newer world.” World historic names no one, except, maybe, those now professed non-inhalers and vanguard neo-con cultural dead-enders, would confuse with mysticism.

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- When Beat Was Neat-A Film Clip From The B-Film Classic “High School Confidential”-Phillipa Fallon’s “High School Drag”

High School Drag: Phillipa Fallon [1958]


My old man was a bread stasher all his life.
He never got fat. He wound up with a used car,
a 17 inch screen and arthritis.

Tomorrow is a drag, man.
Tomorrow is a king sized bust.

They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what?
Time, how much? And what to do with it.

Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole
human race giving itself three days to get out.

Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.

I had a canary who couldn’t sing.
I had a cat who let me share my pad with her.
I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary.
What is truth?

I had an uncle with an ivy league card.
He had a life with a belt in the back.
He had a button-down brain.
Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.

We cough blood on this earth.
Now there’s a race for space.
We can cough blood on the moon soon.

Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats.
Tomorrow is a king size drag.

Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick.
Turn on to a thousand joys.
Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen,
You’ll miss what’s happening.
Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.

Tomorrow, DRAG.
Phillipa Fallon [1958]
High School Drag
(Welles / Glasser)
MGM 12661

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- When Beat Was Neat-A Film Clip From The B-Film Classic “High School Confidential”-Phillipa Fallon’s “High School Drag”

From The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night:

“And then... .

the great Western shore, surf’s up, white, white wave-flecked, lapis-lazuli blue-flecked ocean, rust golden-gated, no return, no boat out, land’s end, this is it coast highway, heading down or up now, heading up or down gas stationed, named and unnamed, side road diners, still caboose’d, ravine-edged sleep and beach sleeped, blue-pink American West night.

Yes, but there is more. No child vision but now of full blossom American West night, the San Francisco great American West night, of the be-bop, bop-bop, narrow-stepped, downstairs overflowed music cellar, shared in my time, the time of my time, by “beat” jazz, “hippie’d folk”, and howled poem, but at this minute jazz, high white note-blown, sexed sax-playing godman, unnamed, but like Lester Young’s own child jazz. Smoke-filled, blended meshed smokes of ganja and tobacco (and, maybe, of meshed pipe smokes of hashish and tobacco), ordered whisky-straight up, soon be-sotted, cheap, face-reddened wines, clanking coffee cups that speak of not tonight promise. High sexual intensity under wraps, tightly under wraps, swirls inside its own mad desire, black-dressed she (black dress, black sweater, black stockings, black shoes, black bag, black beret, black sunglasses, ah, sweet color scheme against white Madonna, white, secular Madonna alabaster skin. What do you want to bet black undergarments too, ah, but I am the soul of discretion, your imagination will have to do), promising shades of heat-glanced night. And later, later than night just before the darkest hour dawn, of poems poet’d, of freedom songs free-verse’d, of that sax-charged high white note following out the door, out into the street, out into the eternity lights of the great golden-gated night. I say, can you blame me?”

Leading to this …

High School Drag: Phillipa Fallon [1958]


My old man was a bread stasher all his life.
He never got fat. He wound up with a used car,
a 17 inch screen and arthritis.

Tomorrow is a drag, man.
Tomorrow is a king sized bust.

They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what?
Time, how much? And what to do with it.

Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole
human race giving itself three days to get out.

Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.

I had a canary who couldn’t sing.
I had a cat who let me share my pad with her.
I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary.
What is truth?

I had an uncle with an ivy league card.
He had a life with a belt in the back.
He had a button-down brain.
Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.

We cough blood on this earth.
Now there’s a race for space.
We can cough blood on the moon soon.

Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats.
Tomorrow is a king size drag.

Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick.
Turn on to a thousand joys.
Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen,
You’ll miss what’s happening.
Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.

Tomorrow, DRAG.
Phillipa Fallon [1958]
High School Drag
(Welles / Glasser)
MGM 12661

*******
I ain’t saying that High School Confidential and this low budget be-bop B-film’s (although with a solid A on the rock and roll intro with Jerry Lee Lewis sitting at the piano in back of a flat-bed truck flailing, yes, flailing away on his classic rock and roll song, teen angst-busting , teen alienation-busting song, High School Confidential, heralding the hint, just the hint, of a possibility that we of the generation of ’68 might be getting ready for that big jail break we were sitting under some atomic bomb air raid school desk looking for a sign of) “beat” poetess will make you throw away your personally autographed first edition City Lights copy of mad monk om om man Allen Ginsberg’s Howl or even some torn-up paperback copy of Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues or even some shotgun version of street gunsel mad poet Gregory Corso’s machine gun sonnets but she was a sister, a sister in the struggle to break out of squaresville, to break out of the void, to break from nine to five, to break from soda fountain giggle girl dreams, to break from seventy-six, count ‘em, forms of teen angst and sixty-six, count ‘em again, forms of teen alienation, to break from same old, same old, to, ah hell, just to break as portrayed by know nothing Hollywood with its angst-less dreams and its alienation-less non-sorrows. So be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.

I ain’t, furthermore, saying that everything the sultry sister (1950s sultry don’t touch me just listen tea-head, but what were we to know of that kind of sultry out in Podunk teen land, cashmere sweater, black skirt, maybe devil black stockings not shown, teen boy dreams sultry whatever her message, or even no message but bop) had to say had its head on straight. Or that if we, we meaning those fledgling angst-filled, alienation sorrowed‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teenage night club (no liquor allowed, no petting allowed, no, no allowed enforced by burly guys with direct access to parents/priests/teachers/cops/authorities and hence to some mischievous god),a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, that we would have understood half, hell, a quarter of what she said but like some mad dash shaman, oops, shaman-ess, it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.

And I definitely ain’t saying that even ifall she said did have its head on straight that we, we meaning those fledgling ‘68ers mentioned above, had heard her in some forbidden teenage night club,a club filled with smoke, cigarette smoke and djinn smoke and weed smoke and maybe hash pipe smoke too although that might have been for more private moments, and maybe too train smoke and dreams, road dreams to see mystic vistas,sitting with some cashmere sweater frill, not quite old enough to do the apparel justice, blonde maybe, red-headed for sure, in ancient landlocked celtic strongholds where some fierce blue-eyed boys stood waiting, holding forth against the squares, against the cubes, against the pentagonals,against the angry young men, against the not angry young men, and ditto women, against the death-dealing old men, against the country club uncertain certainties, against that cold war hot war red scare night, against the break-out blockers as fierce as any New York Giants monster linebacker, would have dug, yes, dug, in dig beat language dug, exactly what she had to say any more than when our time did come (when we shed teen know nothing-ness, Hollywood know nothing-ness,parent know nothing-ness, cop know nothing-ness, priest know nothing-ness, authorities know nothing-ness), the time when we got our bloody jail break time signal, that we more than echo-listened to om om-antic New Jersey mad monk Allen Ginsberg (tea head, acid head, Buddha head) howl against that evil night, or to Jeanbon (Jack) Kerouac, sweet Lowell mill boy gone sour, sitting in some hell-hole mere florida trailer park (or bungalow, maybe) sweating whiskey and hubris against his children, or to New Jack City Gregory Corso playing the lone ranger against the death night, but it would have stuck, stuck to be mulled over, stuck for later times and so…be-bop, be-bop sister, be-bop.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Seals Rock Inn Night -Wasn’t That A Mighty Storm

Funny he, Adam Evans, thought,  a little sweaty and overheated from the turned too high thermostat put on earlier to ward off the open- eyed chill of the room, as he laid in his toss and turn early morning Seals Rock Inn, San Francisco bed,  the rain poured down in buckets, literally buckets, at his unprotected door, the winds were howling against that same door, and the nearby sea was lashing up its fury, how many times the sea stormy night, the sea fury tempest day, the, well, the mighty storm anytime, had played a part in his life. He was under no circumstances, as he cleared his mind for a think back, a think back  that was occupying his thoughts more and more of late, trying to work himself into a lather over some metaphorical essence between the storms that life had bestowed on him and the raging night storm within hearing distance. No way, too simple. Rather he was just joy searching for all those sea-driven times, times when a storm, a furious storm like this night or maybe just an average ordinary vanilla storm passing through and complete in an hour made him think of his relationship with his homeland the sea and with its time for reflection. And so on that toss and turn bed he thought.

He thought first and mainly about how early the sea came into his life, almost from birth down at those ragged edge of the sea slopes around Granitetown, the 1950s old time sea air country farm turned modern housing development of single three bedroom homes and duplexes for up and coming World War II veterans like his father with plenty of kids to house and some prospects, where he lived growing up and was tumbled into the sea early. Literally tumbled early to the sea as an errant older brother, aged maybe five, rolled him, maybe aged four, in a barrel, a tinny old trash barrel, down those ragged slopes that formed the outer perimeter of the housing development and gateway to the sea and he would up in about three feet of water crying to get out. Crying also that he had gotten his new trousers and jersey all wet and seaweedy and that he would catch hell (not the word he would have used then but appropriate) when he got home and Ma saw his condition. And Teflon older brother would get away scot-free and he, no snitch even then, would Velcro once again some mother trouble. And he did, although, damn age, he could not recall the penalty, maybe a few days without television.  

And learned the power of the sea early when one winter storm night, maybe about fourth grade but in any case a situation that would, minimum, call for at least one no school day, Mother Nature played a dirty trick on her seaward brethren and tried to bring them home to her bosom all in one lashed-up swoop as the exploding high water, ignoring painfully constructed man-made seawalls, came right up to that home’s front door  and the lot of them, two parents and three brothers,  only reached higher ground in a split second before a big foam-flecked (aren’t they always foam-flecked  like some angry man ranting to a rapt crowd when they come in that hard, fast and furious) wave crashed down on their home. A few nights spent in the gymnasium of his elementary school, Snug Harbor (jesus, what a name after that episode), and weeks of clean- up and smells of bleach to get rid of mold and other stuff  taught  him well the fickleness of old Mother.

And later, childhood later, a few years after the winter storm later anyway, when he, bravo he, decided, yes, consciously decided that the impeding summer storm he could sense coming (he had developed a sense about weather, sea weather anyway, without the need for television prompts) would be no deterrent to his taking that somewhat water-logged log he eyed on the beach and using it to help him swim to China, or some such place, on the current. The China, or someplace being prompted, that day by episode 234 in the Velcro Ma wars that he had just lost another round in and was ready to chuck it all if he could just get away to make his fame and fortune . The subject of the dispute, a case of missing money from her purse (money missing and spent the night before on sweet roll crème-filled Twinkies, ditto cocoa rich chocolate cupcakes, and a few off-hand pieces of penny candy, mary janes , no, not that mary jane what would he have known of weeds, dopes, and such in those suburban dark ages, tootsie rolls, stuff like that, maybe adding up to a dollar, a big dollar just then with Pa just out of work and no dough rolling in and mortgages to pay, and hungry, not sweet tooth hungry kids to feed, and so every penny counted. Round to Ma, and adieu, no more burden son.

But enough of motivation, and enough of not having the sense that god gave geese because just then he let go of the log to do something, something forgotten. And with the sea picking up steam that log kept eluding his grasp as they, he and the log, headed to open water. And losing the log in the churning waters he, not a strong swimmer then (or now) almost drowned, and would have and fate changed, except for the screams of his panic beach-bound older brother (the rolling barrel older brother, thanks, he owed older brother one) seeing his plight sounded the alarm for help and some Madonna savior swimmer, beach-bound too, came and swooped him up before he went down for the third time. And later he yelling beach-bound and still full of water, yelling to his savior bother “Don’t tell Ma, jesus, don’t tell Ma.” And he didn’t .

Or that night, that funny night (funny night in retrospect, then and now retrospect) when he, his buddy since elementary school Will (and proper subject of some wild non-mighty storm tales) and his girl, Carrie he thought  although it could have been Donna, Donna whom Will  later married and divorced after about three weeks of marriage right after he caught her running around with about four different guys, and a couple of  dykes to top things off, and who would wind up a very senior cadre, if cadre is the right word for those times and that feeling, in the summer of love in San Francisco, 1967 not fifteen blocks from this stormy night Seals Rock Inn, and she, she Terry Wallace, his mostly through high school flame, sat in Will’s father-bought high school car, a ’59 Dodge, “making out” (term of art for “doing the do,” “going all the way,” sex, hell, fucking) while the sea churned up around them at old Nippo Point Beach just up from home Granitetown and the police, spotting the storm blasted car and the fix, came and rescued them rescued them while they were in, ah, compromising positions (you figure it out,  back seat car figure it out, or read the Karma Sutra, position number twenty- one, or just read it and dream figure your own position,  he just laughed his thought laugh) because in the throes of love they had not realized that they were in a couple of feet of sea water and rising that had splashed over some poor man-made seawall built against Mother’s angers. And the cops, the cops snitching, snitching like they always do, snitching like crazy to Ma (and Pa too on all sides), talking about court and under-age, even when Donna, yah, that’s right, it had to be Donna, she was just that bold and sassy, offered to give them a piece, or maybe some head, if they would forget the whole matter. Mas and Pas didn’t and  Will and he walked, walked alone all summer, and all summer heard  Karma Sutra laughs from fogged up cars down at that broken Nippo Point seawall they claimed.

Or that day, that wind- swept, foam-flecked sea day (okay, enough of foam-flecked seas, enough of rough seas. big swirling rough seas, immense, beyond man-sized immense out in the deep blue deep all green gloss gone  falling but almost tepidly to thankful womb shores, cluttered with jetsam and flotsam, logs, ancient memory logs, China-worthy logs, from hurt penny-pinched  childhood, cigarette packages, maybe discarded from some white tee- shirted corner boy venture out in the submarine race night, lobster traps, useful for student ghetto table, every smashed and swirled thing,  enough of wind, enough to fill a lifetime wind , a lifetime of sad blown winds, a lifetime of false trumpet winds, Miles Davis be-bop full-throated winds, if they, the winds could have “dug” be-bop instead of aimless fury), when his world fell apart, the day when Diana, his first wife, had left him, left him for good, for good after about seventeen mad bouts of irreconcilable differences and about sixteen almost reconciliations. Enough of  almost reconciliations to fill a book, a book of how to, and how not to, his version, his final truth version, screw up the genteel, gentle, the broken, or better half-broken women (nah, woman, she ) from saddened youth spills, damnations, and mishaps without really trying.     

Funny, although not humorously funny like his nymph tryst with Terry, or ironically funny like his bonding with the sea from birth, but kind of sad sack funny he and Diana had met, met in Harvard Square in the summer of love, 1967 (check it out on Wikipedia for the San Francisco version of that same year but basically it was the winds blowing the right way for once when make love not war, make something, make your dreams come true with sex, drugs, music had its minute, has its soon faded minute via self –imposed hubris and the death-dealing, fag-hating, nigger-hating, women-hating, self-hating  bad guys with the guns and the dough leading, and still leading, a vicious counter-attack), she from Podunk Mid-West (Davenport out in the Iowas if you need to know) far from ocean waters, but thrilled by the prospect of meeting an ocean boy who actually had been there, to the ocean that is.

Oh yah, how they met in that Harvard Square good night for the curious, simplicity itself (his version), she was sitting about half way across the room, the cafeteria room, the old  Hayes-Bickford lunch room just up from the old end of the red line Harvard Square subway stop (and no longer there, nor is the subway stop the end of the Red Line), if that name helps (and it did , did help that is, if you had any pretensions to some folkie literary career, some  be-bop blessed poet life, or just wanted to rub elbows with what might be the next big thing after that folk minute expired of a British invasion of sexed-up moppets and  wet dream bad boys and poetry  died of T.S. Eliot and rarified air, or, maybe just a two in the morning coffee, hard pressed sudsy coffee, but coffee, enough to keep a seat in the place, after a tough night at the local gin mills, and hadn’t caught anybody’s attention, sitting by herself, writing furiously, on some yellow notepad, and she looked up.  

He, just that moment looked up as well (although he had taken about six previous peeks in her direction but she ignored them with her furious pen), and smiled at her. And she gave him a whimsical, no, a melt smile, a smile to think about eternities over, about maybe chasing some windmills about, about, about walking right over and asking about the meaning of, well, that smile. And he did, and she did, she told him that is. And in the telling, told him, that she had half seen (her version) him peeking and wondered about it. And all this peeking, half peeking, got him a seat at her table, and her a cup of coffee and a couple of hours of where are you from, what do you like, what is the meaning of existence and what the hell are you writing so furiously  about at two o’clock on Sunday morning. And one thing led to another and eventually the sea came in, although, damn age against he couldn’t for the  life of him remember  how that subject came up, except maybe  something triggered when she mentioned Iowa, or something.                 

And what did she look like, for the male reader in need of such detail, especially since she was sitting alone writing furiously at two in the morning, maybe she was, ah, ah, a dog. Nah she was kind of slender, but not skinny, slender in that fresh as sweet cream Midwestern corn-fed way that started to happen after the womenfolk, not prairie fire pioneer women any longer, had been properly fed for a couple of generations after those hard Okie/Arkie western trek push on days of eating chalk dust and car smoke trailing dreams. With her long de riguer freshly- ironed brown hair pulled back from her face (otherwise she would have constantly had to interrupt her furious writing to keep it out of her face as she wrote). And a pleasing face, bright blue eyes, good nose, and nice lips, kissable lips. Nice legs from what he could see when he went over. But who was he kidding, it was that whimsical, no, melt smile, that smile that spoke of eternities, although what it spoke of at that two in the morning was gentle breezes, soft pillows, of that Midwestern what you see is what you get and what you get, well, you better hang on, and hang on tight, and be ready to take some adversity, to keep around that smile. But that was later, later really, when he figured it out better why he tossed and turned all that night (really morning) and that thought would not let him be.            

And memory bank of their first time up in ocean’s kingdom, the next day actually she was so anxious to see the ocean, or maybe anxious to see it with him, they talked about it being that way too but let’s just memory call it her anxiety, the rugged cross salvation rocks that make up Perkins’s Cove in southern Maine, up there by Ogunquit. There are stories to be told of his own previous meetings with Mother Perkin’s but this is Diana’ s story and those stories, his stories, involved other women, other treacheries, other immense treacheries, and other delights too. That day thought she flipped out, flipped out at the immensity of it, of the majestic swells (and of her swaying, gently, but rhythmically to the rise and fall of each wave) of the closeness of a nature that she, she of wind- swept wheat oceans, of broken- back bracero wet back labor to bring in the crop, of fights against every form of injury, dust, bugs, fire, drought had not dreamed of. And as if under some mystic spell, or some cornfield mistake, she actually plunged fully- clothed (not having been told of the need  for a swimsuit since the ocean itself was the play, the hugeness of it, the looking longingly back to primordial times of it, the reflection in the changings winds of it), in to the ocean at that spot where there was just enough room if the tide was right, just ebbing enough to create a sand bar to do so (today there is no problem getting down there as the Cove trustees have provided a helpful stairs, concrete-reinforced, against old time lumber steps breakaway and lost in some snarled sea) and promptly was almost carried out by a riptide.

He saved her, saved her good that day. Saved her with every ounce of energy he had to take her like some lonesome sailor saving his shipmate, save just to be saving, saving from the sea for a time anyway, or better, saving like the guy, that long gone daddy, who did or said some fool thing to his woman and she flipped out and make a death pact with old King Neptune (and wouldn’t you know want to bring him along for the ride) from that song Endless Sleep by Jody Reynolds. But get this, and get it from him straight just in case you might have heard it from her. That day she was so sexed-up, there is no other way to say it, and there shouldn’t be, what with the first look ocean swells and her swaying , and her getting dunked good (with wet clothes and a slight feverish chill), and her being so appreciative of him saving her (the way she put it, his version anyway, was that save, that unthinking save, meant that whatever might come that she knew, knew after one day, and knew she was not wrong, that he would not forsake her for some trivial) that she wanted to have sex with him right there, right in the cove. (In those days there was a little spot that he knew, a little spot off a rutted dirt path that was then not well known, was unmarked  and was protected by rows of shrubbery so there was no problem about “doing the do” there and frankly that thought got him sexed-up too. Today there are so many touristas per square inch in high season and that old rutted path now paved so that the act would be impossible. It would have to wait hard winter and frozen asses, if that same scenario came up again.)

Here’s the thing thought she, Diana, from the sticks, new to Harvard Square summer of love and Boston college scene school didn’t take birth control pills or have any other form of protection that day, although she was fairly sexually experienced (some wheat field farmer and then the usual assortment of colleges guys, some honest ,some, well, one- night stands). And he, he not expecting to be a savior sailor that day carried no protection, hell condoms (and, truth, his circle, the guys anyway, and really the girls knowing what the guys expected, left it up to their partners to protect themselves. Barbarians, okay). So before they could hit the bushes, before they could lose themselves in the stormy throes of love he had to run (yes, he ran, so you know he was sexed-up too) up to Doc’s Drugstore (no longer there, since Doc passed away many years ago and his sons became lawyers and not pharmacists) on U.S.1 right in the center of Ogunquit. And red faced purchased their “rubbers”  (and wouldn’t you know there was some young smirky I-know what-you-are-up- to-right-now sales girl behind the counter when he paid for his purchase, jesus). So as the sun started blue –pink setting in the west and to the sound, the symphony really, of those swells clanging on those rugged cross rocks they made love for the first time, not beautiful sultry night pillow love in some high-end hotel (like later), or fearfully (fearful that her prudish dorm roommate would bust in on them) in her dorm room but fiercely, fiercely like those ocean waves crashing mercilessly to shore. The time for exotic, genteel, gentle love-makings (“making it,” out of some be-bop hipster lexicon their way of expressing that desire) would come later, later intermingled with the seventeen differences and sixteen almost reconciliations.                   

And funny too in that same sad sack love way they early on  had vowed, secular vowed (no, not that Perkin’s Cove love day, sex is easier to agree to, to make and unmake, than vows, religious, secular, or blasphemous), that they would not, like their parents fight over every stupid thing.. That night in her dorm room after that full day of activity they stayed up half the night (hell with a little benny that wasn’t hard, and perhaps they stayed up all night, and although her roommate never showed that night they did not, his version, did not make love) remembering his Velcro Ma wars and, as she related that night and many night after, her Baptist father repent sinners weird wars. He related in detail his various wars, wars to the death that left him with no option, no he option except to leave the family house and strike it on his own, on his summer of love terms if possible, since he had sensed that wind that storm swell coming for a while and was as ready as any “hippie”  (quaint term, although he did not, and never did, consider himself a hippie but rather traced his summer of love yearnings to beat times, to be-bop boys and girls with shaded  eyes and existential desires) to run with the tide. She related in detail her devil father, with seven prayer books in all his hands on Sunday and a thwarted creep up to her room every other day, and of  his bend bracero hatred short-changing the wages of the wetbacks who came via train smoke and dreams to bring in the crop (or have the complaisant county sheriff  kick them out wage-less, or with so many  deductions for cheap jack low rent shack barely held together against the fury of prairie winds room and board, food just shy of some Sally, Salvation Army, hand- out in some desolate back street town (and he knew of such foods, and of kindly thanks yous but that was give away food not sweated labor food)  that it made the same thing. Justified of course by some chapter and verse about the heathens (Catholic heathens and he, the father , still fighting those 16^th century wars out on prairie America and, and, winning against hard luck ,move on to the next shack and hand-out worthy food harvest stop, endlessly, braceros), and their  sorrows .           

And they didn’t , didn’t act like their parents, their he and she parents, that summer of love, that overblown ,frantic , wind-changing summer of love, when they sensed that high tide rolling in, hell, more than sensed it, could taste it, taste in the their off-hand love bouts not reserved for downy billows (and he glad, glad as hell, that she, his little temptress she, had freely offered herself to him up on those rugged cross rocks so that he, when he needed a reason, easily coaxed her to some landlocked bushes, or some river, some up river ,Charles River, of course hide-out and she, slightly blushing, maybe, with the thought of it, followed along giggling like a schoolgirl),taste it is the sweet wines handmade in some friend experiment , hey try this (and experiment yogurts, ice cream, dough bread, and on and on, too) , taste it in the tea, ganga, herb, hemp smoke curling through their lungs and moment peace, or later, benny high to keep sleep from their eyes on the hitchhike road, or later too, sweet cousin cocaine, cheap, cheap as hell, and exotic to snuffed noses to take away the minute blues creeping in, taste it in the new way that their brethren (after all not everybody got caught up in the minute, some went jungle-fighting, some went wall street back-biting, some went plain old ordinary nine to five- routining, some went same old same, old love and marriage and here come X and Y with a baby carriage (and mortgages , and saving for junior’s college and ,and…) offered this and that, free, this and that help, this and that can I have this free, taste it in, well, if you don’t want to do that, hell, don’t and not face Ma, or kin, or professional wrath (or she father fire and brimstone), taste it out in those friendly streets, no not Milk Street, not Wall Street,  not the Loop, but Commonwealth Avenue, Haight Street, Division Street, many Village streets, many Brattle streets, many Taos streets, Venice Beach streets, all the clots that make the connections, the oneness of it all, the grandness of it all, the free of it all.

And they, they made the kindness, the everyday kindness of it, the simple air-filled big balloon kindness of it like some Peter Max cartoonish figure, and when they filled that balloon with enough kindness and against the slut remarks of  high Catholic Ma disapproving of heathens (see not all bigots were out in the prairie wheat field strung out on the lord and, wheat profits) and she Pa disapproving of hippie (never was , beat, beat, yes) they married , justice of the peace high wind Perkin’s Cove- consummated married she all garlanded up like some Botticelli doll model picture (his mistress, his whore,  from what they had heard, and Diana  blushed at that knowledge), flowered, flowing garment, free hair in the  wind and he some black robe throw around , and feasting,  feasting on those rugged cross rocks . Too much.                          

And for as long as they could see some new breeze blowing that they felt part of they were kind to each other (and others of course). Then the winds of change shifted, and like the tides the ebbs set in, maybe not obvious at first, maybe not that first series of defeats, that Loop madness in ’68, that first bust for some ill-gotten dope and some fool snitch to save his ass from stir turned on him, some brethren (he hated snitch, the very word snitch, from that time down in that rolling barrel slope in the water episode with his older brother, his older brother now name- etched in black marble in Washington along with other old neighborhood names), that first Connecticut highway hitchhike bust as they headed to D.C. for one more vain and futile attempt to stop the generation’s damn war, that several hour wait in Madison for some magnificent Volkswagen bus to stop and get them from point C to point D on their journey to this now very storm- driven San Francisco spot (a few blocks up over in North Beach the old beat blocks, Haight Street hippie having turned into a free-fire zone, that “no that is six dollars for those candles , not free brother” sea-change, and the decline of kindness, first casualty their own kindnesses, their own big balloon kindnesses more less frequently evoked, more tired from too much work, more sorry  but I have a headache ,he too, and less thoughts about trysts in hidden bushes, or downy billows for that matter. Worse, worse still, he went his way, and she went hers, trying to make it (no longer their “making it” signal to chart love’s love time) in the world, hell, nine to five routining it but it was the kindnesses, those big ball kindnesses that went (and that they both spoke of, marriage counselor spoke of, missing), and seventeen differences, substantial differences, and sixteen almost reconciliations,, they grew older and apart, and…

She left him for another man, another non-sea driven man, a man who hated the outdoors, hated the thought of the ocean (he grew up in lobstertown Maine and had his fill of oceans, of fierce winds, of rubber hip boots, and of rugged cross rocks  thank you, she told him of the other man) when she called it seventeen times is enough quits after they had spent a couple of months up in that storm-ravaged Maine cottage that he insisted they go to reconcile after the last difference bout where she, quote, was tired as hell of the sea, of the wind, of the stuff that the wind did to her sensitive skin ( big old sadness at that remark by him for he never said, kindness said, anything about that, or never said he could stop the ravages of time), and, and, tired of him playing out some old man of the seas, some man against nature thing with her in his train, unquote. Yah, she up and left him. Damn, and he had had thoughts of eternity, of always being around that smile, that quizzical smile, or the possibility of that smile, that he first latched onto that first Harvard Square night when he had smiled at her across the room, and she had smiled that smile right between his eyes at him.

Or that time later with Sarah, jesus has it been twenty years now, as the winter seas once again bore down their fury when they, at her insistence she from coastline Oregon near Coos Bay, had moved to water’s edge Marblehead outside of Boston away from city crowds and city concerns and city madnesses and city doubts and too city delights, and the seas came up over a painfully constructed double seawall (watched over time turn from single storm blasted sea wall), damn double seawalls and still not enough, and almost touched the top of their front door steps. And they seeking shelter again in a make-shift home school like he in in kid time and spending obligatory weeks with bleach and mop buckets.  She, Sarah she, too eventually calling it quits, although not over another man, or over his man and nature obsession, or over that breeched double sea-wall but just her calling it Sarah quits. Just like the way she came in to that meeting, the Park Street church meeting, some pressing urgent meeting to stop another generation’s war and they connected like the passing air that night they met, both on the hurt rebound, and both clingy, clingy as hell, and both without a word shortly thereafter, maybe a couple of days not more than a week, deciding quickly to stay together for a time, not kid foolish eternity time, an indeterminate time. And she brought forth a rebirth of kindness in him (she was organically kind, needed no winds of time shift, no big world- historic motion motive to do that) and of shared funny times, mature now (ragged bushes, and up river hide-aways just a laugh and tingle memory), although rugged cross rock still travelled, mature travelled and no fair maiden rescues. And he sorry, end of youth, end of mystery awe, end of mad adventure sorry, strangely more than Diana sorry, when she left.

Or that Maine time a few years back when, alone to clear some troubled thoughts after the end of his last marriage (and last marriage), a sudden winter storm came up the coast of Maine and he was stranded in his Thoreau-like lean-to shack not build for heavy gales but summer frolic for a couple of days when Mile Road the sole road in or out, drowned smothered flooded marshland on both sides and so no escape except for the boat-worthy , was cut off sunken under five feet of water, he short of supplies  and house fuel not having heard any forecast, his life-long  sea trouble radar apparently failing him or maybe unadorned hubris from his quick decision to head north against all cautions after he gathered himself together post-court battle, and he finally knew what it was like to be totally dependent on happenstance, to siren call Mother Nature, on others, and, in the end on his own devises.

Or tonight, the winds blasting away against the open air door to his room, rain splashing down the wind -battered door seeping into the room a little, torrents of rain, torrents of thoughts, momentarily left to his own devises, left to his own thoughts. Just then he thought, that no, no he had been wrong, he really had been  searching for that metaphor, that metaphor, that mighty storm metaphor, that would sum up his life.