Tales From Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night: brothers under the bridge

Showing posts with label brothers under the bridge. Show all posts

Thursday, February 21, 2013

From The Brothers Under The Bridge Series-Jamal Pratt’s Personal Peace Treaty

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:

You know the steady drumbeat of what are you going to do with your life (he had only vaguely alluded to that service career which she might have freaked at if he explained it in too much detail), why were you hanging out with who you were hanging out with, don't you know those corner boys of yours will just get you in trouble (in fact she was only about half right about that since Junior was headed for college and Roy the Boy had military ideas too, although Jesse and Preston were slated to do time, black time, for some cheap jack robberies) , the universal mother drill. Moreover he had no steady girlfriend since Sheila had moved back down south with her grandmother after her parents split up and he was just keeping his head above water when it came to that corner boy midnight shifter stuff his mother kept harping on (he was under Jesse’s spell in particular just then). He was desperately in need of a change of scenery, no question.

Besides he wanted, English High proud wanted (the glass case in the front lobby exhibited many of the servicemen and others who had distinguished themselves in service to the country in the long line of campaigns this country has conducted as befitted the oldest public high school in the country, both fact drummed in the boys from day one of grade nine), to do his duty for his country against the communist menace that it was facing, besides big dog Red Russia, from a place called Vietnam, a place where, from all the reports, the citizenry was growing wild, and getting wilder and would take down the whole region with it. That, of course was part of it, part of what any red-blooded American, black or white, feared and Jamal thought rightfully so, although he was loose, pretty loose, on exactly what the hell was happening there. The big part though was that Jamal Pratt was smitten by a John Wayne Army Special Forces action film, The Green Berets, having seen it several times and having bored, bored there was no other word for it, his corner boys as they hung around nights in front of his apartment house over on the corner of Washington Street and Geneva Avenue in the high Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.

What got to Jamal was how smooth these guys were, these Special Forces guys (and how they he heard also got plenty of action from the girls around North Carolina and places like that who were ready to do just about anything to get their kicks with a Green Beret), how they were able to take on about ten gooks (yes, that was the term he used for them and a term of common usage, Charlie only came later when the deal went down in–country, and the more respectful Mr. Charlie even later) and whip their sorry asses before they knew what hit them, about how they saved little rice-growing peasant village after little rice-growing peasant village when those crummy cowardly commie bastards tried to stake out their claim, and about how cool their weapons were that made quick victories possible (especially that quick-action M-16 that every guy got to carry, later he would pray, pray to high heaven for a sweet AK-47 that Mr. Charlie had at his disposal when his goddam M-16 would jam at the wrong freaking time ).He wanted in, wanted in bad on that action, and since he had not planned to go to college anyway for lack of money and interest he figured that when he signed up down at the recruiting station on Tremont Street he would try his luck as a Green Beret recruit even though his physical aspect (thin and short) was just inside the stiff Special Forces regulations. He figured if that didn’t work out, although he was pretty sure he had the stuff that the Green Berets were made of, he would pick a skill school, maybe carpentry or plumbing like his uncle, and be all set for when after he got out.

Well Jamal’s dream, like a lot of things, and not just black things, in this wicked old world, didn’t pan out, the Green Beret part (strangely he couldn't pass the hearing test, although, strangely too it did not disqualify him from the military as a whole), although he did gain a skill school, not exactly the one he had planned on, partly any way. He was assigned to be 11-Bravo, a grunt, a foot soldier, cannon fodder (although that thought term only came later, grunt was the word his used to his friends back on the block when he came home on leave the first time). He did take advantage of an opportunity to go to jump school, paratrooper school, down at Fort Benning in Georgia and was thereafter sent to Fort Bragg (where the Special Forces units were also located) down in North Carolina to be part of the 82^nd Airborne Division.

As luck would have it 1966 was a year that the action was getting hot and heavy in Vietnam and so units, including his unit, of the 82^nd were ordered to that hot spot as President Johnson acceded to every request from the general in charge, General Westmoreland, for more and more troops (that’s when he first heard the term cannon fodder but he did not connect it with himself then). As stories started coming back in about the actual fighting situation in Vietnam and as he gathered from the training he had received in how to kill gooks by the score (although that Mr. Charlie designation and constant rumors about how the night belonged to him was becoming more and more the term of usage among his fellow soldiers whatever term was being used on the streets or in the barrooms) Jamal started getting more anxious, anxious for a very good reason since he had met a girl, Tonya, from Fayetteville, the town outside the fort, and they had plans to marry and all. (Apparently girls, girls around Fayetteville anyway, were just as happy to get their kicks with airborne guys as with Green Berets or any other elite military units but that attraction is a question for another time).

Jamal did his time in 'Nam, did his rotation (a year and a month’s R&R in Hawaii where Tonya met him on the quiet since she wasn’t supposed to do so), although he never did want to talk about it that much, about the killing (the constant firing part, the fields of fire part, although he would go on and on about that damn jamming M-16 and when he complained about it being told by the sergeant that he must not have cleaned it properly, Jesus, he could clean it in his sleep), about the burning down of villages to save them (although he never asked the reason for doing so he just heard that some colonel from his brigade had said that was the reason), about having black sweats every night every single fucking night on the perimeter waiting for Mr. Charlie to come back and take his back (and some black sweat nights later in the “real world” too, for a while), and a few things he swore he would never tell anybody about what he had done there, about what he had seen done there, and about who these peasants really were anyway.

What he did want to talk about was the sea-change in his own attitude, him and some of the brothers (a few white guys too but not from the 82^nd they, the white guys anyway, were still gung-ho), about how Cassius Clay turned Mohammed Ali was right-“that no Viet Cong ever called him nigger,” that he had no quarrel with those yellow-skinned people, that this red scare thing was a white man’s idea, a white man’s war, taking down poor black, brown, yellow-skinned peoples and making them like it, or trying to make them like it. He read some stuff given to him by a guy, a fellow soldier, whose brother was what he called a Black Panther, a black hell-raiser out on the streets of Oakland in California, some stuff by a guy named Fanon, a West Indian guy, a doctor who had been all wrapped up helping bring down the French in Algeria (the same French had been kicked out of Vietnam by Mr. Charlie he found out when he started looking into stuff. Some of it made sense, some just flat-out didn’t (like the hokey black nation thing, he already knew about what that looked like, just walk down Washington Street and Geneva, Jesus.

Well, when he got back to the "real world" he and a few brothers decided, after hearing their unit might be going back to take on Mr. Charlie again , that they didn’t like it, didn’t like it enough to say something about it, say it out loud, and say it in public. At that point, that 1968 point, especially after Charlie went wild during his Tet earlier in the year, a number of guys, dog soldiers like him, were raising hell, white guys too, but mainly brothers because wouldn't you know the brothers were taking an immense amount of the burden in all those hellish fire-fights that was burning up the dreaded Vietnamese countryside. And so they wound up, fistfuls of service combat decorations and all, in that dreaded Fort Bragg stockade for a while before some publicity-conscious general decided that the best thing to do was to get him and the brothers out, give them undesirable discharges and be done with it. He didn’t like the deal but he took it (he would later fight to change it, get it upgraded when that was possible). He had had enough of Mister’s war, enough of killing, and enough of losing everything he held dear (his Fayetteville girl heeding her army father left him in the lurch too) but he had made his peace, his personal peace treaty with the world…

Monday, February 11, 2013

From The “Brothers Under The Bridge” Series- Fritz John Taylor’s Tribulations –“With Juana From Down Sonora Way In Mind”

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:

In the first installment of this series of sketches space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from 1979 fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.

Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, or talk about the fate of some buddy, some ‘Nam buddy, who maybe made it back the “real world” but got catch up with stuff he couldn’t handle, or as is the case here with Fritz John Taylor, got caught up in some stuff himself that he couldn’t handle, couldn’t handle because his whole blessed life pointed the other way. Some stuff he told me when he started skidding down the pole after riding high for a while. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Fritz’s sign was that of that dark night Juana rose perfume smell.
*******
“United States," answered Fritz Taylor to the burly “la migra” U.S. border guard who was whip-lashing the question of nationality a mile a minute at the steady stream of border-entering people, and giving a cursory nod to all but the very most suspect looking characters, the most illegal Mexican- looking if you want to know. Yes, American, Fritz thought, Fritz John Taylor if they looked at his passport, his real passport, although he had other identification with names like John Fitzgerald, Taylor Fitzgerald, and John Tyler on them, as he passed the huge "la migra” U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at El Paso on the American side across from old-time Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, a city in passing that March, 1972 day that looked very much like something out of Orson Welles’ 1950s Touch of Evil, except the automobiles were smaller and less flashy and the graft now more expensive, and no longer guaranteed to grease the rails, the illegal rails; drugs, women, illegals, gambling, fenced goods, you name it. But just then he didn’t want to think about greasing any rails, or anything else illegal for that matter.

Fritz thought again, this time with easier breathing, whether "la migra” had looked at his passport or not, he was glad, glad as hell, to be saying his nationality, his American, gringo, Estados Unidos, call it what you will citizenship, something he never thought possible, not after Vietnam, not after all the shooting and killing of his thirteen month tour of hell (one month R&R included, a month in Hawaii where he thought he must have set the world record for boozing, mostly scotch, low-shelf scotch to make his dough last, dope-sniffing from opium to cocaine to brother and sister, reefer was the least of it, whoring, some paid, some free what did it matter when a man had his wanting habits on, whoring running through the Kama Sutra and a couple of other tricks not listed in that volume that one of the girls, a white girl too from respectable parents back on the mainland who was looking for kicks, odd-ball kicks and found a partner, for a while, willing to indulge her, Angelina her name, ask her how she got that tattoo on her upper inner thigh and why, if you ever run across her in Lima, Ohio) except these last three weeks down south of the border had been almost as bad, and no more profitable, Fritz profitable. Now that he breathed gringo air, American air he could tell his story, or tell parts of it because he was not quite sure that parts might not still be inside the statute of limitations, for him or his former confederates. So some stuff was better left unsaid.

Yah, it started in ‘Nam really, Fritz thought, as he traced his life-sized movements back in time while he started for a bus, a gringo bright yellow and green El Paso Transit bus that would take him to a downtown hotel where he could wash the dust of Mexico, wash that clotting dust of the twenty hour bus ride from Cuernavaca off his body, if not his soul. Hell, he confessed to himself, a thing he would be very reluctant to mention to others, others impressed by his publicly impervious persona, if it hadn’t been 'Nam, it could have been any one of a thousand places, or hundred situation a few years back, back when he first caught the mary jane, ganga, herb, weed, call your name joy stick, delight habit, tea was his favorite term of rite though. And then he graduated to girl, cousin cocaine when that became the drug of choice and then mainly cheaper that high-grade reefer.

Or, maybe, it really started in dead-end Clintondale when he graduated from high school and with nothing particular to do, allowed himself, chuckling a little to hear him call it that way now, allowed himself to be drafted when his number came up. And drafted, 1960s drafted, meant nothing but 'Nam, nothing but 'Nam and grunt-hood, and that thirteen months of hell, minus one, the boozing, doping, whoring one. And maybe, just maybe, it was even earlier than Clintondale high school days, days when he just hung around Sammy’s garage, watching him tool up some old Chevy or Dodge to make all the valley boys twist in the wind when early morning “chicken runs” beckoned down around the far end of Squaw Rock, took more days off from school than he should have and maybe spent too much time in the back seat of one of Sammy’s cars down the other end, the lovers’ end of Squaw Rock with older girls, Sammy’s “cast-offs,” that only made him restless, restless to break out of one-horse Clintonville. Or reaching down deep the hard fact that he grew up, grew up desperately poor, in the Clintondale back alley projects and so had spent those precious few years of his life hungry, hungry for something, something easy, something sweet, and something to take the pain away.

But mainly he was looking for something easy. And that something easy pushed him, pushed him like the hard fates of growing up poor, down Mexico way, down Sonora way, mostly, as his liked to hum from a vaguely remembered song, some old time cowboy song, on any one of his twenty or so trips down sur. Until, that is, this last Cuernavaca madness, this time there was no humming, no sing-song Mexican brass band marching humming. But stop right there, Fritz said to himself, if he was ever going to figure what went wrong, desperately wrong on this last, ill-fated trip, he had to come clean and coming clean meant, you know, not only was it about the get to easy street, not only was it to get some tea (and later cousin cocaine like he said) delight to chase the soul pain away, but it was about a woman, and as every guy, every women-loving guy, even honest women-loving guy, will tell you, in the end it is always about a woman.

Always about a woman from hard-hearted Irish Catholic Cecilias like he knew, kid knew with their novena books in one hand and their red dress come hither flick with the other, yes, knew them backwards and forwards, to kicks-loving Angela. Knew the score since from kid time or some other combinations foxed out later but a woman, no question. Although not always about a woman named Juana, his sweet Juana. Although, maybe the way she left him hanging by his thumbs in Mexico City before the fall, not knowing, or maybe caring, of his danger, he should be a little less forgiving. Yah, that’s easy to say, easy off the hellish now tongue, but this was Juana not just some hop-head floozy out for kicks.

Jesus, he could still smell that sweetness, that exotic Spanish sweetness, that rose something fragrance Juana always wore (and don’t tell her if you run into her down Sonora way, and you will if you are looking for grade A dope for sure, drove him as crazy as a loon), that smell of her freshly-washed black hair which got all wavy, naturally wavy, and big so that she looked like some old-time Goya senorita, all severe front but smoldering underneath. And those big laughing eyes, yah, black eyes you won’t forget, or want to. Yes, his thoughts drifted back to Juana, treacherously warm-blooded Juana. And it seems almost sacrilegious thinking of her, sitting on this stinking, hit every bump, crowded, air-fouling bus filled with “wetbacks,” sorry, braceros, okay, going to work, or wherever they go when they are not on these stinking buses.

Yah, Juana, Juana whom he met in Harvard Square when he first got back to the world and was looking to deep-six the memories of that 'Nam thing, deep-six it with dope, mope, cope, and some woman to chase his blues away. And there she was sitting on a bench in Cambridge Common wearing some wild seventy-two colored ankle-length dress that had him mesmerized, that and that rose something fragrance. But that day, that spring 1970 day, what Juana-bonded him was the dope she was selling, selling right there in the open like it was some fresh produce (and it was). Cops no too far off but not bothering anyone except the raggedy drunks, or some kid who took too much acid and they needed to practically scrape him off the Civil War monument that centered the park and get him some medical attention, quick.

See Juana, daughter of fairly well-to-do Mexican “somebodies,” needed dough to keep her in style. He never did get the whole story straight but what was down in Sonora well-to-do was nada in the states. She needed dough, okay, just like any gringa dame. And all of that was just fine by him but Juana was also “connected,” connected through some cousin, to the good dope, the Acapulco Gold and Colombian Red that was primo stuff. Not the oregano-laced stuff that was making the rounds of the Eastern cities and was strictly for the touristas, for the week-end warrior hippies who flooded Harvard Square come Saturday night. So Juana was to good tea like Owsley was to the acid scene, the maestro.

Fitz thought back, as that rickety old bus moved along heading, twenty-seven-stop heading, downtown trying to be honest, honest through that dope-haze rose smell, that black hair and those laughing eyes (and that hard-loving midnight sex they both craved when they were high as kites) about whether it was all that or just the dope in the beginning. Yah, it was the Columbia Red at first. He was just too shattered, 'Nam and Clintondale shattered, to know when he had a woman for the ages in his grasp. But he got “religion” fast. Like every religion though, godly or womanly, there is a price to pay, paid willingly or not, and that price was to become Juana’s “mule” on the Mexico drug runs.

To keep the good dope in stock you had to be willing to make some runs down south of the border. If not, by the time it got to say some New York City middle man, it had been cut so much you might as well have been smoking tea leaves. He could hear himself laugh when she first said that tea leave thing in her efforts to enlist him. But by then he had religion, Juana religion, and he went off on that first trip eyes wide open. And that was probably the problem because it went off without a hitch. Hell, he brought a kilogram over the border in his little green knapsack acting just like any other tourist buying a cheap serape or something.

And like a lot of things done over and over again the trips turned into a routine, a routine though that did not take into consideration some of the greater not-knowing, maybe not knowable things, although he now had his suspicions, things going on, like the cartelization of the international drug trade, like the squeeze out of the small unaffiliated tea ladies, like Juana, and placing them as mere employees like some regular corporate structure bad trip. But the biggest thing was Juana, Juana wanted more and more dough, and that meant bigger shipments, which meant more Fritz risk, and later Fritz and Tommy risk (Tommy, ah, let’s just leave it at Tommy, rest his soul, face down in some Cuernavaca muddy craven back alley with two slugs in his back from when some cartel guy got jumpy when Tommy moved the wrong way, or maybe just moved when el jefe was present as thing went awry). And on this last trip it mean no more friendly Sonora lazy, hazy, getting high off some free AAA perfecto weed after the deal was made and then leisurely taking a plane (a plane for chrissakes) from some Mexican city to Los Angeles, or Dallas, depending on the connections. And then home.

This time, this time the deal was going down in Cuernavaca, in a church, or rather in some side room of a church, Santa Maria’s Chapel, in downtown Cuernavaca, maybe you know it if you have been there it's kind of famous. He didn’t like the switch, but only because it was out of the routine, a habit he learned in ‘Nam and that saved him more than once. What he didn’t know, and what his connections on the other side should have known (and maybe did, but he was not thinking about that part right that minute) was that the Federales, instead of chasing Pancho Villa’s ghost like they should have been doing, were driving hard (prompted by the gringo DEA) to close down Cuernavaca, just then starting to become the axis of the cartels further south.

And what he also didn’t know, until too late, was that Juana, getting some kind of information from some well-connected source in the states, had fled to Mexico, first Mexico City where he had met her to make connections further south, and then back to her hometown of Sonora he heard later. So when the deal in Cuernavaca went sour, after he learned at the almost the last minute that the deal was “fixed,” he headed Norte on the first bus, first to Mexico City and then to El Paso. And there he was, now alighting from that yellow green bus, ready to walk into that fresh soap. As he got off he though he staggered for a minute, staggered in some kind of fog, as he “smelled,” smelled, that rose fragrance something in the air. He said to himself, yah, I guess it's still like that with Juana. If you read this and are down Sonora way and see her tell her Fritz said hello.
*******
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez

And it's Eastertime too

And your gravity fails

And negativity don't pull you through

Don't put on any airs

When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue

They got some hungry women there

And they really make a mess outa you.

Now if you see Saint Annie

Please tell her thanks a lot

I cannot move

My fingers are all in a knot

I don't have the strength

To get up and take another shot

And my best friend, my doctor

Won't even say what it is I've got.

Sweet Melinda

The peasants call her the goddess of gloom

She speaks good English

And she invites you up into her room

And you're so kind

And careful not to go to her too soon

And she takes your voice

And leaves you howling at the moon.

Up on Housing Project Hill

It's either fortune or fame

You must pick up one or the other

Though neither of them are to be what they claim

If you're lookin' to get silly

You better go back to from where you came

Because the cops don't need you

And man they expect the same.

Now all the authorities

They just stand around and boast

How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms

Into leaving his post

And picking up Angel who

Just arrived here from the coast

Who looked so fine at first

But left looking just like a ghost.

I started out on burgundy

But soon hit the harder stuff

Everybody said they'd stand behind me

When the game got rough

But the joke was on me

There was nobody even there to bluff

I'm going back to New York City

I do believe I've had enough.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

From The “Brothers Under The Bridge” Series- “The Sign Of The Easy Rider”

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:

Then, like a lot of things in his sorry, beautiful life, it turned into one thing after another. He took a turn around Pacifica curve way too fast, went way over the edge with his right hand throttle (Little Peach so excited by this her first outlaw run she slipped her hands low, too low while he was making that maneuver, thinking, maybe, they were in bed and well you know things happen, distracting things, just bad timing) and skidded hair- pin twirl skidded off the on-coming road. Little Peach was hurt a little, a couple of bruises, but the bike was dented enough to require some work at Loopy Lester’s (Red Riley had guys up, bike magic guys, up and down the coast) back in Daly City. So delay, money draining delay.

A few more days delay too, they ran into rain down around Big Sur, pouring rain and Little Peach moaned about it and they had to shack up in a motel for those few days, days looking at that fierce ocean. She loved it, had never been that far south but to him just more delay. After those mishaps, he then made his first serious mistake, short on funds he decided to rob a liquor store in Paseo Robles, the nearest town big enough to have a liquor store large enough to rob. Hell, he had not decided to do that deed (never telling Little Peach who would have cried bloody hell about it), he was hard-wired compelled to make that decision, hard –wired by his whole sorry, beautiful life, his father (a drunk) then mother (none too stable, a product of those too close Maine family relationships and those long, bad ass Maine winter nights) left him Maine dumped, his whore first wife from over in Richmond cheating on him with every blue jean guy in town while he was in ‘Nam, his very real ‘Nam pain (while saving Brad’s, metaphor Brad’s city boy, college boy sorry ass when Mister Charlie decided, probably hard-wired too to come prove who was boss of the night), and, a little his dope habit (picked up courtesy of ‘Nam too, he was strictly always a whisky and beer man before). Little Peach, gentle in some previous unknown, unknown to him, womanly ways, especially for her age, no question, and the eternal ocean, gentle, when it co-operated, his only rays.

Hard-wired to just take now, take it fast, and get out fast. Hell, it was easy, he had been doing since he was about sixteen and just needed that first Harley some Ellsworth guy was selling, selling cheap, since was headed to Shawshank for a long stretch. That first time he wasn’t even armed, easy. As so it went. Easy, except that time down in Rockland where the clerk flipped the alarm and the cops were just a block away. Yah, he didn’t figure that one right, not at any point. That was when he got the choice- three to five in county or ‘Nam. He hadn’t messed with that kind of thing, that robbery, in California since he hooked up with Red’s operation about a month after he got out of the VA hospital over in ‘Frisco.

Trouble this time, the night he tried to rob the Paseo Robles liquor store, was the owner, and he identified himself as the owner to Jeff, must have thought he was Charley, shot at him, nicking him in the shoulder. He grabbed the owner’s gun in the tussle that followed and bang, bang. Grabbed the dough (almost five thousand dollars in that two -bit town), and the extra ammo under the counter and roared off, Little Peach waiting on the Norton, trembling, confused about what happened, into the Pacific highway night.

A serious mistake, for sure, one the cops kind of had the habit of pressing the issue on. They caught up with him just outside Carlsbad, South Carlsbad down pass the airport road, near the state park camp sites, where he was resting up a little (bleeding a little too). He had left Little Peach back in Laguna to keep her out of it and with most of the dough, telling her to get out of town on the quiet, to use the dough to go back to school, and have a nice life. He was okay that she didn’t argue a lot about staying, or getting all weepy about his fate. She had been his ray and that was enough, enough for what was ahead. So alone, not wanting to face some big step ahead, he wasn’t built for jails and chambers, not wanting to face another downer in his sorry, beautiful life, taking a long look at the heathered, rock strewn, smashing wave shoreline just below, he took out that damn gun, loaded the last of the ammo, doubled around to face the blockading police cars, and throttled –up his Norton. Varoom, varoom…

Friday, December 28, 2012

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -From The“Brothers Under The Bridge” Series-High Street Hank’s Ode To Railroad Bill, The Hobo King

In the first installment of this series of sketches in this space provided courtesy of my old 1960s yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, I mentioned, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod, that I had come across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (Frisco town, California East Bay, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a Great Depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramp camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me in on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A while back, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The ground rules of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to hear, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I, like with the others in this current series, have reconstructed this story as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said.

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger. Most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch from 1979 fits this description, had no real desire to advertise their own hunger but just wanted to get something off their chest about some lost buddy, or some event they had witnessed. I have presented enough of these sketches both back in the day and here to not make a generalization about what a guy might be hiding in the deep recesses of his mind.

Some wanted to give a blow by blow description of every firefight (and every hut torched) they were involved in, others wanted to blank out ‘Nam completely and talk of before or after times, as is the case here with High Street Hank (real name Jason Preston), who went way out of his way to avoid talking much about ‘Nam, or about how he wound up in the hobo camps in the late 1970s after heading west in the early 1970s, but who wanted to talk about missed chances at love, and about the life on the road, and the life of his late hobo king friend, Railroad Bill. I like to finish up these introductions by placing these sketches under a particular sign; no question Jason Preston's sign was that of the hobo king.

[In the interest of full disclosure, although it does not relate directly to Jason’s story, I was probably closer to him than any of the brothers under the bridge that I ran into in those days. Partially because, after ‘Nam in 1971, he followed my own earlier, 1967 summer of love, merry prankster yellow brick road west and got catch up with the remnants of the 1960s scene as it was descending into madness as the tide ebbed. Partially also because he had tried, tried several times after that, to come off the road and move on with his life. To no avail. That “to no avail” part got to me since a quarter turn one way or another in my own experiences and I could have been telling my own Railroad Bill story around that ‘Frisco camp fire mentioned below. I lost contact with Jason about 1985 when he informed me that he was heading south to Mexico to see if he could grapple with his life better there.]

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Here is the way High Street Hank told the story one night, one 1979 November night, as best I remember it, the story of the famous hobo king (real title, no kidding, they have their social gradations just like the rest of us), Railroad Bill, who even I had heard of previously in some mist of time way, told the story one campfire cold sludge coffee stew broth boiling in the kettle night, one miserable hell foggy raw under the bridge Frisco town night, maybe a half dozen guys (Spokane Spike, Portland Phil, Graybeard Gary, and I forgot who else) gathered close around to keep warm against the Pacific squalls, and to share the bottle night (Thunderbird so somebody had dough, had been successful panhandling that afternoon down the Embarcadero, or had cadged it, otherwise Tokay was the cheap jack beverage of choice), yah, Hank told the Railroad Bill story, the story of a prince of the American road, of the long vanishing race of master-less men.

Railroad Bill (real name Theodore Greene, from one of the branches of the Greene family that used to run, or thought they used to run, Albany, although like Hank kept saying don’t hold him to the truth of that real name of that late knight, first- class, of the road since these guys were clumsy with names, aliases, addresses, mail-drops and stuff like that, nine to five stuff that keep the rest of us going, and connected, when he did some begging around looking for Bill’s roots after he passed on, not to inform any kin of his passing but just so he would know that Bill wouldn’t wind up in some potter’s field nameless, numbered, simple county-paid pine box, unadorned and un-remembered, like a million other hoboes, tramps, bums, winos, con men, grifters, sifters, and midnight drifters he had run into in his time, and with the idea that maybe too when old High Street Hank, (his road moniker, although he used others like every guy on the road but that one stuck more often than not and after a while gained a certain privilege, a certain “sure, come on in and have some stew or a swig , brother,” when uttered after some serious time in the jungles), passed on some roadie would wonder, wonder, curious wonder, big time and think big thoughts about his roots and about what he did, or did not, bullshit about, and maybe beg around a little to find out where he came from, or where he had been, but maybe too Railroad Bill the name Hank knew him by was just good enough and the rest was what Hank called his mind, the nine-to-five mind part of it, working overtime), now the late Railroad Bill, always laughed that he had never worked, and he never will (and now won’t), never had a steady job for more than a few days at a time and not many of them either (mainly washing dishes, pearl-diving he called it, some bracero hot sun work out in the California field when he was high on some hot tamale dark-eyed mex dame, some senorita all dark and with Spanish dancing eyes and ready to take him around the world [ you figure it out] for a dollar and a quarter and couple of shots of tequila, and mex dope), never worked for a check (cash only, no deductions brother, or else and Bill was big, and tough, tough enough to enforce that against almost any guy, sometimes guys), hell, never cashed a check ( a real check, although for a while he kited a few, and did some time for that little effort, a few months, maybe a year, guys were always a little shaky on their time after they got out and sometimes built it up a little to impress the new guys, up in Shawshank in Maine) and never, never had a master over him, the kiss of death for any self-respecting ‘bo (and he was a ‘bo, hobo in the “class” structure of the railroad jungle, ahead of tramps, bums, con men, grifters, and bottom-feeding midnight sifters).

So Hank said this was to be Railroad’s story, nah, sketch, or something like that, he said, a story would make you think it was just for entertainment, and this one was about times when honest men (sorry there wasn’t much room for women except whorehouses, slave tents, houses, and getting knocked around by “what the hell” angry men, sorry too) hit the road just to hit the road, and not to write talk-talk immense books about it, literature, or get a feel for the great American night before heading back to academia and attend delicious cozy little conferences for the next fifty years about the plight of the master-less men, 20th century variety [or to write down told homey little sketches told by campfires about hobo kings after coming off the minute road either-JLB]. A time when if you didn’t have what it takes, if you weren’t strong enough to shimmy yourself on some box car to ride the rails, if you weren’t fast enough to outrun some bull railroad cop with a billy club with your name on it, if you didn’t have enough sense god gave geese to “clip” the necessities for the day at some Woolworth’s (more recently replaced by Wal-Mart and, frankly, easier to do since nobody cared whether anybody “stole” some gabacho three for a dollar stuff, not the people who work there anyway unlike the child-like fawns who worked for fifty years and a good watch for Ma Woolworth), if your talk wasn’t smooth enough to make a few bucks to tide you over pan-handling (and cadge at least a couple of packs of cigarettes so you didn’t have to constantly roll your own Bull Durham coffin nails), if you couldn’t dream enough about some phantom white dress Phoebe Snow to get you through those hard first women-less days, if you didn’t have enough sense to latch on to some queen of the rails mutt to keep you company (and make “cute dog” hitchhike rides easier on the days when there were no rails in sight), then you would wind up with old Denver Slim (Railroad Bill’s first road brother), or a thousand other guys, buried early under some railroad trestle, down some deserted ravine, or beside some hollows hillside and nameless, nameless forever:

Hank woke with a start that dreary late October 1976 night when he first ran into Bill, early morning really from the look of the lightened sky, last cold night, or so he thought to himself , before drifting south then heading west to warmer climes for “winter camp.” Yes, he had the routine down pretty pat back then after a few years of scuttling around just short of getting it right, getting away from the damn winter colds that shortened more than one frozen stiff’s life. Summering in the Cambridges away from the congestion of the big towns (downtown Boston and fetid Pine Street Inns or sanctimonious Sallies [Salvation Army] flops , ditto Frisco, ditto L.A., ditto Chi town), and then wintering in the Keys (maybe Key Largo for the air but Key West if he needed hurry money, or in some Pancho Villa bandito arroyo near the border in desert California, or maybe higher up near Joshua Tree (where he had earlier, before his vagabond wandering days, holed up with a couple of mex senoritas with those sparkling eyes himself, some herb, and a couple of Phoebe Snows too, and with dough to go with the herb, when he rode the merry prankster yellow brick road bus back in the early 1970s). But just that minute that cold dreary morning minute his summer was interrupted by a loud sound of snoring and short breathe coughing from some fellow resident who had parked himself about twenty feet from his exclusive turf.

Hell, Hank laughed, explaining to everyone around that campfire [like we were school boys and couldn’t figure it out by ourselves that he was trying to be funny about it] he didn’t mean to tease us about his itinerary he said (although the gist of schedule was real enough, damn real), or about his mayfair swell digs. The fact was that back then he had been in kind of a bad streak and so sweet home Eliot Bridge right next to the Charles River, but not too next to Harvard Square had been his “home” of late then while he prepared for those sunnier climes just mentioned. Those last few previous months have been tough for him though after trying to make a go of it off the road [like a lot of road guys always try to do whether to beat up some bogus parole trap, beat some promise some family to do better trap, or just beat some road tired trap, except the serious winos who would not know where to begin, wouldn’t want to begin, or even give it a thought] first losing that swell paying job “diving for pearls” at Elsie’s, the deli where all the Harvard Johns hung out for some real food after they got tired of the frat house/Lowell house fare, then losing his apartment when the landlord decided, legally decided, that six months arrears was all that he could take, and then losing Janie over some spat, and getting so mad he “took” a couple of hundred dollars from her pocketbook as he went out the not-coming-back door that last time. So there he was at “home” waiting it out. But that was his story not Bill’s and so he moved on.

He had a pretty good set-up under the bridge, he thought. Far enough away from the Square so that the druggies and drunks wouldn’t dream of seeking shelter so far from their base. But close enough for him to try to panhandle a stake to head west with in rich folks Harvard Square (although apparently the rich those days preferred to tithe in other ways than to part with their spare change to, uh, itinerants since he was having a rough time getting the bread together). And, moreover, the bridge provided some protection against the chilly elements, and a stray nosey cop or two ready to run a stray itinerant in order to fill his or her quota on the run-in sheet.

All that precious planning had gone for naught though because some snoring be-draggled newspaper- strewn hobo had enough courage to head a few hundred yards up river and disturb his home. There and then he decided he had better see what the guy looked like, see if he was dangerous, and see if he could get the hobo the hell out of there so he could get back to sleep for a couple more hours before the damn work-a-day world traffic made that spot too noisy to sleep in. Besides, as is the nature of such things on the down and out American road (and in other less exotic locales as well), the hobo might have other companions just ready to put down stakes there before he was ready to head west.

He unfolded his own newspaper covering, folded up his extra shirt pillow and put it in his make-shift ruck-sack, and rolled (rolled for the umpteenth time) his ground covering and placed it next to his ruck-sack. No morning ablutions to brighten breath and face were necessary that early, not in that zip code, he was thus ready for guests. He ambled over to the newspaper pile where the snoring had come from and tapped the papers with a stick that he had picked up along the way (never, never use your hand or you might lose your life if the rustling newspaper causes an unseen knife-hand to cut you six ways to Sunday. Don’t laugh it almost happened to him once, and only once.).

The hobo stirred, stirred again, and then opened his eyes saying “Howdy, my name is Boulder Shorty, what’s yours?” (A rule of the road in strange country was never to give your real moniker straight out but maybe some old time one and for Bill Boulder Shorty was just such a thing from when he first headed out with Denver Slim his first road companion. Bill later told Hank that he had never been to Boulder, nor Denver Slim to Denver, could not have picked it out on a map if he was given ten chances, and was six feet two inches tall so go figure on monikers. The way they got hanged on a guy was always good for a story in some desolate railroad fireside camp before Hank got wise enough to stay away from those sites, far away.) He told Bill his, his road moniker, his real road moniker at the time not having been out on the road long enough to get wise to the protective switch-up then, “Be-Bop Benny.” Bill laughed, muttering about beatniks and faux kid hobos in thrall of some Jack London call of wild down and out story or some on the road Jack Kerouac or something vision between short, violent coughs. Funny Bill’s bringing up that last name because Hank, having had a couple of years of junior college on the G.I Bill after ‘Nam, 1968-70, had gone to the library when he first headed out on the road back in the early 1970s after things first fell apart to read Kerouac’s On The Road and a couple of other books whose names he had forgotten to see if he could pick up any hobo tips, no sale, not for real hoboing, just book hoboing.

Funny too about different tramps, hobos, and bums (and there are differences, recognized differences just like in regular society). He, Boulder Shorty turned Railroad Bill once he knew Hank was no danger to him after sizing up Hank as a raw kid, and after showing that raw kid a little later when they visited a railroad jungle set up near the abandoned Revere railroad tracks what happens when a six-two wiry guy who had been through it all chain-whipped a guy who was trying to steal his bottle of Muscatel, or whom he thought was trying to steal it, same thing, one campfire night, and Hank, were hobos, the kings of the river, ravine, and railroad trestle. Some start out gruff, tough and mean, street hard mean. Others like Bill, kings, just go with the flow. And that go with the flow for a little while anyway (a little while being very long in hobo company) kept Bill and Hank together for a while, several weeks while before that short violent cough caught up with old Railroad (you didn’t have to know medicine, or much else, to know that was the small echo of the death-rattle coming up).

In those few weeks Railroad Bill taught Hank more about ‘bo-ing, more about natural things, more about how to take life one day at a time than anybody else, his long gone father included. About staying away from bums and tramps, the guys who talked all day about this and that scan they pulled off in about 1958 and hadn’t gotten over it yet. About how they slipped a couple of shirts under their sweaters or something and walked right out of Goodwill and nobody stopped them. Or about how some padre bought their story about being far from home and a little tough on the luck side and gave them a fiver. Or about how they ponzi’d some scheme and netted about sixteen dollars and change one time. All about 1958, like he said, and a river of dreams, sorrows and booze ago. [And as if to show the “class” distinction more clearly Hank went into an aside about how Railroad showed him how to hustle for serious dough from the padres (private social service agencies like the Sallys, U-Us, Universalist-Unitarians joined together under one god, and the Catholic Worker-type outfits), fifty buck dough, just by being not too dressed up but clean, and maybe having showered recently, and having a line of patter. Not too strong, not like you overplay you are scamming them (winos need not apply just keep that empty coffee cup out in front of you), and they know it too, but with a plausible plan to present to get you “back on your feet” with their little help. Hank said he would tell us about the details sometime, he never did, but he got fifty easy dollars, cash money, thanks to Railroad’s advice. A couple of times]

Bill told him about guys who took your money, your clothes, hell, and your newspaper covering in the dead of night just to do it, especially to young hobo kings. And about staying alone, staying away from the railroad, river, ravine camps that everybody talked about being the last refuge for the wayward but were just full of disease, drunks and dips. (He let Railroad talk on about that although that was one thing he was already hip to, a river camp was where he almost got his throat handed back to him by some quick- knife tramp that he had mentioned before when he talked about disturbing guys while they were newspaper roll sleeping ).

Yes, Railroad Bill had some street smart wisdom for a guy who couldn’t have been past forty, at least that’s what figured from the times he gave in his stories. (Don’t try to judge a guy on the road’s age because between the drugs or booze, the bad food, the weather-beaten road, and about six other miseries most guys looked, and acted, like they were about twenty years older. Even Hank, before a shower to take a few days dirt off and maybe hadn’t eaten for a while, looked older than his thirty-something years then.) But most of all it was the little tricks of the road that Railroad taught and showed him that held him to the man.

Like right off how Hank’s approach, his poor boy hat in hand approach, was all wrong in working the Harvard Square panhandle. You had to get in their faces, shout stuff at them, and block their passage so that the couple of bucks they practically threw at you were far easier to give than have you in their faces. Christ, Railroad, complete with unfeigned cough, collected about twenty bucks in an hour one day, one day when he was coughing pretty badly. And a ton of cigarettes, good cigarettes too, that he asked for when some guys (and a few gals) pled no dough. It was art, true art that day. Railroad said one girl wanted to take him home, said she wanted to feed him and help him out, implying some big sex wet dream thing out of some mex senorita sparkling eyes past. But Hank just let it go as so much hobo hot air and bravado. Still next time out pan-handling he made about twelve bucks, a ton of smokes, a joint and some girl went into Cardillo’s and brought him out a sandwich and coffee. Beautiful.

Or Railroad told him about how a hobo king need never go hungry in any city once he had the Sallies, U/U good and kindly neighbor feeding schedule down. No so much those places, any bum or tramp could figure that out, and wait in line, but to “volunteer” and get to know the people running the thing and get invited to their houses as sturdy yeoman “reclamation” projects. A vacation, see. Best of all let he said before was him showing how to work the social service agencies for ten here, and twenty there, as long as you could hold the line of patter straight and not oversell your misery. Tramps and bums need not apply for this kind of hustle, go back and jiggle your coffee cup in front of some subway station, and good luck.

[Railroad also taught him the ins and outs of jack-rolling, what you would call mugging, if things got really bad. Jack-rolling guys, bigger and smaller than you but Hank said he ‘d rather keep that knowledge to himself especially when the guys around the campfire started looking mean-eyed at him.]

Funny they never talked about women, although he tried once to talk to Railroad about Janie. Railroad cut him short, not out of disrespect he didn’t think, but he said they were all Janie in the end. He said talking about women was too tough for guys on the road with nothing but drifter, grifter, midnight sifter guys to stare at. Or looking too close at women when on the bum was bad for those longings for home things when you couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Although he did let on once that he was partial to truck stop road side diner waitresses serving them off the arm when he was in the clover (had dough) and was washed up enough to present himself at some stop along the road. Especially the ones who piled the potatoes extra high or double scooped the bread pudding as acts of kindred kindness. One night near the end, maybe a week before, time is hard to remember on the meshed together bum, Railroad started muttering about some Phoebe Snow, some gal all dressed in white, and he kind of smiled, and then the coughing started again.

Hank tried to get Railroad moving south with him (and had delayed his own departure to stick with him for as long as he figured he could get south before the snows hit) but Bill knew, knew deep in his bones, that his time was short, that he wanted to finish up in Boston (not for any special reason, he was from Albany, but just because he was tired of moving) and was glad of young hobo company.

It was funny about how he found out about Railroad’s Albany roots. One night, a couple of nights before the end, coughing like crazy, he seemingly had to prove to Hank that he was from Albany. Bill had mentioned that he was mad for William Kennedy’s novels, Ironweedand the like, that had just come out a couple of years before. He went on and on about the Phelans this and that. Jesus he knew the books better than Hank did. He say that is what made hobos the intelligentsia of the road. Some old Wobblie folksinger told him that once when they heading west riding the rails on the Denver & Rio Grande. When holed up in some godforsaken library to get out of the weather hobos read rather than just get curled up on some stuffed chair. Yes, Railroad was a piece of work. He was always saying stuff like that.

Then one morning, one too cold Eliot Bridge morning, he tried to shake his newspaper kingdom and got no response. Old Bill had taken his last ride, his last train smoke and dreams ride he called it. He left him there like Bill wanted him to and like was necessary on the hobo road. He made a forlorn anonymous call to the Cambridge cops on his way out of town. But after that on those few occasion when High Street Hank passed some potter’s field he tipped his fingers to his head in Railroad Bill’s memory, his one less hobo king memory.